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Two chatbots meet and put the world to rights online in battle to see who is most human-like. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3mIzQki

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays,  based on the column of the same name . You can sign up for the email  here . Over the past few months the IPO market made it plain that some public investors were willing to pay more for growth-focused technology shares than private investors. We saw this in both strong tech IPO pricing — the value set on companies as they debut — and in resulting first-day valuations , which were often higher. One way to consider how far public valuations rose for tech startups, especially those with a software core in 2020, is to ask yourself how often you heard about a down IPO this year. Maybe a single time? At most? (You can catch up on 2020 IPO performance here , if you need to.) IPO enthusiasm exposed a gap between what many venture capitalists and private investors were paying for tech shares, and what the public market was doing with its own valuation calculations. Insurtech startup Hippo’s $150 million private

This week, GV General Partner (and TechCrunch alum) MG Siegler joined us on Extra Crunch Live for a far-ranging chat about what it takes to foster a good relationship between investor and startup, how portfolio management and investing has changed as the COVID-19 crisis drags on, and what Siegler expects will and won’t stick around in terms of changes in behavior in investment and entrepreneurship once the pandemic passes. We last caught up with Siegler on the heels of his investment in Universe , a mobile-focused, e-commerce business-building startup. The coronavirus pandemic was relatively new and no one was sure how long it would last or what measures to contain it would look like. Now, with a few months of experience under his belt, Siegler told me that things have relatively settled into a new normal from his perspective as an investor – sometimes for worse, sometimes for better, but mostly just resulting in differences that require adaptation. This select transcript has been ed

Editor’s note:   Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT).  Subscribe here . Let’s think beyond Monday, for a minute, to the trends playing out in technology this coming decade. While humanity’s problems have never been greater, our tools have never been better. Here’s more, from Danny Crichton : The 2010s were all about executing on the dreams of mobile, cloud, and basic data. Those ideas had historical antecedents going back in some cases decades or more (Vannevar Bush’s description of the internet dates to the 1940s, for instance). But for the first time, we had the infrastructure and the users to actually build these products and make them useful. It was quite possibly the most extensive greenfield opportunity in the history of technology. Yet, that greenfield is increasingly fallow. Business has cycles and seasonality as much as media reporting does. The easy stuff has been done. Building an app to text

Hello and welcome back to  Equity , TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast ( now on Twitter! ), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As promised, the whole gang is back, this time to chew on the biggest, baddest, worstest, and most troubling earnings reports from the current cycle. This week saw Amazon and Alphabet and Microsoft and Apple and Facebook report, along with a host of smaller companies. Spoiler alert: there were more tricks than treats. Danny , Natasha and Alex wanted to get to the bottom of the big tech results, asking what really mattered from each of them? Then it was time to dig into themes. We saw plan price increases coming from Netflix and Spotify , advertising getting a boo-st from politics and 2020’s overall meltdown, and boo-ming billions of consumer interest in…desktops. After that, a dive into the results of smaller SaaS and cloud companies, picking out trends that might help us see around the corner a bit; is the tech boom slowi

Chips that power nearly all electronic devices are at the heart of the battle for global dominance. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3e9taZk

The hip-hop artist gave his wife a hologram of her dead father. How did he do it - and is it ethical? from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/37VHxPK

The iPhone transformed mobile phones in just 10 years. Could green energy see a similar revolution? from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3ee9Gmj

For years — decades, even — there was little question about whether you could become a venture capitalist if you weren’t comfortable financially. You couldn’t. The people and institutions that invest in venture funds want to know that fund managers have their own “skin in the game,” so they’ve long required a sizable check from the investor’s own pocket before jumping aboard. Think 2% to 3% of the fund’s total assets, which often equates to millions of dollars. In fact, five years ago, I wrote that the real obstacle to becoming a venture capitalist has less to do with gender than with financial inequality. I focused then on women, who are paid less ( especially Black and Hispanic women), and who possess less wealth. But the same is true of anyone of lesser means. Consider that one or two partners trying to raise a $50 million debut fund have to come up with $1.5 million. They’ll collect management fees off that $50 million fund — the standard is 2% annually for the fund’s investmen

Social media companies are making plans in case of unrest after election day. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3kJG4Qj

TikTok has won another battle in its fight against the Trump administration’s ban of its video-sharing app in the U.S. — or, more accurately in this case, the TikTok community won a battle. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania has issued an injunction that blocked the restrictions that would have otherwise blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. on November 12. This particular lawsuit was not led by TikTok itself, but rather a group of TikTok creators who use the app to engage with their million-plus followers. According to the court documents, plaintiff Douglas Marland has 2.7 million followers on the app; Alec Chambers has 1.8 million followers; and Cosette Rinab has 2.3 million followers. The creators argued – successfully as it turns out — that they would lose access to their followers in the event of a ban, as well as the “professional opportunities afforded by TikTok.” In other words, they’d lose their brand sponsorships — meaning, their income. This is not the firs

Are your AirPods Pro earbuds making weird noises? You’re not imagining it — and you’re not the only one. Just a few months after Apple started shipping AirPods Pro, some users started noticing that one or both of their earbuds were rattling or crackling. The noises would reportedly get worse whenever the user moved, and would sometimes only develop after months of use. Apple didn’t say too much about it at first, but would usually replace crackling earbuds if you took the time to hit up support. A few folks here at TechCrunch have had the rattle rear its head on our own AirPods Pro buds… only to have it pop up again in the replacements. It seems the problem has become widespread enough for an official acknowledgement: today Apple launched an “AirPods Pro Service Program” (as first pointed out by Mark Gurman ) specifically for swapping out crackling buds. A newly published support page outlines the potential symptoms, both of which suggest the issue has to do with the noise canc

Tourism boards, hotels and destinations are turning to virtual reality to woo potential visitors. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3enY3cJ

Apple has packed an interesting new accessibility feature into the latest beta of iOS: a system that detects the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera, so blind users can social distance effectively, among many other things. The feature emerged from Apple’s ARKit, for which the company developed “people occlusion,” which detects people’s shapes and lets virtual items pass in front of and behind them. The accessibility team realized that this, combined with the accurate distance measurements provided by the lidar units on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max , could be an extremely useful tool for anyone with a visual impairment. Of course during the pandemic one immediately thinks of the idea of keeping six feet away from other people. But knowing where others are and how far away is a basic visual task that we use all the time to plan where we walk, which line we get in at the store, whether to cross the street, and so on. The new feature, which will be p

“5G is a once-in-a-decade kind of opportunity,” Tim Cook told the media during the Q&A portion of Apple’s Q3 earnings call. “And we could not be more excited to hit the market exactly when we did.” The truth of the matter is its timing was a mixed bag. Apple was, by some accounts, late to 5G. By the time the company finally announced that it was adding the technology across its lineup of iPhone 12 variants, much of its competition had already beat the company to the punch. Of course, that’s not a huge surprise. Apple’s strategy is rarely a rush to be first. 5G networks are only really starting to come into their own now. Even today, there are still wide swaths of users who will have to default to an LTE connection the majority of the time they use their handsets. The arrival of 5G on the iPhone was really as much about future proofing this year’s models as anything. Consumers are holding onto phones longer, and in the three or four years before it’s time for another upgrade, the

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Any upgrade options for E-2 visa holders interested in changing jobs? Dear Sophie: What visa options exist for a grad co-founding a startup? Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn , a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.” Extra

The world of enterprise software and cybersecurity has taken multiple body blows since COVID-19 demolished the in-person office, flinging employees across the world and forcing companies to adapt to an all-remote productivity model. The shift has required companies to rethink not only collaboration software, but also the infrastructure that powers it and the best way to protect assets once their security perimeters have been destroyed. The pandemic has also dramatically increased the usage of digital services, forcing cloud providers to keep up with crushing demands for performance and reliability. In short — it’s never been a better time to be an enterprise investor (or, possibly, a founder). So I’m excited to announce our next guest in our Extra Crunch Live interview series : Asheem Chandna from Greylock , one of the top enterprise investors of the past two decades who has worked with multiple important founding teams from whiteboard to IPO. We’re scheduled for Thursday, November

Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, then prepared in a few minutes via microwave or oven,  So you get the benefit of fresh, healthy meals but — unlike signing up with a meal kit startup — you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking them yourself. If anything, this sounds even more appealing now, as so many of us are spending most of our time at home, doing our best to cook for ourselves. According to Nestlé’s press release, Freshly is now shipping more than 1 million meals per week across 48 states, with forecasted sales of $430 million for 2020. The startup raised a total of $107 million from investors including Highland Capital Partners, White Star Capital, Insight Venture Partners and Nestlé itself, which led the Series C in 2017 .

In 2015, then-Twitter product manager Terri Burns penned a piece about staying optimistic despite the sexism and racism that exists expansively within tech. “America has broke my heart countless times, but I believe that technology can be a tool to mend some of the woes of the world and produce tools to better humanity,” she wrote. “It’s hard to continue to believe this when the industry holding this power takes so little interest in the basic rights of women and people of color. I actively choose to remain hopeful under the belief that myself and many of the incredible people also working toward equality and justice in technology and in America will make a difference.” Burns left Twitter in 2017 to join GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. Her hope has now been met with recognition. GV has promoted Terri Burns to partner, making her the first Black woman to hold that role — and the youngest ever. Making history comes with its own set of pressures and spotlight, but Burns seems

It wasn’t the lingering exhaustion that made Christine Huang, a New York public school teacher, leave the profession. Or the low pay. Or the fact that she rarely had time to spend with her kids after the school day due to workload demands. Instead, Huang left teaching after seven years because of how New York City handled the coronavirus pandemic in schools. “Honestly, I have no confidence in the city,” she says. Tensions between educators and NYC officials grew over the past few weeks, as school openings were delayed twice and staffing shortages continue . In late September, the union representing NYC’s principals called on the state to take control of the situation , slamming Mayor de Blasio for his inability to offer clear guidance. Now, schools are open and the number of positive coronavirus cases are surprisingly low. Still, Huang says there’s a lack of grace given to teachers in this time. Huang wanted the flexibility to work from home to take care of her kids who could no