Crunch Hype

Twitter is finally letting you do more with Retweets. In a small but useful update rolled out today, Twitter will now allow users to add a photo, video or GIF to a Retweet, instead of only text. The feature is live today on iOS, Android and Twitter’s mobile website. Though a seemingly minor upgrade, the […]

Microsoft has been leaning into accessibility in gaming lately, most visibly with its amazing Adaptive Controller, and a new patent suggests another way the company may be accommodating disabled gamers: an Xbox controller with a built-in braille display.

With Uber expected to make its debut on the public market by Friday, May 10, on-demand ride-hailing drivers are planning to strike on Wednesday. The New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to stand in solidarity with drivers in London and log off from both Uber and Lyft on May 8 between […]

Facebook today announced a series of changes to the way it ranks videos on its social network, which determines how widely they’re distributed. According to the updated guidelines, Facebook will now prioritize videos that focus on original content, those where users are engaged for longer periods of time and those where users return repeatedly to […]

Most of the strategy discussions and news coverage in the media and entertainment industry is concerned with the unfolding corporate mega-mergers and the political implications of social media platforms. These are important conversations, but they’re largely a story of twentieth-century media (and broader society) finally responding to the dominance Web 2.0 companies have achieved. To […]

Android Auto — the in-car platform that brings the look and functions of a smartphone to the vehicle’s central screen — is getting a new look and improved navigation and communication features that will roll out this summer. The improvements and new look were revealed Monday during Google I/O 2019, the annual developer conference. The […]

We’re inviting hundreds of think-outside-the-boxers — coders, devs, engineers and tech makers — to compete onsite at the TechCrunch Hackathon, which takes place during Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. Are you up for the adventure? Participating in the hackathon is free, and all competitors receive Expo Only passes for days one and two, […]

Behind all those on-demand shuttles, ride-hailing vehicles, dockless scooters, bikes and someday even autonomous cars is data. A lot of data. Numerous startups have popped up and several large, established companies have rolled out products all aimed at capturing and making sense of that data. One such company is Populus AI, a startup that has […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. The EU will reportedly investigate Apple following anti-competition complaint from Spotify The European Commission plans to investigate Spotify’s claim that Apple […]

A new trailer for “Spider-Man: Far From Home” has just been released, and it’s setting up a way for Marvel to finally unite the disparate elements of its franchises. The trailer contains a pretty huge spoiler for “Avengers: Endgame,” so be prepared, but it also reveals how Disney’s super-heroically successful Marvel franchise will enter the […]

When it comes to voting, we've come a long way from dropping pebbles into an amphora, but still not nearly far enough, if the lack of confidence in our election systems is any indication. Microsoft is the first major tech company to take on this problem with a new platform it calls ElectionGuard that promises to make elections more secure and transparent — and yes, it's free and open source.

One major — and somewhat unexpected — theme at Microsoft’s Build developer conference this week is autonomous robots. After acquiring AI startup Bonsai, which specialized in reinforcement learning for autonomous systems, the company today announced the limited preview of a new Azure-based platform that is partially built on this acquisition and that will help developers […]

If you write in Microsoft Word Online, you’ll soon have an AI-powered editor at your side. As the company announced today, Word will soon get a new feature called “Ideas” that will offer writers all kinds of help with their documents. If writing is a struggle for you, the most important feature of Ideas is […]

Microsoft today announced the private preview launch of Visual Studio Online, an online code editor the company is positioning as a companion to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. The service is based on the Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s popular free and open-source desktop code editor. This means Visual Studio Online will also support all […]

Microsoft’s quantum computer may not have a working qubit yet, but the company has been hard at work on building the tools to program future quantum computers. Over the course of the last few years, the company announced both Q#, a programming language for writing quantum code and a compiler for this language, as well […]

IntelliCode, Microsoft’s tool for AI-assisted coding, is now generally available. It supports C# and XAML in Visual Studio and Java, JavaScript, TypeScript and Python in Visual Studio Code. By default, it is now also included in Visual Studio 2019, starting with the second preview of version 16.1, which the company also announced that. IntelliCode is […]

Microsoft today announced a new open-source project for React Native developers who want to target Windows. “React Native for Windows,” as the project is unsurprisingly called, is meant to be a new ‘performance-oriented’ implementation of React for Windows under the MIT License. Being able to target Windows using React Native, a framework for cross-platform development […]

