Technology news

Juul doesn't want teens hitting its vapes. The company promises. 
Facing a rising tide of criticism for underage use of its e-cigarettes, vape manufacturer Juul is taking a new approach aimed at cracking down on teen use. Specifically, the company launched an online tool designed to track how specific vapes find their way into the hands of minors. 
SEE ALSO: FDA boss threatens 'game over' for e-cigs if companies won't keep kids away
The idea, as explained by Juul, seems pretty straight

That's one big plane. 
The Stratolaunch, the world's largest aircraft that just so happens to be designed to "enable airline-style access to space," successfully took flight for the first time in the Mojave Desert on April 13. The plane is the brainchild of Paul G. Allen's Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, and sports an impressive 385-foot wingspan. 
SEE ALSO: SpaceX landed three of its boosters for the first time, and yep, it was impressive
That's not all that makes this plane remarka

Remember to really savor Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker when it hits theaters in December.
Yes, it's the final chapter in the narrative that George Lucas kicked off with the first Star Wars back in 1977. But it's also notably going to be the last big screen Star Wars movie for some time. How long? At least a couple of years, according to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.
SEE ALSO: The 'Star Wars Episode IX' trailer is here at last
"We’re going to take a hiatus for a couple of years .

OpenAI, theAI research organization, can claim a world first: its artificial intelligence system trained to play the complex strategy game Dota 2 has bested a world champion e-sports team. The competition was held in San Francisco today and dubbed the OpenAI Five Finals, ending the organization’s public demonstrations of its Dota-playing technology on a high note.The competition on the human side included five top Dota 2 pros from team OG, which won the world’s most coveted e-sports

[Editor’s note: this is a free example of a series of articles we’re publishing by top experts who have cutting-edge startup advice to offer, over on Extra Crunch. Get in touch at [email protected] if you have ideas to share.] 
Even the best growth marketers fail to get content marketing to work. Many are unwittingly using tactics from 4 years ago that no longer work today.
This post cuts through the noise by sharing real-world data behind some of the biggest SEO success

Welcome back to this week’s transcribed edition of Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast that unpacks the numbers behind the headlines.
And because it’s another week, why not another emergency episode? This time Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm popped in the studio an hour before they were due to record the regular episode in order to dig into the Uber S-1. Not only did they dig into it, but they did so in real-time. That’s what happens when you only have 10 min

The call to oust Mark Zuckerberg is coming from inside the house. 
A group of investors have teamed up in an effort to replace the Facebook CEO and board chairman with an independent voice. The plan, put forth in an April 12 SEC filing, doesn't mince words in its critique of the 34-year-old fan of smoked meats. 
"[Zuckerberg's] dual-class shareholdings give him approximately 60% of Facebook's voting shares, leaving the board, even with a lead independent director, with only a limited a

K-pop has officially rocked Coachella, and the music festival will never be the same.
On Friday, Blackpink, a K-pop girl group comprised of four singers — Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa — made history by becoming the first such group ever to perform at Coachella. The festival has been home to other South Korean acts before, but as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, it's the first time "a K-pop idol group at the height of its powers" took the Coachella stage.
Think of it as a mi

With Respawn still riding high on the continued success of Apex Legends, today, the developer finally unveiled its much-anticipated Star Wars game with a number of details and the first proper trailer. Star Wars: Fallen Order will be released on November 15th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
The game take place after the events of Revenge of the Sith when the universe is largely devoid of Jedi, and the developer says that the game will be “a single player, story-driven title” wi

Respawn Entertainment's long-awaited Star Wars game is about a Jedi on the run. More importantly: it's leaving all the recent Star Wars game baggage behind.
That's a big deal, and the news Respawn's Star Wars Celebration actually led with. Before they even got to detailing anything about the game's story and setting, they confirmed that Fallen Order is a story-driven single-player game with no loot boxes, no multiplayer, and no microtransactions.
SEE ALSO: J.J. Abrams wrote 'Star Wars Episode IX

When Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens in Disneyland next month (and Disney World in August), we'll finally see how many details Lucasfilm and Disney Imagineers have sweated to make the experience — set in a Resistance base called Black Spire Outpost — extremely immersive.
You'll be able to sip blue milk at a Cantina (featuring the first new music from Cantina band The Modal Nodes in 42 years), hack outpost computers with your phone, barter for lightsabers, and browse a store of Jedi ar

A day after the big Episode IX reveal, Disney and subsidiary Lucas film announced that it will be donating $1.5 million to FIRST . The non-profit group was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to help teach STEM through initiatives like robotics competitions.
Disney’s money will go to provide education and outreach to the underserved communities on which FIRST focuses. Details are pretty thin on precisely what the partnership will entail, but Disney’s certainly got a lot to gain from this s

It’s been more than a half-decade since Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures kicked off the unicorn craze. Noting in a well-read post for TechCrunch that an interesting cohort of private companies worth a billion dollars or more was worth examining, the post brought the “unicorn” into its current usage inside of tech.
And then tech itself did the term a favor, building and financing hundreds more. Now unicorns swarm like fleas, and simply snagging a $1 bi

It turns out that AirDrop might be good for something other than unsolicited dick pics after all. 
Random attendees at the annual (and extremely Instagram-friendly) Coachella festival were surprised April 12 with an AirDrop request to accept a photo from an account claiming to be Donald Glover. As in the actor and musician also known as Childish Gambino. Those who took the leap of faith and welcomed a picture share from a random stranger were treated to a new pair of shoes. 
Yes, Donal

Amazon’s running a pretty great deal right now that will let you buy three of its Alexa-enabled Echo Dot speakers for just $69.97. Each Dot individually costs $49.99, so you’re saving $80 off the standard amount you’d pay for three. The Echo Dot frequently goes on sale, but even then, it would almost certainly cost more to get a trio.The offer is good for all three colors of the Echo Dot, so you can mix and match them as you please. Remember that the Dots can be stereo paired

Harry Potter, the Platform, and the Future of Niantic
After deep dives into the story of Niantic’sspinout from Google and its creation and development of Pokémon GO, TechCrunch editor Greg Kumparak turns his attention to Niantic’s future, looking at how Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is not just uniting wand-wielders, but also the company’s ambitions in areas as diverse as 5G, China, 3D mapping, and the next-generation of augmented reality.
This is definitely a weekend read

Jordan Peele fans who go to his latest film “Us” hoping to find another “Get Out” may be disappointed: Where Peele’s directorial debut lent itself to straightforward political allegory, the follow-up feels murkier and stranger.
“Us” is a nightmarish journey into a world invaded by sinister doppelgangers. The film does, eventually, offer a rationale for what’s happening, but the surreal imagery (and the unsettling work by the cast, led by Lupita Nyo

Amazon-owned game-streaming site Twitchis today publicly launching its first game. But it’s not a traditional video game — like those the site’s creators stream for their fans. Instead, the new game is called “Twitch Sings” and is a free karaoke-style experience designed for live streaming.
The game, which was launched into beta last year, includes thousands of karaoke classics that players can sing either alone or in a duet with another person. In addition, streame

Since becoming the de facto game streaming platform of the modern generation, Twitch is finally ready to design its own video games, starting with a karaoke title built specifically to take advantage of the Twitch platform. The news, announced this morning on the first day of TwitchCon Europe, marks the Amazon-owned live streaming platform’s first-ever foray into game development. The game is called Twitch Sings and is available for free on Windows at sings.twitch.tv.Twitch started as a l

Microsoft has started notifying some Outlook.com users that a hacker was able to access accounts for months earlier this year. The software giant discovered that a support agent’s credentials were compromised for its web mail service, allowing unauthorized access to some accounts between January 1st and March 28th, 2019. Microsoft says the hackers could have viewed account email addresses, folder names, and subject lines of emails, but not the content of emails or attachments.
It’s

