Glance, which serves media content, news and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

Modern Games is a new studio working to create games that combine physical and digital play. The company was founded by husband-and-wife team Justin and Amanda Kifer — serial entrepreneurs who previously launched companies including Citizen Local (acquired by MyLife in 2011) and Fidgetly, a fidget spinner company that also created a motion controller for […]

Google today announced that it is extending the preview period of Android 11 by about a month. So instead of launching a beta this month, as it had previously planned, it’ll release a fourth developer preview today instead. The first beta will officially launch on June 3, during an Android -centric online event it’ll hold […]

Google today is launching a new app, Read Along, that aims to help elementary school students practice their reading skills and stay educationally engaged amid school closures due to coronavirus. The new Android app is based on Google’s existing application, Bolo, which launched in India last year with a catalog of read-along stories in both […]

Facebook Messenger is finally getting desktop apps almost 9 years after its debut. After seeing over a 100% increase in desktop browser audio and video calling, Messenger today releases its Mac and Windows desktop apps. They bring the same features as the browser version, but make it easier to keep your chat threads handy than […]

It’s a brutal time for marijuana startups. I’m hearing some are raising at 1/5th of their 2019 valuation amidst rampant competition, tall taxes, and slow legalization. The struggles for marijuana’s best-known startup, delivery service Eaze, continue as today it’s losing one of its top partners. $75 million-funded weed brand empire Caliva has dropped Eaze in […]

Could avatars that show what co-workers are up to save work-from-home teams from constant distraction and loneliness? That’s the idea behind Pragli, the Bitmoji for the enterprise. It’s a virtual office app that makes you actually feel like you’re in the same building. Pragli uses avatars to signal whether co-workers are at their desk, away, […]

Home fitness and games as gathering places are a few of the startup verticals propelled by unprecedented shifts in behavior due to shelter-in-place orders. We surveyed the top investors in consumer and social apps to learn about 2020’s startup trends, the M&A climate, the threat of incumbents copying new entrants, underserved demographics and which features […]

Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have teamed up to launch their first product together since leaving the Facebook mothership. Rt.live is an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each state. “Rt” measures the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. The higher above the number 1, […]

Facebook is co-opting some of the top video chat innovations like Zoom’s gallery view for large groups and Houseparty’s spontaneous hangouts for a new feature called Rooms. It could usher in a new era of unplanned togetherness via video. Launching today on mobile and desktop in English speaking countries, you can start a video chat […]

The tech industry (and the world at large) is not experiencing temporary anxiety — the uncertainty we’re all coping with is the new normal. Sudden shifts in behavior have made some startups targeting slow-moving, old-school industries more relevant than they could have imagined, such as those in telehealth, distance learning and remote work. Most, however […]

Atlassian is about as ubiquitous to software engineers as Google is to the rest of us. The Sydney-based company, which launched in 2002, develops tools and services for enterprise collaboration and marched efficiently to a public offering in 2015. So it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes […]

Material Bank, a logistics platform for the architectural and design industry, has announced the close of a $28 million Series B financing today, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Bain’s Merritt Hummer led the round on behalf of the firm and will join the board of directors at Material Bank, along with Jeff Sine, cofounder and […]

IRL, the recently pivoted calendar app that aggregates live virtual events, has today launched a web version of the platform. The company, which has $11 million in funding from Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund and Floodgate, started as a social planning app that helped folks find each other in the real world, based on interest and […]

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has underlined the need for greater multilateral cooperation, including the need to improve the global trading system, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said on 7 May. Speaking at a webinar hosted by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, DDG Wolff said trade will play an important role in Africa’s economic recovery from the crisis, particularly through increased intra-African trade.

Some of the best real-time insights into Tesla and its global fleet of electric vehicles — outside the confines of its Silicon Valley headquarters — might be through the lens of TezLab, a tiny upstart in Brooklyn. Now, a little more than two years after its founding, TezLab is on the verge of hitting what […]

Impossible Foods made huge waves in the food industry when it came up with a way of isolating and using “heme” molecules from plants to mimic the blood found in animal meat (also comprised of heme), bringing a new depth of flavor to its vegetarian burger. This week at CES, the company is presenting the […]

We’ve spent so long asking tech to turn its attention to real-world problems. Let’s not complain when they do so now. 

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released updated projections of future U.S. energy production and use in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) today.

Hot startup Superhuman has been getting some backlash, as often happens when someone notices the precise methodology that a startup is using to enable a core feature. We’re well into stage 2 now when, inevitably, the backlash itself gets backlash. The nut of it is that people have been exposed to the idea that Superhuman […]

Layoffs are having a big impact on industries across the board due to COVID-19. This week alone news came out of massive cuts for TripAdvisor, Lyft, and reportedly Juul and Uber. But according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi, the cuts have affected certain job roles more than others. Sales and customer success roles are the most […]

The world has changed dramatically since May 2019 when we last surveyed venture capitalists about the trends they were seeing in media, entertainment and gaming. Since then, COVID-19 and the resulting physical distancing measures have created plenty of demand for companies helping to inform and entertain us as we’re stuck at home. At the same […]

