Technology news

Lucasfilm and Del Rey Books revealed today that Timothy Zahn is writing a new Star Wars novel: Thrawn: Treason. It’s a sequel to 2017’s Thrawn (which covered the villain’s origins) and Thrawn: Alliances, the sequel that brought Thrawn and Darth Vader together for the first time. This new book is set in the aftermath of the demise of Thrawn’s Tie Defender project in Star Wars Rebels, after it’s killed in favor of the Empire weapons project that becomes the Death Sta

Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to fund a “magnificent 2019 comeback” on the crowdfunding platform Patreon, only to be banned after one day. Yiannopoulos’ Patreon campaign, whose banner image is seen above, garnered around 250 patrons pledging an unknown amount of money before being kicked off the service.
“Milo Yiannopoulos was removed from Patreon as we don’t allow association with or supporting hate groups on Patreon,” the company said

Canada arrested the chief financial officer of Huawei on suspicion of violating US sanctions against Iran, according to The Globe and Mail. The CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday at the request of US law enforcement and is facing extradition to the US.
It’s an extremely high-profile arrest, the first major break in a probe that has mostly been kept from the public and only after long-harbored suspicions about Huawei have become widespread. Meng happens to be the daug

Creating biologically accurate emoji representations of animals and insects are an issue for developers at Apple and Google, and the most recent example is no exception.Apple’s squid emoji, which was integrated in 2016, is on the receiving end of scorn from the scientific community following a tweet from the Monterey Bay Aquarium team. The team addressed a serious misdeed on Apple’s part, in an effort to bring attention to sea life in general for ocean awareness. The squid in questi

Today, documents released by the UK Parliament provided a largely unprecedented, firsthand look inside Facebook. In the documents, executives can be seen responding to the threat of competitors, debating how to handle users’ data, and discussing major changes to its business model. In all, the cache shows a fact about Facebook that’s widely understood, but only occasionally detailed: its decisions have tremendous consequences for businesses that rely on it. The documents are sheddin

Duet Display is an app that lets you turn your iPad into a second Mac monitor. And the team behind it just released a major update that makes it much more efficient — it consumes less CPU resources and is now recognized as a true external display.
If you’ve used Duet Displayover the past few years, you may have seen a change that made it worse, not better. At some point, Apple updated macOS and broke Duet Display’s method.
Duet Display had to use AirPlay as a fallback method. I

As if on cue from its recent teardown, iFixit is selling its first Mac mini RAM replacement kit. Starting at $165, the toolkit includes 16GB of RAM compatible with your new Mac’s underequipped RAM slots as well as the items you need to pry the Mac mini’s metal shell open to access its RAM slots. Those include:A PC4-21300 16GB or 32GB RAM
Angled tweezers
Precision bit driver
4mm precision bits
SpudgeriFixit opening toolFor comparison, if you bought a new base model Mac mini directly

Spoilers ahead for the overall theme of American Gods, the season 1 adaptation and the fantasy novel it’s based on.
Starz’s long-overdue second season of its fantasy series American Gods finally has a release date: March 10th, 2019.The series, based on Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel of the same name, debuted in April 2017. It follows a former convict, Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), who is hired to serve as the bodyguard and driver for a man named Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) during

The thing people forget about artificial intelligence is that it’s exactly that — artificial. Behind Facebook’s flesh-spotting algorithms and Mobileye’s pedestrian-avoiding machines are vast, complicated datasets, which are built and labeled by a vast human workforce. Have you ever wondered where that workforce comes from? I assumed that the likes of Tesla and Google owned vast offices in Manila and Mumbai where, under the harsh glare of halogen lighting, an workforce of

Video won’t start rolling on Meg Whitmanand Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new bite-sized streaming service with the billion-dollar backing until the end of 2019, but talent keeps signing up to come along for their ride into the future of serialization.
The latest marquee director to sign on the dotted line with Quibi is Catherine Hardwicke, who will be helming a story around the creation of an artificial intelligence with the working title “How They Made Her,” according to an anno

