The Daily Crunch 08/23/16

All engines are firing on getting to full self-driving cars, and one credit card company claims to be cuddly. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for August 23, 2016. And if your phone can't put itself back together, I pity you.

1. Can a credit card company be... good?

LendUp is a startup that wants to add some flex and compassion to the credit industry, with a credit card called the L Card that holds no hidden fees and can be paid back on a flexible schedule depending on a user's needs. Our own Josh Constine called them "loan dolphins," as opposed to loan sharks, but how long can dolphins survive in shark-infested waters? They company just raised an additional $47 million to keep swimming, so hopefully the experiment continues for a while longer yet.

2. Full self-driving cars on track for 2019

Key autonomous car tech suppliers Mobileye and Delphi are teaming up to speed the progress of putting self-driving cars on the road. The two announced a new partnership with the aim of producing an end-to-end Level 4/Level 5 autonomous driving system that car makers can use to give their shipping vehicles robo drivers by late 2019. The race is clearly on for full autonomy, and both Mobileye and Delphi seem interested in skipping right ahead to the dessert course, where we can lean back and play Pokemon Go while the cars drive themselves.

3. All 44 of YC's S16 demo day 1 companies

It's that time again: Y Combinator is demoing the companies coming out of its latest cohort, the Summer 2016 class. Day 1 of their multi-day demo extravaganza features the launch of 44 startups, which is a lot of them. Some highlights: A company called Skylights is doing VR as in-flight entertainment, providing headsets that act as virtual private theaters, and Luminostics, an app that uses your smartphone's flash to diagnose illnesses.

4. It's been two years – you never call, you ever write

Here comes the sun: NASA has re-established contact with a satellite it lost comms with almost two years ago. The so-called STEREO-B satellite was launched in 2006 and was only supposed to operate for two years, but kept on reporting in after that. Then in 2014, six years after its original planned end date, it stopped talking to NASA due to its position relative to the sun. It coming back online could help it return to operational status – or maybe in that intervening time it acquired sentience and will soon destroy us all. Probably a 50/50 chance of either scenario coming true.

5. Law and Order: Special data parsing algorithms unit

Digging through unstructured legal data and putting it into some kind of useful, searchable form is typically the domain of legal interns, often students working harder and longer hours thanks to their bosses. Startup Logikcull is trying to make that easier with machine learning, and it just picked up $10 million to help do so. It could reduce costs for legal activities in general, and it's yet another startup that shows even specialized white-collar industries need to start thinking about the impact of AI.

6. Delicious Nougat rolls out, but most won't get a taste for a long time

Android's naming convention really taxes my ability to resist my sweet tooth. The latest version, Android 7.0 or 'Nougat,' is now out of beta and officially available to users... a tiny, tiny fraction of Android users. Nexus device owners can grab it, and the LG V20 is going to ship with it in early September, but even popular, current flagship devices like the Galaxy S7 likely won't get it for a while yet. Fuchsia can't come fast enough.

7. Cell phone, assemble!

Move over Avengers: a cell phone can now answer the call. This self-assembling gadget was created by the aptly named MIT Self-Assembly Lab, and follows its early research into building self-construction Ikea-like furniture. MIT's team says this can actually make for cheaper mass market assembly practices in the future, too.