Technology news

Google is apparently working on a subscription service that will print a selection of your photos monthly, then deliver them to you in neat 4×6 format. The trick is that Google will select which things to print from your Photos library. Depending on your lifestyle, it’ll either sound like a charming thing to get or a massive waste of money. A tipster, speaking to 9to5Google, said the big G is trialing the subscription service with select users in the US. We’ve contacted Google

An ad that PETA claims was banned from airing during the Super Bowl faced backlash on Twitter for seemingly depicting NFL players who took a knee to protest police brutality as animals.
the ad was “inspired” by former 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick
A bee, bear, and even fish take a knee in the cartoon ad as “The Star Spangled Banner” is hummed in the background. The ad was “inspired” by former 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt when the national a

Image: Simon Weckert Seeing traffic jams in Google Maps can really help you plan your route home from work. But a video posted this weekend seems to show that a traffic jam could be spoofed into Google Maps with nothing more than a bunch of phones piled into a little red wagon.
In the video, posted by Simon Weckert, a Berlin-based artist who focuses on examining the value and impact of technology, a man walks down some city streets pulling a wagon with 99 smartphones that all have Google Maps&r

Google Maps changed GPS navigation forever, in part by making it accessible to everyone, in part by helping provide accurate traffic reports. Well, maybe not always accurate, if artist Simon Weckert has any say. Weckert managed to fool Google Maps into reporting non-existent traffic jams by wheeling around a cartful of 99 phones down the streets of berlin. Wherever Weckert went, a jam appeared. Weckert tried his scheme last summer, but only revealed the results this week for Google Maps&rs

Photo by Sam Bloxham/Jaguar Racing/Getty Images All-electric racing series Formula E has canceled an upcoming race in China due to the recent coronavirus outbreak, according to the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the series’ governing body.
“Given the current growing health concerns and with the World Health Organisation declaring the coronavirus an international emergency, Formula E has taken the necessary measures to ensure the health and safet

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber temporarily deactivated 240 customer accounts in Mexico to prevent the possible spread of the coronavirus, according to Bloomberg.In a statement posted on Twitter, the company said it suspended customers who had traveled with two drivers who had suspected contact with the coronavirus. The country’s health officials confirmed an Uber driver had given a ride to a passenger from Los Angeles who was infected with the virus, based on information fro

HPE announced today that it has acquired Scytale, a cloud native security startup that is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol. The companies did not share the acquisition price.
Specifically, Scytale looks at application-to-application identity and access management, something that is increasingly important as more transactions take place between applications without any human intervention. It’s imperative that the application knows

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge YouTube generated nearly $5 billion in ad revenue in the last three months, Google revealed today as part of parent company Alphabet’s fourth quarter earnings report.The announcement marks the first time in YouTube’s nearly 15 years as a Google-owned platform, since Google bought the website in 2006 for $1.65 billion, that the company has revealed how much money YouTube-hosted ads contribute to the search giant’s bottom line. On an annu

While Nintendo’s Wii U was a commercial failure, it still had a bunch of great games that don’t deserve to be locked away on the doomed platform forever. Thankfully, that list is getting ever shorter by the day with re-releases of cult hits like Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and you should soon be able to cross one more off — PlatinumGames is announcing plans to remaster its under-appreciated superhero game The Wonderful 101.PlatinumGames is best known for its high-octane action title

For four years, The Good Place felt like one of the most radical shows on television. A series that was initially about what happens when the wrong person goes to heaven transformed into a meditation on what it means to be a good person, and how no one is beyond redemption. That it aired during a time where cruelty led to a parade of demoralizing victories in politics and culture made it feel even more miraculous, a kind show for mean times. With its series finale, The Good Place chose not to ov

As the 2020 election season officially kicks off, and tensions run high, YouTube is laying out its steps to combat disinformation on its platform.A new blog post issued by Leslie Miller, vice president of government affairs and public policy at YouTube, reiterated some of the company’s key policies. None of the policies are new, but the company is hoping to present the details of its various investments in fighting disinformation related to the election. The blog post essentially acts as a

Photo by Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Jeff Bezos paid a small fortune in parking fines as part of the ongoing renovation of his $23 million, Washington, DC mansion. A team of Bezos-employed contractors, who converted his home from a museum into a residence, racked up more $16,840 in parking tickets while working on the property, according to news organization WUSA9.
Bezos reportedly paid $23 million for the property, with plans to spend $12 million to renovate it. The news team o

Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday announced that he’s throwing a “Super Fun AI Party/Hackathon” with Tesla engineers and a select group of invitees. Tesla will hold a super fun AI party/hackathon at my house with the Tesla AI/autopilot team in about four weeks. Invitations going out soon. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020 This comes on the heels of last week’s fourth quarter earnings call, where Business Insider reports Musk admitted Tesla was at least a “

Twitter is suspending meme accounts from nut company Planters for violating its rules on spam and platform manipulation. In a statement to Insider, a spokesperson for Planters said Twitter found the accounts — known as BabyNutBaby, BabyNutMemes, and BabyNutLOL — did not comply with their policies.In January, Planters announced that its mascot, Mr. Peanut, had “died” after he “sacrificed” himself to save his “friends.” (In an interview with CNBC, Pl

