Technology news

Apple CEO Tim Cook has fired back at a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported on tensions between departing chief design officer Jony Ive and the company, calling the story “absurd” and claiming that “the conclusions just don’t match with reality” in an email sent to NBC News reporter Dylan Byers.The WSJ report alleged that Ive’s departure from the company had been a long time coming, claiming that Ive has been slowly drifting away from the company i

Virginia has officially expanded its nonconsensual pornography ban to include realistic fake videos and photos, including computer-generated “deepfakes.” The amendment was passed earlier this year and goes into effect today, making Virginia one of the first places with a law covering deepfakes.
Since 2014, Virginia has banned spreading nude images or video “with the intent to coerce, harass, or intimidate” another person. The amendment clarifies that this includes “

Several buildings at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus have been evacuated after a machine at the company’s mailing facility alerted employees that a package may contain sarin, a potentially deadly nerve agent, as first reported by NBC Bay Area. According to that report, no one has been exposed to the substance, whatever it may be.
“We evacuated four buildings and are conducting a thorough investigation in coordination with local authorities,” Anthony Harrison, a Facebook spok

Meditation app unicorn Calmwants you to doze off to the dulcet tones of actor Matthew McConaughey’s southern drawl or writer Stephen Fry’s English accent. Calm’s Sleep Stories feature that launched last year is a hit, with more than 150 million listens from its 2 million paid subscribers and 50 million downloads. While lots of people want to meditate, they need to sleep. The seven-year-old app has finally found its must-have feature that makes it a habit rather than an aspirati

Every PlayStation Vue subscriber will see a $5-per-month price increase, Sony announced today. New subscribers to Sony’s over-the-top TV service will see higher costs across all pricing tiers, meaning basic plans will rise from $45 to $50 per month. Current subscribers will start paying the higher price after July 31st. The increase comes from a recent review of what competitors are charging for content, changes in the ecosystem, and the number of services offered, according to Sony’

The world changed on July 1st, 1979: the day that Sony released the iconic Walkman TPS-L2, the first real portable music player that would revolutionize the way we listened to music in a way that no other device really had ever done before. Boomboxes and portable radios had been around for a while, but the Walkman made portable music private, ushering in a whole new era of people listening to music away from home.40 years of portable music
Forty years later and Walkmans aren’t exactly popu

My colleague Chaim Gartenberg recently reviewed Sarah Gailey’s debut novel Magic for Liars, prompting me to bump it further up my to-read list. I’m already a sucker for books about magical schools, and it’s a spectacular read, following a tough-as-nails PI who is hired to investigate a brutal murder at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged, magical twin sister works.What impressed me most was how Gailey plays with all of the conventions of a magical academy s

There are 30 new anime series starting this summer season, which is a lot of content for anyone to wade through. So here’s a list of seven particularly outstanding new summer shows, suitable for newcomers or longtime fans. Most of these shows are available for viewing internationally the day after they air in Japan, thanks to streaming services like Amazon, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Netflix.
In addition to these seven shows, three series (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Fruits Basket, a

Samsung co-CEO DJ Koh says he pushed the Galaxy Fold to market “before it was ready,” leading to the device’s delay just days before it was supposed to ship out to customers. “It was embarrassing,” Koh told a small group of reporters, according to The Independent.The Galaxy Fold, which would have been the first major release of a foldable smartphone, was supposed to come out in late April. But as reviewers started testing the phone in the weeks prior, several notice

Berlin-based Spark Networks, the owner of niche dating app brands like Christian Mingle, Jdate, LDSsingles, Silver Singles, JSwipe and others, today announced it has acquired Match.com competitor Zoosk for a combination of cash and stock. The deal values Zooskat approximately $258 million.
Spark says it will issue 12,980,000 American Depositary Shares (ADS) to former Zoosk shareholders valued at $153 million based on the closing price of Spark ADS of $11.78 on June 28, 2019. The deal also provid

Tomorrow morning, NASA will test its new deep-space crew capsule to see if the vehicle can keep people safe during a botched launch. The agency will activate a special emergency system on the capsule designed to carry the vehicle away from a malfunctioning rocket, to safety. If all goes well, it’ll show that the capsule is ready for flight and pave the way for its first mission to space within the next couple of years.
The crew capsule enduring tomorrow’s test is NASA’s Orion,

