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Some Amazon Alexa users are currently having problems reaching the voice assistant. Instead of reacting to commands, Alexa simply says “sorry, something went wrong.” Amazon hasn’t commented publicly yet on the issue. Based on tweets and Down Detector, users began having trouble reaching Alexa around 7AM PST. While some had their connection is

More and more, the internet is delivered wirelessly, but as bandwidth demand grows in each home — multiple TVs, smart devices, tablets and phones — current Wi-Fi standards are starting to fall short. Fortunately the FCC and wireless industry are prepared for this, and the former has just officially proposed opening up a wide swathe of spectrum

Marketplace businesses are intrinsically linked to the technologies that enable them. As enabling technologies have evolved, marketplaces have become able to facilitate increasingly complex exchanges in new environments and industries. The next level? They will get smart.

Teamable, a provider of hiring software that leverages employees’ social networks, has brought in $5 million from new investor Foundation Capital and existing backers True Ventures and SaaStr Fund. The startup also announced its acquisition of Simppler‘s referral recommendation engine and matchmaking recruiting software. Teamable’s co-founde

Citron Research, an influential short-seller that has been an staunch critic of Tesla, reversed its position on the electric automaker. The about-face, which Citron Research outlined in a research note Tuesday, helped pushed Tesla shares up 12.7% to close at $294.14.

A team of developers have made something called PlusOneCoin, a clever cryptocurrency that essentially allows owners to upvote content on two financial sites, ADVFN and Investorshub. The idea — to reward people for accessing content and, more importantly, interacting with it — is something many services like Steemit have tried and failed to pull

SOSV, a 20-year-old fund with $500 million in assets under management, has been running accelerators for years. Their oldest one, HAX, is the premier hardware accelerator in San Francisco and Shenzhen, and they’ve recently launched a food accelerator in New York and a pair of biology accelerators. Now, however, they’ve just announced DLab, a cr

If you’ve ever bought a movie on Google Play and decided to save a few bucks by buying it in standard definition, you might’ve just lucked out. Google just announced that it’s upgrading all previously purchased movies to 4K (if a 4K version is available) free of charge. Even if you bought SD instead of […]

Apple’s still-untitled morning show drama already has some serious star power, with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as its leads. Now it’s adding Steve Carell to the cast. This will be Carell’s first regular role on a TV show since his seven seasons starring in the U.S. version of “The Office.” He’ll be playing Mitch […]

A few weeks after Circle announced the launch of USD Coin (or USDC for short), Coinbase also announced that customers can now buy, sell, send and receive USDC on Coinbase. A USDC is a token that is worth exactly 1 USD. Its value is going to stay stable against USD — hence the name stablecoin […]

We already knew that the electronic scooter space in Europe was heating up, with Berlin’s Tier announcing today it has raised €25 million in a round led by Northzone, and rumours circulating that Delivery Hero founder Lukasz Gadowski has ventured into the space — all within the context of U.S. companies Bird and Lime recently […]

Google sometimes experiments with new features in beta versions of its various Android applications on Google Play. However, the recently spotted YouTube beta program will not, unfortunately, be a testbed for upcoming additions to the video-sharing service. Instead, Google says it only plans to test the stability of the YouTube app at this time, no

Repairing a phone is harder than it needs to be. With phone manufacturers spending the last decade chasing device slimness and building devices meant to last however long a phone contract lasts, user repairability just doesn’t seem to be something they care much about. Need a repair part? Good luck on eBay, friendo! In what […]

If Facebook Messenger’s redesign succeeds, you won’t really notice it even happened. I hardly did over the past week of testing. There’s just a subtle sense that the claustrophobia has lifted. Perhaps that’s why Facebook decided to throw a big breakfast press event with 30 reporters today at its new downtown San Francisco office, complete [

Last month, the internet was abuzz with reports that Apple was sweetening up selfies on the iPhone XS and XS Max. The shots appeared to have an effect applied, in a manner similar to “beauty” filters offered on competing handsets. Apple denied it was intentionally touching photos, but not before it earned the predictable name, […]

The office might not seem like an area in desperate need of disruption, but Envoy — a Silicon Valley company used to sign in over 100,000 visitors at offices across the world each day; and a TechCrunch SF office neighbor! — has raised $43 million to do just that. The company started life five years […]

Industry vets and students alike crammed into UCLA's historic Royce Hall last week for TC Sessions AR/VR, our one day event on the fast-moving (and hype-plagued) industry and the people in it. Disney, Snap, Oculus and more stopped by to chat and show off their latest; if you didn't happen to be in LA that day, read on and find out what we

Following news of Hulu’s plans to move towards skinnier bundles, including those consisting of premium add-ons, the streaming service this morning announced the addition of Starz to its service. The Starz premium add-on will be available across all tiers of Hulu’s service, including its Limited Commercials and No Commercials plans, as well as i

Online dating is trash. Seriously, try to find anyone who disagrees with me. Vibes, operated by an all-women team, aims to be different. Sure, the swipe mechanics are still there, but that’s about the only similarity you’ll find between Vibes and the likes of Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and others. “Because of how crowded the space […]

Y Combinator, the wildly successful San Francisco-based startup accelerator, is issuing a request for startups that will focus on different kinds of geo-engineering technologies in a bid to mitigate the effects of climate change. With the acknowledgement earlier this month from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that drastic measures are