Anthony Levandowski closes his Church of AI

The first church of artificial intelligence has shut its conceptual doors. Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who avoided an 18-month prison sentence after receiving a presidential pardon last month, has closed the church he created to understand and accept a godhead based on artificia

Chromebooks had a banner 2020

2020 was a weird year by any measure. Certainly it was a wild ride for those in the consumer electronics category. Take smartphones — first there were manufacturing delays out of China, followed by an across the board decrease in demand. There are lots of reasons contributing to the latter, b

Perseverance lands safely on Mars and sends back its first images of the surface

Mars rover Perseverance has landed on the surface of Mars after a white-knuckle descent involving picking a landing spot just moments before making a rocket-powered sky-crane landing. The rover immediately sent back its first image of Jezero Crater, which it will be exploring over the course of its

Following backlash, WhatsApp to roll out in-app banner to better explain its privacy update

Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced it would delay enforcement of its new privacy terms, following a backlash from confused users which later led to a legal challenge in India and various regulatory investigations. WhatsApp users had misinterpreted the privacy updates as an indication tha

Creating a prediction machine for the financial markets

Artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies have evolved a lot over the past decade and have been useful to many people and businesses, especially in the realm of finance, banking, investment and trading. In these industries, there are many activities that machines can perform better

Math learning app Photomath raises $23 million as it reaches 220 million downloads

Photomath, the popular mobile app that helps you solve equations, has raised a $23 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures. The app is a massive consumer success, and chances are you might already know about it if you have a teenager in your household. The app lets you point your phone

Uber extends work from home policy through mid-September

Uber today notified employees that it will extend its work from home policy through September 13. “In considering the extension, we took into account the latest scientific data and experts' views; the fact that different countries are at different stages of recovery; and the start of the

Microsoft announces the next perpetual release of Office

If you use Office, Microsoft would really, really, really like you to buy a cloud-enabled subscription to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). But as the company promised, it will continue to make a standalone, perpetual license for Office available for the foreseeable future. A while back, it laun

Anthony Lin named permanent managing partner and head of Intel Capital

When Wendell Brooks stepped down as managing partner and head of Intel Capital last August, Anthony Lin was named to replace him on an interim basis. At the time, it wasn’t clear if he would be given the role permanently, but today, six months later, the answer is known. In a letter to the fi

Robinhood goes to Congress

Update: There’s an entire second session of this? My lord. Update two: The hearing went on and on — it continues as I write to you! — but something did come out that was worth sharing. Namely that Congress got Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to report that his company generates at least

Google has a new responsible AI lead

Google has appointed Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division within Google Research, Bloomberg reported earlier today. Croak was previously the vice president of engineering at the company. In her new role, Croak will oversee the teams working on accessibility, AI

YC-backed Queenly launches a marketplace for formalwear

Queenly, a marketplace for formalwear, launched into a world where its core product of dresses and gowns had a massive competitor, bigger and more elusive than Poshmark: quarantine. The coronavirus pandemic has caused the fancy in-person events that one might attend, such as award shows, pageants,

Check out the incredible speakers joining us on Extra Crunch Live in March

Extra Crunch Live is off to a great start this year. Lightspeed’s Gaurav Gupta and Grafana’s Raj Dutt taught us how to nail the narrative. Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque showed us how valuable a simple pitch deck can be. And yesterday, Accel̵

Apple TV+ arrives on Google TV devices, starting with Chromecast

Google announced today the Apple TV+ streaming service has now arrived on the Google TV platform, starting with Chromecast with Google TV. It will also become available on Google TVs from both Sony and TCL, with expansions to other Android TV-powered devices in the months to come, Google says. Goog