Technical

Welp. Three straight weeks of work travel amid a seemingly endless pandemic finally caught up with me. Forgive me, as I’m writing this under the influence of green tea and antivirals, so thank you in advance to the regularly Herculean efforts of our copy editor, David. Apparently the old adage of things happening in Vegas staying in Vegas doesn’t extend to viral loads. After managing to stave off COVID for the past couple of years, it’s fitting that I get to write about our fulfillment panel through the brain fog, as a strong case can be made that the category has benefited from pandemic-fueled automation more than any other. It also comes a week after I devoted a chunk of this column to Amazon’s robotics play, which had an accelerating effect on the category years before the pandemic. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking with Amazon’s VP Global Robotics, Fulfillment, Joseph Quinlivan, at our upcoming robotics event , as well as United States Labor Secretary Marty Walsh — on se...

Khaby Lame is quite literally on top of the world (if TikTok follower counts are the world). After attending his first VidCon and surpassing Charli D’Amelio as the most followed TikToker, the Italian-Senegalese comedian signed on as an ambassador for Binance , the world’s largest platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Just last week, Binance snagged a partnership with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who wants to “ change the NFT game .” These high-profile partnerships come at a troubling time for crypto. In May, the popular cryptocurrency TerraUSD collapsed , meaning that anyone who had invested in the coin lost all of the money they put in . Then, in the face of a macroeconomic downturn, crypto companies like Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi and Gemini have conducted layoffs, and the prices of top cryptocurrencies have dropped as much as 35% week over week. Basically, anyone who has invested in cryptocurrency is feeling a bit nervous right now, unless they’re so bullish that...

What’s a poor, freshly minted developer to do when they’re out of coding boot camp but don’t have any real-life experience? You step into the world of simulation. That’s the basic premise of what Wilco offers. Last week, I covered the company’s $7 million seed funding round , and the company’s CEO, On Freund, was gracious enough to let me use the deck the company created to close that round for my Pitch Deck Teardown series . One of the things I love, love, love about the deck is that it — like the company’s overall design style — uses the Sierra-era games look. Specifically, it harkens back to the old 1980s and ’90s Space Quest games, and the company itself, Wilco, is apparently named after Space Quest’s main protagonist, Roger Wilco . TechCrunch+ is having an Independence Day sale! Save 50% on an annual subscription here . (More on TechCrunch+ here if you need it!) It’s a particularly fitting name, given that Roger, in the Space Quest series, is a hapless but well-meaning “sa...

Devindra Hardawar Contributor Devindra Hardawar is a Senior Editor at Engadget . More posts by this contributor Meta’s latest VR headset prototypes will help it pass the ‘Visual Turing test’ Cadillac’s new self-driving concept is a luxury loveseat on wheels With Pokémon Go , Niantic became the poster child for the power of mobile augmented reality (AR) apps. Since then, the company has struggled to recapture that glory. Yesterday’s round of layoffs and canceled projects cemented how difficult things are for Niantic, driven by the pandemic that has made it tough for people to get outside and gather in groups. But it turns out there’s another way for Niantic to double down on its AR lead: By making it easier for its existing players to communicate with each other. Today, the company has begun rolling out Campfire, a social app that will let Niantic’s users chat with their friends, join groups of like-minded mobile wanders, and arrange major events like Pokémon Go’s rai...

More than a half dozen Cruise robotaxis stopped operating and sat in a street in San Francisco late Tuesday night, blocking traffic for a couple of hours until employees arrived and manually moved the autonomous vehicles. Photos and a description of the Cruise robotaxi blockade were shared to a Reddit post on a subreddit about happenings in the city. The cars appear to have been stalled at the intersection of Gough and Fulton Streets. Cruise has yet to respond to questions as to what caused the vehicles to stop and why the vehicles had to be manually driven away. It is unclear if the vehicles had passengers when they stopped. The mishap comes less than a week after Cruise launched its first fully driverless, commercial robotaxi service in the city. Cruise’s vehicles are initially operating between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on designated streets and without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The Reddit post subsequently made the rounds on Twitter. Some @Cruise robotaxis appeare...

