TechCrunch Industry News

New numbers from research firm Canalys point to continued growth for PCs in 2020/21, as the pandemic has forced many to rethink how – and where – they work. PC shipments have grown for four straight quarters. All told, the numbers (within which the firm lumps tablets, incidentally) grew 53% year over year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stride VC, a London-based seed investment fund, has raised its second fund, which will be £100M ($138.6M) – identical to its first fund. The fund will invest primarily in London startups but also look at select European opportunities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has launched 60 more of its Starlink internet broadband satellites — on ‘Star Wars Day,’ no less, and only five days after it launched the last batch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter Spaces, the company’s new live audio rooms feature, is opening up more broadly. The company announced today it’s making Twitter Spaces available to any account with 600 followers or more, including both iOS and Android users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Conventional wisdom over the last year has suggested that the pandemic has driven companies to the cloud much faster than they ever would have gone without that forcing event with some suggesting it has compressed years of transformation into months. This quarter’s cloud infrastructure revenue numbers appear to be proving that thesis correct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....

Facebook has announced a $10 million grant to support emergency response efforts in India and has rolled out its Vaccine Finder tool in the country as the South Asian nation grapples with the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following a controversial ban on political discussions earlier this week, Basecamp employees are heading for the exits. The company employs around 60 people, and roughly a third of the company appears to have accepted buyouts to leave, many citing new company policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two years ago, we talked with Lior Susan, the founder of now six-year-old Eclipse Ventures in Palo Alto, Ca. At the time, the outfit believed that the next big thing wasn’t another social network but instead the remaking of old-line industries through full tech stacks — including hardware, software and data — capable of bring […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Biden Labor Secretary Marty Walsh charged into the white hot issue of the gig economy Thursday, asserting that many people working without benefits in the gig economy should be classified as employees instead. In an interview with Reuters, Walsh said that the Department of Labor is “looking at” the gig economy, hinting that worker reclassification […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas...

Google today announced the launch of Grow with Google Career Readiness for Reentry. The initiative — created in partnership with nonprofits The Last Mile, Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), Defy Ventures, Fortune Society and The Ladies of Hope Ministries — is designed to offer job readiness and digital skill training for formerly incarcerated individuals. Learn more about your ad choices....

Facebook has temporarily hidden all posts with hashtag “ResignModi” in India, days after the U.S. social juggernaut — along with Twitter — complied with an order from New Delhi to censor some posts critical of Indian government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are lot of companies out there making robotic exoskeletons. In fact, it’s one of the more active categories in the space — and for good reason. These sorts of technologies have the ability to profoundly impact the future of how people work, move and rehabilitate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s a bunch of tablet news coming from Amazon this morning. Leading the way is the release of two new 10-inch devices: the Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 10 Plus. The former features a 1080p display with a bump in brightness, an unnamed eight-core processor and 3GB of RAM — a 50% jump over […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earth Day may have come and gone, but with apps like #8meals from the non-profit Habits of Waste, anyone can try and do their part to help reduce deforestation and rising greenhouse gas emissions by cutting meat out of their diets for just 8 meals a week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hailing company Lyft has sold off its autonomous vehicle unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet Holdings subsidiary for $550 million, the latest in a string of acquisitions spurred by the cost and lengthy timelines to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology. Under the acquisition agreement announced Tuesday, Lyft’s so-called Level 5 division will be folded into Woven Planet […] Learn more about yo...

Bobby Goodlatte has only been an investor for about a decade, but he appears to have already made tens of millions of dollars, contrary to the expectations of some traditional VCs who have privately, and publicly, griped that too many novice investors have flooded into the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever since I read this Bloomberg story about how songs are engineered to go viral on TikTok, I’ve had one thought in my head – if you can call it that – it’s more of a noise, or impression:  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Yes, it’s the sound of internally screaming. Just when I thought I understood how deeply […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The European Union’s lead data protection supervisor has called for remote biometric surveillance in public places to be banned outright under incoming AI legislation. The European Data Protection Supervisor’s (EDPS) intervention follows a proposal, put out by EU lawmakers on Wednesday, for a risk-based approach to regulating applications of artificial intelligence. The Commission’s legislative pr...

Apple just announced the new iMac powered by Apple’s own M1 silicon. Among the numerous updates and upgrades is a new power brick that sports something special to Apple’s lineup: an Ethernet port. On the surface, this seems like a silly placement of a critical I/O port, but there’s a good chance this feature could […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The big news from today’s Spring Loaded event is, as anticipated, a new version of Apple’s high-end tablet. The new iPad Pro is the first in the line to adopt the M1 chip introduced on the company’s Mac line. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s Apple event, chock-full of the company’s products that will help decide whether the company meets, exceeds or undershoots Wall Street expectations for its future growth and performance, had little to no impact on its share price. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of the most popular running apps are still lagging behind on security and privacy. That’s the verdict from security researchers who examined the leading running apps five years apart and found only a few apps had improved — and not by much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple has unveiled a new, colorful iMac today with an Apple-designed M1 chip. But that was just part of the story as the company used that opportunity to release new Mac accessories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise! It’s another Apple Event. Gone are the days of getting a few weeks’ notice before these events now that they’re entirely virtual (at least until 2022, most likely). Instead, the company just dropped the news last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been a strange few years for Fitbit. After defining the fitness tracking space, the company was a bit late to the smartwatch trend, but was still able to ride that wave to a rebound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices