Technology news

Salesforce announced today it’s buying another company built on its platform. This time it’s MapAnything, which, as the name implies, helps companies build location-based workflows, something that could come in handy for sales or service calls.
The companies did not reveal the selling price, and Salesforcedidn’t have anything to add beyond a brief press release announcing the deal.
“The addition of MapAnythingto Salesforce will help the world’s leading brands accura

Zoom,a relatively under-the-radar tech unicorn, has defied expectations with its initial public offering. The video conferencing business priced its IPO above its planned range on Wednesday, confirming plans to sell shares of its Nasdaq stock, titled “ZM,” at $36 apiece, CNBC reports.
The company initially planned to price its shares at between $28 and $32 per share, but following big demand for a piece of a profitable tech business, Zoom increased expectations, announcing plans to s

It’s super early-bird season for startuppers of every stripe, meaning it’s time to grab the lowest prices on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019, going down on October 2-4 at Moscone North. Check out all the different pass types that fit any level of needs and budgets. Register for your pass now to lock in the lowest price, plus you can pay for your pass in four installments if need be.
Here’s how the buy-now-pay-later installment plan works. Follow the normal process to purch

The FCChas proposed to deny an application from China Mobile, a state-owned telecom, to provide interconnect and mobile services here in the U.S., citing security concerns. It’s another setback to the country’s attempts to take part in key portions of American telecommunications.
China Mobilewas essentially asking to put call and data interconnection infrastructure here in the U.S.; It would have come into play when U.S. providers needed to connect to Chinese ones. Right now the infr

Lime co-founder and executive chairman Brad Bao chatted with The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and senior transportation reporter Andrew J. Hawkins about what’s next for the e-scooter revolution in this week’s Vergecast interview. Bao discussed how scooter-sharing companies could better promote safety without compromising the convenience, as well as how his company is protecting its customers’ private data.You can listen to the discussion in its entirety on The Ver

Shared electric scooters are close to overtaking bike-sharing, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials. In 2018, of the 84 million micromobility trips taken, 38.5 million of those were on scooters.
The other 45.5 million trips were on bikes — either ones from station-based bike-shares or dockless shared bikes. Rides on station-based bikes accounted for 36.5 million trips, an increase of nine percent from 2017. Compared to the year prior, more than twice as ma

Google is rolling out a new feature to Google Assistant today that will allow a Google Home device to work in concert with a Philips Hue light setup to gently wake you up in the morning or go to sleep at night by gradually raising or lowering the lights over the course of 30 minutes.The feature — fittingly called Gentle Sleep & Wake — is designed to mimic a sunrise and sunset. It will let you get the kind of luxury experience that people who can afford homes and apartments with

A former student of The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, has pled guilty to charges that he destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of campus computers using a USB device designed to instantly overwhelm and fry their circuitry. The plea was announced today by the Department of Justice, FBI, and Albany Police Department.
Vishwanath Akuthota, the former student, now faces up to 10 years in prison (with up to three years of supervision after release) and a fine totaling up to $250,0

Coinbase has been available in 42 countries around the world before today — mostly in North America, Europe, Australia and Singapore. Today, the company is aggressively expanding by opening 11 countries at once in Latin America and South East Asia. But there’s a trick — there’s no crypto-to-fiat conversions.
Coinbasecompetitor Binance has taken the crypto world by storm by focusing on crypto-to-crypto conversions. You can only fund and withdraw cryptocurrencies from

Investors have forked over $33 million in a new round of funding for Redox, hoping that the company can execute on its bid to serve as the link between healthcare providers and the technology companies bringing new digital services to market.
The financing comes just two months after Redox sealed a deal with Microsoftto act as the integration partner connecting Microsoft’s Teams product to electronic health records through the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard.
Redox sits

