Starting today, Netflix is giving TV users the option to customize the size and style of subtitles and closed captions. This update gives subscribers the ability to choose from three sizes — small, medium and large — as well as four styles/colors which include the default white text option, drop shadow (white text with black
Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow recaps the day’s tech news: Inflection AI seeks funding, Reid Hoffman steps down from OpenAI’s board, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm is raising $75 million for its debut fund. ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Caroline Hyde and
A steady stream of new startups pitch their ideas, concepts, products and services on a daily basis to TechCrunch reporters: Startups that claim to predict when employees might want to leave for a new job; that think they can detect depression using someone’s voice; that experiment by using chatbots on patients with depression; that scrape
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Happy International Women’s Day! Did you know that the holiday was adopted by the UN 46 years ago? We read the Wikipedia article about IWD, and learned stuff. Try it — you
Turns out the UK government, under current prime minister Rishi Sunak, is not replacing the GDPR, as Michelle Donelan, his secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, implied last October — when as a fresh-in-post digital secretary under a different PM, she paused the flagship data protection reform, saying the government wanted to rethink its
Among the wave of Spotify announcements coming out of today’s Spotify Stream On event, the company shared some exciting news with podcast listeners — in particular, Batman fans. Spotify is launching a new podcast series “The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark,” starring comedian-actor Hasan Minhaj as The Riddler. As part of Spotify’s exclusive multiyear partnership
Thousand Faces, a web3 community-based investment group, hosted its demo day on Wednesday with the top 10 startups from its Female Founder Accelerator program. The demo day coincided with International Women’s Day and featured women-led businesses focused on sustainable development goals (SDGs). The accelerator program’s first cohort accepted 30 startups from a pool of over
The tools of modern cinema have become increasingly accessible to independent and even amateur filmmakers, but realistic CG characters (like them or not) have remained the province of big-budget projects. Wonder Dynamics aims to change that with a platform that lets creators literally drag and drop a CG character into any scene as if it
TikTok is doubling down on its European charm offensive today as it looks to counter a rising tide of political discontent with the popular short-form video-hosting platform. A new program called Project Clover will serve to create “a secure enclave for European TikTok user data,” wrote Theo Bertram, TikTok’s European VP of government relations and
Ring just launched its first doorbell in two years. The $180 Battery Doorbell Plus brings head-to-toe video and improved resolution to the Amazon brand’s lineup. The smart home accessory features a 150×150-degree view that allows you to see a visitor’s entire body. The company says the Doorbell Plus has the highest resolution of any of its
At Spotify’s Stream On event today, the company introduced new tools to help artists on the streaming service build an audience and grow. Spotify showcased a suite of tools to help artists find fans who would enjoy their music the most, and also announced new features designed to create buzz around their content, merchandise and
The global downturn has impacted every sector, but fintech bore the brunt of it as public-market valuations fell off a cliff last year. However, it appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing. CB Insights recently found that two of the
Meet Elyn, a new French startup that recently raised a $2.7 million (€2.5 million) pre-seed funding round led by Headline and Sequoia Arc. The company wants to offer some flexibility when it comes to e-commerce online payments. Instead of paying for items before they are even shipped, Elyn lets customers try before you buy something.
La Famiglia, a Berlin-based VC fund (no, not the Mafia organization, in case there is any confusion) has raised €250 million for its combined third seed fund (which is €165 million) and its first growth co-investment fund (€90 million). The fund has a vertical focus on ML and AI, data, logistics, and supply chains, consumerization
The reMarkable 2 is a great tablet for reading long documents on, annotating them, taking notes, sketching… but not for full-on writing. At least, it wasn’t until they put out this great keyboard folio that converts this tablet into a pretty compelling minimalist writing station — if you don’t mind a slightly premium price. The
Hotstar will lose HBO content at the end of this month in the latest setback for the Disney-owned on-demand video streaming giant that recently also lost rights for a popular cricket tournament in the country. HBO’s catalog — shows such as Succession, The Last of Us, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Industry, Watchmen, The
Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters on Wednesday carrying a kitchen sink. He posted the video to his own Twitter account. He changed the profile description to read “Chief Twit.” Musk is expected to close the deal to buy Twitter by 5 p.m. New York time Friday. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of Mill, a startup that helps its customers turn their food scraps into farm feed. The former founder of Nest talked about what compelled him to jump back into
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hellooooo, Crunchers! We’re back for another round of tech news from your very favorite news site. It’s been a busy news day, and Haje is on deadline trying to finish this week’s
Local governments in the southwestern U.S. are putting up $150,000 to back what they say is a pioneering effort to “turn air into concrete at scale.” The funds will help cover the cost of the “reference project,” a collaboration between two climate tech startups and a masonry firm in Flagstaff, Arizona. The firms expect construction
Upway, the French startup that refurbishes and resells electric bikes across a range of brands, launched in the U.S. Tuesday. The company will focus its efforts on the Northeast region of the country, but its bikes will be available for shipping across the continental U.S. Upway has already made a name for itself in Europe,
The Sonos One wasn’t broken, but that doesn’t mean the company’s is above fixing it. Over two generations and a few variants, the compact speaker has become one of the company’s most popular. Really, it’s been a big win for a firm whose portfolio can give off a whiff of inaccessibility, compared to other connected
YouTube announced today that it’s relaxing the controversial profanity rules that it introduced toward the end of last year. The company says the new rules ended up creating a “stricter approach” than it had intended. The new update to the policy allows creators to use moderate and strong profanity without risking demonetization. The original policy
The economy is a bit better — kind of, maybe, sort of? While things appear to be trending in the right direction, it’s going to be a long road. Besides, if you’re unable to find work, positive macroeconomic trends are cold comfort. One of the nice things about having a platform like TechCrunch is the
Approximately one in three restaurants will go out of business in its first year. For construction companies, that figure rises to 53%. But AI projects are the real heartbreakers: A Gartner study found that 85% are destined to fail “due to bias in data, algorithms or the teams responsible for managing them.” Unfortunately, the profound
When it comes to sustainable infrastructure development, technology is making terrific leaps and bounds. The money to make it happen, however? That leaves a thing or two to be desired. For one thing, the processes remain largely manual, with financing in this sector remaining reliant on emails, spreadsheets and documents in a variety of formats.
Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time — despite previously saying it would. The product, known as Twitter Blue, lets users pay to get a blue check market on
Apple has a tendency to introduce a new iPhone color in the spring. And this time, it’s yellow. The company is adding the color option to both iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. Last spring, the company launched a new green color (Alpine green for the Pro models) for the iPhone 13 series, and in
While “Ted Lasso” writers and co-stars Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein have confirmed multiple times in interviews that the Apple TV+ original series will likely end after three seasons, the story of AFC Richmond may not be over. Sudeikis recently mentioned that he’s open to the idea of a spin-off, which would be a first
Serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Vinod Khosla has some strong, contrarian advice for the venture capital industry: don’t sit on your founders’ boards. Khosla, who spoke onstage at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles this week, spoke about the culture of capital. “I’m not a big fan of governance; I think if you engage as