Technology news

Googlehas been rolling out news at a steady rate since last week, in what feels like a bit of a last-minute clearinghouse ahead of tomorrow. The company’s already taken the wraps off of news about Android TV, Google Home, Wear OS Assistant, you name it. If this were practically any other company, we’d be concerned that there’s nothing left to discuss.
But this is Google. The next few days are going to be jam-packed with developer news and a whole lot of information around the c

Microsoft announced Monday that its payment service would be integrated with Outlook in a bid to better integrate bill pay and invoices into emails. It was one of the modifications to Outlook that the company said would allow developers to better engage with users.The Microsoft Pay system would let users make payments through emails without having to switch into other apps. Microsoft said initial payment partners include Stripe and Braintree, while billing service Zuora and invoicing services i

Amazon’s Alexa can now be set as your default personal assistant on Android phones and accessed through holding down the home button, as a user on Reddit pointed out. Previously, you were only able to swap in Microsoft’s Cortana as the default voice assistant on Android devices.
Setting up Alexa on Android is going to vary depending on which device you have but the general gist is that you update the Alexa app, then head into your phone’s settings under the category for &ldquo

Over the past several years, content moderation has reached a breaking point. We’ve seen all manner of ugliness thrive on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, whether it’s coordinated harassment, impostor accounts, foreign political influence, or bizarre algorithmic chum. At the same time, inconsistent and sometimes heavy-handed moderation has become an increasingly partisan issue, with conservative celebrities appearing before Congress to make murky claims about censorshi

Since May 3rd, Hawaii’s most active volcano, called Kilauea, has been spewing out lava and molten rock on a residential area called Leilani Estates, prompting evacuations and destroying up to 26 homes. The eruption has also been providing us with some stunning and terrifying photos and videos of bright orange lava bubbling up from cracks in the ground and shooting up to 330 feet (100 meters) into the air.
The Kilauea volcano has been erupting almost without stopping since 1983, according

Barnes & Noble, that once proud anchor to many a suburban mall, is waning. It is not failing all at once, dropping like the savaged corpse of Toys “R” Us, but it also clear that its cultural moment has passed and only drastic measures can save it from joining Waldenbooks and Borders in the great, paper-smelling ark of our book-buying memory. I’m thinking about this because David Leonhardt at The New York Times calls for B&N to be saved. I doubt it can be.
First, there i

Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have proven to us that we can trust them with our personal data. Now it’s time to reward that trust by giving them complete control over our computers, toasters, and cars.
Allow me to introduce you to “edge” computing.
Edge is a buzzword. Like “IoT” and “cloud” before it, edge means everything and nothing. But I’ve been watching some industry experts on YouTube, listening to some podcasts, and even, on

Going to the dentist can be anxiety-inducing. Unfortunately, it was no different for me last week when I went to discuss Uniform Teeth’srecent $4 million seed funding round from Lerer Hippeau, Refactor Capital,Founder’s Fund and Slow Ventures.
Uniform Teeth is a clear teeth aligner startup that competes with the likes of Invisalign and Smile Direct Club. The startup takes a One Medical-like approach in that it provides real, licensed orthodontists to see you and treat your bite.

This Friday, May 11, TechCrunch launches the West Coast debut of TC Sessions: Robotics at UC Berkeley. There are still a few tickets left, including $45 student tickets, that will get you access to the conference, workshops and networking reception. With robots as far as the eye can see and top robotics experts abounding, this is one event you won’t want to miss.
Still not convinced? Here are five reasons why you need to be there:
Hear from the best minds in robotics Where else can yo

Anshu Sharma Contributor Anshu Sharma is a serial entrepreneur and a former venture partner at Storm Ventures.More posts by this contributorThe unbeatable advantage of Apple and Amazon An engineer’s guide to picking a startup
We are spending a lot of time discussing what happens to data when you explicitly or implicitly share it. But what about data that you have never ever shared?
Your cousin’s DNA
We all share DNA —  after all, it seems we are all descendant

Conceiving a product and turning it into a successful high-growth startup is challenging work, but it can be absolutely punishing for underrepresented founders. While a strong product and a great go-to-market is critical for early success, that’s not enough to ensure a successful venture capital fundraise. Instead, what often matters is building relationships with investors, and the evidence is clear that people love to work with people who look just like them.
In an industry dominated by

