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Showing posts from November, 2022

StartupOS launches what it hopes will be the operating system for early-stage startups

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Running a startup can be a chaotic time; a million things need to be built, done, tracked, analyzed, considered, reported and validated. Keeping an overview of it all can be hard, and there’s always a threat of something (maybe something important?!) slipping through the cracks. StartupOS today launched a platform to bring some sanity to it all in a bid to help founders stay on track. The platform was built in partnership with (and backed by) SVB, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank. It includes access to business tools, guidance, mentors and investors, with the hope that the founders can learn how to best shepherd their startups through the process of validating ideas, building MVPs and finding product-market fit. Your MVP is neither minimal, viable nor a product The company is headed up by CEO and co-founder Paul Pluschkell, who spent the past quarter century building startups, and has a handful of successful exits under his belt, including MXNet, IXnet, Spigit , Globa

T-minus 72 hours left to save on passes to TC Sessions: Space

We’re getting ready to launch a price hike, but you still have time — 72 hours to be precise — to attend TC Sessions: Space 2022 on December 6 in Los Angeles for $199. Will you be in the room? Click, register and save: Space tech may come with a jaw-dropping price tag, but this space conference doesn’t. Buy your pass before December 2 at 11:59 p.m. PST — prices go up to $495 at midnight. Why pay more if you don’t have to? Let’s take a gander at just some programming we have lined up for the day. Check out the event agenda for specifics on all the speakers, topics and times. TechCrunch Space Pitch-off : You can improve your own pitch by watching how the VC judges react and by the questions they ask. It’s a window into what might make them decide to schedule a meeting with you. We’ll announce the competitors soon, and they’ll have to deliver their very best to impress our panel of expert judges: Jory Bell (Playground Global), Mark Boggett (Seraphim Space), Tess Hatch (Bessemer

Apple’s iOS update just dropped with security fixes and crash detection improvements

Apple rolled out iOS 16.1.2 on Wednesday, citing updates involving user security. Apple hasn’t yet detailed the nature of the security updates , as the company doesn’t disclose security issues until after they’ve been investigated or patched. The update also includes improved compatibility with wireless carriers, as well as crash detection optimizations for iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models. Crash detection , which was announced at Apple’s September event , is a new feature that triggers Emergency SOS if it suspects you’ve been in a crash. While this feature could be life-saving in certain situations, users have reported issues in which crash detection is falsely triggered while riding roller coasters . Apple doesn’t outright name the roller coaster issue in its patch notes, but it’s a bug that’s been on adrenaline-seeking customers’ minds. To update to the latest version of iOS, navigate to your iPhone’s settings. Then, click “general.” At the top of your screen, you should see a

Book Excerpt: ‘Better Venture’ looks at how the current venture model connects to the slave trade

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Erika Brodnock Contributor Share on Twitter Erika Brodnock is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, research fellow at King’s College London and a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Erika founded Karisma Kidz and is co-founder at Kinhub (formally Kami), an employee well-being platform focused on enhancing equity and inclusion in the future of work. Johannes Lenhard Contributor Share on Twitter Johannes Lenhard, Ph.D., is centre coordinator at the Max Planck Cambridge Centre for Ethics, Economy and Social Change . More posts by this contributor Book Excerpt: ‘Better Venture’ looks at how the current venture model connects to the slave trade Why don’t more VCs care about good tech (yet)? T he following is a lightly edited and truncated excerpt from “ Better Venture: Improving Diversity, Innovation, and Profitability in Venture Capital and Startups ,” by Erika Brodnock and Johannes Lenhard , published by Holloway. Brod

Telcos should also pay OTT platforms, BIF urges govt

The BIF letter to the government came after telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said that OTT platforms must contribute towards creating and developing digital telecom infrastructure in India in exchange for using the services. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/l3xC0eT

