Technology news

We are continuing to make progress through Palantir’s leaked S-1 filing, which TechCrunch attained a copy of recently. We have covered the company’s financials this morning, and this afternoon we talked about the company’s customer concentration. Now I want to talk a bit about its ownership and stock valuation.
First, let’s talk about ownership. Having read through our leaked copy of the S-1 the past few hours, I can only summarize the situation as: wow, this is a really

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. HBO Max has a very convenient option when it comes to switching audio or language tracks in some of its movies. Here’s how you can find it. While English-language films dominate the streaming services, not everything we want to watch was originally made in English. For example, HBO Max has several Latino films as well as several Crunchyroll an

Palantir, the controversial analytics and data mining firm, still relies heavily on its US government contracts for revenue despite its public statements that it was branching out into more corporate clients, according to screenshots of the company’s S-1 filing acquired by TechCrunch. The financials, which the New York Times also has viewed, show Palantir has not once turned a profit since its founding in 2003.Add to that the news it’s moving out of Silicon Valley because of “i

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images WordPress, the iOS app, lets you build and manage a website right from your iPhone or iPad.Separately, WordPress.com also happens to sell domain names.Now, WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg is accusing Apple of cutting off the ability to update that app — until or unless he adds in-app purchases so the most valuable company in the world can extract its 30 percent cut of the money.
Heads up on why @Wor

If you watch basketball, Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers has been everywhere on your TV during the last few weeks — just not in the Hulu commercial that he "stars in."
Protocol spoke to Hulu about the production of its new "Hulu Has Live Sports Again" commercial and Lillard's remote participation in it, given his involvement in the restarted NBA season. To get around his lack of physical availability, Hulu used AI to place Lillard's face on a stunt double's body for the commer

We are still walking through Palantir’s leaked S-1, which as of the time of this writing, hasn’t yet been filed and published by the SEC. This morning, we discussed some of Palantir’s financials, including its revenues, margins, and net losses.Leaked S-1 screenshots show Palantir losing $579M in 2019The company’s customer base — and it’s high-degree of concentration — is a recurring theme in the leaked S-1 filing that TechCrunch has been reading all

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s been just over a week since Fortnite developer Epic Games initiated an unprecedented antitrust legal fight with Apple over its App Store rules, and now we’re already seeing a trove of legal documents surface and shed light on how exactly the whole showdown began.In a series of emails detailed as part of Apple’s formal legal response to the game studio, we can piece together the timeline of events starting in June when Epic CEO Tim S

Welcome back to Human Capital, where we unpack the latest in diversity, equity and inclusion, and labor issues in the tech industry.
In this week’s edition, we’re looking at the latest in Uberand Lyft’scourt battle to keep their drivers classified as independent contractors, Pinterest’s well-timed announcement of a Black board member, overall board diversity in tech and the Kapor Center for Social Impact’s action campaign to advance racial justice.Gig LifeAppeals ju

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google pushed out a significant firmware update to its Pixel Buds this week, adding several new features to the true wireless earbuds including a “bass boost” setting, sharing detection (so you can individually set volume for each earbud when sharing one of them with someone), attention alerts, and more. The updated firmware was also supposed to address the connectivity and audio dropout problems that some early Pixel Buds buyers have been complainin

Rocket Labhas made a remarkable recovery after losing a payload during a mission failure on July 4 — just eight weeks later, the company has set a launch window for its next dedicated commercial mission that spans 12 days beginning August 27 at 3:05 PM local New Zealand time.
At the end of July, Rocket Lab revealed it had received crucial FAA clearance to resume its launch activities, following an internal investigation that lasted a month and identified the root cause — a component

Applehas filed legal documents opposing Epic’s attempt to have itself reinstated in the iOS App Store, after having been kicked out last week for flouting its rules. Apple characterizes the entire thing as a “carefully orchestrated, multi-faceted campaign” aimed at circumventing — perhaps permanently — the 30% cut it demands for the privilege of doing business on iOS.
Epic last week slyly introduced a way to make in-app purchases in its popular game Fortnite without

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has responded to Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit over its iOS App Store policies. The filing asks a court not to temporarily reverse an App Store ban while the suit is ongoing. And it accuses Epic of disingenuously creating an “emergency” by accepting direct payments through Fortnite in violation of Apple’s rules.
In a declaration to the court, Apple executive Phil Schiller wrote that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney asked for a “spe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has responded to Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit over its iOS App Store policies. CNBC reports that the filing asks a court not to temporarily reverse an App Store ban while the suit is ongoing. And it accuses Epic of disingenuously creating an “emergency” by accepting direct payments through Fortnite in violation of Apple’s rules.
Apple executive Phil Schiller wrote that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney asked for a “special deal wit

Charles Yu ContributorShare on Twitter Charles is a principal at Bling Capital and manages his own angel investment vehicle. Previously, he was an investor at TI Platform Management and Manhattan Venture Partners. He has quarterbacked investments in nine unicorns over the course of his career.
As a founding member of TI Platform Management, I have quarterbacked more than $200 million in investments into first-time fund managers around the world. That portfolio includes being one of the first ins

On a cold November day in 2016, Dr Peter Scott-Morgan was having a long, hot soak in the bath. After stepping out of the tub, he gave his foot a shake to get the water off. But his foot wouldn’t move. Peter was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), the same incurable illness that killed Stephen Hawking. The disease degenerates the nerve cells that enable us to move, speak, breathe, and swallow. In time, it can render a person physically paralyzed while their brain remains alert

So you’re looking for a storage unit to put some stuff in for a few months. Maybe you’re moving and your new place isn’t ready yet — or maybe you’re just looking to declutter and want to tuck some stuff away for a while and see if you’re really ready to part with it.
As you may find, the process of finding a storage unit can be… not great. While there are a few big storage chains in the market, a huge chunk of the self-storage industry is made up of ind

