Technology news

In case you needed one more reason to be in complete awe of first responders handling the COVID-19 pandemic, paramedic Danny Hughes is here to help. 
On Friday, the UK-based medical professional, who currently works for South East Coast Ambulance Services per his Twitter bio, shared his inventive solution for speaking to patients who lipread while wearing a mask. (H/t r/nextfuckinglevel) 
"Some of our patients and service users rely on lipreading to communicate and wearing a mask makes

For those who have been inundated by robocalls and other scams – which means anyone with a mobile phone, pretty much – it's hard to imagine them ever going away. Could T-Mobile's "Scam Shield" actually help?
The free service for T-Mobile and Sprint subscribers attacks the problem in a number of ways. There's caller ID that can spot incoming scan calls and block them. No-cost phone number changes once per year, too. But the most unusual wrinkle of all is the ability to create a proxy

On Saturday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) inserted both of his feet into his mouth with a poorly executed tribute to late civil rights legend, John Lewis (D-GA). 
In a since-deleted tweet, Rubio shared a photo of himself and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), another late, highly celebrated Black lawmaker, captioning the image: "It was an honor to know & be blessed with the opportunity to serve in Congress with JohnLewis [sic] a genuine & historic American hero. May the Lord grant him eternal pe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge According to its just-released sustainability report, GM is planning a full-size electric Chevrolet pickup truck with 400 miles of range. The report describes the “Chevrolet BET Truck, which will be the brand’s first electric full-size pickup, offering 400+ miles of range on a single charge.”GM CEO Mary Barra said last November that an electric pickup was coming in late 2021, and most assumed she was referring to the Hummer EV, but it&rs

So you want to live a cleaner, greener, more sustainable life? 
OK, let's do this! 
NEXT STORY:But suddenly giving up meat completely, or never buying single-use plastic again, is easier said than done. To make aspects of your life more sustainable, it's best to start small and build on those changes until you've incorporated healthier habits (for the planet and yourself) into everyday choices. And it's important to note that while you can lessen your personal impact, meaningful change

Rish Joshi Contributor Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT. More posts by this contributorAssessing the potential for a gig economy in education Generative algorithms are redefining the intersection of software and music
We’re a few years out from the call to

As the nation mourns the loss of Representative John Lewis (D-GA), a lifelong civil rights advocate and iconic proponent of racial equality, not all condolences are welcome. 
On Saturday, following the announcement of Lewis' death, political figures flocked to social media to share statements of remembrance and grief. Among them was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — a man uniquely positioned to champion or, as critics have pointed out, stand in the way of Lewis's hard-fought le

Did you know the U.S. Army is gaming on Twitch? 
That’s right, you can watch livestreams of the American military playing their favorite video games. They even promote giveaways where you can win cool gaming prizes if you just fill out some personal information.
Big problem, though. The giveaways aren’t real. They’re just military recruitment forms. And Twitch is telling the U.S. Army to stop doing it.
“Per our Terms of Service, promotions on Twitch must comply with

Google is giving the boot to websites that push coronavirus conspiracy theories using its ad platform.
Starting Aug. 18, Google will no longer allow publishers that promote coronavirus conspiracies to monetize their sites with Google ads. The policy change allows the search giant leeway to ban ads on certain pages or to block an entire website from its advertising platform.
Google already bans from its ad network websites publishing medical misinformation that can harm others. This new policy ex

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We’re pleased to kick off this week’s newsletter by sharing an important new project: The TechCrunch List. It’s a database of investors who have shown a commitment to first checks and leading rounds from seed through growth, based on founder recommendations we’ve received as well as learnings from our own research.

Congressman John Lewis, who died on Friday, proved again and again that politician Twitter can rise above angry, hateful thuggery.
His own timeline was a regular source of wisdom and inspiration, especially around racial issues. Lewis was a hell of a speaker, and the thundering power of his words translated easily into the short, soundbite-friendly format imposed by Twitter's character constraints.Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of

The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were sparks that reignited smoldering fury against authorities across the globe. One of the most watched locations has been Seattle, where protestors barricaded off a cop-free zone, drawing outsize attention and, in the process, forming a new case study in the uses of technology both to advance a cause and to drown it in disinformation.
From the actual recording of Floyd’s killing and the protests and riots that followed, to documentin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For years, Absofacto’s “Dissolve” has been a fixture on Tik Tok — specifically the first few seconds of the chorus, a hooky rising vocal line singing the words, “I just wanted you to watch me dissolve...” The song never broke as big as “Old Town Road” or “The Box,” but TikTok fame has given it millions of streaming plays and even a minor chart breakthrough in 2019, a full four years after it was