Daily Crunch: Apple announces its 2022 App Store Award winners

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To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Oh hey! While we have you here, grab your calendar — we’ve got some things for you to add. For the stargazers among us, we’ll be in Los Angeles doing TC Sessions: Space on December 6. And on April 20, 2023, we’re heading to Boston for our TC Early Stage festival . Come to either. Come to both. Come to neither. We love you all just the same. But we’d prefer to see your faces in person if we can! Oh, and did you know it’s “Giving Tuesday”? That means it’s time to think about which of your favorite causes deserve some of your time or dollars, if you have some of either to spare. — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 And the winner is… : Okay, all you fans of taking photos of yourself “in the now,” no matter where you are. Ivan writes that BeReal won “app of the year” for 2022 in Apple’s annual App Store Awards. Order up! : Nigerian restaurant

Magic creator Richard Garfield on why he put a paper game on the blockchain

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Richard Garfield is a name familiar to many in the tabletop gaming world, most notably as one of the creators of Magic: The Gathering, the most prominent trading card game out there. But Garfield is dipping his toes into the world of digital and in particular blockchain-adjacent games, and TechCrunch took the opportunity to quiz the veteran gamemaker on the pros and cons of this and other new approaches to gaming. It should be noted at the outset that unlike the dubious profit-focused gameplay of your Axie Infinity and suchlike, Garfield’s new game, technically a “mode” of Blockchain Brawlers , is not focused on speculation but more of an experiment in distribution of a complete card-based game outside traditional publishing methods. It should probably also be noted that the game platform is full of the usual NFT and monetization chatter, but the core game itself, a 1v1 bluffing style match, is capable of being played with ordinary playing cards or for that matter numbered pieces o

8 Great gifts for anyone working from home

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This time two years ago, I changed up my annual gift guide feature’s focus from travel to working from home. After all, very few of us were doing much traveling at the time. I planned to switch back as the world reopened; it’s clear now, however, that for many of us, there is no going back to the before times. The pandemic has had a number of lasting impacts in our lives, including how – and where – we work. But the transition from the office to home requires more than simply choosing not to get on that train every morning. Creating a home office is a deliberate act. At its center is building a space where it’s possible to be every bit as productive in the absence of in-face meetings and awkward break room conversations. You need to build a place that will sufficiently separate work life from the personal for eight to 10 hours a day. Here’s a handy gift guide for the person in life who needs a little extra push into that – or perhaps requires a refresh on some of the gear they pur

AWS SimSpace Weaver can run city-sized simulations in the Cloud

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At this morning’s Re:Invent keynote in Las Vegas, Amazon unveiled AWS SimSpace Weaver, a computing service that allows developers to run city-sized simulations at scale in the cloud. The service is designed to free simulation developers from the constraints of their own hardware. Amazon’s proposed applications here are city managers simulating a natural disaster to test emergency response systems, as well the impact of sports games on traffic flow. These are  complex situations with a lot of moving parts, which shouldn’t require watching a real life instance to gain insight. Among the other advantages to running this in the cloud is the ability to have multiple external parties view and interact with the simulation remotely in real-time. Image Credits: Amazon “Simulating these events requires modeling hundreds of thousands of independent dynamic entities to represent the people and vehicles,” AWS Principal Developer Advocate, Marcia Villalba, notes in a blog post . “Each entity h

As BlockFi files for bankruptcy, how contagious will FTX’s downfall become?

Crypto lending platform BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, just a few weeks after once-major crypto exchange FTX did the same. While BlockFi has been struggling to stay afloat for months now (and was even potentially going to be acquired by FTX ), this latest filing signals that the bankruptcy contagion may run deeper than what the crypto industry sees at the surface. “It is another example that the crypto winter is not over, and with the FTX debacle, it’s going to persist longer than previously expected,” Ric Edelman, founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP) and author of “The Truth About Crypto,” said to TechCrunch. “There is clearly a large amount of self-dealing and excessive leverage in the system, and until most of that is washed out through business failures, M&A and regulatory actions, the crypto winter will persist.” Ric Edelman, founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals With BlockFi now in the midst of b