Technology news

The 2016 Trump presidential campaign identified millions of Black Americans in an apparent attempt to deter them from going to the polls — and Facebook may have played a critical role. 
That's according to Channel 4 News, which obtained the campaign's voter database on 200 million Americans. Notably, 3.5 million Black Americans were categorized as "Deterrence" — a category the Trump campaign reportedly described as "hope don't show up to vote." The question, of course, is did th

Amazonis introducing a personal shopping service for men’s fashion. The service, now available to Prime members, is an expansion of the existing Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe, a $4.99 per month Stitch Fix rival, originally aimed at women. With Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe, an Amazon stylist selects an assortment of fashion items that match a customer’s style and fit preferences. These are then shipped to the customer on a monthly basis for home try-on. Whatever the custome

TC Sessions: Mobility is coming up next week, and we’ve decided to sweeten the deal for what’s included with your event pass. Buy your ticket now and you’ll get a free annual membership to Extra Crunch, our membership program focused on startups, founders and investors with more than 100 exclusive articles published per month.
Extra Crunch unlocks access to our weekly investor surveys, private market analysis and in-depth interviews with experts on fundraising, growth, monetiza

Small startups and logistics giants alike are working on how to use automated vehicle technology and robotics for delivery. Some have even accelerated their efforts, with mixed results, as the COVID-19 pandemic drove up demand for delivery.
But is the world — or the tech — ready for the mainstream?
TechCrunch has tapped three experts from FedEx,Refraction AI and Postmates to join our virtual stage at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 to talk about the challenges and opportunities of using r

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Health care provider Universal Health Services, one of the largest chains in the US, has been hit by an apparent ransomware attack, TechCrunch reported. UHS facilities in California, Florida, North Dakota, Arizona, and other locations began noticing problems early Sunday, with some locations reporting locked computers and phone systems.Some UHS hospitals had to use pen and paper to file patient information as a result, according to NBC News.
The hospital

Will Joel On Tuesday night, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face off in the first presidential debate of the 2020 cycle, and cable channels will be lit up with analyses of which candidate beat expectations and which lines landed best with audiences at home.But 60 years after the first televised presidential debate, the post-event spin isn’t limited to television anymore. The moment the event finishes, a new class of pundits on YouTube and Instagram will be digging through the footage for

The global pandemic is driving interest toward cannabis, and device makers are recording record sales. From startups to major players, several leading manufacturers told TechCrunch that their companies are seeing a boom in sales since the start of the crisis. Coupled with supply constraints, consumers are now seeing limited supply on some top models as makers try to keep up.
Some company CEOs see the pandemic driving consumer acceptance and pushing legalization at the national level. With legali

Research papers come out far too rapidly for anyone to read them all, especially in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in but not limited to artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter.
The topics in this week’s Deep Science column are a real grab bag that range from planetary science to whale trackin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The surprise success of InnerSloth’s game Among Us was one of the bigger Twitch stories that happened this summer: over the last month, the game shot up a full 650 percent in hours watched on the site. (It has gotten so popular so suddenly that the developers at InnerSloth have canceled Among Us 2 to focus more on the first game.)Its success has spawned other successes, too. Among Us’ spike in popularity has led to Discord’s mobile app d

Fintech startup N26 is announcing some changes in the leadership team with two new C-Level hires. First, Adrienne Gormley, pictured above, is joining the company as chief operating officer, replacing Martin Schilling who left the company in March 2020. Second, Diana Styles, pictured below, will become N26’s chief people officer.
Gormley has spent the last six years working for Dropbox in Dublin. She was the VP of Global Customer Experience as well as the head of EMEA for Dropbox. Previousl

Under threat of regulation, Googleannounced today it’s updating its Google Play billing policies to better clarify which types of transactions will be subject to Google’s commissions on in-app purchases. While the more detailed language doesn’t actually change the earlier policy’s intention, it will impact a percentage of developers who don’t currently use Google Play’s billing system when selling digital goods in their app. In addition, the company announced

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is outlining new changes to its developer policies and promising to make using third-party app stores easier on Android 12. The announcement addresses recent concerns around Android app development, including a fight over alternate in-app payment systems and difficulties for businesses moving online because of COVID-19.
Android users can already install apps through third-party stores like Samsung’s Galaxy Store. Google says that in response

As high schools pivot to hybrid models and students see less in-person face time with friends, the current social app sphere seems to be missing a way to build deeper bonds with classmates. HAGS is building a social network designed around high school networks and they’ve picked up some fresh funding led by Google’s venture arm GV.
The team is building an old school social play focused on Gen Z high school socialization. The first iteration of their vision was a digital yearbook they

Amanda Milligan ContributorShare on Twitter Amanda Milligan is the marketing director at Fractl, a prominent growth marketing agency that’s helped Fortune 500 companies and boutique businesses alike earn quality media coverage, backlinks, awareness and authority. More posts by this contributorEarn the best backlinks with high-quality content and digital PR We throw away 80% of our content ideas, and you should too
Even when you’re excellent at making the sale, you still need people t

Around a quarter of U.S. adults, or roughly 26%, say they get news by watching YouTube videos, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, which examined the Google-owned video platform’s growing influence over news distribution in the U.S., as well as its consumption. The study, not surprisingly, found that established news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch, as only one-in-five YouTube consumers (23%) said they “often” get their new

Were you Born to be Wild? Then get your electric motor running, head out on the virtual highway to look for adventure, because we’re just one week away from TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. Join thousands of global attendees October 6-7 for two programming-packed days devoted to the fast-moving world of mobility and transportation technology.
Price of admission: We offer a range of pass levels and prices to fit just about every budget. Prices start at $25 (for the Expo ticket) plus, we have dis

