Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, the internet erupted in a small way to learn that Apple had successfully forced WordPress to monetize its free app — forcing it to sell premium plans and custom domain names seemingly just so that Apple could get its traditional 30 percent cut.
But one afternoon and evening of surprise and outrage later, Apple is backing off. The company is issuing a rare on-the-record apology, and it says that WordPress will no longer have to add in-app

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, the internet erupted in a small way to learn that Apple had successfully forced WordPress to monetize its free app — forcing it to sell premium plans and custom domain names seemingly just so that Apple could get its traditional 30 percent cut.
But one afternoon and evening of surprise and outrage later, Apple is backing off. The company is issuing a rare on-the-record apology, and it says that WordPress will no longer have to add in-app

After years of campaigning from fans, Zack Snyder’s Justice League will see the light of day — and a first look trailer for the director’s version premiered today.Snyder brought the trailer for his panel at DC FanDome, a miniature version of San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H for fans of DC and Warner Bros.’ films. The trailer is set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and follows the various members of the team as they slowly come together. Snyder fans who

The wildly popular game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is reportedly coming to mobile. Games analyst Daniel Ahmad tweeted that Chinese entertainment company Bilibili has secured the rights to publish a mobile version of the game, but in China only.On its website, Bilibili says it will be the “exclusive agent” for a genuine mobile game in mainland China that Google is translating to “Jelly Bean: Ultimate Knockout,” with “jelly bean” a likely reference to the game

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok confirmed Saturday that it will file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order demanding parent company ByteDance divest its TikTok operations in the US. It’s the first time the company has confirmed it will pursue legal action, a move that has been rumored for several weeks. Reports began surfacing Friday that a lawsuit was likely imminent.
“Even though we strongly disagree with the administration’s conce

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. You can subscribe to the newsletter here if you haven’t yet.
Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.
Palantir and the great revenue mysteryAs I write to you on Friday afternoon, the Palantir S-1 has yet to drop, but TechCrunch did break some news re

Director James Gunn took his time at DC Comics’ FanDome to introduce the new Suicide Squad set to debut in Warner Bros.’ The Suicide Squad.
A “roll call” trailer for his Suicide Squad sequel debuted today at DC FanDome, a virtual convention from DC Comics and Warner Bros. That includes Idris Elba as Bloodsport, John Cena as Peacemaker, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, Nathan Fillion as TDK, Pete Davidson as Blackguard and many more. Although it’s not an official t

Warner Bros. Games Montreal debuted its new game set within Batman’s world, Gotham Knights, at DC Comics’ FanDome today, and the developers brought nearly eight minutes of gameplay footage for fans to watch.The open world game is set within Gotham City. The gameplay footage in particular sees Batgirl and Robin team up to take on classic Batman villain Mr. Freeze. This is just one of several villain encounters that the vigilantes-turned-heroes will happen upon in the game, according t

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here.
The public markets are staying receptive to tech IPOs, and tech unicorns are trying to recover from pandemic damage, polish up their financials, and head back towards the starting gates. This week, it’s Airbnb and Palantir, finally. Both have been startup icons of the past decade, and literally helped define the term “unicorn.

It’s been a few years, but there’s a new Batman game on the way. At the DC Fandome event we got our first look at the long-rumored Gotham Knights, which looks to channel the spirit of the beloved Arkham games. The new title will be launching in 2021. Gameplay footage from the game was shown at FanDome. The Verge will update the story if that gameplay footage is published online.
Step Into The Knight and save Gotham from chaos. Welcome to #GothamKnights. pic.twitter.com/t6b9g1TBh9&mda

After questions about whether Wonder Woman 1984 would possibly skip theaters to premiere digitally, a new trailer for the film confirms it’s getting the big-screen treatment.Director Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, and Pedro Pascal appeared at DC Comics’ FanDome event to answer a few audience Q&A’s and debut the new trailer. The new trailer sees Wonder Woman take on Cheetah, a new villain played by Kristen Wiig. There are also some new scenes reuniting D