On the heels of a trove of 773 million emails, and tens of millions of passwords, from a variety of domains getting leaked in January, Microsoft has faced another breach affecting its web-based email services.
Microsofthas confirmed to TechCrunch that a certain “limited” number of people who use web email services managed by Microsoft — which cover services like @msn.com and @hotmail.com — had their accounts compromised.
“We addressed this scheme, which affected a l

The world’s largest airplane took flight for the first time ever on Saturday morning. Built by rocket launch company Stratolaunch, the 500,000-pound plane with a 385-foot wingspan lifted off shortly after 10AM ET from Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. It’s a critical first test flight for the aircraft, designed to launch rockets into orbit from the air.
The inaugural flight is expected to last a few hours. The dual-fuselage Stratolaunch is designed to fly to an altitu

Thursday’s arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has provoked complicated reactions. There’s one place, however, where everyone seems to agree: we really hope his cat is doing okay.
“Embassy Cat,” as the feline is known on Twitter and Instagram, is undoubtedly a PR play from WikiLeaks. According to one New Yorker profile, Assange made up a story about getting the cat from his children, and the organization sells an array of Embassy Cat mugs, shirts, and stickers. Bu

I sat down with Menlo Venturespartner Shawn Carolan this week to talk about his early investment in Uber. Menlo, if you remember, led Uber’sSeries B and has made a hefty sum over the year selling shares in the ride-hailing company. I’ll have more on that later; for now, I want to share some of the insights Carolan had on his experience ditching venture capital to become a founder.
Around when Menlo made its first investment in Uber, Carolan began taking a step back from the firm and

It’s so easy to be excited about Katie Bouman. She’s the 29-year-old computer scientist whose utter glee at seeing a black hole for the first time was captured in a picture that warmed hearts around the world.
Here's the moment when the first black hole image was processed, from the eyes of researcher Katie Bouman. #EHTBlackHole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole (v/@dfbarajas) pic.twitter.com/n0ZnIoeG1d— MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) April 10, 2019Bouman, soon to be an Associate Professor at

Researchers at Princeton Universityhave built a web app that lets you (and them) spy on your smart home devices to see what they’re up to.
The open source tool, called IoT Inspector, is available for download here. (Currently it’s Mac OS only, with a wait list for Windows or Linux.)
In a blog about the effort the researchers write that their aim is to offer a simple tool for consumers to analyze the network traffic of their Internet connected gizmos. The basic idea is to help people

Drones are great. But they are also flying machines that can do lots of stupid and dangerous things. Like, for instance, fly over a major league baseball game packed with spectators. It happened at Fenway Park last night, and the FAA is not happy.
The illegal flight took place last night during a Red Sox-Blue Jays game at Fenway; the drone, a conspicuously white DJI Phantom, reportedly first showed up around 9:30 PM, coming and going over the next hour.
One of the many fans who shot a video of t

A hacker group has breached several FBI-affiliated websites and uploaded their contents to the web, including dozens of files containing the personal information of thousands of federal agents and law enforcement officers, TechCrunch has learned.
The hackers breached three sites associated with the FBI National Academy Association, a coalition of different chapters across the U.S. promoting federal and law enforcement leadership and training located at the FBI training academy in Quantico, VA. T

Battle royale shooters Fortnite and Apex Legends may have surpassed PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in some ways, but PUBG is back in the headlines for a controversial new reason: some governments are outright banning the game.Last month, we heard how police in India arrested ten college students for playing PUBG after some cities in Gujarat, India restricted the title, and now an entire nation has done the same. Nepal has directed every ISP and mobile operator to ban the game, according to

In China, the laws limit work to 44 hours a week and require overtime pay for anything above that. But many aren’t following the rules, and a rare online movement puts a spotlight on extended work hours in China’s booming tech sector. People from all corners of society have rallied in support for improvements to startup working conditions, while some warn of hurdles in a culture ingrained in the belief that more work leads to greater success.
In late March, anonymous activists introd