Pokémon GO developer Niantic is running into trouble as it builds “ the real-world metaverse .” Like so many other tech companies facing turbulent economic times , the company decided to let go of 8% of its staff, affecting about 85 to 90 people. Just seven months ago, the company raised $300 million at a $9 billion valuation, more than doubling its valuation from 2018. In an email to staff, reported by Bloomberg , CEO John Hanke said that the company needs to reduce costs to best prepare for “economic storms that may lie ahead.” Niantic also cancelled four upcoming projects: Heavy Metal, a Transformers game that had already entered beta testing ; Hamlet, a collaboration with the theater company behind “Sleep No More;” and two other projects called Blue Sky and Snowball. Recently announced games like NBA All-World and Peridot don’t appear to be affected. While Pokémon GO brings in more than $1 billion in revenue each year, other games like now-defunct Harry Potter: Wizards Uni...

We’re sorry in advance for getting Paula Abdul stuck in your head today. Virgin Orbit is ready to launch the “Straight Up” mission this evening at 10 PM PDT — yes, it’s named after the singer’s 1988 hit — and you can watch it live below. The mission will ferry seven experimental satellites to orbit for the United States Space Force, demonstrating both new hardware (a new satellite bus and radio communications technology) and software (regarding satellite monitoring and studying climate change). They’ll be taken to orbit via Virgin Orbit’s “horizontal” launch system: The LauncherOne rocket is released from the belly of a modified Boeing 747 aircraft named Cosmic Girl while the aircraft is in mid-flight. The plane will take off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California before flying over the Pacific Ocean, where LauncherOne will be released to deliver its payload to a 500-kilometer orbit. “Our hardware is in top-notch condition, and the team is performing exceptionally, as we pre...

Modsy , an online interior design services company, has ceased to offer design services, a move that comes at the cost of the team behind the effort and customers who have orders in flux. In an email to TechCrunch, Modsy CEO Shanna Tellerman provided this statement when asked about the disruption of business: We have worked hard over the past seven years to build Modsy and never expected we would have to disrupt our business. Our focus has always been, and still is, on our customers. We intend to fulfill customer merchandise orders and we are working through a process for our design service customers. We ask for your patience as we work through this plan. I hope that for many people, the Modsy story will not be defined by this turn of events, and we are truly sorry. We would like to thank our team, our designers, and our customers. TechCrunch sent a series of questions in response to the statement – including queries about the below information from sources – but has not yet hear...

Imagine for a second that you could roll up the entire cloud market, everything from SaaS to infrastructure to platform, CDNs (content delivery networks), managed private clouds, data center rentals — everything. What would that be worth in a quarter? Well, the folks at Synergy Research were kind enough to do the work for us and the figure the firm came up with was $126 billion for Q1 2022, up 26% over the prior year. That’s a lot of money, but consider that a significant portion of that, $44 billion, came from the infrastructure and platform segment, which was itself up 36% year over year. Another major tranche of $54 billion came from three major categories that Synergy follows encompassing managed private cloud services, enterprise SaaS and CDN, leaving $28 billion divided up among the remaining categories — still nothing to sneeze at, mind you. The astonishing part of all this is that John Dinsdale, who is research director at Synergy, is predicting that the cloud services port...

Google announced today that its Switch to Android app for iOS users is now compatible with all Android 12 phones. The iOS app, which launched earlier this year , makes the transition between the mobile platforms easier to manage by helping users import their contacts, calendar, photos and videos to their new Android phone. Prior to today’s expansion, the app was limited to Pixel phones. The app initiates a transfer process by displaying a QR code on your iPhone that you can scan to start migrating your data over to your new Android phone. You will be prompted to connect your old iPhone with your new Android phone either with your iPhone cable or wirelessly via the new Switch to Android app. In addition to moving data, the app offers other instructions about the transfer process, such as how to deregister iMessage in order to continue getting texts on the new Android device. The app will also give you tips for your new device, such as learning how to transfer photos from iCloud....

