Praveen chintu

Everyone’s favorite versatile microcontroller maker, Raspberry Pi, just unveiled a handful of new, budget-minded products. The company is building on the success of its $4 Pico board, which has thus far moved just under two million units since its January 2021 launch. The new Pico W is launching today for $6 — the “W” (and additional $2) brings 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity to the system. The $5 Pico H adds a pre-populated header for interefacting with other systems; the Pico WH ($7) gets you both. The first two are available right now, while WH is shipping at some point in August. As the company notes, its boards have found a lot of success beyond their initial hobbyist and educational focus, as companies have begun to intregrate the controllers directly into their products. More than once in the wild I’ve seen some sophisticated pieces of machinary being controlled by these inexpensive systems. Interestingly, the company notes that the chip shortage has been a huge boon for sales to

Equity service platform Carta has acquired Vauban, an online platform that helps investors back private companies from end to end. As first reported by The Information , the deal was framed by Carta as a way to support investors of all sizes, from the sub-million-dollar level into the billions of dollars worth of dry powder. Carta said that it is not disclosing any details beyond what it wrote in a blog post, meaning that the price of the deal will remain unknown. The entire full-time Vauban team is joining Carta, the company says. Carta says it just used its own product to establish a new — and far higher — valuation for itself The acquisition, closed today, is yet another example of the expanding competitive surface area between Carta and AngelList, two platforms that are racing to build a software suite that solves some of venture capital-backed startups’ key pain points. Last year, AngelList Venture launched AngelList Stack , a new suite of products that will compete wit

Blockchain games and NFTs in video games were a hot topic toward the end of 2021, and they continue to be so, spurred by the early success of Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn (P2E) model. After all, it’s hard to ignore a sector that’s playing with billions of dollars. The potential of Axie’s P2E model, which gives players ownership of collectible in-game items (tokens) that they can sell for actual money, was immediately apparent. Its success showed the potential economic rewards of combining blockchain technology and gaming, and spurred a slew of smaller developers to put out similar offerings. More notably, it also led to established video game studios trying to elbow their way in. And they tried hard indeed. Between November and February, video game giants, from Ubisoft and Sega to Square Enix, all signaled their intention to cash in on the NFT craze. TechCrunch+ is having an Independence Day sale! Save 50% on an annual subscription here . (More on TechCrunch+ here if you need it

Jonathan Martinez Contributor Share on Twitter Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who's helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor How to improve retention, growth marketing’s golden metric When and how to hire your startup’s first growth marketer If you search for “growth marketing” roles on LinkedIn these days, it’s likely you’ll get over 15,000 results. Contrast that with just a few years ago, when LinkedIn would have yielded a significantly lower number for the same role. The rapid expansion of the growth marketing industry has created a significant problem for startups looking to hire: There is a massive undersupply of good growth marketers. After all, every startup, whether it’s trying to find product-market fit or an efficient way to deploy recent funding, is ultimately searching for a growth marketer. TechCrunch+ is having an Independence Day sale! Save 50%

Welp. Three straight weeks of work travel amid a seemingly endless pandemic finally caught up with me. Forgive me, as I’m writing this under the influence of green tea and antivirals, so thank you in advance to the regularly Herculean efforts of our copy editor, David. Apparently the old adage of things happening in Vegas staying in Vegas doesn’t extend to viral loads. After managing to stave off COVID for the past couple of years, it’s fitting that I get to write about our fulfillment panel through the brain fog, as a strong case can be made that the category has benefited from pandemic-fueled automation more than any other. It also comes a week after I devoted a chunk of this column to Amazon’s robotics play, which had an accelerating effect on the category years before the pandemic. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking with Amazon’s VP Global Robotics, Fulfillment, Joseph Quinlivan, at our upcoming robotics event , as well as United States Labor Secretary Marty Walsh — on se

The IT Ministry has warned Twitter to comply with the new IT rules within the July 4 deadline or face stricter action. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/uxo02XG

If you want the inside scoop on which companies are serious about addressing their carbon emissions and which aren’t, take a look at the public comments submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its proposed climate rule. You can tell if a company is serious by its stance on so-called Scope 3 emissions. Depending on the business, Scope 3 emissions might make up a significant majority of a company’s carbon footprint. Such emissions can result from activities and assets a company doesn’t own or control, like leased office space, business travel or end-of-life processing of their products. They also might occur when customers use their products, like when someone drives their gas-powered SUV. In short, if your company is serious about doing something about climate change, it should probably be estimating its Scope 3 emissions. If it’s making noise about being sustainable, at the very least it probably shouldn’t undermine attempts to make Scope 3 disclosures stan