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images KFC is trying to create the world’s first laboratory-produced chicken nuggets, part of its “restaurant of the future” concept, the company announced. The chicken restaurant chain will work with Russian company 3D Bioprinting Solutions to develop bioprinting technology that will “print” chicken meat, using chicken cells and plant material.KFC plans to provide the bioprinting firm with ingredients like breading and spice

More and more new information has been coming out about the massive Twitter hack that went down on Wednesday. However, the latest update from Twitter itself is cause for concern.
In an update posted on Friday night, Twitter ran down what its internal investigation has discovered so far. One piece of previously unknown information: the hacker(s) downloaded the personal account data for up to eight of the accounts which they had access to.
I should make this clear up front: that data includes dire

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch 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 $54

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, and catch up on prior editions of the column and newsletter here. 
It’s Saturday, July 18, and this is The Exchange. Today we’re wrapping our look at second-quarter VC, capping off the recent IPOs of some venture-backed startups, and digging into the hottest V

Georgia Congessman John Lewis died on Friday at the age of 80. You should take some time to learn about his life and work in the Dawn Porter-directed documentary, John Lewis: Good Trouble.
The Civil Rights icon leaves behind the legacy of a fighter for peace who spent the bulk of his time on Earth working to ensure equal treatment for people of color in the United States. He was the last living member of the "Big Six" group of Civil Rights activists who helped organize and spoke at the 1963 Marc

Ilse Calderon Contributor Ilse Calderon is an investor at OVO Fund where she specializes in pre-seed investments across capital-efficient markets. Prior to OVO, Ilse spent a year at Silicon Valley Bank rotating across consumer and software teams.While it’s no secret Hispanics represent unparalleled growth opportunities for the U.S. economy, most startups don’t realize Hispanic youth means an abundance of prime spending years (translation: dollars for businesses). The average age of a

Photo: Skip Bolen / Netflix Palm Springs, the new Andy Samberg comedy, likely would have gone to theaters if the world weren’t... you know... right now. But with theaters still closed, the film landed straight on Hulu, and it’s kind of the perfect movie for streaming from home — short, funny, and about being stuck in the same place endlessly. It even broke first-weekend records for Hulu.
I watched the movie last weekend, too, and really enjoyed it. The film takes the premise o

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Since its launch in 2004, Google’s Gmail email app has grown to be the most popular email service out there. While it’s gone through a lot of changes since then and has added a wide variety of features, its main goal — and main advantage — remains that it provides free online email in an easy-to-understand and use format.
However, behind that clean interface is actually a plethora of features, add-ons, and possible tweaks. In The V

Illustration by Alex Castro On Friday evening, Twitter issued its first full blog post about what happened after the biggest security lapse in the company’s history, one that led to attackers getting hold of some of the highest profile Twitter accounts in the world — including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, President Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, and more.
The bad news: Twitter has now revealed that t

Photo by Kena Krutsinger/NBAE via Getty Images Fortnite’s newest in-game emote is a collaborative one. Epic Games this evening announced the launch of “The Renegade,” the viral TikTok dance created by Atlanta teenager Jalaiah Harmon. The Twitter account for Fortnite openly cites Harmon, writing, “Go, go, go, go, let’s go and bust out some [fire] moves by @jalaiah.”It’s not clear whether Epic and Harmon struck some type of licensing deal, but it’s

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Reporters are starting to piece together the behind-the-scenes events of the unprecedented Twitter attack on Wednesday almost as fast as the official investigators themselves. And the clearest idea of what may have happened two days ago — when roughly 130 accounts were compromised using internal company tools — comes courtesy of The New York Times this afternoon.Reporters Nathaniel Popper and Kate Conger tell the stories of four individua

Kaiser Hwang ContributorShare on Twitter Kaiser Hwang is a longtime member of the games community and a vice president at Forte, an organization building an open economic platform for games.
“Animal Crossing: New Horizons”is a bonafide wonder. The game has been setting new records for Nintendo, is adored by players and critics alike and provides millions of players a peaceful escape during these unprecedented times.
But there’s been something even more extraordinary happening o

Microsoft this week revealed it’ll no longer be making the Xbox One X or the Xbox One S digital edition. Instead, it’ll be focusing on the Xbox Series X, its new baby — though it’ll continue to sell the standard Xbox One S for the foreseeable future. In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson said “As we ramp into the future with Xbox Series X, we’re taking the natural step of stopping production on Xbox One X and Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. Xbox One S w

Fallout continues from this week’s big Twitterhack, podcaster Harry Stebbings launches a small VC fund and robots help with sorting the mail. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 17, 2020.
The big story: More details emerge in Twitter hack
As we recapped in yesterday’s newsletter, a number of high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked earlier this week as part of what appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam. So how bad was it?
“We have no evidence that attackers accessed passwor