Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, September 17th! What a week, ya’ll. It is now just days before Disrupt, which means the TechCrunch hive is buzzing. I’ll leave it by noting that Reid Hoffman is coming, which is going to be a treat. See you next week! — Alex The TechCrunch Top 3…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will use personal driving data to determine whether owners who have paid for its controversial “Full Self-Driving” software can access the latest beta version that promises more automated driving functions. Musk tweeted late Thursday night that the FSD Beta v10.0.1 software update, which has already been pushed out…
Apple and Google have removed a tactical voting app created by the organization of jailed Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, from their respective mobile app stores in Russia. Earlier this week Reuters reported that the Russian state had been amping up the pressure on foreign tech giants ahead of federal elections — appropriating the language of…
Supply chain and fleet management solutions company Ryder is partnering with yet another autonomous trucking company. On Thursday, Ryder announced its plans to help Embark launch a nationwide network of up to 100 transfer points that will be owned and operated by the autonomous trucking developer. This is Ryder’s third public partnership with autonomous trucking…
Facebook is in the hot seat again. The Wall Street Journal published a powerful multi-part series on the company this week, drawing from internal documents on everything from the company’s secretive practice of whitelisting celebrities to its knowledge that Instagram is taking a serious toll on the mental health of teen girls. The flurry of…
Building an orbital launch business from scratch is no simple matter, but what if that business is just a stepping stone to a vertically integrated, interplanetary space company? Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck will be joining us next week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 (Sept 21-23) to talk about the challenge and exhilaration of pursuing his…
Alphabet ended Project Loon earlier this year, but the things it learned from the internet-broadcasting balloon initiative haven’t gone to waste. The high speed wireless optical link technology originally developed for Loon is currently being used for another moonshot called Project Taara. In a new blog post, Taara’s Director of Engineering, Baris Erkmen, has revealed…
French startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million). The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your company. What makes it special is that Skello automatically takes into account local labor laws and collective agreements. Partech is leading today’s funding round. Existing…
After months of publicity, an NFT auction and even a Netflix docuseries, it’s finally here: the four-person crew of Inspiration4 will be heading to space today (weather permitting). What makes this launch different from any that came before it? None of the four people onboard are astronauts. The mission marks the first time that an…
As you prepare to dive in to three days of TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, be sure to take your passport. No, not the government-issued variety. Our Disrupt Passport lets you collect experiences during the virtual conference and gives you a chance to win some pretty fabulous prizes. Seriously, who wouldn’t want a chance to win these?…
