Category: Tech news

 DN Capital is one of Europe’s oldest venture capital firms, albeit one that, by its own admission, has retained its scrappy roots and a certain kind of reputation to go with it. The VC hasn’t gone without success either, most recently seeing portfolio company Shazam exit to Apple in a reported $400 million deal, apt timing for the announcement of DN Capital’s new fund. Read More

 Call him the ultimate hodler. After being one of the first musicians to accept Bitcoin all the way back in 2014, Rapper 50 Cent (a.k.a. Curtis Jackson) appears to have accumulated a small fortune in the volatile digital currency. As TMZ first reported, and the man himself seems to have confirmed, 50 Cent left his Bitcoin sales untouched until rediscovering them some time recently. At the time,… Read More

 A number of startups are rethinking how hiring should work, because while many employers require a college degree for a job, the fact is that most of the skills needed to perform those jobs aren’t taught in college. Enter Strive Talent, a new startup that’s trying to come up with (arguably) better criteria to determine an applicant’s suitability for a job. Read More

 Logan Paul, the YouTuber who sparked a public backlash three weeks ago after posting a video in Japan’s “suicide forest,” has returned to the platform. In his first post back, he published a video focused on suicide and self-harm prevention. Read More

 One of Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s top lieutenants Tom Conrad will leave Snapchat, and the whole tech industry, in March. Coming roughly two years after he joined the company as VP of Product, a source tipped off TechCrunch to Conrad’s impending departure, which Snap now confirms to us. Snap’s director of growth Jacob Andreou who reported to Conrad will step into his role at… Read More

 On Wednesday, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) revealed it has filed a lawsuit against the creators of My Big Coin, an alleged cryptocurrency scam that took naive investors for $6 million. The case charges Randall Crater, Mark Gillespie and My Big Coin Pay, Inc. with commodity fraud and misappropriation of funds raised for a virtual currency known as My Big Coin. Read More

 Alphabet, the company you probably still wrongly refer to as “Google,” today announced the launch of Chronicle, a new cybersecurity company that aims to give companies a better chance at detecting and fighting off hackers. Chronicle is graduating out of Alphabet’s X moonshot group and is now a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella, just like Google. Read More

 Google loves a good puzzle. Each year the company tucks the first details about its annual Google I/O conference behind a puzzle or three, and this year is no different. This year’s setup has the user click their way through a series of rooms found on Google’s Mountain View campus, answering a series of riddles that builds up to the big reveal: the date and time of Google I/O 2018. Read More

 SpaceX has successfully test fired its Falcon Heavy rocket – but this is just the prelude to the big show. The static test fire performed today is a necessary step prior to an actual test launch, firing up all 27 of the rocket’s big Merlin engines prior to trying to do the same but actually following through with a proper take-off. The test fire, completed at the SpaceX Cape… Read More

 Meet Setapp, the Spotify of Mac apps. For $9.99 per month, you can download and use more than a hundred Mac apps without spending another cent. All those apps are usually paid apps, but Setapp wants to change the model. Setapp was founded by MacPaw, an independent Mac development company based in Ukraine. While they have been developing their own apps for almost ten years, they’ve… Read More

 Every inch of the Mavic Air is a testament to thoughtful engineering. Before handing off a review unit, a DJI rep takes us through the process of getting up and running. He flips open the smartphone docking arms from the bottom of the remote, revealing two hidden replacement joysticks nestled inside. Read More

 Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström have much in common beyond the home and family they share. Each has started (and sold) companies. Each has angel invested. But both were beginning to see more opportunities that seize on what Fake calls the “monumental changes” coming our collective way. What they needed was a fund. Enter Yes VC, a new pre-seed and seed-stage firm. Read More

 Following a series of scandals for YouTube’s video-sharing network, the company today announced it’s investing $5 million in creators who use the service in “positive ways” to create change and empower young people. The investment is going towards YouTube’s Creators for Change, its two-year old program focused on countering hate and promoting tolerance.
In its… Read More

 Tigera, a San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses connect and secure their container-based applications, today announced that it has raised an additional $10 million in a funding round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from New England Associates (NEA) and Wing Venture Capital. Read More

 In what amounts to faint praise for the strength of the physical book NPD reported that print book sales rose 1.9 percent in 2017, less than the 3 percent growth posted in 2013-2016. NPD tracks book sales in the US. They write: “Returning from the huge sales of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ in 2016, and the rise of adult coloring books, last year’s book sales… Read More