Nintendo Labo VR, the cardboard accessory kit for the Switch, is up against a lot of expectations as the company’s official foray into virtual reality. It’s the fourth installment of the Labo series, which first launched one year ago to mixed reviews. Parents and schools lauded its tactile building experience and programming features as creative educational tools for kids, while some critics dismissed it as a novelty item that lost its fun after the first few plays.
But Labo directo

With air quality not improving any time soon (hello pollution!) respiratory conditions are on the rise. This has created an opportunity for startups to employ smartphones to monitor respiratory diseases with apps and smart devices.
ResApp’s smartphone app, called ResAppDx, diagnoses a wide range of respiratory illnesses accurately by using cough sounds. Healthymize listens for signals of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) when you make calls.
NuvoAir is a new digital therapeutics

Foxconn chairman Terry Gouofficially announced on Wednesday that he will run for president of Taiwan. Gou will step down from leading the company (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd), one of Apple’s most important manufacturers, in order to campaign for the nomination of the Kuomintang, the pro-China opposition party.
Taiwan’s economy and complicated relationship with China will be at the heart of the 2020 presidential campaign, as incumbent Tsai Ing-wen defends her pos

Watching wall-to-wall coverage of domestic terrorism can cause people to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Those symptoms, in turn, can cause people to seek out more upsetting coverage in the future, creating a cycle that can be hard to break.For a study published today in the journal Science Advances, UC Irvine psychologist Rebecca Thompson and her team spent three years collecting survey data from over 4,000 US residents. The team surveyed these residents four times, asking

Amazon has a new trailer out for its upcoming adaptation of The Boys, a long-running comics series written by Preacher and Hitman author Garth Ennis. Set in a world where superheroes are real, but also terrible people who abuse their vast powers, The Boys focuses on a group of vigilantes who work to hold those “heroes” accountable — with lots of bloody, aggressive mayhem.
The latest trailer — which is definitely NSFW — gives a good look at the series’ Zack Sn

Netflix has gained a reputation for being painfully secret about viewership numbers for its original shows and films, but the company apparently intends to change that policy, as it promises more transparency.
Chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke about the company’s new transparency initiative during an investors call on Tuesday. Sarandos told investors that the company will start releasing “more specific and granular data and reporting” to different groups soon. Producers

Quotes from articles are much more eye-catching than links on Twitter,so the social giant is scooping up the team behind highlight sharing app Highly. This talent could help Twitter build its own version of Highly or develop other ways to excerpt the best content from websites and get it into the timeline.
Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch that the deal was an acquihire, and a spokesperson provided this statement: “We are excited to welcome the Highly team to Twitter. Their expertise will ac

Quotes from articles are much more eye-catching than links on Twitter,so the social giant is scooping up the team behind highlight-sharing app Highly. This talent could help Twitter build its own version of Highly or develop other ways to excerpt the best content from websites and get it into the timeline.
Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch that the deal was an acqui-hire, and a spokesperson provided this statement: “We are excited to welcome the Highly team to Twitter. Their expertise will a

Audi’sself-driving unit has tapped a startup with a unique approach to lidar as it ramps up testing in Munich using a fleet of autonomous electric e-tron crossover vehicles.
Audi subsidiary Autonomous Intelligent Driving, or AID, said Wednesday it’s using lidar sensors developed by Aeva, a startup founded just two years ago by veterans of Apple and Nikon.
Aeva,a Mountain View, Calif.-based company started by Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk, has developed what it describes as “4D

Google is adding a new budgeting feature to its Play Store that will allow Android users to establish a monthly maximum they want to spend on digital content. This applies to apps, games, movies, TV shows, music, ebooks, and so on. As you get close to reaching your budget limit, you’ll see an alert that you’re nearing it — or have gone over the amount you specified.This budget option hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet. When it does, you’ll be able to access it like

Look closely at the picture above, and you can see a small bulge right on the crease of my Galaxy Fold review unit. It’s just enough to slightly distort the screen, and I can feel it under my finger. There’s something pressing up against the screen at the hinge, right there in the crease. My best guess is that it’s a piece of debris, something harder than lint for sure. It’s possible that it’s something else, though, like the hinge itself on a defective unit pressi