Facebook and Instagram have removed posts from users who offered abortion pills via mail posts. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/tmXwGyJ

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued retail commerce giant Walmart for allegedly allowing its money transfer services to be used by fraudsters, who fleeced consumers out of more than $197 million. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/UlqKBLs

Fintech platform Razorpay on Wednesday appointed Murali Brahmadesam as head of engineering and chief technology officer. Ex-CTO and co-founder Shashank Kumar will now take on the new role of co-founder and managing director at the company. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/X29kwdu

As a resource-rich country on the leading edge of many clean energy technologies, Norway is uniquely well placed for the clean energy transition and now needs to advance strategies to tackle emissions in sectors where they are hardest to reduce in order to meet its ambitious climate targets, a new in-depth policy review by the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/QeSuNVh

Microsoft on Wednesday introduced Hindi captions and transcripts for its video collaboration app Teams on Web that will help small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/i2Iq3KH

Facebook announced today that it’s introducing new features for Facebook Groups, including “Channels” that will let users connect with each other in smaller settings. Admins can create channels to connect with their groups in more casual settings within their communities to have more focused discussions. There are three types of channels that admins can create: chat, audio and feed. Community chat channels can be used as a place for people to message, collaborate and talk about specific topics in a more real-time way across both Facebook Groups and Messenger. Once you create a chat, you can name it and decide if you want it to be invite only. When you join a chat, you’ll be able to send messages and receive notifications. If the chat becomes full and you’re inactive, you may have to join again. Image Credits: Facebook The new community feed channels are a way for members to connect when it’s convenient for them. Facebook says admins can organize their communities around topics wi

Welcome Back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where we get the stories behind the startups. Christine Tao knows good leaders have good executive coaches. She founded Sounding Board to make it easier for companies to manage, scale, and measure leadership coaching on one unified platform. This week, she talks to Darrell and Jordan about difficulties she and her co-founder faced while fundraising and why she believes so deeply in the power of a good executive coach. She also gets into how she and her co-foundered decided to go b2b and establish the customer type that made scaling possible. Take our listener survey  and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND. Connect with us: On  Twitter On  Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618 from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/kN3cWQo

Image Credits: Coalition In 2020, Thrive Capital asked a cohort of folks — including Glossier VP of Communications Ashley Mayer , Cityblock Health co-founder Toyin Ajayi , Umbrella co-founder Lindsay Ullman and Tribe AI co-founder Jackie Nelson — if they wanted to be scouts, or invest tiny checks on behalf of the firm with a potential for shared upside. Instead, the four-person group had an idea: Why not pool the scout capital they were being offered and formalize it into a micro-fund to be invested out together. Checks wouldn’t just come with one stamp of approval, but four; and instead of playing subtle scouts, the four operators can see and back a broader range of companies. After all, invest for the job you want, right? Twenty checks and two years later, the quartet decided to pitch another idea, this time as a firmer bet on themselves and to a broader group of investors. The vision, launching publicly for the first time today, is Coalition , a fund and operator network d

You know you’re living in the space age when a rocket hits the moon, and the industry as a whole points to the sky and, like an angry teacher holding up a paper airplane, asks “Who launched this?!” Truly, that is what occurred this week as an unidentified rocket stage (!) impacted the lunar surface, forming a new and interesting crater and leaving us all wondering how it’s possible not to know what happened. The short version of this story is that skywatchers led by Bill Gray had been tracking an object for months that, based on their calculations, would soon impact the moon. It was obviously a piece of rocket trash (rockets produce a ton of trash), but no one stepped up to say “yes, that’s ours, sorry about that.” Based on their observations and discussions, these amateur (though by no means lacking in expertise) object trackers determined that it was most likely a SpaceX launch from 2015. But SpaceX didn’t cop to it, and after a while Gray and others, including NASA, decided it w

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a draft law that would potentially exempt issuers of digital assets and cryptocurrencies from value-added tax. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3emB4rA

