Technology news

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Ring’s security devices are advertised as a way to have peace of mind about your home, and the company’s work with law enforcement to provide additional security is well-documented. But two recent stories about the Amazon-owned company demonstrate how its security cameras can distort your view of how much crime actually takes place near your house and how they may not actually help police solve crimes at all.
In one article, Max Read, writing for New

Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in India, Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, the vast majority of retail transactions there still happen offline in small stores that also serve as neighborhood hubs.
The central role these stores play in their communities led GGV Capitalto develop what the firm refers to as its mom-and-pop shop investment thesis. This means backing startups that help small retailers digitize operations, tap into better supply chains and serve as delivery points in

Call of Duty Modern Warfare recently received its Season Two update, and with it a mysterious “classified” game mode appeared in the game’s menu. Players are currently unable to select the new mode, but we’re all pretty sure it’s going to lead to an all-new battle royale once it finally unlocks. The question, however, is when will that happen? The gaming industry is notorious for its inability to keep a secret but, aside from a glitch here and a map reveal the

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox.
Hello again — or perhaps for the first time. This is Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch and your host here at The Station. This weekly newsletter will also be posted as an article after the weekend — that’s what you’re reading now. To get it first, subscribe for free. Please no

Rumors have been floating around for some time that Apple is planning on launching a new, low cost iPhone in 2020 – called either the iPhone SE 2 or the iPhone 9. German site iphone-ticker.de is now claiming that device will be announced at a March 31 event. Though we can’t confirm the exact date, the March timing seems about right. That’s the month Apple chose to announce the original iPhone SE, it means the device doesn’t get drowned out in WWDC announcements in J

After WeWork exploded there was — at least supposedly — a change in sentiment among investors and founders alike. Gone were the days of easy nine-figure rounds, expensive growth, negative unit economics and the rest of the excess that Startupland has enjoyed over the past half-decade.
Inside this purported sentiment shift, I presumed, was a decrease in optimism; surely venture capitalists and entrepreneurs would change their behavior inside this new paradigm?
But by some measures, th

An international team of researchers may have just figured out why single-celled organisms such as the AIDS virus and cancer cells manage to be so incredibly successful. And, in doing so, they may also have unraveled the mystery behind the origin of life. Hooray for science! Life on Earth emerged as the result of a bunch of chemicals swirling around in a primordial ooze until they turned into amino acids, then proteins, and eventually cells. The spark of life happened at some point and those no

Existing intellectual property laws don’t allow AI systems to be recognized as inventors, which threatens the integrity of the patent system and the potential to develop life-changing innovations. Current legislation only allows humans to be recognized as inventors, which could make AI-generated innovations unpatentable. This would deprive the owners of the AI of the legal protections they need for the inventions that their systems create. The Artificial Inventor Proje

Today Apple announced that its prior financial forecast, provided during its January earnings cycle, is no longer valid. In a letter to investors today, the technology giant said that it “do[es] not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter” due to impacts stemming from the coronavirus that has shuttered large parts of China, and is reverberating through the global economy.
In its letter Applesaid that its prior guidance was based on its “best estima

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a rare investor update on Monday, Apple said the global effects of the coronavirus outbreak are having have a material impact on the company bottom line. The company does not expect to meet its own revenue guidance for the second quarter due to the impact of the virus, and warns that “worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained.” Store closures and reduced retail traffic in China are also expected to have a significant impact.
A

When Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Flip would be the first phone to use “ultra-thin glass,” I had just one big question: would it hold up to JerryRigEverything’s scratch tests? Would it, as with virtually every glass phone ever, “scratch at a level six, with deeper grooves at a level seven?” Nope. Samsung’s ultra-thin glass screen is apparently no more durable than plain old plastic. Zack Nelson (that’s right, his name isn’t Jerry), put the