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast, The Vergecast, Dieter Bohn, Becca Farsace, and Dan Seifert log into a Zoom meeting to discuss their reviews of the next line of Samsung hardware on the market: the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, the Galaxy Buds Live, and the Galaxy Watch 3.The Note 20 Ultra is a really big phone, but are we cool with that now? Dieter explains why a bigger phone suits the stay-at-home lifestyle of 2020 and how delightful Samsung’s up

It has been nearly a decade since Anu Duggal,founding partner of Female Founders Fund, started raising money to invest in women-led startups. In 2020, the investor says her thesis — that there will be a generation of successful venture-backed businesses built by women — is one you can’t avoid.
“You can’t argue with that anymore,” she said. “There are going to be some people who take a little longer to kind of accept that this is a long-term development,

Once upon a time, Box’sAaron Levie was just a guy with an idea for a company: 15 years ago as a USC student, he conceived of a way to simply store and share files online.
It may be hard to recall, but back then, the world was awash with thumb drives and moving files manually, but Levie saw an opportunity to change that.
Today, his company helps enterprise customers collaborate and manage content in the cloud, but when Levie appeared on an episode of Extra Crunch Live at the end of May, my

We're more than halfway through 2020, and many of us are physically still quarantining at home. But mentally? Well, we could be anywhere.
A new meme is here to help you pinpoint where exactly you are mentally. To partake in the meme just attach the words "Mentally I'm here" to the first image that comes to your mind, like so:mentally im here pic.twitter.com/DJu05OOxEQ
— g'raha tea (@crystalIexarch) August 20, 2020Many people are coping with the year's continuous chaos by mentally seeking s

Image: Crytek When a trailer for Crysis Remastered leaked online in July, fans criticized the game’s graphics for looking far too much like the original’s from over 10 years ago. But today, Crytek released a new trailer that shows drastic improvements to the game’s visuals, and it announced the remaster will be coming to multiple platforms next month.
Crysis Remastered will now launch on the PS4, Xbox One, and Epic Games Store on September 18th for $30. In July, following back

This morning, we published exclusive, leaked details about Palantir’s much anticipated S-1 filing, including the company’s revenues, margins, operating loss and government/commercial contract breakdown.Leaked S-1 screenshots show Palantir losing $579M in 2019One aspect that we didn’t cover much though was the actual process the company intends to use to float its shares on the stock exchange. Rumors have flown for weeks that the company intends to pursue a direct listing, proba

In discussions of ethically dubious social networks, Facebook is the usual reference choice. But spare a thought for subscribers of InterNations, a Munich-based social networking community for expats, who have found themselves unable to obtain refunds for full-year payments charged in the middle of the coronavirus crisis.
InterNations has operated an expat networking experience since 2007, offering a free “Basic” tier of membership that gives users some access to site content and com

Reviews are out for Christopher Nolan's latest movie Tenet, which is coming to select countries on Aug. 26 due to COVID-19 before its U.S. debut in some theaters on Sept. 3.
While the thrills and action that fill this mysterious film shine for many critics, many are also pointing to hefty helpings of confusion stemming from the movie's use of time travel and red herrings in this John David Washington-led project.
It sounds like it's pretty par for the course for a Nolan movie, mixing the themes

Avi Freedman is like any other founder: He wants to build a great company. In this case network analytics platform Kentik, and he needs venture capital to do it. Like pretty much all founders, he doesn’t like the dilution that comes from taking vast sums from VCs in order to grow. There’s always been an alluring solution to this dilemma, but one that comes with its own tradeoffs.
Debt.
The word has negative connotations, but the reality is that just like equity capital, debt is a key

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Fortnite’s next season, which kicks off on August 27th, could be a full-season collaboration with Marvel, as suggested by a teaser released by Epic Games on Friday. But due to Epic’s public dispute with Apple over the iPhone maker’s App Store policies, Epic currently isn’t able to update Fortnite on iOS. That means iPhone and iPad players will miss out on the new season unless something changes between Epic and Apple before Thursda

Run The Jewels / Sketchfab Run The Jewels has teamed up with Sketchfab, an online platform to share and sell 3D artwork, for a remix challenge of the duo’s iconic pistol and fist logo. The logo has always inspired reinterpretation by fans — but now, the group is looking to reward those fans directly.
Fans can download the 3D model used in the production of their latest album cover, RTJ4, and put it into their own creations. To enter, artists have to upload their project to Sketchfab

Oops. Seems like Steve Bannon said the quiet part out loud more than a year ago. 
If you somehow missed it, the former White House chief strategist was arrested on Thursday, charged with defrauding donors to the viral 'We Build the Wall' GoFundMe campaign. Federal prosecutors allege he and Brian Kolfage — the founder of We Build the Wall — worked to funnel thousands of dollars in donations to Kolfage to fund a "lavish lifestyle." Two other men, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea,

Disrupt 2020 is a few weeks away and we’re looking for founders to submit their pitch decks. In the Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees’ pitch decks.
First impressions are everything, and pitch decks are often the first glimpse of companies by investors and business partners. It’s critical that these decks accurately present and illustrate the company’s goals and potential, concisel

There’s no doubt that tech’s biggest companies have bounced hard since COVID-19 laid waste to global stock markets, but none have bounced quite as spectacularly as Tesla. Still, even after removing Tesla as an outlier, a dozen companies in the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 (NDX) have seen their share prices more than double since the index’s 2020 low on March 23. [Read: Tesla and Apple set stock splits to lower share prices — then they rallied] That list includes the &