Technology news

The biggest surprise of CES this year came from Apple, a company that didn’t give a keynote speech, didn’t have a booth on the show floor, but nevertheless dominates the show year after year from afar. A bunch of TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, and Vizio will support AirPlay 2.It was a surprise because none of the announcements leaked, sure, but it was also a surprise because it ran completely counter to the way things usually go at CES. It also ran counter to the way things usually go

PeakSpan Capital, a four-year-old, Burlingame, Calif.-based venture firm, has closed its second fund with $265 million in capital commitments, according to a new SEC filing that shows that 68 investors were involved in the fundraise.
That’s a meaningful jump in size from the firm’s $150 million debut fund, which it closed in 2016.
PeakSpan was co-founded by Phil Dur, Brian Mulvey, and Matt Melymuka, longtime investors who’d worked together previously for an outfit that&rsq

Smart doorbell company Ring allowed employees to share unencrypted customer videos with each other, according to reports by both The Intercept and The Information. The reports say that Ring, which was purchased by Amazon last year, gave various teams access to unencrypted customer video files on company servers and live feeds from some customer cameras, regardless of whether that access was necessary.
The reports say that this behavior began in 2016, when Ring founder Jamie Siminoff moved the c

For the first time ever, astronomers have directly witnessed the birth of a super dense object far outside of our galaxy — the rise of either a black hole or a collapsed star in real time. Up until now, we’ve only ever seen these objects many years after they’ve first formed. But now, we can study this creation in its early days, giving us novel insight into what these mysterious phenomena look like when they first come into existence.
The discovery, nicknamed “The Cow,&

Ford is shutting down Chariot,the shuttle startup that it purchased just two years ago that was supposed to be a part of the automaker’s fresh effort to move beyond the traditional business of buying and selling cars.
Chariot will end service on commuter routes in the U.K. on January 25, according to a company update Thursday. Other commuter routes in New York and San Francisco will cease by February 1. The dynamic shuttle service also had an enterprise business, which were routes with cor

Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T said they were taking steps to crack down on the misuse of customer location data after an investigation this week found how easy it was for third parties to track the locations of customers.
The announcements were the second promise from carriers in the past year to crack down on data access, and came as lawmakers questioned carriers’ commitment to protecting sensitive information.In a story published on Tuesday, Motherboard said it had successfully paid a

Gaurav Jain Contributor Gaurav Jain is one of the founders of Afore Capital, a $47 million fund focused on pre-seed. He was also an early early product manager for Android.More posts by this contributorHow To Be A VC Without Any Capital You’ve Only Got One Shot At Building A Consumer UnicornBy now it’s clear that seed is the new Series A. Seed rounds have tripled in size and companies have been around for 2.4 years before they raise a seed round. A new stage called pre-seed has emer

VLC, the open-source video player app, is announcing two major milestones from CES today. The development team, Videolan — along with Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the lead developers — told Variety at CES that it’ll be adding AirPlay support, allowing users to transmit videos from their iPhone (or Android) to their Apple TV.The update could be released for the primary VLC app in “about a month,” for free. However, VLC tells The Verge there’s no specific releas

Shareholders today filed a lawsuit against Google parent company Alphabet, arguing that the company had breached its duty to shareholders when it approved large exit packages for former executives after determining that there were credible allegations of sexual misconduct.
The suit was filed this morning in San Mateo Superior Court by Alphabet shareholder James Martin. The suit seeks three new independent directors for the Alphabet board, and an end to the dual-class voting structure of the sto

Game studio Bungie, known best for having created the Halo franchise and more recently the Destiny series, is splitting up with its longtime publishing partner Activision, the company said in a surprise announcement this afternoon. Bungie will retain the rights to Destiny, with plans to self-publish future expansions and new installments.The two companies partnered back in 2010, after Bungie sold its Halo rights to Microsoft and embarked on its next big project, which ultimately became 2014&rsq

IMDb is known as the place to go to look up details for any film under the sun, and now it’s entering the streaming video arena. The company has launched Freedive, a free streaming platform that’s supported by periodic ad breaks.The service’s films and TV shows are available to registered IMDb or Amazon users and Amazon Fire TV owners. (The list of compatible devices is the same as the list for Prime Video.) Fire owners can navigate the service by way of a new icon in the &ldq