If a company like Facebookcan’t even understand why its moderation tools work the way they do, then its users certainly don’t have a fighting shot. Anyway, that’s the idea behind what a coalition of digital rights groups are calling The Santa Clara Principles (PDF), “a set of minimum standards” aimed at Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech companies that moderate the content published on their platforms.
The suggested guidelines grew out of a set of events

Google may announce a new set of Android controls tomorrow at its annual developer conference that will help individuals and families manage how much time they’re spending on mobile devices, The Washington Post reports.It won’t be the first time Google has created controls for monitoring phone use. Google already offers a set of family control tools called Family Link which let parents restrict their children’s app usage time and remotely lock devices.Other announcements the P

Uber has discovered the reason why one of the test cars in its fledgling self-driving car fleet struck and killed a pedestrian earlier this year, according to The Information. While the company believes the car’s suite of sensors spotted 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she crossed the road in front of the modified Volvo XC90 on March 18th, two sources tell the publication that the software was tuned in such a way that it “decided” it didn’t need to take evasive action, an

Nearly 600 union workers at the United Launch Alliance — the US government’s primary rocket launch provider — went on strike on May 6th, just a day after the company launched a lander to Mars for NASA.The employees are part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), and they’re responsible for assembling, testing, and helping to launch ULA’s rockets. They voted to go on strike after rejecting ULA’s final offer on a three-yea

Microsoft Pay — Microsoft’s answer to Android Pay and Apple Pay that was originally launched in 2016 as Microsoft Wallet — is getting a little more useful today. At Build, Microsoft announced that it will be integrating its digital wallet service into Outlook. This means that, for the first time, when a company sends you an invoice in an email, and you are using Outlook to read it, you can pay that bill directly, without needing to leave Outlook and open a different app or serv

California-based Drive.ai is set to launch a self-driving ride-share service in a Texas city this summer to test how well the vehicles work with traffic as well as how the public reacts to them. In its announcement on Monday, Drive.ai said it will offer rides to over 10,000 people in Level 4 self-driving vehicles within a geofenced area that includes retail, entertainment, and office spaces as part of a six-month pilot program.The company has teamed up with Frisco, Texas — a city of about

Drive.ai,the self-driving car startup with roots in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, has partnered with Frisco, Texas and the Hall Group to deploy the first autonomous ride-hailing platform in the state of Texas.
Initially, the platform will be available to more than 10,000 members of Hall Group’s commercial and residential communities. Through the service, people will be able to hail free autonomous rides from fixed pickup locations to fixed drop-off locations.
“Se

The cause of the fatal crash of an Uberself-driving car appears to have been at the software level, specifically a function that determines which objects to ignore and which to attend to, The Information reported. This puts the fault squarely on Uber’s doorstep, though there was never much reason to think it belonged anywhere else.
Given the multiplicity of vision systems and backups on board any given autonomous vehicle, it seemed impossible that any one of them failing could have prevent

Microsoft just demonstrated a meeting room of the future at the company’s Build developer conference. Meeting rooms, conference calls, and meetings in general are usually the stuff of nightmares, but Microsoft is working on prototype hardware that will make meetings a lot easier. Microsoft’s meeting room demonstration is seriously impressive, and provides a glimpse of what’s possible in the future.
It all starts with a 360-degree camera and microphone array that can detect any

At its Build developer conference, Microsofttoday announced that Live Share, its previously announced collaborative development feature for Visual Studio and Visual Studiocode, is now available to developers who want to give it a try. Until now, this feature, which allows developers to better work together, was only available in a private preview — and it’s available for free to all developers, even those who use the free Visual Studio code editor.
In a way, Live Share is a bit like

Internet personality Poppy has responded to abuse allegations and a lawsuit filed by fellow YouTuber Mars Argo, real name Brittany Sheets, calling the accusations “false.” In a statement posted to her Twitter account, Poppy — whose legal name is Moriah Pereira — writes that both she and creative partner Corey Mixter were surprised to learn of the lawsuit via TMZ. “It would appear Ms. Sheets was intent on building a publicity campaign around her filing of a complain

Warning: major spoilers ahead for Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Infinity War.
James Gunn is terrorizing Twitter again. The director and co-writer of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies is an active participant on the social media platform, and he frequently interacts with fans, sometimes to their dismay. Back in February, he casually mentioned to a fan asking a jokey question that Groot, the sentient tree character who became a breakout favorite character in the first Guardians, is dead.

