Technology news

For most, Indonesia does not immediately spring to mind as a hub for startup innovation, not least because nearby Singapore has been traditionally known as the “Silicon Valley of Southeast Asia”. However, Indonesia is fast emerging as a diverse economy that’s causing excitement for investors: It’s no wonder that it takes the ‘I’ in the CIVETS group (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa). Despite the challenges posed by being home

Facebook is planning to launch a cryptocurrency it hopes will “transform the global economy.” The currency, named Libra, is being developed by Facebook, but the company intends to share control with a consortium of organizations, including venture capital firms, credit card companies, and other tech giants.At launch, you’ll be able to send Libra inside of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, with it mostly being meant as an intermediary for transferring traditional currencies. Eve

The writing has been on the slate for some time now. Roughly this time last year, we reported that Google had wiped all tablet sales off its site. Turns out that was just a bug, but it seemed like an ominous portent of things to come.
Googlestill went ahead and launched the Pixel Slate late last year, hoping the device would give users a much-welcome form factor alternative to its high-end PixelBook. Ultimately, however, the device felt redundant, and now it seems it will be the last of its kind

NASA’svery own free-floating Companion Cube equivalent took its own first tentative “steps” in space today, demonstrating its ability to rotate on its own in zero gravity inside the International Space Station. The robot, called “Bumble” and one of a series of Astrobee robots that NASA developed to work along with astronauts on the ISS, is the first ever to fly on its own in space.
Bumble’s first flight wouldn’t necessarily wow at an airshow — the

It was a historic day for Slack(NYSE: WORK). The workplace communication software juggernaut debuted on the New York Stock Exchange up 48% at $38.50 per share after reports emerged Wednesday night that the business had agreed to a reference price of $26 per share.
Slack, founded in 2009 as Tiny Speck, closed up 48.5% Thursday at $38.62 per share. The stock had climbed as high as $42 in intraday trading. Slack’s market cap now sits well above $20 billion, or nearly 3 times its most recent p

Shuly Galili Contributor Shuly Galili is a founding partner at UpWest.According to CB Insights, the number of seed-stage funding deals in the U.S. declined for the fourth straight year in 2018, continuing a trend that has seen the number of deals steadily drop, while the average size of deals increased. It’s safe to say this is the new normal. Yet, there continues to be a huge surplus of available capital and there are more funds out there than ever before.
For new entrepreneurs, as well

In a world where the enterprise market hovers around $500 billion in annual sales, is it any wonder that hundreds of enterprise startups launch into that fiercely competitive arena every year? It’s a thrilling, roller-coaster ride that’s seen it all: serious success, wild wealth and rapid failure.
That’s why we’re excited to host our inaugural TC Sessions Enterprise 2019 event on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Like TechCrunch’s

Ever since Apple first announced its new, cheese grater-shaped take on the Mac Pro, one question has been on everyone’s mind: how well would the Mac Pro actually work as a $6,000-plus cheese grater? Fortunately, we no longer have to wait, thanks to YouTube Winston Moy, who went and machined a replica of Apple’s new Mac Pro chassis to answer the question once and for all.Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t do a great job, which sort of makes sense given the Mac Pro is not even remotely

Electronic Arts, when called upon to defend its practice of including loot boxes in its games, chose to defend its money-maker in the most cringeworthy way possible, by comparing them to Kinder eggs. The UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee yesterday heard evidence from EA and Epic Games representatives about various game-related issues, the legality and propriety of loot boxes and other microtransactions in games chief among them. For the most part, the gamin

The online behavioural advertising industry is illegally profiling internet users.
That’s the damning assessment of the U.K.’s data protection regulator in an update report published today, in which it sets out major concerns about the programmatic advertising process known as real-time bidding (RTB), which makes up a large chunk of online advertising.
In what sounds like a knock-out blow for highly invasive data-driven ads, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concludes

Google will not be launching a sequel to last year’s Pixel Slate tablet, according to Business Insider and Computer World, and will instead focus its Chrome OS hardware efforts on traditional laptop devices like the Pixelbook. “For Google’s first-party hardware efforts, we’ll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate,” a spokesperson told Business Insider.Translation: you can expect the Slate to continue to receive software and secur

While mirrorless cameras accelerate into the future, medium format models are hearkening unto the past — and Hasselbladis chief among them. Its new digital back fits lenses going back to the ’50s, and the tiny 907X camera body is about as lovely a throwback as one can imagine.
The new set of systems, announced today, are somewhat different from what most people are used to. Most interchangeable-lens systems, like Canon and Nikon’s DSLRs and Olympus and Fujifilm’s mirrorle

Walmart has been surveilling its checkout registers using a computer vision technology called Missed Scan Detection to identify when items move past the scanner without having been scanned. As reported by Business Insider, the technology has been implemented in more than 1,000 stores across the US over the past two years, and it monitors both self-checkout kiosks and traditional registers managed by human cashiers.
The system runs on cameras that watch as items move across the register. If an u

