The European Union’s executive body has signed up tech platforms and ad industry players to a voluntary Code of Practice aimed at trying to do something about the spread of disinformation online. Something, just not anything too specifically quantifiable. According…
Category: A Head Start
Daimler names new CEO to lead push into electric, autonomous vehicles
Daimler said Wednesday that Dieter Zetsche is stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by a long-serving executive who has most recently been leading the automaker’s research and development efforts, including its push into electric vehicles. The company has…
Facebook’s newest VR headset, Oculus Quest, ships in the spring for $399
Opening up the Oculus Connect 5 keynote with some announcements, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that its newest headset, called Oculus Quest, will be released in the spring of 2019 at a $399 price point. The standalone VR device will…
Facebook takes down more ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ linked to Iran
Facebook has removed 82 pages, groups and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that originated out of Iran. The social networking giant discovered the “inauthentic behavior” late last week, according to a blog post by the company’s cybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher.…
Am I Depriving My Family?
Am I depriving my family of the best (materialistic) things in life? Of course, I am. Do I feel guilty about it? Not at all. Mrs. RB40 and I are both naturally frugal and we don’t feel deprived. For us,…
Nubank’s David Vélez and Cristina Junquiera to speak at Startup Battlefield Latin America
TechCrunch is pleased to announce that Nubank co-founder Cristina Junqueira and co-founder/CEO David Vélez will join us in a fireside chat at Startup Battlefield Latin America on November 8 at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. Nubank’s product is…
Google wants to make Chrome extensions safer
Google today announced a number of upcoming changes to how Chrome will handle extensions that request a lot of permissions, as well as new requirements for developers who want to publish their extensions in the Chrome Web Store. It’s no…
BuildInk is the winner of Startup Battlefield MENA 2018
We’ve just wrapped up Startup Battlefield MENA in Beirut, Lebanon. Throughout the day, 15 companies pitched their ideas, demonstrated their technology and answered questions. We took the feedback from all our expert judges and chose five teams to compete in…
We’re addressing gender disparity in engineering way too late
Ioannis Miaoulis Contributor Dr. Ioannis Miaoulis has been president and director of the Museum of Science, Boston since 2003. He serves on the board of directors of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages the…
November 2018 Goals and Financial Update
Happy holidays! Is your Christmas tree up? I can’t believe 2018 is coming to a close in just a few weeks. It’s been a whirlwind year for us. Sadly, we’re not putting up our Christmas tree this time. RB40Jr and…
On-demand trucking app Convoy raises $185M at $1B valuation
CapitalG, the growth equity arm of Alphabet, has led the $185 million round in Convoy, its first investment in the Seattle-based, tech-enabled trucking network. The round brings Convoy’s total raised to $265 million and values the company at $1 billion.…
Spotify ends test that required family plan subscribers to share their GPS location
Spotify has ended a test that required its family plan subscribers to verify their location, or risk losing accessing to its music streaming service. According to recent reports, the company sent out emails to its “Premium for Family” customers that…
Bumble to launch in India before year-end
On the heels of Tinder’s launch of a Bumble-like feature in India, which allows women to initiative the conversations, Bumble is today formally announcing its plans for an expansion into India. The company says it has been building up a…
What each cloud company could bring to the Pentagon’s $10 B JEDI cloud contract
The Pentagon is going to make one cloud vendor exceedingly happy when it chooses the winner of the $10 billion, ten-year enterprise cloud project dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (or JEDI for short). The contract is designed to establish…
Work is NOT Optional After Retirement
What do you think about work after retirement? Lots of people hate that idea. After 6+ years of early retirement, I still get emails and comments saying you’re not retired. These people say, “You’re blogging and your wife is working,…
Spotify launches Co.Lab to teach musicians about the industry
The music industry has always been cut-throat, and on-going internet fragmentation only complicates matters. Musicians have to be their own promoters, tour managers, bookers and a million other things, just to get off the ground. If nothing else, Spotify’s new…
Singapore is the crypto sandbox that Asia needs
Singapore Blockchain Week happened this past week. While there have been a few announcements from companies, some of the most interesting updates have come from regulators, and specifically, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The financial regulator openly discussed its views…
Urban Massage exposed a huge customer database, including sensitive comments on its creepy clients
Urban Massage, a popular massage startup that bills itself as providing “wellness that comes to you,” has leaked its entire customer database. The London, U.K.-based startup — now known as just Urban — left its Google-hosted ElasticSearch database online without…
Netflix will create a ‘story universe’ based on the work of Roald Dahl
Netflix and The Roald Dahl Story Company announced today that they’ve signed a deal for the streaming service to create a slate of animated “event series” based on a long list of titles by the classic children’s author, including “Charlie…
Google’s Pixel Slate arrives Thursday
Google’s last major piece of hardware for the year is finally shipping this week. A number of pre-orders have already begun receiving shipping notifications for the Pixel Slate, and the company just popped up a blog post noting that the…