2016

In the weeks since the U.S. presidential election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been firefighting. Not literally, but figuratively. Widespread accusations assert that his social media company contributed to the…

Consider ethics when designing new technologies

For years, Oakland-based stand-up comic Stroy Moyd has been driving for Uber and Lyft part-time to generate supplemental income. It’s a familiar story to anyone in a creative industry — even though Moyd was…

Stroy Moyd’s dating show in an Uber goes from meme to mainstream

Cinema critics keep raving about Arrival, a sci-fi drama focusing on one linguist’s attempts to decipher an alien language. Star Trek recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. As a language geek…

Reverse-engineering the universal translator

There are so many reasons that men should get involved and be true allies to women in tech: It’s the right thing to do. It’s good for business. Diverse teams…

How male allies can support women in technology

One indicator of how the market is apparently more comfortable with AR than it is with its immersive sibling, VR, is that one of its earliest adopters are toymakers.

Toymakers are the early adopters pushing AR into the mainstream

Kayako isn’t a new company — the bootstrapped business has been around for 16 years — but it does have an interesting story. Kayako has never taken outside funding. It…

Kayako’s CEO on building a bootstrapped business

This year, Donald Trump’s U.S. election triumph sent Silicon Valley into a spiral of uncertainty, Facebook addressed its fake news problem, the IPO landscape saw little action and the UK…

Weekly Roundup: Obama imposes sanctions on Russian intelligence, Snapchat and Oculus eat up startups

What does my crystal ball say about the outlook for venture capital in 2017? The building blocks of a better year are in place. Many venture capital firms are flush…

2017 will be a strong year for venture capital

Value creation in enterprise tech is often driven by a cohort of exits, while value creation in consumer tech is generally driven by large, individual exits — a phenomenon I…

Why you probably won’t invest in the next unicorn

2016 sucked, if we’re being honest with ourselves. But the year wasn’t a total waste. The world of tech offered up a few shining stars in 2016, and in the…

Meet the five startups vying for Best App at the 10th Annual Crunchies Awards

New York City-based startup Uru is working on a new way for video publishers to make money. Imagine watching a normal-looking online video — except that on some of the surfaces…

Uru finds the best places to introduce ads in online videos

In my opinion, one of FaceTime’s major flaws is the lack of group video chat. Sure, apps like Skype, ooVoo and now Messenger let you do group video chats, but…

Fam lets you do group videochats directly within iMessage

The real political divide is education

The two main political parties in this country are about to face a challenge that will create a complete realignment as politicians are forced to choose between robots and people.…

The real political divide is education

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox…

Russia sanctioned and SpaceX looks back to the stars: It’s The Daily Crunch

Earlier this week The Ministry of Justice in Iran blocked Clash of Clans because psychologists in the country believe the game promotes violence and what they are describing as ‘tribal conflict’.…

Iran has banned Clash of Clans for promoting violence and tribal conflict

LG and Samsung have really taken advantage of the calm before the CES storm by teasing out their product announcements, one by one. LG’s certainly ahead in terms of sheer strangeness…

LG’s Hub Robot sounds like a mobile Amazon Echo

The payload is now on board for SpaceX’s first return to launch following its September 1 explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket on a launchpad during fueling. The proposed launch…

SpaceX loads Iridium satellites for first Falcon 9 mission since explosion

The blockchain industry is moving into the Trough of Disillusionment, marked by waning interest “as experiments and implementations fail to deliver.” During this time, many will fail and exit the…

Blockchain technologies entered the trough of disillusionment in 2016, but 2017 will be brighter

Twenty-sixteen was a pivotal year for African tech. The continent’s IT scene attracted major investment, produced its first $1 billion startup, launched a national drone delivery program, and drew one…

2016 Africa roundup: drone delivery, VC, unicorns, exits and Zuck

There weren’t many tech IPOs this year, but they performed well. Just 14 venture-backed tech companies went public, according to Dealogic. This compares to 25 last year and the 40+…

Few startups IPOed this year, but the ones that did soared

Right before the New Year begins — and with it, CES — tech companies tend to out many of their upcoming wares before the show even starts. Take Samsung for example, with its…

Samsung’s new curved monitor coming to CES is somewhat tailored for gamers

EVgo announced this month that it has broken ground on what will be the first public DC fast charging station, capable of up to 350 kw, in California — more…

How fast is fast charging?

An Illinois law is proving a thorn in Facebook’s side as a class action lawsuit, alleging mishandling of biometric information, moves toward trial. The latest developments in the case have…

Facebook stalls in lawsuit alleging its facial recognition tech violates Illinois law

2016 and the year ahead

This past year was a big one for internet attacks, encryption, blackouts, speed and IoT, and 2017 is positioned to bring even more headlines for each of these. As Cloudflare…

2016 and the year ahead

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and tennis superstar Serena Williams are engaged! Williams announced the engagement today on none other than Reddit.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams are getting married

After opening to much fanfare three years ago, Coca-Cola is shutting down The Founders program, according to a published report in Innovation Leader. Under this program, the company nurtured young startups, hoping to…

Coca-Cola closes Founders startup incubator

The 10th Annual Crunchies Awards show is right around the corner, and this year’s event will be bigger and better than ever. As a part of that, we’re including a…

These are the 5 videos vying for Best Startup Video at the 10th Annual Crunchies

Fitbit celebrated the holiday this year by ending one of a number of suits filed against fellow fitness wearable manufacturer Jawbone. Even so, the legal war being waged between the…

Jawbone fires back after Fitbit ends patent case

The Obama administration announced today that it will impose sanctions on Russian intelligence services and officials in response to the hacks of American political institutions during the election season. The…

Obama announces sanctions for Russian election hacking

Uber and Lyft have responded to Senator Al Franken’s questions regarding potential racial discrimination against passengers. Last month, Franken wondered why it’s necessary to include names and photos of passengers…

In light of discrimination concerns, Uber and Lyft defend their policies to show rider names and photos