Electric vehicle competition is heating up and it’s pushing some of the first entrants to add range and other features in hopes of keeping up with automakers that are just bringing EVs to the market.
Nissan has been in this EV game for nearly nine years now. The company has sold more than 380,000 Leaf vehicles globally since the EV first went on sale in 2010. And while it debuted a refreshed version of its all-electric Leaf just 16 months ago, the automaker is back with another Leaf v

Chariot, the microtransit service owned by Ford, is going out of business. According to a companywide email obtained by the San Francisco Examiner, the on-demand bus service will cease operation February 1st. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to The Verge.Dan Grossman, CEO of Chariot, said in a statement:
In today’s mobility landscape, the wants and needs of customers and cities are changing rapidly. As those changes continue, it has become clear that the mobility services

Amazon’sIMDb movie website today announced the launch of a free streaming service, called Freedive. The service offers viewers in the U.S. access to an ad-supported collection of TV shows like  Fringe, Heroes, The Bachelor and Without a Trace, as well as Hollywood movies like Awakenings, Foxcatcher, Memento, Monster, Run Lola Run, The Illusionist, The Last Samurai, True Romance, and others.
The content is free to watch without a subscription, and can be viewed on a phon

Earlier this week, when Razer announced that it would integrate Amazon’s Alexa into its gaming platform, I wondered if this was a strong signal of how Amazon may be starting to lay the groundwork for its own strategy to do more in gaming. By coincidence, today The Information reports just that: Amazon is now developing its own streamed gaming service, according to its sources. It’s already talking with publishers to stream their titles on the platform, and it aims to launch it next y

It sure looks like Amazon wants to stream games to your home. No, not the kind of streaming where you watch somebody play games over the internet — Amazon already owns Twitch — but the kind where you can play games without waiting for a download or buying a disc, because they’re actually running on powerful servers that live far away from your house.
That’s the word from The Information, which reports that two independent sources have said Amazon is developing a cloud ga

Scientists have built an app that gives a smartphone the ability to detect an opioid overdose and alert others for help. The app, called Second Chances, is still in development, but the researchers hope to have it approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and eventually sell the technology.
With over 110 Americans dying each day from opioid overdoses, the opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug overdose crisis in US history. “It’s a huge public health problem and also one where

Germany automotive firm Continental is best know for its tires, but at CES 2019 the company is demonstrating something a little different: package delivery by robot dog.As part of its research into the future of mobility, Continental has partnered with robotics company ANYbotics (a spin off from ETH Zurich) to imagine the future of package delivery. In a staged demonstration on the CES show floor, the firm showed how one of ANYbotics’ four-legged robots could jump out the back of a self-d

It was on Android phones first, then it came to smart speakers, and now Google Assistant is compatible with everything from TVs to showers. In fact, Google’s voice assistant is now so popular that the company recently announced that it expects the feature to be installed on a billion devices soon.That number is 10 times bigger than the 100 million Alexa devices that Amazon recently announced have been sold. But Google is counting millions of Android phones where people may not actually be

Voice assistants are being integrated into every part of our daily lives, from smart speakers to home security and bizarrely, even to toilets. Google said it expects its Assistant to be installed on a billion devices soon, and Amazon recently announced that more than 100 million devices with Alexa have been sold.
So Amazon’s number isn’t a billion (it isn’t on millions of Android phones, after all), but support for Alexa continues to be built into more and more products, thank

Venture firms can come and go, as anyone who lived through the boom and bust of the late ’90s internet bubble can attest. Some firms have staying power, however, and among these is Mayfield, founded 50 years ago, just ahead of Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital (both founded 47 years ago) and Menlo Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, which celebrate their 43rd and 42nd birthdays this year, respectively.
Indeed, to ensure it continues to stick around, Mayfield decided it was time to st

Today, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Instagram followers got an unexpected message from the newly elected congresswoman — she created a new Instagram account for official government business.
Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement came on her personal Instagram account, @ocasio2018, on Thursday by way of an Insta-story. “House Rules say I can’t post IG stories from my personal account while I’m in my office,” she wrote on a screenshot from her new offici