Photo by Saeed Adyani / Netflix Bill Gates believes tech firms “deserve” the kind of scrutiny they got during Congressional hearings last month, and that the late Steve Jobs was a “genius,” he told the Armchair Expert podcast.
“If you’re as successful as I am or any of those people are, you deserve rude, unfair, tough questions,” the Microsoft founder told host Dax Shepard. “The government deserves to have shots at you,” Gates said. “T

Amit Garg and Sanjay Rao have spent the bulk of their professional lives developing technology, founding startups and investing in startups at places like Googleand Microsoft,HealthIQ, and Norwest Venture Partners.
Over their decade-long friendship the two men discussed working together on a venture fund, but the time was never right — until now. Since last August, the two men have been raising capital for their inaugural fund, Tau Ventures.
The name, like the two partners, is a bit wonky.

Apple’sa hard company to like these days. Their glory days behind them, they have relentlessly pursued a misguided concept of optimization that has alienated their user base and compromised their products. A MacBook SE would go a long way toward smoothing the wake they’ve left behind them.
I was excited that this would be a possibility years ago when the iPhone SE came out. “Here,” I thought, “is a company that has come to recognize the value of its legacy products.

Bletchley Park is an English country house that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. It built the world’s first programmable digital electronic computer, cracking the Enigma Machine and thus helping turn the tide of the war against Nazi Germany. But now the institution that preserves that history is in trouble.
The Bletchley Park Trust, which runs the site today and also houses the UK’s National Museum of Computing, has been hit by the fina

Edtech’s reputation has been revitalized due to the coronavirus pandemic, which forced millions of students to adopt remote education overnight. But behind the scramble is a crop of investors who have long invested in the space — before it became cool.
To better understand what’s ahead, what’s hot, and what’s not, I’m talking to a trio of top investors in edtech at TechCrunch Disrupt: Ian Chiu of Owl Ventures, Mercedes Bent from Lightspeed, and Jennifer Carola

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

Mikaela Kiner ContributorShare on Twitter Mikaela Kiner is an executive coach and author of "Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace."
A few years ago, I came to the realization that my company, an HR consulting firm, was not as diverse as I wanted it to be. I value diversity because I know it makes teams better — more creative, more productive and more nimble. It helps my firm represent our community and serve our clients.
Tho

Photo by: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images AT&T-owned Cricket Wireless is enabling 5G support on some of its plans, the company announced. But oddly, even though the appeal to most customers of prepaid plans like Cricket is a lower price, the company’s only 5G compatible device so far is the $1,199 Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus. And getting access to 5G on Cricket requires subscribing to one of its Unlimited plans, which start at $60 per mo

A student at UNC Chapel Hill | Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images Colleges got a schooling in virology this week. After ignoring recommendations from the local health department to hold virtual classes this fall, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillstarted classes on August 10, in person. Within a week, with outbreaks spreading on campus, the school abruptly shifted to online learning. A day later, also facing an outbreak, Notre Dame did the same.That Greek chorus singing &ldq

“Selling Sunset” is the kind reality TV show that doesn’t bother with things like sympathetic or relatable characters.
The Netflixseries recently released its third season — which, like the seasons before it, follows the efforts of the largely female staff at a Los Angeles brokerage to sell high-end real estate.
As we explain on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, “Selling Sunset” does make the occasional, perfunctory effort to tug at the heart

Without San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics and Warner Bros. launched a new virtual event to showcase new trailers for upcoming films, games, and TV shows.From Robert Pattinson’s The Batman to Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League to glimpses at The Flash, Shazam 2, Aquaman 2, Wonder Woman 1984, and more, FanDome is effectively trying to recreate the experience of Comic-Con’s Hall H phenomena in an interactive, virtual way. Different “panels” will take place throughout the

Few topics garner cheers and groans quite as quickly as the no-code software explosion.
While investors seem uniformly bullish on toolsets that streamline and automate processes that once required a decent amount of technical know-how, not everyone seems to think that the product class is much of a new phenomenon.
On one hand, basic tools like Microsoft Excel have long given non-technical users a path toward carrying out complex tasks. (There’s historical precedent for the perspective.) On

