Technology news

Valo Ventures, a new firm focused on social, economic and environmental megatrends, has closed on $175 million for its debut venture capital fund.
The effort is led by Scott Tierney,a co-founder of Alphabet’sgrowth investing unit CapitalG,as well as Mona ElNaggar, a former managing director of TIFF Investment Management and Julia Brady, who previously worked as a director at The Via Agency, a communications workshop.
“Googleis like being a kid in a candy store,” Tierney tells T

NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft OSIRIS-REx just snapped its closest picture yet of Bennu, the deep-space rock it’s been hovering around since the end of last year. The high-resolution image highlights the object’s very rocky surface and even showcases a very large boulder on its southern half.
OSIRIS-REx took this up-close picture on June 13th, right after the spacecraft inserted itself into orbit around Bennu for the second time. The vehicle first got into Bennu’s o

AI has come a long way in recent years — but as many who work with this technology can attest, it is still prone to surprising errors that wouldn’t be made by a human observer. While these errors can sometimes be the result of the required learning curve for artificial intelligence, it is becoming apparent that a far more serious problem is posing an increasing risk: adversarial data. For the uninitiated, adversarial data describes a situation in which human users intentionally supp

I am now being subjected to headlines like “Elon Musk ‘deletes’ Twitter account after bizarre video game fan art scandal” because apparently journalists in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Nineteen can’t wrap their brains around shitposting. If you can see Elon Musk’s Twitter account, he has not deleted it.
This is almost too stupid to explain
This is almost too stupid to explain, so I actually wasn’t going to bother. But Bloomberg decided to make

Get ready for summer in the city, TechCrunch -style. We just released a fresh batch of tickets to the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party. Available on a first-come, first-served basis, tickets to our popular event sell out quickly, and they’ll be gone before you know it. Don’t wait — buy your ticket today.
Join us for TechCrunch’s fabulous summer fete at Park Chalet — San Francisco’s coastal beer garden — where you can enjoy ocean views, refreshing drin

A team of scientists recently determined certain quantum particles can regenerate after they’ve decayed. This has grand implications for the future of humanity, quantum computing, and intergalactic graffiti. Theoretical physicists from the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute conducted simulation experiments to determine that certain quasiparticles are essentially immortal. Per the second law of thermodynamics nothing lasts forever, but these quantum particle fields

Eagle-eyed researchers from streaming titan Netflix have uncovered several troubling security vulnerabilities within the TCP implementations on Linux and FreeBSD kernels. The most severe specimen, called SACK Panic, could permit an attacker to remotely induce a kernel panic within recent Linux operating systems. A kernel panic is a kind of vulnerability where an operating system cannot easily recover – or, indeed, cannot recover at all. This could force a restart of a targeted host, causi

James Glasnapp Contributor James Glasnapp is a senior UX researcher at PARC. More posts by this contributorNine requirements for a successful private ridesharing system
Artificial intelligence is allowing us all to consider surprising new ways to simplify the lives of our customers. As a product developer, your central focus is always on the customer. But new problems can arise when the specific solution under development helps one customer while alienating others.
We tend to think of AI as an

It’s finally happened… our beloved Mario has finally made his way into a battle royale game, just like everything and its shadow. My first reaction was, “What madness hath we wrought?” My second was, “I’ve played sixteen games already, what the heck?” “Mario Royale” is a browser-based game that can be played on keyboard or controller. The game was created by YouTuber Inferno Plus, and uses shortened version of worlds from the original NES S

Nearly 8,000 Amazonemployees, many in prestigious engineering and design roles, have recently signed a petition calling on Jeff Bezosand the Amazon Board of Directors to dramatically shift the giant company’s approach to climate change.
By deploying a kind of corporate social disobedience such as speaking out dramatically at shareholders meetings, and by engaging in a variety of community organizing tactics, the “Amazon Employees for Climate Justice” group has quickly become a

