Category: Technology Trends

Last Saturday, Taiwanese voters re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen to her second term after an election that split the country among generational and ideological lines. A crucial issue were the differences in how Tsai, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and her main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang (KMT), approach Taiwan’s fraught relationship with China. Despite the highly polarizing run-up to the election, however, both the DPP and KMT have taken measures to foster entrepreneurship in Taiwan. Now that Tsai has won, many investors don’t expect a dramatic impact, but instead are keeping an eye on how policies

Hi everyone, my name is Eric Eldon and I’m the new writer of the Startups Weekly newsletter.  I’ll be picking my favorite explicitly startup-focused articles of the week for you from Extra Crunch (where I’m the editor now), as well as TechCrunch (where I was the co-editor years ago… long story).  Some people tell us that TechCrunch doesn’t cover startups like it used to. I don’t know if that is true, but it is definitely hard to keep track of our startup coverage mixed in with the rest of our news. This newsletter will highlight the best startup coverage on

‘This is the very, very beginning of something much bigger’ Greg Kumparak @grg / 8 hours This week, LaunchDarkly announced that it has raised another $54 million. Led by Bessemer Venture Partners and backed by the company’s existing investors, it brings the company’s total funding up to $130 million. For the unfamiliar, LaunchDarkly builds a platform that allows companies to easily roll out new features to only certain customers, providing a dashboard for things like “canary launches” (pushing new stuff to a small group of users to make sure nothing breaks) or launching a feature

Lenovo hasn’t made the best bets in virtual reality so far, but it seems like the company’s about to try again — according to a new FCC filing for the “Lenovo VR3030S,” which company docs identify as an upcoming standalone VR headset. Standalone means that like Lenovo’s previous Mirage Solo or the Oculus Quest, it Read More…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge You might have read headlines today about how the EU is looking to force Apple to ditch the Lightning cable. That’s not really true. Since 2009, the European Commission has been trying to convince tech companies to adopt a single wall charger instead of opting for a proprietary Read More…

Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images Google added tiny favicon icons to its search results this week for some reason, creating more clutter in what used to be a clean interface, and seemingly without actually improving the results or the user experience. The company says it’s part of a plan to make clearer where information is coming Read More…

Continuing our irregular surveys of the public markets, two things happened this week that are worth our time. First, a third domestic technology company — Alphabet — passed the $1 trillion market capitalization threshold. And, second, software as a service (SaaS) stocks reached record highs on the public markets after retreating over last summer. The two milestones, only modestly related events, indicate how temperate the public waters are for technology companies today, a fact that should extend warmth into the private market where startups, and their venture capital backers, work. The happenings are good news for technology startups for a

For practically as long as the Nintendo Switch and its removable Joy-Con controllers has existed, fans have been mocking up and wishing for Joy-Con-style GameCube controllers to use with the portable console. But hardware mod YouTuber Shank did more than just dream: he spent months turning the idea into reality, combining Joy-Con internals with original Read More…

Valve has put an end to rumors about Left 4 Dead 3 being in development, by stating that the studio hasn’t been working on it for years. “We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months,” Valve said in a statement to IGN. “We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next Read More…

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Eaze, a well-known cannabis-focused startup, is struggling to stay in business amidst a cash crunch, leadership turmoil, banking issues and a business model pivot. It’s a compelling, critical read. The news, however, asks a question: How are other cannabis-focused startups faring? We’ll explore the question through the lens of fundraising and the public market results of public cannabis companies in Canada. Fundraising