Rackspace, the hosted private cloud vendor, let go around 200 workers or 3 percent of its worldwide workforce of 6,600 employees this week. The company says that it’s part of a recalibration where it is trying to find workers who are better suited to their current business approach. A Rackspace spokesperson told TechCrunch that it…
Another overly niche streaming service is closing up shop. On Friday, Alpha – a geek-friendly streaming service that focused on TV, pop-culture, sci-fi, comics, video games and more – announced it was shutting down. The subscription-based streaming service had been a joint venture between Nerdist and Geek & Sundry, and offered $4.99-per-month access to a…
Co-working juggernaut WeWork (now known as the We Company) has laid off 3 percent of its global workforce, or roughly 300 employees, the company told TechCrunch. The heavily funded business, most recently valued at a whopping $47 billion, employs 10,000 people around the world. Headquartered in New York, the layoffs were performance-related, part of the…
It’s obviously important to Australians to make sure their koala population is closely tracked — but how can you do so when the suckers live in forests and climb trees all the time? With drones and AI, of course. A new project from Queensland University of Technology combines some well-known techniques in a new way…
Apex Legends’ bigger characters are colorful, interesting, and full of gameplay potential. So it’s a shame that, thanks to a design quirk spotted by gamers, no one wants to play as them. Respawn Entertainment’s unexpected battle royale was surprisingly polished at launch, with tight, fun gameplay that didn’t require months of post-release patches to whip…
Adobe has hurried out a patch for a critical arbitrary code execution vulnerability in its ColdFusion product.
Jessica spends 12 hours a day on the internet managing security for web assets and loves her macha tea
A report from The Wall St. Journal today claims Amazon is preparing to open a new chain of grocery stores across the U.S. that won’t be associated with Whole Foods. The retailer is expected to open the first of these stores in L.A., possibly by the end of 2019, and has signed leases for at…
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Tesla closing retail stores in shift to online-only sales strategy Tesla is moving all its sales online, a dramatic shift in…
Tristan O’Tierney, a cofounder of the payments company Square has passed away at age 35. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, O’Tierney died last weekend in Florida or addiction-related causes after a hospital was unable to revive him. In the Chron’s piece, it reports that Square cofounders Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey hired O’Tierney to…
In Lyft’s S-1 this morning, the company laid out the potential consequences for converting its drivers from independent contractors to W-2 employees. This, of course, has been an ongoing conversation within the gig economy. Those who work as 1099 contractors can set their own schedules, and decide when, where and how much they want to…
