Category: Tech news

 Google’s push to make the web more secure by flagging sites using insecure HTTP connections appears to be working. The company announced today that 64 percent of Chrome traffic on Android is now protected, up 42 percent from a year ago. In addition, over 75 percent of Chrome traffic on both ChromeOS and Mac is now protected, up from 60 percent on Mac and 67 percent on ChromeOS a year ago. Read More

 Fair.com — an all-digital car marketplace that was co-founded by car industry vets Georg Bauer of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla; Scott Painter of TrueCar; and Fedor Artiles of Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and Tesla — has been largely operating under the radar since quietly launching its business earlier this year. But today, it’s coming roaring down the street,… Read More

Duo Security raises $70 million, a close look at Apple’s self-driving car, Snapchat’s Halloween costume and Abu Dhabi’s state fund is doing business in San Francisco. All this on Crunch Report! Read More

 If you like playing console games with the younger generation, you may have come across the issue of their tiny hands being unable to perform certain combos, reach certain buttons easily, and so on. While this makes them satisfying opponents, it might be better if they had a controller more suited to their physiology. Well, good thing there is one! Read More

 MongoDB has finished up what is essentially the final step in going public, pricing its IPO at $24 and raising $192 million in the process. The company will debut on the public markets tomorrow and will once again test the waters for companies that are looking to build full-fledged businesses on the back of open-sourced software. MongoDB provides open-sourced database software that can be… Read More

 Atlas Informatics, whose Atlas Recall promised an intuitive and powerful way to index all your information across many services, is shutting down less than a year after launch. There will be no long sunset period: all user data will be deleted next Friday, the 27th. Read More

 While you’ve already got Yelp and other apps to help you figure out where to eat, Truffle is designed specifically for sharing recommendations with friends and other people you know. A new update should make that sharing even easier. The big addition is an iMessage app, which means (you guessed it) that Truffle is now integrated with iMessage. Read More

 Tom Willerer, who has spent the last four years with the online education company Coursera — the last two as its chief product officer — is moving on from the outfit to become a venture capitalist. Specifically, Willerer is joining Venrock, a venture firm founded nearly 50 years ago to build off the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family. Read More

 As Blue Apron approaches its next earnings report in a couple of weeks, the company said Wednesday that it is laying off 6 percent of its staff as part of “a company-wide realignment of personnel to support its strategic priorities.” Blue Apron was one of the big — and most anticipated — consumer IPOs of the year, but it’s also now one of the companies that… Read More

 eBay is not having a great afternoon after posting a pretty ho-hum third quarter that fit roughly in line with analyst estimates, but perhaps not seeing the kinds of leaps that Wall Street is looking for heading into the fourth quarter. The company said it added an additional 2 million active buyers and now says it has 168 million global active buyers. But even with buyer numbers as large as… Read More

 About a year ago, Adobe announced its Sensei AI platform. Unlike other companies, Adobe says that it has no interest in building a general artificial intelligence platform — instead, it wants to build a platform squarely focused on helping its customers be more creative. This week, at its Max conference, Adobe provided both more insight into what this means and showed off a number of… Read More

 This might perhaps be the most random thing I ever write, but here goes nothing. Snap, the maker of Snapchat and Spectacles, is selling the dancing hot dog costume on Amazon for $79.99. If you’re a Snapchat or Bitmoji user, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. Read More

 No surprise, Samsung is making the connected home a big focus of its annual Developer Conference this week in San Francisco. DJ Koh, the company’s head of Mobile Communications took to the stage at Moscone Center to reveal a spate of different announcements focused on connected devices, as the company works to build a cohesive narrative around its approach. Up to now, the… Read More

 In a textbook illustration of the conflict of interest between Facebook and Google’s ostensible dedication to free speech and their ostensible espousal of progressive values, the internet giants reportedly took millions in advertising money from a major anti-immigration group at the same time as both were engaged in pro-immigration advocacy. Read More

 Facebook has come under fire for its role in influencing the U.S. presidential election, particularly when it comes to “fake news” and Russian-sponsored ads.  When asked about this at WSJ D.Live in Laguna Beach on Wednesday, Facebook VP David Marcus at first deflected, talking at length about all the positive impacts that the social media giant has had on the world. “When… Read More