Technology news

New research indicates that a volcano near Naples, Italy might be in the early stages of gearing up for an eruption large enough to change the area’s landscape.The study, published today in Science Advances, may be of particular interest to the 1.5 million people living within the bounds of the volcanic complex. Fortunately for them, there’s no indication that this massive event will happen any time soon. Volcanic eruptions like this can take thousands of years to develop, and there

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered his management team to only use Android phones, given that the operating system has more total users worldwide. According to The New York Times, the decision reportedly occurred after Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook in an MSNBC interview for being a service that traffics “in your personal life.”In those comments made back in March, Cook dismissed a question asking him what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg’s shoes dealing with the

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered his management team to only use Android phones, given that the operating system has more total users worldwide. According to The New York Times, the decision reportedly occurred after Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook in an MSNBC interview for being a service that traffics “in your personal life.”In those comments made back in March, Cook dismissed a question asking him what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg’s shoes dealing with the

Back in August, Facebook and Instagram announced they would introduce new activity dashboards that tracked how much time users spent inside the apps, but the features never materialized. Now, Instagram has finally started rolling out its own “Your Activity” feature, which includes tools for setting daily time limits and the option to temporarily mute push notifications. The feature can be found inside the hamburger icon on the upper right corner of your profile page, and from there

If a food item isn’t safe to eat, it’s best to find that out before someone eats it. But manual testing of every jar and bottle isn’t possible, even when a threat, like the recent baby food scare, is known. MITresearchers have found a way to check many items instantly, non-invasively and from a distance — using the RFID tags many products already have.
RFID, or radio frequency identification, uses a tiny antenna embedded in a sticker or label that’s activated and po

De Correspondent, a Dutch news organization aiming to “unbreak the news,” is planning to launch in the United States next year as The Correspondent. To fund its efforts, it’s hoping to raise $2.5 million from future readers.
Co-founder and CEO Ernst Pfauth (a former tech journalist who previously served as editor in chief at The Next Web) said this campaign is meant to test the waters of whether U.S. readers are interested in The Correspondent’s journalism. If it raises t

Facebooksecretly retracted messages sent by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TechCrunch reported seven months ago. Now for the first time, Facebook Messenger users will get the power to unsend too so they can remove their sent messages from the recipient’s inbox. Messages can only be unsent for the first 10 minutes after they’re delivered so that you can correct a mistake or remove something you accidentally pushed, but you won’t be able to edit ancient history. Formally known as &ldq

Two hackers have collected a bounty of $50,000 for finding an exploit in the iPhone X that lets you recover a previously deleted photo or file. During a mobile contest where hackers located bugs in iOS and Android, two hackers Richard Zhu and Amat Cama uncovered the vulnerability today and presented it in a demo. So far, Apple has been notified about the bug but it remains accessible at least until the next iOS update, as first reported by Forbes.
While the attack requires some access to the ta

When Oraclefiled a protest in August with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI RFP process was unfair, it probably had little chance of succeeding. Today, the GAO turned away the protest.
The JEDI contract has been set up as a winner-take-all affair. With $10 billion on the table, there has been much teeth-gnashing and complaining that the deck has been stacked to favor one vendor, Amazon. The Pentagon has firmly denied this, but it hasn&rsqu

HMD Global has announced the Nokia 106, an affordable feature phone destined for the global market. The 106 has a 1.8-inch, 160x120 display that’s a perfect match for the built-in Snake game. (You’ll have to pay for others, though demos are included.) The phone can store up to 2000 contacts, and retain up to 500 SMS messages. Yes, these are the highlights advertised for a device like this.HMD says the battery lasts “from sunrise to sunset with one charge,” which is somet

Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg has spent years as the biggest YouTuber on the video platform, so now that an Indian music channel called T-Series threatens to take the throne, the world is paying close attention to the man’s subscriber count. While T-Series’ YouTube dominance is likely just a matter of time, Kjellberg’s fans have gone into overdrive to make the overthrow take as long as possible. The fight has spilled out into the real world, thanks to a number of gra