Motorola wants you to know that it demoed a real Verizon 5G connection on a real 5G phone in Maui that over 330 journalists and analysts were able to see in person. It wants you to know that phone is capable of incredible 5Gbps speeds — enough to apparently download an entire season of your favorite TV show in mere minutes.
So when journalists tried out Motorola’s speed test demo, they naturally did the math. By measuring how long it supposedly took Motorola’s 5G Moto Mod to d

Five years is an awful lot of time in the tech industry. Darling startups find ways to crash and burn. Trends that seem unstoppable sputter-out. In the field of artificial intelligence, the past five years have been nothing short of transformative.
Facebook’sAI Research lab (FAIR) turns five years old this month, and just as the social media giant has left an indelible mark on the broader culture — for better or worse — the work coming out of FAIR has seen some major impact in

There used to be a fairly stable tradition of war, says John E. Jackson, a retired Navy captain and professor at the Naval War College. But drones have changed everything.“It used to be that a warrior prepares, trains, deploys to a foreign location where he is face-to-face with an enemy, he may or may not survive, and at the end, he comes home,” says Jackson. Now, pilots can leave their homes in Las Vegas, drive to the Creech Air Force Base, are “at war” for eight to 10

Carriers around the world are preparing to move on from 4G LTE to 5G, the next era of mobile networking that promises ultra-fast data speeds and low latency between device and network. Consumers in the US can expect to start seeing 5G networks light up in 2019. All four major providers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint — have promised to make 5G a reality in the new year. Even before those networks are switched on, smartphones from Samsung, LG, and other 5G-capable devices h

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Need more gift ideas? Check out our Gift Guide Hub.
Since digital product designer Ryder Carroll’s list-based method for organizing his life first went viral five years ago, bullet journaling has become a movement of its own, helping people take charge of their time with a notebook and pen.
The system’s flexibility means it can be used for many things: time management, academic note taking, mental health tracking, meal planning,

A number of app developers building third-party screen time trackers and parental control applications are worried that Apple’sincreased scrutiny of their apps in recent weeks is not a coincidence. With Apple’s launch of iOS 12, the company has implemented its own built-in screen time tracking tools and controls. Not long after, developers’ third-party screen time apps came under increased review from Apple, and, in some cases, rejections and removals from the App Store.
The im

Verizon has expanded access to high-speed data in 54 additional countries in its TravelPass program for travelers who are willing to pay extra. The program allows travelers to pay a flat fee each day for access to high-speed data, texting, and calling. New countries include Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya.
With the new expansion, TravelPass is now available in 185 countries around the world, just 10 short of including every single country on the planet. You get 0.5GB of high-speed data

Fortnite isn’t a game: it’s a phenomenon. Like “Back To The Future,” “The Simpsons,” and Pokemon, it’s transcended media and become a cultural icon. I can’t help but wonder how many of its 200 million registered players know anything about the game that came before it: Unreal Tournament (UT). The creator of Fortnite, Epic Games, confirmed in an interview with Variety that it would no longer develop the venerable shooter. And, for those of us who c

Qualcomm officially took the wraps off the Snapdragon 855, its next generation processor, yesterday at the Snapdragon Tech Summit. At day two of the conference, Qualcomm is providing all the details on what the new processor will offer for the next wave of flagship phones.
Qualcomm is focusing on several key areas for improvement with the Snapdragon 855, including connectivity, the camera, artificial intelligence, entertainment, and more.Connectivity and performance
On the connectivity front, t

HMD Global, the current licensor to the iconic Nokia brand, today announced its latest flagship phone — the Nokia 8.1. I say “flagship,” but when it comes to its price point, it’s firmly lodged in mid-range territory, as the Nokia 8.1 retails for £379.99 in the UK and €399 in the Eurozone. That puts it within the same price bracket as other worthy contenders, including the Honor 10 and Xiaomi’s Poco F1. With the Nokia 8.1, HMD is enthusiastically touting

Laco is a small German watch company famous for its Flieger watches — pieces featuring big crowns and legible faces designed for pilots. Now the brand has teamed up with A Blog To Watch on a Fallout-themed watch that looks like something pulled out of a deserted vault.
The $2,950 watch contains ETA 2824.2 movement and features a massively distressed case and band along with a clever case that hearkens back to 1950s A-Bomb/military design. It’s limited to 143 pieces and you can pre-or

