Technology news

Days after Ethiopian ICT officials made public pledges to improve net access, the government began playing on-again, off-again with the internet—shutting it down (almost completely) to coincide with the country’s national exams.
Data provided to TechCrunch from Oracle’s Internet Intelligence confirmed intermittent net blackouts from June 11 to 14, with connectivity returning for brief periods during that time-span.Sources on the ground, including in the country’s tec

As news of the crisis in Sudan spreads, the color blue has become a symbol of solidarity with protestors in the country on social media.
People are changing their profile pictures to blue in an attempt at raising awareness of the extreme violence inflicted upon civilians by the military rulers. An internet blackout — imposed in an attempt to stop protests — has made spreading information difficult. 
The color blue is in remembrance of Mohamed Hashim Mattar, a young man who was k

"It's got cocaine, hot chicks, sports cars, bombed-out buildings, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, FBI agents, and hard-core drug dealers."
That's how the son of former General Motors exec John DeLorean — who created his own car company, DeLorean Motor Company, or DMC — describes the story of his father's downfall and the end of his car dreams in the new documentary Framing John DeLorean. 
That dramatic description could easily be adjusted to describe Elon Musk and his electric

Every story about E3 has opened with a mention of Sony’s absence, and this one’s no different. The lack of one of gaming’s “big three” loomed large over the show, right down to a strange sense of space on the showroom floor.Even Xbox chief Phil Spencer mourned the absence of the company’s biggest competitor, stating, “I wish Sony was here,” during a live stream.But the show went on, as it has through countless ebbs and flows of the gaming industry.

Sad news for anyone who loves geeky goods and top-notch April Fools’ jokes: ThinkGeek.com, the 20-year-old online retailer known for selling more geek-centric gadgets and peripherals than you could fit in a TARDIS, is going away.
According to an FAQ sitting at the top of its site, ThinkGeek isn’t “shutting down,” it just won’t continue on as the site we’ve come to know, instead living on as a shadow of its former self as a section in GameStop (which acquired T

NASA’sstated goal of sending the first woman ever, and the first man since the Apollo program, to the Moon involves setting up a new space station that will orbit the Moon, which is supposed to begin being built by the end of 2022, per current timelines. Today, the U.S. space agency issued an open call for industry feedback and insight on how American companies might help supply said station.
Like the ISS, the forthcoming “Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway” (aka the LOP-G, but muc

NASA’sambitious plan to return to the moon may cost as much as $30 billion over the next five years, the agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, indicated in an interview this week. This is only a ballpark figure, but it’s the first all-inclusive one we’ve seen and, despite being a large amount of money, is lower than some might have guessed.
Bridenstine floated the figure in an interview with CNN, suggesting that the agency would need somewhere between $20 billion and $

Byton was the darling of CES last year, showing off its never-ending dashboard screen and other touchscreens on practically every surface of the Chinese's company first all-electric car, the M-Byte. Now we know that nearly all designs from the prototype car will actually be made, including that massive 48-inch end-to-end screen up front.
This week Byton showed an interior glimpse into the final design of the cars as the first electric SUVs are made in China. The $45,000-starting-price car will m

Bethesda revealed at this year’s E3 it would be offering something called Orion — a solution for game streaming that promises to make game streaming more feasible for those without the high-speed internet cloud gaming demands. Given that the whole industry seems to be pushing in that direction, this and similar solutions could be immeasurably helpful. At first blush, Orion sounds like Bethesda‘s own offering in the cloud gaming arena — but it’s not. According to th

Mattel is introducing Hot Wheels id, which lets kids race their NFC-enabled Hot Wheels on its Smart Track, and scan their collections into a free iOS app. In the app, which acts as a virtual garage, kids can track speed and laps via infrared sensors in the Hot Wheels Race Portal, which scans in your cars and connects to classic Hot Wheels tracks. It sounds great for kids who are into obsessively tracking details, and using cold, hard, data to back up claims on whose car is faster.
Companies hav

TL;DR: The retro-inspired Playstation Classic normally retails for $99.99, but Walmart's got it on sale for just $29.99 — a 70% discount.The Playstation 5 sounds cool and all — really, really cool, actually — but you can't beat the nostalgia factor of an original Playstation console. You know the one: It looked like a gray brick, had a meager 640x480 resolution, and left you with an enduring love for Crash Bandicoot. (Let's not talk about that lame redesign, though.)
Sony disco

