World Of News

Tesla made a flurry of announcements this afternoon with the highlight being the company’s reveal of its $35k Model 3. That reveal grabbed the most headlines, but updates to the Model S and Model X lines brought the costs of high-end models down with maxed out Performance + Ludicrous Mode versions of the S and X receiving healthy $18k discounts. The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 has arrived — but it comes with a price The Model S has the same entry-level price at $79k but the price bump to go from the Standard Range to more souped up versions is a lot more accessible with some huge price drops on the Long Range and Performance models. The Long Range Model S, which takes the top speed from 140mph to 155 mph and the range from 270 miles to 335 miles, now prices in at $83k, down from $96k. With $4k separating the standard and long-range models, it’s interesting that they even decided to keep the Standard Range version and didn’t just have the Long Range as the entry-level model with the ...

Tesla is moving all of its sales online, a dramatic shift in its sales strategy that will result in the closure of stores and some layoffs as the automaker looks for ways to reduce costs in order to bring a cheaper Model 3 to market. Tesla CEO Elon Musk didn’t say how many stores would close. He noted that some stores would remain and turn into information centers and showrooms. The company didn’t provide specific numbers on how many retail employees might be affected. “We will be closing some stores a nd that will be some reduction in head count as a result; t here’s no question about that,” Musk said. “ There’s no other way for us to achieve the savings  required to provide this car and be financially sustainable. I wish there was another b ut unfortunately, it will entail reduction in work force on the retail side, no way around it.” The shift to online-only sales, plus other cost efficiencies, allowed the company to lower al...

Forget the office ping pong table,  Cherry , a startup in Y Combinator’s latest batch, wants to let employees take company perks into their own hands. Cherry co-founders (and sisters) Gillian and Emily O’Brien say their Slackbot marketplace will let employees completely personalize the lifestyle benefits they get from their company, allowing them to set up a Spotify Premium account or buy a subscription to Classpass instead of just taking what perks their company dishes out at face value. Companies will pay huge amounts of money to deliver sweeping employee memberships or build a company gym even if there are only a few people interested in using them. Cherry could potentially eliminate a lot of wasted efforts while still managing to  potential recruits. The available subscriptions run the gamut from things like Classpass, Netflix, Spotify, Peloton, Postmates and other services that allow employees to feel like they’re getting. A sampling of Cherry’s 40+ available services...

Facebook has changed its story after initially trying to downplay how it targeted teens with its Research program that a TechCrunch investigation revealed was paying them gift cards to monitor all their mobile app usage and browser traffic. “Less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch and many other news outlets in a damage control effort 7 hours after we published our report on January 29th. At the time,  Facebook claimed that it had removed its Research app from iOS. The next morning we learned that wasn’t true, as Apple had already forcibly blocked the Facebook Research app for violating its Enterprise Certificate program that supposed to reserved for companies distributing internal apps to employees. It turns out that wasn’t the only time Facebook deceived the public in its response regarding the Research VPN scandal. TechCrunch has attained Facebook’s unpublished February 21st...

I know it’s everyone’s dream to see outside the wavelengths allotted to our visual systems. Well, as usual, mice have gotten there first, with the help of some clever scientists. By injecting specialized light-tweaking nanoparticles into a mouse’s retina , that mouse is suddenly and clearly able to perceive near-infrared light — suggesting the same could be possible for us, assuming you don’t mind a needle in the eye. The advance involves what the researchers, from the University of Science and Technology in China, call “ocular injectable photoreceptor-binding upconversion nanoparticles.” It’s actually not as complicated as it sounds. Well… actually, it is pretty complicated. The human eye can only see wavelengths of light between about 430 and 770 nanometers; above that is ultraviolet and below it is infrared. We don’t see infrared but in great enough quantities we can sense the heat it imparts. All objects give off IR, increasingly so the warmer they are, which is the basis for hea...

Richard Pleper, who’s been at HBO since 1992 and served as CEO since 2013, is leaving the network. In a staff memo , Plepler didn’t offer specific reasons for his departure but said, “Hard as it is to think about leaving the company I love, and the people I love in it, it is the right time for me to do so.” The news comes less than a year after AT&T acquired HBO’s corporate parent Time Warner . Shortly after the deal closed, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey held a town hall meeting where he said HBO would need to grow its subscriber base and the amount of time those subscribers spend watching HBO content (a recording of the meeting was obtained by The New York Times ). In the memo, Plepler said he’s told Stankey — “who has been nothing but gracious since we spoke” — that he “would work closely with him to assure a seamless and organic transition.” This also comes as WarnerMedia plans to launch a streaming service of its own . While Pleper was CEO, Netflix has reshaped the TV lands...

The long-awaited $35,000 Tesla Model 3 has finally arrived, three years after CEO Elon Musk promised to bring the electric vehicle to market at that price point. But that cheaper Model 3 comes with a price — or at least a dramatic shift for Tesla. Tesla said that to achieve this lower price it will shift all sales globally to online only, meaning the company will be closing many of its stores over the next few months. A small number of stores in high-traffic locations will remain as galleries, showcases and Tesla information centers, the company said. “Shifting all sales online, combined with other ongoing cost efficiencies, will enable us to lower all vehicle prices by about 6% on average, allowing us to achieve the $35,000 Model 3 price point earlier than we expected,” the company wrote in a post. Tesla announced Thursday that the $35,000 version will have a 220 miles of range and be able to reach a top speed of 130 miles per hour.  The company also said it’s introducing a M...