The Amazon-owned game streaming platform Twitch is suing anonymous trolls who posted a slew of harmful and illegal content, including the Christchurch shooting, on the platform late last month. If the company learns the identities of these people, they plan to request the court to prohibit them from using the platform and force them to pay damages, as first reported by Bloomberg.The videos were posted last month by an organized group of trolls in Twitch’s Artifact category, who are named

As part of the shutdown of Telltale Games, support for Minecraft: Story Mode is set to end on June 25th. But due to some weirdness with how the Xbox Live store works on the Xbox 360 specifically, the company had to re-add the episodes to the store for a whopping $99.99 each, in order to allow players who already own the game to re-download their content before it’s removed for good, via Polygon.Obviously, that price is way beyond the $4.99 price each episode originally ran for, but$100 pe

I played Pokémon GO this weekend, because I was babysitting my nephew, and I couldn’t help but be reminded what a cultural force it was when it launched three years ago. Hundreds massed near San Francisco’s Ocean Beach every day to hunt. Huge crowds sprinted through Central Park to catch a Vaporeon. Disapproving finger-pointers penned whiny moral panics and sermons about how it encouraged crime and provoked danger.
One thing that was not controversial, though, was the belief t

Microsoft removed Huawei’s laptop lineup from its online store last month, following a new executive order to crack down on the Chinese tech company. While the software giant has remained silent over whether Huawei will still be able to obtain Windows licenses for its range of laptops, the devices are now starting to return to online stores this week.
Twitter user WalkingCat noticed that Huawei’s laptops have returned, and we’ve spotted that the MateBook 13, the MateBook, and

Just about anyone can come up with a good idea. Fewer people can execute on that idea and turn it into a prototype or MVP. But there is still one final challenge for most entrepreneurs that can prove challenging.
How do you secure that initial seed capital and take your idea to the next level?
At Disrupt SF in October, Redpoint’s Annie Kadavy, DocSend’s Russ Heddleston and Precursor’s Charles Hudson will sit down together and chat it out on the Extra Crunch stage.
Kadavy, Heddl

MobiKwik,a mobile wallet app in India that has expanded to add several financial services in recent years, said today it plans to enter international markets as it approaches profitability with the local operation. The company is kick-starting its overseas ambitions with cross-border mobile top-ups support.
The 10-year-old firm said it has partnered with DT One, a Singapore-headquartered payments network, to enable international mobile recharge (topping up credit to a mobile account), rewards an

New York, a longtime holdout in the dockless electric scooter boom, appears poised to finally allow scooter-sharing companies like Bird and Lime to operate on its roads. Lawmakers in the state capital of Albany have reached a deal to lift the ban on throttle-based scooters and bikes, and if Governor Andrew Cuomo signs off, New Yorkers may soon see the electric-powered vehicles zipping down their streets in droves.The bill would change state law to legalize e-bikes and scooters, but would requir

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1. Huawei says US ban will cost it $30B in lost revenue
Following a string of trade restrictions from the U.S., China’s Huawei expects its revenues to drop $30 billion below forecast over the next two years, founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei said today.
That said, Ren claimed that af

A little more than a year ago, Waymosurprised the industry and announced that its next big move in the world of autonomous vehicles would be a partnership with Jaguar Land Roverto add the automaker’s new all-electric I-Pace crossover to its fleet of self-driving cars.
Now, it appears self-driving Jaguar I-Pace vehicles are finally being tested on public streets around Waymo’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., TechCrunch has learned. A self-driving Jaguar I-Pace, with a safety dr

You’d be hard-pressed to find a tech company that said it wished it had waited longer to implement on diversity and inclusion efforts. The examples of tech companies “doing it right” in this industry are few and far between, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. And for those that want to try, there’s a clear playbook to follow.
Where tech companies seem to go wrong is around implementing one-off initiatives such as unconscious bias training, employee r

Homeland Security’s cyber agency says it has tested a working exploit for the BlueKeep vulnerability, capable of achieving remote code execution on a vulnerable device.
To date, most of the private exploits targeting BlueKeep would have triggered a denial-of-service condition, capable of knocking computers offline. But an exploit able to remotely run code or malware on an affected computer — an event feared by government — could trigger a global incident similar to the WannaCry

