Daily Crunch: Blue Origin’s second crewed launch includes guest star William Shatner

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 13, 2021! Today's newsletter features fan favorites in space, a startup called “Karat,” and the final restin

Ireland’s draft GDPR decision against Facebook branded a joke

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in the European Union is inching toward making its first decision on a complaint against Facebook itself. And it looks like it’s a doozy. Privacy campaign not-for-profit noyb today published a draft decision by the Irish Data Protection Commissi

Google’s latest virtual tour lets you walk the Great Wall of China

Google’s Arts & Culture team is today launching a new online experience that lets users virtually walk the Great Wall of China. The “Walk the Great Wall of China” experience includes an exclusive 360-degree virtual tour of one of the wall's best-preserved sections, includi

TikTok removed 81 million videos for violations in Q2, representing 1% of uploads

TikTok released a transparency update about content that was removed from the platform between April 1 and June 30, 2021. The platform says it removed 81,518,334 videos for violating its community guidelines or terms of service during that time period, which represents less than 1% of the total vid

Dear Sophie: Marriage-based green card versus EB-1C green card?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says

Payments giant Stripe says it’s reentering the crypto market

Payments company Stripe announced it’s building out a new crypto team to help build out the “future of Web3 payments,” according to public statements posted to Twitter on Tuesday. Stripe, which had once been among the first to support Bitcoin payments before leaving the market a f

reMarkable adds subscription service to access new features on its e-paper tablet

In a rather surprising move, the makers of the reMarkable line of e-paper tablets have added a subscription service to their latest device that enables several of its more advanced features. All current users are provided a lifetime subscription, and new users get about a year for free, so nothing

ScienceIO leaves stealth with millions to structure health data

Years before he co-launched a stealthy business to fix the messy world of health data, Gaurav Kaushik was slowly connecting the dots on how better visualization could impact health outcomes. In 2018, the budding entrepreneur was working with a Boston-based cancer research company and FlatIron Healt

Mindbody acquires ClassPass in all-stock deal and secures $500 million investment

ClassPass, the subscription-based fitness marketplace most recently valued at $1 billion, is today announcing that it has been acquired by Mindbody. Mindbody is a bit like the OpenTable of the fitness world. Its booking software is used by studios, gyms and other experience-based service providers

Astropad’s Luna Display (finally) ships with Windows support

The Luna Display from Astropad is a clever product enabling you to use your iPad as a second display. It was originally launched for Mac only, but Apple launched a competing product, putting the company in jeopardy for a couple of years. Today, it’s available for Windows machines as well, com

Volvo Group unveils vehicle made with 3,000 kilos of ‘fossil-free’ steel

AB Volvo, the construction truck arm of Sweden's Volvo Group, unveiled a new vehicle Wednesday made with a majority of “fossil-free” steel, plus plans to begin smaller-scale series production using the new material as early as 2022. “Our intention is to start to build these vehicles, thes

US regulator targets Tesla on NDAs, over-the-air software updates

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent a pair of letters to Tesla targeting the company’s use of non-disclosure agreements for owners who gain early access to its “full self-driving” software beta as well as its decision to use an over-the-air software update

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches 4-person crew, including William Shatner, to space

That's two out of two successful crewed launches for Blue Origin, as the company today sent a crew of four people, including actor William Shatner, to space and back from its facility in West Texas. The mission, dubbed NS-18, is the fifth rocket launch for the company this year and the eighteen

UK startup blasts gov’t plan to downgrade data protection

The U.K. government’s post-Brexit appetite to “reform” domestic privacy rules by reducing the level of protections wrapping people’s data is already having wider ramifications for the country’s tech ecosystem. Last month the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sp