23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner, leading the firm’s U.S. business, is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that […]

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.

In the April Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts that the United States will again become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2020 and remain a net importer in most months through the end of 2021. Fewer barrels are available for export as U.S. crude oil production continues to decline. In addition, net exports of petroleum products will be lowest in the third quarter of 2020, when U.S. refinery runs decline in response to lower demand for refined products.

When Roger Lee, the co-founder of Human Interest, heard that San Francisco imposed shelter-in-place orders, he started blogging about layoff news and posting crowdsourced lists of employees who were laid off. His goal was to increase awareness about layoffs and give recruiters a place to search for candidates. However, one week and 40 startup layoffs […]

Apple and Google ask for developer feedback on their contact tracing efforts, Facebook sees a “significant reduction” in ads and Microsoft makes life easier for IT managers. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2020. 1. Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers This is a […]

BuzzFeed plans to furlough 68 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, according to a memo from CEO Jonah Peretti that was shared earlier by Variety. We’ve also obtained a copy of the memo, in which Peretti said the furloughs will affect the business, studios and administration teams. It sounds like the furloughs do not […]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 95.3 billion cubic feet per day in 2020, up 3% from 2019. However, EIA expects monthly production to generally decline through 2020, falling from an estimated 96.3 billion cubic feet per day in January to 92.3 billion cubic feet per day in December. Most of the decline in production will occur in the Appalachian and Permian regions. In the Appalachian region, low natural gas prices are discouraging drilling for natural gas. In the Permian, low oil prices are expected to reduce the associated production of natural gas from wells drilled to produce oil. In its March Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 92.6 billion cubic feet per day in 2021, down 3% from 2020. This would be the first decline in average annual natural gas production since 2016.

In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. electricity generation will decline by 3% in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 related economic slowdown. Most new generating capacity built in 2020 will use renewable energy sources. EIA expects renewable generation to grow by 11% in 2020. Although EIA expects renewable energy to be the fastest growing source of U.S. electric generation in 2020, the economic slowdown will reduce the total amount of new generating capacity over the next few months. The electric power sector will add 19.4 gigawatts of new wind capacity and 12.6 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity in 2020. These annual wind and solar capacity additions are 5% and 10% less, respectively, than EIA forecast in its March outlook. This update combined with EIA's forecast lower overall electricity demand, leads to a decline in U.S. fossil fuel generation, especially at coal-fired power plants. EIA expects that coal generation will fall by 20% in 2020.

In the April Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the United States will again become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2020 and remain a net importer in most months through 2021. More net imports of crude oil and less net exports of petroleum products drove this change. EIA expects net crude oil imports to increase because as U.S. crude oil production declines, fewer barrels will be available for export. Net exports of petroleum products will be lowest in the third quarter of 2020, when U.S. refinery runs will decline significantly because of lower demand for refined products. In September 2019, the United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported for the first month since records began in 1973. EIA previously expected the United States to continue as a net exporter in most months through 2021. However, as a result of recent significant changes in global oil market dynamics, EIA now expects U.S. imports and exports will be even in 2020. It is important to note that the April outlook is subject to heightened levels of uncertainty because the impacts of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease on energy markets are evolving.

Australia dropped six places to 15th position - the largest drop out of the 27 OECD countries measured.

PwC Chief Executive Luke Sayers today announced the members of an external advisory board charged with moving the firm towards greater diversity and inclusion among its people.

While technology and innovation are transforming our economy, they are also the solution to our workforce and growth challenge.

Australia's next generation of family business leaders is more confident and better prepared for senior roles than two years ago, but is also experiencing more challenges, both inside the firm and in the wider business landscape.

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 […]

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the company’s product portfolio and communicating with […]

The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) just went through a major leadership change, with executive director Abby Kearns stepping down after five years (and becoming a CTO at Puppet) and the CFF’s CTO Chip Childers stepping into the top leadership role in the organization. For the most part, though, these changes are only accelerating some of […]

With Windows 10X, Microsoft introduced a new version of its flagship operating system last October that was specifically designed for dual-screen devices. The original plan was to launch the first set of Windows 10X dual-screen devices before the 2020 holidays, and in February of this year, it announced a slew of tools to help developers […]

At its Think Digital conference, IBM and Red Hat today announced a number of new services that all center around 5G edge and AI. The fact that the company is focusing on these two areas doesn’t come as a surprise, given that both edge and AI are two of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise computing. […]

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]

By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy. Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant. When the […]

While Jackbox clearly owes a great deal of its current popularity to the shelter-in-place policies, they've also been honing their craft for years. It's worth looking at what makes them work.

