Category: Tech news

 If you have not yet had the pleasure of being introduced to Nathan for You, you’re in for a treat! The man behind the show, Nathan Fielder, is so wonderfully awkward in his delivery he might just make you pee your pants from laughing so hard.
Last week’s episode “Andy vs. Uber” almost made me do just that.
Warning: lots of spoilers in this post so stop reading if you… Read More

 Over the last two years we have been working hard to improve the experience of TechCrunch products for our readers. Our tiny-but-mighty product team launched the brand new TechCrunch mobile app earlier this month and we couldn’t be more excited. It has been completely redesigned with the goal of giving you easy access to the news you care about most, no matter where you are. Read More

 French VC firm CapHorn Invest recently closed a new $150 million fund (€130 million). Around 250 CEOs and executives of big established companies invested in the fund as limited partners. This is CapHorn Invest’s second fund. The firm plans to focus on Series A rounds, from $600,000 to $6 million (€500,000 to €5 million). What’s interesting about this VC firm is that it… Read More

 Sea, the gaming and e-commerce company holding the first major U.S. IPO from a Southeast Asian tech firm, had a bumpy start to life on the NYSE after closing the day up around eight percent on its list price of $15. The company raised $884 million from its listing, but it could surpass $1 billion if all allotted shares are purchased by underwriters. The share — listed as… Read More

SoftBank is planning to create $100 billion Vision Fund sequels, Chariot is temporarily paused in San Francisco and Stitch Fix shows us what a good IPO looks like. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 Although we may disagree on the usefulness of VR and AR today, it’s hard to argue with the idea that it should be easier to develop for and deploy — especially on the web. That’s why Mozilla is working on a combined framework that gives developers standardized, well-documented tools with which to access the user’s chosen mixed reality platform. Read More

 Venture capitalists Dave McClure, Jason Caldbeck and Chris Sacca, SoFi CEO Mike Cagney and a top Uber engineer have all been accused of sexual impropriety in the last six months as a growing number of women have come forward about the harassment they have endured by those in power. However, Robert Scoble, who has been accused of sexual misconduct in the past, has so far gone unscathed. Read More

 Apple, AT&T, the FCC and Alphabet’s X division have all put into motion efforts to give residents of Puerto Rico more cellular connectivity. Apple has been working with AT&T to extend and activate cell service for users in Puerto Rico. To improve what is a terrible connectivity situation there, it’s going to enable a provisional band of LTE that has been recently approved,… Read More

 Zain Jaffer, who has been CEO of fast-growing mobile ad startup, Vungle, is out of the company after being arrested on a slew of charges, including a lewd act upon a child and assault with a deadly weapon. The alleged victim was his three-year-old son, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. Wagstaffe told us that Jaffer was initially charged with attempted murder,… Read More

 Apple’s first few pieces of original programming, Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps, felt more like stumbles out of the gate. In this era of prestige television from cord-cutting platforms like Netflix and Amazon, the shows weren’t exactly, say, House of Cards or Transparent. But a number of moves over the past several months find the company positioning itself as a serious… Read More

 Elon Musk’s week is going pretty great thus far, between meeting the creators of Rick & Morty and now gaining permission to dig even more tunnels — besides the one he already got the OK to begin digging closer to home in Hawthorne. Read More

 Shopkick, a shopping rewards app owned by SK Telecom, laid off a little more than 10 percent of its staff (about 30 people) yesterday, TechCrunch has learned. Shopkick CEO Bill Demas confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch, saying they were part of a broader restructuring of the business. Read More

 If you’re going to convict or acquit based on evidence provided by a piece of software, you’d better be damn sure that software is reliable. One such program, a DNA analysis tool used in over a thousand cases, has been called unreliable by critics — and a federal judge has just ordered that its code be opened for all to see so we can find out one way or the other. Read More

 Rebecca Kaden has announced that she’s leaving Maveron to join Union Square Ventures as a general partner on the investment team. She’ll be the first female partner at USV. She said that her faith in the team and also a return to her native NYC were motivating factors in joining the firm. Read More

 Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch today announced a number of new features for streamers aimed at helping their grow their online communities and generate revenue from their online channels. Notably, the company will soon debut several features that will allow video creators to better track their path towards achieving either Affiliate or Partner status – a designation… Read More