I used to build bombs in my basement. My friend, a guy who called himself Damage Inc. on the BBSes, built pipe bombs and made a rocket launcher that shot small Estes rockets tipped with razors. We set them off in abandoned fields and fired rockets into trees. We lived in Columbus, Ohio, where there were wide stretches of open field and wide vistas of open time and we were bored and we made and… Read More
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“I am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos” wrote Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos on Saturday in a reeling tweetstorm. He claims journalists misunderstand the complexity of attacking fake news, deride Facebook for thinking algorithms are neutral when the company knows they… 
In the last two years, Unilever has acquired Carver Korea for $2.7 billion. Estee Lauder acquired Too Faced Cosmetics for $1.45 billion. CVC Capital Brands bought PDC Brands for $1.43 billion. L’Oreal purchased a trio of skincare brands for $1.3 billion, and also IT Cosmetics for $1.2 billion. E.l.f. Beauty did an IPO. Venture capitalists didn’t invest in any of these… 
One Night, the last-minute booking app for boutique hotels, is expanding internationally – starting today with London. One Night was created by Standard International, which is the parent company of Standard Hotels. Originally the company launched an app called One Night Standard, which was a way to get great deals on same-day bookings (starting at 3pm) at Standard properties. But… 
It’s a refrain we all hear every year around September: “I swear, whenever they release a new iPhone, Apple makes all the old ones run worse to make you upgrade.” But thousands of performance tests conducted over the years by Futuremark users show that the conspiracy is mostly in your mind. 
Spiro aims to sell CRM software to businesses that have been avoiding traditional CRM products. CEO Adam Honig told me that he and his co-founders Andy Levi (CTO) and Justin Kao (vice president of growth) originally set out to build artificial intelligence products that could assist with CRM (i.e., the software that salespeople use to track their customers and deals). But then they started… 
That’s because Flexport doesn’t ship bits, it ships atoms. Lots of them. Flexport is a freight forwarding logistics network. If you produce a few metric tons of goods in China and need them in stores across the U.S., it books the trucks, ports, planes, and boats you need to get them there. While the dinosaur freight forwarders still rely on paper manifests, Flexport tracks all the… 
Nobody likes corporate trainings. Nobody. In fact one of life’s puzzles that eludes me most is how a person could enjoy corporate trainings enough to spend their time designing and running them. Perhaps only with distain for the status quo can a startup create something that people not only don’t hate, but find helpful. The idea for Butterfly, founded by David Mendlewicz, Simon… 
Quinn Slack thinks we’re close to the future that Back to the Future II promised back in the 80s — flying cars, artificial intelligence, sending rockets into space, and the rest of the whole suite — but there’s a way to get there even faster. That’s why he and his co-founder Beyang Liu started Sourcegraph, a development environment for programmers… 
The pioneering chat app that taught us to text is pulling the plug. On December 15th, AOL Instant Messenger will shut down after running since 1997. AIM dominated online chat in North America at the turn of the century. But with SMS and social apps like Facebook and WhatsApp having conquered chat, AOL is giving up the fight with no planned replacement. “We know there are so many loyal… 
Reports from a few iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus buyers have suggested there could be an issue with the battery inside some of the devices swelling. Apple has now confirmed it is looking into the issue. 
Moneyfarm, the U.K.-headquartered “digital wealth manager” has acquired the technology behind personal finance chatbot Ernest. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, though I understand that, along with the tech, this is an acqui-hire of sorts, seeing London-based Ernest’s CTO Lorenzo Sicilia join Moneyfarm to oversee technology integration. 
Issuu is giving publishers another way to make money from the digital magazines published on its platform. Previously, they could monetize their magazines through advertising or by using the content to drive purchases elsewhere. Now, Issuu is enabling digital sales, which means publishers can charge their readers for subscriptions and single issues. CEO Joe Hyrkin said that many Issuu… 
Gobble, a 15-minute meal kit delivery service, has raised $15 million in Series B growth financing from Khosla Ventures, TechCrunch has confirmed. Khosla Ventures led the round, along with participation from previous investors A16z, Trinity Ventures and Initialized Capital. Gobble came out of Y Combinator in 2015, around the same time many DIY meal kit services started to falter. For a while,… 
With multiple bike-share services to choose from, it can be a pain to open up two or three apps just to see which has the bike closest to you. Transit, an app that shows (you guessed it) transit options nearby and recently raised $5M, now tracks multiple services on its maps of Seattle and Washington, D.C., showing you the best bike to go to regardless of who operates it. 
TechCrunch has discovered that Facebook has stealthily launched official desktop PC and Mac chat apps with screen sharing — two features users have been begging for. Right now, they’re only available for Facebook Workplace, its enterprise collaboration software that competes with Slack and other business apps. But users would surely enjoy if the consumer Messenger app got its… 
Case in point: Sony and reMarkable, a pair of companies as unlike as you’re likely to find, yet with the shared mission of making a device that adequately serves the same purpose a few sheets of paper do. They have mixed success, each working and failing in different ways; but these devices left me optimistic about future possibilities — while at the same time clinging tenaciously… 
The TechCrunch mobile app was in dire need of a refresh, so we rebuilt it from the ground up. Starting today, you can download the new app in the iOS App Store or Google Play store. If you already have the old version of the app installed on your phone, all you need to do is update it to get the new version. 
While Microsoft is still officially working on the mobile version of Windows 10, it’s no secret that the company has all but given up on building its own mobile ecosystem. That only leaves Microsoft with one option: concede defeat and bring its applications to the likes of Android and iOS. That’s exactly what the company has been doing for the last few years and today the… 
Traaqr, a St. Louis-based company, has just announced the launch of their interesting and clever new service. Essentially the system connects online interactions with real world customer service representatives, ensuring accurate attribution when someone goes from your website to your phone bank. Created by entrepreneurs Brian Handrigan, Jeff Linihan, and RJ Jones, the company has raised… 
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