Technology news

Like Azure last week, AWS reported some slippage in its cloud earnings growth numbers today, dropping from 49% growth last year at this time to 37% this year. Total revenue increased from Q2 last year, from $6.105 billion to $8.381 billion this year. Today’s report puts the company on an astonishing run rate of more than $33 billion — just for AWS. That’s a successful company, never mind one that’s a division of a larger organization.
And Amazonhas to be thrilled that it

Elon Musk’sSpaceX managed to pull off something very few people thought it could — by disrupting one of the most fixed markets in the world with some of the most entrenched and protected players ever to benefit from government contract arrangements: rocket launches. The success of SpaceX,and promising progress from other new launch providers, including Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, have encouraged interest in space-based innovation among entrepreneurs and investors alike. But is this a

Ahead of tomorrow's release of the final season on Netflix, Orange is the New Black is partnering with GoFundMe to raise money for critical issues explored on the show.
The Poussey Washington Fund (named for Samira Wiley's beloved character on the show) will support eight pre-existing non-profits that focus on issues like criminal justice and policy reform, immigrants’ rights, and mass incarceration.
The fund doesn't just take inspiration from the show.  It's also an interactive part

Elon Musk’stunneling and transportation startup The Boring Company has raised its first outside investment through the sale of $120 million in stock, according to a securities filing.
The details of authorized sale of stock were first reported by Bloomberg News, which reviewed the filing obtained by Prime Unicorn Index.
The main investors in the stock sale were 8VC, Vy Capital, Craft Ventures and Valor Capital, and DFJ, according to a Boring Company spokesperson.
Steve Jurvetson,a lon

It’s been a while since Googlelast shared any fundamental financial data about its cloud business. In today’s earnings call, though, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who recently installed former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian as the new head of Google Cloud, announced that this business unit now has an $8 billion annual revenue run rate. That’s up from the $4 billion the company reported in early 2018.
While Google often felt like an also-ran in the cloud wars, it’s clearly starting

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google’s budget-conscious approach to its Pixel smartphone line appears to be paying off. Google parent company Alphabet posted second quarter earnings for 2019 today, handily beating Wall Street expectations with revenue of $38.9 billion and a profit of $9.9 billion. The profit dwarfs that of the second quarter of 2018, when Google had to dock its net income by a record $5 billion over last year’s antitrust settlement.The Google ad machine continue

When it comes to VC, vehicles, and startups, Africa’s ride-hail markets are becoming a multi-wheeled and global affair.
The big players such as Uberand Bolt are competing in Kampala and Nairobi—where in addition to car-service—they offer rickshaw taxis. On-demand motorcycle startups are multiplying and piloting EVs with funds from international partners. And many ride-hail companies in Africa are adapting unique product solutions to local transit needs.
In this a

Cyrus Radfar Contributor Cyrus Radfar is the founding partner at V1 Worldwide. More posts by this contributorHow autonomous vehicles and hyperloop are scooting along Will tech companies change the way we manage our health?
There are those who praise the technology as the solution to some of humankind’s gravest problems, and those who demonize AI as the world’s greatest existential threat. Of course, these are two ends of the spectrum, and AI, surely, presents exciting opportunities

It looks like the mid-range Pixel3a is the hit Googlesurely hoped it would be.
Alphabetreported some pretty good earnings today, but the company’s report tends to be pretty generic, given that it doesn’t provide details for its different business units inside of Google and its other segments. That’s not to say there isn’t good news there for Google. On today’s call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared some new stats for the company’s phone line.
“With the la

I went to Elon Musk’s Boring Company pep rally | Artist: Alex Castro Elon Musk has secured $120 million in new funding for The Boring Company, the tunnel-digging project he dreamt up while sitting in Los Angeles traffic back in 2016. It’s the first outside money to come into The Boring Company, though some of it is from a friendly party: the new fund from venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson’s, who has a seat on the boards of directors for both Tesla and SpaceX. The news was fir

In 2017, Matthew Peltier walked barefoot into a pitch meeting with venture capitalists. Young, male, man bun intact, he certainly resembled the stereotypical successful entrepreneur, but it was his startup, an app designed to bring social media stars and their fans into conversation, that drew skepticism.
Shimmur, as it was called, ultimately succeeded in raising about $7 million from Greycroft, Arena Ventures, Luma Launch, Right Side Capital Management and Techstars, according to PitchBook, but

Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its annual Mobility Sessions event, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles.
Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts key panels and conversations from the event, including our panel on micromobility where TechCrunch VC reporter Kate Clark was joined by investors Sarah Smith of Bain Capital Ventur

Apple has entered into a deal to acquire a majority of Intel’s modem business, TechCrunch has learned. The deal, valued at around $1 billion, includes Intel IP, equipment, leases and employees, with Apple bringing over 2,200 new roles and bringing its portfolio up 17,000 wireless technology patents.
“We’ve worked with Intelfor many years and know this team shares Apple’spassion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users,&rdquo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple will acquire “the majority” of Intel’s smartphone modem business for $1 billion, the two companies announced today. Around 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, and Apple will acquire IP and equipment from Intel as well. The transaction is expected to close toward the end of the year.
Intel won’t be getting out of the modem business entirely. It’ll still be able to develop modems for PCs, Internet of Things devices, au

Get ready to experience world-class networking TechCrunch-style at TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019. On September 5, more than 1,000 of the top enterprise software minds and makers, movers and shakers will descend on San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It’s a day-long conference featuring distinguished speakers, panel discussions, demos and workshops.
It’s also a prime opportunity to connect and build relationships with enterprise software founders, technologists and i

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission finalized a landmark settlement with Facebook over the company’s alleged privacy malpractices accrued over the past year.Whether it was Cambridge Analytica or falsely promising user control over its use of facial recognition, Facebook messed up — big time. But after months of negotiations with the FTC, Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership was left virtually untouched, and investors applauded the settleme

Discord has finally fixed a, ahem, bug where server folders didn’t exist. The chat service heard the cries of the video gaming community, and it added server folders today to make it much easier to organize the servers you’re participating in. If you’re anything like me, then you’re in more than 30 Discord servers, and the app has been a bit of a mess to organize the long list on the sidebar.
You can now simply drag and drop a server on top of another one to form a folder

Before you upgrade your Mac desktop or laptop to macOS Catalina, which will arrive later in 2019, there’s something that you should consider first: if you use 32-bit apps, they won’t work on the new macOS update. When Catalina arrives later in 2019, it will support 64-bit apps exclusively, making macOS Mojave (version 10.13) the final major version to support32-bit apps.Is this change guaranteed to impact you? No, especially if you mainly use Apple software. Apple wrote on a support

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is apparently moving on from its infamous butterfly keyboard. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via MacRumors), the company will introduce a scissor-switch keyboard design in its 16-inch MacBook Pro, which is expected to go on sale in September.This new keyboard design is said to use a scissor mechanism with glass fibers to reinforce the keys and keep them from breaking. It would also apparently be cheaper to produce. The updated keyboard would all

Reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuofrom TF International Securities has released a new report, as Apple Insider spotted. I’ve read the report and it focuses specifically on keyboard suppliers that would potentially work with Apple . And the company should potentially replace the unreliable butterfly mechanism with a new scissor mechanism.
The first laptop that should receive the update is the long-rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro. Kuo has updated the release timeline for the new device, and he n

Hyper Light Drifter — the gorgeous pixel art “slash ‘em up” — is now available on iPhone and iPad devices for $4.99, as the latest top-quality console / PC game to make the jump to mobile.Originally developed by Heart Machine, the iOS port was published by Abylight Studios, which also worked on the Switch port earlier this year. The iOS version features the same Special Edition content that was released on the Switch, which includes a few new areas, items, and enemi

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Google has already confirmed that a Pixelbook 2 is on the way, and the hardware end of things might already be largely complete: a new FCC filing is very likely Google’s next laptop. The filing is confidential for 180 days, which is plenty of time to keep things secret until the company’s standard October hardware event.But there are several factors that point to the Pixelbook. For one, the filing comes from Quanta, which manufactured the original

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has sued Google for temporarily suspending her advertising account after the Democratic primary debates last month, claiming the company is trying to suppress her bid for presidency. The lawsuit accuses Google of violating the First Amendment, among other offenses, and Gabbard is seeking $50 million plus assurances that Google will refrain from “censoring or restricting” the account.
Gabbard’s lawsuit claims th