Technology news

Apple will soon give iOS and Mac App Store developers the option to offer discounted subscriptions to current and past customers, as noted by MacRumors and TechCrunch. As it stands now, limited-time subscription rates can only be part of introductory promotions; once you’ve signed up for a service or app, you’re stuck having to pay the regular subscription cost after the discount expires. And developers haven’t had any way of changing that — say, to entice former subscri

Lime has issued a warning to riders about a firmware bug in the company’s electric scooters that can cause “sudden excessive braking” during use, via The Washington Post.
The bug tends to occurs when riding downhill at top speed
According to Lime, the bug occurs in “very rare cases,” usually when a rider is going downhill at top speed and hits a pothole or obstacle, the scooter will unexpectedly brake the front wheel, which has led to some riders being injured. Lim

California-based Zero Motorcycles pulled the cover off of its newest electric bike, the SR/F, at an event in midtown Manhattan on Monday. It’s the company’s most advanced bike in its 13-year history, with a colorful new digital dashboard, a revamped mobile app, and of course, the promise that it will be a joy to ride, with 110 horsepower on offer and up to 200 miles of range on a full charge (with a range-extending battery pack add-on).
The new SR/F will start shipping in April, and

There’s been a lot of talk in the last year about the different form factors of devices (laptops, tablets, and smartphones) gradually converging over time. We’ve seen Google and Apple attempt to make the tablet a viable laptop replacement with the iPad Pro and Pixel Slate, and now Samsung and Huawei are merging the smartphone and tablet with their foldable smartphones, the Galaxy Fold and Mate X, respectively.Less common is the idea of using flexible displays to bring together the f

Although you may not want to add to the trauma of the moderation staff who spend their days monitoring the worst of Facebook, disturbing and inappropriate content gets posted to the social network each and every day, and the company’s automated software is woefully ill-equipped at finding it and even worse at properly evaluating it. So how do you as a user report a post, message, photo, or other item on Facebook that you believe should be pulled?
Well, the first place to go is Facebook&rs

Adam Sacks was a video editor on a mission: to create a Kickstarter to digitally erase the rat that appears in the final scene of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film The Departed. But sadly, it seems that Sacks’ dream may not become a reality, with Warner Bros. issuing a DCMA copyright takedown request to cancel the project.
Sacks was attempting to raise $4,000 for the quest to remove the rat, which he describes on the campaign as a “painfully on the nose metaphor” that

Microsoftwon’t stop its work on a nearly half-billion-dollar government contract designed to bring HoloLens augmented reality tech to the U.S. Army.
“We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy,” Satya Nadellatold CNN in an interview. “We were very transparent about that decision and we’ll continue to have that dialogue [with employees].”G

If you thought Fortnite was looking mortal, you might want to reconsider.
New numbers from SuperData show that the Fortnite juggernaut lagged by one meaningful measure at the start of this year. Revenue from the game across platforms dropped by a hard-to-ignore 48 percent between December 2018 and January 2019. As the report notes, December was a peak month for the multiplayer third-person shooter, with Fortnite fever in full swing and holiday purchases driving revenue to record levels.
While a

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the company’s multimillion-dollar contract with the Pentagon to supply augmented reality headsets in an interview with CNN Business today. Last week, dozens of employees publicly criticized that same contract and called for the company to end its ties with the US military.
On Friday, a group of about 50 Microsoft workers published a letter demanding that the company pull out of its nearly $480 million contract to supply as many as 100,000 HoloLens devi

The first wave of 5G phones are starting to get announced, but if today’s Qualcomm news is anything to go by, the real point of entry for the next-generation network won’t come until early 2020, when Qualcomm ships its first processor with a 5G modem built in.
That’s because so far, the first 5G phones are all a bit of a pieced-together affair. Currently, Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 855 chipset has an integrated LTE modem, and not one of the company’s 5G modems.

