Twitter and Facebook wrestle with Trump telling Americans to vote twice

President Trump’s recent suggestion that North Carolina voters should cast multiple ballots has run afoul of Twitter’s election integrity rules. In a series of tweets Thursday morning, the president elaborated on previous statements in which he encouraged Americans to vote twice to R

Rocket Lab secretly launched its very first satellite, ‘First Light’

Rocket Lab’s 14th mission, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Optical,” had a stowaway aboard. The New Zealand launch company quietly included its first fully functioning satellite next to its paying customer’s payload. First Light, as it’s called, is a sort of tech

SpaceX completes another successful short test flight of its Starship spacecraft prototype

SpaceX has done it again — a second “hop” flight in less than a month for its Starship prototype. This was a 150 meter (just under 500 foot) test flight from its Boca Chica, Texas development site. The prototype used in this instance was SN6, a more recent model than the SN5 test

Media Roundup: Patreon joins unicorn club, Facebook could ban news in Australia, more

Welcome to the very first edition of Extra Crunch's Media Roundup. Over the past few months, we've launched features like Decrypted, Deep Science and The Exchange, which aggregate and analyze the latest news in a given sector, so it seemed overdue to do something similar for media. The goal

Exhibitors at Disrupt 2020: Register now to meet accelerators next week

Disrupt 2020 is all about helping startups find and create ways to drive their business forward in these most challenging times. We partnered with cela to give exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley one sweet opportunity — networking with 13 accelerators. If you're exhibiting — or plan to —

Apple won’t force developers to let users opt out of tracking until next year

At its global developer conference in June, Apple said its forthcoming iOS 14 update would allow users to opt out of in-app ad tracking, a privacy feature that quickly drew ire from advertising giants over fears that it would make it harder to deliver targeted ads to users. But now Apple is delayin

Explore micromobility’s next opportunities at TC Sessions: Mobility

Micromobility, like many other industries, has faced a lot of uncertainty this year. Many shared electric scooter operators paused their services in the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but resumed operations after putting some safety measures into place. Meanwhile, some industry analysts hav

As it awaits its US fate, TikTok rolls out new marketing tools and Stitch to let users sample other videos

There’s a big question mark hanging over the future of TikTok right now, in the form of what exactly will happen to its U.S. business come September 20, when President Trump said he plans to shut down the Chinese-owned app over security concerns. But in the meantime, it seems to be business a

OrCam Technologies co-founder Amnon Shashua to speak at Sight Tech Global

If the measure of progress in technology is that devices should become ever smaller and more capable, then OrCam Technologies is on a roll. The Israeli firm's OrCam MyEye, which fits on the arm of a pair of glasses, is far more powerful and much smaller than its predecessor. With new AI-based S

Triller CEO Mike Lu to talk taking on TikTok at Disrupt 2020

Several months ago, before the world became so much more complicated, it was still crystal clear that TikTok was a force to be reckoned with and that its massive growth signaled big things for both Silicon Valley and the global tech scene. As the ByteDance-owned social media app has been drawn into

Optimizely acquired by content management company Episerver

Episerver is announcing that it has reached an agreement to acquire Optimizely for an undisclosed sum. Optimizely was founded in 2009 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen. It became synonymous with A/B testing, subsequently building a broader suite of tools for marketers to experiment with and personaliz

Building paths to funding for Black female founders

Amid a racial justice reckoning following countless events of police brutality (justice for Breonna Taylor), it’s high time companies and investors in the tech industry do more than just say “Black Lives Matter,” but show that Black lives matter. As Human Utility CEO Tiffani Ashle

48 hours left on early-bird prices to TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

We're just about a month away from launching TC Sessions: Mobility 2020, but you have only 48 hours left to save yourself $100 on the price of admission. Join the global mobility community on October 6-8 at the lowest possible price. Snag your pass before the early-bird price expires on Septemb

Adobe Spark adds support for animations to its social media graphics tool

Spark is one of those products in Adobe’s Creative Suite that doesn’t always get a lot of attention. But the company’s tool for creating social media posts (which you can try for free) has plenty of fans, and maybe that’s no surprise, given that its mission is to help small