Tyler Barriss, a prolific and seemingly unremorseful repeat swatter and bomb hoaxer whose fakery got a man killed in 2017, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. This hopefully closes the book on a long and disturbing career of random and mercenary harassment and threats. Not to linger on the crimes committed by Barriss, […]

Viacom’s Nickelodeon is doubling down on the educational aspects of its preschooler-focused streaming service, Noggin, with the acquisition of the early childhood learning platform Sparkler. Announced on Friday, the deal will see Sparkler’s technology integrated into Noggin over the next year, and makes Sparkler’s co-founder and CEO Kristen Kane the new head of the Noggin […]

1stdibs began pushing the antiques business into the 21st century long ago. Apparently, investors think it can it can push further and faster with $76 million in new funding. That’s how much the now-18-year-old, New York-based company says it just closed on for its Series D round, led by T. Rowe Price Associates,  with participation […]

Few software companies have transformed the way we think about moving through physical space like Niantic. The creators of Pokémon GO and soon Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Niantic has become an incredible unicorn success story, with a reported valuation of nearly $4 billion. One part AR, one part gaming, one part location, and many parts […]

How did Niantic happen? How did the company behind Pokémon GO and (soon) Harry Potter: Wizards Unite come to be? When anyone talks about Niantic, they generally mention that it’s “a Google spinout” and move on. As if that’s something that just happens every day. That dozens of people within a massive company come together, […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Lyft prices IPO at top of range Lyft raised more than $2 billion Thursday afternoon after pricing its shares at $72 […]

Ride-hailing startup Lyft may bear the distinction bearing highest net loss of any maiden public company ever going public, but despite that, it made its debut in a high gear this morning in. Trading as LYFT on Nasdaq, the company’s shares opened at nearly noon today at $87.24, a pop of 21 percent on the $72/share […]

Alphabet’s urban planning subsidiary announced today the launch of CommonSpaces. The new app was created to give park operators and community members a place to enter and organize observations about parks and other publics spaces. Interested parties can create a web portal for a space. The organizer defines the parameters of a study, outlining what […]

Political parties, campaigns, and brands can’t get an accurate and cost-effective understanding of opinion in small geographic areas, like the constituencies of lawmakers. This is a big problem in political campaigning. And all political campaigning now has a huge online element, as we know. We also know political turbulence is one of the defining themes […]

Nativo has acquired SimpleReach, a move that Nativo CEO Justin Choi said will pair his company’s distribution system for native ads with SimpleReach’s measurement tools. “If you can’t measure the impact of something, it’s difficult to scale spend in that area,” Choi told me. “When we say measurement we’re actually talking about connecting content to […]