Technology news

Chatty gamers are apparently worth billions.
Discord, the gaming chat startup with more than 200 million active users, announced Friday that it had secured $150 million in funding at a $2.05 billion valuation. The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners.
The company announced this past April that they had raised $50 million in funding at a $1.65 billion valuation. With this latest bout of cash, Discord

For more than 60 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight around the world on December 24.
And it will continue this year, even if there’s a government shutdown, the operations center said Friday in a tweet.
In the event of a government shutdown, NORAD will continue with its 63-year tradition of NORAD Tracks Santa on Dec. 24. Military personnel who conduct N

Roughly four months after JD.com’sbillionaire CEO Richard Liuwas arrested and later released by Minneapolis police on suspicion of alleged sexual misconduct, local authorities say they will not be charging him in a sexual misconduct case. In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said it was not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the charges brought against Liu.
“As is the case in many sexual assault incidents, it was a complicated situation,” sai

Thousands of San Diego area students and teachers may be on Christmas break, but that didn't stop the school district from announcing a major data hack Friday.
San Diego Unified School District, the second largest school district in California, said more than 500,000 students and staff had their personal information accessed through a data breach. Through a phishing attack, an unauthorized user accessed data from as far back as the 2008-2009 school year. The hack also affected 50 district employ

My podcasting rig is simple: Two microphones, a Tascam recorder, two XLR cables. I’ve upgraded things a bit in the past year — improved the mics, bought some foam windscreens and bought a pair of tabletop, foldable mic stands. But the principle is the same: take nothing I can’t fit into a laptop sleeve.
It’s served me pretty well in the five years I’ve been doing my show. While friends were building soundproof posting studios in their homes, I went with a rig I coul

Actual 5G networks for your phone won't be ready for some time, but AT&T isn't letting that stop it from trying to cash in on the hype.
Some Android users will soon see a "5GE" icon on their screens, even though their phones are still technically connected to 4G LTE networks. In this case, the "E" is a key distinction — it's a reference to "5G Evolution," AT&T's moniker for its fast, but not actually 5G, network. 
SEE ALSO: 5G's biggest challenge is making sure it actually wor

Florida men are seemingly involved in so many strange happenings involving pythons, alligators and restaurant break-ins that when a parody “Florida Man” Twitter account surfaced back in 2013, it became an immediate sensation.
But a five-day-old GoFundMe fundraiser for Donald Trump’s border wall by a Florida man is starting to look anything like a joke. With ambitions to raise a brow-raising $1 billion, it has already secured nearly $13 million from more than 200,000 i

In this app-laden world, there is now a void. One so large, it will be difficult to fill. Perhaps, the Kardashians will reconsider.
The Kardashian sisters, specifically Kim KardashianWest, Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are shutting down their apps in 2019. Kendall Jenner stopped updating her app and website last year. The apps and accompanying websites were provided through Whalerock Industries.
“We’ve had an incredible experience connecting with all of you thoro

While more than 60 companies have received permits to test their driverless vehicles in California, Zoox has become the first permitted to actually transport people in those vehicles. The California Public Utilities Commission today granted Zoox a permit to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot.
During the testing period, Zooxmust have a safety driver behind the wheel and will not be allowed to charge passengers for rides. And, as part of the program, Zoox m

Tesla is set to unveil the Model Y, its fifth car, in March of 2019. It’s expected to be a crossover SUV that’s smaller than the Model X, and will share lots of the Model 3’s underlying tech. With SUV sales through the roof in the United States, it’s likely to be a hit. And with a sticker price that will likely resemble the Model 3’s, the Model Y will launch in the US with very little direct competition when you consider the premium attached to the electric SUVs fr

On February 2nd, Kylie Jenner published a video called “To Our Daughter.” It was a sentimental video announcing the birth of her first child, Stormi — something better suited for Facebook or Instagram, where friends and family members post updates on their life. Instead, Jenner published it on YouTube, where it has collected nearly 80 million views, making it the biggest trending YouTube video of 2018, according to YouTube.Outside the realm of regular celebrity, there isn&rsqu

