In the next step on its path to getting its low earth orbit payload launch system up and running, Virgin Orbit successfully took its LauncherOne system out for a spin with an actual rocket attached under its wing.  The company’s specially modified 747-400 carried a 70-foot-long rocket as part of a test flight proving that […]

BuzzFeed News is giving readers a new way to support its journalism — by paying a monthly or yearly fee. BuzzFeed might not seem like the most obvious publication to ask readers for financial support, as it doesn’t really have the high-minded appeal of (say) NPR or The New Yorker. However, the company has been […]

Good morning! Except if you’re a hosted Microsoft customer who’s locked out of your account right now. Microsoft’s cloud-based multi-factor authentication services went down across the globe early Monday morning, preventing access to users who are required to sign in using a second layer of authentication to their account, such as a text message, a […]

Last year Amazon announced Comprehend, a natural language processing tool to help companies extract common words and phrases from a corpus of information. Today, a week ahead of its Re:invent customer conference, Amazon announced an enhancement to Comprehend that allows developers to build lists of specialized words and phrases without machine learning domain knowledge. “Today […]

Cruise, the self-driving company acquired by GM in 2016, is expanding to Seattle as it seeks more engineering talent to develop its technology. The company doesn’t have any plans right now to test its autonomous vehicles in the city. Instead, GM Cruise plans to set up offices in Seattle to attract and hire between 100 […]

Facebook’s founder is facing pressure to accept an invite from eight international parliaments, with lawmakers wanting to question him about negative impacts his social network is having on democratic processes globally. Last week Facebook declined an invitation from five of these parliaments. The elected representatives of Facebook users want Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions in […]

Putting a new spin on the term “digital nomad,” U.K. addressing platform what3words has partnered with Airbnb to list stays with Mongolian nomads. The startup’s simplified addressing system is being applied to help adventurous travelers “home share” with Dukha reindeer herders at their mountain camp where there aren’t any street names to anchor a trip.  The partnership is […]

The Carbo is a new electric bike that weighs a mere 27 pounds and can pep up your morning commute. Created by the Montreal-based team that successfully shipped the Veco, this crowdfunded electric bike can collapse for travel and can go 40 miles with pedal assist and 28 miles on full automatic. Early birds can […]

Pandora Premium is finally available on Echo devices. The streaming music company this morning announced its top-level paid subscription tier will launch across Alexa-powered devices, including the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show, as well as on all third-party Alexa devices that support Pandora. The company’s free, ad-supported music service has been available on […]

Snap has announced a partner program intended to make it easier for brands to get on board with — and pay for — its augmented reality “lenses” by helping advertisers find certified AR shops to craft the digital product placements on their behalf. The move follows the visual messaging platform opening up lenses, almost a […]

Knack, a peer tutoring platform aimed at college students, is taking a different approach than some online tutoring marketplaces have in the past. As a result, the Florida-based startup has raised a $1.5 million seed round co-led by Charles Hudson’s Precursor Ventures and Tampa Bay Lighting owner and Fenway Sports Group Partner, Jeff Vinik. Other […]

Genies is emerging as the top competitor to Snapchat’s wildly popular Bitmoji as Facebook, Apple and Google have been slow to get serious about personalized avatars. More than one million people have customized dozens of traits to build a realistic digital lookalike of themselves from over a million possible permutations. When Genies launched a year […]

A recent survey found that around 20 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are held by contractors — people who take on work based on a particular project or fixed-term period, not as full-time, permanent employees. We’ve definitely seen that trend play out in Silicon Valley, both among the knowledge workers building tech products […]

Lidar technology developer AEye will scale its operations globally through manufacturing partnerships after raising a $40 million Series B. The round was led by Taiwania Capital, the investment firm created and backed by Taiwan’s National Development Council, and includes returning investors Kleiner Perkins, Intel Capital, Airbus Ventures and Tychee Partners. This brings the California-based startup’s […]