The novel coronavirus pandemic has disordered traditional notions of work, travel, socializing and the way we collaborate with colleagues. It seems obvious that the future of work must evolve, given what we’re experiencing, but what will that future look like? Which changes are here to stay and which ones will revert the moment offices reopen?
Technology
Busier than ever in a world that has shut itself down, Scott Page, the saxophonist of Pink Floyd, Supertramp, and Toto has immersed himself in a neon state of technology combined with music as he rises above the noise with new and innovative ideas for artists. Page is currently the CEO of Think:EXP, an all-star band based
Months into this global pandemic, many questions remain about whether and when companies of all sizes will return to their offices and what will be required of the move. The future is so unclear that even people steeped in the real estate industry don’t have all the answers — though they’re starting to make educated
Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, automaker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, is laying off nearly 8% of its more than 1,800-member workforce today as it tries to reduce costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The layoffs will affect employees in Cruise’s product, marketing and
Workvivo, an employee communications platform founded only three years ago, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding, in a round led by Tiger Global which is best know for large growth-oriented rounds. Also participating is Frontline Ventures and Enterprise Ireland, previous investors. The Series A round follows on from a seed round late
While the world feels paused, in some respects, new startups are still cropping up like usual. Today, 13 companies are graduating from the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, based in NY, with $100,000 each in funding from the accelerator. This is ERA’s 18th class, with the accelerator having launched more than 200 companies since its inception, which
Facebook strikes a deal to compensate content moderators with PTSD, Tesla might reopen its factory next week and Twitter says some employees can work from home indefinitely. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 13, 2020. 1. Facebook to pay $52M to content moderators suffering from PTSD Facebook employs thousands of content moderators to sift through
The Extra Crunch Live series rolls along next week with something special: My old boss is taking part. Let me explain. Alexia Bonatsos was once co-editor of TechCrunch and was part of my interview circuit when I first joined the publication. She taught me more than I can write down; Alexia is one of my
Having a holistic picture of your health might not mean just wearing a device like an Apple Watch that can monitor your biometrics — researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have developed a new system that can figure out when and where in-home appliances like hair dryers, stoves, microwaves and washing
After eight years of Unreal Engine 4, Epic Games is finally ready to talk about Unreal Engine 5, which they’re announcing will launch in preview early next year with a wider launch by the year’s end. Unreal Engine 5 is all about harnessing the performance of next-generation consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series
Despite the economic disruptions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, cloud vendors are holding up well as many client companies and their employees work from home. With stores closed, it’s natural that e-commerce would also perform strongly — after all, it’s also cloud-based, and folks working from home are shifting their shopping from brick-and-mortar to digital.
Space bus company Momentus has signed a new contract that will see it provide in-space transportation and deployment for Sen, the U.K. company that’s building a 4K real-time video streaming service providing live, high-quality views of Earth, both free for individuals and via an open source data platform for developers and service creators. Santa Clara-based
Now here’s an interesting GDPR complaint: Is Google illegally tracking Android users in Europe via a unique, device-assigned advertising ID? First, what is the Android advertising ID? Per Google’s description to developers building apps for its smartphone platform it’s — [emphasis added by us] The advertising ID is a unique, user-resettable ID for advertising, provided by
Uber says it has committed $50 million to procure and providing safety supplies to drivers. Those supplies will include things like face masks, sanitizer, gloves and disinfectant, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced on a press call today. Uber says it has secured more than 23 million masks for drivers and delivery people throughout the world.
French research institute Inria has released a small portion of the source code that is going to power France’s contact-tracing app StopCovid. It is available on several GitLab repositories under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. While the French government announced that everything would be open source, it’s going to bit more complicated than that. As