Microsoftstill isn’t giving a timeline as to when its virtual assistant, Cortana, will support integration with Amazon Alexa – something the companies had announced last year. But the company at its Build developer conference today did show off how that integration will work, in an on-stage demo with support from Amazon,and it launched a new website for developers interested in receiving Alexa-Cortana integration news and information going forward.
When Microsoft and Amazon

Spoilers ahead for the penultimate episode of Silicon Valley.
In the latest season of Silicon Valley, startup Pied Piper braves all kinds of obstacles, from an aggressive pizza company trying to steal their coders to contending with their archnemesis Hooli’s Galvin Belson (played by Matt Ross). In last night’s episode, it addresses one of the most salient issues of the tech world: Bitcoin. In the process, it explains two commonly confusing aspects about cryptocurrency: why are peopl

Microsoft is moving Kinect to the cloud, the company’s CEO Satya Nadella announced today during the annual Build keynote. “Kinect, when we first launched it in 2010, was a speech-first, gaze-first, vision-first device. It was used in gaming, and then, later on, it came to the PC, and it was used in many applications: medical, industrial, robotics, education,” said Nadella. “We’ve been inspired by what developers have done, and since Kinect, we’ve made a treme

Microsoft first announced its Alexa and Cortana integration last year, and the company is providing an update today. Despite falling behind both Google Assistant and Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana will now include access to Amazon’s digital assistant. At Microsoft’s Build conference today, the software maker demonstrated Cortana running on Alexa and vice versa.
The integration works by simply summoning Cortana with the command “Alexa, open Cortana.” You can then ask fo

DJI is partnering with Microsoft to build a new drone SDK for Windows 10 that will enable full flight control and data transfer to Windows 10 PCs, which allows it to directly connect DJI’s drones with Windows computers.
Along with controlling the drones, the SDK will also make it possible to easily integrate third-party hardware like multispectral sensors or custom actuators with DJI’s drones, expanding what customers will be able to do with their drones.
Additionally, going forward

Google’s platform for smart devices, Android Things, is ready to start shipping inside consumer gadgets. Android Things is hitting its 1.0 release today after launching to developers at the end of 2016. Google says the first devices — which include speakers from LG and iHome, and smart displays from LG, Lenovo, and JBL — will be released over the next several months.
Android Things is a development platform that’s meant to make it easier for hardware companies to start b

Google is partnering with JBL to develop a new hybrid device that blends a standard sound bar with a streaming set-top box. The new product, called the JBL Link Bar, will work as an audio hub for your living room, but it will also run Android TV and come with Google Assistant integration to enable voice search and control.It’s an interesting combination of home entertainment products, and it’s sure to strike a little bit of a fear into Sonos, which is planning what sounds like a sim

Microsoft is expanding its list of “mixed reality” tools with a program called Microsoft Layout, which lets people design and visualize real spaces in either Microsoft HoloLens or a virtual reality headset. Layout allows Windows Mixed Reality users to define a virtual floor plan and then move 3D models around on it in a VR headset, previewing how a room would look and feel. Then, they can go to a physical location and view that layout using HoloLens — either alone or with othe

The second trailer for Luke Cage season 2 has dropped, revealing more details about the villains the bulletproof hero of Harlem will be facing this time around.
Alfre Woodard returns, of course, as queenpin Mariah Dillard, along with the assorted “hard rocks,” who, as Bobby Fish (Ron Cephas Jones) puts it in a voice-over, now fear Cage as “the ghetto boogeyman of their nightmares.”
But with new installments come new challenges. This time, that challenge will be Bushmaste

Microsoft is unveiling a new “Your Phone” app for Windows 10 today at its Build developer conference. The app is designed to provide a mirror of a phone straight to a desktop PC, and it will let Windows 10 users access texts, photos, and notifications from their machines.Features will vary depending on iOS and Android, but Microsoft can mirror far more Android phone features to a Windows 10 PC so you never have to physically pick up your device while you’re working on a PC. It