Ikea has released a free font called Soffa Sans, inspired by all the memes born from its online ‘Design your own sofa’ planner. The tool allows for customers to design the layouts and configurations of Ikea’s couches, from the Vimle sectionals to the Vallentuna modular sofa series. Once it was discovered that the planner allowed for basically any configuration with no limit to the cost, it inspired some Sims-like creativity from users.
Acknowledging the planner’s full pot

Pretty much every company is finding a way to get involved in the lead-up to Prime Day 2019, which starts July 15th. Google is one of them, and it announced price cuts on most of its smart home devices. The deals will last through July 17th, the day after Prime Day concludes.
A few retailers besides Google Store are participating in this sale, including Best Buy, B&H Photo, and Walmart. You’ll find a few of the best deals below, and you can check out more at Google Store.
The Google Ne

Samsung has opened a new app store for Bixby so Galaxy users can discover new shortcuts they can use with the assistant. Called Bixby marketplace, users can browse for “Bixby capsules.” Despite sounding like some kind of prescription drug, these tools are akin to Amazon’s Alexa skills that let you easily access certain functionalities of an app with a voice command.
Bixby already offers quick commands that integrate with third-party apps, but the marketplace makes it easier to

Madrid’s new mayor has halted the city’s congestion pricing program, despite early evidence that it eased traffic and reduced pollution after going into effect last November. It’s the first major European city to reverse the creation of a low-emissions zone, an idea that has become more popular in recent years as the European Union looks to enforce new clean air regulations across the continent. The move sparked thousands of citizens to protest in the city’s streets this

To be a Mormon among Mormons is to realize the American fantasy of good neighbors. They’re the kind of neighbors from whom you borrow a cup of sugar and whom you trust to pick up your children from school when you’re stuck in a meeting. They invite you over on summer evenings for lemonade at the table in the backyard next to the hydrangeas. You eat their Jell-O salad at picnics. (Lime Jell-O is so popular among Mormons that the corridor of Mormon communities from Utah to Idaho is oft

All startup founders want to steer to a successful outcome the business they started. Sometimes the goal is an initial public offering. Sometimes it’s an acquisition.
Though acquisitions often represent a kind of finish line for entrepreneurs, they aren’t easy to line up, and even when an offer is on the table, it often comes with difficult decisions. To better understand how to field interest, what’s involved once an acquirer comes knocking and who can be impacted when a compa

There was no question that Dr Disrespect’s ban from Twitch would be temporary when he was suspended from the platform two weeks ago. But as the popular streamer, whose real name is Guy Beahm, prepares to make his return, the community is grappling to understand the precedent it sets going forward.Beahm was suspended for streaming in a public bathroom at a major video game convention, E3. It presented a pivotal moderation moment for Twitch: Beahm is one of the company’s most popular s

When Shomik Dutta and Betsy Hoover first met in 2007, hewas coordinating fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts for Barack Obama’sfirst presidential campaign and she was a deputy field director for the campaign.
Over the next two election cycles the two would become parts of an organizing and fundraising team that transformed the business of politics through its use of technology — supposedly laying the groundwork for years of Democratic dominance in organizing, fundraising, pollin

T-Mobile’s 5G network is now up and running in several US cities. This initial phase of the carrier’s 5G strategy uses the same sort of high-frequency millimeter wave network tech as Verizon, resulting in download speeds that far exceed what LTE phones can reach today. The biggest problem with millimeter wave is range: to cover a whole city, you need to have 5G nodes — the things that beam out the millimeter wave signal — all over the place. In Verizon’s case, thing

Six months ago Korean games giant Nexon seemed headed for a management change, but now it seems very much back to business as usual. Days after founder Kim Jung-ju was reported to have called off selling his near-50 percent share in the firm, Nexon has snapped up a controlling stake in seven-month-old game developer Embark for $96 million.
Sweden-based Embark was founded by former EA executive Patrick Söderlund last year. Nexon was its sole early investor, having paid a reported $41 million

The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups came around again last week (Thursday 27th June), and once again proved that Europe’s enormous diversity in startups continues to shine through on the world stage.
Once again TechCrunch was the exclusive media sponsor of the awards, alongside new “tech, culture & society” event creator The Pathfounder. Attendees, nominees and winners were given discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this year.
The awards cover 20 categ