Tag: Daily Crunch

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Daily Crunch: Twitter will let you hide replies

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Twitter will start testing its ‘hide replies’ feature next week, in Canada

Before you start complaining about censorship, keep in mind that hidden replies won’t actually get pulled from Twitter — they’ll disappear from the default view, but you can still tap a gray icon to see them.

The goal is to give the person who starts a conversation more control over which comments are visible, making it harder for trolls to jump in and derail things.

2. Ford and Volkswagen team up on EVs, with Ford the first outside automaker to use VW’s MEB platform

This EV tie-up will see Ford using Volkswagen’s platform to develop “at least one” fully electric car for the European market.

3. YouTube is giving creators more ways to make money

The new features include Super Stickers, allowing users to purchase original animated stickers during a live stream or premiere.

4. Amazon said to be launching new Echo speaker with premium sound next year

Amazon has plans for an Echo that more directly competes with high-end speakers like Apple’s HomePod, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

5. FEC says political campaigns can now get discounted cybersecurity help

In a long-awaited decision, the Federal Elections Commission will now allow political campaigns to appoint cybersecurity helpers to protect themselves from cyberthreats and malicious attackers.

6. WPP sells 60% of market research giant Kantar to Bain, valuing Kantar at $4B

Kantar provides stats and insights on how consumers buy and think of products in areas like technology, media and health — we’ve written many stories citing their numbers.

7. How Roblox avoided the gaming graveyard and grew into a $2.5B company

Time for a new EC-1, which provides an in-depth profile of a successful startup! This time, we’re focusing on Roblox, a company that took at least a decade to hit its stride. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Twitter will let you hide replies

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Twitter will start testing its ‘hide replies’ feature next week, in Canada

Before you start complaining about censorship, keep in mind that hidden replies won’t actually get pulled from Twitter — they’ll disappear from the default view, but you can still tap a gray icon to see them.

The goal is to give the person who starts a conversation more control over which comments are visible, making it harder for trolls to jump in and derail things.

2. Ford and Volkswagen team up on EVs, with Ford the first outside automaker to use VW’s MEB platform

This EV tie-up will see Ford using Volkswagen’s platform to develop “at least one” fully electric car for the European market.

3. YouTube is giving creators more ways to make money

The new features include Super Stickers, allowing users to purchase original animated stickers during a live stream or premiere.

4. Amazon said to be launching new Echo speaker with premium sound next year

Amazon has plans for an Echo that more directly competes with high-end speakers like Apple’s HomePod, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

5. FEC says political campaigns can now get discounted cybersecurity help

In a long-awaited decision, the Federal Elections Commission will now allow political campaigns to appoint cybersecurity helpers to protect themselves from cyberthreats and malicious attackers.

6. WPP sells 60% of market research giant Kantar to Bain, valuing Kantar at $4B

Kantar provides stats and insights on how consumers buy and think of products in areas like technology, media and health — we’ve written many stories citing their numbers.

7. How Roblox avoided the gaming graveyard and grew into a $2.5B company

Time for a new EC-1, which provides an in-depth profile of a successful startup! This time, we’re focusing on Roblox, a company that took at least a decade to hit its stride. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Apple disables Walkie Talkie app

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Apple disables Walkie Talkie app due to vulnerability that could allow iPhone eavesdropping

The Walkie Talkie app on Apple Watch allows two users who have accepted an invite from each other to receive audio chats via a “push to talk” interface reminiscent of the PTT buttons on older cell phones.

Apple has apologized for the bug and for the inconvenience of being unable to use the feature while a fix is made.

2. Amazon invests $700 million to retrain a third of its US workforce by 2025

The company’s stated goal is to “upskill” 100,000 of its U.S. employees for more in-demand jobs by 2025. That’s one in three of Amazon’s U.S. workers.

3. Hospitality business Sonder confirms new investment, $1B+ valuation

Sonder, which rents serviced apartments akin to boutique hotels, has raised $225 million at a valuation north of $1 billion.

4. N26 launches its challenger bank in the US

If you’re familiar with N26, the product going live today won’t surprise you much. Customers in the U.S. can download a mobile app and create a bank account from their phone in just a few minutes.

5. Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

Zoom took flack from users following a public vulnerability disclosure on Monday by Jonathan Leitschuh, in which he described how “any website [could] forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user’s permission.”

