 Volkswagen's $800M Tennessee factory expansion to include battery pack plant
Volkswagen said Wednesday it will build a battery pack assembly facility as part of an $800 million expansion project that will turn the Chattanooga, Tenn. factory into its North American base for manufacturing electric vehicles. The Chattanooga factory expansion, which is includes a 564,000-square-foot addition to the body shop and is expected to create 1,000 […]
|
|
|
Disney+ has already attracted over 10 million subscribers
Disney’s launch of its premium subscription streaming service Disney+ was not without issues - high demand resulted int content not being accessible for hours on its first day of availability. The company cited higher-than-expected demand as a factor, and now we have a rough estimate of the size of that demand - Disney has revealed […]
|
|
|
Google Maps adds a new translation feature that speaks place names out loud
Google Maps is adding a feature that will make it easier for people traveling in foreign countries where they don’t speak the local language: built-in translation with text-to-speech support. The feature will allow users to tap on a new speaker button next to a place name or address, to have Google Maps say the name […]
|
|
|
|
After selling enterprise biz, Docker lands $35M investment and new CEO
In what’s proving to be an interesting day for Docker, it announced it has received a $35 million investment from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Insight Partners. It also announced the company has named long-time Chief Product Officer, Scott Johnston as CEO. Johnston is the third CEO at Docker this year, replacing Rob Bearden, who […]
|
|
|
|
Facebook says government demands for user data are at a record high
Facebook’s latest transparency report is out. The social media giant said the number of government demands for user data increased by 16% to 128,617 demands during the first-half of this year compared to the second-half of last year. That’s the highest number of government demands its received in any reporting period since it published its […]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise
Mirantis today announced that it has acquired Docker’s Enterprise business and team. Docker Enterprise was very much the heart of Docker’s product lineup, so this sale leaves Docker as a shell of its former, high-flying unicorn self. Docker itself, which installed a new CEO earlier this year, says it will continue to focus on tools […]
|
|
|
Yahoo Japan and Line are reportedly going to merge
According to Nikkei, messaging app Line and Yahoo Japan are about to merge and form a single tech company. Despite the name, Yahoo Japan is currently 100% owned by Z Holdings, a company that is controlled by Japanese telecom company SoftBank (Yahoo Japan isn’t related with TechCrunch's parent company Verizon Media). Line Corporation is owned […]
|
|
|
Techstars launches a virtual space tech accelerator with USAF, the Netherlands and Norway
Techstars is following up the first class of their Starburst space-focused program with a new, virtual accelerator program that is being run in partnership with the U.S. Air Force, the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and the Norwegian Space Agency. It’s called the Techstars Allied Space Accelerator, and its focus is […]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Netflix and Nickelodeon partner on original programming, following Disney+ launch
Netflix is taking on the Disney+ threat by partnering up with kids entertainment giant Nickelodeon, which will produce original content, including films and TV shows, for Netflix’s streaming service. The company announced this morning it has entered into a new, multi-year output deal that will produce animated feature films and shows that will include both […]
|
|
|
Brave launches version 1.0 of its privacy-focused browser
Brave, the company co-founded by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after his ouster from the organization in 2014, today launched version 1.0 of its browser for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In a browser market where users are spoiled for choice, Brave is positioning itself as a fast option that preserves users’ privacy with strong […]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | | |
|
JetPack Aviation raises $2M to build the prototype of its flying motorcycle
Flying cars are fine — but why use a car when you can have a motorcycle instead? YC-backed startup JetPack Aviation wants to answer that question with the world’s first flying motorcycle, a personal aircraft dubbed “The Speeder,” a name that Star Wars fans will surely appreciate. Now, JetPack has raised a seed round of […]
|
|
|
Apple's Mac Pro ships in December with maximum 8TB of storage
Apple is making its Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display available in December, it announced today. The machine was announced earlier this year, but no availability window had been set. In addition to the previously announced specs, Apple also noted that it would be able to be ordered with up to an 8TB SSD. Apple's […]
|
|
|
MacBook Pro 16” first impressions: Return of the Mack
In poker, complacency is a quiet killer. It can steal your forward momentum bit by bit, using the warm glow of a winning hand or two to cover the bets you're not making until it's too late and you're out of leverage. Over the past few years, Apple's MacBook game had begun to suffer from […]
|
|
|
These sneakers vibrate
Sometimes it seems like you can hear a song all the way in your toes. With these new sneakers, you actually can. Meet the new EP 01 sneakers out of DropLabs. Yes, you read that right. We’re talking about sneakers. Invented by a man named Brock Seiler, and led by former Beats by Dre CEO […]
|
|
|
Google to offer checking accounts in partnership with banks starting next year
Google is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services: The company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, starting as early as next year. Google is calling the project “Cache,” and it’ll partner with banks and credit […]
|
|
|
Less than 72 hours left to buy early-bird passes to Disrupt Berlin
