Virgin Galactic has $20 million more to pursue its goal of space tourism with a new investment from Boeing announced this morning. The two companies are both deeply involved in human spaceflight, but in different ways — and Boeing seems to feel that it’s better to join Virgin than try to beat them at this…
Microsoft is following Apple and Google’s lead with today’s launch of per-app and per-game time limits in its parental control software. Already, the company allows parents to limit screen time across Windows 10, Xbox One, and Android via the Microsoft Launcher. However, it hadn’t yet allowed parents to limit the amount of time a child…
Missing out on a month’s rent because you can’t find a tenant is a huge loss. Searching for someone to fill a home takes work, while property managers are incentivized to price your place too high, leading to costly vacancies. But new startup Doorstead wants to take on the risk and the work for you.…
Instagram is removing its Following tab, a feature that became better known as a stalking tool than one to aid with new account discovery, as the company had intended. Today, Instagram says that its Explore tab is the go-to place to find new people, places and hashtags to follow. Meanwhile, the Following tab is now…
While it’s true that many parents are doing their best to reduce screen time as much as possible, there’s something to be said for the Kindle Kids Edition. The best and worst thing about the device are its limitations. It’s purpose built for reading, and that’s about it. For that reason, the Kindle line makes…
Editor’s Note This week, we hosted 23 panels on all aspects of building startups on the Extra Crunch stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Thanks to the thousands of attendees who attended those talks, as well as the workshops we held on the Breakout Stage — your enthusiasm was palpable. We also had hundreds of new…
Project Include CEO Ellen Pao, who has been working to foster diversity, inclusion and ethics in the tech industry, called out Twitter’s “public square” model as flawed — and a decision that indicates a lack of ethical consideration, on Twitter’s part. The topic of Twitter came up on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019…
When Elizabeth Warren took on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook earlier this week, it was a low moment for what New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz calls “techno-utopianism.” That the progressive, populist Massachusetts Senator and leading Democratic Presidential candidate wants to #BreakUpBigTech is not surprising. But Warren’s choice to spotlight regulating and trust-busting Facebook was nonetheless noteworthy,…
Apple has reportedly acquired U.K. special effects studio IKinema, a startup that may be useful in Apple’s quest to bolster its mobile devices with AR special effects and in its more far-flung attempts to enter the AR/VR headset market. The company issued its standard confirmation for the deal to several other publications, “Apple buys smaller…
The wedding industry is estimated to be worth some $100 billion in the U.S. alone, and now one of the fastest-growing companies in that space — the wedding planning site Zola — is making a move to augment its position with a sidestep into travel. Today at Disrupt (our conference in San Francisco), the company…
