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Showing posts from March 11, 2020

Frustrated Dwyane Wade skipping son's title game

Like many basketball parents around the world, Dwyane Wade isn't happy about his son's playing time, but the former NBA star had a major platform to express his frustration. On Tuesday's edition of Inside the NBA on TNT, the  Miami Heat  legend said he would not attend Saturday's state title game between Sierra Canyon -- which features his son, senior Zaire Wade, and  LeBron James ' son, freshman Bronny James -- and the winner of Thursday's Sheldon (Sacramento) and Bishop O'Down (Oakland) matchup in California's open division. "I will not be there," Wade said about attending the state title game before referencing Sierra Canyon coach Andre Chevalier. "My son isn't playing and I don't want to do nothing to the coach. I won't be there. But I'll be rooting for the kids." Dwyane Wade hugs his son Zaire after his jersey retirement ceremony in Miami in February.  Getty Images Ziaire Williams, a five-star prospect ran

Harvey Weinstein jailed for 23 years in rape trial

Disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. Weinstein was found guilty in a trial in New York last month, finalising a dramatic fall from grace for one of Hollywood's most powerful figures. The 67-year-old appeared in court on Wednesday in a wheelchair. Weinstein's lawyers had appealed for leniency, insisting that even the minimum sentence of five years could be a "life sentence" for him. But prosecutors argued Weinstein should be given the maximum possible sentence given his "lifetime of abuse" towards women and "lack of remorse" for his actions. Weinstein addressed the court for the first time on Wednesday, saying he had "deep remorse" but described himself as "totally confused" by what had happened, in comments seen as critical to the #MeToo movement. Dozens of women have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, including rape, against Weinst

PandaDoc introduces new template-driven editor to ease sales doc production

PandaDoc , a sales-focused document automation startup, announced a new web-based document production editor today that allows sales teams to quickly generate proposals and contracts from design templates. The templates give a consistent and professional look to these documents, which might otherwise be produced in a word processor like Word or Google Docs. While customers are free to customize these any way they like, the templated approach means these businesses don’t require a designer to create quality looking documents. Company co-founder and CTO Serge Barysiuk says the startup has had a vision for some time that sales documents would be more interactive than a static PDF or Word document, and they have invested a lot of resources into building a more interactive document editor, while enabling the sales team to see usage statistics like document opens, time on pages and so forth. “We have added a new document builder editor to our platform, which helps you create docu

Coronavirus: Iran death toll rises as virus spreads

The death toll from Covid-19 continues to rise in Iran. The virus has now spread to every province in the country and people are fearful that the true scale of the outbreak is even worse than is being disclosed. A video circulating on social media shows a morgue in the city of Qom, full of dead bodies that are waiting to be tested for the coronavirus.

Airport retailer OTG will use Amazon’s cashierless technology starting next week

Earlier this week, Amazon  announced  it will now sell its cashierless technology, dubbed “Just Walk Out,” to other retailers. Today, airport hospitality group  OTG,  which operates more than 350 restaurants and retail locations in North American airports, revealed it will be one of the first retailers to adopt Amazon’s tech in its own stores. The first store, a CIBO Express Gourmet Market, will open next week (March 16) in Newark Liberty’s Terminal C. This will be followed by additional stores in both Newark Liberty and LaGuardia airports, OTG says. OTG today operates more than 100 “CIBO Express Gourmet Markets” across  10 major North American airports . The stores stock items like ready-made and fresh foods, health and beauty items, gifts and electronics. Shoppers will enter the new, tech-enabled store in the Newark airport by first swiping their credit card. Then, Amazon’s Just Walk Out system uses a combination of cameras, shelf sensors, computer vision and deep lea

Budget 2020: What it means for you

Chancellor Rishi Sunak's first Budget came as attention is focused on coronavirus, but what does it mean for your financial health? There were significant announcements on benefits, tax, and the wider economy. A tax cut for millions A tax break from the government regarding national insurance was promised in the Conservative manifesto. The current threshold sees employees and the self-employed paying contributions once they earn £166 a week, equivalent to an annual salary of £8,632 a year. From April, you start paying when earning £9,500. That will mean 500,000 people will no longer have to pay this tax, according to independent economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). Those still paying will save up to £85 a year on average. The chancellor said it would be just over £100 a year, but that calculation may not include the self-employed. The IFS says 8% of the gains go to the poorest 20% of working households, so it is those on a decent income who may benefit

Real estate platform Orchard adds new features to home search portal

Orchard , formerly Perch, is sprinting towards its goal of having a fully integrated home buying and selling platform, from title and mortgage services to its tech-focused real estate brokerage to a consumer search portal. They company has many plates spinning at once, one could say. Today, Orchard is announcing new features for its home search portal in the form of Home Match and Photo Switch. Home Match gives users the chance to specify the degree of their preferences to filter search results down to the stuff they really want. For example, users can choose between “Not Important”, “Nice to Have” and “Very Important” for features like a Kitchen Island, a pool in the backyard, high ceilings and many other features of a home. Most home search portals ask about what you want in a binary way — either you want a pool or you don’t. They don’t take into account that yes, you want a pool, but it’s not nearly as important as having stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.

