Technology news

OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), has put together a new, $750 million fund to invest in both Europe and North America.
The capital vehicle is larger than the group’s preceding European and North American funds combined. In 2019 OMERS Venturesannounced a €300 million fund Europe-focused fund (TechCrunch covered its launch here), and the venture group’s last North American fund was worth $300 million back in 2017

The Library of Congress has launched a new website that allows you to create short remixes of royalty-free audio clips.Citizen DJ is an open-source hip-hop project created by New York-based artist and computer scientist Brian Foo. The website includes roughly 3 million sound recordings spanning centuries that are divided into six different collections, including audio clips from government films to free music, which you can edit directly from your web browser.The website allows you to pull clips

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is currently experimenting with adding chapters to “a small selection” of videos on Android, iOS, and desktop devices. Instead of finding and clicking on hyperlinked timestamps and song titles in the video description, this new feature incorporates that metadata right into the red progress bar built within the video player. This experiment started in early April, which is when publications like Android Police first wrote about it, but

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon has extended its policy to not charge late fees or cancel service for customers and small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic through June 30th, the company announced today. Verizon, along with virtually every major US broadband and telecom company, committed to waiving late fees and not canceling service for 60 days in mid-March. In Verizon’s case, that policy would have originally ended on May 13th.
If you are unable to pay your V

Short-term home rental platform Airbnb is introducing a new “enhanced cleaning initiative” that will take effect in May and include a 24-hour vacancy period between bookings, according to a company blog post. The new cleaning protocol is not required for property hosts, but guests will be able to see which hosts are participating in the cleaning initiative in search results on the platform.Airbnb claims that this is the “first overarching standardized protocol for cleaning and

Photo by Sean O’Kane/The Verge Tesla is rolling out a software update to some of its newest cars that will allow them to see and respond to traffic lights and stop signs, a feature that CEO Elon Musk has teased for years.
The update is available only to owners of Tesla vehicles equipped with the third version of the onboard computer that powers Autopilot, which it refers to as “Hardware 3.” The company started installing this computer on all new vehicles last year (and offers

WarnerMedia and Apple have reached a deal that will give free HBO Max access to existing HBO customers who subscribe to the service through Apple. Free access begins when the new streaming service launches on May 27th, via Deadline.It’s a change from the original announcement, where AT&T — which owns WarnerMedia, and by extension, HBO Max — said that only customers who subscribe through hbonow.com and are billed directly by HBO would get the free upgrade.Apple gets in on fr

Photo by Kim Raff / Getty Images for NRDC The COVID-19 crisis hasn’t stopped the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back key environmental protections in the US, alarming both environmental and public health experts. Since the pandemic took hold in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has relaxed fuel economy standards — a decision that will lead to more emissions from tailpipes. It also weakened a rule meant to keep mercury pollution in check, which coul

How do you leave the place that made you? You figure out what it made you for. TechCrunch made me a part of the startup ecosystem I love. Now it’s time to put that love into action to help a new generation of entrepreneurs build their dreams and tell their stories.
So it’s “TC to VC” for me. After 8.5 years at TechCrunch and 10 in tech journalism, I’m leaving today to join the venture team at VC fund SignalFire. I’m going to be a principal investor and their h

Image: Netflix Netflix announced today that a new documentary about former first lady Michelle Obama will be available on the streaming service starting Wednesday, May 6th. The documentary is called Becoming, which is the same title as her memoir released in 2018. Becoming will cover some history of Obama’s life from the memoir, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and give a behind-the-scenes look at experiences from her 34-city book tour.“Those months I spent traveling — mee

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Samsung released its second version of truly wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds Plus, earlier this year, and now it’s bringing some of their functionality to its original earbuds, the Galaxy Buds. The company says today it’s rolling out an update that’ll allow Galaxy Buds to connect to multiple devices at once and give them support for Microsoft Swift Pair, which pairs the Galaxy Buds with Windows 10 devices more quickly. The Galaxy B

Photo by Mikhail Japaridze / TASS via Getty Images Even during a pandemic, Walmart’s supply chain managers have to make sure stores and warehouses are stocked with the things customers want and need. COVID-19, though, has thrown off the digital program that helps them predict how many diapers and garden hoses they need to keep on the shelves.Normally, the system can reliably analyze things like inventory levels, historical purchasing trends, and discounts to recommend how much of a produc

Image: Naughty Dog Sony announced today that Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II will now be released on June 19th. Earlier this month, Sony had said that the PlayStation 4 exclusive would be delayed “until further notice” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, the game had been scheduled to release on May 29th (which was also a delayed release date).“As we begin to see an ease in the global distribution environment, I am pleased to confirm that The Last of Us P

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Live-streaming isn’t a wilderness, but it can feel that way sometimes: even if you know what you’re doing, finding your way to someone new can be daunting. That’s why my favorite thing about live-streaming is the raid, which is when a streamer who’s done streaming sends their entire live audience to another currently live streamer. (Yes, it’s opt in.) As a viewer, it feels like taking part in an event — suddenly, you, i

Photo: Riot Games With people stuck at home looking for things to watch, some of the biggest esports leagues in the world are seeing a big spike in viewership. That includes professional competitions for League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, both of which have seen record-breaking numbers over the last few weeks.
The 11th season of the ESL Pro League, which ran from March 16th to April 12th, was what the league describes as “the most successful season in the competition&

