Technology news

Colin Kaepernick and his former teammate, Eric Reid, have reached a settlement in their suit against the NFL. 
The players sued the league in 2017, alleging it colluded to keep the players out of league in response to their protests — against police brutality and racial injustice — during the pre-game National Anthem, which drew the ire of President Donald Trump. 
SEE ALSO: Colin Kaepernick's Pet Tortoise Is the NFL's Internet MVP
Details of the settlement were not disclose

Should local communities have the right to know before a big tech company moves in? Should they be able to protest before city planners offer those companies millions or even billions of dollars in incentives? Those were the questions raised when Amazon was promised $1.2 billion in subsidies to bring a new headquarters to New York City, and we’re asking them again today — because The Washington Post reports that Google has been using secret shell companies to nab millions in tax bre

The University of Michigan,well known for its efforts in self-driving car tech, has been working on an improved algorithm for predicting the movements of pedestrians that takes into account not just what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it. This body language could be critical to predicting what a person does next.
Keeping an eye on pedestrians and predicting what they’re going to do is a major part of any autonomous vehicle’s vision system. Understanding that a perso

Samsung is throwing in the towel on Blu-ray players, in the U.S. at least.
"Samsung will no longer introduce new Blu-ray or 4K Blu-ray player models in the US market," the company told CNET, in response to an earlier report in Forbes. 
SEE ALSO: Welp, we now know almost everything about Samsung's Galaxy S10 lineup
That doesn't mean you can't still get your hands on a Samsung Blu-ray player — retailers have plenty of older models in stock by the look of it — but if you were holdi

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been one of the most outspoken critics of Amazon's now-abandoned HQ2 plan for New York City, and now the online mega-retailer is hitting back... nicely.
After the young congresswoman criticized Amazon over reports of the inhumane conditions faced by the company's warehouse workers, an Amazon exec responded with a denial and an offer: come visit our facilities and see for yourself.
SEE ALSO: Amazon abandons HQ2 plan in New York City
"Is that culture of 'strict pe

When Oscar voters cast their ballots ahead of the 91st Academy Awards on Feb. 24, Disney wants them to remember Incredibles 2.
"For your consideration" ads and social media posts are a common sight in the run-up to the big show every year. But the typically dominant showing from Disney-Pixar productions is facing major competition in the universally well-received Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.
And that movie's fans are internet-savvy, to say the least.
SEE ALSO: What exactly is the Spider-Ve

We’ve seen practically as many different folding phone concepts as there are phone manufacturers, but one particularly intriguing idea may soon be coming back from the dead — CNET reports that BlackBerry and Alcatel brand owner TCL is working on as many as five different foldable devices, one of them a phone that can bend around your wrist like a bracelet, per the image you’re seeing immediately above these words.
That’s actually not a new idea: one of the very first fol

“The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell i

In just a week, a single seller put close to 750 million records from 24 hacked sites up for sale. Now, the hacker has struck again.
The hacker, whose identity isn’t known, began listing user data from several major websites — including MyFitnessPal, 500px and Coffee Meets Bagel, and more recently Houzz and Roll20 — earlier this week. This weekend, the hacker added a third round of data breaches — another eight sites, amounting to another 91 million user re

Want a new basketball jersey? In the future, it may be as simple as pushing a button.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver showed off a concept for the "NBA jersey of the future" that does just that. Silver, who was speaking at the NBA's All-Star Technology Summit demoed the futuristic tech, which would let you change the player name and number on your jersey in just a few seconds."So hopefully I just put Michael Rubin out of business," Silver joked, referring to the CEO of online jersey retailer Fanati

Uh-oh, this doesn't look good.
You know how when you delete a Twitter DM and you're expecting it to, like, be erased and non-retrievable ever again? Turns out Twitter's still keeping archives of deleted DMs according to a security researcher who shared his discovery with TechCrunch.
SEE ALSO: Brand Twitter, please stay away from the 2020 election
Speaking with TechCrunch, security researcher Karan Saini discovered he was able to retrieve old Twitter DMs he had deleted years ago. 
Saini says

5G phones — real ones you can actually buy soon — are coming.
OnePlus and Samsung have already pledged to release 5G smartphones sometime in 2019, but LG might beat everyone to launching one first if a newly leaked image of its alleged 5G-ready V50 ThinQ ends up being real.
SEE ALSO: Sprint files lawsuit against AT&T for misleading people with its fake 5G network
Phone leaker extraordinaire Evan Blass aka @evleaks published an image of what he claims is the LG V50 ThinQ. 
Th

OK, I’m about convinced that Vlad is right: phone manufacturers aren’t even trying anymore. Hot on the heels of learning practically everything Samsung could possibly announce at its Galaxy S10 press conference later this month, including up to five phones and an entire wearables lineup, we're now leaning that LG’s new superphone — the LG V50 ThinQ — has just broken cover. It turns an entire trail of bread crumbs into a remarkably decent picture of a phone worth wa

Mary Ann Azevedo ContributorShare on Twitter Mary Ann Azevedo covers startups and tech at Crunchbase News.More posts by this contributorAustin in January: Cash rich and maturing
Although it’s not the sexiest of industries, the hefty construction sector in 2018 attracted not only the attention but, more importantly, the dollars of investors.
Historically, the multi-trillion-dollar sector has been slow to adopt new technologies, as builders rely on a variety of disparate systems t

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gave the world a peek at the future of jerseys during this week’s NBA All-Start Technology Summit, an event dedicated to illustrating how technology might advance the sport by 2038.In addition to mentioning fans gaining entry into games via facial recognition, hologram mascots, and more personalized game experiences, Silver demonstrated the future of jerseys: a piece of smart clothing that can change the name and number displayed on them through a mobile app.

