Benchmark's entire current partnership—Jack Altman, Peter Fenton, Chetan Puttagunta, Everett Randle and Eric Vishria—will join a single main-stage panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, marking the first time the full team has appeared together on the Disrupt Stage. The session, titled 'What We Believe Now,' will focus on where future startups may emerge and which founder assumptions deserve rethinking. The panel follows Benchmark's recent expansion, having raised roughly $2 billion this year across a new flagship fund and its first growth fund.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-21
Most major phone makers, including Apple, Google and Samsung, have phased out the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of USB-C for wired audio, charging and data transfer. Apple made the switch starting with the iPhone 7 in 2016, followed by Google in 2017 and Samsung in 2019, with Apple finally adopting USB-C for the iPhone 15 due to EU regulation. Sony remains an exception, still including a 3.5mm jack on its upcoming Xperia 1 VIII.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-14
The Commodore 64, launched in 1982 for $595 with just 64 kilobytes of memory, went on to sell roughly 12.5 million units and become the best-selling desktop computer ever. Its combination of an inexpensive industrial CPU, a music-synthesizer sound chip, and a game-oriented graphics chip made it unusually capable for its price, despite being seen at the time as a mere 'game machine.' That gaming-friendly hardware ended up enabling some of the earliest persistent, open-ended online multiplayer worlds.
worksinprogress.news
· 2026-09-09
The FSIS's century-old 'poke and sniff' meat inspection system, born from the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act, proved unable to detect microscopic pathogens like E. coli as beef consumption soared. The 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, which sickened over 700 people and killed four children, forced federal regulators to speed up adoption of a science-based safety approach originally developed by NASA for feeding astronauts.
wired.com
· 2026-09-08
A new Linux distribution called stillOS has debuted with a strong focus on simplifying onboarding for people who have never used Linux before. It uses atomic updates so the operating system and apps update automatically in the background without risking system stability, and it lets users customize their desktop without needing any technical Linux knowledge.
zdnet.com
· 2026-08-28
A writer recounts how her sister Annie and partner Jack, after moving into a California home, began feeding an American Crow with a limp they named Sal. The bird's shyer companion, dubbed Pal, soon joined in, and both crows started visiting the couple regularly in exchange for peanuts. Over months, the birds and humans developed a recognizable daily routine of greetings and visits.
audubon.org
· 2026-08-28
Family members W.L. Lyons Brown III and Stuart Brown sent a seven-page letter to over 130 relatives criticizing Brown-Forman's board for rejecting Sazerac's unsolicited $15 billion takeover offer and for pursuing a failed merger with Pernod Ricard instead. Days after the letter circulated, CEO Lawson Whiting announced he would step down, amid a five-year period in which the company's stock has fallen 60%.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-24
GoKawiil