Hello friends! Welcome back Reviewed week, where we quickly summarize the most read stories on TechCrunch over the past 7 days. Goal: If you’ve had a busy week, you can skim WiR and still have a pretty good sense of what’s happened in the tech arena. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Many thanks to Henry Pickavet for putting the WiR together while I took a few weeks off. I wish I could say it was a wonderfully relaxing stay for a few weeks, but I’m traveling with a back injury and my 3 year old…so yeah, no. I had a great time, but I’m happy to stay home and put the words on the Internet back!
The Most read This week’s story, so far, is believe that Elon Musk quietly has twins with “one of his top executives” last year. Musk responded to a lot of that with a tweet: “Doing your best to help the low population crisis. Falling birth rates are the greatest danger facing civilization to date.”
–greg
different things:
Image credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Elon Musk Says He’s Killing The Twitter Deal: Elon Musk’s legal team announced late Friday that it intends to halt the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, citing “false and misleading statements on which Mr. entering into the Merger Agreement”. Twitter President Bret Taylor immediately responded with a statement that “Twitter Board of Directors is committed to closing the transaction at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue action.” to enforce the merger agreement”. This will get messy.
Glance is heading to the US: Glance is a company that puts tailored content/games (and ads, of course) on the lock screen of Android phones. After finding its way into around 400 million smartphones in Asia over the past few years, the company is gearing up for a US launch “within two months,” according to a scoop from our own Manish Singh. .
Apple Watch is bigger, more sturdy: Rumors about new Apple devices are always in the air… but when Mark Gurman is often right when he says something is about to happen, we tend to pay attention. Gurman says Apple is building an improved version of the Apple Watch for “extreme sports athletes” — one with a larger screen for easier reading in the middle of a workout and a more rugged design. , so you’ll worry less about dents and dents.
Apple’s “Lockdown” mode: Sure it’s a generalization, but the more features your phone has, the more potential attack vectors for hackers to target. With that in mind, Apple this week announced “Locked Mode,” a setting coming to iOS/iPadOS/macOS that lets you instantly turn off certain features — think things like files to open, web pages, etc. what you’re allowed to do, who can contact you, etc. It’s primarily intended for people who “may be at high risk of targeted cyberattacks,” an Apple press release said, but there will be available to all by the end of the year.
Vauld Access Pause: Cryptocurrency prices saw a massive crash throughout May and June, and crypto lending platform/exchange Vauld said earlier this week that it would be suspending “all transactions.” withdrawals, trading and deposits” while exploring “potential restructuring options”. In one a bunch of tweetsVauld co-founder Darshan Bathija noted that customers have withdrawn more than $197 million from the platform in the past few weeks alone.
Sunny Balwani found guilty: After a three-month trial, former Theranos COO Sunny Balwani was found guilty of 12 counts this week. For those who haven’t watched every beat of the Theranos disaster, Amanda has put together a great and concise overview of the incident so far – and its impact on the startup ecosystem.
Amanda interviews MKBHD: I may be half a decade older than him, but I want to be Marques Brownlee when I grow up. Also known as MKBHD, he’s a hugely popular tech Youtuber, increasingly popular TikToker, the ultimate professional Frisbee player (!) and an absolutely amazing human being. Amanda struck up a conversation with Marques at VidCon, where they talked about everything from developing the long-form content he’s famous for to the pacing of TikTok in mind, his thoughts on the metaverse, and the technology he thinks is the best. not getting enough attention.
Audio content:
Podcasts! You like them, we’ve got them.
Over the past few days, Darrell chatted with Amanda about her trip to VidCon on The TechCrunch Podcast, Jacquie and Anita talked about the crypto savior on Chain Reaction, and the Found podcast team talked to people. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on 19 years leading the Company.
You can find all of these and more in weekly podcasts.
things added:
Want more TechCrunch? Head over to the aptly named TechCrunch+, where we can dig a little deeper into the topics our subscribers tell us they care about. Some good stuff this week includes:
What makes your pitch useless?: “You’ve ditched your Keynote skills, you’re excited that you’ll finally be able to start paying yourself a living wage, and you’re excited to start rolling out your next round of funding startups for your investors,” wrote Haje (TC resident Pitch Deck expert). “It’s a tough time for sure, but hit the other pedal there for a moment, pal – you might be forgetting something.”
Meanwhile…: The last post includes a Haje slide saying that every pitch deck needs it; this is all about the slide he thinks is useless.
So are we in a startup recession or what?: Alex Wilhelm spends more time thinking about the realities of entrepreneurship than about anyone I know, so when he opens a post that says, “I don’t know what’s going on. happened in the startup market and there was a bit of pain in the butt,” I continued.