You will never know as much as your lawyers do about the legal services they provide to you. It is a classic asymmetry of information, where the party that knows less gets the worse deal. In this case, that is you, the startup founder.
As an attorney and a co-founder of a venture-backed startup that made it over the finish line, I have been on both sides of the table. Through that experience, I’ve adopted an approach for managing legal spend which you can use to help ensure that you get th

The Alienware Area-51m is trying to deliver on a dream: a gaming laptop with user-upgradeable CPUs and GPUs like a desktop so it won’t become obsolete. (At least that’s the plan; check out our feature story.)
But as you might expect, the most premium parts won’t be cheap. Alienware’s configurator page now shows that a fully kitted Area-51m — complete with a bona fide 8-core Intel Core i9-9900K desktop processor, Nvidia RTX 2080 mobile graphics, and a 144Hz screen &

GM is sprucing up its smartphone app for owners of the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt through a collaboration with charging network companies EVgo,ChargePointand Greenlots.
The idea is to take aggregate dynamic data from each of the EV charging networks so owners can have a “more seamless charging experience.” In short: GM wants to make it easier and more intuitive for Bolt EV owners to find and access charging. Removing hurdles from the charging experience can go a long way in convinci

Tidal, the Jay Z-led music streaming service that emphasizes audio quality, is making its way into new Lincoln vehicles, the companies announced on Thursday. Lincoln owners with the latest versions of Ford’s Sync infotainment service and an iOS device can access the Tidal app via the in-car console. Lincoln owners will receive up to 12 months of the streaming service for free under the terms of the partnership.Last year, Lincoln announced a brand “refresh” when it unveiled the

When your satellite breaks in space, as DigitalGlobe’s did on Monday, there isn’t an easy way to repair it. Technology that’s currently on the horizon may change that, however, allowing satellite providers to staunch their financial losses and get more out of their investments.
For DigitalGlobe, the loss was brutal: an Earth-imaging satellite called WorldView-4, which had clients that include Google Maps. A critical instrument needed to stabilize the spacecraft has stopped wor

A couple of days ago, we reported that Kroger and Microsoft were working on a smart shopping solution that uses your phone to scan groceries as you shop. Now, a startup called Caper Labs has taken that idea a step further, and it has built both scanning hardware and a payment terminal directly into a shopping cart, reports TechCrunch. It’s even got a small touchscreen designed to help you navigate the store and advertise relevant promotions.At the moment, the cart’s scanner acts lik

At the end of The Punisher’s first season, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) got a new lease on life after tangling with a group of corrupt military officials who covered up war crimes in Afghanistan. But as we saw in the first teaser for season 2, that clean slate he earned is short-lived. The first full trailer for the second season shows Castle being pulled out of retirement and into another bloody vigilante battle.
Castle is brought back into action when he helps a young woman, Amy Bendix (

Wikipedia’s goal is to make the world’s knowledge accessible to everyone on the planet, but it would be the first to admit its efforts are skewed somewhat towards those that read English. To help fix this, the Wikimedia Foundation (which runs Wikipedia) announced today it’s partnering with Google to take advantage of the company’s AI translation skills.Google Translate will be integrated into Wikipedia’s in-house translation tool at no cost, added as an option alon

Sprint and T-Mobile said they were taking steps to crack down on the misuse of customer location data after an investigation this week found how easy it was for third parties to track the locations of customers.
The announcements were the second promise from carriers in the past year to crack down on data access, and came as lawmakers questioned carriers’ commitment to protecting sensitive information.In a story published on Tuesday, Motherboard said it had successfully paid a bounty hunt

T-Mobile is beginning to roll out support for call verification technology, which will confirm that a phone call is actually coming from the number listed on caller ID. Now, if one T-Mobile subscriber calls another T-Mobile subscriber, the person receiving the call will see a message saying “Caller Verified” if they have a supported phone. Unfortunately, there’s only one supported phone for the time being.
Call verification won’t put a stop to spammy phone calls, but it

