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To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense. Oh! And good news, btw, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our trusty Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount ! See you tomorrow!  — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Slumdog $5-illonnaire : Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. Its approach enables people to invest in the real estate sector, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases, for as little as $5 initially. Snap, crackle and . . . fizzle : Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported about Snap

Lyft is facing a fresh batch of lawsuits from drivers and passengers who say they were sexually and physically assaulted during rides and accused the ride-hailing company of failing to protect its users. Seventeen lawsuits were filed in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, the law firm representing many of the victims. These are separate lawsuits and not a class-action. The lawsuits are requesting a jury trial and do not specify a specific financial award except that they’re seeking compensatory damages, including all expenses and wages owed, damages for future loss of earnings, reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses and punitive damages. The lawsuits, 13 of which were from drivers and passengers who were sexually assaulted, allege that Lyft didn’t have proper safety measures to prevent such attacks and failed to adequately respond once the assaults

NASA has finalized an agreement with SpaceX to purchase five more astronaut transportation missions to and from the International Space Station, further entrenching the space company’s position as the prime services vendor for the space agency. The new contract — for the Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13 and Crew-14 missions — is valued at $1.4 billion. It brings the total contract value for all 14 transportation missions, part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program, to $4.9 billion. The funds include use of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to transport up to four astronauts, the Falcon 9 rocket for launch and all other return and recovery operations. NASA announced its intention to order the additional missions in June. The CCtCap program is under the aegis of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, a series of public-private partnerships designed to develop domestic launch capabilities. NASA issued the original $2.6 billion contract to SpaceX in 2014. The spac

Attorney General Merrick Garland. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images If DOJ decides to indict Trump, it will likely wait until after the midterms, Bloomberg reported. The move would be in accordance with longstanding policy that bars prosecutors from taking overt steps that could affect the outcome of an election. AG Merrick Garland also recently introduced new restrictions to "maintain public trust" in the DOJ. If federal prosecutors decide to charge former President Donald Trump with a crime, they'll wait until after the November midterm elections to do so, Bloomberg reported , citing people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department is currently investigating if Trump violated three federal laws , including the Espionage Act, when he improperly moved government records to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office and resisted turning them over for more than a year after. Prosecutors are also said to be zeroing in on Trump as part of a separate, ongoing investi

Spencer Platt/Getty Images US stocks fell Wednesday to mark a fourth consecutive session of declines. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester says policy makers should raise rates beyond 4% and deliver no rate cuts in 2023. Wall Street's major indexes closed August in the red. US stocks fell Wednesday, locking in losses for the month of August, as investors weighed the prospect of the Federal Reserve continuing to raise interest rates into 2023 to bring down high inflation.  Wall Street's major indexes fell for a fourth consecutive session. All but one of the S&P 500 industry sectors lost ground. The energy group fell alongside oil prices, which were under pressure after factory activity in China, a major oil importer, contracted in August. The Nasdaq Composite paced the August declines as it lost about 4%. Stocks pulled back from hefty gains in July that allowed indexes to pare their severe losses for the year.  Investors rounded off August considering the view

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. Amazon/Biolite Energy/Allbirds Labor Day is on Monday, September 5 and retailers are already kicking off their celebratory deals. From outdoor gear to jewelry, you can find plenty of products on sale.  Some of the best sitewide sales include REI, ThermoWorks, J.Crew, and more. Labor Day is more than just a three-day weekend — it's also a great time to score some deals. It's the unofficial end of summer, and the last major savings event before the rush of holiday discounts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Though it's still a few days before the holiday weekend kicks off, we're already seeing several discounts from retailers and brands that we recommend. We've gathered all of them below, and we'll update this story with more Labor Day discounts as additional deals go live. Early Labor Day deals: Editors' picks Note: For more savings, see our coverage for bes

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week’s guest Shiv Rao founded Abridge after experiencing how unnerving it can be to go through a medical emergency with a loved one — even for a practicing doctor like himself. So he and the Abridge team created an app that doesn’t just transcribe a conversation between doctor and patient but can summarize the important parts, pull out the next steps and even define any medical terms that were said so the patient walks away with all the information they need. The same technology helps doctors take better notes and alleviate the “pajama time” burnout by recording what happened in the appointment and synthesizing it in a format that is useful to a doctor. Darrell, Jordan and Shiv talk about the importance of making an impact at scale in the medical field. Subscribe to Found  to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: On  Twitter On  Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com from Tec

