Technology news

What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit or seeking a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics.
Thistle is a different type of food startup. It delivers thrice-weekly cooler bags customized with meat-optional, plant-based breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, sides and ju

Chinese tourists wearing masks use smartphones in the Ginza shopping district on January 24, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. | Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, the creators of a wildly popular game about viral outbreaks issued a statement last week reminding people that, while realistic, their game is just a game.“Please remember that Plague Inc. is a game, not a scientific model and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You might install antivirus software on your computer to protect your privacy and make sure no one is snooping on what you’re up to. But if you used some Avast and AVG products, you might have been revealing all of that sensitive information anyway.
A joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag reveals how Avast, which owns AVG, kept track of detailed information on what many of its users did online. That data it collected included what people sear

Image: Atari Atari has licensed its name for a number of brand partnerships in the gaming space, but the company’s latest deal to build eight Atari-branded hotels marks its foray into the hospitality industry. The company announced a licensing deal with US real estate developer True North Studio and GSD group to build eight hotels in the US. Construction will begin in Phoenix in mid-2020, with more hotels to come in Austin, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you place a preorder for Motorola’s Razr right now, you won’t receive the phone until February 18th — more than 10 days after its launch date. The resurrected Razr, now with a folding screen, will exclusively hit Verizon on February 6th. Preorders opened up yesterday, and delivery dates for the $1,500 device were quickly pushed out by several days.Motorola’s website, which is also taking preorders for the Razr, lists the same February

Bird has announced that it will acquire Circ, a leading electric scooter rental business in Europe and the Middle East. The acquisition is the latest sign of consolidation among e-scooter companies as the quest for a profitable business model intensifies.As part of the deal, Bird will take on 300 of Circ’s employees, many of whom are based in Berlin. Bird also announced a $75 million extension to its Series D funding round, bringing the total size of the round to $350 million — thoug

If you didn’t see this coming, then clearly you didn’t have your eyes on the road. Bird, the LA-founded e-scooter giant, has confirmed that it is acquiring European competitor Circ, the micromobility company founded by Lukasz Gadowski of Delivery Hero fame.
The deal, for which terms remain undisclosed, was first reported by FT late last week. Meanwhile, TechCrunch revealed in late November that Circ was facing difficulties and had issued a round of layoffs following so-called “

To call Netflix’s visual take on Ghost in the Shell different would be an understatement. The animated series has gotten a full makeover in the form of CGI that looks more suited to a Pixar film or a video game; it’s a beautiful, albeit drastic, change from the drawn animation most fans have come to know. In the first full trailer for Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, which is set to arrive this April, Netflix offers a full look at the cast, from Major to Batou.
Ghost in the Shell is a c

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Today’s best deals are a mix of fresh offers we’re seeing for the first time and a few returning favorites. The headliner is Amazon’s Echo Buds, which are $40 off right now, bringing the truly wireless earphones down to a much more reasonable $90. If you’re looking for a set of affordable wireless earbuds that offer noise cancellation, your search is over. Despite the annoyance of charging these via Micro USB, you won’t find a bette

Kentucky Route Zero starts out slow and simple. An old man named Conway pulls into a gas station to ask for directions. He has a rusting truck, rumbling away in the background, stuffed with antiques. But he can’t find his destination. That road, he’s told, is not easy to reach. What follows is a surreal road trip that’s constantly changing. Kentucky Route Zero remains slow across its five acts (and multiple interludes). But with the exception of that opening scene, it’s n

This morning Mural, a software startup focused on visual collaboration,1 announced that it closed a $23 million Series A round of capital. The funds come after Mural, formerly Mural.ly, had raised just a few million dollars previously. That fact made its round interesting: How did the company raise 10 times its prior total in one round, and why did it pursue so much money in a single shot?
TechCrunch chatted with the company’s CEO, Mariano Suarez-Battan, and Weston Gaddy, the round’s

Image: @evleaks There’s been a lot of excitement around Motorola’s revived Razr and its folding screen. But a new image from Evan Blass (as reported by Engadget) suggests that a nostalgia play isn’t the only surprise that Motorola has in store for 2020. In the shot, we see a typical-looking Moto phone with a hole-punch selfie camera, but there’s a very surprising accessory next to it: a stylus.The dual-tone stylus has two buttons near its top and a rounded soft tip. Ther

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Today is the 10th anniversary of the original iPad being announced. Coincidence or not, the seventh-generation iPad with a 10.2-inch display is back down to its lowest price yet (the same excellent price that we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday). The base configuration of its latest model with 32GB of onboard storage costs $249.99 at Amazon and Best Buy. That’s $80 off of the usual price, a discount that hasn’t been beaten yet.
If you want more stora

Activision Blizzard Amazon’s Twitch, Microsoft’s Mixer, and Google’s YouTube are all in the middle of individual creator wars, placing million-dollar bets on the biggest gaming streamers in the space. Now, YouTube is trying to corner another market in the space: e-sports.YouTube announced late on Friday that three different e-sports organizations — the Call of Duty League, the Overwatch League, and competitive Hearthstone — will stream matches exclusively on its pl