Last month I wrote about Ubiquitilink, which promised, through undisclosed means, it was on the verge of providing a sort of global satellite-based roaming service. But how, I asked? (Wait, they told me.) Turns out our phones are capable of a lot more than we think: they can reach satellites acting as cell towers in orbit just fine, and the company just proved it.
Utilizing a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, Ubiquitilinkclaimed during a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelo

One of the big challenges of developing a machine learning project can be simply getting enough relevant data to train the algorithms. That’s where Superb AI, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2019 class, can help. The startup helps companies create customized data sets to meet the requirements of any project, using AI to speed up the tagging process.
Hyun Kim, who is CEO and co-founder at the startup, says one of the big stumbling blocks for companies trying to incorporate AI and machin

Taiwanese horror game Devotion has been removed from Steam by its developers after it drew the ire of Chinese gamers by including a meme that mocked Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meme angered gamers enough that they left thousands of thumbs-down reviews on Steam for Devotion, forcing the developer to apologize, as spotted earlier by Polygon. Developers now say the game will return after a quality check.
Twitch’s hottest psychological horror game Devotion takes players through an aband

With an angle on a long-neglected part of the shipping industry — the short-haul movement of cargo from docks to logistics centers — Dray Alliance is joining a growing startup scene for logistics businesses based in Los Angeles.
With some of the nation’s largest ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Southern California region is now fertile ground for businesses hoping to tackle what amounts to a trillion-dollar industry.
Companies like Shippabo, a provider of shipping track

Samsung is one of the first major smartphone makers to include a cryptocurrency wallet in its latest flagship Galaxy S10 phones. The wallet lets users store bitcoin, Ethereum, and a beauty-related cryptocurrency called Cosmo Coin. It's a cold storage wallet, meaning it's not connected to the internet.
The Galaxy S10 phones also support select decentralized apps (“Dapps”). Currently, Samsung’s main Dapp that’s available is called Cosmee, and it lets users earn Cosmo token

Leslee Cohen has been practicing law for decades in her hometown of Chicago. She’s been working with more and more startups over the last ten years, after co-founding her own firm (Hershman Cohen) and expanding along with the city’s tech scene.On her approach:
“I have one partner and we have now hired two other women to join us. We are extremely conscious of the fact that startups and small businesses have a lot of important uses for their dollars other than legal fees. We are

Facebook says it’s working on an improved compliance and audit process for the third-party contractors it hires to perform content moderation, following an exposé by The Verge detailing harrowing working conditions at the Phoenix, Arizona facility of a Facebook contractor called Cognizant.”We are putting in place a rigorous and regular compliance and audit process for all of our outsourced partners to ensure they are complying with the contracts and care we expect,” wri

We’re getting to a point, as a culture, where we can predict a few things with absolute certainty. Disney will milk every possible cent out of its animated library with live-action cash-ins. The Oscars will be divisive. And ads for Ryan Reynolds projects will have a certain wide-eyed, tongue-in-cheek self-importance that’s both ridiculous and refreshing. On Monday, the actor tweeted out a supposed behind-the-scenes clip about his preparations to voice the pokémon Pikachu in t

A group of security researchers has revealed that newly discovered flaws in networks could let hackers eavesdrop on calls or track a phone owner’s location. Worse, the problems extend beyond just the widely used 4G, and into the next-generation 5G.TechCrunch first reported on the researchers’ paper, which is set to be presented at a security symposium tomorrow.Attack works by making several calls
In the paper, the researchers outline an attack called Torpedo, which can be used to de

As subscriptions continue to grow into a sizable revenue stream for mobile app developers, Apple has had to make adjustments to its guidelines, rules and even its tools for subscription management in recent weeks. It issued stricter guidelines around how subscriptions are to be presented to consumers, and it made the setting for canceling existing subscriptions more accessible. Now, Apple is rolling out new tools for developers that will help them retain their current customers and win back laps

On Tuesday, Coinbaseannounced that XRP will be the latest cryptocurrency to hit its pro-level trading platform. Coinbase Pro will allow users to transfer XRP to the platform right away (“After 10am on February 25”) but there will be at least a 12-hour delay before trading is enabled.
Support for XRP will be available for users in the U.S. (though not those in New York state), the U.K., Canada, Singapore, Australia and the EU. As one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies around,

Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi didn’t know it when they met at the University of Waterlooeleven years ago, but the bond that the two forged in late night study sessions as roommates in the UW Place dorm has helped power their work building an exoskeleton that allows children with disabilities to walk.
The fruit of that labor is Trexo Robotics, which will graduate as part of the latest batch of Y Combinator’s winter 2019 cohort.Trexo Robotics exoskeleton for childrenIn the three years