The Indian government has said that its contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what he […]

Tinder will add a video dating feature in the second quarter of this year, parent company Match announced on Tuesday as part of its Q1 2020 earnings report. The company also detailed the coronavirus impact, which slowed Tinder user growth in the quarter, as social distancing requirements and government lockdowns went into effect. Match didn’t […]

1. Dhoni turns up in video with daughter, his appearance inspires memes on social media  The Indian Express
2. ‘Please do not use it’: Matthew Hayden reveals MS Dhoni’s reaction on his ‘mongoose bat’  India Gone Viral
3. Watch: MS Dhoni's New Look Sends Twitter Into A Frenzy  NDTV Tamil
4. WATCH: A grey-bearded MS Dhoni enjoys playtime with Ziva Dhoni inside his Ranchi farmhouse  DNA India
5. MS Dhoni makes fun of Suresh Raina in this priceless video posted by CSK; watch - Republic World  Republic World
6. View Full coverage on Google News

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

After months of rumors, Verizon finally sold off Tumblr for a reported $3 million — a fraction of what Yahoo paid for the once mighty blogging service back in 2013. The media conglomerate (which also owns TechCrunch) was clearly never quite sure what to do with the property after gobbling it up as part of […]

Zhihu may not be as well known outside of China as WeChat or ByteDance’s Douyin, but over the past eight years, it has cultivated a reputation for being one of the country’s most trustworthy social media platforms. Originally launched as a question-and-answer site similar to Quora, Zhihu has grown to be a central hub for […]

Startup founders have a million things to worry about every day. Finding product-market fit, great talent and and a sustainable plan for constant growth are top of mind, but perhaps most importantly, they need to keep the lights on, whether it’s by raising venture capital or managing cash flows while bootstrapping. The flip side to […]

Billionaire. Entrepreneur. Investor. Shark. Mark Cuban is one of tech’s best-known entrepreneurs, so we are amped to have him join us for an upcoming Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series that connects the brightest minds in tech directly with our Extra Crunch audience. Starting out as a salesman for one of Dallas’s earliest PC […]

Today at 10am PDT, two-thirds of the Equity crew are sitting down with Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist with Homebrew and well-known seed-stage investor. Continuing TechCrunch’s running series of Extra Crunch Live discussions with prominent people in the tech industry, bringing Walk in for a discussion is fitting. Our recent chat with Sequoia Roelof Botha’s […]

Zoom announced this morning that it has acquired Keybase, a startup with encryption expertise. It did not reveal the purchase price. Keybase, which has been building encryption products for several years including secure file sharing and collaboration tools, should give Zoom some security credibility as it goes through pandemic demand growing pains. The company has […]

The mindset that allows Colin Wayne to push forward in times of crisis.

Apple and Google have provided a number of updates about the technical details of their joint contact tracing system, which they’re now exclusively referring to as an “exposure notification” technology, since the companies say this is a better way to describe what they’re offering. The system is just one part of a contact tracing system, […]

A number of UK computer security and privacy experts have signed an open letter raising transparency and mission creep concerns about the national approach to develop a coronavirus contacts tracing app. The letter, signed by 177 academics, follows a similar letter earlier this month signed by around 300 academics from across the world, who urged […]

Prague based Resistant AI has nabbed a $2.75M seed round. The security startup’s machine learning technology is designed to be deployed on top of AI systems used for financial decision making to protect customers in markets such as financial services and ecommerce from attacks such as targeted manipulation, adversarial machine learning and advanced fraud. The […]

Uber Eats is pulling out of a clutch of markets — shuttering its on-demand food offering in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and Ukraine. It’s also transferring its Uber Eats business operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Careem, its wholly owned ride-hailing subsidiary that’s mostly focused on the Middle […]

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. […]

Papa John's founder and former CEO John Schnatter slammed the pizza chain he founded in an interview with local news.

Which of the Entrepreneur Franchise 500 entries is the cheapest, and which is most expensive?

Five strategies to broaden your startup's talent-recruitment options.

Discover 20 different ways to make extra money, save cash, pay down debt, or start their own side hustle, all of which are done online.

In an exclusive first look at the film Thomas struggles to hide his fury as he asked to step aside, and snaps that he 'won't be a sort of anything.'

The actress, 33, attended the star-studded bash held at Quaglino's restaurant wearing an off-the-shoulder mini dress with statement puff sleeves.

The actress, 32, looked nothing short of sensational as she attended the red carpet premiere of Downton Abbey in Leicester Square on Monday.

Back in the Seventies, much-loved television shows were regularly turned into films, and for eager audiences it often proved a rather disorientating experience.

PBS's drama series Downton Abbey is returning as a feature film this weekend, and projections have the movie pegged to fare rather well as compared to other titles opening at the same time.

BRIAN VINER: Jesse is on the run, needing money to fund a new identity, the instinct to stay alive and ahead of the law just about overcoming the travails of post-traumatic stress disorder. It sounds grim.

Married At First Sight was equal parts Jerry Springer and Downton Abbey in an uneven, scripted affair on Tuesday night.

The British actress wears stockings, suspenders and high heels while striking  a series of provocative poses for the latest issue of AnOther magazine.

The trailer for the exciting new show by Downton Abbey's creator Julian Fellowes was released on Friday, and teased an intense family drama.