Thomas Kurian,the newly-minted CEO of Google Cloud, used the company’s Cloud Next conference last week to lay out his vision for the future of Google’scloud computing platform. That vision involves, in part, a hiring spree to give businesses that want to work with Google more people to talk to and get help from. Unsurprisingly, Kurian is also looking to put his stamp on the executive team, too, and today announced that former SAP executive Robert Enslin is joining Google Cloud as its

For seven years, Pinteresthas been considered a “unicorn,” boasting a valuation larger than $1 billion since its 2012 Series C funding round. Before that, it was considered an underdog, puzzling some investors with its “digital pinboard” and preference for “quality growth.”
Now, as the company takes its final step toward its Thursday NYSE initial public offering, it’s being called an “undercorn.”
Pinterest plans to sell shares of its stock, t

Walt Disney and dating app Badoo are the latest companies to pledge funds for the rebuilding of Notre-Dame after the historic cathedral sustained severe damage in a fire earlier this week. Disney is giving $5 million to help reconstruct the 800-year-old Parisian landmark, while Badoowill donate all of its April profits from its 22 million users in France.
They join several other companies that have already promised money, including Apple and a €100 million (about $113 million) pledge from G

George Lucas has stepped back from one of the world’s most popular franchises, but that hasn’t stopped him from jumping on another.According to a 17-minute behind-the-scenes video that HBO released on YouTube, Lucas was hanging out on the Game of Thrones set while director David Nutter was directing the season 8 premiere. The former Star Wars director was sitting by Nutter’s side while they were filming a scene with Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clark

European Union lawmakers today approved controversial legislation that would require platforms to take down terrorist content within one hour of receiving notification from authorities.
The European Parliament passed the measure by a vote of 308 to 204, and the text will be further negotiated among lawmakers before becoming law.Passed 308 to 204
Under the legislation, called the Terrorist Content Regulation, companies could be fined up to 4 percent of revenue if they consistently fail to remove

In 2009, the National Institutes of Health launched a five-year, $150 million project to stimulate research into a new field of medicine examining the connections between the millions of bacteria living in the human gut and overall human health.
Spurred by the advancements in genetics from a decade earlier, this new field of research would map not just the human genome, but the genetic sequences of the microbes living in the body to ascertain their function and the role they played in ensuring t

Tilt Brush, Google’s virtual reality painting tool, is coming to Oculus’ new standalone Quest headset. Thanks to the Quest’s two motion controllers, the app should work in a similar way to how it does on the Oculus Rift, although Google has said it’s had to make a number of tweaks to allow the software to run on the Quest’s mobile processor. Tilt Brush is already available on the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
After its original release

Game of Thrones returned to HBO with some of its highest ratings yet last Sunday, but even those numbers were dwarfed by an even bigger audience. The season 8 premiere had almost 55 million pirated views across illegal streams, downloads, and torrents in the first 24 hours, according to analytics firm MUSO.
Of those 55 million pirated views, MUSO says that the vast majority (76.6 percent) came from unofficial streams of the episode, with web downloads accounting for 12.2 percent of views, publi

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. Apple and Qualcomm are ending their legal battles
In a standoff that has been brewing since 2017, Appleargued that Qualcomm was charging too much for patent licensing. After Apple shifted to using Intel chips, Qualcommmoved to get iPhone imports banned in countries around the world for patent

Spoilers ahead for “Winterfell,” episode 1 of Game of Thrones, season 8.
The season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones is the beginning of the end for the show, which is wrapping up in May. To acknowledge the coming end, the showrunners used that premiere to bring audiences full circle, back to the beginning of the series. Episode 1 of season 8, “Winterfell,” is full of visual and narrative parallels with season 1, episode 1, “Winter is Coming,” from the episode n