It’s tax season, which has me thinking about one of decentralized technology’s holy grails: self-sovereign identities. It’s a stirring vision, of a world in which control over our driver’s licenses, passports, birth certificates, social security numbers — the table stakes to participate in the modern economy — rests in our hands, rather than that of…
Editor’s Note: refocused newsletters It was another dizzying week here at Extra Crunch as you will shortly see in this newsletter. One change that we are making: we are simplifying our newsletters to keep you better informed on what is happening on Extra Crunch. We are merging the daily, weekly, and article editions of this…
Let’s start this week’s newsletter with some data. Nationally, startups pulled in $30.8 billion in the first quarter of 2019, up 22 percent year-on-year, according to Crunchbase’s latest deal round-up. A closer look at the numbers shows a big drop in angel funding and a slight decrease in mega-rounds, or financings larger than $100 million.…
About half a year ago, Google gave the Assistant on phones a major visual refresh. Today, the company is following up with a couple of small but welcome tweaks that’ll see the Assistant on Android provide more and better visual responses that are more aligned with what users already expect to see from other Google…
You might be surprised what you can buy on Facebook, if you know where to look. Researchers with Cisco’s Talos security research team have uncovered a wave of Facebook groups dedicated to making money from a variety of illicit and otherwise sketchy online behaviors, including phishing schemes, trading hacked credentials and spamming. The 74 groups…
It’s getting bare-knuckled out there again in the ride-hailing wars. According to a report earlier today from The Information, newly public Lyft threatened Morgan Stanley with legal action earlier this week, demanding in a letter that the powerful investment bank stop marketing a short-selling product that it believed was disrupting trading in its stock. It…
Skype is capitalizing on Apple’s struggles with Group FaceTime to attract attention to its own group calling features. Today, the company announced it’s doubling the number of people who can simultaneously participate in a group audio or video call. It now supports as many as 50 people at once, up from 25, previously. With the expanded…
Scott Tong is a startup advisor and entrepreneur in residence at IMO Ventures. Previously he was head of product design at Pinterest, co-founder at IFTTT, and principal designer at IDEO. Follow him @ScottTong on Twitter. Editor’s note: This guest post is a part of our latest initiative to demystify design and find the best brand…
Google has abandoned an advisory board on ethics in AI after critics questioned the inclusion of Kay Coles James, leader of the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, on the 8-person panel. Google employees and thousands more concerned people called for this mistake to be corrected, and in response the company has apparently chosen to…
Amazon is ready to challenge Apple with a cheaper, Alexa-powered set of wireless earbuds. If successful, it would carve out a space for the popular digital assistant, and its deep connections to the rest of Amazon’s ecosystem, in the mobile world Amazon has hitherto largely failed to penetrate. But that’s a big if. A report…
