Technology news

Sometimes you just can’t get a [L]uckin’ break.
After announcing this morning that it is ending its fight to stay listed on Nasdaq, China-based coffee chain and delivery company Luckin Coffee announced in a filing with the SEC that it is requiring that its chairman, Lu Zhengyao, resign.Luckin Coffee will unluckin’ly delist from Nasdaq following fraud allegationsIt also announced in its SEC filing that the chairman has requested the firing of independent director Sean Shao throu

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In the last week there were 23 rounds worth $50 million in the world, according to Crunchbase data. The rounds were worth a total of $3.72 billion, with a median value of $80 million and an average size of $16

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro | Photography by Bobby Quillard Dr Disrespect disappeared from Twitch this afternoon, with his account vanishing from the site, which led to rumors that he had been banned. The disappearance comes two days after Twitch said it would begin issuing permanent suspensions for streamers as it cracked down on accusations of harassment and sexual misconduct.
Twitch would not confirm that it had banned Dr Disrespect, why he might have been banned, or whether he might b

Shares of Agora, a China and U.S.-based “real-time engagement” API company, soared today after it went public.
Yesterday Agora priced 17.5 million shares at $20 apiece, up from its target range of $16 to $18 per share. The firm raised $350 in its debut, or around 10 times its Q1 2020 revenue and is now amply capitalized and has runway for effectively forever, given its modest cash consumption as an ongoing concern.
But while the debut was a success, seeing Agora’s share price r

Telemedicine is becoming more widely embraced by the day — and not just for humans. With a pet in roughly 65% of U.S. homes, there is now a dizzying number of companies enabling vets to meet with their furry patients remotely, including Petriage, Anipanion, TeleVet, Linkyvet, TeleTails, VetNOW, PawSquad, Vetoclock and Petpro Connect.
One of these — a two-year-old, 13-person, LA-based startup called Airvet — unsurprisingly thinks it is the best among the bunch, and it has p

Over the past few months, the COVID-19 virus has had a huge impact on the globe. As of April 28, according to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 2.8 million confirmed cases worldwide and nearly 198,000+ confirmed deaths reported in more than 213 nations across the globe. The COVID-19 Pandemic is forcing governments and businesses into actions that are critical in the effort to minimize the rate at which the virus spreads. On March 19th, all residents in California, 40

June is the traditional month of weddings, happiness, and matrimony. June 2020 so far has been… not about those things. In fact, it’s far from those things. So let’s take a moment of levity and talk about something fun. You know what’s fun? Contemplating which video game characters we’d marry, if given the chance. Please note, I say marry: this is not about thirsting over the hot men and women of games. We’re a classy establishment, darn it. Sure, many video

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Some critics of President Donald Trump have spent the last few days trying to lock up Trump-branded merchandise by leaving thousands of products from his online stores in shopping carts. But while the attack has become a kind of resistance meme, reminiscent of recent pranks on the president’s Tulsa rally, it’s far less clear whether the hoax actually prevented Trump’s stores from selling merchandise.
Earlier this week, TikTok and Twitter users

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images The Trump administration has sent letters to social media companies requesting they take action on posts calling for people to take down statues, commit acts of violence, and break curfews, as first reported by The Washington Post. The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Snap, and Google’s parent company Alphabet.
In a copy of one of the letters obtained by The Verge, W

With the game industry booming, more entrepreneurs are evaluating where to base their new startup or open a new office for their existing company. The U.S. government’s block on H1-B and L-1 visas will encourage American game startups to add an office abroad much sooner than they otherwise would have. But where?
This spring, I surveyed a number of gaming-focused VCs about which cities are the best hubs for game studios targeting the Western games market. Several locales stood out as heavil

Photo by Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Facebook is placing new restrictions on hateful content in ads, explicitly banning ads that encourage racial divisions. Specifically, the new policy will “prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.” The policy will also restrict ads that

Nearly 40 million Americans are unemployed, and a recent study that examined more than 66,000 tech job layoffs found that sales and customer success roles are most vulnerable amid COVID-19. In response, some quarters of Silicon Valley are abuzz about a long-standing technology: reskilling, or training individuals to adopt an entirely new skillset or career for employment.
As millions look for a way to reenter the workforce, the question arises: Who really benefits from reskilling technology?
Tha

