Technology news

Tim Cook is a pretty well-known figure in the business world. I know a lot of people don’t care about computers and that’s fine, but if you’re in the industry or having some sort of professional interaction with him, I have to think people usually know his name going in.
And yet, at an American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting today, the president pretty unmistakably called Tim Cook “Tim Apple.”At first I thought I was just hearing things? Then I thought it

In a long manifesto about Facebook’s future, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is willing to be banned in countries that object to its new focus on privacy, specifically the emphasis on secure data storage. That might sink any chance of Facebook operating in China, a huge market it’s been flirting with entering for years. But it also might let Facebook claim some moral high ground over one of its competitors: Apple.
Zuckerberg described a vision for Facebook that’s based on

Amazon is shutting down all of its US pop-up kiosks as it shifts its strategy toward growing other forms of physical stores. First reported by The Wall Street Journal, the company announced that it will be shuttering its pop-up kiosks, and all 87 mini-stores are expected to close by April 29th.
Amazon’s pop-up stores have been operating since 2014, usually located inside malls as small kiosks selling devices like Echos, Kindles, and tablets. The kiosks have also operated inside Kohl&rsquo

T-Mobile announced today that it’s expanding its robocall-fighting Caller Verified feature to five new phones, including the Galaxy S10E, S10, and S10 Plus, along with the forthcoming LG G8 ThinQ and the LG Aristo 3.It’s not a perfect solution to spam calls, but at least it’s something
Those phones join the Note 9, Galaxy S9, and S9 Plus in supporting Caller Verified, which displays a message that an incoming call is coming from a verified person, not a VoIP internet spammer.

Valve has at last responded to a mounting controversy concerning an indie game designed entirely around the violent sexual assault of women. The statement, posted to the Steam Blog earlier today, makes clear that Valve will in fact not distribute the visual novel, which was called Rape Day and scheduled for release in April through the company’s Steam Direct distribution channel. The declaration marks a quizzical few days of silence from the video game developer and marketplace owner, whi

Devil May Cry 5 releases this Friday, March 8th, and if you were planning on buying the game for PC, Fanatical is offering the best price. It’s $44.87 with the offer code 25OFFDMC5 used at checkout. Character action games like this, especially ones as “lavishly produced” as DMC5, are a dying breed — and Andrew Webster’s review found this one adds to Capcom’s recent winning streak.
Meanwhile, 400GB microSD cards only recently became affordable enough to splurg

The biggest debuts each year at the Geneva Motor Show are usually eye-popping supercars, but look hard enough and you can find some more... democratic ideas in the margins. Like Fiat’s newest concept, the Centoventi, which is a customizable modular electric car that totally rethinks many of the norms of automotive ownership.
The Centoventi — named as such in honor of the Italian automaker’s 120th anniversary — is an exploration of what it would be like to buy a very plai

Zotac’s RTX 2080 AMP graphics card is $659 at B&H Photo for readers of The Verge. Previously priced at $809 at B&H and as low as $739 direct through Zotac, it’s the biggest price drop that we’ve seen for this particular model.
There a few RTX 2080 models from other manufacturers that can be found for $699, but Zotac’s AMP card stands out at that price with three fans, which will be put to good use if you overclock. This model can be safely overclocked to a higher

Googletoday is introducing a new way for Android developers to generate revenue from their mobile applications. And no, it’s not subscription-related. Instead, the company is launching a new monetization option for apps called “Rewarded Products.” This will allow non-paying app users to contribute to an app’s revenue stream by sacrificing their time, but not their money. The first product will be rewarded video, where users can opt to watch a video ad in exchange for in-g

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just published a lengthy post outlining what he describes as a “privacy-focused” future for his company’s various messaging platforms — Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp — and online communication at large.The letter is Zuckerberg’s most significant preview of Facebook’s messaging ambitions (and the undertakings necessary to reach them) in years. It touches on encryption, data storage,user safety, and more. Zuckerb

On feed-based “broader social networks, where people can accumulate friends or followers until the services feel more public . . . it feels more like a town square than a more intimate space like a living room” FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerbergexplained in a blog post today. With messaging, groups, and ephemeral stories as the fastest growing social features, Zuckerberg laid out why he’s rethinking Facebook as a private living room where people can be comfortable being themselves wit

Facebook will increasingly shift its focus away from public posts to encrypted, ephemeral communications on its trio of messaging apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today in a significant new blog post. In a 3,200-word missive, Zuckerberg says that encryption will be one of the keys to Facebook’s future — and that the company is willing to be banned in countries that refuse to let it operate as a result. “As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused com

TechCrunch is profiling great startup lawyers wherever they may be working — and that includes within new companies built from the ground up around tech. Today, we’re interviewing Jared Verzello of Atrium. While even the most old-line of law firms have begun integrating document automation and analysis software, Atrium started that way. Around two years old, it’s both a full-service corporate law firm, Atrium LLP, and a technology startup, Atrium Legal Technology Services, that