Apple says its HomePod smart speaker will be coming to China early next year. The country is the latest in Apple’s slow expansion across the globe for the Siri-powered device. The HomePod reached France, Canada, and Germany in June, for instance, and Mexico and Spain in October.
Preorders aren’t live yet for the HomePod in China, but a new product page has appeared on Apple’s site, saying the device will be available in early 2019. The smart speaker’s ability to support

Comcast customers with Xfinity X1 set-top boxes can now stream Amazon Prime Video. The partnership was announced back in August, and now Prime subscribers can stream Amazon original content like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Man in the High Castle on their X1 TV boxes. The app started rolling out this week, so if it hasn’t hit your TV yet, give it a few days.
This is the first time Amazon Prime content has been available on a cable streaming platform, and with it comes the ability to

For the first time since SpaceX began recovering its Falcon 9 fleet, the company failed to land one of its rockets that was meant to touch down on solid ground. Just seven minutes after launching from Florida this afternoon, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was preparing to land on the company’s concrete landing pad back near the launch site at Cape Canaveral. But footage from the booster showed it spinning out of control, and SpaceX commentators confirmed that the vehicle hit the Atlantic

After releasing its first official iPhone XR cases today, Apple has also added another new accessory to the Apple Store: an 18 watt USB-C power adapter. The new $29 USB-C charger can be used to fast charge your iPad (or iPhone), if you lost the identical charger that it shipped with.Previously, your only official replacement option from Apple was to buy one of the Mac USB-C adapters — starting at $49 — for the 30W USB-C charger normally shipped with MacBooks. The new, less-expensive

OnePlus CEO Pete Lau took the stage at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit today to announce that OnePlus will be the first to release a 5G smartphone in Europe, available first on EE.
OnePlus had already announced plans for a 5G smartphone in Europe earlier this year, but today’s announcement cemented a few new details, including the EE partnership and theexpected use of Qualcomm’s just-announced Snapdragon 855 processor (and presumably the company’s accompanying X50 5G m

The latest Falcon 9 mission launched successfully, but its reusable booster just missed sticking the landing thanks to a stalled hydraulic pump on the grid fin, according to a tweet by Elon Musk.
Grid fin hydraulic pump stalled, so Falcon landed just out to sea. Appears to be undamaged & is transmitting data. Recovery ship dispatched.
— Elon Musk(@elonmusk) December 5, 2018Footage captured by the Twitch streamer DazValdez, who was on the ground for the launch, managed to record th

With the release of iOS 12, Applehid the button that lets you jump from front camera to rear camera (or vice versa) during a FaceTime call. Previously a one-click thing, it was suddenly shoved away into a menu as if it wasn’t something you might use a half dozen times per call.
Don’t like the change? Good news! Apple is undoing it.
As of iOS 12.1.1, released today, the camera swap button is returning to the main call screen. Basically every FaceTime call I’ve had since this cha

Cinephiles, take note: your TV may be messing with your favorite films. Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie recently put out a video warning TV watchers that motion smoothing (also known as video interpolation or the “soap opera effect”) could be changing the quality of your picture. Meant to reduce motion blur, smoothing is useful when you’re watching the quick action in sports, but it’s not great when you’re watching a carefully filmed motion picture.
I

As part of its investigation of Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the British government seized a huge cache of the company‘s internal documents. Despite Facebook‘s best efforts, those documents are now online. And the picture they paint is not pretty. You can peruse all of the roughly 250 pages on Parliament’s website. While the whole thing is a fascinating read, here are a few highlights: Zuckerberg contemplated charging developers for user d

Apple’snew iPhone XR comes in a half dozen colors, including blue, yellow, red and coral. In fact, the colors are sufficiently fresh that it’d be kind of silly to buy a traditional phone case that would protect it but also hide if from plain view.
It’s for this reason that Apple just began selling a clear case, which, because it is Apple, sounds special despite being a clear plastic case. Think “thin, light, and easy to grip,” and “crafted with a blend of opti