Volkswagen Group subsidiary Electrify America said Tuesday it raised $450 million in a deal that includes its first external investor as it aims to accelerate its rollout of ultra-fast charging stations in the U.S. and Canada. The deal, which values North America’s largest ultra-fast EV charging network at $2.45 billion, includes more than $100 million from German industrial company Siemens and additional capital from VW Group. The money will help Electrify America toward its goal of more than doubling its footprint to 10,000 ultra-fast chargers across 1,800 charging stations in both countries by 2026. The company currently operates 3,500 ultra-fast chargers at 800 stations. Siemens, now a minority shareholder with a seat on the board, will invest “a low triple-digit USD amount” as the charging company’s first outside investor, Electrify America said. Meanwhile, Volkswagen said it plans to increase its capital investment in Electrify America beyond its original commitment of $2 bil

Meta announced today that it’s introducing Reels APIs to several endpoints on the Instagram Platform for developers starting tomorrow. The company says it’s introducing the new Reels APIs after hearing from its developer community that Reels is a top priority. Meta is expanding the scope of support of Reels to content publishing, insights, comment moderation, hashtag search, business discovery, mentions and more. Developers will be able to use the APIs to schedule Reels and get social interaction metrics for Reels. Developers can also publish Reels on Instagram Business accounts using the new APIs. The APIs will also let developers reply to comments, delete comments, hide/unhide comments and disable/enable comments on Reels. In addition, developers will be able to find public Reels that have been tagged with specific hashtags. Developers will also be able to identify Reels in which an Instagram Business or Creator’s alias has been tagged or @mentioned. The API enhancement will be a

Many of the top digital assets in the cryptocurrency market are down significantly, but some market participants are shrugging it off and focusing on the long game. The top five cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have fallen 55% or more year to date, according to CoinMarketCap data . The top two, bitcoin and ether, have dropped 56.5% and 68.5%, respectively, during that period. But Pascal Gauthier, chairman and CEO of Ledger, said during a panel at his company’s Op3n conference in New York City that “this doesn’t feel like a [crypto] bear market.” “Now, for the macro economy, it’s a bloodbath,” Gauthier added. For example, Swedish buy now, pay later provider Klarna is considering raising capital at about a $10 billion valuation , down from its mid-2021 valuation of over $45 billion, TechCrunch reported last week. And a number of fintech companies’ values are declining sharply , taking the downturn even harder than most other sectors. Gauthier also referenced the Nasdaq, wh

Period tracking app Stardust surged to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after the app promised it will encrypt its users’ private data to keep it out of the hands of the government. But TechCrunch found on Monday that the current version of the now-booming Stardust app is sharing the app users’ phone numbers with a third-party analytics company, which could be used to identify individual users of the app. The decision to reverse Roe overturned 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights in the United States, allowing individual states to create laws to criminalize abortion. The decision has led to calls for users to delete their period-tracking apps from their phones, fearing the data collected by these apps could be used against them to prove an abortion was obtained illegally. Others are abandoning their current period trackers and turning to apps like Stardust instead as a result of the compa

Consumers are ditching their current period tracking apps in favor of what they perceive to be safer options in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that allows individual U.S. states to criminalize abortion. The app switching trend is impacting all manner of period tracking apps, including leading app Flo , which owns a 47% share of the period tracking app market in the U.S., according to data provided by Apptopia . The app may have both lost customers to rival apps while gaining new users from others over the weekend. Other apps are seeing similar trends. The patterns of app switching indicate consumers are seeking out increased privacy, as many of those gaining from this trend are companies that have made public statements in support of strengthened data security and privacy practices. But it’s also clear that consumers don’t necessarily have a good understanding of which apps to trust given that the current beneficiary of this increased switching activity is a pote

The Cadillac Celestiq, the brand’s halo EV set to debut during Monterey Car Week in August, will reportedly start around $300,000, pushing it well above the top variants from other luxury EVs, including the Lucid Air Dream Edition, Porsche Taycan Turbo S and Tesla Model X Plaid. While Cadillac would not confirm the eye-popping price tag, the GM brand did verify the role the Celestiq will play in fulfilling its electrified ambitions. “We are excited to share more information later this year and return Cadillac to the standard of the world,” spokesman Mike Albano told TechCrunch on Monday, noting that the company would not comment on the Celestiq price. The phrase “standard of the world” suggests Cadillac has large-scale ambitions for the small-batch car. The price isn’t the only signal that Cadillac is aiming to create an exclusivity narrative around the Celestiq as the face of its future EVs. GM plans to only produce 500 of the luxury electric hatchbacks following the launch of the