Anthem is the first attempt by Bioware (of Mass Effect and Dragon Age fame) to tap into the well of cash supposedly to be found in the “game as platform” trend that has grown over the last few years, with Destiny, Warframe and Fortnite as preeminent exemplars. After a botched demo weekend dampened fan expectations, the final game is here — and while it’s a lot better than the broken mess we saw a few weeks ago, it’s still very hard to recommend.
I delayed my review

At MWC 2019, 5G phones are starting to make their first real-life appearances, and ZTE is the latest company to throw its hat in the ring with the announcement of the Axon 10 Pro 5G, set to release later this year in China and Europe.
No price or release date, of course
Next-gen network aside, the Axon 10 Pro 5G looks like a fairly nice upgrade to last year’s Axon 9 Pro: the iPhone X-sized notch is getting shrunk down to a smaller teardrop one, the fingerprint sensor has been moved from t

China is facing a challenging juxtaposition in the coming years: can the government remain in control of business and media while also opening up the country to the knowledge economy?
China has uplifted more humans in a shorter period of time than any other country in the history of the planet. That mesmerizing growth engine, though, is starting to face an intense slog. Economic growth has slowed considerably, and while there are vagaries to these indicators, it is clear that China needs to rebu

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. Say hello to Microsoft’s new $3,500 HoloLens with twice the field of view
Microsoft has unveiled the latest version of its HoloLens “mixed reality” headset at MWC Barcelona. The HoloLens 2 features a significantly larger field of view, higher resolution and a device that&rsqu

Narrative, a startup that makes it easier to buy and sell data, is announcing that it’s raised $3 million in additional seed funding.
The round was led by Glasswing Ventures .  XSeed, Tuhaye and Revel also participated.
When I first wrote about the company two years ago, it had already raised $2.25 million, and its business revolved around a marketplace for data. Founder and CEO Nick Jordan told me that’s still what Narrative offers — but customers have also started u

If you’re one of the many people who have cut the cord and moved from cable to streaming TV, you’ve probably lost access to most, or all, of your local stations. And your options (unless you want to reattach that cable box) are limited. You can buy a separate antenna in order to access these stations, but your reception may be limited by how strong the signals are and whether they are blocked by nearby structures. So what do you do?
There is currently at least one service that is tr

HAX today announced the launch of an initiative targeted at helping startups advance the state of tech for people over the age of 65. The program was developed in conjunction with Centrica, the energy company behind the newly launched Hive Link, a smart home service for people with elderly family members.The program will invest $250,000 in the startups it selects, including mentoring, office space, education and the like, in exchange for equity in the companies — a pretty standard setup fo

Microsoft resurrected Kinect yesterday during the company’s HoloLens 2 press event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The software giant has shrunk Kinect into a $399 PC peripheral that can be used as a sensor in similar ways to how developers used Kinect for Windows or even the original Xbox 360 Kinect. Microsoft has designed this new Kinect to be primarily used with Azure, the company’s cloud-based service, for computer vision and speech models.
I got a chance to get a closer

“High Flying Bird,” the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh, isn’t an easy movie to categorize.
For starters, it’s a basketball movie without any basketball. Instead, the story focuses on agent Ray Burke (played by Andre Holland), and his efforts behind the scenes during an NBA lockout. It becomes surprisingly political, portraying the pro sports world as another arena for the conflict between labor and management.
Oh, and this is the second time Soderbergh’

Samsung has announced two new mid-range Galaxy A Series phones, the A30 and A50. The phones were first spotted on the Samsung India website, and there appear to be invites sent out for a press event in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata on February 28th. It’s a push by Samsung against the market share its lost in India to Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, whose cheaper phones with competitive features are increasingly popular in the country.
Cameras are one of the main focuses with both the

