Is it just me, or was that an earthquake?
“DID WE JUST HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE IN NEW YORK”“was that an earthquake?????
People on microblogging sites (it wasn’t just X — I see you, Bluesky) had already determined the scope of the earthquake, confirmed it was, in fact, an earthquake, and began posting jokes about the situation before the less chronically online people even realized what happened.
Dom says she used to live in LA, and this was definitely an earthquake.
On Facebook, I am delighted to learn there is a new grocery store coming to my neighborhood, but no one is talking about the earthquake.
What a week, everyone.
Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup-land.
Then to close out, we chatted through the impending Ibotta and Rubrik IPOs.
The latter deal could provide a fascinating heat-check for unprofitable unicorns that need to find some sort of exit, and quickly.
All told we chatted through startups from their very earliest form all the way through their most mature.
Oculus’ Rift prototype felt like just such a device when it first crossed my radar more than a decade ago.
“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences.
Should anyone doubt the company’s commitment to the concept, it rebranded itself as “Meta”, killing off the Oculus brand the same afternoon.
In spite of the $500 billion rebrand, Zuckerberg and co. never did a particularly good job defining the metaverse.
That’s roughly 21x the price it paid for Oculus, not adjusting for inflation.
If Trump wins, net neutrality is dead for one of several reasons.
A second Trump presidency, whatever its likelihood or one’s opinion on his other policies, would be fatal to net neutrality efforts.
Companies that oppose regulations like the FCC’s net neutrality plans often call for federal legislation on the topic.
A third threat to net neutrality comes from the Supreme Court, which is performing quite a bit of conservative wish-fulfillment lately.
Net neutrality rules being moot due to the FCC being inoperable would be the least of our worries if that occurs, though.
In a move implying that the launch went well, JFFVentures today unveiled its second fund, JFFVentures Fund II, with a target of $50 million.
So how is JFFVentures Fund II planning to avoid these pitfalls?
Well, Raja says, while the fund is operationally independent from JFF, JFFVentures Fund II will benefit from the wider JFF community, including its connections with government, corporate, education and nonprofit partners.
“We’ve committed in our fund docs that at least 50% of Fund II founders will identify as underrepresented in terms of founder backgrounds,” he said.
Kerszenbaum pointed to JFFVentures’ inaugural fund performance as evidence Fund II can succeed, though.
TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 is welcoming an outstanding addition to its roster of speakers as Paris Heymann, partner at Index Ventures, takes the stage.
As a partner at Index Ventures, where he focuses on software, data, and AI companies, Heymann is an expert at navigating the complexities of the tech industry.
Throughout his session, Heymann will explore the multitude of challenges that companies encounter when executing their go-to-market plans.
With Heymann’s dynamic presentation style and wealth of knowledge, his session at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 is set to be a highlight of the event, offering attendees invaluable guidance for navigating the ever-changing landscape of GTM strategies.
Attend this session and many others at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 to better understand how to build your startup and avoid common founder pitfalls.
Google is rolling out the April update to ChromeOS users with features like the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts and mouse button actions.
The update also brings improved offline text-to-speech voice support.
The ChromeOS M123 update is rolling out to users over the next few days.
The main new feature is a way to assign custom keyboard shortcuts to actions.
The company said that the keyboard customization shortcut will be enabled by default with the next ChromeOS update M124.
X is giving blue checks to influential users (which is what blue checks were supposed to be all along)X is giving free blue checks to users who have more than 2500 “verified” followers (or, people that subscribe to X Premium).
So, basically this means that if you are a popular poster, you will get a blue check.
This also means that these lucky people are frantically posting to make it clear that they didn’t buy a blue check — the blue check was foisted upon them.
Back in days of yore, Twitter’s blue check indicated that a user was influential in some way.
Back then, blue checks actually helped us determine if public figures are who they say they are.
NASA has given three space companies the chance to design the next generation moon buggy — but only one design will go to space.
Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab are developing rugged vehicles intended for astronauts to drive around on the lunar surface, from which NASA may choose as early as next year.
The three teams will now enter into a 12-month “feasibility phase” that will culminate in a preliminary design review.
NASA declined to specify the dollar value of the awards, though Intuitive Machines said in a statement that it was awarded a $30 million contract.
“With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are building up the capabilities needed to establish a longer-term exploration and presence of the moon,” he said.
For the second time in just over a month, Meta’s apps including WhatsApp, and possibly Messenger and Instagram, are facing outages and intermittent issues.
WhatsApp also confirmed the outage in an update to its X account.
(In our own tests, Meta’s apps were loading and we could send messages via WhatsApp which indicates either the outages were not global in nature or they’ve already been fixed.)
This is not the first time Meta’s apps have seen a sizable outage this year.
At the time, Meta’s status page had signaled problems with products like Ads Manager as well.