Bellabeat,the company behind a variety of health and wellness wearable devices aimed at women, is now selling its first smartwatch. The device, which is simply called “Time,” was announced earlier this month right in the midst of holiday shopping season. Like other fitness trackers, the watch is capable of basic tasks like counting your steps, tracking sleep patterns and reminding you to move. But unlike traditional smartwatches — which, aesthetically, are still very much just

If you’ve ever found yourself lugging a big suitcase from meeting to meeting, a startup called Bounce could make your life easier. Using Bounce,you’ll be able to pay for short-term storage at hotels, dry cleaners and other local businesses.
The San Francisco-based startup is announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from investors including Structured Capital managing partner Jillian Manus, Seabed VC, Airbnb general counsel Rob Chesnut and Canadian entrepreneur Micha

If you’ve spent dozens of hours fine-tuning a home automation setup so that everything just works, you’d be pretty angry if a single firmware update screwed it up. But Logitech is now pledging to make it right for customers wronged by its latest firmware update to the Harmony Hub — by offering yet another update that’ll restore local network control.
While Logitech originally defended its move to make the Harmony Hub unresponsive to third-party home automation software &

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Need more gift ideas? Check out our Gift Guide Hub.
Whoops. You goofed up. It seemed like you had plenty of time before Christmas was here and now there are four days left and all the shops are slammed and you’ve (mostly) missed the shipping window.
It’s okay! We’ve all been there.
We’ve compiled a list of things we think are great but that you should still be able to get in time, be it online or in a local big box st

People across the world may face a variety of challenges, but innovators, activists, and organizations worked together in 2018 to find impressive solutions.
SEE ALSO: 2018 was the year of the youth activist
In no particular order, here are 14 innovations that made the world a more inclusive, safe, and all-around better place this year. To learn about other ingenious innovations, check out this list from 2017.
1. Starbucks signing store in U.S. You can get these mugs at Starbucks' first U.S.

The Securities and Exchange Commission appears to be keeping a close eye on financial services startups, with today’s news that the agency has settled cases with two robo-advisory companies over allegations that they misled investors.
Wealthfront Advisers, one of the darlings of the fintech investment sector with $11 billion under management and roughly $200 million in venture capital backing, was fined $250,000 for making false statements to investors about one of its newer automated fina

Nothing gets people riled up like a peek into other people's budgets.
On Friday, much of Twitter went into an uproar when CNBC shared a mind-boggling pie chart that laid out a monthly budget for a 25-year-old who happens to make $100,000 a year and is "excellent with money."The budget breakdown of a 25-year-old who makes $100,000 a year and is excellent with money. via @CNBCMakeIt https://t.co/GLRCp1rfey pic.twitter.com/FuxRVrYXoH
— CNBC (@CNBC) December 21, 2018The outrage was instant, wi

A year ago, crypto was reaching ever new highs, and I was talking about whether ICOs would supplant the VC funding round and warning about Kim Jong Un’s crypto trading operations.
And then the world turned upside down.
Crypto prices are near rock-bottom prices, with Bitcoin hanging around $4,000 and Ethereum around $113, down from their highs earlier this year of around $16,600 and $1,400, respectively.
While that has put a dampener on the enthusiasm of a lot of cryptocurrency retail inves

Mars is looking like a cool destination this time of year, especially in this picture recently released by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. The image shows the icy heart of the perennially chilly Korolev crater, and is one of a few snapshots sent back from Mars’ robot explorers to Earth this holiday season.The Korolev crater formed sometime in Mars’ turbulent past, when another object slammed into the northern lowlands of the planet, leaving a scar fifty miles

This article contains spoilers for many shows and movies, including Killing Eve, Sharp Objects, and House of Cards. 
All our lives, the "fairer sex" has been told that femininity is a delicate flower, a weakness, a virtue, and an invitation for abuse.
The #MeToo movement made it clear that power imbalances can make womanhood feel synonymous with victimhood. And the women-led entertainment of 2017 often reflected that reality, or offered escapism from it through fantasies like Wonder Woman i

As long as there has been alcohol, there have been hangovers — and yet there has been no cure. Though there’s no lack of morning-after tips, we don’t have a pill or drink that can instantly reduce those telltale symptoms of nausea and exhaustion.Journalist Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall set out to investigate why and the result is Hung Over: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for a Cure (out now from Penguin Random House). The Verge spoke to Bishop-Stall about the cultural