Image: Curzon British cinema chain Curzon is partnering with Uber Eats to offer a selection of snacks from its concessions stand for your home movie night. The limited edition home cinema bundle consists of Curzon’s sweet popcorn, a gourmet hot dog, and selection of other movie snacks, like a salt-and-pepper nut mix and a Negroni slushie, according to The Evening Standard.The kit, which also includes a cushion that doubles as a cup holder and a “Please turn off your mobile phone&rdq

Image: Bose At Best Buy and Amazon, you can get Bose’s excellent Noise Cancelling 700 Headphones for $299 in the white soapstone color. This model usually costs $400, and if the white soapstone color isn’t what you want (you must not like Dark Souls), the silver or black headphones are also discounted at each retailer, though only by $50 ($350). Though, if the color of your headphones doesn’t make much of a difference to you (after all, we’re all inside most of the time

A startup that’s hoping to be a contender in the very large and fragmented market of human resources software has captured the eye of a big investor out of the US and become its first investment in Spain.
Barcelona-based Factorial, which is building an all-in-one HR automation platform aimed at small and medium businesses that manages payroll, employee onboarding, time off and other human resource functions, has raised €15 ($16 million) in a Series A round of funding led by CRV,

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
As global startup markets enter a slowdown — more on that shortly — we’re starting to get notes on when growth-oriented firms are going to run short of cash. Of course, startups around the world are cutting staff and trying to limit costs as macro uncertainty reins, but their efforts won’t save everyone.
This morning, let’s dig into what venture&rsq

Photo by Monty Brinton / CBS via Getty Images On April 21st, CBS aired Let’s Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince, a concert special recorded to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Prince’s death. Taped on January 28th, two days after the Grammys aired, the concert is immediately notable for being a throwback to our pre-pandemic world of live (at the time) entertainment. But our current public health crisis hasn’t just given Let’s Go Crazy a new layer of relevance; it

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Reviews of the new 2020 iPhone SE are here and so is iFixit’s teardown of the device. While the $400 handset has a design similar to that of an iPhone 8, the teardown reveals that it’s surprisingly modern on the inside.
Specifically, the phone includes an A13 Bionic SoC with a third-generation neural engine. This, according to iFixit, was pulled from the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. That’s significantly more powerful than t

UPS and CVS are teaming up to deliver prescription medicine via drone to residents of The Villages retirement community in Florida. The service, which will use Matternet’s M2 drones, is being conducted with authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration.The drone deliveries will begin on May 4th. The first flights will be less than half a mile and will be delivered to a pickup location near the retirement community. Initially, a UPS ground vehicle will complete the delivery to the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For the most part, you can no longer use Twitter as it was originally built to be used: over text message.
Last week, Twitter turned off the ability to receive SMS messages containing the text of new tweets. The feature was disabled in all but “a few countries” that rely on the feature.This won’t be a huge deal for the vasty majority of Twitter users who access the service via the app or website. But there are already complaints from som

Startup founders who are fundraising in this climate should expect venture investors to take a huge chunk out of their valuation expectations.
“What we’re seeing across the board is discounts,” says Mike Janke, co-founder of early-stage cybersecurity investment firm Datatribe.
Investors are still committing to new deals, he says, but they’re adding new terms and demanding lower valuations from companies as the cost of raising capital during the downturn. Janke, whose firm

In the past decade, 3D printing has occupied some interesting niches. It’s an invaluable prototyping tool for countless industries and has found regular use in architecture, biotech, prosthetics, and plenty of other disciplines. The rise in consumer-grade printers has also given rise to a vibrant maker community. But for the most part, the technology has remained a niche tool instead of a household name.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospitals around the world faced frightening shortage

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week.
Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding to the mix. You can catch last week’s show with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas right here if you haven’t yet.
Unlike some weeks when the weekend’s crop of news and thought runs fallow, our rec

Lucasfilm Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will debut on Disney Plus on May 4th — “Star Wars Day,” of course — the company announced today, bringing the final Star Wars film to the streaming service. The move means that, soon, fans will be able to stream the entire nine-film Skywalker Saga (along with spinoff films Solo and Rogue One) all in one place — in 4K.The Rise of Skywalker is another part of Disney’s plans for May 4th Star Wars content on Disney Plus.

DuPont Registry If you really want an Apple car and have half a million bucks to spend, there’s a 1979 Porsche 935 K3 Apple-themed racecar up for sale, according to Apple Insider. Apple sponsored the car — which is now listed for sale on the DuPont Registry — during the 1980 racing season. Along with the “Apple Computer” name, the car also bears the retro rainbow logo and a sticker on its rear bumper that reads “Don’t upset the Apple Car.”
Accordi

DuPont Registry If you really want an Apple car and have half a million bucks to spend, there’s a replica of a 1979 Porsche 935 K3 Apple-themed racecar up for sale, according to Apple Insider. Apple sponsored the original car during the 1980 racing season. Along with the “Apple Computer” name, the car also bears the retro rainbow logo and a sticker on its rear bumper that reads “Don’t upset the Apple Car.”
This version that’s listed for sale on DuPont R

SpaceX’s fourth Starship prototype prior to cryogenic proof testing. | Photo by Elon Musk This weekend, SpaceX successfully passed a big milestone in the development of its next-generation deep-space rocket called Starship, which is designed to one day send cargo and people to the Moon and Mars. Overnight on Sunday, a prototype of the rocket underwent a super cold pressure test in Texas and remained intact on the test stand, paving the way for this particular vehicle to fly to a low altit