Richard Garfield is a name familiar to many in the tabletop gaming world, most notably as one of the creators of Magic: The Gathering, the most prominent trading card game out there. But Garfield is dipping his toes into the world of digital and in particular blockchain-adjacent games, and TechCrunch took the opportunity to quiz […]
NASA’s plan to decommission and deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) by 2031 creates another collaborative, multinational opportunity to provide a persistent orbital presence. Yet, the path to achieving that goal remains unclear. Here’s the rub. No one knows exactly what that presence looks like, how it should be built, who would run it and […]
AWS introduced Contact Center, its customer service oriented product some years ago, putting it smack dab in the middle of enterprise applications. It also places the company in the position of competing directly with the likes of Salesforce and other established enterprise SaaS vendors. When you are competing in that space, you need some powerful […]
This time two years ago, I changed up my annual gift guide feature’s focus from travel to working from home. After all, very few of us were doing much traveling at the time. I planned to switch back as the world reopened; it’s clear now, however, that for many of us, there is no going […]
Over the last several years, we’ve seen supply chain disruptions the likes of which we haven’t seen previously. The pandemic led to a series of issues that spiraled into a full-blown supply chain crisis. Amazon wants to put AWS technology to work on the problem, and today the company announced a new supply chain solution […]
AWS today launched a new service that will help users inside an advertising or marketing organization share data with other employees inside their company or with outside partners, all without running the risk of inadvertently sharing personal data. This new service is part of Amazon’s new AWS for Advertising & Marketing initiative, which aims to […]
At this morning’s Re:Invent keynote in Las Vegas, Amazon unveiled AWS SimSpace Weaver, a computing service that allows developers to run city-sized simulations at scale in the cloud. The service is designed to free simulation developers from the constraints of their own hardware. Amazon’s proposed applications here are city managers simulating a natural disaster to […]
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced some notable new natural language querying capabilities that enable non-analysts to forecast future business outcomes. By way of a quick recap, AWS first introduced its QuickSight business intelligence service back in 2015, allowing customers to visualize their data through dashboards and reports without requiring the technical prowess of a […]
As companies build more complex machine learning models, the cost of training and running these models becomes a real issue. AWS has created a series of custom instances to help bring down the cost, and today it introduced a preview of an all-new Inf2 instance for EC2 designed to process data from larger workloads more […]
Plenty of companies that launched during downturns went on to be phenomenally successful. During the Great Depression, Stanford grads David Packard and William Hewlett famously set up shop in a Palo Alto garage. Microsoft was founded as the U.S. was recovering from a years-long oil embargo that hobbled the economy. Slack, Airbnb, Uber and Square […]
Cloud tech companies are facing a significant cloud skills shortage, making it hard to hire people and difficult to make sure their current workforce’s skills are up to date. Australia- and US-based Saasguru wants to narrow the gap with an edtech platform designed for new graduates and tech workers who want to become better at […]
Mozilla’s Hubs offering has been kicking around for several years now. Lucas described a 2018 preview of the service thusly, “It’s not Second Life, or even Facebook Spaces; it’s pretty low-key. You’re just a humble robot hanging with other robots who are hopefully your friends.” The service has expanded features since then (including the arrival […]
AWS today announced Amazon Security Lake, a new purpose-built data lake for security-related data. It can aggregate data from cloud and on-premises infrastructure, firewalls and endpoint security solutions. It helps enterprises centralize all of their security data in a single data lake, using a standards-based format, and manage the lifecycle of this data. Security Lake […]
Amazon made a couple of announcements today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas that helps move data management towards a future without the need for ETL. ETL, extract transform load, is the bane of every data scientist and team as they try to get data into shape to put it to work. As AWS CEO […]
At its re:Invent conference, AWS today announced Amazon DataZone, a new data management service that can help enterprises catalog, discover, share and — most importantly — govern their data. The nifty part here is that AWS is using machine learning to help businesses build these data catalogs and generate the metadata to make it searchable. […]