In the wake of Huawei’s US export ban, its easy to forget that the company was due to launch one of the first folding phones to hit the market. The $2,600 Mate X was set to go head-to-head with Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, but after the Korean giant delayed the device due to mishaps with early review units, Huawei says it wants to avoid the same mistakes. The Mate X was originally announced in February and rumored to launch in June, but a Huawei spokesperson told CNBC the launch will now

After 20 years of serving the nerds of the internet with a wide variety of geek-related merchandise, ThinkGeek will officially close down its website and will migrate its operations over to its parent company GameStop’s website instead. In the meantime, the store is holding a 50 percent off “moving sale.”
By way of explanation, a GameStop spokesperson would only provide the following business-speak: The company is “engaging in a strategic business transformation initiati

Xiao Wang & Anjana Prasad Contributor Anjana Prasad is senior advisor of immigration law and Xiao Wang is CEO at Boundless, a technology startup that has helped thousands of immigrant families apply for marriage green cards and U.S. citizenship while providing affordable access to independent immigration attorneys. More posts by this contributor10 immigration tips for love-struck tech workers
Getting an H-1B skilled-worker visa is like winning the lottery — literally: With the number

Hulu has released a full trailer for its upcoming revival of the cult-classic mystery series, Veronica Mars, picking up the lives of the characters since we last saw them in the 2014 movie. In it, we see that the show’s heroine Veronica is back home in Neptune, California, dealing with a new threat to the city.This new season picks up nearly a decade after the show’s original three seasons. Veronica is back home and as cynical and witty as ever, and this new trailer shows off a bit

You weren’t going to try to buy a place on TechCrunch for $20. You, dear reader, are smarter than that. But that doesn’t make it any less concerning when a reader emails you in the middle of the night to let you know that someone’s posing as you on Fiverr, name, biography, picture and all.
Heck, it barely even bothered me that the U.K.-based individual was charging a mere $20 for “basic” TechCrunch writing, versus $30 for “standard” Forbes and $50 for &l

Rep. Will Hurd will no longer give the keynote address at the Black Hat security conference amid questions about his voting record on women’s rights.
Hurd, a Texas Republican congressman, was scheduled to headline the conference later this year, but the organizers decided to walk back the decision a day later.
“Black Hat has chosen to remove U.S. Representative Will Hurd as our 2019 Black Hat USA Keynote. We misjudged the separation of technology and politics,” said a statement

Elizabeth Warren,who earlier this year confirmed her intent to run for president in 2020, has an ambitious plan to advance entrepreneurs of color.
In a series of tweets published this morning, the Massachusetts senator proposed a $7 billion Small Business Equity Fund to provide grants to Black, Latinx, Native American and other minority entrepreneurs, if she’s elected president. The initiative will be covered by her “Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” a two-cent tax on every dollar of wea

Freelance marketplace Fiverr has become closely associated with the gig economy, but Micha Kaufman argued that not all gig economy companies are created equal.
I spoke to Kaufman yesterday afternoon, after Fiverr debuted on the New York Stock Exchange and spent the day climbing to 90% above the IPO price.
As we talked about Fiverr’s community of freelancers, I brought up the driver strikes before Uber’s IPOand wondered how Kaufman can ensure freelancers can benefit from the company&r

Retro consoles are bittersweet little gadgets. They pack a ton of nostalgia, must-have-it miniature console design, and properly licensed software into a mostly affordable package that will, inevitably, mostly go unused sitting on your shelf. That’s because they are often cumbersome to play, and as gadgets teetering close to the edge of becoming cash grabs, they’re not really designed to be more robust than the emulator solution a teenager could hack together on a cheap laptop.The S

Amazonwill now allow developers to offer premium content for purchase in Alexa skills aimed at children. The company on Friday introduced new tools for building skills with in-app purchases that requires the Amazon account holder — typically mom or dad — to approve or decline the requested purchase via a text or email.
In-skill purchasing was first introduced to all U.S. Alexa developers last year, and more recently became available to international developers. But like any app aimed

Samsung’s newest activity tracker, the Galaxy Fit, is now available through Samsung’s website for $99.99. The device comes in two colors, black or silver, and features a 0.95-inch AMOLED display; a 120mAh battery; 2MB of RAM; 32MB of storage; and pairs with phones over Bluetooth. It’s water resistant, too, and tracks heart rate.
While Samsung has focused on its smartwatches recently, the idea behind the Fit is to bring more robust tracking to the minimal fitness band. The Fit

Samsung reportedly may be missing a July ship date for the delayed Galaxy Fold, according to a company official speaking to The Korea Herald, seemingly denying rumors from earlier in June that the company was looking at a July release.“If we are running such a media event this month, we should be doing something by now,” said a Samsung official. “Nothing has progressed since the April delay.”July isn’t looking good for the increasingly delayed Fold
If true, that wo

