Mission Everywhere

A Walmart store. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images Walmart saw an estimated 5.3% decline year-over-year for in-store traffic, according to Placer.ai. Nonetheless, Walmart got more search traffic than its rivals from people looking online for Black Friday deals. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer offered both early online and in-person Black Friday deals. Shoppers just aren't flocking to stores like they used to for Black Friday. And the world's largest retailer experienced that firsthand this year. Walmart saw a 5.3% dip in physical store traffic this Black Friday compared to last, according to estimates from Placer.ai , a location data company. And big-box stores across the board saw fewer people coming in: Placer.ai  estimates that Target and Lowe's saw Black Friday foot traffic decline 2% and 18.6%, respectively, compared with last year. But that doesn't mean fewer people are shopping at Walmart and its rivals. Global online searches for the term "Blac...

Bumble has experimented with many ways to help its users engage with each other beyond tapping and swiping on miscellaneous profiles. Today, Bumble launched a message-before-match feature, “Compliments,” allowing users to send a note before they decide to connect. Users can send one Compliment per day, and there’s a 150-character limit per Compliment, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Compliments can be seen on the user’s main Encounters page as well as their Beeline, which is a perk for Premium members. Users will also get notifications for unread Compliment messages upon opening the app. The purpose of the new feature is for users to stand out and “be even more intentional about starting the conversation in a positive way,” Bumble wrote in its announcement. In a growing pool of online daters, sending a compliment to a potential match could be a nice bonus for users. “Compliments answer the what and why of dating. What is it about a person that you find fascinating? Why do you want t...

Taylor Locke / Fortune : Uniswap Labs launches an NFT marketplace aggregator with listings from OpenSea, LooksRare, NFTX, and others, after acquiring the aggregator Genie in June   —  Though sales of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have dropped substantially amid the ongoing Crypto Winter, Uniswap Labs remains bullish on the future of the market. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/4ICMw78

New York City interior designer Bennett Leifer said statement headboards are in and overusing white is out. Bjorn Wallander (left), Getty Images NYC interior designer Bennett Leifer outlined what's in and what's out right now. Textured walls, hand-painted wallpaper, and bold headboards create subtle luxury that people want. But the all-white look and overdressed windows have fallen out of favor. People across New York City, the Hamptons, the Hudson Valley, and Connecticut  seeking whimsical yet sophisticated interiors call on Bennett Leifer. Leifer, who founded his New York City-based interior design firm nearly a decade ago, has his finger on the pulse of the design whims and wants of his clients, and those waning in popularity.  He spoke with Insider about what his clients are seeking in their homes now, and the tired trends they're ready to leave behind. In: Handmade and unexpected touches Handmade details are in. Just look at these two rooms with hand-pai...

We’re just about one week away from achieving liftoff for TC Sessions: Space — a full day jam-packed with the latest space science, tech and trends. Join us on December 6 in Los Angeles to hear from and connect with the startups, researchers, investors and technologists forging the future of space. A word (or two or three) about our partner companies. They play a vital role at TechCrunch events. As subject-matter experts, they show up and present sessions with relevant content designed to help early-stage founders succeed. And yes, we’re about to showcase one of them. Beat the price hike: The moon is not made of cheese, but if you act quickly enough, you’ll save a chunk of cheddar. Buy a $199 pass before December 2 at 11:59 pm (PST) . The price goes up to $495 at midnight, December 2. Today, we’re excited to highlight Antaris, a cloud-based satellite software platform dedicated to simplifying satellite design and deployment while reducing cost and time-to-orbit. Be in the room...

Carly Page / TechCrunch : Google says Barcelona-based spyware vendor Variston planted spyware by exploiting zero-day flaws in Chrome, Firefox, and Windows between 2018 and 2022   —  A Barcelona-based company that bills itself as a custom security solutions provider exploited several zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/9WIqCuc

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch : AWS unveils Amazon Security Lake, a service that automatically centralizes an organization's security data from cloud and on-premises sources into a data lake   —  AWS today announced Amazon Security Lake, a new purpose-built data lake for security-related data. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/XrQMgcf

  Doing PR as a small business doesn't need to be hard — or expensive. Alistair Berg/Getty Images Hiring someone to handle your small business' PR can be costly and ineffective. Doing your own PR starts with setting realistic and clear goals from the start. Then figure out where your audience is and what expertise you can lend to content creators. This article is part of " Marketing for Small Business ," a series exploring the basics of marketing strategy for SBOs to earn new customers and grow their business. From the outside, it can feel like there's a lot of gatekeeping in the media world. So when small-business owners are thinking about getting press as part of their marketing strategy, it's understandable that many look to hire someone with existing connections in the field.  The bad news is that can be cost prohibitive for many small businesses. The good news is that it's totally doable for founders to manage their own PR until they h...

This time two years ago, I changed up my annual gift guide feature’s focus from travel to working from home. After all, very few of us were doing much traveling at the time. I planned to switch back as the world reopened; it’s clear now, however, that for many of us, there is no going back to the before times. The pandemic has had a number of lasting impacts in our lives, including how – and where – we work. But the transition from the office to home requires more than simply choosing not to get on that train every morning. Creating a home office is a deliberate act. At its center is building a space where it’s possible to be every bit as productive in the absence of in-face meetings and awkward break room conversations. You need to build a place that will sufficiently separate work life from the personal for eight to 10 hours a day. Here’s a handy gift guide for the person in life who needs a little extra push into that – or perhaps requires a refresh on some of the gear they pur...

