Category : Tech Tips

To truly protect citizens, lawmakers need to restructure their regulatory oversight of big tech

If members of the European Parliament thought they could bring Mark Zuckerberg to heel with his recent appearance, they underestimated the enormous gulf between 21 century companies and their last-century regulators. Zuckerberg himself reiterated...

SPACE Administration would streamline federal oversight of commercial launches

As part of an ongoing effort to improve the regulatory conditions weathered by companies doing business in space, the Commerce Department has proposed to unify several offices under a new banner: the Space Policy Advancing Commercial Enterprise Admi...

Gillmor Gang: Auto Immunity

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Michael Markman, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Sunday, May 27, 2018. Digital cars, food, Hollywood, and other disruptions. G3: Firedrills and Fascinators — Mary Hodder, Elisa Camahor...

This sensor stops your quadcopter before it can cut you

The folks at Spectrum have found a truly cool project for quadcopter pilots. It’s a spinning sensor that will stop the rotors if your finger gets too close to the blades, thereby preventing you – or your kids – from getting cut. Researchers at the U...

Pandora now offers a Premium Family plan for $14.99 a month

Pandora just launched a family version of its Premium service. For $14.99 a month, up to six users can access Premium features (the individual version costs $9.99 a month). The new subscription option was added with little fanfare and spotted earlie...

Saul Klein joins TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, tickets on sale now

TechCrunch Disrupt is coming back to Berlin this winter, and you can already buy tickets. It will feature technologists, investors, entrepreneurs and media outlets; Startup Alley, where over 400 pre-Series A companies exhibit; Startup Battlefield, o...

Sign up: 2-4-1 Innovator passes for Disrupt Berlin available Wednesday

We love Berlin. It’s the epicenter of Europe’s vibrant startup scene, and we can’t wait to see what the continent’s tech titans and rising stars will bring to Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. These two action-packed days offer tremendous value...

Grab launches a food delivery service in Southeast Asia

Fresh from completing its acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asia business, ride-hailing firm Grab has officially launched its food delivery business — GrabFood — today. The service is already available in beta in a handful of countries, including Thai...

Customer opinions of ISPs somehow drop even lower

Disliking one’s internet provider is such a common condition that it’s hard to imagine that ISPs have anywhere to go but up in the eyes of their customers. Nope! There are new lows ahead, if the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index is any ind...

Review: Cult of the Machine at the de Young

Let’s flash back to the Machine Age, the period in American history that gave us the assembly line, the first nonstop transcontinental flight, regular radio broadcasts, and the first robot capable of performing more than 20 movements. These technolo...

Vermont passes first law to crack down on data brokers

While Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are hogging the spotlight, data brokers that collect your information from hundreds of sources and sell it wholesale are laughing all the way to the bank. But they’re not laughing in Vermont, where a first-of-i...

Desperate for jobs, Venezuelan immigrants turn to ride-hailing services across Latin America

Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo Contributor Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo is a former Google and Twitter Manager and current CEO of Céntrico Digital, a Latin American based digital agency. One month ago, Yonathan Segovia, a Cabify driver or...

The well-funded startups driven to own the autonomous vehicle stack

At some point in the future, while riding along in a car, a kid may ask their parent about a distant time in the past when people used steering wheels and pedals to control an automobile. Of course, the full realization of the “auto” part of the wo...

Jeff Bezos details his moon colony ambitions

Jeff Bezos has big plans for the moon, if he can just get there. With a little elbow grease our trusty satellite could become a platform from which to build out the space industry — and while a partnership with NASA, the ESA and others would be best...

Pornography and the butterfly effect

“Whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody,” said Bruce Sterling years ago, referring to the effects of free downloadable music on their industry; and so it has come to pass for pornographers, as depicted by the great Jon Ronson in his equa...