NEA, venture capital’s quiet giant, closes on $3.6 billion

While many venture capital firms spend their days either chasing the limelight or shunning it, for the last 42 years  New Enterprise Associates   has just done the work of investing capital and building startup businesses. Now the firm has closed its latest investment vehicle, a $3.6 billion fund that brings its total capital under management to nearly $24 billion, according to a statement. Unlike some firms, the partnership at NEA hasn’t really focused on star-making. For the last several years the fund has been run by Scott Sandell, who has been with the firm since 1996 ( his last tweet was in 2010 ). The strategy stands in sharp contrast to the loud voices and strong personalities that dominate venture capital’s online conversation. The browsers in business sections of airport bookstores won’t see many books on venture capital or thought leadership from NEA partners. These days, the most public figure from NEA is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the Food and

Why so many robotic startups fail, and what can be done about it

At last week’s  TC Sessions: Robotics+AI, I felt it was important to focus at least one panel on companies that are working to foster robotics startups. NVIDIA’s VP of Engineering Claire Delaunay and Freedom Robotics co-founder and CEO Joshua Wilson joined me to offer unique perspectives. Both companies help provide building blocks for founders. NVIDIA is using some of its tremendous resources to create platforms like  Isaac , designed to help prototype robots. And  Freedom , a fairly fresh startup in its own right, is designing AI offerings to ease the deployment of those manner of systems. But the first step of helping robotic startups help themselves is identifying why so many fail. Citing a handful of high-profile examples like Rethink, Anki, Jibo and CyPhy Works, I put the question to the panelists: even with a lot of funding and plenty of smart people on board, why do so many robotic startups fail? “I think it’s just very hard to solve robotics problems today, wh

Stocks change their mind again, falling sharply this morning in early trading

Have you ever seen a dead cat bounce? It’s a term that Wall Street traders coined to describe the moment when collapsing markets briefly rise before resuming a downward trajectory. It looks like investors new to the notion of an economic downturn may have seen their first such bounce yesterday. The glacial domestic response to the spreading novel coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe, coupled with economic pressures on the domestic oil industry coming from Saudi Arabia and Russia, are fueling increasingly negative outlooks among global investors. Regular readers of TechCrunch’s Market-Mandated Stocks Coverage will note that we’ve been covering the public market’s open and close lately, because with the return of volatility the markets have become active and therefore more influential in day-to-day news. When stocks only went up, it was boring. Now, they do all sorts of crazy things, like kicking off the day like this: Dow Jones Industrial Average: -712.4, -2.85% S&

Apple News adds a special coverage section for tracking the coronavirus outbreak

Apple today is rolling out a dedicated section within its Apple News app that will help readers stay updated on the coronavirus outbreak. The special coverage will include informative, fact-based stories from reputable publishers, says Apple, which are curated by Apple News’ team of editors. The launch of the section comes at a time when social media platforms are  struggling to reign in misinformation around the coronavirus outbreak , ranging from conspiracy theories about the virus’s origins to  bogus  medicines, preventatives and treatments — including those are bizarre as  drinking bleach,  and more. Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been working with the World Health Organization to remove misinformation and to direct users to trusted resources, but the inaccurate and often dangerous information continues to spread. With Apple News, Apple has the ability to reach millions of people through the built-in app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. On desktop and on mobile,

Everything You Need to Know About Proper Hat Etiquette

Republicans Were Warned in Private Briefing Most Americans Will Be Exposed to COVID-19 Matt Novak An hour ago Jalopnik This Chart Will Tell You What Kind Of Space-Based Sci-Fi You're About To Watch Just By Looking At The Main Shi Jason Torchinsky Yesterday 6:30PM Popular Deals on The Inventory What's the Best Juicer? Get up to 30% Off on C9 Champion Apparel In Today's Gold Box ly tips, tricks & shortcuts delivered to your inbox. Filed to: RETRO WEEK Photo via   U.S. Diplomacy Center . So you want to wear a nice hat, do ya? Fine. Then you need to learn how to wear it like a proper lady or gentleman. This story was part of   Retro Week ,   during which we fired up the flux capacitor and brought you 1950s know-how on everything from casserole-making to fallout-shelter-building to the joys of letting kids relax and play with trash.   These days there doesn’t