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. Tom Cruise in "Top Gun: Maverick." Paramount "Top Gun: Maverick" is now available to watch at home. The movie costs $13 to buy through digital retailers like Prime Video and Vudu . You'll also be able to stream it with a Paramount Plus subscription ($5/month) starting December 22. "Top Gun: Maverick," the sequel to the 1986 movie "Top Gun," is now available to watch at home. You can buy or rent the movie from digital retailers like Amazon and Vudu for a starting price of $5. The box office hit will also be available on Paramount Plus starting December 22. Tom Cruise returns to the "Top Gun" franchise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, a US Navy test pilot who is tasked with training a group of young Top Gun graduates for a high-risk specialized mission. The detachment includes Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), ...

Crypto lending platform BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, just a few weeks after once-major crypto exchange FTX did the same. While BlockFi has been struggling to stay afloat for months now (and was even potentially going to be acquired by FTX ), this latest filing signals that the bankruptcy contagion may run deeper than what the crypto industry sees at the surface. “It is another example that the crypto winter is not over, and with the FTX debacle, it’s going to persist longer than previously expected,” Ric Edelman, founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP) and author of “The Truth About Crypto,” said to TechCrunch. “There is clearly a large amount of self-dealing and excessive leverage in the system, and until most of that is washed out through business failures, M&A and regulatory actions, the crypto winter will persist.” Ric Edelman, founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals With BlockFi now in the midst of b...

It’s me! Hi! (I’m not the problem, just the podcast’s host, here to bring you the latest greatest in startup and tech news this fine Monday morning). Welcome back to Equity , the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for those of you who hummed the first sentence of this post, extra points to you. I’m starting things off this week as a test run before Alex heads on paternity leave. We have lots to get to, so shake off the holiday feels and let’s remember how this ecosystem works? Here’s what we got to:  The markets are broadly down, due to COVID-19 protests breaking out in China.  Blockfi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our crypto reporter Jacquelyn Melinek has more on what happened – and she explains just how intertwined this universe is. I’ll also get to notes I took from our recent crypto conference and how the reality may be looking like Web 2.5 before it looks like Web 3.0. We also talk about ...

Juli Clover / MacRumors : Elon Musk says Apple threatened to “withhold” Twitter from App Store “but won't tell us why” and calls out Apple's lower Twitter ad spend and alleged censorship   —  Apple has cut back on its Twitter advertising, according to Twitter CEO Elon Musk. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/SfgxpLE

NurPhoto/Getty Images A radio show host in Canada confirmed last month she's behind TikTok's popular Jessie voice. Kat Callaghan said she's made peace with people using the text-to-speech voice to say bad things. She told The Verge she can separate herself from the voice because she understands it's not her. The woman behind TikTok's famous text-to-speech voice, Jessie, said she's made peace with the platform's creators using it to say bad things on the app. Kat Callaghan, a radio host on Canada's 91.5 The Beat station, told The Verge she can distance herself from TikToks that use her voice to say profane things. "In my mind, I understand that that's not me — I never said that," she told the publication. "So that's fine if that's what people want to do on their own platform, but it certainly isn't anything that I would ever say." She said she can separate herself from Jessie, as her voice is known on the ...

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images/Insider Peacock has kicked off its Cyber Monday sale with one of the best streaming deals we've seen so far. The limited-time discount gives new subscribers a whopping 80% off Peacock Premium. Now during Cyber Monday, new members who sign up for Peacock Premium can lock in a monthly rate of just 99 cents a month for 12 months. The normal monthly cost of Peacock Premium is $5. With this deal, you can get a year of service for only $12 — that's a savings of $48.  Even at full price, Peacock Premium is one of the most affordable streaming services on the market, so this deal makes it an especially great value. Though Peacock does have a free plan with limited access to its library, Peacock Premium unlocks everything the service has to offer, including a huge library of NBCUniversal content and even live sports, like Sunday Night Fo...

You wouldn’t drive a car or fly a plane if the only controls you had available were on/off switches for left and right or up and down, and yet that’s pretty much what gamers are stuck with when they control their virtual avatars with their keyboards. U.K. startup Peratech wants to change that with a new range of “force feedback” keyboards that are starting to turn up in Lenovo notebook computers. I spoke with the company’s CEO to learn more. “We just launched a force-sensing keyboard. It’s not just the keys; it’s a user experience. We created a user interface that is both an application and a game bar widget so that new users can have out-of-the-box simplicity, and serious gamers get advanced controls to take the mechanics of using the keyboard,” explains Jon Stark, CEO at Peratech. “With our keyboards you have a tactile feedback loop. The keyboard knows how hard you press, and you can change that pressure profile. Say you want to have really progressive acceleration at first because...

Financial Times : Source: Musk sought to call some brands' CEOs to berate them for advertising less on Twitter; others lowered spend to the minimum needed to avoid confrontation   —  Top brands abandon social media platform as billionaire owner berates chief executives who have curbed spending from Techmeme https://ift.tt/TqPhGNv

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review : A look at OpenAI's Minecraft bot, which has learned to complete complex tasks in Minecraft after being trained on 70K hours of video of people playing the game   —  Online videos are a vast and untapped source of training data—and OpenAI says it has a new way to use it. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/VgCiURl

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. Save big on the Fitbit Charge 5, Sense 2, and Versa 4 during Cyber Monday. Jenny McGrath/Insider If you've been waiting until Cyber Monday  to score a deal on that Fitbit tracker you've had your eye on, your time has come. The sales event has arrived and we're keeping track of all the latest Cyber Monday deals , including a ton of Fitbit discounts available at Amazon , Best Buy , and Walmart you can take advantage of right now. We compared Fitbit models and chose the Charge 5 as our favorite for fitness tracking , and it currently has the best Cyber Monday deal . It's typically $150 but it's on sale for just $100 — an all-time low price for a wearable that offers built-in GPS, Fitbit's new Daily Readiness score, advanced heart metric analysis, and the ability to track a variety of activities. It's even capable of logging sleep data and getting text and phone call not...