Remember when Zenefitsimploded, and kicked out CEO Parker Conrad. Well, Conrad launched a new employee onboarding startup called Rippling, and now he’s going after another HR company called Gusto with a new billboard, “Outgrowing Gusto?Presto change-o.”
The problem is, Gusto got it taken down by issuing a cease & desist order to Rippling and the billboard operator Clear Channel Outdoor. That’s despite the law typically allowing comparative advertising as long as it&rs

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Ever had the urge to look up an image, but don’t have a computer close to hand? These days, most of us do the bulk of our online searching from our phones, and Google’s image search is not as easy to use on an iPhone as it is on a desktop. But it’s also not terribly difficult either: it just requires a few extra steps. [Read: Use C

Over the weekend, a video and screenshots that appeared to come from a playable Xbox build of the never-released StarCraft: Ghost leaked online. It’s a fascinating piece of gaming history. StarCraft: Ghost was a third-person shooter set in the Blizzard’ StarCraft universe that was supposed to be released on the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 but never saw the light of day due to a rocky, years-long development history (which you can read all about in this great feature fr

Geneviève Patterson ContributorShare on Twitter Dr. Geneviève Patterson is co-founder and CSTO of TRASH. More posts by this contributorLeveraging TikTok for growth Hannah Donovan ContributorShare on Twitter Hannah Donovan is the founder and CEO of TRASH.More posts by this contributorLeveraging TikTok for growth
Once you have a product, distributing it becomes the next challenge for any entrepreneur. At TRASH (one-tap video editing), we looked to TikTok as a potential marketing chan

Hannah Donovan ContributorShare on Twitter Hannah Donovan is the founder and CEO of TRASH.More posts by this contributorLeveraging TikTok for growth Geneviève Patterson ContributorShare on Twitter Dr. Geneviève Patterson is co-founder and CSTO of TRASH. More posts by this contributorLeveraging TikTok for growth
Part 2: The TikTok System
Read part one of this post, “Leveraging TikTok for growth,” on TechCrunch.Leveraging TikTok for growthSo what do we mean when we say &l

Image: Shanghai Community Radio Many cities in China are still in quarantine lockdown in efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, pushing most activities online. Day-to-day activities like grocery orders and university classes are affected, but so is live entertainment. Music venues are shuttered across the country, rendering the country’s live music scene “temporarily dead and silent.” With everyone bored and stuck at home, a report by Hyperallergic (that builds off previ

Max Q is a new weekly newsletter all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Sundays in your inbox.
This week turned out to be a surprisingly busy one in space news — kicked off by the Trump administration’s FY 2021 budget proposal, which was generous to U.S. space efforts both in science and in defense.
Meanwhile, we saw significant progress in SpaceX’scommercial crew program, and plenty of activity among startups big and small.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon arrives in

China’s annual auto show in Beijing has been postponed because of novel coronavirus, as the number of cases of people infected surpass 71,000.
The Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, which was scheduled to begin April 21, is the latest high-profile event that has been either cancelled or postponed over concerns of coronavirus. A new date will be announced in the future, organizers said on the official event website.
Earlier this month, MWC canceled its event in Barcelona, which wa

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
HQ Trivia is dead. On Valentine’s Day, the company laid off its full team of 25. The company had a deal in the works to be acquired, but the buyer pulled out and the investors aren’t willing to fund it any longer, according to a

Image: Apple Today, Apple posted a trailer for Amazing Stories, a new anthology series executive produced by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg and helmed by his production company Amblin Entertainment. The new series launches on Apple TV Plus on March 6th.
The new Amazing Stories is a revival of Spielberg’s NBC series that first aired in 1985. The original show dipped its toes into fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and based on the trailer, the revival of the show will do the same.