Starting this weekend, Tinderwill allow college students on its Tinder U service to match with others outside their own university for the first time. The dating app is positioning this market test of a potential Tinder U expansion as the  “Rivals Week” — a way to match users with those who attend a rival university (for a limited period of time).
Tinder U’s Rivalry Week starts November 17 in the U.S. for students attending four-year, degree-granting colleges and uni

When New York’s governor and New York City’s mayor appeared alongside an Amazon executive yesterday to announce Amazon’s HQ2 setting up shop in the city, the mood was celebratory. But some locals are pushing back and considering what would need to happen to scuttle the deal.Amazon’s decision to build a new facility in Long Island City, Queens, as well as in Northern Virginia, has been met with stiff resistance. Two local politicians, State Sen. Michael Gianaris and City

The battle between ailing electric car startup Faraday Future and its main investor, Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, escalated once again on Wednesday. Employees of the startup filed suit against Evergrande in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming the Chinese conglomerate committed “breaches” of its fiduciary duties as well as “other illegal conduct.” The plaintiffs also say Evergrande “plotted” from the beginning to send Faraday Future “off

Uber,which is expected to go public sometime next year, just released its Q3 2018 financial results. Uber’s net losses increased 32 percent quarter over quarter to $939 million on a pro forma basis, though Uber expected these losses as it continues to invest in future growth areas.
On an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization basis (EBIDTA), Uber’s losses were $527 million, up about 21 percent quarter over quarter. And as Uber prepares to go public, the compan

The LG Gram is one of the thinnest, lightest Windows laptops you can buy — also see: Acer’s Swift 7 — but now, it may be going places the new MacBook Air and its featherlight Windows rivals haven’t. Namely, all the way to 17 inches.Today, LG offers 13.3-inch, 14-inch, and 15.6-inch variants of the Gram laptop, but an FCC filing may have just clued us in on LG’s laptop strategy this CES — a 17-inch version that’d offer a bigger screen than any of Apple&r

It wasn’t so long ago that many a PC user was clamoring for a Dark mode on Windows 10. Now that they have it, things are swinging in the opposite direction: Microsoft is bringing a ‘Light Mode’ to Windows 10, helping bring balance to the Force. You might be thinking “isn’t that just Windows 10 with Dark mode off?” Well, not quite. While Windows defaults to light-colored menu and background elements, it’s not entirely consistent. Most notably, the defaul

Nikon’s first mirrorless camera, the Z7, launched back in September for $3,999.95. If you’ve been holding out for the cheaper Z6 model, your patience has been rewarded: it’ll hit stores on November 16th, starting at $1,999.95 for just the camera body or $2,599.95 for a bundle with a 24-70mm f/4 “kit” lens.The pricing puts the Z6 right up against Sony’s similarly priced A7 III mirrorless camera, which has long been the go-to option, and it also starts at $2,00

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Need more gift ideas? Check out our Gift Guide Hub.
I’ve been traveling a lot this year — more than any year in the past. It’s been both a blessing and a curse, so thanks, TechCrunch, for that. Honestly, I should probably be packing for Asia instead of writing this, but I’m looking out for you instead.Rather than writing the standard Travel Guide or Holiday Gift Guide, we’ve opted to combine them into one. Becau

Skullcandy is apparently making the jump to truly wireless earbuds, with an unannounced pair of Skullcandy Push earbuds making it through the FCC today in a filing that managed to reveal almost every single aspect of the device, down to the instruction manual.
True to the name, each Push earbud has a large button on the side, which can variously be used to change volume, skip tracks, and activate a smart assistant on your phone (honestly, check the manual for the list of button commands because

Nike has announced new Nike Sport band colors that are coming for the Apple Watch Nike+, as reported by 9to5Mac. The new bands include two Nike Sport Loop bands and one Nike Sport band that will be available to purchase starting on November 16th.
The forthcoming bands were spotted within the Nike shopping app for the iPhone. The Nike Sport Loop is adding “smokey mauve” and “celestial teal” colors, and both new colors are reflective, like other Nike Sport Loop bands. The