Mobile World Congress is underway, which means there are a handful of brand spankin’ new 5G phones hitting the market soon.
How ever will you decide?
Here’s a look at all the 5G phones announced thus far:
Huawei Mate X
The Mate X is a foldable 5G phone with one 4.6-inch screen, another 6.6-inch 2480×1148 screen and (when unfolded) an 8-inch 2200×2480 display.
Some other specs:Processor: Kirin 980
Battery: 4,5000mAh
Memory: 8GB RAM, 512GB internal
Price: $2,600
Size: 11mm

It might have been hidden inside a thick plastic case and locked inside a plastic cube, but at MWC 2019 OnePlus showed a prototype of its first 5G phone to the public for the first time. The device was connected to a local 5G base station with an mmWave connection, the variant of 5G that focuses on high data throughput at the expense of range. In the last few days the company has recently confirmed via a Finnish carrier that it expects to launch it in the second quarter of this year.Aside from

The FTC announced this morning it has approved the final consent order with online student loan refinancer SoFi, which resolves the allegations around SoFi’sdeceptive advertising practices. Last October, the FTC issued a complaint stating that SoFi had been misrepresenting how much money student loan borrowers could save in its online, TV and direct mail advertisements since April 2016.
According to the FTC’s findings, SoFi would inflate the average lifetime savings consumers could a

Huawei’s zealousness about keeping journalists’ hands off its new Mate X foldable phone slipped a little today, and I got to hold and fold it for myself. The hands-on experience with this device confirmed and deepened all the feelings I had about it already: it’s a polished, refined physical design that gets us closest to the ideal of a foldable with minimal compromises. There are still huge questions about what the software UX will be like, how durable and scratch-resistant t

Target this morning announced Target+, a new initiative designed to expand the assortment on Target.com with merchandise from third-party sellers. But unlike with Walmart and Amazon’s marketplaces, Target is taking a more curated approach as to how sellers will be added to its program. The retailer says it’s starting with “thoughtfully selected” additions in areas like home, toys, electronics and sporting goods.
While any seller can apply to join Amazon or Walmart’s

T-Mobile’s 5G network won’t launch in full until the second half of 2019 because phones aren’t ready yet, according to CNET, which spoke with T-Mobile’s chief technical officer about the delay. That’ll put T-Mobile at least a few months behind Verizon, Sprint, and possibly AT&T (which already has a limited 5G launch) as well.
T-Mobile has been cagey about its 5G launch date: this time last year, the company indicated that it would have 30 cities with 5G by the

The European Commission’sdigital commissioner has warned the mobile industry to expect it to act over security concerns attached to Chinese network equipment makers.
The Commission is considering a defacto ban on kit made by Chinese companies including Huawei in the face of security and espionage concerns, per Reuters.
Appearing on stage at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona today, Mariya Gabriel,European commissioner for digital economy and society, flagged network “cy

OnePlus promised us a 5G handset this year. At Mobile World Congress this week, the company kind of, sort of delivered. Unlike the sea of other 5G devices unveiled at the show, however, the company’s offering is still very much in the prototype phase — like, behind protective glass with all of the interesting bits obscured, as it isn’t officially official.The product appeared at Qualcomm’s booth this week, since OnePlus’ presence at the show has been mostly limited

MicroSD cards are about to get a whole lot faster, thanks to the newly announced microSD Express format that the SD Association announced at MWC 2019. The new cards will rely on the far faster PCIe and NVMe interfaces commonly used on modern SSDs to reach speeds of up to 985 megabytes per second.
Next-gen microSD cards could be as fast as SSDs
For comparison, Western Digital’s new 1TB SanDisk microSD card, also announced at MWC and which claims to be the fastest 1TB card in the world, top

The FIDO Alliance and Google today announced that Android (from version 7.0 up) with the latest version of the Google Play Services is now FIDO2 certified. At first glance, that sounds rather boring, but it will enable developers to write apps that use a phone’s fingerprint scanner or a FIDO security key to authenticate users without making them type in a password. As I’m not aware of too many people who like to type in complicated passwords that their IT department makes them change

Sprint plans to launch its 5G network this May, starting in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City. 5G service is also supposed to come to Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Washington, DC in the first half of the year.
Like most of the just-months-away 5G network launches, details are surprisingly slim around Sprint’s plans. The company declined to state what its 5G service plans would look like, and it was vague about what kind of speeds to expect.
Asked about speeds on a c