Redboxhas entered the ad-supported streaming market with the launch of Redbox Free Live TV. The company, best known for its DVD rental kiosks, has been dabbling with streaming for years as consumer demand for DVD rentals has simultaneously declined. But despite its name, Redbox’s new streaming service isn’t offering “live TV” similar to what you’d get on a TV streaming service like YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV. Instead, the new service offers a curated set of ad-

Jeff Bezos(one of the world’s richest men) announced on one of the world’s largest social media platforms (Instagram) that he’s creating a $10 billion fund to combat climate change.
In a post on Monday morning Bezos announced that the Bezos Earth Fund will finance “scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.” View this post on InstagramToday, I’m thrilled to announce I am launchi

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images Today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he would be committing $10 billion to fight climate change through a new fund called the Bezos Earth Fund.
He announced new fund in a post on Instagram. Amazon confirmed the existence of the fund to The Verge: View this post on InstagramToday, I’m thrilled to announce I am launching the Bezos Earth Fund.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want

In December, The New York Times reported a popular messaging app called ToTok was actually a spying tool used by the government of the United Arab Emirates to track users’ conversations, location and social connections. The app was removed from the Google Play store in December, while Googleinvestigated, then reinstated in early January. Google now confirms the app has again been removed, but this time declined to comment as to why.
The site 9to5Google first noticed ToTok had again been pu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new email scam threatens website owners with a flood of bot traffic to get their Google AdSense accounts suspended, Krebs on Security reports.
By directing a large amount of bot traffic to a company’s banner ads, the scammers could trigger Google’s automated anti-fraud protection, which flags traffic that looks like “automated clicking tools or traffic sources,” as well as any attempts by ad publishers to artificially inflate imp

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Late last week two Boston-based companies raised big rounds. The size of the two investments — each over the $100 million mark — and their rapid succession made them stand out.
The pair of investments raised a question: Is Boston seeing an acceleration in the pace at which it attracts venture capital? Of course, Toast raising $400 million and Flywireraising $120 mill

SpaceX successfully launched a new batch of its Starlink satellites on Monday morning, but the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that put them in orbit missed its landing on a floating platform at sea. It’s the first time that’s happened in almost four years; the last time Falcon 9 booster failed to land on one of SpaceX’s drone ships was in June 2016.
To be sure, SpaceX has lost a few rocket boosters since then. The company has lost the center core of the three-core Falcon He

Image: Justin Bieber Justin Bieber recently dropped his latest album, Changes, and it took less than 24 hours before the pop star was accused of stealing the melody used in one of its songs. Indie artist Asher Monroe pointed out that the soft and plucky hook in his 2019 song “Synergy” is the same as the one in Bieber’s “Running Over.” However, it turned out no one stole anything because the melody isn’t by either artist. It’s a royalty-free sample by pr

Image: CNET TCL is working on a new phone with a slide-out display, leaked images published by CNET suggest. Unlike devices that fold in half like the Motorola Razr or Samsung Galaxy Fold, the images show a phone that seems to work like an extendable dining table, with a second display that slides out from underneath the first. According to CNET’s sources, TCL had been planning to show off the phone at MWC, before the trade show was cancelled over coronavirus fears.
The images paint a com

PullRequest, a startup that provides code review as a service, announced today that it was buying Moonlight, an early-stage startup that has built an online platform for hiring remote developers. The companies did not share the terms.
Lyal Avery, founder and CEO at PullRequest,says he bought this company to expand his range of services. “Our platform is at a place where we’re very confident about our ability to identify issues. We’re moving to the next phase of fixing issues au

Microsoft is working on a new organizational feature for Outlook, named Spaces. Twitter user WalkingCat revealed the new tool in a leaked video over the weekend, and Outlook Spaces looks like it’s designed to allow users to collate emails, notes, files, documents, calendar appointments, and to-do lists into online spaces. It looks like it will be useful for students or businesses that are planning projects.
Microsoft has not yet officially unveiled Outlook Spaces, but some have managed to

Image: Google Google is shutting down Station, a program that saw the company offer free Wi-Fi across over 400 railway stations in India and other locations worldwide since 2016, TechCrunch reports. Google Station’s website says that the service is currently live in Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico, India, and Indonesia. The Station program will be wound down globally this year.
Google explained that it took the decision to end the program because it was be