Technology news

The latest software update to the Fitbit Charge 4 gives two big upgrades including dynamic GPS, and a “smart wake” option. First reported by 9to5Google, the new features are now rolling out to all users.Dynamic GPS allows you to connect with the GPS in your phone if it’s in range, which may help with location accuracy and preserve the Fitbit’s battery life. If your phone isn’t close enough, the tracker will revert to its internal GPS, which can drain the battery mor

As it tries to catch up with the popular features offered by some of its younger competitors, Cisco’s Webex has unveiled virtual backgrounds for its videoconferences. Users can either apply a “blur” effect to mask their background or replace with one of Webex’s preset background images.Zoom, the most popular videoconferencing app of the moment, and rivals Google Meet and Microsoft Teams all allow users to upload their own custom images for background displays.
Webex is on

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You could almost hear the internet cracking apart this week as international businesses pulled away from Hong Kong and the US considered a ban on TikTok. Software can no longer eat the entire world like it had attempted last decade. Startups across tech-focused industries face a new reality, where local markets and efforts are more protec

Let’s face it, robots are cool. They’re also going to run the world some day, and hopefully, at that time they will take pity on their poor soft fleshy creators (a.k.a. robotics developers) and help us build a space utopia filled with plenty. I’m joking of course, but only sort of. In my ambition to have some small influence over the matter, I took a course in autonomous robot control theory last year, which culminated in my building a Python-based robotic

With the release of “Hamilton” on Disney+, Jordan and Darrell finally got to watch the musical biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton — albeit in recorded form, rather than live on-stage.
And as we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, they were pretty delighted by what they found. Not that a Broadway hit that’s won virtually every award really needs defenders at this point — but the Disney+ version is beautifully filmed, and i

Photo by Saeed Adyani / Netflix Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Saturday that drugs and a future vaccine to treat COVID-19 should go where they are most needed, not just to “the highest bidder,” Reuters reported.
“If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic,” Gates said (remotely) during a COVID-19 conference. “We need lead

Electric vehicles can help keep the air clean in our cities – as we’ve seen recently with the reduction of traffic through COVID-19 lockdowns – but they face two obstacles. In the short term they’re still expensive. In the long term charging millions of vehicles from the electricity grid presents challenges. I’m part of a new project, launched today, that tackles both of these obstacles head-on, and it could mean owners earn more money than they’re likely to

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 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $5

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Wells Fargo has reportedly instructed employees who installed TikTok on company devices to remove the app, The Information reported. The company said it had “concerns about TikTok’s privacy and security controls and practices” in a statement to The Information.
It’s the latest company to raise security concerns about employees using the popular video-sharing app, which hit 2 billion downloads in April. On Friday, Amazon said it sen

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Wells Fargo has instructed employees who installed TikTok on company devices to remove the app over privacy concerns, as first reported by The Information.“We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with corporate-owned devices who had installed the TikTok application on their device,” a Wells Fargo spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. “Due to concerns about TikTok’s privacy and security controls and practice

Update July 11th, 9:30AM ET: SpaceX postponed the launch again on Saturday morning, “to allow more time for checkouts.” The company says it will announce a new launch day once it’s confirmed.
Original Story: A little over a week after launching a GPS satellite for the Space Force, SpaceX is back with another launch of its internet-beaming Starlink satellites. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket is slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, launching 57 Starlink spacecraft

Welcome to The Exchange, an upcoming weekly newsletter featuring TechCrunch and Extra Crunch reporting on startups, money, and markets. You can sign up for it here to receive it regularly when it launches on July 25th. You can email me about it here, or talk to me about it on Twitter. Let’s go!
Ahead of parsing Q2 venture capital data, we got a look this week into the VC world’s take on making deals over Zoom. A few months ago it was an open question whether VCs would simply sto

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This weekend, you can still get the biggest discount we’ve seen yet on Apple’s AirPods Pro truly wireless earbuds. The sale is happening at Verizon, and you can save $30 on a set of Apple AirPods Pro online only. Most discounts for this model are in the $15 to $20 range, but this deal at Verizon brings them down to their best-ever price of $220. The AirPods Pro are the best truly wireless earbuds for people who own an iPhone, according to

TLDR: Easy website creation for visual builders is the calling card of this Sparkle Pro Website Builder lifetime subscription offer. Website builder apps have a tough job. They need a robust set of cutting edge features and customization options to keep web development pros happy, while being simple enough that a first-time user can get a good looking site completed without pulling their hair out.  That’s a finer line than you might realize. Many apps and services are either too simp