In a blog post this Friday afternoon, Y Combinator’s president Geoff Ralston said that the accelerator would make two changes to its terms for startups.
The first would see the size of the standard deal for YC startups decline from $150,000 for 7% (roughly a $2.1 million post-money valuation) to $125,000 for the same equity (or roughly a $1.79 million post-money valuation). The deal will continue to be offered using a SAFE, which YC and a group of others pioneered as a simpler investment o

As advertisers pull away from Facebookto protest the social networking giant’s hands-off approach to misinformation and hate speech, the company is instituting a number of stronger policies to woo them back.
In a livestreamed segment of the company’s weekly all-hands meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerbergrecapped some of the steps Facebook is already taking, and announced new measures to fight voter suppression and misinformation — although they amount to things that other social media p

It’s now o’clock, founders. A mere 12 hours stands between you and a chance to compete in Startup Battlefield and launch your pre-Series A startup during Disrupt 2020 — in front of the world’s influential technorati.
You won’t find a bigger launching pad, and this window of extraordinary opportunity slams shut on June 26 at 11:59 pm (PT). Apply to Startup Battlefield right here, right now.
This year’s legendary pitch competition is virtual, but the benefi

When Apple confirmed it had acquired Fleetsmith, a mobile device management vendor, on Wednesday, it seemed like a straightforward purchase, but Fleetsmith customers quickly learned a key piece of functionality had stopped working  — and many weren’t happy about it.
Applesystems administrators began complaining on social media on the morning of the acquisition announcement that the company was no longer allowing them to connect to third-party applications.
“Primarily Fleet

Advertiser momentum against Facebook’scontent and monetization policies continues to grow.
Last night, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) said it will be pausing advertising on Facebook and Instagram “until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we’ve done with YouTube and other partners.”
Then today, it was joined by consumer goods giant Unilever,which said it will halt all U.S. advertising on Facebook, Instagra

Tim O’Reilly has a financial incentive to pooh-pooh the traditional VC model, wherein investors gamble on nascent startups in hopes of seeing many times their money back. Bryce Roberts, who is O’Reilly’s longtime investing partner at the early-stage venture firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), now actively steers the partnership away from these riskier investments and into companies around the country that are already generating revenue and don’t necessarily wan

The events of the past few months have shaken the lives of everyone, but especially Black people in the U.S. COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted members of the Black community while police violence has recently claimed the lives of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and others. 
Two weeks ago, two Black transgender women, Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells were murdered. In light of their deaths, activists took to the streets to protest

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Consumer goods giant Unilever said Friday that it would halt all ad spending on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter through the end of the year, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Unilever owns dozens of popular household brands like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Dove soap, and typically spends more than $1 billion each year promoting them through various ad channels.
As of press time, Facebook’s s

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) has passed a new rule that says all commercial trucks and vans sold in the state in 2045 must be zero-emission, in a bid to move the industry away from the dirty and harmful diesel engines that currently power most of these vehicles.It’s the first rule of its kind in the United States, and it follows California’s 2018 decision to mandate that transit agencies purchase all-electric buses starting in 2029,

Photo by Neil Lupin/Redferns TikTok has signed a deal with Prince’s estate to bring the late artist’s “full catalog” to its app, starting today. Price was long protective of his work, pulling music from most streaming services before his death. But his estate began bringing albums back to services like Spotify in 2017. TikTok is the “first short-form video app” to gain access to his complete discography, a very specific but still notable superlative, given ho

Byju’s is in advanced stages of talks to acquire Doubtnut, a two-year-old education learning app, as the Indian edtech giant looks to expand its reach in smaller cities and towns in the world’s second-largest internet market.
Three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the acquisition offer from nine-year-old Byju’s values the younger startup between $125 million to $150 million. The talks haven’t finalized yet and its terms could change or the deal could

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok says it will stop accessing users’ clipboard content on iOS devices, after a new privacy transparency feature in iOS 14 revealed the video sharing platform was continuing the practice it had pledged last year to discontinue, the Telegraph reported.Whenever a third-party app accesses the clipboard of a device with iOS 14, a notification pops up. Users discovered that TikTok was checking content from the clipboard every few keystrokes, even whe

