Best Tech News Site

Rappi , the Colombian on-demand delivery startup, has brought in a new round of funding at a valuation north of $1 billion, as first reported by Axios and confirmed to TechCrunch by a source close to the company. DST Global has led the $200 million round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia—all of which were existing investors in the company. Rappi kicked off its business delivering beverages and has since expanded into meals, groceries, and even tech and medicine. You can, for example, have a pair of AirPods delivered to you using Rappi’s app. The company also has a popular cash withdrawal feature that allows users to pay with credit cards and then receive cash from one of Rappi’s delivery agents. Rappi charges $1 per delivery. To help keep costs efficient, the company’s fleet of couriers use only motorcycles and bikes. Simón Borrero, Sebastian Mejia and Felipe Villamarin launched the company in 2015, graduating from Y Combinator the following year. From th...

The Village Voice is dead — at least, as a functioning journalistic organization. Starting today, the legendary alternative newspaper will no longer publish new stories. Gothamist reports that at a staff meeting, owner Peter Barbey said that about half the team would be laid off, while the other half would remain on-board for now to “wind things down” and work on creating a digital Voice archive. Barbey acquired the Voice in 2015 and took the paper online-only last year. In a statement released today, he said: In recent years, the Voice has been subject to the increasingly harsh economic realities facing those creating journalism and written media. Like many others in publishing, we were continually optimistic that relief was around the next corner. Where stability for our business is, we do not know yet. The only thing that is clear now is that we have not reached that destination. The Village Voice was created to give speed to a cultural and social revolution, and its legacy a...

The Google Pixel 3 XL has had a truly comical amount of leaks to date, but for the most part its younger, smaller brother has been a bit a more camera-shy. Well, today we finally have some purported photos of the real-life baby Pixel 3 via an anonymous Reddit user who leaked the shots that were discovered by 9to5Google . [gallery ids="1702474,1702475,1702476,1702478"] The device seems to have a modest forehead and chin, certainly a bit larger than what we’ve seen on the screen-to-body ratio of the Pixel XL 3 photo leaks, but it seems to be a marked improvement over the smaller-bodied Pixel 2 and seems pretty similar to a miniature Pixel 2 XL in design. We also have some screenshots of the phone’s specs pointing to a 5.5 inch 2160 x 1080 display that’s rocking 440 dpi. From this leak we also can see that the battery capacity of the phone will likely be 2,915 mAh. Previous leaks have suggested that this will be a Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU and 4GB RAM. At this poin...

Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out a new feature that allowed Alexa device owners to create their own custom skills using preconfigured templates. Today, Amazon is expanding Alexa Blueprints, as the service is called, to include a handful of new templates designed for families and roommates. These include a chore chart template, a house rules template for roommates, and others. The Chore Chart template allows families to schedule and track children’s weekly chores, and even lets multiple kids (or anyone, really) compete to see who has done the most. Parents first configure the skill with a list of weekly chores and who those chores are assigned to. Throughout the week, the kids can log their completed chores by asking Alexa. (“Alexa, ask Chore Chart to log a chore.”). Anyone can then check the progress by asking for the “Chore Score.” Another blueprint is a variation on the existing “houseguest” and “babysitter” templates, which let you fill in useful information about the home...

The industry is forever chasing the Apple Watch. After all, the smartwatch has been a rare bright spot in a plateauing wearables category. Even Fitbit recently found itself heading in that direction, finding a fair bit of success with the Versa. Samsung’s approach, on the other hand, has always been very, well, Samsung. The company’s watches are big, hulking things, covering chrome with a kind of Swiss Army knife approach customary of its various other products. Announced alongside the Note 9, the Galaxy Watch wasn’t the departure many expected. While the name implied a potential shift toward Android Wear, the company is intent on sticking with Tizen. And why not? Samsung’s spent a lot of time making Tizen its own — multiple generations have been devoted to tweaking the operating system to its specifications. It’s the result of a pretty clear cost-benefit analysis. The biggest drawback of not embracing Wear OS is the relative lack of third-party app support on Tizen. The biggest ad...

The world’s largest investor is joining the chorus of voices pushing for a separation of powers at the electric vehicle, solar panel and battery manufacturer, Tesla . Funds managed by BlackRock , a top 10 shareholder in the electric vehicle company run by Elon Musk (and the manager of roughly $6.3 trillion in global assets ), joined calls for the creation of an independent chairman position at Tesla. The shareholder initiative, which was solidly defeated, would not have affected Musk’s standing as chief executive. News of BlackRock’s push comes as a new article in The Wall Street Journal further underscores the autocratic ways in which Musk manages his electric vehicle startup, and highlights the singular grip Musk has on his companies and the public’s perception of them. Elon Musk losing his temper and firing people on the spot is one of those anecdotes I’ve heard over and over again and never been able to stand up. Kudos to WSJ for nailing it down. https://t.co/vRYFtRM3U...

Something is going on at Social Capital. A series of departures continued this morning at former Facebook executive  Chamath Palihapitiya ‘s venture capital firm, with Mike Ghaffary, a partner since August 2017, announcing he was moving on to focus on angel investing. Personal update: I’ve decided to leave Social Capital. Over the next few months, I'll focus on angel investing. It's been an incredible experience, working alongside a talented team. I'll continue to work closely with the founders I’ve invested in, and excited for the next step. — Mike Ghaffary (@newmike) August 31, 2018 That’s just a day after Ashley Mayer, a partner and VP of marketing since 2015, said she was departing the firm to pursue “new adventures.” The pair of exits is just the latest in a line of high-profile departures for the firm. We’ve reached out to Palihapitiya for some explanation. The mass exodus began when Mamoon Hamid, who founded Social Capital with Palihapitiya in 2011, jo...