If you want the inside scoop on which companies are serious about addressing their carbon emissions and which aren’t, take a look at the public comments submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its proposed climate rule. You can tell if a company is serious by its stance on so-called Scope 3 emissions. Depending on the business, Scope 3 emissions might make up a significant majority of a company’s carbon footprint. Such emissions can result from activities and assets a company doesn’t own or control, like leased office space, business travel or end-of-life processing of their products. They also might occur when customers use their products, like when someone drives their gas-powered SUV. In short, if your company is serious about doing something about climate change, it should probably be estimating its Scope 3 emissions. If it’s making noise about being sustainable, at the very least it probably shouldn’t undermine attempts to make Scope 3 disclosures stan...

Disney’s board unanimously voted to extend CEO Bob Chapek’s contract for three more years, the company announced yesterday. His current deal was set to expire in February 2023. Despite a chaotic tenure that began at the height of COVID, the new three-year agreement will begin Friday, July 1. “Disney was dealt a tough hand by the pandemic, yet with Bob at the helm, our businesses—from parks to streaming—not only weathered the storm but emerged in a position of strength. In this important time of growth and transformation, the Board is committed to keeping Disney on the successful path it is on today, and Bob’s leadership is key to achieving that goal. Bob is the right leader at the right time for The Walt Disney Company, and the Board has full confidence in him and his leadership team,” said Susan Arnold, chairman of the board, in a statement . The extension is Chapek’s chance to prove to the board, Wall Street and subscribers that he is capable of running a streaming business in thi...

Facebook announced today that it’s introducing new features for Facebook Groups, including “Channels” that will let users connect with each other in smaller settings. Admins can create channels to connect with their groups in more casual settings within their communities to have more focused discussions. There are three types of channels that admins can create: chat, audio and feed. Community chat channels can be used as a place for people to message, collaborate and talk about specific topics in a more real-time way across both Facebook Groups and Messenger. Once you create a chat, you can name it and decide if you want it to be invite only. When you join a chat, you’ll be able to send messages and receive notifications. If the chat becomes full and you’re inactive, you may have to join again. Image Credits: Facebook The new community feed channels are a way for members to connect when it’s convenient for them. Facebook says admins can organize their communities around topics wi...

Welcome Back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where we get the stories behind the startups. Christine Tao knows good leaders have good executive coaches. She founded Sounding Board to make it easier for companies to manage, scale, and measure leadership coaching on one unified platform. This week, she talks to Darrell and Jordan about difficulties she and her co-founder faced while fundraising and why she believes so deeply in the power of a good executive coach. She also gets into how she and her co-foundered decided to go b2b and establish the customer type that made scaling possible. Take our listener survey  and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND. Connect with us: On  Twitter On  Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618 from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/POE8Y2b

Image Credits: Coalition In 2020, Thrive Capital asked a cohort of folks — including Glossier VP of Communications Ashley Mayer , Cityblock Health co-founder Toyin Ajayi , Umbrella co-founder Lindsay Ullman and Tribe AI co-founder Jackie Nelson — if they wanted to be scouts, or invest tiny checks on behalf of the firm with a potential for shared upside. Instead, the four-person group had an idea: Why not pool the scout capital they were being offered and formalize it into a micro-fund to be invested out together. Checks wouldn’t just come with one stamp of approval, but four; and instead of playing subtle scouts, the four operators can see and back a broader range of companies. After all, invest for the job you want, right? Twenty checks and two years later, the quartet decided to pitch another idea, this time as a firmer bet on themselves and to a broader group of investors. The vision, launching publicly for the first time today, is Coalition , a fund and operator network d...