Windows 10 is getting a new terminal for command-line users, Microsoft announced at its Build developer conference today. The new so-called ‘Windows Terminal’ will launch in mid-June and promises to be a major update of the existing Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell experience. Indeed, it seems like the Terminal will essentially become the default environment […]

The spat between Spotify and Apple is going to be the focus on a new investigation from the EU, according to a report from the FT. The paper reported today that the European Commission (EC), the EU’s regulatory body, plans to launch a competition inquiry around Spotify’s claim that the iPhone-maker uses its position as […]

Cross-border fintech continues to be an area of interest for venture capitalists. The latest deal sees GGV Capital — the U.S-China firm that’s backed Xiaomi, Airbnb, Square and others — lead a $10 million investment in Singapore-based startup Thunes. Other investors in the Series A round are not being disclosed at this point. Thunes — […]

The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Thursday April 25, 2019. Streamed live to Twitter, or just slightly after the fact. Luminary and the podcast wars, @jack, and the Democrats in the Age of Bidenomics. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @dsearls, @mickeleh, @kteare, […]

Welcome back to this week’s transcribed edition of Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast that unpacks the numbers behind the headlines. This week, Crunchbase News’s Alex Wilhelm and Extra Crunch’s Danny Crichton connected from their respective sides of the States to run through a rash of news about Divvy, Cheddar, SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. Plus, […]

Jessica Fields Contributor Share on Twitter Jessica Fields is a research analyst and program manager at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and a collaborator in The OpEd Project. May is national Older Americans Month, and this year’s theme is Connect, Create, Contribute. One area in particular threatens to prevent older adults from making […]

After a dozen years of riding high, the iPhone is showing signs of weakness in a struggling smartphone market where Apple is still managing to be the biggest loser. Here’s a snapshot of where things are at… Apple hasn’t been broadcasting its quarterly unit sales the past few quarters so we’ll have to lean on […]

“The future is private,” said Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook’s roadmap, after conceding “we don’t exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly.” But it’s easy to see why he would genuinely want that … now. Facebook’s seemingly endless series of privacy debacles have been disastrous for the company’s reputation. Not […]

3 key secrets to building extraordinary teams David Cancel, the CEO and founder of Drift, wrote a deep dive on how to think about finding and recruiting the kinds of people who build incredible startups. Among the factors he looks at: Scrappiness (Importance: 35%) The four most telling words a new hire can say: “I’ll […]

This post and podcast contain spoilers for “Game of Thrones” and “Avengers: Endgame.” “The Long Night,” the much-anticipated “Game of Thrones” episode where the living and the dead meet in a desperate, epic battle, wasn’t entirely embraced by the show’s fans. Instead, many have complained about the episode’s (literal) darkness, while others were disappointed by the apparent […]

Former Youtube star Austin Jones has been sentenced to ten years in a US federal prison after pleading guilty to persuading underage girls to send him explicit videos of themselves. Jones, who made a name for himself online singing covers of songs, was arrested and charged in 2017 with two counts of producing child pornography. […]

In this week's newsletter: WeWork files confidentially for IPO, Lyft loses scooter head and Magic Leap raises MORE money.

As it gears up to go public Uber is facing legacy baggage down under: A class action lawsuit has been filed in Australia on behalf of around 6,000 taxi and hire car drivers and license owners, Reuters reported Friday. The suit was filed Friday at the Victoria Supreme Court by personal injury and compensation law […]

No one does brand synergy quite like Lego. The company’s been one of the biggest Star Wars licensers over the years, and for the first time, it’s applying one of the most valuable pieces of IP to its own line of STEM kits, Lego Boost. For this year’s Star Wars Day, the Danish company is […]

Coinbase, the $8 billion-valued crypto exchange, has lost its CTO after Balaji Srinivasan announced his departure from the company. Srinivasan became the U.S. company’s first CTO one year ago after it acquired Earn.com, where he was CEO and co-founder. Given the tenure — one year and one day — it looks like Srinivasan’s departure comes […]

Did you just open Firefox only to find all of your extensions disabled and/or otherwise not working? You’re not alone, and it’s nothing you did. Reports are pouring in of a glitch that has spontaneously disabled effectively all Firefox extensions. Each extension is now being listed as a “legacy” extension, alongside a warning that it […]

Fast-growing launch provider Rocket Lab is launching its second orbital payload of the year late tonight by our reckoning, early in the evening at the launch site in New Zealand. It will carry three experimental satellites to low Earth orbit, and you can watch it live.