Housing has been constructed for millennia, and while clearly our modern abodes are ever so slightly better than the elk tents we used to live in, the construction techniques behind housing today haven’t progressed all that much. What has progressed are prices — it’s more expensive than ever to build a modern unit, and that’s just for housing — head over to commercial real estate and the numbers don’t look much better.
For Martin Diz and his team, that’s

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge TCL’s 10 Pro phone is nearly $70 off at Amazon for the first time since it released recently in May 2020. You can pick one up for $382 (normally $450). You might not have realized that TCL makes smartphones, but this mid-range device actually compares favorably to the likes of Apple’s new iPhone SE and the Samsung Galaxy A51 in terms of build quality and, for the most part, specs. This device has a big 6.4-inch 1080p OLED screen with minimal bezels

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Phone app appears to be getting a new Verified Calls feature that will show you a business’ name, logo, and the reason it’s calling you. News of the feature first appeared on a Google support page that was spotted by Android Police. The feature relies on businesses supplying its phone number, your phone number, and the reason for its call, directly to Google, which pushes this information to the Phone app. If the information lines

Melinda Sue Gordon Warner Bros. has announced that it’ll be delaying the release of Tenet — the studio’s mysterious time-manipulating summer blockbuster from director Christopher Nolan — by another two weeks, moving the planned release from July 31st to August 12th as COVID-19 cases continue to spike around the United States.
Warner Bros. is still adamant that that $200 million Tenet will debut in a movie theater, commenting in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Vergecast’s annual WWDC episode is here. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference started on Monday, and The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn run through the important announcements from the event as well as the updates you may have missed.The first half of the show starts with a special guest: Wall Street Journal columnist and Verge alum Joanna Stern. Nilay, Dieter, and Joanna analyze the most talked about news from the event: App

For the past week, I’ve spent most of my evenings wandering around a picturesque, nearly deserted island in search of Jigglypuff. It’s been a nice change of pace. “Isle of Armor,” the first expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield on the Switch, takes one of the best parts of the experience — the big, open “wild area” — and fleshes it out into a larger world to explore. The expansion doesn’t change the experience in any significant ways.

In a move that highlights how open the American IPOwindow may be at the moment, China-based Agora priced its public offering at $20 per share last night, ahead of its $16 to $18 proposed price range. (Update: As noted here, the company has a second HQ in California.)
At $20 per share, the 17.5 million shares sold in its debut raised $350 million, a huge haul for a company that reported around 10% of that figure in Q1 2020 revenue. Provided that your humble servant is doing his Class A to ADS sha

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Microsoft is about to (mostly) give up on retail. Today the company announced plans to permanently close all Microsoft Store locations in the United States and around the world, except for four locations that will remain open.Those locations are New York City (Fifth Ave), London (Oxford Circus), Sydney (Westfield Sydney), and the Redmond campus location. All other Microsoft Store locations across the United States and globally

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Microsoft is giving up on physical retail. Today the company announced plans to permanently close all Microsoft Store locations in the United States and around the world, except for four locations that will be “reimagined” as experience centers that no longer sell products.Those locations are New York City (Fifth Ave), London (Oxford Circus), Sydney (Westfield Sydney), and the Redmond campus location. The London sto

Apple CEO Tim Cook in front of a silicon wafer platter | Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The Verge Earlier this week, on what Tim Cook called a “historic day,” Apple announced that it’s moving Macs away from Intel processors to its own silicon chips. The first Mac with Apple silicon is coming by the end of 2020, but Apple expects the full transition process to take two years.
The new Macs will use arm64, the same CPU architecture that recent iOS devices use (Intel-based Macs use

The direct-to-consumer health insurer Oscar has raised another $225 million in its latest, late-stage round of funding as its vision of tech-enabled healthcare services to drive down consumer costs becomes more and more of a reality.
In an effort to prevent a patient’s potential exposure to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, most healthcare practices are seeing patients remotely via virtual consultations, and more patients are embracing digital health services voluntarily, which reduces cost