It’s easy to forget that Fortnite — a cultural phenomenon that now has over 200 million registered players — began as a failure. It was conceived as a player vs. environment game that Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney described as a cross between Minecraft and Left 4 Dead in 2015, before co-opting the last-man-standing mechanics of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and becoming the biggest game on the planet. Fortnite stole that idea and then perfected the formula by making it

2018 has been a good year for video games. From blockbuster epics to smaller indie experiences to inventive takes on VR, the breadth and variety of games that came out over the last 12 months is astounding. To celebrate, Verge staff members are writing essays on their own personal favorite games, and what made them stand out above the crowd.
Return of the Obra Dinn begins at the end. The end of a story, the end of a life, the end of a barrel of a gun.
It begins with a body, a desiccated pile of

Apple events once held the attention of the entire internet. But in recent years, as we've become inundated with constant releases of new iPhones and MacBooks with somewhat incremental updates, they've become, well, boring.
Thankfully, Bad Lip Reading just dropped a parody of the Apple's product unveilings that perfectly captures their awkward and sometimes nonsensical nature.
I'm personally most excited for the Apple Steven Forkhead. You stick forks in it and then you hear a doorbell. It's pret

People want Ruth Bader Ginsburg to take their lungs. 
The 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice underwent surgery to remove two cancerous nodules in her left lung on Friday morning. The malignant lumps were found when she was treated for fractured ribs in November. According to a statement from the Supreme Court, there was "no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body" after surgery. 
SEE ALSO: Ruth Bader Ginsburg fractures her ribs and Twitter quickly offers to donate their bones
"Justice

Gatwick Airport, the UK’s second largest airport, has just become a key example of how thoroughly today’s consumer tech can disrupt our infrastructure. The airport briefly suspended all flights again Friday, the third time in three days, due to suspected drone sightings in the area. That’s right — drones were able to shut down a major UK artery for well over 24 hours, as police and armed forces have seemingly been unable to find those responsible.
Gatwick is investigatin

On Saturday morning, SpaceX will attempt to launch a new GPS satellite for the US Air Force from Florida — the last mission of the year for the company. If successful, SpaceX will finish 2018 with 21 launches and beat out its own record of 18 missions last year. However, viewers won’t get to see one of SpaceX’s rocket landings this time around, as the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellite will be deposited in the ocean.
SpaceX has been trying to get this launch off the ground

Meet Spot, a beautifully designed mobile app to control your cryptocurrencies. Spot looks like a portfolio-tracking app. But the company has built a strong foundation to add more features in the coming months. Spot wants to be your unique gateway to the world of cryptocurrencies.
“Spot’s vision isn’t to build a portfolio tracker — we went a bit overboard with this feature,” co-founder and CEO Edouard Steegmanntold me. “Eventually, we want to become the app to

No one said it was easy to adjust to life on Earth after living in space. 
From your lack of spatial awareness to missing that bird's eye view from the International Space Station, astronauts come back home to solid ground and experience all kinds of symptoms as a result of long stays in space. 
And according to a newly released video from NASA astronaut Drew Feustel, one of those symptoms is being unable to walk a straight line with your eyes closed. 
Feustel posted the video to

Where are you? That’s not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position.
Countries around the world, including China, Japan, India and the United Kingdom plus the European Union are exploring, testing and deploying satellites to build out their own positioning capabilities.
That’s a massive change for the United States, which for decades has had a practical monopoly on determining the lo

A new startup using AI to look after elderly people at home has raised a new round of funding to apply its platform to detect changes in gait or behavior, falls or stumbles. In other words, it could start to predict changes in long-term health.
CherryHome, the home AI security system created by startup Cherry Labs, has raised $5.2 million in funding from GSR Ventures to drive the technology’s use for in-home senior care. CherryHome uses its proprietary computer vision algorithms to interpr

With only four more days until Christmas, we found the best deals on 4K smart TVs from top manufacturers like Sony, LG, Samsung, and more. It's not too late to give an amazing 4K TV for the holidays with free two-day shipping from Amazon and Walmart (if you buy today), while you can order one from Best Buy and pick it up from one of their local retail stores.
Here are some of our favorite deals for this weekend:Save $402 on Samsung UN49NU8000FXZA Flat 49-inch 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV (2018)