TechCrunch

Anyone for quantifiable VR mindfulness?

What’s the point of virtual reality? At this nascent stage the question remains hanging in the pixelated air like the promise of a better life off-world. As does the associated unknown of whether the tech’s promise of ‘exceptional immersion’ will stand the test of time and make the leap to …

Autonomous robots and game-playing A.I. — Incredible demos at Disrupt London, Dec 5-6

TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6. Grab tickets here. As well as speakers and panels, we’ll be featuring some demos by some amazing tech companies.<p>The first will be by Boston Dynamics. Yes, folks, delegates to Disrupt London will get to see one of those amazing BD robots up close and …

Here’s why you should attend the Disrupt London Hackathon, more tickets now available

The Hackathon at Disrupt London 2016 is so close we can almost taste it. Soon, thousands of founders, investors and tech enthusiasts will storm London’s Copper Box Arena for the best startup show in Europe. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the next wave of tickets to the hackathon is …

Wynd grabs $31.7 million for its point-of-sale solution

French startup Wynd has raised a $31.7 million Series B round (€30 million) from Sodexo Ventures and Orange Digital Ventures, with Bpifrance also participating. Orange Digital Ventures had already invested in the Series A round with Alven Capital. Wynd is working on a software-as-a-service solution …

Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has admitted that he modified comments about him left on the site from supporters of Donald Trump.<p>Huffman said he changed mentions of him in some of the messages inside the site’s largest forum for the President-elect, but not the messages themselves. But, in doing so, he …

Facebook Builds a Censorship Tool

<b>Today’s Stories</b><p>Facebook built censorship tool to get into China despite human rights risks<br>• Twitter mistakenly suspended its own CEO’s Twitter account<br>• Security researchers can turn headphones into microphones<br>• MIT’s new nylon muscles could lead to actual Westworld hosts<br>• Ditto is now in Pokémon</b> …

China’s Ctrip is buying flight search company SkyScanner for $1.74 billion

Skyscanner, the Scotland-based flight search company, has been acquired by Chinese online travel giant Ctrip for £1.4 billion, or approximately $1.74 billion.<p>The deal is predominantly cash and is expected to close before the end of this year. Once completed, SkyScanner will operate independently of …

Care/of takes on the vitamin industry with customized nutrition packs

There’s no end to the bottles, packs, and pills of various nutritional supplements out there, but vitamin startup Care/of plans to stand out by tailoring the vitamins you pop to your specific needs.<p>The startup joins a growing number of others in tech hoping to cash in on the lucrative vitamin …

Facebook Builds a Censorship Tool | Crunch Report

Facebook is unlikely to succeed in China, even if it compromises on free speech

Facebook may have laid some of the early groundwork to launch its social network in China, but the U.S. company’s chances of making a dent in the world’s most populous country remain remote.<p>A New York Times report that Facebook is developing a system that could censor information to appease the …

Sherpa Foundry Casts a Wider Net, Hoping to Catch Customers Abroad

Sherpa Foundry — a three-year-old, San Francisco-based group that’s among a growing number of outfits to help older and non-tech companies better understand how tech startups might help them — is looking to beef up the number of companies with which it’s working. It anticipates a growing number of …

21 gorgeous holiday gifts for your tech-savvy girlfriends

1/22<p>Prynt Phone Case<p>Want fun insta pics to share with your friends? Prynt basically turns your smartphone into a Polaroid camera. Just pop on the special phone case, take a picture and hit print. Then stick the image to your fridge or string a bunch of photos together and put it all over your house …

Sony gives Bose a run for its money with the MDR-1000X

Sony makes no bones about going after Bose. In fact, when the company first showed off its product in the lead up to IFA this summer, it said as much, acknowledging that the QuietComfort line is largely considered the gold standard for noise-cancelling travel headphones. It’s a bit like getting the …

Gong says it’s cracked news personalization

If you’re a little skeptical about trying out another news aggregator, Gong CEO Itzik Ben-Bassat knows what you’re probably thinking — after all, he heard the same thing when he was pitching investors.<p>“They all kind of looked at me and said, ‘<i>Not again</i>,'” he recalled.<p>But it seems like Ben-Bassat …

A longtime VC on the virtues of not swinging for the fences

There’s a winner-take-all mentality in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it has distorted the thinking of countless entrepreneurs who’d likely be better off running smaller companies — and giving up less ownership to investors in the process. While funding announcements are widely celebrated as …