Pull your heads out of the trenches, startup fans. You have just 72 hours to save up to €500 with early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019. When the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on Friday, 15 November, the early bird is no more. Three days will fly by in a flash, so don't wait. […]
|
|
|
Convoy raises $400 million to expand its on-demand trucking platform
Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its business amid an increasingly competitive market. The funding round brings Convoy’s post-money valuation to $2.75 billion. The round was co-led by Generation Investment Management and previous Convoy investor T. […]
|
|
|
 Dell Unveils Subscription Model To Counter Amazon, Microsoft
Dell is planning to offer business clients a subscription model for products like servers and personal computers, "seeking to counter the lure of cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Dell and its hardware peers have been under pressure to offer corporate clients the flexibility and simplicity of infrastructure cloud services. Public cloud titans such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have cut demand for data-center hardware as more businesses lo
|
|
|
The Garage is a new blockchain-focused incubator based in Paris
Meet The Garage, a new incubator in Paris that is all about blockchain projects. Co-founded by Cyril Paglino from Starchain Capital, Fabrice Le Fessant from Dune Network and Oussama Ammar from The Family, the company will support blockchain startups, help big companies launch blockchain projects and educate engineers about blockchain development. The Garage is a […]
|
|
|
Plum, the 'AI' money management app, raises $3M more and comes to Android
Plum, the U.K.-based “AI assistant” to help you manage your money and save more, has raised $3 million in additional funding — money it plans to use for further growth, including European expansion. The London company has also quietly launched its app for Android phones, adding to an existing iOS app and Facebook Messenger chatbot. […]
|
|
|
|
|
|
PalmPay launches in Nigeria on $40M round led by China's Transsion
Africa focused payment startup PalmPay has launched in Nigeria after raising a $40 million seed-round led by Chinese mobile-phone maker Transsion. The investment came via Transsion’s Tecno subsidiary, with participation from China’s NetEase and Taiwanese wireless comms hardware firm Mediatek — a Transsion spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. PalmPay had piloted its mobile fintech offering in […]
|
|
|
Chaka opens up global investing to Africa's most populous nation
Fintech startup Chaka aims to open up online investingd to Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria. The seed-stage company recently went live with its mobile-based platform that offers Nigerians stock trading in over 40 countries. Chaka positions itself as a passport to local and global investing. The startup has created an API and interface that allows […]
|
|
|
Are We Living In a Blade Runner World?
Now that we have arrived in Blade Runner's November 2019 "future," the BBC asks what the 37-year-old film got right. Slashdot reader dryriver shares the report: [B]eyond particular components, Blade Runner arguably gets something much more fundamental right, which is the world's socio-political outlook in 2019 -- and that isn't particularly welcome, according to Michi Trota, who is a media critic and the non-fiction editor of the science-fiction periodical, Uncanny Magazine. "It's disappointing,
|
|
|
|
|
Physics Experiment With Ultrafast Laser Pulses Produces a Previously Unseen Phase of Matter
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Adding energy to any material, such as by heating it, almost always makes its structure less orderly. Ice, for example, with its crystalline structure, melts to become liquid water, with no order at all. But in new experiments by physicists at MIT and elsewhere, the opposite happens: When a pattern called a charge density wave in a certain material is hit with a fast laser pulse, a whole new charge density wave is created -- a highly ordered sta
|
|
|
|
|
|
Amazon's Heavy Recruitment of Chinese Sellers Puts Consumers At Risk
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Amazon's China business "aggressively recruited Chinese manufacturers and merchants to sell to consumers outside the country. And these sellers, in turn, represent a high proportion of problem listings found on the site." From the report: The Journal earlier this year uncovered 10,870 items for sale between May and August that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled, lacked federally-required warnings, or are banned by
|
|
|
|
UCLA Now Has the First Zero-Emission, All-Electric Mobile Surgical Instrument Lab
UCLA's new mobile surgical lab is a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two UCLA campuses, collecting, sterilizing and repairing surgical instruments for the medical staff there. TechCrunch reports: Why is that even needed? The usual process is sending out surgical instruments for this kind of service by a third-party, and it's handled in a dedicated facility at a significant annual cost. UCLA Health Center estimates that it can save as much as $750,000 per
|
|
|
Unusual New 'PureLocker' Ransomware Is Going After Servers
Researchers at Intezer and IBM X-Force have detected an unconventional form of ransomware that's being deployed in targeted attacks against enterprise servers. They're calling it PureLocker because it's written in the PureBasic programming language. ZDNet reports: It's unusual for ransomware to be written in PureBasic, but it provides benefits to attackers because sometimes security vendors struggle to generate reliable detection signatures for malicious software written in this language. PureBa
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Fired Kickstarter Organizer Is Trying To Unionize Tech Workers Using Kickstarter
