The misunderstandings of 18-month-old Luckin’s $500m IPO
Luckin Coffee is the most energizing IPO in recent memory, and not just because it sells caffeine. Most venture-backed startups can take a decade to reach the public markets. Luckin cut that time down to about 18 months. Founder Jenny Qian Zhiya opened a trial coffee shop in Beijing, with a focus on rapid coffee […]
Uber offers shareable video of drivers’ ‘journey’
A new feature rolling out to Uber drivers offers a semi-customized look at their “journey” with the company. On the face of its, the video is similar to sort offered up by Facebook on the occasion of anniversaries. Here, it pairs a driver’s stats with jaunty music and animation, highlighting how long they’ve been driving […]
After criticism over moderator treatment, Facebook raises wages and boosts support for contractors
Facebook has been repeatedly (and rightly) hammered for its treatment of the content moderators who ensure the site doesn’t end up becoming a river of images, videos and articles embodying the worst of humanity. Those workers, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of other contractors Facebook employs to cook food, provide security, and transportation for […]
Boost Mobile says hackers broke into customer accounts
Boost Mobile, a virtual mobile network owned by Sprint, has confirmed hackers have broken into an unknown number of customer accounts. The company quietly posted a notification of its data breach almost exactly two months after March 14 when Boost said the breach happened. “Boost.com experienced unauthorized online account activity in which an unauthorized person […]
Daily Crunch: Amazon doubles down on its partner program
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Amazon offers employees $10K and 3 months’ pay to start their own delivery businesses Amazon’s partner program, first announced last year, […]
Spotify brings its slimmed-down ‘Lite’ app to India
Spotify has launched a more slimmed-down version of its streaming music app in India, only months after its public debut in the country. The Android-only app, Spotify Lite is only 11 MB in size compared with 30 MB for the main app — a change that’s common to apps targeting emerging markets where bandwidth and […]
Slack aims to be the most important software company in the world, says CEO
Slack discloses latest earnings, plans NYSE direct listing for June 20.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is having trouble — and that’s okay
We may be poised on the precipice of a new era of spaceflight, but leaping prematurely off it would be a costly mistake — which is why the delays and failures of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the new spacecraft that will likely be soonest to take humans to space, are a matter for concern but not worry. In space, you expect the unexpected.
The Pentagon and CIA have a secret missile that shreds targets with giant flying knives
A report by The Wall Street Journal last week revealed a secretive U.S. military weapon designed explicitly to reduce civilian casualties in targeted strikes. Unlike a traditional hellfire missile dispatched from an aerial drone, the missile variant packs no payload, no explosive. The catch? It drops 100 pounds of metal on a target, shredding them […]
Adobe brings new Amazon and Google integrations to Magento
It’s only been a few months since Adobe launched its Commerce Cloud, based on its $1.6 billion acquisition of Magento. Today, at its Imagine 2019 conference, the company announced a number of updates to Magento that focus on expanding the platform’s reach for the small- and mid-size businesses that use the service. When Adobe acquired […]
