Accusations that Spotify has been punishing artists for signing exclusives with other streaming services hit the internet in full force this morning, originating from a Bloomberg article.
When confronted by TechCrunch, a Spotify spokesperson gave the same response they have been giving since the story broke — that the accusations about burying search results are “unequivocally… Read More
Fundraising for a startup is a notoriously stressful process. Much ink has been spilled dissecting every aspect of what works when pitching a venture capitalist, and there are countless “tips” out there that promise to help close deals. But for all the attention paid to VCs, little has been paid to limited partners — the money behind the money that makes the venture world… Read More
Big data is hardly new at this point — nor has it wrought anywhere near its potential effects on many companies and institutions insulated by inertia and red tape. A summer program at the University of Washington called Data Science for Good shows that fresh eyes and good code can make more in 10 weeks than some have done in as many years. Read More
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises has demonstrated delivery of hot pizzas by drone in Auckland, New Zealand.
The company has a long history of embracing high-tech concepts. Last year, they tested out a four-wheeled, driverless pizza delivery vehicle. And in 2012, Domino’s launched a casual build-a-pizza game that also let players order the pizza they built digitally for real life… Read More
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an office under the Department of Homeland Security, put forward a proposal today that would allow the U.S. government to offer parole (temporary permission to be in the country) to foreign entrepreneurs starting their businesses in the United States. The proposal specifies that a founder can qualify if they started a company in the U.S. in… Read More
You’ll want to be updating your iOS devices to 9.3.5, the version released today by Apple — especially if you’re a prominent human rights activist. A recently thwarted attack on just such a person employed not one but three zero-day exploits. And that’s just the beginning of the story. Read More
BuzzFeed has a new chief technology officer — Todd Levy, who was already serving as the vice president of engineering. Levy joined the company through the acquisition of startup Torando Labs in 2014. As part of the deal, he was tasked with creating a new data engineering team at BuzzFeed. “It is without hyperbole when I say that [Levy] has revolutionized the way we architect… Read More
Grabr, the peer-to-peer marketplace that lets anyone become an international shopper, has today announced the close of a $3.5 million seed round led by Alexey Repik from RBV Capital. Kanstantin Nikolaev of N-Trans Group also participated in the round, along with various angel investors. Grabr works like this: Shoppers who are having trouble finding a certain item (or affording to ship a… Read More
For years roboticists have been looking into using softer materials for parts rather than the usual metal and plastic — sometimes even building entirely soft robots. But this Octobot from Harvard is the first that not only contains no hard parts but is also entirely autonomous. Read More