Respawn’s Apex Legends is a huge hit. The free-to-play battle royale shooter is closing out its second week since release, and it’s still retaining its top spot on the Twitch leaderboards following its successful first e-sports event. Top streamers like Ninja and Shroud continue to play the game on a daily basis, and it’s looking like it could have a healthy life as a top-tier competitive game if Respawn puts the resources into building out a proper tournament structure.But on

Oh Presidents' Day, the one day of the year when you can score mattresses at rock-bottom prices. We've decided to shake things up for 2019 and swap sleepy time for brain fuel: online courses, bundles, and e-learning packages. 
Take your pick from this selection of hot courses and learn something new before Memorial Day comes around.
Machine Learning and Data Science Certification Training Bundle ($1,600 value)
Haven't you heard? The world revolves around machine learning and big data now. I

In the US, Presidents’ Day is on Monday, February 18th. Banks will be closed as will some other stores and institutions, so check before you make the trek out if you have the day off. The biggest retailers, like Best Buy, Walmart, and Target, are all on the clock, though, and we’re seeing some of the best deals of the year from them.Some of the price cuts begin on Monday or even Tuesday in some cases, but there are a lot of sales that you can take advantage of right now. We’ll

According to a report from the WSJ, Visa and Mastercard are considering raising interchange fees on card transactions in the U.S. Visaand Mastercard generate most of their revenue from these small processing fees, and it could have implications for merchants and fintech startups.
When you pay with a credit or debit card, merchants pay a small fee to the bank that issued this card. Your bank then pays an even smaller fee to the company that operates the card network.
In most cases, card issuers a

Since AirPods launched in late 2016, people have begged Apple to release them in a color other than white.
After years, Apple might finally cave in to everyone's wishes. The latest rumor suggests Apple launch the second generation of its AirPods, tentatively called "AirPods 2," in black.
SEE ALSO: Genius woman turns her AirPods into earrings so they won't get lost
According to the Economic Daily News (via AppleInsider), Apple's supply chain has already started mass producing AirPods 2 in black a

Uberfiled a lawsuit against New York City, The Verge reported. The company wants to overturn New York City’s rule that caps the number of new ride-hailing drivers. Last summer, the city approved legislation that halts the issuing of new licenses to drivers for 12 months.
It has been a multi-year fight between Uber and New York City. NYC mayor Bill de Blasio has been in favor of new legislation to regulate ride-hailing companies for years. And the NYC Council finally voted in favor of such

We’re just a few days away from Samsung’s giant 10th anniversary Galaxy S10 event on February 20th, and it’s looking like it’ll be one of the biggest phone announcements Samsung has ever made. Fortunately, given that we live in a world where leaks are plentiful and manufacturers aren’t even trying to keep secrets anymore, we already know a ton about Samsung’s new phones.
So if you can’t wait for the official announcement on February 20th, here’s e

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. This is the second edition and seriously people, what happened this week? Too much. Too much!
Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation Weekly? Catch up here. As I’ve written before, consider this a soft launch. Follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week. (An email subscription is coming).
Off we go … vroom.
ONM …

This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.Between the loss of queer publication Into and the partial closing of AfterEllen, it's been a crushing few years for queer people in media.
So it was downright uplifting to see Out Magazine feature the women and non-binary femmes otherwise known as the "Mothers and Daughters of the Movement" in its latest issue. 
It's so rare to see this community represented in media, forget g

American speculative fiction can trace its roots back to the country’s puritanical origins, which left its mark on a wide range of authors. Starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne and continuing through Shirley Jackson and Margaret Atwood, these writers focus on the role that their characters play in society at large, and what those societies do to keep their subjects in line. That influence cuts through Ben H. Winters’ latest novel, Golden State, in which a police officer uncovers a trou

We finally know when Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune will come out: November 20th, 2020, according to Variety. The film is the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 science fiction novel, set on a desert planet in a feudal galaxy.Villeneuve comes to the film with an impressive track record when it comes to science fiction, first with his first contact film Arrival, and with Blade Runner 2049. Last year, the director said in an interview that his goal was to direct

Greetings from Chittorgarh, one of my stops on a two-week excursion through Goa and Rajasthan, India. I’ve been a little too busy exploring, photographing cows and monkeys and eating a lot of delicious food to keep up with *all* the tech news, but I’ve still got the highlights.
For starters, if you haven’t heard yet, TechCrunchlaunched Extra Crunch, a paid premium subscription offering full of amazing content. As part of Extra Crunch, we’ll be doing deep dives on select b

Steve Jurvetsonis staging a comeback, disclosing today that his new San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm Future Ventures, has raised $200 million for its debut fund.
“It’s good to be back in the saddle again,” says Jurvetson, whose career was somewhat derailed in the fall of 2017 when a former girlfriend wrote a Facebook post, accusing DFJ — the firm Jurvetson cofounded in 1985 — of “predatory behavior.” DFJ said publicly the next day that it wa

Hasbro, owner of the Nerf brand, today revealed its full lineup of Fortnite-themed Nerf products, including the previously announced AR-L Elite blaster modeled after the SCAR in Epic Games’ hit battle royale game.Prior to today, only the AR-L Elite was confirmed back when the line was first announced in October. At the time, that product had a ship date of June 1st, 2019 and a price tag of $49.99. That price tag stays the same, but Hasbro says all of the products will now start shipping o