Can the startup building a Fortnite for VR become the Fortnite of VR?

Virtual reality hasn’t proven itself to be the lucrative escape of the every-man, but the medium has done a fairly good job enticing the gaming community and keeping that niche (mostly) happy. While a couple of big titles have gotten some halfway-decent ports to VR, for the most part VR users are confined to whatever indies can build or whatever Oculus can fund. BigBox VR has been trying to capture attention in the space by not building solo adventures that lead users to find themselves, but instead by trying to match VR’s physicality and immersion...

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Growing pains at venture-backed Moogsoft lead to layoffs

Eight months after bringing in a $40 million Series D, Moogsoft‘s co-founder and chief executive officer Phil Tee confirmed to TechCrunch that the IT incident management startup had shed 18 percent of its workforce or just over 30 employees. The layoffs took place at the end of October; shortly after, Moogsoft announced two executive hires. Among the new additions is Amer Deeba, who recently resigned from Qualys after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with insider trading. Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Moogsoft...

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Limiting social media use reduced loneliness and depression in new experiment

{rss:content:encoded} Limiting social media use reduced loneliness and depression in new experiment https://ift.tt/2DtKpVP https://ift.tt/2qEhGVz November 09, 2018 at 11:52PM The idea that social media can be harmful to our mental and emotional well-being is not a new one, but little has been done by researchers to directly measure the effect; surveys and correlative studies are at best suggestive. A new experimental study out of Penn State, however, directly links more social media use to worse emotional states, and less use to better. To be clear...

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Limiting social media use reduced loneliness and depression in new experiment

The idea that social media can be harmful to our mental and emotional well-being is not a new one, but little has been done by researchers to directly measure the effect; surveys and correlative studies are at best suggestive. A new experimental study out of Penn State, however, directly links more social media use to worse emotional states, and less use to better. To be clear on the terminology here, a simple survey might ask people to self-report that using Instagram makes them feel bad. A correlative study would, for example, find that people...

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Facebook launches Lasso, its music and video TikTok clone

Done cloning Snapchat, Facebook is now chasing Chinese short-form video sensation TikTok with the launch of its knock-off Lasso. Available now for iOS and Android, Lasso is Facebook’s answer to the zany mobile lipsyncing playground that’s gained ground with young users, both in China and in the West. The release confirms TechCrunch’s scoop from last month that the company was building an app called Lasso to let people share short videos with soundtracks. With TikTok looking like the next big thing, it’s not surprising to see Facebook...

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Pure Bit, a South Korean exchange, pulls a $2.8 million exit scam

Another day, another exit scam. This time it comes to us from South Korea where an exchange, Pure Bit, has completely shut down after raising $2.8 million in Ethereum from investors. The exchange, which promised to deliver something call Pure Coin, was live yesterday and today is completely shut down after posting “Sorry” and “Thanks” to their communications channels. According to a Reddit thread, the team was anonymous and that the process of building and pumping exchange tokens is a “popular trend in Korea.” “They have gotten rid of every evidence,”...

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Listen to the music of a Martian sunrise

Two researchers, Dr. Domenico Vicinanza of Anglia Ruskin University and Dr. Genevieve Williams, have “sonified” a video of the 5,000th Martian sunrise captured by the Mars rover, Opportunity. The music is a representation of the experience of seeing the sun rise over the red dunes as light pierces the planet’s atmosphere. It’s beautiful. From the release: Researchers created the piece of music by scanning a picture from left to right, pixel by pixel, and looking at brightness and colour information and combining them with terrain elevation. They...

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Everything you missed from the Startup Battlefield Latin America

The tech scene in São Paulo is an absolute delight, and we’re honored to have seen such an amazing turnout at the Startup Battlefield Latin America. In case you missed it, we’ve put together a little recap of the event below. Editor’s Note: We will embed videos from the event as soon as they’re available. A China Twist to Brazil’s Mobility Revolution Featuring Ariel Lambrecht (Yellow), Eduardo Musa (Yellow), Tony Qiu (Didi Chuxing), Hans Tung (GGV) Mobility is a massive challenge for megacities around the world, including Sao Paulo. The first panel...

