Technology news

Southwest and United Airlines have extended the cancellation of flights using Boeing 737 Max aircraft, following the news that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has discovered a new flaw in the plane’s flight computer.Southwest Airlines had previously announced it would begin using the 737 Max again starting September 2nd, as long as the plane was re-certified by the FAA. Now, the airline says it won’t start using the plane again until at least October 1st. Some 150 flights w

NASAhas just announced its next big interplanetary mission: Dragonfly, which will deliver a Mars Rover-sized flying vehicle to the surface of Titan, a moon of Saturn with tantalizing life-supporting qualities. The craft will fly from place to place, sampling the delicious organic surface materials and sending high-resolution pictures back to Earth.
Dragonfly will launch in 2026, taking eight years to reach Titan and land (if all goes well) in 2034. So there will be plenty more updates after this

The man who won over decades of Apple fans with iconic product design and his pronunciation of “aluminum” is out at the company. Sir Jonathan Paul “Jony” Ive told The Financial Times today that he’s leaving Apple after 27 years. 
Ive led a design team that created an army of consumer electronics’ most iconic devices, including the iPhone, iPod and various Mac models. The executive will begin transitioning away from the company at the end of 2019, launchin

Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive will depart the company later this year, bringing an end to a tenure spent crafting some of technology’s most influential products, including the iPhone. Ive, who has led Apple’s design team since 1996, is leaving “to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients.” The company is called LoveFrom, and Ive will be joined by famed designer Marc Newson on the new venture. Despite stepping do

Ash Egan Contributor Ash Egan leads crypto investing at Accomplice. He formerly was a VC at ConsenSysVentures and Converge.In the early 2000s, journalists popularized the term “PayPalmafia” to describe the PayPal founders and employees who left to start their own wildly successful tech companies, including Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk. Drawing from that idea, this article seeks to cover the formation and flow of talent within the crypto landscape today.
I'm fascinated by

The 2017 iPad Pro (64GB, Wi-Fi) is currently $474 at Walmart, and as for why you might consider buying an older iPad instead of one of the newer models, there are a few reasons. The 2018 iPad Air is practically a carbon copy of this model and has most of its best features, like the True Tone tech that adjusts the screen’s color temperature based on the ambient light in the room, and it has a Smart Connector for Apple’s Smart Keyboard.The Air features a newer processor, and will likel

To celebrate International Small Business Day, Googletoday launched a new website that will suggest its products that seem like the best fit for a specific business.
The Google for Small Business portal was announced today at the Grow with Google Learning Center in New York City, where the company offers a variety of workshops and classes. During a break in the event, Kim Spalding, Google’s global product director for small business ads, told me that the website “gives everyone

Chinese automotive startup Nio is recalling nearly 5,000 of its ES8 high-performance electric SUVs after a series of battery fires in China and a subsequent investigation revealed a vulnerability that created a safety risk.
The recall affects a quarter of the ES8 vehicles it has sold since they went on sale in June 2018.
A Nio-led team of experts that included the supplier of the battery pack module, investigated a reported fire involving an ES8 in Shanghai. The team concluded there was a vulner

A new mission involving a drone-like lander will explore the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission — called Dragonfly — received a coveted funding slot from NASA’s New Frontiers program, which funds ambitious missions to explore objects in our Solar System.
“Dragonfly is a Mars rover-sized drone that will be able to fly from place to place on Titan,” Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, the lead investigator of the mission, said in a briefing. The 4-foot

Flappy Bird is a gaming legend and one of the most explosively popular mobile games ever made. But what if it were more like Fortnite?That’s the idea behind Flappy Royale, a new game from developers Orta Therox and Em Lazer-Walker (with contributions from Zach Gage). It mashes together the endless flapping gameplay of Flappy Bird with the last-bird-standing style of the battle royale genre that’s all the rage these days.Gameplay is simple, just like it was in the original game: tap o

Final Fantasy XIV is making the jump to live action with a new TV series that is set to be produced by Sony Pictures Television and Hivemind, the studio that makes The Expanse and Netflix’s upcoming The Witcher show
Said to be “inspired directly by the world and characters of the title’s fourteenth installment,” neither Square Enix nor the production companies have said much about what the show will be about or where it’ll take place relative to the ongoing MMO. We

Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue says Apple Music has surpassed 60 million subscribers, according an interview with French media site Numerama. This milestone adds 10 million more subscribers to the last known figure, which was still around 50 million as of April. At the time, Apple Music was reported as having more listeners than Spotify in the US. (Spotify, however, boasts 100 million subscribers worldwide.)
“In the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is the number one streaming service,&rd

James Winter Contributor James Winter is currently the VP of Marketing at Brandfolder,a leading digital asset management solution; prior to joining Brandfolder, James was the Director of Marketing at AspireIQ where he grew the marketing team from zero to seven.
As brands pursue audiences online, they are producing more creative content than ever — particularly around Instagram.
In the past twelve months, Brandfolder‘s Brand Index (check out the full Brand Index Report at the en

Amazon along with Boulder company Nite Ize, a maker of specialty lights and phone mounts under the STEELIE brand, filed suit on Wednesday in a Seattle federal court against a group of counterfeiters who have been ripping off Nite Ize products. The issue was brought to Amazon’s attention in October 2018, following a tip from the United States Customers and Border Protection agency, which had seized a shipment of 300 counterfeit STEELIE brand car mounts, Amazon lawsuit explains.
The agency a