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In early September, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter fired two union organizers in 8 days. One of them was Clarissa Redwine, who considered her termination to be a blatant act of retaliation for organizing what could become the first union at a major tech company in the United States. Although Redwine lost her job, she has not given up her vision. Today, she launched "Solidarity Onboarding," a new project designed to help workers unioniz
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
IBM's 200,000 Macs Have Made a Happier and More Productive Workforce, Study Finds
sbinning shares a report from AppleInsider: IBM has published its latest study focusing on the benefits of Apple products in enterprise, and has found that a fleet of over 200,000 Macs leads to far lower support costs, smaller numbers of support staff, and happier employees versus a Windows deployment. In the study presented on Tuesday, IBM says that employees that used Mac machines were 22 percent more likely to exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. Mac-using emp
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tesla's European Gigafactory Will Be Built In Berlin
Tesla's European gigafactory will be built in the Berlin area, Elon Musk said Tuesday during an awards ceremony in Germany. TechCrunch reports: Musk was onstage to receive a Golden Steering Wheel Award given by BILD. "There's not enough time tonight to tell all the details," Musk said during an onstage interview with Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess. "But it's in the Berlin area, and it's near the new airport." Tesla is also going to create an engineering and design center in Berlin because "I
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Minecraft Earth is live, so get tapping
Microsoft’s big experiment in real-world augmented reality gaming, Minecraft Earth, is live now for players in North America, the U.K. and a number of other areas. The pocket-size AR game lets you collect blocks and critters wherever you go, undertake little adventures with friends and, of course, build sweet castles. I played an early version […]
|
|
|
|
Intel Fixes a Security Flaw It Said Was Repaired 6 Months Ago
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Last May, when Intel released a patch for a group of security vulnerabilities researchers had found in the company's computer processors, Intel implied that all the problems were solved. But that wasn't entirely true, according to Dutch researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who discovered the vulnerabilities and first reported them to the tech giant in September 2018. The software patch meant to fix the processor problem addresse
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Microsoft Starts Rolling Out Windows 10 November 2019 Update
Microsoft today started rolling out the free Windows 10 November 2019 Update. For those keeping track, this update is Windows 10 build 18363 and will bring Windows 10 to version 1909. From a report: The Windows 10 November 2019 Update (version 1909) is odd because it shares the same Cumulative Update packages as the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903). That means version 1909 will be delivered more quickly to version 1903 users -- it will install like a monthly security update. The build n
|
|
|
|
Twitch publicly launches its free broadcasting software, Twitch Studio
Twitch today publicly launched Twitch Studio, its new software designed to help new streamers get started broadcasting. The idea behind the app is to make it simple for someone new to the space to get started, by offering a quick setup process and other tools to make the stream both look and sound more professional […]
|
|
|
A US Federal Court Finds Suspicionless Searches of Phones at the Border is Illegal
A federal court in Boston has ruled that the government is not allowed to search travelers' phones or other electronic devices at the U.S. border without first having reasonable suspicion of a crime. From a report: That's a significant victory for civil liberties advocates, who say the government's own rules allowing its border agents to search electronic devices at the border without a warrant are unconstitutional. The court said that the governmentâ(TM)s policies on warrantless searches o
|
|
|
|
The New Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Trailer is a Giant Relief
You can almost hear the sigh of relief from the global Sega fan community. The new Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer, which Paramount released this morning, is a giant improvement. From a report: Our spiky hero no longer looks like a nightmarish experiment in avant garde taxidermy. The human teeth have been extracted. He has big doe eyes, not the sinister mini-peepers of the original trailer. The new design genuinely captures a lot of what original character designer Naoto Ohshima set out to achi
|
|
|
A US federal court finds suspicionless searches of phones at the border is illegal
A federal court in Boston has ruled that the government is not allowed to search travelers’ phones or other electronic devices at the U.S. border without first having reasonable suspicion of a crime. That’s a significant victory for civil liberties advocates, who say the government’s own rules allowing its border agents to search electronic devices […]
|
|
|
Elon Musk picks Berlin for Tesla's Europe Gigafactory
Elon Musk said Tuesday during an awards ceremony in Germany that Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in the Berlin area. Musk was on stage to receive a Golden Steering Wheel Award given by BILD. “There’s not enough time tonight to tell all the details,” Musk said during an on stage interview with Volkswagen Group […]
|
|
|
Facebook Unites Payment Service Across Apps With Facebook Pay
Facebook said on Tuesday it was launching Facebook Pay, a unified payment service through which users across its platforms including WhatsApp and Instagram can make payments without exiting the app. From a report: The social network said the service would allow users to send money or make a payment with security options such as PIN or biometrics on their smartphones. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year the company is planning to unify the messaging infrastructure acros
|
|
|
|
|