Modern Games is a new studio working to create games that combine physical and digital play. The company was founded by husband-and-wife team Justin and Amanda Kifer — serial entrepreneurs who previously launched companies including Citizen Local (acquired by MyLife in 2011) and Fidgetly, a fidget spinner company that also created a motion controller for […]

Uber and Airbnb are cutting significant portions of their workforce, Microsoft announces new Surface devices and we talk to Apple Craig Federighi about the new iPad cursor. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 6, 2020. 1. Uber is laying off 3,700 as rides plummet due to COVID-19 In an SEC filing, Uber disclosed plans to […]

Founder and CEO Lara Vandenberg told me she created Publicist to support the ways in which the communications and marketing industry is changing — changes that are only accelerating due to COVID-19. Vandenberg was previously senior vice president of communications and marketing at Knotch, and she told me, “More companies now are being better served […]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) will decrease by 7.5% in 2020, driven by the economic slowdown and restrictions on business and travel activity related to COVID-19. This follows a 2.7% decrease in emissions in 2019. EIA forecasts that energy-related CO2 emissions will then increase by 3.6% in 2021. In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA estimates that in 2020, CO2 emissions from petroleum will decrease 7% and from coal will decrease 18.4%. EIA creates estimates of energy-related CO2 emissions based on energy consumption and on the amounts of CO2 that are released when different fuels are burned. Total CO2 emissions depend on total energy consumption and the fuel mix of the energy consumed. When it is burned, coal creates the most CO2 of the major fossil fuels. However, because more petroleum products (such as motor gasoline) are consumed than coal, petroleum is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States. Natural gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, but in recent years, because of its increasing consumption, it generates more U.S. CO2 emissions than coal. Non-fossil fuels such as nuclear power and renewable generation emit no direct CO2 at the end use. As these noncarbon generation sources increasingly enter the fuel mix, energy demand can be met without a proportional increase in energy-related CO2.

For members of Australia's start up community, Adelaide is fast growing the reputation of a national entrepreneurial hub.

Governments must apply renewed focus to achieve fiscal balance and sustainably reduce the cost of delivery.

The eyesight of more than 32,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be saved if the Government invested just $227 million over 10 years, a new report has found.

Regulation, compliance, and price pressure are slowing access to potentially life-saving new medicines, and undermining industry confidence in the current listing process.

Thirty-five of the ASX 200 companies saw a turnover in Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2014, almost 35 percent more than the global average, including 8 unplanned succession events which cost $8 billion in foregone shareholder value

PwC today announced it was collaborating with a range of Australasian startups and emerging technology companies to deliver a purpose-built cloud platform that brings together some of the leading cloud solutions in the market today, all in one place.

Australian oil and gas companies will need to think bigger and embrace customers in Asia, rapidly evolve their business models, and become much more responsive to emerging trends, if they are to thrive in a challenging new global marketplace.

An enhanced Singapore-Australia free trade agreement (SAFTA) represents the biggest step-forward in over a decade in our economic relationship with Singapore.

Cloudflare today announced a new partnership with JD Cloud & AI that will see the company expand its network in Chinato an additional 150 data centers. Currently, Cloudflare is available in 17 data centers in mainland China, thanks to a long-standing partnership with Baidu, but this new deal is obviously significantly larger. CloudFlare’s original partnership […]

Google Cloud today announced the official opening of its Las Vegas data center region. With this, Google Cloud now operates four regions in the western U.S., with Las Vegas complementing Google Cloud’s existing data centers in Los Angeles, Calif.; The Dalles, Ore. and its recently opened Salt Lake City, Utah region. In total, Google now […]

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]

AWS today announced the launch of the Elemental Link, a small hardware device that makes it easy to connect a live video source to the AWS Elemental Media Live service for broadcast-grade live video processing in the cloud. The $995 Link, which weighs in at less than a pound, is meant to allow Media Live […]

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]

Google today announced that it is extending the preview period of Android 11 by about a month. So instead of launching a beta this month, as it had previously planned, it’ll release a fourth developer preview today instead. The first beta will officially launch on June 3, during an Android -centric online event it’ll hold […]

Hub Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that developed a software and hardware platform for cryptographic operations, today announced that it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by AXA Ventures. Crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also participated in this round. Like most companies at the Series A stage, the company plans to use the investment […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

On Monday, April 20, 2020, New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil front-month futures prices fell below zero dollars per barrel (b)—at one point, trading at -$40.32/b (Figure 1)—and remained below zero for part of the following trading day. Monday marked the first time the price for the WTI futures contract fell below zero since trading began in 1983. Negative prices in commodity markets are very rare, but when they occur they typically indicate high transactions costs and significant infrastructure constraints. In this case, the WTI front-month futures contract was for May 2020 delivery, and the contract was set to expire on April 21, 2020. Unless they have made other arrangements ahead of time, market participants that hold WTI futures contracts to expiration must take physical delivery of WTI crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma. Typically, most market participants close any futures contracts ahead of expiration through cash settlement in order to avoid taking physical delivery, and only about 1% of contracts are physically settled. The extreme market events of April 20 and April 21 were driven by several factors, including the inability of contract holders to find other market participants to sell the futures contracts. In addition, in this case, the scarcity of available crude oil storage meant several market participants sold their futures contracts at negative prices, in effect paying a counterparty to close out of the contracts. ...

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]

Glance, which serves media content, news and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their […]