TechCrunch Industry News

All major indices rose Wednesday, led by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which increased 3.44% to close above 23,000 for the first time since March 13. Investors seemed heartened by comments made by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who said Wednesday that the U.S. death count from COVID-19 is lower […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Want to let your kids poke around Netflix without them wandering their way beyond the kids section? Got a roommate who keeps inexplicably forgetting to use their profile and is totally screwing up your “Continue Watching” list? Good news! Netflix is now letting users set a PIN to keep individual profiles locked down. The new […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American equities closed down today, with the major domestic indices all losing ground after a wild trading cycle. After starting the day up sharply higher after strong Monday gains, those gains were erased as the day closed. It was a day of confusing movement; the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, to pick an example, had a range […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a sharp Monday rally seemingly built on optimism that the impact of the global pandemic may have reached its zenith in Europe — and indeed that the United States might see a lower infection and mortality peak than some anticipated — shares once again rose this morning. Here’s how the day looks a few […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stocks rallied Monday, with all major indices snapping back into positive territories as investors seized on any positive developments in the fight to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. The stock market is, of course, not the economy. And this is likely a dead cat bounce — a temporary recovery after […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

The massive surge of COVID-19-related layoffs has put tech in a unique position. While the startup world is facing layoffs itself, it is also trying to help get people back to work. Back at the end of 2019, the SoftBank-backed belt-tightening period led to a flurry of crowdsourced spreadsheets with employee names from companies like […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

Times are exceptionally hard, especially for local restaurants, which were always in a precarious business even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But when times are hard, people pull together, right? Or at least they don’t take advantage of the suffering and desperate to exploit and profit from them. Right? We’d all like to think so, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...

With movie theaters largely closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney is pushing back its slate of upcoming films. And at least one movie won’t be making it into theaters at all, with “Artemis Fowl” heading straight to streaming instead. The company announced today that that the film will debut exclusively on Disney+, and that […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi...

AWS today announced that its DeepComposer keyboard is now available for purchase. And no, DeepComposer isn’t a mechanical keyboard for hackers but a small MIDI keyboard for working with the AWS DeepComposer service that uses AI to create songs based on your input. First announced at AWS re:Invent 2019, the keyboard created a bit of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

Time spent in mobile apps has been surging, as people stuck at home due to the coronavirus outbreak have been turning to apps to do their shopping, manage their finances, find new exercises, work from home, and stay entertained. According to new data from App Annie, released today, Q1 2020 was the largest-ever quarter in […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’ve ever tried to buy the Harry Potter audiobooks, you probably noticed something kind of tricky: there’s two very different versions. The version most widely available in the US is narrated by Jim Dale. The UK version is read by Stephen Fry. Which is better? I won’t get into that — that’s something the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A recent redbound in domestic equity prices faded further into the distance today, as American stocks fell for a second consecutive day following modest Tuesday declines. After rising from new 52 week lows, all domestic indices after the American president warned of difficult weeks ahead as the country reels from the economic and social impacts […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

The first quarter of 2020 ended with a whimper  — with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and NASDAQ posting their worst quarter in decades — as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause uncertainty and volatility across all major stock market indices. At the beginning of the quarter, we were still basking in a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let’s be real: Now isn’t the ideal time to launch a health tracker. For a majority of us, expectations have dramatically plummeted for step counts, workout minutes and other gamified metrics. But hardware launches will, for the most part, go on. Fitbit eschewed its normal press event this time out — for increasingly good reason […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

The last few weeks have just been dreadful for asset managers. Not only have the markets tanked the past few weeks (if slightly recovered from their lows since the signing of the U.S. stimulus bill), but the daily volatility of different assets is making it very hard to keep portfolios balanced. As an example, the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft today announced a ton of new features for its productivity apps, but it also used today’s release to highlight a few new features that are coming to its Chromium-based Edge browser in the near future. Most of these are pretty straightforward and expected, like its Collections bookmarking feature coming to mobile later this year, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....

Only a few days after saying that he would like to see the country “opened up and raring to go by Easter” and maybe relax rules for at least some parts of the U.S. sooner than later, President Trump today announced that he is extending the government’s social distancing guidelines through April 30. “Nothing would […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The long-running Folding@Home program to crowdsource the enormously complex task of solving molecular interactions has hit a major milestone as thousands of new users sign up to put their computers to work. The network now comprises an "exaflop" of computing power: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Huawei has unveiled new flagship phones today, the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. These are beautiful phones with great specs. But it would only take you a few minutes to realize that there’s something odd with them. There is no Gmail, no Google Maps and no Google Play Store. Last year, the U.S. government […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The impacts of telecommuting, shelter-in-place laws, and home quarantines resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak are starting to impact broadband speeds across a number of U.S. cities, a new report has found. According to broadband analysis site BroadbandNow, 88 out of the top 200 most populous U.S. cities analyzed have now experienced some form of network […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Web browser Brave is expanding its cryptocurrency features with an integration with cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Brave users will be able to buy, trade and receive crypto assets directly on the new tab page. In addition to a particular focus on privacy, Brave has been playing around with cryptocurrencies for a while. The company launched its […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

Last week, popular music platform Bandcamp announced that it would be waiving its revenue shares from all sales for 24 hours, starting Friday morning. The move was an effort to help boost income for the innumerable artists who have been struggling to make ends meet as live performances have been canceled for the foreseeable future […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch...

Apple has released software updates for the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the Apple TV and the Mac. The biggest changes are on the iPad. Starting today, you can pair a mouse or trackpad with your iPad and use it to move a cursor on the display. Apple unveiled trackpad support for iPadOS when […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The technology industry’s central role in an American economy shaped by attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 is being reflected in how investors are approaching markets in these turbulent times. As the broader economy stumbles, technology companies and the major exchange they call home seem to be somewhat more of a safe-haven given the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...

The flood of status symbol content into Instagram Stories has run dry. No one is going out and doing anything cool right now, and if they are, they should be shamed for it. Beyond sharing video chat happy hour screenshots and quarantine dinner concoctions, our piece-by-piece biographies have ground to a halt. Oddly, what remains […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi...