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Soylent Is Back

<b>Today’s Stories</b><p>Super Mario Run tops 5 million downloads on day one, but half reviews are just one star<br>• 2016 isn’t done yet as Soylent powder goes back on sale<br>• To prevent another crash, Facebook’s solar drone will get an airbrake<p><b>Credits</b><p><b>Written by:</b> Tito Hamze, John Mannes <b><br>Hosted and edited by:</b> Tito …

Airbnb authorizes $153 million more funding

A new Delaware filing for Airbnb, identified by CB Insights, suggests that the travel service has authorized another $153 million in Series F shares. This implies that they might be raising an extension to their financing $555 million round from a few months back.<p>The filing prices the shares at …

Trivago closes up 8% in public debut

Hotel search site Trivago went public on Friday, after separating from Expedia. The company priced its shares at $11 and closed the day at $11.85, up 7.73%.<p>But this was after pricing at $11 per share, below the $13 to $15 range that had been forecast. The company raised $287 million in the offering …

Tesla introduces fee for lazy owners who leave their cars at Supercharger stations

There’s nothing like driving your nearly-empty Tesla up to a Supercharger station for a top-up and finding every spot taken up by other cars — probably all charged up and ready to go. Where are their drivers? How dare they? Tesla shares your anger and will soothe it by giving those drivers a …

Google Maps now notes if a location is wheelchair accessible

“Can I get in the building?”<p>It might not be a question you find yourself asking regularly — but for the 3 million+ wheelchair users in the US, it’s a question that has to be considered. And starting now, it’s one that Google Maps is trying to help answer.<p>“Wheelchair accessible entrance” will now be …

Weekly Roundup: Trump meets with tech leaders, Yahoo suffers another massive hack

This week, one could play Super Mario Run on iOS in a self-driving Uber if you lived in San Francisco. You could have also broadcast it live on Instagram or Snapchatted it to a group for the first time. These are the top stories in tech from this week, all in one place. <i>You can also get this post as</i> …

Uber continues self-driving vehicle testing in SF in defiance of DMV

Uber won’t stop operating self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, despite an order from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to do just that.<p>The DMV says Uber needs a permit to test its autonomous vehicles, but Uber argues that its vehicles aren’t autonomous at all and therefore it doesn’t …

Soylent Is Back | Crunch Report

The relevance of media-streaming startups

With 86 million users across multiple countries and roughly $2.2 billion in generated revenue in Q3 2016, Netflix is the shining star of media-streaming startups. But it wasn’t always such a powerhouse.<p>In the early days of Netflix, video rental companies like Blockbuster were the established …

Motorola’s hackathon winning Moto Mods include a gamepad and skin care monitor

You’ve got to hand it to Motorola, the smartphone maker does appear committed to its nascent modular smartphone offering. The company launched the Moto Z back in July, alongside four magnetic backings – a projector, a set of JBL speakers, a battery pack and protective casing.<p>Since then, the company …

‘Rogue One’ transports viewers to a broader Star Wars universe

For months, I insisted that I wasn’t going to see <i>Rogue One</i>.<p>I was kind of a whiner about it: Yes, I did see <i>The Force Awakens,</i> and yes, I mostly liked it, but I kept telling friends that I didn’t need to buy a ticket a new <i>Star Wars</i> movie every year for the rest of my life. I repeated that speech …

Managed By Q lands $30 million in Series C funding

Managed By Q, a service that automates office management, has raised $30 million in Series C funding, according to SEC filings.<p>Managed By Q started off as a NY-based platform that let office administrators more efficiently deal with the tedious housekeeping of an office, from cleanings to supplies …

The 10 largest Series B rounds of 2016

1/10<p>Juicero – $70 million<p>Love it or hate it, most people have strong opinions about Juicero’s $700 juice making machine. The GV and KPCB backed company locked down $70 million in Series B financing in March of this year. While this is certainly a ton of capital, the startup is rumored to have …

Facebook Messenger strikes at Skype with desktop group voice calling

We might finally get to stop asking, “Wait, what’s your Skype name” thanks to a test of new Facebook group audio calling on desktop. Facebook launched group voice calls on its mobile Messenger app in April, and now it’s working out the kinks to bring the feature to your home and office. It could …

Obama defends White House handling of Russian hacking

In his final press conference of the year, President Barack Obama addressed intelligence community assessments that hackers associated with the Russian government tampered with the U.S. election in order to sway the victory to Donald Trump and defended the White House’s handling of the …

Vine won’t be removed from the app stores, will instead relaunch as “Vine Camera”