Less than a day after receiving widespread attention, the deepfake app that used AI to create fake nude photos of women is shutting down. In a tweet, the team behind DeepNude said they “greatly underestimated” interest in the project and that “the probability that people will misuse it is too high.”
DeepNude will no longer be offered for sale and further versions won’t be released. The team also warned against sharing the software online, saying it would be against

A $30-per-month email service capturing the adoration of investors and founders in Silicon Valley is perhaps an unsurprising story in a subscription-obsessed landscape, yet we’re only now hearing how stealth-y startup Superhuman has captured investor $$$.
The New York Times reports that the SF startup closed a $33 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz last month, raising at a $260 million valuation. The company has been oddly tight-lipped about its funding for a startup that people w

Niantichad already been hinting at plans to throw a big festival for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite players — something in the same vein as its Pokémon GO Fest events, but with less Pokémon and more virtual witchcraft and wizardry. I mentioned it back when the game first got a launch date.
Now it’s a bit more official. Niantic says it will be throwing a two day Wizards Unite festival in Indianapolis, Indiana later this summer.
Details are still a bit light, but here’

Hey, so remember earlier today when I said that new 5G cities still qualify as news, for a little while longer, at least? AT&T is making it under the wire with the addition of Las Vegas to its growing portfolio of 5G business cities.
The addition of Sin City brings the carrier’s total up to 20 cities for its 5G+ — a confusing branding it gave to avoid confusion with its purposefully confusing 5G E branding. Confused? Good. That was kind of the point.
Anyway, AT&T’s cert

We’ve seen Harvard’s Robobee flying robot evolve for years: After first learning to fly, it learned to swim in 2015, then to jump out of the water again in 2017 — and now it has another trick up its non-existent sleeve. The Robobee X-Wing can fly using only the power it collects from light hitting its solar cells, making it possible to stay in the air indefinitely.
Achieving flight at this scale is extremely hard. You might think that being small, it would be easy to take off a

Waymo is hiring 13 engineers from shuttered robot toy startup Anki, including former Anki CEO Boris Sofman who will lead the Alphabet unit’s self-driving trucking project, the company said on Thursday. The news was first reported by Axios.Anki launched in 2013 with a smartphone-controlled toy racecar set called Anki Drive. It raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding and sold 1.5 million robot units. That included Cozmo, a Pixar-style toy robot with anthropomorphic features

French startup Ornikar is raising a $40 million Series B round (€35 million) from Idinvest and Bpifrance. The company competes with traditional driving schools in Europe with an online marketplace of students and teachers.
And Ornikar has been a massive success in France. Overall, 35 percent of driving school registrations in 2019 are handled by Ornikar.
There are many advantages in choosing Ornikar. For driver students, Ornikar is much more flexible than a traditional driving school. Drivi

Dell’s 2019 refresh of the XPS 15 2-in-1 laptop is now available. One of the most notable changes in this year’s model is the placement of the webcam: it’s now shifted up above the screen, where it should have been all along, instead of near the hinge.
Prices for the XPS 15 start at $1,099, and all four of Dell’s configurations include 9th Gen Intel processors, fast M.2 SSD NVMe storage, and a 97Wh battery. If you’re more of a power user, the $1,549 model is built w

Pre-saving albums on Spotify can give music labels access to personal user data like emails addresses and playlists, according to a Billboard report. It also gives labels permission to manage who users follow, add or remove songs from their libraries, and stream Spotify on users’ other devices.Spotify users can pre-save upcoming releases to have the album added to their libraries as soon as it’s available. Users have to click and approve permissions to give labels access to do this,

Did you miss the deadline to compete in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on Oct. 2-4? Cheer up buckaroo. You may be down, but you’re not out. You have one last chance for Startup Battlefield glory.
“Tell me more,” we hear you cry. Buy a demo table and exhibit in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF for a chance to win a Wild Card entry to Startup Battlefield. Out of all the startups exhibiting in the Alley, our team of TechCrunch editors will select two standouts as

It’s NEWSLETTER TIME get pumped! I know I am – it’s my first Daily Crunch in over a year. That’s right, your friendly neighborhood Anthony Ha is otherwise occupied today so I’m back to deliver this baby to you, devoted readers. And there’s news: Plenty o’ News.
1. Reddit puts r/The_Donald in a corner
Reddit has long had an uncomfortable relationship with one of its communities, a subreddit called r/The_Donald which focuses on all things related to the cu

Respawn’s sci-fi battle royale shooter Apex Legends is getting its next big update starting on July 2nd with the launch of its second seasonal battle pass, a new legend to play, and a slew of new changes to the map. Titled Battle Charge, the second season will introduce the first-ever structural changes to the King’s Canyon map and bring on new character Wattson, an engineer type who can build electricity traps. Wattson was first revealed at E3 earlier this month, but now we’re

You may have seen news stories last week about researchers developing tools that can detect deepfakes with greater than 90 percent accuracy. It’s comforting to think that with research like this, the harm caused by AI-generated fakes will be limited. Simply run your content through a deepfake detector and bang, the misinformation is gone!But software that can spot AI-manipulated videos will only ever provide a partial fix to this problem, say experts. As with computer viruses or biological