On the heels of unveiling its pink-wheeled e-bikes for the San Francisco Bay Area, Lyft is doing the same for its electric scooters in Denver, Colo. Lyftsays these scooters are designed to be more durable, and feature a more powerful battery and a hand brake.
Upon first look, however, these scooters don’t appear particularly sturdier or more durable than Lyft’s first batch of scooters. But Lyft says these scooters don’t fold, they’re heavier, more stable and are made with

Every time I see a “the future of work is remote” article, I think to myself: “How backwards! How retro! How quaint!” That future is now, for many of us. I’ve been a fully remote developer-turned-CTO for a full decade. So I’m always baffled by people still wrestling with whether remote work is viable for their company. That jury rendered its verdict a long time ago.
One reason companies still struggle with it is that remote work amplifies the negative effects

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1. Fiverr shares climb 90% in first day of trading
Freelance marketplace Fiverr had a good first day on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company priced its IPO at $21 per share on Wednesday, raising around $111 million. It then started trading at $26, with shares climbing for most of the day and

An internet advertising company specializing in helping law firms sign up potential clients has exposed close to 150,000 records from a database that was left unsecured.
The database contained submissions as part of a lead-generation effort by X Social Media, a Florida-based ad firm that largely uses Facebook to advertise various campaigns for its law firm customers. Law firms pay the ad company to set up individual websites that aim to sign up victims from specific categories of harm and injuri

After only a few years, Microsoft’sfree Visual Studio Code has become one of the most popular code editors on the market. One of VS Code’s advantages is its flexibility. This flexibility does come with some complexity when it comes to getting everything set up. Today, the company launched a new project that makes it significantly easier to get started with writing Java on VS Code.
Recently, a Microsoft spokesperson told us, the VS Code team noticed that it was still difficult for som

Rivian, the once secretive company that made its public debut in November with an electric pickup truck and SUV, plans to give its batteries a second life and put them to work in a solar microgrid project in Puerto Rico.
The automaker is teaming up with The Honnold Foundation, an organization started by Alex Honnold,the professional climber and subject of the documentary Free Solo, on the microgrid project. Honnold and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe will discuss the project Saturday in Denver. The discu

Fresh off of Code Conference, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul discuss YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s apology and difficult week, and consider whether there’s any viable alternative to Youtube amid all the backlash the company’s received in recent weeks.They also discuss the leaked photo of the upcoming Pixel 4 and ponder the strategy behind the leaked photo. And later, a recap of what happened at E3 from Megan Farokhmanesh and some video game and hardware updates from the Vergecast crew

One of the DC government’s top economic development officials, who tried to charm Amazon into building its second headquarters in the District, will be stepping down to work for the tech giant in the coming weeks.
Brian Kenner, DC’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development, helped lead the Mayor Muriel Bowser administration’s “Obviously DC” campaign. The campaign was aimed at tempting Amazon to locate a new headquarters in the DC metro area, using a combi

Tinder co-founder Sean Rad’s $2 billion lawsuit against the dating app’s parent company is one step closer to trial. In an order last night, New York Supreme Court judge Saliann Scarpulla rejected IAC’s motion to dismiss Rad’s case, allowing Rad and his co-plaintiffs to pursue their allegations that Match Group and IAC purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock options to the original dating app team.
In a statement to The

Tinder co-founder Sean Rad’s $2 billion lawsuit against the dating app’s parent company is one step closer to trial. In an order last night, New York Supreme Court judge Saliann Scarpulla rejected IAC’s motion to dismiss Rad’s case, allowing Rad and his co-plaintiffs to pursue their allegations that Match Group and IAC purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock options to the original dating app team.
In a statement to The

Popular short-form video app TikTokhas been slowly ramping up its advertising strategy this year as it increases its focus on monetization. However, the company still generates a smaller portion of its revenue from in-app purchases — and that number hit a high of $9 million in May, according to a report from Sensor Tower. That represents 500% year-over-year growth from the $1.5 million spent in May 2018, and 22% growth from April’s $7.4 million.
Arguably, TikTok hasn’t put much

Alex Gold ContributorShare on Twitter Alex Gold is co-founder of Myia, an intelligent health platform employing novel biometric data to predict and prevent costly medical events. Previously, Alex was Venture Partner at BCG Digital Ventures and a co-founder of Traction, a marketplace of digital marketing experts.Three years ago, I met with a founder who had raised a massive seed round at a valuation that was at least five times the market rate. I asked what firm made the investment.
She said it