Smart cities are designed to make life easier for their residents: better traffic management by clearing routes, making sure the public transport is running on time and having cameras keeping a watchful eye from above. But what happens when that data leaks? One such database was open for weeks for anyone to look inside. Security […]

Your wireless carrier knows where you are as you read this on your phone — otherwise, it couldn’t connect your phone in the first place. But your wireless carrier also has a memory. It knows where you took your phone in the last hour, the last week, the last month, the last year — and […]

The White House has refused to exempt the “brain” of Tesla’s Autopilot technology from punitive import tariffs, a decision that could delay or disrupt the company’s self-driving ambitions, TechCrunch has learned. At a special “autonomy day” event last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled advanced Autopilot 3.0 hardware, including a new custom chip intended to […]

It’s hard to pass on a chance to stoke startup schadenfreude, but Hollywood could put the spotlight on women who pioneered the bleeding edge of tech and actually produced billion-dollar successes.

Spotify has launched its instant listening app Stations on iOS, but only in Australia for the time being. The release comes nearly a year and a half after the Stations app first arrived on the market, initially for Android users in Australia. Dubbed an “experiment,” the app allows users to jump right into streaming instead […]

The emerging business of offering bikes and scooters on demand has not always been very smooth, and today comes one of the latest bumps: TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Liam O’Connor, an executive hired to help transportation company Lyft build its bike and scooter operations, has left after seven months with the newly-public company. […]

The major darknet marketplace known as the Wall Street Market have been seized and its alleged operators arrested in a joint operation between European and U.S. authorities. Millions in cash, cryptocurrency, and other assets were collected, and the markets shut down. How investigators tied these anonymity-obsessed individuals to the illegal activities is instructive.

Despite Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick wanting to be part of the company going public, the company’s board is considering not letting Kalanick be there to ring the opening bell on May 10, Uber’s first day of trading, Axios reports. Kalanick also wants to bring his dad, The New York Times reports. Additionally, Kalanick’s fellow co-founders […]

Way back in 2013, Apple spent a whopping $578 million on sapphire glass. The sum, spread out over four installments, was an advance to GT Advanced Technologies. Already in use on the company’s home buttons and camera, the plan was to implement the extremely hard material on a larger scale, replacing Gorilla Glass in the […]

“The Key,” a surreal story with a real-world political message, has won the Storyscapes award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival That’s the festival’s juried award for immersive art. It comes with a $10,000 cash prize, which the creators say will be donated to the Friends of Refugees organizations. I had a chance to experience […]

When Amazon entered markets like bookselling or groceries, its competition proved highly disruptive to incumbents. In November 2018, Amazon declared that it had selected northern Virginia as one of two locations for its new second headquarters, and four months later it announced that HQ2 would only proceed in the Virginia site. The Seattle company has grandly entered yet another market, that for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent in the metro Washington, D.C., area.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook bans a fresh batch of mostly far-right figures The banned figures include Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, Paul […]

This week, Facebook invited a small group of journalists — which didn’t include TechCrunch — to look at the “war room” it has set up in Dublin, Ireland, to help monitor its products for election-related content that violates its policies. (“Time and space constraints” limited the numbers, a spokesperson told us when he asked why […]

As tech has grown, policy debates have become an important pastime. Today’s tech industry aspires to replace human drivers with self-driving cars, secretaries with AI assistants, permanent jobs with gigs — and as a result, the human impact of tech has become an everyday conversation. No other idea is as emblematic of this as Universal […]

TV broadcasting company Sinclair will buy 21st Century Fox’s 21 regional sports networks from Disney for $10 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Sinclair was one of several bidding for the sports networks, which had also seen interest from Liberty Media, MLB and Big 3 Basketball LLC. Sinclair came out on […]

The Pixel 3a is arriving next week at Google I/O. That statement felt like all but a given before, and now that the handset is showing up at Ohio-area Best Buys, well, you can pretty much bank on it at this point. Google’s budget take on its Pixel flagship is expected to take the stage […]