13 awesome gifts for the geek guys and gals in your life

1/14<p>Snapchat Spectacles<p>Snapchat’s $129 Spectacles are like the Furby-in-1998 of the modern tech world.<p>They’re stupidly hard to get and maybe a little silly, but people are going crazy for them. You tap one button and a camera built into the glasses frame shoots a video that uploads right into …

Amazon makes good on its promise to delete “incentivized” reviews

Amazon is making good on its promise to ban “incentivized” reviews from its website, according to a new analysis of over 32,000 products and around 65 million reviews. The ban was meant to address the growing problem of less trustworthy reviews that had been plaguing the retailer’s site, leading to …

Ashton Kutcher’s and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures back Apptopia’s next-gen app intelligence platform

Apptopia, a startup that began its life as a marketplace for reselling apps before morphing into the app intelligence provider that’s now used by Google, Facebook, Pinterest, NBCU, and others, has closed on a second seed round of $2.7 million. The round, which was led by Ashton Kutcher’s and Guy …

Handy’s Black Friday promo rewards contractors over customers

Handy, the on-demand service for cleaners, handymen, and more, has today announced the Give > Get promotion for Black Friday.<p>This Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, all Handys that are booked that day will receive 50 percent extra in pay for their cleanings. To be clear, customers are paying the …

Albert raises $2.5 million for its finance app that helps you save money

Everyone knows the basics of how to improve their financial health: put money into savings, track your spending, reduce your debt, look for ways to save on your monthly bills, and make smart investments. Where people struggle is translating that knowledge into specific actions you can take today. …

Singapore’s Spacemob lands $5.5M to expand its co-working spaces across Asia Pacific

Co-working spaces are becoming a serious business in Asia. WeWork entered the region via China earlier this year, but there are numerous others across the continent. Singapore-based Spacemob is one such contender, and today it announced a $5.5 million seed round to expand its reach across Asia …

A Stroll Through Snap’s NYC Spectacle Line

The history behind a $5 billion eSports industry

1/4<p>The 1970s<p>“Star Wars” was the highest-grossing film of the decade, Elvis Presley was the No. 1 artist, and disco was at its peak. And in 1972, the first eSports competition was was launched with the game “Spacewar,” which took place at Stanford University.<p>Students were invited to an …

Amazon acquired patents, employees from Biba, reportedly plans new video chat service

Amazon’s purchases of Twitch and Elemental Technologies appear to be only two parts of a bigger strategy at the company to move deeper into video services through acquisition. Last year, the marketplace and cloud computing giant also quietly acquired a startup out of San Francisco called Biba …

UK wants to censor ‘non-conventional’ sex videos

In an ongoing effort to prevent pornography from soiling the shores of Britannia, UK lawmakers are working to prevent the spread of ‘non-conventional’ sex videos online. The proposed law blocks sites that host content that would not be “certified for commercial DVD sale by the British Board of Film …

Security researchers can turn headphones into microphones

Security researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have created a proof-of-concept exploit that lets them turn headphones into microphones to secretly record conversations. The PoC, called “Speake(a)r,” first turned headphones connected to a PC into microphones and then tested the quality of …

NHTSA spells out what your phone shouldn’t be able to do while driving

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released new voluntary proposed guidelines for software makers and device manufacturers, including smartphone makers like Apple and Google, which aim to cut down on driver distraction from mobile apps and hardware.<p>These guileless, which are again …

Lovely is finally shipping the Fitbit for sexy times

Do you and your partner often do sex? Do you want to know how much sex you’re doing? And do you want to know how good it is and how good it could be? What is sex? Does anyone know? Can Lovely help us find out?<p>Hopefully, because I’m confused.<p>Created by Jakub Konik and Tomasz Badyla Lovely is a …

Alexa can now clean a floor with Neato’s robot vacuum

Neato got on the smartphone connected robot vacuum train early on, so it’s really only fitting that the company become the first to embrace Amazon’s multi-talented home assistant. Starting this week, the company’s Botvac Connected vacuum gets Alexa integration, so users can control a clean by …

Another Spectacle-selling Snapbot pops up at Brentwood Country Mart in LA

Snapchat now has not one, but two Spectacle-selling Snapbots deployed at the same time. The second dropped Wednesday morning at 10 AM ET (7 AM PT) at a spot near Santa Monica at the Brentwood Country Mart in Los Angeles.<p>The Brentwood Country Mart is a shopping and for spot in L.A.’s Brentwood …