“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will be making his debut as a feature film director on Netflix .
Variety reports that Netflix won the rights to Miranda’s film adaptation of “Tick Tick … Boom!” following “a heated bidding war,” with Andrew Garfield (who played Eduardo Saverin in “The Social Network” and recently won a Tony for his role in the onstage revival of “Angels in America”) in talks to star.
The musical was wri

It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that an angry fan online must be in search of a website to launch a mostly useless petition. A recent protest from a Christian group asking Netflix to remove Good Omens from its library is a perfect example — except that Good Omens isn’t part of Netflix’s library, because it’s an Amazon show.The petition was first reported by The Guardian, which discovered that a Christian organization known as the Return to Order campaign lau

Tim Hsia & Neil Devani ContributorShare on Twitter Tim Hsia is the CEO of Media Mobilize and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Neil Devani is an angel investor and venture capitalist focused on companies solving hard problems.Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.The Operators highlights the experts bui

Apple says the Trump administration’s tariffs could lower the company’s economic output and put it at a disadvantage compared to its international competitors, particularly its Chinese counterparts. In Apple’s letter to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the company argues that the proposed tariffs, which would impact nearly every Apple device including the iPhone, MacBook, AirPods, and Apple Watch, would hurt Apple’s US employees and its ability to contribute to

Google Maps is overrun with fake business listings and phone numbers that reroute to competing businesses, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Hundreds of thousands of fake listings appear on Google Maps every month, with the Journal estimating the service currently has about 11 million falsely listed businesses.Though Google claims in a self-funded 2017 academic study that only 0.5 percent of local searches are false listings, a separate investigation by the Journal suggested otherwise.

Prosthetic limbs are getting better, but not as quickly as you’d think. They’re not as smart as our real limbs, which (directed by the brain) do things like automatically stretch out to catch ourselves when we fall. This particular “stumble reflex” was the subject of an interesting study at Vanderbilt that required its subjects to fall down… a lot.
The problem the team is aiming to help alleviate is simply that users of prosthetic limbs fall, as you might guess, mo

NetflixHack Day, the company’s internal hackathon, has a habit of producing some amazing gems — like a brain-controlled interface, a Fitbit hack that shuts off Netflix when you fall asleep, a Netflix app for the original NES and a way to navigate the Netflix app with Face ID and ARKit, to name a few. At this year’s Netflix Hack Day, employees ventured into areas like voice technology and haptics — the latter, so your phone could vibrate right along with the on-screen acti

Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency, is expected to have a smaller environmental footprint compared to some of its more notorious blockchain brethren, including bitcoin, according to experts. Its energy demands are projected to be more like those of existing data centers — which, while still demanding, aren’t quite as energy-hungry as mining bitcoins.
The currency hasn’t launched yet, so it’s hard to know how those claims will stack up against reality. But its des

Carnegie Mellon researchers working with peers from the University of Minnesotahave made a big breakthrough in brain-computer interface (BCI) and robotic technology: They’ve developed a way for a person to control a robot arm with their minds — with no surgery or invasive procedures required to make it possible.
The mind-controlled robot in this experiment also showed a high degree of motor control, as it’s able to track a computer cursor as it moves across a screen. This is ob

Many roles inside of startups and tech companies are clear: marketers market, salespeople sell, engineers engineer. Then there are the roles like “product manager” that seem obvious on the surface (product managers “product,” right?) but in reality are very fuzzy roles that can be highly variable across different companies.
A few weeks ago, TechCrunch editor Jordan Crook interviewed J Crowley, who is head of product for Airbnb Lux and was formerly at Foursquare. Crowley c

Overheating batteries are no laughing matter, so this may be urgent: Apple has just issued a recall for the 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, saying its batteries “may pose a fire safety risk.”
The company says there are a “limited number” of affected units, sold between September 2015 and February 2017. That could easily be quite a number of laptops over that span. But the company sold that third-generation MacBook Pro between 2012 and 2018, so we’re definitel

Applethis morning announced a “voluntary” recall of MacBook Pro batteries due to potential overheating and safety risk. The recall only applies to mid-2015 15-inch MacBook Pros with Retina displays. As the company notes in a press release, these models were primarily sold between September 2015 and February 2017.
Concerned users can see if their systems qualify for replacement by checking the Apple Menu in their system finder. The company is hosting a page where they can enter their

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. Slack prices IPO at $26 per share
Slackis debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today. Trading hasn’t opened yet as I write this, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has set a price of $26 per share.
The enterprise communication company is pursuing a direct listing, es

The unofficial start of summer means it’s time for rumors to begin swirling for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note device, which is typically announced around August. Still, the news might not be what you want to hear: the 10th anniversary Galaxy Note might be the one where Samsung finally kills the headphone jack for the phablet line.
According to Android Police, Samsung may be preparing to release two sizes for the Galaxy Note 10 — a regular and a smaller device (by the Note’s

