TechCrunch Industry News

FaceApp, the AI-powered selfie-editing app that’s been having another viral moment of late, has now responded to a privacy controversy that we covered earlier here. We’ve pasted the company’s full statement at the bottom of this post. The tl;dr here is that concerns had been raised that FaceApp, a Russian startup, uploads users’ photos to the cloud — without making it clear to them that processing...

With help from ‘Game of Thrones,’ HBO conquers Netflix in Emmy nominations When the Emmy nominations were announced last year, Netflix had a big win,overtaking HBO for the first time. But this year, HBO is back in the lead, with 137 nominations compared to Netflix’s 117. The Hollywood Reporter has tallied up the just-announced nominations, with Amazon Prime Video getting 47 nods and Hulu receiving...

The price of a Tesla vehicle equipped with “full self-driving” is about to get more expensive, the second time in the past several months the company has increased fees for a feature that isn’t completely functional. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday that the price of its full self-driving option will increase by $1,000 on August 16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

Like most companies, much of what Valve tinkers with behind the scenes never sees the light of day. Concepts are born, torn apart and rebuilt, and sometimes tossed away without anyone outside the company ever seeing a hint of it. Seems Valve is trying to change that, giving users an opportunity to provide feedback on potential new features before they’re fully baked. Learn more about your ad choic...

Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission to the asteroid Ryugu is an ambitious one to begin with, and the team recently made the decision to up the stakes with a second touchdown on the space rock’s surface. Not only did all go as planned, but we now have the best shots of an asteroid’s surface ever to be sent back to Earth. Hayabusa2 is a very, very cool mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

The new 2020 C8 Corvette won’t be revealed for six more days. But to hold us over, Chevrolet is showing off the steering wheel of the eighth generation vehicle. The photo, which Chevy teased Friday, is just the steering wheel. But there are hints and insights that even this single photo provides. For one, this new generation is unlike any of its predecessors. The leathered-wrapped steering wheel h...

Boosted, the startup that got its beginnings with electric skateboards, has officially taken its first stab at electric scooters with the launch of the Boosted Rev. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks riding the Rev around the streets of San Francisco and, as I put in the headline, it’s fast, durable, fun and really heavy — 46 pounds to be exact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...

Google loves a good Easter egg. From cutesie Douglas Adams references to the search results for “askew” being just a liiiiittle bit crooked, there’s all sorts of stuff hiding in the search engine if you know the right thing to type or the right buttons to push. The latest addition — a fun little tennis game hidden within certain search results pages — is in honor of the Wimbledon tennis tournament...

Here’s a thing that should have never been a thing: Bluetooth-connected hair straighteners. Glamoriser, a U.K. firm that bills itself as the maker of the “world’s first Bluetooth hair straighteners“, allows users to link the device to an app, which lets the owner set certain heat and style settings. The app can also be used to remotely switch off the straighteners within Bluetooth range. Big probl...

Tesla owners and customers hoping for a refreshed Model S or Model X are going to be waiting indefinitely. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Monday night that there will be no “refreshed” Model X or Model S coming. In automotive speak, refreshed typically means small revisions to a vehicle model that extend beyond the typical yearly updates made by manufacturers. A refresh is not a major redesign, altho...

The BMW i8 is a lovely vehicle to drive even though it’s lacking. It hugs the road and commands attention. It’s thrilling in a way that few cars can achieve without speed. Sure, it’s quick, but it won’t set track records or quarter mile times. It just feels great to drive. By the numbers, there’s little reason to buy a $164,000 BMW i8 Roadster. Want speed? Buy a Porsche 911 Turbo for $161k or Corv...

Chris Hogg Contributor Share on Twitter Chris Hogg is a digital health advocate interested in how new forms of health data are changing the relationship between physician and patient. As CCO of Propeller Health, he leads the company's San Francisco office and oversees the pharma BD, health system and payer sales, clinical and medical affairs and data science teams. Silicon Valley is obsessed with...