Last December (yes, in the before-times) U.K.-based mental health startup eQuoo had a round of announcements, becoming the NHS-approved mental health game, as well as signing Barmer, the largest insurance company in Germany, as a client.
It has now been selected as the Mental Health App for Unilever’s new global initiative aimed at the mental health of young people. The move came after Unilever’s People Data Centre (PDC) selected eQuoo out of all the mental health games on the Google

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google’s Pixel 5 event is scheduled for this Wednesday, but some of the company’s other new gadgets are already appearing on store shelves. That includes its all-new Chromecast, which some savvy buyers have been able to purchase directly in-store from retailers like Walmart and The Home Depot over the course of the last week.The Verge has purchased one such device from The Home Depot and can confirm the retailer is not stopping customers from checkin

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google’s Pixel 5 event is scheduled for this Wednesday, but some of the company’s other new gadgets are already appearing on store shelves. That includes its all-new Chromecast, which some savvy buyers have been able to purchase directly in-store from retailers like Walmart and The Home Depot over the course of the last week.The Verge has purchased one such device from The Home Depot and can confirm the retailer is not stopping customers from checkin

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google’s Pixel 5 event is scheduled for this Wednesday, but some of the company’s other new gadgets are already appearing on store shelves. That includes its all-new Chromecast, which some savvy buyers have been able to purchase directly in-store from retailers like Walmart and The Home Depot over the course of the last week.The Verge has purchased one such device from The Home Depot and can confirm the retailer is not stopping customers from checkin

Universal Health Services, one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack.
The attack hit UHS systems early on Sunday morning, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident, locking computers and phone systems at several UHS facilities across the country, including in California and Florida.
One of the people said the computer screens changed with text that referenced the “shadow universe,” consistent with the Ryuk ransomware.

Adobe has had a developer program for years called Adobe.io, but today at the Adobe Developers Live virtual conference, the company announced some new tools with a fresh emphasis on helping developers build custom apps on the Adobe Experience Cloud.
Jason Woosley, VP of developer experience and commerce at Adobe, says that the pandemic has forced companies to build enhanced digital experiences much more quickly than they might have, and the new tools being announced today are at least partly rel

SoftBank has been quite bullish on Bear Roboticsthis year, beginning with leadership in a $32 million Series A back in January. It’s easy to see why the investment firm believes that this is the breakthrough moment for the Bay Area-based startup, as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic and labor issues around the world — not to mention all of the mandatory social distancing.
Labor has, of course, been an issue in Japan for some time, courtesy of a shrinking population, low birth

A one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus normally costs $60, but it’s available for almost half that price at CDKeys.com. You’ll need this service to play PS4 games online right now, and it’s an especially good deal if you’re planning to upgrade to the PS5 this year. On the new console, this subscription will grant you access to the PlayStation Plus Collection, a suite of several acclaimed PS4 classics (including Persona 5, Bloodborne, God of War, and more) that will b

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. I subbed in for Alex this week, so send your love over to the show on Twitter here and fan mail to me right here. Also, don’t forget to ch

Farmville | Zynga If you want to harvest those apples, you better get on it soon: Zynga is shutting down its original FarmVille web game on Facebook at the end of the year, the company announced. It’s not entirely unexpected news; Facebook said in July it would no longer support Flash games as of December 31st, the same date Adobe is killing the Flash player altogether.
But it does feel like the end of a gaming era. As silly (and sometimes annoying) as FarmVille could be — especiall

The new Dell XPS 13, the best laptop of 2020 so far, is getting a refresh. | Dell Dell has announced new refreshes to its XPS 13 and XPS 13 2-in-1. Both are powered by Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors and will be available in the US and Canada on September 30th (and more countries in the coming weeks). The XPS 13 starts at $999; the 2-in-1 starts at $1,249. The new XPS was first teased onstage at Intel’s Tiger Lake launch earlier this month.The upgrades mostly look like spec b

It’s fall, so that means it’s time for the annual refresh of Roku hardware. In addition to the Streambar announced today, the company’s streaming player lineup is led by a refreshed Roku Ultra. For the first time, the flagship device now supports Dolby Vision HDR. Many Roku TVs already offer the format, but so far Roku’s standalone devices have not. (They’ve had Dolby Atmos audio, however, which the Ultra retains.) The company is also adding support for the AV1 code

The Streambar includes one of Roku’s voice remotes. | Image: Roku A year after Roku announced its Smart Soundbar, the company is back with the Streambar, which combines a compact soundbar with a 4K / HDR streaming device. It’s compatible with all the apps and services you’d expect from Roku, and it combines this with four full-range speaker drivers to fill your living room with stereo audio. The soundbar was announced today alongside the updated Roku Ultra streaming box, which

Image: Roku Roku today announced that it plans to bring support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit features to many of its streaming players and Roku TVs by the end of the year. The move will allow people to send content — music, videos, photos, etc. — from their iPhone, iPad, or Mac to their Roku device. That’s the AirPlay 2 part, and HomeKit will let Roku’s products to be controlled with your iPhone via the Home app or Siri, and they can also be included in smart

The tablet is designed to be usable even when you’re wearing gloves. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Active 3 is a new rugged tablet designed for tough environments, the company announced today. Alongside more typical features like an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, the tablet can survive drops of up to 1.5 meters. It’s also backed by Samsung’s promise to support “up to three generations of Android OS upgrades.”
Like last year’s Galaxy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber has won its appeal after losing its license to operate in London, Bloomberg reports. A judge ruled that the service is “fit and proper” and should be allowed to operate in the capital, although the exact duration of the company’s operating permit is yet to be announced. Uber had been allowed to continue operating in London throughout the appeals process.
In his decision, the judge admitted that Uber had made “historical failin