Creative destruction “is the essential fact about capitalism,” wrote the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. New technologies and processes continuously revolutionize the economic structure from within, “incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Change happens more quickly and creatively during times of economic disruption. Innovations meeting material and cultural needs accelerate. Structures preventing new, more efficient tech

Now that so many Americans are working from home full-time, a lot of us are spending a ton of time in front of our home computers. And if there’s one thing that’s true about most computers, it’s that they have pretty terrible built-in speakers. Chances are, you’ll max out the volume button on your laptop and still find the sound too soft to hear your boss on a Zoom or Google Meet conference clearly enough. And if it’s that bad for a conference call, can you imagine

The dimming of Betelgeuse seen at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 explained — the red giant star “sneezed.” Betelgeuse dimmed in the final few months of 2019, perplexing both professional and amateur astronomers. First noted in October 2019, by February 2020, the star lost two-thirds of its brightness as seen from Earth. Many astronomers — both professional and amateur — questioned if the change of light revealed the star was on the verge of exploding as a su

Feeling like you should better understand special purpose acquisition vehicles – or SPACs — than you do? You aren’t alone.
It isn’t like you’re totally clueless, right? You’re probably aware that Paul Ryan now has a SPAC, as does baseball executive Billy Beane and Silicon Valley stalwart Kevin Hartz. You likely know, too, that brash entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya seemed to kick off the craze around SPACs — blank-check companies that are formed for the

TV makes meeting people look much too easy. No one expects to live across the hall from their soulmates like Monica and Chandler or to find love at their small town office job like Jim and Pam.
Between success stories from Love Island and going on first dates via video calls to get around a pandemic, the rules for finding love have officially gone right out the window.
SEE ALSO: The best UK dating sites for women looking to make a connection
Online dating is hardly a novel way to meet people and

TL;DR: The Complete Final Cut Pro X Course is on sale for £11.40 as of Aug. 22, saving you 92% on list price.Somehow, out of the blue, everyone on YouTube became a master editor. Even those annoying children's videos flow seamlessly from one frame to the next. If you're sick of gawking in awe and want to learn how to edit your own videos, check out this Final Cut Pro X course.
Starting from scratch? It's cool, this training was designed specifically for beginners. Through 38 lectures and f

Someone is weaponizing your typos. 
With the U.S. presidential election fast approaching, people across the country are going online to get instructions for voting by mail, the location of their polling place, and other vital Election Day information that will help them exercise their right to vote. Now, according to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin obtained by Yahoo News, unknown actors are registering website domains that mimic national and state voter information sites with unk

Grab your popcorn, everyone: there’s a new development in the Epic Games vs Apple legal battle over Fortnite. This time, it’s Apple slinging mud, in a new court filing in which it asks for Epic not to be granted its requested emergency restraining order. The latest court document, which came to light today, contains Apple’s defense against both the injunction and the suit in general in a nutshell. Apple feels Epic has had the advantages of access the App Store within the bound

Adding a new employee to a team tends to involve more than saying “You’re hired!” and tossing them into the company Slack. You’ve got to get them trained, ship them any hardware they might need, get them set up on all of your internal tools and check in regularly to make sure everything is going smoothly. Then there’s a whole separate process to follow when someone leaves, unless you want to find out that the guy who left a year ago still digs around in the company

Image: Hasbro When Hasbro brought back three classic Super Soakers this spring, I was pretty pumped — but now, two of them are being recalled. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced that the Super Soaker XP20 and XP30 used too much lead in the ink when the manufacturer printed their labels, and should be immediately be returned to Hasbro for a full refund.
They were exclusively sold at Target between March and July of this year, and the CPSC says that Hasbro manage

We dive into Palantir’s finances, Apple fires back against Epic Games and Lambda School raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for August 21, 2020.
The big story: Palantir docs show $579M net loss
Danny Crichton got a hold of the confidential S-1 filing for secretive data analytics company Palantir and has been unpacking the details. As far as the top-line numbers go, Palantir reported revenue of $742 million in 2019, up 25% from the previous year, with a net loss of $579 million. And i