No moment wowed the audience at last year’s I/O more than Duplex. The demo of the artificial intelligence restaurant and appointment booking program left many in the audience wondering whether Google had just pulled a fast one over on them.
Turns out, it’s real.
Over the summer, I got a chance to test drive Duplex at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan. And later in the year, the company rolled out the program in limited testing to restaurants in four U.S. cities. Today, it announced that

Spotify is bringing back the repeat button after the company pushed out an update last month that buried it inside of a submenu, much to the chagrin of repeat button lovers. The repeat button is now reappearing front and center for some users, including some at The Verge, in an update that’s beginning to roll out.
The previous update reorganized buttons on Spotify’s now playing page and shoved repeat under the three-dot menu in the upper right-hand corner. Now, the repeat button has

Microsoft is making the source code for its Windows calculator available on GitHub today. The software maker wants to “build an even better user experience in partnership with the community.” Opening up the calculator means anyone can contribute code to improve the app, but Microsoft wants to evaluate prototypes of new features or user interface changes before the company starts implementing them or reviewing code.
The source code is now available on GitHub and it includes the build

Europe’s electricity future could be both green and consistent, even as climate change warms the continent, according to a new study. That’s good news for Europeans who are trying to shift their power grids toward wind and solar power and away from traditional power plants.The study, published today in the journal Joule, investigates how the effects of climate change on wind, sunlight, and temperature might change electricity supply and demand in the future. Researchers led by gradu

The net neutrality rules established in 2015 were a triumph decades in the making, but their undoing was rather a quick bit of work. So it is hoped, by Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, that it will be equally quick to nix the new administration’s rules and restore the old ones — via a very simple piece of legislation known as the “Save the Internet Act.”
Announced by a group of lawmakers Wednesday morning, the act is a very straightforward one. As Representa

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. The Silicon Valley exodus continues
Many of the investors that touted the exclusivity of “The Valley” have moved north to San Francisco, where they have better access to top entrepreneurs. Y Combinator,a Silicon Valley institution and to many the lifeblood of the startups and ventu

Farming incubator Square Roots is announcing a new partnership today with food distribution giant Gordon Food Service.
Square Roots has built urban farming facilities in refurbished, climate-controlled shipping containers, which it uses to grow food and train farmers in a year-long program.
Until now, it has operated out of a single location in Brooklyn, which meant you could only purchase Square Roots from select locations in New York City, and it was only working with 10 farmers in each cohort

Facebook’s user base is shrinking, particularly in the coveted 12- to 34-year-old demographic, according to new survey data compiled by market research firm Edison Research. The survey, which only collected data about users in the US (Facebook’s most lucrative market), found that 15 million fewer people use Facebook today than they did in 2017, with the biggest drop being among teen users and millennials.The data is inconclusive on a number of subjects, particularly why people are l

Snap reached settlements with three women last year who alleged discrimination at the company after they were laid off, according to The Wall Street Journal. Snap was previously accused of having a “toxic” workplace with a “pervading sexist vibe,” and the new allegations say that women weren’t given the opportunity to rise up in the company’s ranks.
The layoffs were alleged to have disproportionately targeted women, according to the Journal, with one round of

Smart Compose is a useful Gmail feature that’s arriving on all Android devices starting today. By following your writing patterns and language used, Gmail can automatically generate your frequently used phrases as you type. First spotted by Android Police, Smart Compose is coming to all Android devices via a server-side update.The feature has been tested across Google’s products, making its first appearance as an experimental desktop version of Gmail, followed by availability with G

Amazon today is launching a new feature called “Song ID” that aims to help users discover music they like by using Alexa. When enabled, Alexa will announce the title and the artist name before playing each song while you’re listening to a radio station, playlist or new release on Amazon Music over your smart speaker.
The optional feature for Echo devices can be enabled or disabled by voice at any time by asking Alexa to “turn on Song ID” or “turn off Song ID.&

It’s not exactly what I’d consider to be a successor or proper sequel, but Sonos tells me that beginning March 7th, it will start selling a new revision of its Sonos One smart speaker with improved internals. The new “Gen 2” model will include Bluetooth Low Energy, a faster processor, and more memory than the original Sonos One. There are no changes to the external design whatsoever, nor does the revamped model gain any new, exclusive features. It’s just a little m

Today, Democrats officially launched their efforts to save net neutrality once and for all. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have announced bills with the intention of reinstating the net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission moved to repeal back in 2017.
The dual bills share the title of the Save the Internet Act. The full text is three pages, and, according to lawmakers, it will put in place the same rules that the FCC worked to remove over a year ago. The bill wou

What does the world look like to AI?Researchers have puzzled this for decades, but in recent years the question has become more pressing. Machine vision systems are being deployed in more and more areas of life, from healthcare to self-driving cars, but ”seeing” through the eyes of a machine — understanding why it classified that person as a pedestrian but that one as a signpost — is still a challenge. Our inability to do so could have serious, even fatal, consequences.

