This Week in Apps: Apple’s vaping app ban, Disney+ gets installed, apps gear up for Black Friday

{rss:content:encoded} This Week in Apps: Apple’s vaping app ban, Disney+ gets installed, apps gear up for Black Friday https://ift.tt/2Qr502u https://ift.tt/33PsjH8 November 16, 2019 at 04:41PM Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support, and the money that flows through it all. What are developers talking about? What do app publishers and marketers need to know? How are politics impacting the App Store and app businesses? And which apps are everyone using? As mid-November...

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Facebook’s Libra code chugs along ignoring regulatory deadlock

“5 months and growing strong” the Libra Association announced today in an post about its technical infrastructure that completely omits the fierce regulatory backlash to its cryptocurrency. 40 wallets, tools, and block explorers plus 1,700 Github commits have how now been built on its blockchain testnet that’s seen 51,000 mock transactions in the past two months. Libra nodes that process transactions are now being run by Coinbase, Uber, BisonTrails, Iliad, Xapo, Anchorage, and Facebook’s Calibra. Six more nodes are being established, plus there...

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Daily Crunch: TikTok starts experimenting with commerce

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. TikTok tests social commerce The short-form video app said it’s allowing some users to add links to e-commerce sites (or any other destination) to their profile, while also offering creators the ability to easily send their viewers to shopping websites. On their own, these changes might not sound that dramatic, and parent company ByteDance characterizes...

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Daily Crunch: TikTok starts experimenting with commerce

{rss:content:encoded} Daily Crunch: TikTok starts experimenting with commerce https://ift.tt/2KpYPrL https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu November 15, 2019 at 09:20PM The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. TikTok tests social commerce The short-form video app said it’s allowing some users to add links to e-commerce sites (or any other destination) to their profile, while also offering creators the ability...

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Three of Apple and Google’s former star chip designers launch NUVIA with $53M in series A funding

Silicon is apparently the new gold these days, or so VCs hope. What was once a no-go zone for venture investors, who feared the long development lead times and high technical risk required for new entrants in the semiconductor field, has now turned into one of the hottest investment areas for enterprise and data VCs. Startups like Graphcore have reached unicorn status (after its $200 million series D a year ago) while Groq closed $52M from the likes of Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital fame and Cerebras raised $112 million in investment from...

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Twitter makes its political ad ban official

The ban on political ads announced by Twitter two weeks ago has come into effect, and the rules are surprisingly simple — perhaps too simple. No political content as they define it may be promoted; Candidates, parties, governments or officials, PACs, and certain political nonprofit groups are banned from promoting content altogether. The idea intended to be made manifest in these policies is that “political message reach should be earned, not bought,” as the company puts it. It’s hard to argue with that (but Facebook will anyway). The new rules...

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More layoffs at pivoting London edtech startup pi-top

London edtech startup pi-top has gone through another round of layoffs, TechCrunch has learned. pi-top confirmed that eight jobs have been cut in the London office, saying the job losses resulted from a “restructuring our business to focus on the U.S. education market”. In August we broke the news that the STEM hardware focused company had cut 12 staff after losing out on a major contract. pi-top told us then that its headcount had been reduced from 72 to 60. The latest cuts suggest the workforce has been reduced to around 50 — although we have...

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VoltServer adds a data layer to electricity distribution in a move that could help smart grid rollout

Stephen Eaves, the chief executive of a new startup that promises to overlay data on electricity distribution, has spent years developing data management technologies. Eaves’ first company, the eponymous Eaves Devices, focused on energy systems in aerospace and defense — they converted the military’s fleet of B2 bombers to use lithium ion batteries. The second company he was involved in was developing modular array devices to install in central offices and cell towers and conducted early work on electric vehicle development. His goal, Eaves says,...

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Despite bans, Giphy still hosts self-harm, hate speech, and child sex abuse content

Image search engine Giphy bills itself as providing “fun and safe way” to search and create animated GIFs. But despite its ban on illicit content, the site is littered with self-harm and child sex abuse imagery, TechCrunch has learned. A new report from Israeli online child protection startup L1ght — previously AntiToxin Technologies — has uncovered a host of toxic content hiding within the popular GIF-sharing community, including illegal child abuse content, depictions of rape, and other toxic imagery associated with topics like white supremacy...

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Despite bans, Giphy still hosts self-harm, hate speech, and child sex abuse content

Image search engine Giphy bills itself as providing “fun and safe way” to search and create animated GIFs. But despite its ban on illicit content, the site is littered with self-harm and child sex abuse imagery, TechCrunch has learned. A new report from Israeli online child protection startup L1ght — previously AntiToxin Technologies — has uncovered a host of toxic content hiding within the popular GIF-sharing community, including illegal child abuse content, depictions of rape, and other toxic imagery associated with topics like white supremacy...

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Last chance for early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019

Trite as it may sound, all good things must come to an end. And the good thing that’s about to come to a grinding halt is early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019. You have mere hours to save — the deadline strikes tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). You can save up to €500, but only if you beat the clock. Buy your early bird pass right now, otherwise you’ll pay more than necessary — how sad. Need more inspiration than saving significant euros? Okay, let’s talk speakers. Disrupt conferences always offers an awesome lineup of speakers,...

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TikTok tests social commerce

TikTok is beginning to dabble in social commerce. The short-form video app said it has started to allow some users to add links to e-commerce sites (or any other destination) to their profile biography as well as offer creators the ability to easily send their viewers to shopping websites. The company said the roll-out of these two features are part of its usual “experimentation” to improve app experience for users. Though, this particular experimentation could significantly change how lucrative influencers find TikTok. A spokesperson of ByteDance,...

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SoftBank Vision Fund’s Carolina Brochado is coming to Disrupt Berlin

SoftBank’s Vision Fund has single-handedly changed the game when it comes to tech startup investment. And that’s why I’m excited to announce that SoftBank Vision Fund investment director Carolina Brochado is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. Carolina Brochado isn’t a newcomer when it comes to VC investment. She’s worked for years at Atomico in London. Originally from Brazil, she first joined Atomico as an intern in 2012 while studying her MBA at Columbia Business School. After her MBA, she joined an e-commerce startup as head of operations....

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Investment bank Lazard has quietly recruited a ‘Venture and Growth’ team to focus on European scale-ups

Lazard, the global investment bank, has been quietly recruiting a ten-person team in London to head up its newly created “Venture and Growth Banking” division to match investors with European scale-ups. Unlike some investment banks, the focus of Lazard Venture and Growth Banking will include Series B and C. That’s earlier than many startups typically engage the help of an investment bank when raising capital and speaks to the sheer number of European startups currently chasing a pool of venture capital that is increasingly global and fragmented. The...

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