In October, Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine, its app that let users create and share 6-second looping videos. Today, the company says it won’t actually pull the Vine app from the app store as it had earlier implied, but will rather transition to a new, low-maintenance app called Vine …

If only Huawei’s handsome, high-tech Honor Magic phone was coming to the US

Lucky China, always getting the good stuff. First pandas, and now the Huawei Honor Magic. This curvy beauty is packed with interesting tech, from a dual-camera system on the back to an eye-tracking sensor from Tobii on the front — and a whole lot of custom software in between.<p>The display underneath …

The Everlast Notebook is filled with smart, scannable pages that are also reusable

You’ve probably seen a few of these smart paper or smart pen things over the years — write in this special notebook and it gets saved to an app, that sort of thing. A new entrant to this niche space is the Everlast notebook, which obviates the necessity of restocking proprietary paper in that its …

What the coming educational VR revolution teaches us about the tech’s future

Imagine the following scenario: A fifth-grade science class has just begun and the teacher makes a surprise announcement — today the students will be dissecting a frog.<p>I’m sure you remember dissecting a frog as a kid — the sour-pickle odor of formaldehyde, the sharp scalpels slicing into rubbery …

Pinterest has lowered its hiring goals for women in engineering roles

Pinterest found that the 30% hiring rate it set for women in engineering roles was doing too much, so it’s lowering its 2017 goal to 25%, Pinterest disclosed on its blog today.<p>“We still aspire to 30%—but realize it’s likely going to take more than 12 months to get there,” Pinterest CEO Ben …

Google brings its upgraded keyboard app Gboard to Android

Google today officially announced that it’s rebranding its Google Keyboard application for Android users to “Gboard,” the name sported by its newer keyboard app that sports a fully integrated Google Search engine, emoji and GIF search, and more. The keyboard’s Android launch had been spotted …

Facebook Social VR launches hangout “Rooms”, phone calls, Livestreaming

Facebook’s power-play to rule social virtual reality has a boring name: the “Coordinated App Launch API”. Like a VR version of Xbox Live or Playstation network, it lets you gather with friends in Facebook VR’s new Rooms feature, and then launch together into a developer’s multiplayer game. The …

Facebook admits to another metrics mistake affecting Instant Article publishers

For a metrics powered company, Facebook is pretty bad at metrics. The company just announced its third metrics-related issue in the past two months with today’s reveal that it also experienced problems providing accurate numbers to publishers on its Instant Articles platform.<p>Instant Articles are …

Anki’s Cozmo robot is a surprise hit, temporarily selling out ahead of the holidays

Looks like Anki’s may have a full-fledge holiday hit on its hands. The hardware startup, which first came to prominence when Apple demoed its Drive cars on-stage during a keynote a few years back, went all in on its latest offering Cozmo earlier this year.<p>The plucky little robot is the result of a …

The top 15 events that happened in space in 2016

1/15<p>Astronomers find evidence for Planet 9<p>Two astronomers at Caltech found evidence that indicates the presence of a ninth planet in our solar system. The planet has yet to be directly imaged, but its gravitational influence on other known objects has allowed astronomers to detect its presence and …

Google joins the open source Cloud Foundry Foundation

Google is joining the Cloud Foundry Foundation as a Gold member. To be fair, this doesn’t necessarily come as a major surprise, especially given that Google recently hired the foundation’s former CEO Sam Ramji.<p>Other Cloud Foundry Gold-level members include Accenture, Allstate, CenturyLink, Huawai, …

Super Mario Run sees 2.85 million downloads on day one, but half reviews are just one star

Pokémon Go, step aside. In the first 24 hours, Nintendo’s Super Mario Run has beaten the record-breaking Pokémon game in terms of day one downloads. According to data from Apptopia, Super Mario Run saw 2,850,000 downloads in its first day on the App Store, compared with the 900,000 Pokémon Go had …

Humans can now move complex robot arms just by thinking

Most robotic arm systems required a very complex and very invasive brain implant… until now. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a new system that requires only a sexy helmet and a bit of thinking, paving the way to truly mind-controlled robotic tools.<p>“This is the first time in …

Nintendo reportedly sold 196,000 NES Classic Edition consoles last month

NES Classic demand exceeded Nintendo’s expectations – that much was fairly clear from the fact that it has thus been been nearly impossible to get a system here in the States. The gaming company hasn’t released any specifics surrounding just how many units of the all-in-one emulator it managed to …

TalkBank lets you chat with your bank

As a fan of banks – I like the lollipops they give out – I’m slightly disturbed by services like TalkBank. This Russian company replaces one-on-one teller interaction with a chatbot that can tell you your balance, offer on the spot advice, and even send you cool deals related to your credit …