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Rakuten has SoftBank in its sights

{rss:content:encoded} Rakuten has SoftBank in its sights https://ift.tt/2RFjJ7e https://ift.tt/2DtcXOY November 09, 2018 at 05:14PM This week, I’ve tried to do something new at TechCrunch with this experimental column — getting obsessed about a topic broadly in tech and writing a continuous stream of thoughts and analysis about it. With my research consultant and contributor Arman Tabatabai, we’ve covered two topics: Form Ds, the filing that startups usually submit to the SEC after a venture round closes (although increasingly do not), and SoftBank,...

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LinkedIn Learning now includes 3rd party content and Q&A interactive features

LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social network for the working world with some 580 million users, took a big step into professional development and education when it acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 billion and used it as the anchor for LinkedIn Learning. Now, with 13,000 courses on the platform, LinkedIn is announcing two new developments to get more people using the service. It will now offer videos, tutorials and courses from third parties such as Treehouse and the publishing division of Harvard Business School. And in a social twist, people who use...

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Sneaker marketplace GOAT announces an AR-centric Black Friday giveaway

{rss:content:encoded} Sneaker marketplace GOAT announces an AR-centric Black Friday giveaway https://ift.tt/2OzBymk https://ift.tt/2yZvApM November 09, 2018 at 03:00PM Black Friday giveaways have become a tradition for online sneaker marketplace GOAT. Today it’s announcing the details of this year’s campaign, which will be its first to incorporate augmented reality. Director of Communications Liz Goodno described this as “the largest digital sneaker event of the year.” The company says it will be offering more than 1,000 prizes, including sneakers...

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Burgerbot startup Creator hires inventor of Boston Dynamics’ Big Dog

Disney Imagineering animatronics wizard Dr. Martin Buehler is a legend in the robotics world. His work leading development of the galloping Big Dog quadruped at Boston Dynamics both inspired and terrified a new generation of makers. But after playing in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction that consumers can’t buy, Buehler has been poached to work on something much more tangible. In fact, it’s edible. He’s joining burger-making robot startup Creator as VP of engineering. “It was a great experience working on experimental validation [at...

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SoftBank’s debt, Ford buys Spin, and Chinese coffee is huge money

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a blast. Connie and I were in the studio with our guest, True Ventures’s Tony Conrad, while Danny repped the other side of the country, dialing in from New York. It was another week shaped by news from Asia. Once we had sorted the sartorially expedient, we first turned to the world of SoftBank, this time taking a close look at its debt load. While SoftBank is currently famous for its investments through...

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Sneaker marketplace GOAT announces an AR-centric Black Friday giveaway

Black Friday giveaways have become a tradition for online sneaker marketplace GOAT. Today it’s announcing the details of this year’s campaign, which will be its first to incorporate augmented reality. Director of Communications Liz Goodno described this as “the largest digital sneaker event of the year.” The company says it will be offering more than 1,000 prizes, including sneakers like the Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG Shattered Backboard, KAWSx Air Jordan 4 Retro Black, Pharrell x BBC x NMD Human Race Trail Heart/Mind, plus curated sneaker packs...

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Children are being “datafied” before we’ve understood the risks, report warns

A report by England’s children’s commissioner has raised concerns about how kids’ data is being collected and shared across the board, in both the private and public sectors. In the report, entitled Who knows what about me?, Anne Longfield urges society to “stop and think” about what big data means for children’s lives. Big data practices could result in a data-disadvantaged generation whose life chances are shaped by their childhood data footprint, her report warns. The long term impacts of profiling minors when these children become adults...

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Facebook removed 14 million pieces of terrorist content this year, and the numbers are rising

Facebook must exert constant vigilance to prevent its platform from being taken over by ne’er-do-wells, but how exactly it does that is only really known to itself. Today, however, the company has graced us with a bit of data on what tools it’s using and what results they’re getting — for instance, more than 14 million pieces of “terrorist content” removed this year so far. More than half of that 14 million was old content posted before 2018, some of which had been sitting around for years. But as Facebook points out, that content may very well...

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