Technology news

This week, we read a very short story, The Great Silence, as we start to head toward the end of Ted Chiang’sExhalation collection. This story asks questions about how we connect with nature, and also how to think about innovation and where new ideas come from.
We will finish the remaining two stories in the collection in the coming week, and then it will be time (sadly!) to change books. I’ll announce the next book in the book club hopefully shortly.
Some further quick notes:Want to

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrationsaid today that it would allow new diagnostics technologies to be used to test for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, at elite academic hospitals and healthcare facilities around the country.
The agency’s new initiative comes as critics have assailed various U.S. government agencies for being woefully underprepared to effectively address the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country despite being aware of the potential risks the virus posed since the

These days capitalism and democracy seem to mean that it’s never too early to take advantage of the misery of others, and the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, is the latest proof point.
On Saturday the Washington Post reported that an agency within the State Department had compiled a report of two million tweets, which peddled conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
Among the hoaxes compiled in the report and reported by the Post included the suggestion tha

A do not enter sign has been taped to the door at Bothell High School in Bothell, Washington. It is closed for disinfection after a family member of a staffer was put in quarantine for possible coronavirus | Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images A person in Washington state died after contracting the novel coronavirus, health authorities announced on Saturday. It is the first death attributed to the virus in the U.S.
“We are dealing with an emergency evolving situation,” Amy Reynolds, o

[Editor’s note: Welcome to our weekly review of news that startups can use from across TechCrunch and Extra Crunch. If you want this post by email, just subscribe here.] 
Why some fintech startups aren’t blinking at customer acquisition costs
Distribution channels are getting saturated across the internet and beyond, and in many tech sectors the cost of acquiring new customers is crimping profitability. But so far, so good in the “great credit card craze,” as Alex di

Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to bringing the biggest names in tech to showcase inspiring talks from those driving the future of technology this year? Tim Leberecht, who authored this piece, is one of the speakers. Check out the full ‘Impact‘ program here. At first glance, it is an unlikely match: on the one side, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), or neuro-computing — so-called “expone

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung’s new Galaxy S20 series of phones will release this coming Friday, March 6th. This leaves you with a whole week to decide whether you want to preorder the S20, S20 Plus, or S20 Ultra.There’s nothing wrong with waiting for release day before you make a decision. But if you’re already planning on buying one, you’ll get looped into some good preorder incentives if you commit this week.
No matter which retailer you decide to preorder

The basis of the classic James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” is an evil media mogul who instigates war between the U.K. and China because it will be great for TV ratings. There’s been a wake-up call recently that our most popular social networks have been indirectly designed to divide populations into enemy camps and reward sensational content, but without the personal responsibility of Bond’s nemesis because they’re algorithmically driven.
(This is part five of a

Sports fans don’t have to worry about their local teams disappearing from YouTube TV after all. Not yet, anyway. Last night, YouTube tweeted that it has agreed to a temporary extension with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which now owns many Fox-branded regional sports networks (RSNs) and the YES Network, to keep those channels in its lineup as the two sides hammer out a longer-term carriage agreement.Earlier in the week, YouTube TV emailed customers to notify them that the sports networks would

Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images For years, I have been getting inundated with physical junk mail from my internet service provider (ISP), Charter Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable). In huge red capital letters, the envelopes are stamped “OPEN UPON RECEIPT” or “NOTICE” or “IMPORTANT ACCOUNT INFORMATION.”I always open them, just in case there is a legitimate problem and my internet is about to be shut off. Every single time, I get duped. Instead of le

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just

Between 2006 and now, Disney spent around $100 billion to become the unbeatable giant it is today, snapping up Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, BAMTech, and 21st Century Fox. While the acquisitions were made as the result of teamwork across a number of divisions, they were mostly led by two people: Bob Iger, who was CEO up until Tuesday, and Kevin Mayer, head of Disney’s direct-to-consumer division and the man in charge of all things streaming. Now, with Iger preparing to leave by the end

A researcher works on developing testing for the novel coronavirus at a lab in New Jersey.| Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images A second case of COVID-19 with an unknown origin was identified in Santa Clara county, California on Friday, and two other potential cases of unknown origin were identified in Oregon and Washington state. This indicates to health experts that the novel coronavirus — which causes the disease COVID-19 — is likely spreading through more than one community in t