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is one of the most popular Broadway shows ever to hit the stage, and now it’s part of the vast Disney cultural empire. Disney reportedly shelled out $75 million for the worldwide rights to the show, which includes a theatrical run followed by a debut on the Disney+ streaming service, Deadline reports.
It’s a big deal for a few reasons. First is simply the scope of the purchase: Deadline speculates it may be the single highest price ever paid for a

Spotify While the higher-end Fitbit models allow you to download streaming music apps, until recently, the only available options were for less popular services like Deezer and Pandora. Fitbit has added Spotify to its list of supported music clients, so if you own one of the Fitbit smartwatches that support apps, you can now pair your Spotify account with your smartwatch.
What you need to get started
Currently, music playback is supported by the Versa, Versa 2, Versa Lite, and Ionic. If you don

Adobe revealed in 2017 it would no longer be supporting Flash by the end of this year– which leaves the many stray Flash games out there (and those who play them) high and dry, right? There’s actually a site dedicated to not just saving those Flash games, but offering them for offline play. The site, called Flashpoint, is run by Blue Maxima, and essentially preserves many older bits of gaming ephemera for the users to play. If you know me at all, you know I’m a big f

BlackBerry phones are dead. Again. I’m feeling a bit of déjà vu. In a quiet announcement on Twitter, TCL announced it would stop selling BlackBerry devices starting August 31, at the conclusion of its license. The company “has no further rights to design, manufacture, or sell any new BlackBerry mobile devices,” though the company says it will continue to honor warranties until 2022. pic.twitter.com/jhcfVHjVqL — BlackBerry Mobile (@BBMobile) February 3, 2020

When Disney Imagineering revealed in 2018 that it was working on “Stuntronics”, its own brand of stunt-double animatronics designed to perform aerial tricks, demo videos of its prototype robots conjured up images of superheroes flying through the air. Now the robots are suited up and Disney is unveiling their true purpose: to become the incredible Spider-Man, swinging across the upcoming Avengers Campus at Disneyland’s California Adventure Park.
The video, via Fast Company, sho

MasterCard chief exec Ajay Banga has lambasted Facebook‘s digital currency Libra, citing the social media giant’s apparently shaky attitude towards compliance for his company’s departure from the project back in October. In an interview with Financial Times, Banga noted he believed that key members of the Libra Association weren’t fully committed to “not do anything that is not fully compliant with local law,” particularly in relation to anti-money laund

Musicians know that a TikTok hit can make them a star. But as mainstream artists like Justin Bieber try to manipulate their singles into viral TikTok sensations, the process of trying to force something to go viral is becoming increasingly cringe-inducing.
Bieber’s done quite a bit to promote his single “Yummy” on TikTok, but everything came to a head Sunday night. Bieber alerted fans on Instagram yesterday to a Super Bowl campaign with Chipotle that would take place on TikTok

Microsoft Teams is currently down worldwide after Microsoft forgot to renew a critical security certificate. Users of Microsoft’s Slack competitor were met with error messages attempting to sign into the service Monday morning, with the app noting it had failed to establish an HTTPS connection to Microsoft’s servers.
Microsoft confirmed the Teams service was down just after 9AM ET today, and then later revealed the source of the issue.“We’ve determined that an authenticat

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft’s Surface Go tablet comes bundled with a Type Cover at the Microsoft Store and Best Buy for $599.99, which is around $80 off the price you’d normally pay for both items: $549 for the tablet component alone, then another $100 or so for the Type Cover. This deal is for the fastest configuration of the Surface Go, which features 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. (Note: it’s not fast compared to a standard Surface Pro 7, though it perform

I visited Boston last week and met with a number of robotics researchers, startups and established companies — more on that later — in the lead up to TechCrunch’s fourth annual TC Sessions Robotics + AI in early March. A big part of prepping for that event and my recent trip involved surveying some of the biggest funding raises from the past year.A quick survey of these trends finds most investments concentrated in a handful of key categories. From there, we can get a pretty cl

DNA evidence often isn’t as watertight as many people think. Sensitive techniques developed over the past 20 years mean that police can now detect minute traces of DNA at a crime scene or on a piece of evidence. But traces from a perpetrator are often mixed with those from many other people that have been transferred to the sample site, for example via a handshake. And this problem has led to people being wrongly convicted. Scientists have developed algorithms to separate this DNA soup an

HuluCEO Randy Freer is stepping down from his role as part of a major restructuring of Disney’s direct-to-consumer business, the company announced on Friday. Disney had acquired control of Hulu last year following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox and subsequent deal with NBCU which gave it full operational control. However, the company had largely left Hulu alone to operate as usual until now.
The move signals Disney’s plans to streamline its direct to consumer operations, which a

There’s yet another new rocket launch startup throwing its hat in the ring – Astra, an Alameda-based company that’s actually been operating in stealth mode (though relatively openly, often referred to as ‘Stealth Space Company’) for the past three years developing and testing its launch vehicle. Astra revealed its business model and progress to date in a new feature article with Bloomberg Businessweek, detailing how it plans to use mass production to deliver rockets

Industrial robots are expensive. But, then, so are construction mistakes. Being off by an inch here or there adds up quickly, and too often crews need to correctly costly errors. There’s a reason construction has become the next great target of the robotics and automation industries, with a number of startups vying to create solutions that can constantly monitor sites to detect mistakes before it’s too late.
TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin Berlin Battlefield winner Scaled Robotics

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 what we’ve always done. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton, in which we talked about Kleiner Perkins, venture capital pace and more.)
This morning we opened with the latest