PagerDuty, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that sends companies information about their technology, doesn’t receive a fraction of the press that other fast-growing enterprise software companies receive. In fact, though it counts as customers heavyweight companies like Capital One, Spotify and Netflix; it employs 500 employees; and it has five offices around the world, it has largely operated out of the spotlight.
That’s changing. For one thing, the company is now a so-

Climate change is already making devastating hurricanes wetter — and similar storms are likely to unleash more rain and faster winds by the end of the century, new research says.When Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria struck the US in rapid succession in the fall of 2017, the storms and their aftermaths killed thousands of people and caused an estimated $265 billion in damage. Harvey became the second costliest storm after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Now, new

French startup iBanFirst is raising another $17 million (€15 million) from Serena Capital and Breega Capital, with existing investor Xavier Niel putting in more money, as well.
iBanFirstsolves a very specific problem. If you operate a company that works with suppliers all over the world, chances are you waste a ton of money exchanging and sending money. iBanFirst wants to make currency conversion as easy as transferring money from your savings account to your current account.
You first send

Microsoft’s November update for Xbox One consoles brings a plethora of new capabilities and changes, including the ability to directly stream from Amazon Music.The app is available for Xbox One users today for customers based in the United States, according to a press release. More countries are expected to be added “soon,” but there isn’t a firm launch date just yet. Amazon Music joins Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and YouTube as apps that people can use to stream musi

A man wakes up abruptly, gasping in shock. He’s alone in an unexpected place. Something has clearly gone wrong with the trip he was on, but he won’t know just how wrong until he finds his fellow passengers. They’ll have to work together to manage their basic needs and unravel the mystery of why they didn’t arrive safely at their destination. But can they trust each other, given their various unsavory backgrounds, which will largely be revealed by a series of flashbacks?

Cortana’s version 3.0 redesign, which we first saw released in beta last month, is now available to all iOS users. As well as overhauling its interface, the update adds the ability for you to have “conversational experiences” with the voice assistant, listen to music and podcasts, and set up Cortana devices. These latter two pieces of functionality are especially relevant right now, given that Microsoft’s Surface Headphones are due to launch next week on November 19th.As

Microsoft is planning to introduce a new light theme into Windows 10 with the next major update. The software giant unveiled the theme today in a new test build of Windows 10, and it looks like a new take on the white theme that exists in the operating system. Microsoft is essentially bringing this white theme system-wide, allowing all of the UI to appear white. To compliment the new light theme, Microsoft is also tweaking the default wallpaper of Windows 10 so it better fits the new theme.
Thi

Niantic and WB Games surprised everyone this morning by dropping the first trailer for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the spiritual successor to the world-shatteringly popular Pokemon GO. It drops a few hints about the gameplay and story of the game, and gives us a tentative release date: 2019. It’s up to you to protect the wizarding world. Enlist immediately for the Statute of Secrecy Task Force: https://t.co/b9UtoUA3gS #WizardsUnite pic.twitter.com/2NSlOpgj3W — Harry Potter: Wi

Disney’s 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph proved that a movie based on video game nostalgia could actually be more than a gimmick. It’s the story of Ralph (John C. Reilly), a villain in a Donkey Kong-esque 1980s-style retro arcade game, who ventures outside of his own cabinet and into the world of other games to prove he’s not such a bad guy after all. Along the way, he befriends a wisecracking racing-game misfit named Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman). Together, they learn tha

When Google announced its Pixel 3 devices, one of the most intriguing features was Night Sight – the ability to take pictures in ultra-dark situations. Sadly, the feature wasn’t available right away. Now, Night Sight is finally rolling out to all Pixel phones through an update to the camera app. We’ll take a look at how to use it, some results, and how it works.   How to use it If you own a Pixel phone, first, you need to update the camera app. Then head to the More secti