Save $90: As of Aug. 31, the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3i laptop is on sale for $289 at Walmart. You'll save 24% on the original price. The magic of the 2-in-1: You don't need to choose between a laptop or a tablet. They combine the best of both worlds. A particularly versatile option is the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3i laptop, which is on sale for only $289 at Walmart. You'll save $90 or about 24% on a best-selling laptop that includes a detachable keyboard. SEE ALSO: The best cheap laptops you can buy, because upgrading your device shouldn’t drain your bank account This model of the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3i features a 1.1Ghz Intel Pentium Silver N5030 processor that helps you multitask on different programs at the same time. It also includes 8GB of RAM for additional performance plus 128GB of internal eMMC storage. All this helps to run on Windows 11, making this a more powerful laptop option if you need more than a Chromebook . Instead of a 360-degree hinged keyboard li

Populus, the San Francisco-based transportation data startup, got its start as shared scooter mania took hold and cities tried to make sense of how infrastructure was being used by fleets of tiny vehicles. Now, Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is positioning the company, which collects data on transportation fleets and shares it with cities, to take advantage another hot opportunity: curbs and congestion.  Populus has continued to ride the micromobility wave and expand into other areas such as commercial fleets, ride-hail vehicles and other new mobility forms like autonomous vehicles. Its software-as-a-service product, which is now used by more than 100 cities across the U.S. and Israel, collects data on shared fleets like scooters, e-bikes and car-sharing. That data is then shared with cities to help planners and regulators understand and manage how streets are used. Cities also can use the Populus API to share information such as restrictions on motorized vehicles, pref

Ubisoft’s Rocksmith+ subscription service will arrive on September 6th, the publisher announced today . Following a nearly year-long delay, the guitar learning platform will be available on PC exclusively through the Ubisoft Store . With 5,000 songs available at lunch, including tunes from Alicia Keys, The Clash and Santana, Ubisoft claims Rocksmith+ will feature the “largest catalog of official songs ever offered in a music learning service.” Additionally, the company has pledged to add “millions” of more tracks in the future. If you played a previous Rocksmith release or participated in the closed beta, you can take advantage of loyalty pricing. Subscribe for three months upfront and you’ll receive one month free. You can also prepay for a year of service and Ubisoft will give you an additional three months for free. One-, three- and 12-month subscriptions are priced at $15, $40 and $100 per respective billing period. You will need a way to connect your electric, acoustic or b

Arturia has been building out its collection of effects plugins over the last few years. One notable blind spot was distortion. It wasn't until FX Collection 3 launched in June that the company would introduce its first dedicated distortion plugins. Dist OpAmp-21 and Dist Tube-Culture are solid, if unspectacular entries in the world of dirt effects. But the new Dist Coldfire is something different. It might just be the most interesting and most versatile distortion plugin I've ever used.  Where OpAmp-21 and Tube-Culture were emulations of classic effects units, Coldfire is something completely new. It takes an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach similar to the company's Pigments (still my favorite soft synth on the market). It's a dual distortion engine — meaning you can combine two different drives simultaneously. There are 11 different distortion algorithms, ranging from the subtle warmth of tape to the harsh howl of a wavefolder. Many of them even have multi

Snap is reportedly preparing to lay off around 20 percent of its staff. The company, which has more than 6,400 employees, will start letting people go on Wednesday, according to The Verge . Snap declined to comment to Engadget. There will reportedly be cuts among the company’s hardware division, which recently halted development on the Pixy selfie drone. The report suggests a group that was working on tools to help developers build games and mini apps on Snapchat will be among the hardest hit by the cuts. Social mapping app Zenly, which Snap bought in 2017 and kept running independently, is expected to be heavily impacted. The advertising sales team will also be restructured, according to the report. It’s been a rough year for Snap, which has seen its stock price fall by 80 percent since January amid a broader economic slowdown that has affected many notable tech companies . Snap has said it would look to cut costs while bringing in fewer new hires. The company posted weak earni

UPDATE: Aug. 30, 2022, 2:30 p.m. EDT We've updated this post with the best deals from across the Apple universe. BEST MAC DEAL: The 16-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) is a powerhouse laptop built for creatives down to a record-low price — $2,099 $2,499 at Amazon (save $400) BEST IPAD DEAL: The 2021 iPad (WiFi, 64GB) is the best iPad for most people, and it's down to a record low price — $279 $329 at Amazon (save $50) BEST IPHONE DEAL: The iPhone 13 Mini (64GB) at Verizon is a mini phone with plenty of storage space and a battery life worth bragging about — $0 with an eligible trade-in on select 5G unlimited plans $699.99 (save up to $699.99) BEST APPLE WATCH DEAL: The Apple Watch Series 7 (41mm, GPS) is only $20 away from its all-time low price — $299 $399 at Amazon (save $100) BEST ACCESSORIES DEAL: The AirPods Max are the stylish and functional over-the-ear headphones that most Apple users are sure to love — $479 $549 at Ama