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As summer comes to a close and the leaves begin to brown, the gaming world goes through its own sort of transition. A handful of new titles prep for launch, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. But unlike previous CoD titles, Black Ops 4 represents a counter-attack on the world’s biggest game, Fortnite Battle Royale. For the first time, Call of Duty is ditching a campaign and opting to introduce a...

At a Samsung event last week, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins explained why he doesn’t stream with female gamers. “If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” said Ninja, who is married, in an interview with Polygon. As you might...

Trulia, the online real estate site owned by its former rival Zillow, wants to give you a better idea of what a certain neighborhood feels like before you move there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let’s get the fish in the barrel out of the way. Voatz are a tech startup whose bright idea was to disrupt democracy by having people vote on their phone, and store the votes on, you guessed it, a blockchain. Does this sound like a bad idea? Welp. It turned out that they seemed awfully casual about basic principles of software security, such as not hard-coding your AWS credentials. It turned out t...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launches tonight to “touch the sun” If you think it's hot on Earth right now... NASA’s ambitious mission to go closer to the Sun than ever before is set to launch in the small hours between Friday and Saturday — at 3:33 AM Eastern from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to be precise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 1960s were a beautiful time for watches. Horlogy was in its prime and the great names we know and love today – Rolex, Omega, Cartier – were just one of many watchmakers churning out commodity products to a world that needed to tell the time. Their watches – simple, elegant, and mechanically complex – were the ultimate in mechanical efficiency and design and no one did it quite as well as Seiko...

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by 500 Startups CEOChristine Tsaifor what turned out to be a super packed episode. We kicked off with the latest from Slack: $400 million new dollars at a shiny, new $7 billion valuation,according to TechCrunch. Learn...

Last year I had a good time comparing Sony’s DPT-RP1 with the home-grown reMarkable. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, and one of the Sony’s was that the thing was just plain big. They’ve remedied that with a much smaller sibling, the DPT-CP1, and it’s just as useful as I expected. Which is to say: in a very specific way. Sony’s e-paper tablets are single-minded little gadgets: all the...

Remember those rumors that Samsung would be working to keep costs of its new flagships at reasonable levels? Yeah, no such luck, bucko. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 starts at $999.95. That will get you the base-level model, with an admittedly generous 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM. The next SKU up will really make the eyeballs pop out of your head like a Tex Avery cartoon, however. Learn more about...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking about taking the company private, he said in a Tweet this morning. More specifically, he said he may buy back the company for $82 billion (at a share price of $420 plus debt), and already has the funding to do so. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018 I’ve reached out to Tesla — given that this could jus...

IDC’s latest tablet numbers tell a familiar story. Shipments are down yet again, a trend that shows no sign of abating. There is, however, one clear bright spot in all of this, bucking the trend. Quarter after quarter, convertibles have continued to grow, as users have demanded more productivity than is traditionally possible with slates. It’s no surprise, then, that Apple, Microsoft, Google and S...

Let’s be honest, if you use a receiver as the hub of your home entertainment system, you probably only use about a quarter of the buttons, dials and inputs on it, at most. Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles of a receiver-driven surround sound system. For those looking to get their sound with a considerably smaller footprint, 2.1 powered systems consisting of a pair of bookshelf speakers...

Clear, the biometrics company you’ve probably seen at airports and at a few other prominent queues, is rolling out the capability to simultaneously verify your ID and pay for an alcoholic drink with your fingerprint. It’s only at Seattle’s CenturyLink and Safeco Fields (and only a handful of concessions stands at those) but if it’s successful you can bet we’ll be seeing more of it. That makes it t...

15 names that would have been better than Android Pie Let’s say, hypothetically, that you make a mobile operating system, and somewhere along the line, you decided whimsically to name major updates after alphabetical dessert foods. What a fun idea! Sure, some letters will prove harder than others. “K” and “O” are admittedly tough, but that’s nothing that little bit of clever cross-branding can’t f...

For being the richest company ever with $243 billion in cash, Apple sure cuts corners in the stingiest ways. The hardware giant became the first trillion-dollar company week. Yet it’s tough to reconcile Apple earning $11 billion in profit per quarter with it still screwing us over on cords and keyboards. The “it just works” philosophy has slipped through the cracks of the money-printing machine. L...

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch’s Matthew Lynley and Crunchbase News’s Alex Wilhelm were joined byJyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics and a partner at Unusual Ventures, among other startupwork. Our own Connie Loizos was off this week. This episode was effectively a news grab-ba...

How should you feel to know your employer is far, far richer than Croesus? As Apple CEO Tim Cook tells it — in a memo to staff, obtained by BuzzFeed News, re: yesterday’s news that the computer company Steve Jobs founded back in 1976 is now worth more than $1,000,000,000,000 — you should feel A) pretty stoked that your labor has helped achieve a significant financial milestone but also B) know it’...

Virtual reality is an isolating experience. You power it up, strap the headset on and just sort of drift off into your own world. But maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. Maybe there’s a way to slip into a virtual world and still interact with your surroundings. Electronauts presents an interesting example. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 12 a few days ago. 9to5mac discovered strings in configuration files that reference dual SIM devices. You should expect at least one new iPhone model with two SIM trays. Apple is said to unveil three new iPhone models in September. In addition to an updated iPhone X, the company should announce a bigger second generation “iPhone X Plus”. Apple also plans to bri...

Well, Elon Musk sure had a good run at fixing the world’s pressing problems. Stuff like climate change — with those fancy electric sports cars, built in a fancy tent. Or those fancysolar roof tiles. (Fancy rockets aren’t really a ‘fix’ at this point but he’s thinking about the extraterrestrial future of humanity, okay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You probably never think about the Google Clock app on your Android phone. And unless you are one of those happy early risers, it’s not exactly an app that brings you joy. But every day, it wakes you right on time, with either some annoying chirps or other sounds that, over time, will stress you out. But stress no more. Google today launched an update to the Clock app that now lets you choose any...

Several dummy units of future iPhone models have leaked over the weekend. It gives a good idea of what you should expect to see in September when Apple introduces the next iPhone. Most likely, the iPhones on these photos aren’t actual iPhones. They are just dummy units. Every year, a few manufacturers create objects that look exactly like future iPhones. They are based on leaked design schematics...

Back at Google I/O, Google announced two new features for Google Assistant: custom routines, and schedules. Both focusing on automating things you do regularly, but in different ways. The first lets you trigger multiple commands with a single custom phrase — like saying “Hey Google, I’m awake” to unsilence your phone, turn on the lights, and read the news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...

Tesla is no stranger to branded merch. Its got the standard company swag — the hats, the shirts, and the mugs. It’s got quirkier stuff, like miniature Teslas for kids and USB chargers shaped like the Superchargers that juice up their vehicles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tickets to theTechCrunch Summer Party at August Capitalare on the verge of selling out. If you want to attend our 13th annual summer fete on July 27, there’s no time to waste. Reserve your ticket right now. This event draws an incredible mix of Silicon Valley’s startup community — a who’s who of founders, investors, tech makers, movers and shakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...