Microsoftin 2017 said it would eventually shut down Wunderlist, a company it acquired, in order to forge ahead with its own “to do” app. It has since launched To-Do, as the app is called, on Windows, iOS, Android and the web and expanded its feature set. Today, it’s bringing the app to the Mac, as well.
The company announced this morning its To-Do app is live on the Mac App Store, where it will support most of the core features right away, including the ability to create and ma

Cleo, the London-based “digital assistant” that wants to replace your banking apps, has quietly taken venture debt from U.S.-based TriplePoint Capital, according to a regulatory filing.
The amount remains undisclosed, though I understand from sources that the figure is somewhere in the region of mid-“single-digit” millions and will bridge the gap before a larger Series B round later this year. Cleodeclined to comment on the fundraising.
However, sources tell me the need t

In a case closely watched for its potential implications for social media, the Supreme Court has ruled that a nonprofit running public access channels isn’t bound by governmental constraints on speech.
Split 5–4 ruling
The case, which the conservative wing of the court decided in a split 5–4 ruling, centered around a Manhattan-based nonprofit tasked by New York City with operating public access channels in the area. The organization disciplined two producers after a film led t

Silicon Valley is entering a new phase in its quest for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Some advocates call this part “the end of the beginning,” Code2040 CEO Karla Monterroso tells TechCrunch.At first, advocates were focused on calling out the lack of diversity at tech conferences, pressuring companies to release diversity data and debunking the pipeline problem. Then the focus shifted to hiring heads of diversity and implementing unconscious bias training (more

We know you’re hard at work bringing your early-stage startup dreams to fruition, but allow us to offer this hot tip. Super-early-bird-pass pricing for Disrupt San Francisco 2019 pulls a disappearing act on June 21 at 11:59 p.m. (PT).
Buy your pass now and depending on the pass you buy you can save up to $1,800. You can even select the payment plan option during checkout and pay for your pass over time. Viva la budget!
If you’re serious about realizing your startup dreams, and we&rsq

AppleCEO Tim Cookgave a speech to Stanford graduates this weekend. In addition to the usual motivational stuff, he attacked other big tech companies in a not-so-subtle way. He painted a stark picture of Silicon Valley, saying it’s responsible for too many mistakes.
“Today we gather at a moment that demands some reflections. Fueled by caffeine and code, optimism and idealism, conviction and creativity, generations of Stanford graduates and dropouts have used technology to remake our s

Adobe’s upcoming drawing and painting app has an official name: Adobe Fresco. Inspired by the classic technique of applying pigment to wet plaster, the app is intended “to inspire spontaneous creativity.”
The app has been in development under the code name “Project Gemini” and debuted at Adobe’s Max conference in 2018. It will first be available as an iPad app and later for other devices that use touch and stylus inputs.
Fresco will replicate how real-world me

Tomorrow, Facebook is expected to release full details of its new “cryptocurrency” project Libra — as always, Twitter has lots to say. Few concrete facts about Facebook‘s Libra (formally known as GlobalCoin) have been made public so far. Reports indicate the likes of Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and PayPal have already paid a $10 million fee to become validators on the network, which allows untapped access to related data. Facebook‘s rumored goal i

SoftBank’sVision Fund may be facing some challenges when it comes to restocking its massive reserves, but the firm famous for cutting big checks is leading a sizeable round for Collective Health. This startup focused on enterprise employee healthcare management announced a $205 million Series E raise today, bringing its total funding to $434 million since its founding in 2013. Its last raise was a $110 million round in February, 2018.
Collective Healths’ client list includes Red Bull

Spotify announced today that advertisers can now target ads based on the podcasts that people listen to. This means that unlike before, where advertisers could mainly target Spotify’s free-tier listeners by the music they enjoy — by genre or playlist — they can now target based on the category of podcast they consume, which is likely going to be much more specific and fruitful for the advertisers. Today’s news is likely only the start of how Spotify plans to eventually l