HMD Global just announced the Nokia 8.1, a successor to the midrange Nokia 7 Plus that was released earlier this year. The new handset, which is set to launch in the UK and Europe next year on January 14th for £379.99 (€399), swaps out the 7 Plus’ Snapdragon 660 for a Snapdragon 710, and it includes a notch and HDR10 support for its 2160 x 1440 resolution display.Otherwise, the specs are more or less in line with what you’d expect from this price point, with 4GB of RAM fl

Early on in Anna and the Apocalypse, the new Scottish Christmas zombie high school musical, the protagonist, Anna (Ella Hunt), hears a disgusting growling grunt from behind her. The audience braces itself, expecting that the promised zombie apocalypse has begun, but it turns out that it’s just a classmate of Anna’s, hacking her way through a winter asthma attack. Zombies are disgusting, it’s true, but humans are also disgusting. We’re basically fluid-filled staggering ba

First some notes on SoftBank’srumored expansion into China and its weird fund math, then Foxconn and then quick notes on tech depression, Huaweiand more.
TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at [email protected]) if you like or hate something here.
SoftBank has fund visions (and a Vision Fund) for China? That, and more money
Kane Wu at Reuters reported overnight that SoftBan

Hundreds of people in the Phoenix, Arizona area now have consumer access to Waymo’s driverless taxi service. These “early riders” can now order an autonomous vehicle pickup 24/7. Welcome to the future. Waymo – a Google sister company under the Alphabet umbrella –  today announced the service, called “Waymo One” was officially underway. Currently, the program is only available in early-access to customers who have already participated in Waymo&

Apple’s iOS 12.1.1 update is now available to download, and it comes with some new improvements and fixes for some controversial iOS 12 changes. Most notably, FaceTime — which faced a lot of criticism from users for removing features like the ability to take Live Photos during calls, and making the ‘flip camera’ button harder to find behind a menu — has been tweaked. The button has returned to the main screen, on the bottom menu row alongside the Mute, Effects, and

The new iPad Pro might be the best fit for those who want its slick, new design, and to take solace in owning the most powerful tablet that Apple has created yet. For everyone else, last year’s iPad Pro is still plenty capable, and now it’s considerably more affordable thanks to a sale at B&H Photo. This discount focuses on the 12.9-inch model in particular, and to give you a taste of what’s below, even the 512GB version with Wi-Fi and LTE support costs the same as the new

Google has announced that Chrome 71 has left beta and is publicly rolling out for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as spotted by 9to5Google. The latest version of Google’s browser was in the works over the past few months, touting features to help fight against abusive ad experiences by blocking manipulative ad designs and showing billing warning screens.
With Chrome 71, Chrome will filter experiences on websites that fall under Google’s definition of abusive. These include web experiences

Russian internet company Yandex is releasing its first smartphone, simply called the Yandex Phone. The entry-level Android 8.1 phone will be sold in Russia, complete with Yandex’s own maps, weather, and GPS apps. However, the Yandex Phone isn’t the company’s only new product: recently, Yandex has dabbled in smart speakers, investments with Uber, and even self-driving cars.Image: Yandex
The Yandex Phone also comes with Alice, the Russian search giant’s take on a virtual a

After a six-week delay, Apple has added its $39 iPhone XR clear case to its online store, via MacRumors.This an especially strange and unexpected delay; the clear case was initially mentioned in an Apple press release from October, and so far, this is the only Apple-made case that’s been released for the iPhone XR. The company has never offered a clear protective case for its phones before, so it’s possible these cases will be the only Apple-official cases offered for the iPhone XR

Workato, a startup that offers an integration and automation platform for businesses that competes with the likes of MuleSoft, SnapLogic and Microsoft’s Logic Apps, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round from Battery Ventures, Storm Ventures, ServiceNow and Workday Ventures. Combined with its previous rounds, the company has now received investments from some of the largest SaaS players, including Salesforce, which participated in an earlier round

Current,the app-controlled teen debit card that’s managed by parents, is starting to look more like a bank. Today, the startup announced it’s now adding to its debit account for teens support for routing and account numbers. That means working teens will be able to direct-deposit to their Current account their paychecks from after-school and summer jobs, then use the Visa debit card when they need to make purchases — including when shopping online.
The company first launched it