Starbucks’ mobile ordering app has proven wildly popular for the company, with reports indicating that it had more users than the likes of Apple Pay or Google Pay last year. The convenience is just too alluring. When you’re late for work and forgot to eat, being able to order up a drink and a sandwich with a tap or two and have it ready for pick up by the time you pass the store seems sort of like...

HQ Trivia’s troubles continue after a failed mutiny to oust the CEO, a 92% decline in downloads since versus a year ago, and layoffs of 20% of its staff last week. Now TechCrunch has learned HQ has failed to install a new CEO after months of searching. Meanwhile, users continue to complain about delays for payouts of their prizes from the live mobile trivia game, and about being booted from the ga...

It was late afternoon on May 12, 2017. Two exhausted security researchers could barely unpack the events of what had just happened. Marcus Hutchins and Jamie Hankins, who were working from their homes in the U.K. for Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company Kryptos Logic, had just stopped a global cyberattack dead in its tracks. Hours earlier, WannaCry ransomware began to spread like wildfire, encr...

Brian Kateman Contributor Share on Twitter Brian Kateman is President and Cofounder of the Reducetarian Foundation. Fish make up 16% of animal protein consumed globally, anddemand is set to rise, accordingto the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, largely thanks to rising disposable incomes. But overfishing is hugely problematic – and it’s not sustainable to continue with the way th...

If these past few weeks felt like the sky was falling, you weren’t alone. In the past month there were several major internet outages affecting millions of users across the world. Sites buckled, services broke, images wouldn’t load, direct messages ground to a halt, and calendar and email unavailable for hours at a time. It’s not believed any single event tied the outages together, more so just te...

If you’re driving your car from Portland to Merced, you probably rely on GPS to see where you are. But what if you’re driving your Moon rover from Oceanus Procellarum to the Sea of Tranquility? Actually, GPS should be fine — if this NASA research pans out. Knowing exactly where you are in space, relative to other bodies anyway, is definitely a non-trivial problem. Learn more about your ad choices....

For the first time, Apple has published the number of requests it’s received from governments to take down apps from its app store. In its latest transparency report published Tuesday, the tech giant said it received 80 requests from 11 countries to remove 634 apps from its localized app stores during July 1 and December 31, 2018. Apple didn’t list the apps that were removed but noted in most case...

In a recent interview, Samsung CEO DJ Koh noted that the company was hard at work on Galaxy Fold fixes (he also said people won’t be using smartphones in five years, so who knows?). And now, a report from Bloomberg confirms that the company has put the finishing touches on those fixes two months after the handset was originally set to debut. So now what? We still don’t have a date. Learn more abou...

Tired of cleaning up after take-out or getting hangry waiting at your table in restaurants? Well Uber Eats is barging into the dine-in business. A new option in some cities lets you order your food ahead of time, go to the restaurant, then sit down inside to eat, a tipster from competing dine-in app Allset tells us. We tested it, and Uber Eats Dine-In even waives the standard Uber delivery and ser...

For four months in 2018, U.S. prosecutors in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show. The wiretap, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, was granted as part of a narcotics investigation and became the federal wiretap with the most intercepts in 2018, according to the government’s annual wireta...

Nielsen reports a record half a trillion on-demand music streams in U.S. so far this year Music streaming services have already delivered a new high of half a trillion (507.7 billion) on-demand streams in the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen’s mid-year Music Report released this week. This record number — an increase of 31. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

It looks like choose-your-own-adventure Twitter games won’t be a one-hit wonder, now that Apple’s social team has adopted the format. A new tweet from the @AppleTV Twitter account today helps users find a movie to watch by having them click through a series of Twitter threads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In its most recent report, Synergy Research, a company that monitors cloud marketshare, found that enterprise SaaS revenue passed the $100 billion run rate this quarter. The market was led by Microsoft and Salesforce. It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that these two enterprise powerhouses come in at the top. Microsoft reported $10.1 billion in Productivity and Business Processes revenue, wh...