Most political press conferences can be sort of a bore, but during last week’s live-streamed presser by Pakistani regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai, the event attracted international attention for all the wrong reasons. While Yousafzai addressed the public in his weekly conference, a volunteer on the team accidentally activated the cat filter on Facebook Live, causing the minister to appear with digital cat ears, whiskers, and rosy cheeks.
What have this official PTI KPK Facebok page ha

Father’s Day 2019 has passed, but some great deals that we saw last week are still happening. For example, you can save $200 on a Samsung Galaxy S10E, S10, or S10 Plus, the lowest prices that we’ve seen for these phones, which are unlocked and don’t require activation. The Google Pixel 3 XL with $300 knocked off of its price ($599.99 at checkout) isn’t too bad, either, though it’s a harder sell since the Google Pixel 4 has been revealed — by Google itself.
It

Adobe’s upcoming iPad drawing and painting app will be called Adobe Fresco, the company announced today on its blog. Previously called Project Gemini, the app will arrive sometime later this year.Named after the Italian Renaissance-style painting technique of applying water-based pigments to wet plaster, Adobe Fresco’s main selling point is its Live Brushes, which mimic the way paint would mix and blend in real life. Adobe’s chief product officer, Scott Belsky, writes that Liv

Nuro, the self-driving delivery startup, is teaming up with Domino’s to launch a pilot for driverless pizza delivery in Houston, Texas, the companies announced Monday. Starting later this year, Domino’s will use Nuro’s driverless fleet of custom-built robot cars to deliver pizza to select Houston residents who place orders online.Nuro, which was founded by two ex-members of Google’s pioneering self-driving team, has been using its fleet of R1 robot cars to deliver grocer

Sanho’s Hyper brand has brought us some pretty clever solutions to the shortcomings of today’s smartphones, laptops and tablets for years now, including a sleek, charger-mounted USB-C hub for MacBooks and wireless charging for AirPods before that was cool. By comparison, their latest is a little bit derivative — but it could be a handy way to automatically backup your iOS or Android device when you plug it in at night.The company’s new crowdfunded project is called the H

During Microsoft’s keynote at E3, we learned that The Blair Witch Project — which helped revolutionize horror in 1999 — will be getting a new video game tie-in. The PC and Xbox game, known simply as Blair Witch, debuts in a couple of months on August 30th. But with a short trailer that just barely revealed its connection, it left a lot of questions unanswered. So what exactly is going on with Blair Witch?
As the trailer mentions, Blair Witch is set primarily in 1996, which is

Instagram says today that it’s testing new features that might make it easier for people to regain access to accounts that hackers have overtaken, Motherboard reports. The news follows reports from users about losing access to their valuable accounts, as well as a separate Motherboard story about how some of these victims turned to white-hat (or well-meaning) hackers for help. Attackers often trick Instagram users into clicking a phishing link that requires them to enter their login crede

Sprint is the latest US carrier to begin selling a personal tracking device that can be attached to or kept with something you can’t afford to lose. The new device, described by Sprint as “matchbook-sized,” is called the “Tracker + Safe & Found.” Customers can get it by paying $2.50 per month for 24 months (a total of $60), plus $5 more every month for service.Like similar products from AT&T and more recently Verizon, Sprint is talking up the advantages of

Suzanne Collins is bringing back The Hunger Games, with the author announcing a new prequel novel that takes place 64 years before the events of the first book in the series, set for release on May 19th, 2020.“With this book, I wanted to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we perceive is required for our survival,” Collins said in an announcement to AP. “The reconstruction period 10 years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days — as the country

TL;DR: The portable Microsoft Surface Laptop is down to under £500 on Amazon, saving you £299.01 on list price.Laptops are great for surfing the web, watching your favourite shows, and a bunch of other fun activities. Unfortunately, what we generally use our laptops for more than anything else is work. It's a sad fact of life, but an important one to remember when it comes to purchasing a new device.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop is a great option for anyone that needs to get work don