Technology News – Top Stories

This week, we recap the news, trends, and stand-out gadgets from the first-ever virtual CES.

Officials from NASA and NOAA say the warming of both the planet’s air and water are driving weather disasters.

A Harvard medical student submitted auto-generated comments to Medicaid; volunteers couldn’t distinguish them from those penned by humans.

Sure, the metaphor is imperfect. But as the encyclopedia enters its 20th year, it's worth reflecting on the "rules of the game"—and how they might change.

Should you go Ultra or snag the S21+? We break down the differences between the company’s new phones and round up the best deals.

Researchers are finally getting good data on how severely SARS-CoV-2 affects children and how they transmit it. What does it mean for reopening classrooms?

A sprawling tactical industry is teaching American civilians how to fight like Special Ops forces. By preparing for violence at home, are they calling it into being?

It has a lot to do with unity—and a little something to do with earworms.

The consumer electronics show was virtual this year, and the WIRED Gear crew watched all the Zooms to bring you this list of nearly 80 products, trends, musings, and photos.

Computational biologists used an algorithm meant to model human language to instead predict how viruses could evolve to evade the immune system.

Harness, the startup that wants to create a suite of engineering tools to give every company the kind of technological reach that the biggest companies have, announced an $85 million Series C today on a $1.7 billion valuation. Today’s round comes after 2019’s $60 million Series B, which had a […]

A trio of new Android phones—the S21, S21+, and S21 Ultra—are joined by new Bluetooth earbuds and a Tile-like tracker.

After the 2012 mass shooting, many asked: If this doesn’t lead to change, can we ever expect change? We should be asking the same of the insurrection.

MMORPGs and even social media can trace their roots to games that used simple text commands to construct vivid, fantastical worlds.

The model had shown promise in Flint before officials rebelled. Now Toledo is using it, while incorporating more public input.

An economist looks at public safety during the Covid lockdowns and also at the time of Spanish Flu.

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 have some great games coming this year—assuming schedules hold. Here's a quick rundown of some great ones.

Much of the trade show’s flashy tech will never hit store shelves, but here are a few gadgets that are already available.

Residents and city officials traumatized by last week’s unrest fear a repeat for Biden’s inauguration.

Small enterprises remain one of the most underserved segments of the business market, but the growth of cloud-based services — easier to buy, easier to provision — has helped that change in recent years. Today, one of the more promising startups out of Europe building software to help SMEs run […]

Meet Bluebot, a friendly swimming robot with big camera eyes. Put a few in a tank together and they’ll collaborate to complete surprisingly complex tasks.

At CES 2021, two companies showed off concepts for a rollable phone. This year, expect this new category of devices to greatly expand.

In a move that could have wide ramifications across the tech landscape, Intel announced that VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger would be replacing interim CEO Bob Swan at Intel on February 15th. The question is why would he leave his job to run a struggling chip giant. The bottom line is he has a long history

It’s estimated that there were some 50 billion connected devices globally in 2020, and while that really says a lot about how far we’ve come in tech, for many it also speaks to a big issue: security vulnerabilities, with the devices themselves, plus all the components and services running on […]

Stacklet, a startup that is commercializing the Cloud Custodian open-source cloud governance project, today announced that it has raised an $18 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Addition, with participation from Foundation Capital and new individual investor Liam Randall, who […]

You & Mr. Jones announced today that it has added $60 million in new funding from Merian Chrysalis, bringing the Series B round announced in December to a total of $260 million. The round values the company at $1.36 billion, post-money. You & Mr. Jones takes its name from CEO David Jones, […]

As ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft continue to find their feet in a new landscape for transportation services — where unessential travel is being actively discouraged in many markets and people remain concerned about catching the coronavirus in restricted, shared spaces — a smaller […]

We are more than seven years into the notion of modern containerization, and it still requires a complex set of tools and a high level of knowledge on how containers work. The DockerSlim open-source project developed several years ago from a desire to remove some of that complexity for developers. […]

Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, have been on a fundraising roll for the last couple of years. Today the company announced a $160 million Series E on a fat $2 billion valuation. The round comes just eight months after the startup raised an $86.6 million Series D. The latest investment was led […]

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week. I hope we can all look forward to a nice, boring weekend with no breaking news alerts.

Applications networking company F5 announced today that it is acquiring Volterra, a multi-cloud management startup, for $500 million. That breaks down to $440 million in cash and $60 million in deferred and unvested incentive compensation. Volterra emerged in 2019 with a $50 million investment from […]

RedHat today announced that it’s acquiring container security startup StackRox. The companies did not share the purchase price. RedHat, which is perhaps best known for its enterprise Linux products has been making the shift to the cloud in recent years. IBM purchased the company in 2018 for a […]

The ongoing push for social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 has meant that more people than ever are using internet-based services to get things done. And that is having a direct impact on digital customer service, which is seeing unprecedented traffic and demands when things are not […]

As the pandemic took hold in 2020, companies accelerated their move to cloud services. Lacework, the cloud security startup, was in the right place at the right time as customers looked for ways to secure their cloud native workloads. The company reported that revenue grew 300% year over year for […]

The COVID-19 pandemic and specifically need for social distancing to slow the spread of the virus have continued to keep many of us away from the office. Now, increasingly, many organizations and people believe that it could usher in a more permanent shift to remote, distributed and virtual work. […]

The systemic issues became apparent the way they often do -- when customers began complaining.

Chronosphere, the scalable cloud native monitoring tool launched in 2019 by two former Uber engineers, announced a $43.4 million Series B today. The company also announced that their service was generally available starting today. Greylock, Lux Capital and venture capitalist Lee Fixel, all of whom […]

The start of a new year presents the perfect opportunity to reflect on the annual performance of our focus, the Israeli cybersecurity ecosystem.

"We're going to start to see a lot of real value and ROI generated by AI across more and more businesses,"

When Salesforce acquired Quip in 2016 for $750 million, it gained CEO and co-founder Bret Taylor as part of the deal. Taylor has since risen quickly through the ranks of the software giant to become president and COO, second in command behind CEO Marc Benioff. Taylor’s experience shows that […]