The bisexual community has an inside joke that describes what it's like to date as a bi person: People think it means double the options or double the fun, but it really just means double the rejection.
Self-deprecating jokes like this one are at the core of the Single People Club regardless of sexuality, but bisexual people do face extra roadblocks in the dating world.
True: Online dating sucks for everyone. Horny jerks disguise themselves as relationship seekers, your DMs are constantly filled

Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to exploring new design trends this year? Check out the full ‘Sprint‘ program here. Between 2017 and 2018, Google produced a series of 24 short videos that saw digital designer Mustafa Kurtuldu interview a host of designers and developers about the various quirks of their profession, from “Becoming a Creative Coder” to “UX Research and Usability Testing.” Despite the tongue-in-cheek title of the series,

Facebook Messenger is getting a facelift with a simpler, more streamlined design. Granted, we already knew that given the changes were on the way given they were announced way back in 2018, but today we got our first glimpse at what the final product might look like, courtesy of TechCrunch. The big picture: The Discover tab is disappearing, and chatbots are being curtailed. How many times have you actually used the Discover tab? If you’re like me, probably not much at all; I’d frank

Photo by: Aaron Poole/E! Entertainment/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images New Disney CEO Bob Chapek has only been on the job for a few days, and he’s already got a controversy to deal with. Hilary Duff, whose career was launched by the Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire, is asking the company to move the in-the-works reboot off of Disney Plus and onto Hulu instead. The actress and singer posted the request on her Instagram on Friday night.
“Was incredibly excited to launch ‘Li

Facebook‘s trippy 3D photos are about to become much more accessible. The company first introduced the feature back in 2018, using depth data from your phone’s portrait mode to provide a nifty parallax effect to your images. It helped make images pop while scrolling through your news feed, and though it’s something of a gimmick, it’s still pretty cool. Problem was, it only worked if you’d activated portrait mode for that particular image. That’s no longer a c

Photo credit should read KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images The Internet Archive, perhaps best known for the extremely handy Wayback Machine you can use to find older versions of webpages, also has free movies, books, software, and music. Yet a little known part of the organization’s media trove includes uploaded recordings from VHS tapes, as I learned today thanks to this Vice article. They live on The VHS Vault, and as of this writing, there are more than 20,000 recordings you can perus

Well, after what I’m sure was a hectic few days for the folks planning the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the team announced today that they have officially decided to cancel the event happening this March, saying in a blog post that they hoped they would be able to reschedule an event for “later in the summer.”
In recent days, nearly all of the event’s top corporate sponsors announced that they would not be sending employees to the event due to concerns sur

A year ago, Lyftsubmitted a report to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that summed up its 2018 autonomous vehicle testing activity in a single, short paragraph.
“Lyft Inc. did not operate any vehicles in autonomous mode on California public roads during the reporting period,” the letter read. “As such, Lyft Inc. has no autonomous mode disengagements to report.”
The 2019 data tells a different story. Lyft had 19 autonomous vehicles testing on public roads in Cal

Google Stadia might finally be getting a few of the features users have been hoping for since the service’s launch, namely free Pro trials and YouTube livestreaming. While it’s not completely fulfilling Stadia’s marketing promises, it is a step in the right direction. 9to5Google picked apart the latest update in an APK Insight post, in which it uncovered some potential future features. Among other things, the update contains various lines of code that indicate certain features

This year’s annual Game Developers Conference has been postponed amid growing concern about the international coronavirus outbreaks. The event, which has run since 1988, was expected to take place from March 16th–20th in San Francisco.“After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March,” reads a note posted to the official

A researcher works on developing testing for the novel coronavirus at a lab in New Jersey.| Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images A second case of COVID-19 with an unknown origin has been identified in Santa Clara county, California on Friday. This indicates to health experts that the novel coronavirus — which causes the disease COVID-19 — is likely spreading through more than one community in the US.The Washington Post first reported news of the second case of community transmission

A new startup called Notivize aims to give product teams direct access to one of their most important tools for increasing user engagement — notifications.
The company has been testing the product with select customers since last year and says it has already sent hundreds of thousands of notifications. And this week, it announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Heroic Ventures .
Notivizeco-founder Matt Bornski has worked at a number of startups, including AppLovin and Wi