Mikhail Kokorich, the founder of Momentus, a new Y Combinator-backed propulsion technology developer for space flight, hadn’t always dreamed of going to the moon. A physicist who graduated from Russia’s top-ranked Novosibirsk University, Kokorich was a serial entrepreneur in who grew up in Siberia and made his name and his first fortunes in the years…
The past year has been one of the most tumultuous for the dark web, as massive law enforcement efforts have untangled and disbanded several large criminal operations — but did these operations actually make a difference? What happened? On July 4, 2017, the Amazon of the dark web went dark. Alphabay, the largest underground market…
After protecting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for almost six years, Ecuador is now planning to withdraw its political asylum, probably next week, and eject him from its London embassy—eventually would turn him over to the British authorities. Lenín Moreno, the newly-elected President of Ecuador, has arrived in London this Friday to give a speech at…
Microsoft’s transformation into an enterprise cloud services company was underscored by full-year financial results that revealed total revenues of over $110 billion. In Q4, the number of new Azure contracts worth more than $10 million doubled, and the cloud division showed an 89 percent year-on-year surge in revenues – twelve percent more than consensus analyst…
Is there any space on kids’ homescreens for another social sharing app to poke in? Y Combinator backed Splish wants to have a splash at it (😊) — with a super-short-form video and photo sharing app aimed at the under-25s. The SF-based startup began bootstrapping out of their college dorm rooms last July, playing around with…
For people who make investment decisions based on revenues and projected earnings, biotech IPOs are kind of a non-starter. Not only are new market entrants universally unprofitable, most have zero revenue. Going public is mostly a means to raise money for clinical trials, with red ink expected for years to come. That pattern may be…
Today at Comic-Con, Warner Bros . gave fans a first peek at the first DC Comics films post-Justice League. Warner Bros. and DC had a bumpy 2017. There was the astonishing critical and commercial success of Wonder Woman, followed by the box office disappointment of Justice League — leading to an executive shakeup and a general…
Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin, performed its most critical test to date, Prime Day had some ups and downs but ultimately broke records and major tech companies are uniting to help you move data across apps. Here’s your weekly roundup of the top stories from the tech world: 1. Blue Origin successfully lands both…
Amazon Prime has been an enormous influence on e-commerce, but this online juggernaut is beginning to show cracks. Now is the time for arch-rival Walmart to swoop in with a Prime-like offering that strikes at the weaknesses Amazon has introduced into its formidable loyalty program: price, a lack of focus, and competing subscription services. Here’s…
What do the Gallic Wars and online shopping have in common? The answer, believe it or not, is cryptography. Cryptography is the cement of the digital world, but it also has a long history that predates the digital era. Most people do not realize that cryptography is a foundational element to our modern society. At…