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. How Trump’s government shutdown is harming cyber and national securityThe government has been shut down for nearly three weeks, and there’s no end in sight. While most of the core government departments — State, Treasury, Justice and Defense — are still operational, othe

This year’s CES was full of laptops that looked like last year’s, but there were more than a few interesting exceptions. There’s been everything from GeForce RTX-equipped thin gaming laptops to AMD-powered Chromebooks to 17-inch desktop replacements with swappable CPUs. To cut through the deluge of announcements, we’ve rounded up what we think are the best laptops from CES 2019 so you can get a look at the tech that’s arriving in the year ahead.
Alienware Area-51m

What's all the fuss about Bluetooth speakers? Well, these portable devices allow you to experience your favourite tunes no matter where you are or what you're doing. Whether it's listening to classical pieces or the latest chart-topper, you can enjoy everything you love, all the time.
That's what all the fuss it about.
There are absolutely loads of top quality Bluetooth speakers on the market right now, so you have plenty of options when it comes to making a purchase. You really are spoilt for c

What's so great about Bluetooth speakers? Well, these portable devices allow you to experience your favourite songs no matter where you are or what you're doing. You can enjoy everything you love, all the time.
There are absolutely loads of top quality options on the market right now, so you have plenty of choice when it comes to making a purchase. This isn't always a good thing, though. The problem with having so many impressive products from top brands is that picking the right device can be t

What's so great about Bluetooth speakers? Well, these portable devices allow you to experience your favourite songs no matter where you are or what you're doing. 
You can enjoy everything you love, all the time.
There are absolutely loads of top quality options on the market right now, so you have plenty of choice when it comes to making a purchase. This isn't always a good thing, though. The problem with having so many impressive products from top brands is that picking the right device ca

Bluetooth speakers allow us to experience music no matter where we go. Whether it's listening to classical pieces from Mozart or Halsey's newest single, you shouldn't have to miss out on enjoying your favorites. But with so many great Bluetooth speakers to choose from, how do you know which ones are the best?
Maybe you're an active person who needs a durable speaker for all that hiking or are looking for something to kickstart a whole home audio system. Regardless, there are plenty to choose fro

When Red Dead Online launched in November, it included a mode that was a refreshing take on the now-ubiquitous battle royale format. Called “make it count,” it had players fighting to be the last one standing, with only knives and bows at their disposal. It was wonderfully tense and slow, but if you’re looking for a more traditional battle royale match, the game’s latest mode sounds a lot like Fortnite and PUBG, but on a smaller scale.Included in today’s Red Dead O

Amazon’s Fire TV streaming player has surpassed 30 million active users, pushing ahead of Roku and making it one of the most popular players.Amazon’s head of Fire TV, Marc Whitten, told CNET on Wednesday that number could increase in the coming weeks, too, as people who purchased Fire TV sets over the holiday may have not set them up. Amazon previously announced in October 2018 that it had around 25 million Amazon Fire TV users, meaning that more than five million users were added i

The Amazon boogie-man has every retailer scrambling for ways to fight back. But the cost and effort to install cameras all over the ceiling or into every shelf could block stores from entering the autonomous shopping era. Caper wants to make eliminating checkout lines as easy as replacing their shopping carts while offering a more familiar experience for customers.
The startup makes a shopping cart with a built-in barcode scanner and credit card swiper, but it’s finalizing the technol

AMD introduced its latest Radeon VII graphics card yesterday, just days after Nvidia revealed it was bringing its RTX 2080 line to gaming laptops. AMD’s new chip is designed to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 2080, but outspoken Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has laughed off the competition. In a roundtable attended by Gizmodo and other media outlets, Huang described AMD’s announcement as “underwhelming” and claimed the RTX 2080 would “crush” AMD’s Radeon VII

AOC’s G2590FX gaming monitor is $30 off of its original price at Newegg, dropping it down to $189. While it’s certainly not a huge discount, it makes this FreeSync-ready monitor well worth considering. Later in 2019, it’ll receive a firmware update that enables Nvidia’s G-Sync adaptive sync technology for GeForce GTX and RTX GPUs.
This 24.5-inch monitor has a 1080p resolution with a 1ms response time and 144Hz refresh rate, which are all necessary components for a decent