Facebook Inc. has purchased a blockchain startup called Chainspace in an apparent acquihire, according to reports. Cheddar first reported the purchase of the company, formally named Daffodil Ltd., saying the deal will see four of the five researchers behind Chainspace’s academic white paper join Facebook’s blockchain group. A statement on the Chainspace website seemingly confirmed the news, saying that “we’re ...

Google LLC today released two new apps that tap into artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist those with hearing impediments. The first app, Live Transcribe, transcribes speech to text live via the app installed on an Android phone. Tapping into Google’s existing automatic speech recognition technology, which enables computers to detect audible languages and transcribe ...

Bitcoin hit a new record over the weekend, the longest bear run for the cryptocurrency since its creation in October 2008. The bear run started in December 2017 as bitcoin hit highs near $20,000. As of a little before 9 p.m. EST tonight, the cryptocurrency was trading at $3,420.92. The current price of bitcoin isn’t the lowest ...

Home improvement site Houzz has suffered a data breach, with an unknown amount of user information stolen. The hack, discovered in late December but only revealed on Friday, involved the theft of profile information, including name, city, state, country and profile description, along with internal identifiers such as the region and location of the user ...

Some $190 million in customer funds consisting of both cryptocurrency and regular money is apparently gone in what appears to be an “exit scam” involving Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. In one of the most fanciful stories ever told in relation to a crypto exchange, the company claims that 30-year-old founder Gerald Cotten (pictured) had died of Crohns ...

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance Ltd. today added support for credit and debit cards, making it one of the few leading exchanges that offer the service. The largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, Binance said it’s adding support via a partnership with payment processing company SimplexCC Ltd. Available from today for all Binance users, the feature can be accessed via the funds ...

Apple Inc. has retaken second place in global smartphone sales despite a slowing market and an overall decline in sales, according to two new sets of figures. Both International Data Corp. and Counterpoint Technology Market Research Inc. released their estimates of smartphone sales for the fourth quarter, showing Apple leapfrogged Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., which had ...

Two weeks after a massive database of nearly 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million plain text passwords was found online, the group behind the release has shared even more data, bringing the total pieces of data available to nearly 3 billion. The new databases, Collections #2 through to #5, are being shared on hacker forums and ...

On-demand goods storage startup Clutter Inc. is in the process of raising a new round of up to $250 million from SoftBank, according to a report today from TechCrunch. Sometimes described as the Uber of storage, the Culver City, California company offers a service that allows users to store extra belongings without leaving their house. Users access an ...

Updated: Apple Inc. today revoked Google LLC’s Enterprise Developer Program certificate following a similar move against Facebook Inc. earlier in the week. The certificates are used to run applications outside of the iOS App Store for testing purposes and for internal applications. Update: TechCrunch reported late Thursday that Apple had restored the apps. In Google’s case, ...