Tragic murder in SF, Twitter sends dogecoins skyrocketing, and Android gets account deletion option

It’s the time of the week, folks: the weather of the week in review (WiR). If you’re new to WiR, this is the newsletter where TechCrunch recaps the week in tech that’s been. We understand – you are a busy person. We are all. So what better way to catch up on what happened than in summarized, bulleted form? We can’t think of just one – and believe us, we tried.

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With the call to action out of the way, let’s get down to business!

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Tragic murder: Bob Lee, the creator of Cash App and former CTO of Square, was killed this week in a fatal stabbing in San Francisco. Roman writes that before joining MobileCoin, Lee worked at Google during the early years of Android, focusing on core library development. He then joined Square, the payments company that later became Block, and invested in startups including SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile and Figma.

Twitter sends Doge soaring: Monday, alexander wrote that Twitter added the cryptocurrency symbol dogecoin to a prominent place on Twitter.com, causing the value of dogecoin to skyrocket. It’s no coincidence that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is currently embroiled in a cryptocurrency lawsuit — a lawsuit in which Musk’s lawyers called dogecoin a “legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion.”

Gen Z embraces Fanfix: More and more Gen Z users are jumping on the content creation bandwagon in an effort to make a living beyond the typical 9 to 5 gig. social media, many creators are concerned. lauren reports that’s why a growing number of Gen Zers are jumping on Fanfix — a competitor to Patreon that only allows clean content and allows influencers to earn money directly from their followers.

A long-promised treadmill is coming: Startup Virtuix — which has long promised a consumer omnidirectional treadmill, raising more than $1.1 million on Kickstarter and $35 million from investors to bring it to market — has finally started shipping a home version of its product. brian reports that the $2,595 Omni One features upgrades from Virtuix’s original limited-production model, including a new attachment arm, and comes with a custom Pico Neo 3 headset.

Western Digital Infringements: Data storage giant Western Digital has confirmed that hackers recently exfiltrated data from its systems in a “network security incident”. Carly writing. The California-based company said in a statement Monday that an unauthorized third party gained access to “a number” of its internal systems on March 26. Western Digital did not confirm the nature of the incident or reveal how it was compromised, but its statement suggests the incident may be ransomware-related.

Android apps have a delete option: Ivan reports that Google announced a new account deletion policy for Android apps this week, giving apps that offer account creation an easy way to delete the account as well. Scheduled to take effect from next year, the move follows Apple, which implemented a similar policy last June for apps on the App Store.

A publisher-focused alternative to Twitter: Post, a sort of alternative to Twitter that rethinks how publishers should interact with social media, has opened its doors to the public. Sarah reports that the startup, like others in this space, gained traction following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, as many began looking for a new place to read and discuss the news or share their own thoughts. with their subscribers. But Post doesn’t want to be just another Twitter clone.

SpaceX hype machine: More and more hype is building for the first orbital flight test of Starship, SpaceX’s ultra-heavy-duty launch system. The hype began to build to a crescendo this week when the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an air traffic advisory identifying April 10 as the primary launch date. But the FAA has yet to issue the all-important launch license to SpaceX, Aria written – a final regulatory green light which is a non-negotiable step before the company can perform the test.

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TechCrunch isn’t just a source of well-reported written articles (how’s that for forced alliteration on a Friday?) — it’s also a podcasting machine, wouldn’t you know. On Equity, the team talked about the Y Combinator demo day as well as Q1 numbers, deals of the week and venture capital activity in Latin America. TC’s Found podcast featured The Nudge, a text-based app that helps users make the best shots in their city. Chain Reaction – which has been nominated for a Webby Award (voting ends April 20, by the way) – interviewed Arianna Simpson, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, about the firm’s focus on crypto investments. And TechCrunch Live took a deep dive into Oma Fertility, a company that has raised over $70 million to radically improve in vitro fertilization.

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TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and polls, which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If not, consider signing up. Here are some highlights from this week:

YC Winter 2023 Demo Day Favorites: The TC team rounded up some of their top picks from Y Combinator’s winter 2023 batch, including companies developing comic book software, meat factories and Tesla-derived heat pumps.

Climate Technology Slowdown: Tim writes about the slowdown in climate tech trading, which is happening as investors anticipate a recession in the coming months. So far, the resilience of climate technology has led some to call it the quintessential “recession-proof” investment. Tim wonders if that’s still true.

A sullen Q1: alexander writes about how the global venture capital market contracted in the first quarter of 2023 – and would have been even worse if not for a few mega-deals. The drop in funding implies that the current slowdown in startup investment may not change any time soon.