Friday, June 2, 2017

Paris, je t'aime. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
FRIDAY, JUNE 2 2017 By Darrell Etherington

Literally Trump vs. the world, Waymo eyes the autonomous trucking market, Nintendo's online ambitions go pro and more in The Daily Crunch for June 2, 2017.

1. Tech says Trump is dead wrong on Paris

Tech's response to Trump's disastrous decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement was fairly unanimous: They don't like it. It prompted Elon Musk to finally take his leave of Trump's advisory councils, and it caused Apple CEO Tim Cook to let everyone at his company know he tried to sway the former reality television star.

VCs also mostly expressed dismay at the move, as did everyone else with a functioning brain and the capacity to form logical and coherent thoughts.

2. Waymo will look at self-driving trucks, too

Waymo, Google's self-driving car project, is also exploring what its tech might be able to do in autonomous trucking. That's confirmed by the company, but it's still very early days for this expansion of focus – they're testing just one truck, and it's being human-driven strictly for data-gathering purposes at this stage. Still, interesting shot across the bow at rival Uber.

3. Nintendo's online services will cost $20 per year, include games

Nintendo knows how to sweeten the pot for its Switch online services: bundled classic games, which include more than the originally planned measly 1 game per month. This alone could be worth the price of admission.

4. Blue Apron files for IPO

If you've ever heard a podcast, you're probably familiar with Blue Apron. Ditto if you're a millennial New York urbanite. But is that enough to build a successful public company upon? The pre-portioned meal subscription service will find out, likely sometime later this year.

5. Google's built-in Chrome ad blocker is coming next year

Provided Google sticks to its plans, it'll include a built-in ad blocker in Chrome next year. Publishers might be freaking out, but realistically if people hate web ads so much they install software to prevent it from showing up, how effective can said advertising possibly be?

6. Drone disappointment

The DJI Spark sounds pretty fun per Brian, but not ultimately the consumer drone to end all consumer drones.

7. Bumble gets into real estate

Is the next big bricks and mortar industry dating apps? Weirdly, that's what Bumble is going to find out with a debut physical meetup space for daters on its network, to launch in New York.

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Thursday, June 1, 2017

Trump's Paris plans draw tech opposition. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
THURSDAY, JUNE 1 2017 By Darrell Etherington

Musk to finally break Trump ties? It could go down as soon as today, once we find out the president's plan on the Paris climate agreement. Also, SpaceX is launching stuff into space – if only it were me. That and more in The Daily Crunch for June 1, 2017.

1. Trump's Paris agreement position rallies tech companies

Trump says he'll reveal his plans regarding the Paris climate agreement today at 3 PM ET, and signs indicate he'll move to take the U.S. out of the international effort to counter greenhouse gas emissions and their resulting impact on the environment.

This has unified the tech industry (and industry in general), and resulted in phone calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook – and an ultimatum from Elon Musk, who until now has seen fit to remain close to the administration by serving on Trump advisory councils. Leaving Paris is a bridge too far, for Musk, apparently, where past contentious policies were not.

2. Meanwhile, in space...

The U.S. exiting the Paris agreement could accelerate Musk's motivation to make it to Mars, so today's SpaceX launch takes on greater significance. It's the first time SpaceX will attempt to use a Dragon it flew before in an active mission to resupply the ISS; reusable Dragon cargo capsules are a key ingredient for making Mars affordable.

3. Uber hemorrhaged cash trying to make UberPOOL viable

UberPOOL is a service that aims to make the economics of ride hailing better – but getting there is costing a lot of money, according to new documents published by BuzzFeed. These economics look terrible. Uber told us that all's well with POOL, however; it did not comment on the current economics.

4. Apple's Swift Playgrounds now works with hardware, too

Pretty cool – especially since the hardware support for Apple's coding education tool includes LEGO Mindstorms, Sphero's BB-8 bot, Parrot's drones and more.

5. Skype is trying to be cool

"Hey have you heard about Snapchat? What if we put that in Skype!" "You're a genius, Bill. Skype will be a huge hit with all of the cool teens now for sure." "It sure will, let's use neon gradients, too!" "Wow you're on fire today." "Thanks! I've been microdosing LSD."

6. Moto Z2 Play shows Motorola is all-in on mods

Motorola, kudos for sticking to something that's out of the ordinary. The Z2 Play, the successor to last year's Z Play, will get mods just like the first version. There's a bunch of new mods, even! I'm glad this continues to be a thing.

7. Plex just became your best live TV DVR service

Plex's subscription program is already worth it, but now you also get live TV viewing on a range of devices, and DVR capabilities for local and remote streaming. Super good.

Get more stories at techcrunch.com 

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