2015

How To Unplug For New Year’s Weekend

9:00 pm PST • December 31, 2015

New Year’s is a time where we turn off work for a little while. We meet friends and family, reflect on the prior year, and begin to imagine possibilities for…

How To Unplug For New Year’s Weekend

In a year not too distant, Loretta, a woman in her late 20s, hears a pleasant tone from her watch and checks to see a text. The message isn’t from…

The Federal Vision For Healthcare IT: A Dystopian Paradise

Where Are All The Women In White Hats?

3:00 pm PST • December 31, 2015

America needs cyber talent — especially among women. Without a capable workforce to secure the smartphone in your hand or the highly classified networks our government operates within, our economy…

Where Are All The Women In White Hats?

Data scientist might be considered the “sexiest job of the 21st century,” with many companies eager to hire data science talent. But 20 years ago the term was barely used,…

How To Stem The Global Shortage Of Data Scientists

Sometimes timing creeps up on you and you have to move things back. It’s an ugly reality for hardware creators, but it happens. Today, Oculus announced that its Touch controllers…

Oculus Pushes Back Touch Controller Launch To Second Half Of 2016
Media & Entertainment

We’re Close

10:23 am PST • December 31, 2015

All of the chatter about virtual reality shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Over the years, we’ve been forcing our way to get closer and closer to content of all…

We’re Close

There’s a funny Facebook glitch telling people they’ve been friends on Facebook for 46 years, even though Facebook has only been around since 2004.

Happy 46th Anniversary! Love, Facebook

Political gaffes on Twitter will once again be preserved on the website Politwoops, according to an announcement from Twitter. The company blocked API access for Politwoops earlier this year, a move that…

Twitter Announces Deal To Revive Politwoops

[tc_aol_on code=”519377147″] The robots might one day rise up and take over, but a Mountain View startup called Knightscope has developed a fleet of crime-fighting machinery it hopes to keep us…

Meet Knightscope’s Crime-Fighting Robots

Substantial thought and angst has been expended over the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to your workplace to take over blue- and white-collar jobs, alike. But a major…

Artificial Intelligence Poses A Greater Risk To IP Than Humans Do

Free Basics, a Facebook program that gives free access to certain Internet services, has been shut down in Egypt. The news comes the week after India’s telecom regulator ordered the…

Facebook’s Controversial Free Basics Program Shuts Down In Egypt

Microsoft users will now be notified if a state-sponsored attacker tries to break into their accounts, the company said in a blog post. The announcement comes the same day as…

Microsoft Will Warn Users About Suspected Attacks By Government Hackers

Disney Research and the research group at ETH Zurich have created a car that can drive, fly, jump, and ride up walls. By using propellers and wheels, the robot can…

Disney Research Creates A Robot That Can Fly Up Walls

The Star Destroyer, one of the largest ships in the Star Wars universe, has been recreated in excruciating detail in the form of a two-foot long 3D-printed ship consisting of…

This 3D-Printed Star Destroyer Is Two Feet Long

Yahoo Kids died a quiet death two years ago, but to BJ Heiney (who worked on the product from 1996 to 2000) the shutdown was a “travesty,” depriving kids and…

Thinga Launches Its Kid-Friendly Search Engine
Startups

Debian Creator Ian Murdock Dead At 42

2:16 pm PST • December 30, 2015

Ian Murdock – the ‘ian’ in Debian – was found dead at his home in San Francisco on Monday. The cause is yet unknown. Murdock was an integral figure in…

Debian Creator Ian Murdock Dead At 42

Rapidly expanding car service startup Uber says it has driven its 1 billionth ride. Launched in June 2010, it took the company 5.5 years to reach this milestone. Uber trip…

Uber Hits One Billionth Ride, Gifts Free Year

CES is a bit like the auto shows of yesteryear, back when carmakers simply came to flex their muscles and show what they were capable of, as opposed to unveiling…

Samsung Gets Wacky With A Belt Called WELT And Other Oddities

As the latest year of the future folds into the next, the most bombastic/annoying/entertaining of CEOs sets his gaze on the technologies that will define the wireless space and the…

T-Mobile CEO Discusses Consolidation Rumors, His Predictions For Tech In 2016

Remember Carrier iQ? In the years before Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, the name and its software became synonymous with creepy, unseen monitoring of everything that you do on a smartphone…

AT&T Snaps Up Assets, Talent From Carrier iQ, Phone Monitoring Startup Goes Offline

If I told you that the hottest person on social media right now is a rap producer telling fans that eating egg whites and drinking a gallon of water a…

DJ Khaled On Technology, Entrepreneurship And Snapchatting His Keys To Success

As promised earlier this fall at Twitter’s developer conference Flight, the company’s long-neglected Mac application has been updated today with a host of new features that put the app more on par with…

Twitter’s Revamped Mac App Finally Arrives

Despite rebranding its free Internet.org ‘walled garden’ of apps plan in India under the new name of “Free Basics,” Facebook remains in direct violation of an open internet. Facebook’s first…

Facebook’s Plan to Monopolize The Internet In India Should Be Defeated

If you’re in the tech world, then you know exactly what Slack is and does. As you eke outside of our little techosphere, however, you might get some puzzled faces…

Slack’s New TV Commercial Is Adorable And Effective

Apple wants to show consumers how its devices – including Macs, as well as mobile devices like iPhones and iPads – can be used to create art. Specifically, its latest pushback at…

Apple’s “Start Something New” Campaign Kicks Off With Online Gallery, In-Store Artist Workshops

It looks like another chapter is in the works for Hem, the home design startup headed by Jason Goldberg that first emerged as a pivot from the Fab.com design marketplace in 2014. We’ve heard from…

Hem.com Is On The Block, Swiss Furniture Maker Vitra Likely Buyer

One of the great promises of the Internet — a democratic, transparent, open network that would disintermediate entrenched industries, remove fee-taking middlemen and thereby lower the costs of goods –…

The Middleman Strikes Back

CES is a horrible, god-awful experience that will shave years off your life. The casinos, the food, the people, the germs. Horrible. All of it. But we love it! And…

Attending CES? TechCrunch Wants To See Your Company

Credit and finance management platform Credit Karma, known best as the startup that offers free, no-strings-attached credit scores, has made its first acquisition. The company has acquired the makers of the…

Credit Karma Acquires Innovative Mobile Notifications Startup Snowball

Las Vegas just got a touch more bearable. Uber is using Vinli and T-Mobile to equip its Vegas cars with Wifi. Thanks to Vinli’s hardware, the cars will become mobile…

Uber Taps Vinli To Provide WiFi In Las Vegas Cars During CES 2016