Eve, the Finnish hardware startup that crowdsourced ideas for what turned out to be a pretty great Windows 2-in-1 but then struggled to meet demand, has announced its next product. The Spectrum is a “crowd-developed” monitor that, if the company can deliver, sounds like a compelling option. Of course, as with the Eve V, that is a big if.
The Spectrum is actually three monitors, all of which use 27-inch IPS panels from LG Display with 98-percent P3 gamut coverage along with FreeSync a

Berlin-based Merantix, a venture studio that specifically concentrates on building “AI companies,” says it has raised a new €25 million fund ($27 million). Anchor investors include Trusted Insight, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, as well as further family offices from Europe.
Co-founder Adrian Locher said in a statement that the successful fundraising “underpins Europe’s competitive ability with regards to new transformative technolog

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In the mid-2010s, it seemed like every tech company launched a proprietary payment solution. Everyone from Apple and Google to Samsung, Chase, and CVS had payment apps in which you could load your credit or debit card information and use your phone to buy items from terminals that support near-field communication (NFC).Fitbit launched its version, Fitbit Pay, back in 2017. Currently, Fitbit offers the ability to pay from your smartwatch and tracker on

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing it in the slightest. (Here’s last week’s episode, which took a look at The Athletic’s latest round, in case you missed it.)
This Monday was a bit of a bad news run. The weekend was stuffed with n

Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s Echo Buds are on sale for $90, in what appears to be their first sale since launching in October. The wireless earbuds normally sell for $130, which is a steep price considering you can get Apple’s much-loved AirPods for $159. With this discount, the Echo Buds are competing in a very different price class and look like a far better value.
The Echo Buds were well-received at launch, despite being Amazon’s first attempt at truly wireless e

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge At least seven state attorneys general are meeting with US Justice Department attorneys next week in what could be the first step toward the two groups working together to investigate Google, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The move follows last year’s news that 50 state attorneys general are conducting an antitrust investigation to Google, while the Justice Department has its own broad antitrust review that it’s conducting of the countr

Last week, GM-subsidiary Cruise unveiled the Origin, its first self-driving car without a steering wheel or pedals. At the time, the company’s CEO Dan Ammann promised to reveal production details in the days to come. Well, today’s the day, with GM announcing plans to spend $2.2 billion to retrofit its Detroit-Hamtramck plant for the production of autonomous and electric vehicles.In addition to the Origin, the facility will also produce all-electric SUVs and pickup trucks. The automak

Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice protest outside Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, September 2019. | Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images Hundreds of Amazon workers are speaking out against their employer’s record on climate change, risking being fired to defy a company-wide ban against such public criticism.The group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice published comments from 357 workers on Sunday, many of which highlight what workers see as Amazon’s hypocri

America is about to take part in an annual tradition like no other. Two great football teams will compete for glory, while roughly two-thirds of the people at watch parties around the country will be more interested in snacks and commercials.
That's right, Super Bowl LIV is almost upon us. The NFL got its conference championships out of the way over the weekend, leaving the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers as the only teams left in the mix. The Chiefs are playing for their first champi

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft launched its new Edge Chromium-powered browser earlier this month on both macOS and Windows. The launch marked just over a year after the company announce its plans to work more closely with the Chromium project and Google engineers. The Verge got an exclusive look at Microsoft’s surprise decision to work with Google last year, and now we’re starting to see just how closely Microsoft and Google are collaborating with the introduction

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images The UK government won’t adopt the EU’s controversial copyright directive after it leaves the bloc on January 31st, though politicians say they still support the legislation’s “overall aims.”The copyright directive was criticized by free speech advocates, who said it would stifle expression online through the so-called “upload filter” and “link tax.” The upload filter requires some sites to sca

Image: Apple / USPTO Apple applied for a patent for an ambitious design for a new all-in-one computer which integrates both its keyboard and screen into a single curved sheet of glass. The patent application, which was first spotted by Patently Apple, and which was filed in May last year, describes how the iMac-like computer’s “input area” and “display area” could be built into a single continuous surface, while a support structure behind the display could then con

Microsoft released its final public security updates for Windows 7 earlier this month, ending support for the operating system after more than 10 years. While the final updates looked pretty routine, Microsoft has now revealed that one is causing wallpaper issues for some Windows 7 users. “After installing KB4534310, your desktop wallpaper might display as black when set to Stretch,” admits Microsoft. It seems to only be affecting stretched wallpapers, and fit, fill, tile, or center

Image: Apple via Apple Archive I hope you got your fill of the unofficial Apple Archive last week, because that expansive collection of over 15,000 classic Apple advertisements, internal training videos, and other eye-opening odds and ends from the Cupertino computer company’s history has now been ripped apart — late Friday, curator Sam Henri Gold received a veritable deluge of DMCA takedown notices originating from Apple’s lawyers, informing him the vast majority of the video