Category: Tech news

 2013: “A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face­book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur.” 2014: “Politically, it’s plutonium now for a member of Congress in this environment to be supporting something that would enhance the government’s ability to… Read More

 Stock trading and financial management platform 8 Securities has closed a $9 million Series B to support its expansion in Japan and China. Returning investors include Velocity Capital and Leitmotiv Private Equity. Read More

 Polish 3D printer maker MonkeyFab has created a 3D scan of the Ma?y Powstaniec or Little Resistance Fighter, a statue in Warsaw’s Old Town that commemorates the Warsaw Uprising.
Designed in 1946 by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and unveiled in 1983 by Professor Jerzy ?widerski, the monument depicts a little rebel, Antek, in stylized German military garb. This is the 70th anniversary of the… Read More

The final frontier of the connected home has nothing to do with thermostats, fancy doorbells, or smooth jazz coming out of your credenza. It’s your garage door.

 Earlier this week, Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced a strengthened version of the USA FREEDOM Act to praise from tech companies, privacy groups and the New York Times editorial board. As that initial applause settled, Rep. Zoe Lofgren argued on Thursday that the legislation would only rein in parts of the nation’s intelligence apparatus. Read More

 France’s disruptive telecom company, Free, just announced that it wanted to acquire T-Mobile US. The WSJ first broke the story. Free then confirmed the bid in a press release. Sprint was already in talks with T-Mobile for a potential acquisition. Now, Free (also known as Iliad) is offering $15 billion in cash for 56.6 percent of the American company at $33 per share. Overall, Free says… Read More

 Today marked GoPro’s first earnings report as a public company. The camera firm traded up more than 3.5 percent in regular hours before its release. GoPro had roughly doubled from its IPO price of $24 heading into reporting its second-quarter financial results. For the second quarter, GoPro had revenue of $244.6 million, up 38.1 percent year-over-year, and earnings per share of $0.08 on… Read More

 If you’re thinking about launching your Android app on Amazon’s App Store, your potential market just got quite a bit bigger.
This morning, Amazon is rolling out their App Store in 41 new places, bumping the grand total up to 236 countries and territories. At this point, it’s getting tough to think of a region where Amazon’s App Store isn’t up and… Read More

 Every couple of years, the Oregon Manifest launches a contest designed to surface new ideas in bike design from teams across the country. The project this year has tasked designers from five cities to build what they believe is the “ultimate urban utility bike.”
San Francisco’s entry into the contest is EVO, a collaboration between HUGE Design, 4130 Cycle Works, and PCH… Read More

 Give away a dollar, and you’ll make someone’s day. Teach someone to give, and they’ll make a difference for a lifetime. The anonymous duo behind the @HiddenCash Twitter account didn’t quite realize that was the point when they started hiding envelopes of money and tweeting clues to their locations. With over 700,000 Twitter followers, they’ve become de facto… Read More

 LinkedIn is fleshing out its tools for salesepople today with a new version of its Sales Navigator. The biggest difference — the Sales Navigator is now a standalone product, rather than an additional set of features on the main LinkedIn site. Vice President of Sales Solution Mike Derezin and Group Product Manager Sachin Rekhi walked me through the new product last week. The idea,… Read More

 Tesla just reported its second-quarter financial results, including non-GAAP revenue of $858 million, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.11. That non-GAAP revenue figure is up 55 percent from the year-ago period.
The company delivered 7,579 cars in the quarter, and built 8,763. Tesla indicated that it is “on track” to deliver more than 35,000 cars in the year, matching prior… Read More

 With social networks Facebook and Twitter handily beating analyst estimates for Q2 earnings, LinkedIn today reported its Q2 results and showed that rising tides are lifting its boat, too. Revenue for the second quarter was $534 million and its EPS (non-GAAP diluted) was $0.51 as the company also raised its guidance for Q3 and the full year. The company’s stock is up by around 8% in… Read More

 Facebook’s standalone photosharing app Slingshot is sidestepping its core “reply-to-unlock” mechanic by letting people send reactions to reactions that are instantly viewable, thanks to its first update for iOS and Android that just went out. This solves Slingshot’s biggest problem: the inability to carry on a normal conversation. Finding friends is easier now too thanks… Read More

 When we started working on the TechCrunch redesign last year, one of the major goals was to improve site performance. During the development process, we implemented several tools to help achieve that goal. One of the approaches we took was to offload time-consuming tasks into background tasks. We built a library called WP Async Task to structure those background tasks. Read More