Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is about to undertake a critical test flight to the International Space Station.

Jul.27 -- Neuberger Berman Senior Research Analyst Daniel Flax discusses Alphabet's earnings beating estimates due to robust digital ads from marketers as the Covid-19 pandemic winds down. He speaks with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."

Jul.27 -- The only daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business from San Francisco.

Making mistakes when you distribute equity can really screw up your startup in the long term. Read this to find out how you should distribute your startup's shares.

Extreme weather, a changing climate, and impervious streets and roads have combined to create an urban disaster

You may well recognize Cassie as the basis of Agility Robotics’ delivery bot, Digit. If you’ve been following the tech’s progression at all, however, you no doubt know that it started life as the ostrich-inspired Cassie. The robot is all legs and not much else.In addition to fueling Agility’s commercial ambitions, the robot has proven a solid platform for exploring bipedal location. Announced by Oregon State University professor Jonathan Hunt in 2017, Cassie was created with the aim of a $1 million grant from the DoD — a pretty familiar story in the robotics world.Today, a team from the Dynamics Robotics Laboratory in OSU’s College of Engineering highlighted the ways they’re continuing to push Cassie to its bipedal limits. The team says the robot was able to run a 5K untethered, on a single charge. Cassie’s not going to beat any human world records anytime soon, but the 53-minute (and three second) run was still an impressive exhibition for the tech.

In Bangladesh, students often rely on after school learning centers for study help or test preparation, but many of the best ones are concentrated in major cities. Edtech startup Shikho was created to make supplementary education more accessible and affordable. The company announced today it has closed a $1.3 million seed round co-led by returning investor LearnStart (the seed fund of edtech investment firm Learn Capital) and Anchorless Bangladesh. The round also included participation from Wavemaker Partners and Ankur Nagpal, founder and chief executive officer of online course platform Teachable. Shikho’s last round of funding was $275,000 in pre-seed financing last year from LearnStart and strategic angel investors. 

In order to better protect Microsoft Teams users from link-based phishing attacks, Microsoft has announced that Safe Links in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is now available in its video conferencing software.Whether you're working from home or have already returned to the office, the future of work requires that users be protected from the latest threats no matter where they are so that they can work from anywhere.Beginning today, organizations with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can further protect Microsoft Teams users from malicious phishing attacks that are often carried out using weaponized URLs.What helps set Safe Links apart from other security solutions is the fact that it scans URLs at the time of click to ensure users are protected with the latest intelligence from Microsoft Defender.

No big U.S. tech company is more exposed to China’s political climate than Apple. But its adroit management of the Chinese market is insulating it from the turmoil gripping the country’s own tech stocks.

Consumers should not have to pay excessive prices to use public car charging, MPs say.

Jul.27 -- Wedbush Securities Managing Director Dan Ives says Microsoft continues to defy expectations and remains a major cloud play. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." Ives, his family and his firm do not own shares of Microsoft.

Before you kick back and play some Warzone or WoW to relax after work today, take a gander at why nearly 20% of the company's employees are about to strike.

The largest moon in our Solar System, often overlooked, is a water-rich world. Does that mean life?

There are over 1 billion mobile money accounts globally. Africa leads the way in transaction value and volume thanks to M-Pesa, largely used in East Africa. Other regions across the continent are also growing fast.In 2019, West Africa reported the most live mobile money services in any region, with 56 million active accounts. In Ivory Coast, one of Francophone Africa’s largest mobile money markets, 75% of the population own a mobile money account, compared to 20% who own bank accounts. The difference is staggering and clearly shows the region’s huge appetite for the service.While telecom operators have largely dominated mobile money services across most of sub-Saharan Africa, a few startups are trying to change the mobile money experience for customers. Ivory Coast-based fintech startup Julaya is one such company, and today, it announced a $2 million pre-Series A funding to expand its products across West Africa.