Twitter is no longer enforcing its policy against misleading information about COVID-19, per an update posted to an official company blog page. Reuters spotted the change earlier — which said the change was effective as of last Wednesday. “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the social media […]
Crypto lending platform BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, just a few weeks after once-major crypto exchange FTX did the same. While BlockFi has been struggling to stay afloat for months now (and was even potentially going to be acquired by FTX), this latest filing signals that the bankruptcy contagion may run deeper […]
Snapchat is adding a new privacy setting that enables users based in California to better protect their sensitive personal information. The company confirmed it’s rolling out a feature designed to comply with the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2023, and applies to personal data collected on or after Jan. […]
Abby started its journey selling 120 or so of its “All-In-One Smart Hydroponic Grow Box” on Kickstarter, with a relatively modest $100,000 raised on the crowdfunding platform. The device promises to help you make growing your favorite plants more or less foolproof, especially if your “favorite plants” are marijuana. In its marketing, the company is […]
The 2022 perspective that startups should cut their losses and chart a clearer path to profitability does not only apply to upstart tech companies. After a multiyear spending binge, larger technology companies are also pulling back on costs. For some major tech concerns, the cuts have come in the form of explicit layoffs and staffing […]
TechCrunch Early Stage — our premier event designed for budding entrepreneurs and founders at the very start of their startup journey — returns by popular demand on April 20, 2023. And we’re excited to announce that this year, we’re taking it on the road to Boston, Massachusetts. We’re mixing the East Coast vibe with unparalleled […]
The Federal Trade Commission this week announced that it has settled lawsuits against Google and iHeartMedia relating to “deceptive endorsements” of the Pixel 4 phone. According to a statement issued by the FTC, nearly 29,000 ads were aired featuring radio personalities. The suit notes specifically that the promoters in question never used the handset, in […]
Open-source Twitter alternative Mastodon has seen sizable growth following Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, topping a new milestone of 1 million monthly active users in just over a week after the deal closed. But one of the many challenges for users coming to Mastodon for the first time is in re-creating their network of friends and […]
Dropbox has announced plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its business users, and it’s doing so through acquiring “key assets” from Germany-based cloud security company Boxcryptor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dropbox is well-known for its cloud-based file back-up and sharing services, and while it does offer encryption for files moving between its […]
We can’t wait to see you all in Los Angeles, California, on December 6 at TC Sessions: Space 2022. That’s coming up fast, but you know what’s coming up even sooner? Your chance to attend for just $199, that’s what. It disappears in just four short days. Space saver: Buy your pass before December 2 […]
Lordstown Motors has starting shipping its all-electric Endurance pickup trucks manufactured by Foxconn, a milestone that seemed impossible earlier this year. Lordstown Motors, which has experienced investigations, executive upheaval and a shortage of capital, said Tuesday that its full-sized EV truck received full homologation with certification from both the EPA and CARB that clears the […]
Amazon announced today the launch of “Create with Alexa,” a new AI tool for kids that generates animated stories. The company first revealed the feature in September. “Create with Alexa” launched in the U.S. today, November 29, across supported Echo Show devices and is available in English. To craft a story, a child says, “Alexa, […]
When I went to book a rental car for Thanksgiving a few months ago, all that Hertz had left at O’Hare International Airport were Teslas. Usually, I end up with something like a Nissan Altima — not an amazing car, but one that gets the job done. Cheaply. But not this time. Hertz is in […]
YouTube Music announced today that it’s starting to roll out its personalized end-of-year Recaps to allow users to relive their favorite music moments of 2022. The launch comes ahead of Spotify’s highly-anticipated Wrapped feature, which tends to takes social media by storm every year. YouTube Music introduced the Recap feature last year to compete with […]
When Covid shut down much of the world down in 2020, it ended up wreaking havoc on the supply chain. Suddenly companies built for just-in-time production couldn’t find parts they needed to build their products. Even as Covid subsided, the supply chain woes continued. Veterans of supply management like the founder of startup Amplio watched, […]