In the years since Evernote cratered, ambitious note-takers have been searching for an app that matches its utility, speed, and ease of use. Some ambition would be nice, too — a sense that the developer will go beyond the simple text notes and tables that are possible today and invent new ways to make us more creative and productive.Notion, a two-and-a-half-year-old San Francisco startup that makes a sophisticated note-taking app, is a leading contender to claim Evernote’s crown. As

TechCrunch is elevating networking to a whole new level at TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI, which takes place at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on April 18. This day-long event features discussions, demos and workshops with some of the leading minds in these fields. With more than 1,000 attendees in the house, a tool that simplifies networking would really come in handy. Never fear, we’ve got your back — with CrunchMatch.
CrunchMatch (powered by Brella), is TechCrunch&rs

Homeland Security could do more to protect election infrastructure, according to a new report by the department’s watchdog.
The report from the inspector general, out Wednesday, said progress had been made but Homeland Security, the department charged with protecting elections and the back-end voting machine infrastructure, still “does not have dedicated staff” focused on election infrastructure. The department’s new agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agenc

Google’s Arts & Culture division, the team behind the viral art-matching selfie trend from last year, has partnered with museums from around the world to create a collection of videos and images dedicated to honoring science and human discovery.The Once Upon a Try project is available both online and within the Google Arts & Culture app on Android and iOS. Built in collaboration with groups such as NASA, CERN, and the Smithsonian, it features over 200,000 artifacts from around the

Yet another public space is finding itself loved to death by the onslaught of Instagrammers. Residents of Paris’ Rue Crémieux, a car-less cobblestone street lined with pastel-colored homes, this week are demanding that the city install gates on both ends of the road to block visitors on weekends and evenings. As reported by City Lab, residents say their small, picturesque street has become overrun with tourists during those hours, who, they claim, don’t just come to quietly t

So, like, maybe you had a bad 2018. But ask yourself: was it MoviePass bad? The company was flying high over the summer with a popular movie ticket subscription service that appeared too good to be true. It was, of course, as it swiftly came down to earth on a pair of melted wax wings.MoviePass has tried all manner of new directions, as it has hemorrhaged money, including frequently changing plans, fundraising and borrowing money. Producing and purchasing distribution rights to films has lo

At CES 2019 in Las Vegas in January, Twitter announced it was developing new tools that would make it easier for publishers to better understand what sort of content is resonating with their readers. Through a new analytics dashboard, publishers would be able to see who’s engaging with content and when, and what’s performing well. Today, the company unveiled the first of these efforts: a set of Publisher Insights tools within Media Studio focused on the best time to publish video.
Tw

Waymo, the Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, will start selling its custom LiDAR sensors — the technology that was at the heart of a trade secrets lawsuit last year against Uber .
The company announced Wednesday in a blog post that it will sell its light detection and ranging sensors, or LiDAR, to companies outside of self-driving cars. Waymo will initially target robotics, security and agricultural technology. The sales will help the company sc

Googleis expanding its suite of apps designed for the Indian market with today’s launch of a new language-learning app aimed at children, called Bolo. The app, which is aimed at elementary school-aged students, leverages technology like Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech to help kids learn to read in both Hindi and English.
To do so, Bolo offers a catalog of 50 stories in Hindi and 40 in English, sourced from Storyweaver.org.in. The company says it plans to partner with o

That port and button-free phone Meizu showed off earlier this year? It didn’t even get half of its $100,000 Indiegogo pre-order campaign. But that’s fine, says the company. Turns out it was “messing about.”
That’s according to a post by CEO Jack Wong on Meizu’s official forum. “This crowdfunding project was just the marketing team messing about,” the executive said in the statement noted by Engadget. “The holeless phone is just a development

Tia, the company that launched with an app providing health advice and period tracking for women, has launched its first clinic.
From its first location in New York, the two founders of Tia hope they can build a network of care facilities that integrate all of the information their app collects with the benefits of having in-person consultations with physicians that have a holistic view of their patients’ health.
For founders Carolyn Witte and Felicity Yost, the hurdles women need to overc

Red Cat, a startup that wants to store drone flight data on the blockchain to guarantee immutability, announced the second beta of its drone data platform today.
Jeff Thompson, CEO of Red Cat, says in 2017 he was looking at what was holding back the commercial drone business and the need for a black-box kind of system became apparent to him. The so-called black box is really a flight recorder that tracks data about a flight. He believed he could create a platform to reproduce this capability for

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With so many

We all know someone who never fails to refer to any and every handheld vacuum cleaner as a Hoover. Robot vacuums and Roomba have become just as interchangeable, but we're here to put some respect on the other names.
Given iRobot's domination of the robot vacuum market from 2002 up until a few years ago, this assumption made sense for a while. Roombas have been around for a long time and came out less than a year after Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake stepped out in the all-denim ensemble.
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