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.Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 27, 2021. Today is a good day not only because the U.S. women’s national soccer team is heading to the Olympics quarter finals (shoutout Gotham’s Carli Lloyd!), but also because Danny Crichton just published an incredibly interesting EC-1 digging into RapidSOS. Danny has previously written extensively about disaster tech, a growth industry of sorts given the changing climate. OK, now to tech news! — AlexKicking off today’s startup notes, let’s talk about stock. Startup shares, to be precise. Mostly investors get preferred shares, because they can demand better equity as they are bringing capital to the table. Founders and staff tend to get common stock. Which, as the name implies, is not as good as preferred. But there’s a venture capital firm in Boston called Pillar VC that buys common stock in its investments. One of its investors, Jamie Goldstein, wrote an essay for TechCrunch sharing what he’s learned from the process. It’s worth reading.

If you're looking to buy or build a new workstation anytime soon, there's a high possibility that you may end up choosing a processor from AMD as opposed to Intel according to new sales data from Puget Systems.As reported by Wccftech, the US-based custom PC building company from Auburn, Washington recently released its sales and distribution reports for both its AMD and Intel workstations to reveal that AMD processors were present in six out of ten of the custom systems it sold in June of this year.July also looks to be a big month for AMD processors at Puget Systems according to a new blog post from the company's head product developer William George though the month isn't over quite yet.George provided further insight on his views regarding the ongoing battle between AMD and Intel in his blog post, saying:

Strengthening a multi sectoral approach for food systems transformation will be key if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and tackle the climate crisis.

Jul.27 -- Wedbush Securities Managing Director Dan Ives says Apple's performance in China is a "jaw-dropper" and investors are underestimating the Apple demand story. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."

Apple reported across-the-board sales growth in its Q3 2021 earnings call, but company executives warned that supply shortages had limited sales of Macs and iPads - and that they will likely limit sales of iPhones to come in Q4, which could impact the iPhone 13 launch. “We expect supply constraints during the September quarter to be greater than what we experienced during the June quarter. The constraints will primarily impact iPhone and iPad,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on the call.Apple still expects double-digit growth in Q4, but cautioned listeners that the growth would be lower than what Apple reported for Q3 2021, which was up 36% over Q3 2020. Apple’s shortages are linked to the semiconductor chip shortages plaguing others in the phones, computing, and automotive industries, among others. 

The MaxPro fitness machine offers up to 300 lbs of resistance in a tiny package. The concentric-only resistance won't work for everyone though.

Jul.27 -- Gradient Investments Portfolio Manager Jeremy Bryan says recent earnings prove big tech is performing "phenomenal." He speaks on "Bloomberg What'd You Miss?" Bloomberg Intelligence's Anand Srinivasan also comments.

For fleet managers, managing shipping crew changes across different countries is an elaborate process even in the best of times—and now is definitely not the best of times. Greywing, a Y Combinator-backed platform for automating maritime operations, launched a new solution today that it describes as an industry-first. Called Crew Change, it is used to help shipping companies manage testing, quarantine and other COVID-19 regulations for their crew members.Crew Change draws on data from S5 Agency World, a global port agency, to keep on top of quarantine, testing and vaccination requirements, which are constantly changing. Greywing co-founder and chief executive officer Nick Clarke says Crew Change can potentially save fleet managers millions of dollars by streamlining crew changes, finding the most cost-effective flights for transporting crew, planning routes (or rerouting if necessary) and reducing delays, which have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the supply chain.

Some Alienware gaming PCs are so powerful that six states won't let you buy them due to their excessive power consumption.Dell has announced that it is no longer shipping some of its popular gaming PCs after California and five other states introduced restrictions on the amount of energy a personal computer could draw, as measured in kWh per year. A prominent message on some configurations of the Alienware Aurora R10 and Aurora R12 desktop PCs reads: "This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states. Any orders placed that are bound for those states will be canceled."The issue is California and similar states passing power consumption regulations on computer systems. A Dell rep confirmed to The Register that this was the case. "Yes, this was driven by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Tier 2 implementation that defined a mandatory energy efficiency standard for PCs – including desktops, AIOs and mobile gaming systems. This was put into effect on July 1, 2021. Select configurations of the Alienware Aurora R10 and R12 were the only impacted systems across Dell and Alienware."

A critical vulnerability has been found in Apple's MacOS that could allow malicious code to run on your Mac.