Evil Geniuses CEO on the path toward esports ubiquity

The pandemic brought a new class of gamers online for the very first time, and the gaming space has never been larger or more diverse. At the same time, while esports saw some viewership gains in the past year, it still had to deal with plenty of hurdles tied to pandemic restrictions on physical ev

Daily Crunch: Facebook releases internal research on Instagram’s mental health effects

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 September 30, 2021. It's the last day of the third quarter! Yes, that means earnings season is coming, along with a whol

NASA awards $253M to two companies developing electric propulsion tech for aircraft

NASA has chosen two U.S. companies to develop electric propulsion technologies for aircraft, with the aim of introducing this tech to U.S. aviation fleets by 2035. The two companies, GE Aviation and MagniX, will conduct their work over the next five years. That includes ground and flight test demon

First drive of the Lucid Air reveals power and panache

While cruising along Interstate 8 in the Lucid Air, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to spider graphs. Spider graphs offer a quick glimpse of how various factors like power, performance, weight and aerodynamics interact with one another. For the engineer sitting in the passeng

Cruise, Waymo get OK to launch robotaxi service in San Francisco

The California Department of Motor Vehicles gave General Motors-backed Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo the green light to start charging for autonomous services offered to the public. On Thursday, Cruise received a “driverless deployment permit,” which means it can receive compensation

Growth marketing is not a magic trick, says Ellen Jantsch of Tuff

If you are looking for a growth marketing playbook, stop reading now, because you won’t get one from Tuff. The agency’s founder Ellen Jantsch makes it clear: There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to growth. The team at Tuff knows their stuff — and it’s precisely why t

Who needs a BaaS partner, anyway?

Over the last several years, a series of startups have emerged to cut through the complexity of launching financial services by offering technology that sits on top of partner banks' infrastructure and enables developers to spin up bank accounts, payments and card capabilities through APIs. The

Aurora shines spotlight on autonomous truck tech, strategy ahead of SPAC merger

On Interstate 45 in Texas, a billboard with “Aurora” emblazoned at the top in giant white letters offers a cryptic message: “A new way to drive is on the horizon.” It’s hard to know just how many of the thousands of drivers on this stretch of road know what that means

TikTok starts flirting with NFTs

The NFT space has had quite the year, and while it can be difficult to separate the billions of dollars in crypto speculation from the potential infrastructure shifts, plenty of mainstream tech companies are dipping their toes into the space and signaling future interest. This time it’s TikTo

Clubhouse adds clips, replays for asynchronous listening, better search and spatial audio for Android

Clubhouse announced today that it is unveiling four new features: Clips, Replay, Universal Search and spatial audio for Android (which already exists on iOS). All of these features will launch today, except for Replay, which will roll out in October. These additions will help expand Clubhouse’

South Korean ISP SK Broadband counterclaims against Netflix for bandwidth usage fees

South Korean internet service provider SK Broadband, a subsidiary of South Korean telco company SK Telecom, has filed a counterclaim against Netflix to demand payment for the bandwidth the streaming platform has used for the last three years. This case comes in the wake of the South Korean court si

Facebook grilled in Senate hearing over teen mental health

Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that The Wall Street Journal published this month, which reported evidence that the company is aware of its negative impact on teen mental health. These documents were released in anticipation of t

Current and former employees raise major safety concerns, allegations of sexual harassment at Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos just can't get away from labor issues. The beleaguered billionaire, who has faced repeated and persistent criticism over working conditions at the company he formerly led, Amazon, is now facing allegations of a hostile work environment at his space company Blue Origin. An essay joint

TikTok’s new ad products invite users to interact with taps, swipes, likes and more

TikTok this week presented its new plan to ramp up advertiser investment in its video platform with the expansion of e-commerce, a new promise of “brand safety” and the launch of several new and interactive ad formats, ranging from clickable stickers to “Choose Your Own Adventure&