The first time I ever encountered a regular expression was many years ago now, but I still remember my first thoughts on it: What is this string-like thing? I don’t want to touch it, it looks scary. I don’t remember quite what that regex was doing, or how exactly it looked like, but it scared me to death. In hindsight, I now realize that it wasn’t actually that scary after all. In face, it was an easy way to solve the problem in hand. But why did I ever feel this way? It&

Google-backed Indian hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo said it suffered a data breach that left customer data including email IDs and phone numbers exposed. Dunzo provides pick up and deliver services in over seven cities in India. Given the majority of India’s business relies on offline commerce, through Dunzo, you can ask a delivery person to visit a shop to purchase something and deliver it to you for nominal fees. The service also allows you to pick up a package from a friend’s

Facebook's latest test balloon has popped.
On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook is considering a blackout of political ads in the "days" before the November 2020 election. That alarmed democratic campaign staff and experts, who warned that it could lead to voter suppression.
"Under this proposal the President could use organic posts to suppress voting by mail (as he did today), but Democrats could not run ads encouraging people to return their mail ballots," Rob Flaherty, the digital dire

Makeup retailer Morphe has parted with YouTuber Jeffree Star, after weeks of public acrimony in the YouTube beauty community. Star has been accused of using racist and offensive language, as well as manipulating other creators and people close to him.
“Today we’ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products,” a tweet from Morphe’s account reads. As of right now, Star’s products remain on the site, but a tweet fr

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. It’s election year in the US, which means you’re probably going to see lots of political ads. While some social media platforms have banned them — such as Twitter — Facebook has yet to do so. But luckily, as of this June, it does offer an option to shut them off yourself. Facebook‘s history with political ads, and politics i

We knew a 5G variant of Samsung’s vertically folding Galaxy Z Flip clamshell was on the way, after the first images leaked earlier this month. Now, we have an entire leaked video and a set of rumors about the new “Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G” that seems to leave nothing to the imagination — and suggest it might be ready for Samsung’s upcoming August 5th Galaxy Unpacked event.
Basically, it looks like it’ll be practically the same folding phone but with a faster p

Let's say it together: Facial-recognition technology is a dangerous, biased mess. 
We are reminded of this obvious fact again with the news Friday that an innocent man, despite not looking like the perpetrator at all, was arrested last year after being falsely identified by faulty facial-recognition tech.
This is the second known case of facial recognition software directly leading to the arrest of an innocent man. It's something privacy advocates fear will be a growing trend unless drastic

It wasn't totally odd, at face value, that furniture site Wayfair was trending on Twitter on Friday. Maybe the retailer was having a giant sale?
Unfortunately, Wayfair elbowed its way into the trending column with tens of thousands of tweets because of a much stranger situation.
It boils down to this: Conspiracy theorists were purporting that the site — or third-party sellers on the site — were secretly part of a child trafficking ring. This theory appears to have started, as many do

Video games are getting pretty expensive. The average price of a new release for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Sony Playstation is around $60. Throw in some in-game microtransaction purchases and you could be looking at a whole lot more.
But, how much is too much? Say, $114,000? 
Well, not for someone, apparently. And they spent that money on Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
The game, originally released in 1985, was sold on Friday in an auction held by

U.S. Customs and Border Protectionhas admitted that there is no practical way for Americans to avoid having their movements tracked by its license plate readers, according to its latest privacy assessment.
CBP published its new assessment — three years after its first — to notify the public that it plans to tap into a commercial database, which aggregates license plate data from both private and public sources, as part of its border enforcement efforts.
The U.S. has a massive network

Morphe announced that it's cutting ties with Jeffree Star after weeks of backlash following an explosive video by makeup vlogger Tati Westbrook. 
"Today we've made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products," the cosmetics brand tweeted on Friday. "We expect this to conclude within the coming weeks. As we look to the future, we will continue to share updates on what lies ahead for the Morphe brand." 
Despite claims by Westbrook, Star i

We look at Rackspace’sfinances, a Facebook code change causes numerous app issues and electric vehicle company Rivian raises $2.5 billion. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 10, 2020.
The big story: Rackspace is going public again
The cloud computing company first went public in 2008, before accepting a $4.3 billion offer to go private from Apollo Global Management. Rackspace says it will use the proceeds from the IPO to lower its debt load.
Alex Wilhelm took a deep dive into Rackspac