YouTube finally seems to have realized the obvious: comments, for the most part, are bad and you shouldn’t read them. It’s currently testing a new layout in the Android app that hides comments from sight unless you press a button to expose them. However, according to XDA Developers, the rollout so far hasn’t expanded beyond India.
If you frequently use the app, you probably know that comments live beneath the “Up next” section of video recommendations. But the test

For the first time, aerospace company Blue Origin has fired up a brand-new engine the company developed for its future Moon lander. The engine, dubbed the BE-7, ignited for a full 35 seconds during a test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. It’s a big step for the company as it prepares to build its lander, named Blue Moon, and eventually send it to the lunar surface.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos tweeted out a video of the test last night. The recording shows flames coming fro

The iPad has few rivals. One of those is the 10.5-inch Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, which is currently on sale at Amazon with $150 off the asking price. This deal includes the S-Pen, which typically retails for $59 separately. This is a good deal, but I’d be failing if I didn’t point out that this deal is likely because its successor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S5, is expected to arrive in the coming months. Furthermore, Samsung recently released a mid-range tablet, the Samsun

Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs’ newest augmented reality game based on the Harry Potter universe is available now for both iOS and Android in the US, a day earlier than we anticipated it would launch in the region. The game, called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, is similar in style to Pokémon Go, asking players to traverse a virtual map overlaid on the real world and collect magical artifacts.Originally, Niantic and its partner Portkey Games, the new subsidiary of Warner Bros

Uber made several changes to its app Thursday to improve the experience for both novice and seasoned drivers. The update came as ride-hailing drivers rallied in support of legislation in California that would reclassify them as employees rather than contractors.Uber is testing out several new features for drivers, including a scrolling feed of promotions and gamified “quests” that are viewable before drivers sign on to start driving. For new drivers, there will be a “simulated

Inboxes are beasts, overflowing mountains of frustration – and in my opinion, a real buzzkill when it comes to productivity, sucking up hours out of our days, weeks, and months.   So, what’s the secret to maintaining a healthy inbox and keeping your sanity? Is it even possible? I think so! I’ve put together a few simple steps that will help you achieve email nirvana – you can thank me later. Triage As I write this, I have 16 emails sitting in my Inbox, which truth b

Today’s best deals don’t stick to an overall theme. There is a little bit for everyone, with sales on the Xbox One controller and wireless adapter bundle (compatible with iOS 13 and tvOS 13), the Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker and Logitech peripherals, a great deal on Fujifilm’s X-T2, and more.
Microsoft’s Xbox One controller and wireless adapter bundle are $44.99 at Amazon and B&H Photo, which is over $30 off the usual price. The included adapter can pair to eight co

In case you hadn’t noticed, Google got a facelift. Yep, the tech giant’s search page received some rather fancy new icons. Slap your peepers on this: While before there were just words, now there are words and images. Truly, we live in exalted times. Now these have been rolled out globally, we knew what we had to, nay, what we must do: a ranking, a definitive ranking of these items. Our fans demanded it. Probably. We think they might’ve. The next question was ho

Yesterday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) unveiled legislation called “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act,” which would shake up the legal foundation of the internet in an effort to root out online bias. Under the proposed law, companies like Facebook and Twitter would be required to obtain a government certification that they are not making politically biased decisions about content moderation, in exchange for liability protections they currently receive automatically.
Hawley&rsqu

Last week, Twitch banned one of its top streamers — Guy Beahm, better known as Dr Disrespect — for broadcasting from a public bathroom at E3. The ban now puts Twitch in a tricky position: Twitch needs to show that violating the company’s guidelines comes with real punishment, but a lengthy suspension means losing one of the platform’s biggest stars to competitors, like YouTube.Beahm is one of Twitch’s most popular streamers, with more than 3.2 million followers and

Bitcoin‘s hash rate is skyrocketing, setting a new all-time-high to fly in the face of Facebook’s ambitious Libra cryptocurrency — a remarkably healthy sign for the world’s most popular blockchain. Bitcoin‘s “hash rate” measures the total processing power of the network at any one time. As more miners join the network, the hash rate increases. A strong hash rate is indicative of a secure blockchain, as hypothetical bad actors would n

In the cult 2004 role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, vampires love to dance. Your protagonist can show up at a nightclub and jump into the center of the action, throwing their limbs wildly with an enthusiasm that’s not generally credited to the undead. And in a demo of Bloodlines’ upcoming sequel from Hardsuit Labs and Paradox Interactive, dancing is one of the first things you see, courtesy of a team member who did “extensive research” into the game&

Last year, the Yakuza series wrapped up with its sixth and final entry, which bid farewell to lovable hero Kazuma Kiryu. Given the strong attachment fans had to the character, the team behind the series realized they had to go in a different direction for their next game. Judgment, which launches next week on the PS4, is similar to Yakuza in a lot of ways, but it’s also a hard-boiled detective story. It’s something that producer Kazuki Hosokawa, who directed both Yakuza 5 and the pr