6. OneTrust raises $200M at a $1.3B valuation to help organizations navigate online privacy rules

It’s an outsized round for a Series A, being made at an equally outsized valuation, but according to CEO Kabir Barday, that’s because of the wide-ranging nature of the issue, and OneTrust’s early moves tackling it.

7. The future of car ownership: Cars-as-a-service

Previously, we explored the different startups attempting to change car buying. But not everyone wants to buy a car. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: HBO Max is coming in 2020

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. AT&T’s new streaming service HBO Max arrives in 2020, will be the exclusive home of ‘Friends’

Hooray, we don’t have to call it the Untitled WarnerMedia streaming service anymore! Instead, it’s going to be named HBO Max, and it will launch next spring with more than 10,000 hours of content available to subscribers.

The service won’t be limited to HBO content — hence the availability of “Friends” — but the naming indicates how important HBO as a TV brand is to consumers and to parent company AT&T.

2. Visa funds $40M for no-password crypto vault Anchorage

Visa and Andreessen Horowitz are betting even bigger on cryptocurrency, funding a big round for fellow Facebook Libra Association member Anchorage’s omnimetric blockchain security system.

3. Nintendo Switch Lite’s trade-off of whimsy for practicality is a good one

Nintendo revealed a new Switch Lite version of its current-generation console today, which attaches the controllers permanently, shrinks the hardware a bit and adds a touch more battery life. It also takes away the “Switch” part of the equation, because you can only use it handheld, instead of attached to a TV or as a unique tabletop gaming experience.

Opera Opay Nigeria

4. Opera founded startup OPay raises $50M for mobile finance in Nigeria

OPay’s raise tracks greater influence in African tech from China.

5. Flaws in hospital anesthesia and respiratory devices allow remote tampering

Security researchers have found a vulnerability in a networking protocol used in popular hospital anesthesia and respiratory machines, which they say if exploited could be used to maliciously tamper with the devices.

6. Snapchat announces new shows from Serena Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others

The shows will begin airing this month. They’re all exclusive to Snapchat, and many of them come from creators who have a substantial following on other platforms

7. Understanding mental health in Silicon Valley, with professional coach and former investor Jerry Colonna

In a conversation with Connie Loizos, Colonna discusses how previously developed standards of success can impact your ability to lead and find fulfillment at work. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Instagram fights bullying

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. New Instagram features flag potentially offensive comments, allow you to quietly ‘restrict’ users

Instagram seems to be trying to find ways to limit bad behavior without outright blocking posts or banning users.

The first feature is supposed to use artificial intelligence to flag comments that “may be considered offensive,” then gives those users the option to “undo” their comments before posting. The second addition is the ability to “restrict” users looking at your account — which is less obvious than outright blocking someone.

2. Apple stops selling the 12-inch MacBook, a computer you either loved or were confused by

Apple officially stopped selling the 12-inch MacBook today, a computer that hasn’t had an update since June 2017 and that is also maybe one of the most contentious Macs in Apple’s lineup.

3. The sinkhole that saved the internet

An in-depth look at the “kill switch” preventing future WannaCry outbreaks.

closeup of landline telephone

4. FCC proposal would let it punish international robocallers

While the FCC and Congress hammer out new rules to (hopefully) banish robocalls forever, there are some short-term solutions that can help in the meantime — and one may arrive in just a few weeks.

5. Spotify Lite for Android gets an official launch in 36 countries

The app is designed to work on patchy or weak internet connections and, at just 10MB, it is small enough to cater to lower-end devices that have limited storage or older phones.

6. A vulnerability in Zoom’s Mac client could allow websites to turn on cameras without permission

In a Medium post, security researcher Jason Leitschuh detailed the vulnerability, writing that it may remain an issue even if users have uninstalled the Mac client.

7. Meituan, Alibaba and the new landscape of ride-hailing in China

The government is tightening rules around vehicle and driver accreditation, leading to a widescale driver shortage. Meanwhile, established carmakers, including BMW and state-owned Shouqi, are entering the fray. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: A bad month for the internet

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. It was a really bad month for the internet

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 calendars and email were unavailable for hours at a time.

What can we learn? For one, internet providers need to do better with routing filters. Secondly, perhaps it’s not a good idea to run new code directly on a production system.

2. Twitter and Facebook reportedly not invited to White House ‘social media summit’

Trump’s White House is hosting what it calls “a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment” this week. But according to a new report from CNN, neither Facebook nor Twitter qualify as “digital leaders,” as neither platform has received an invite.

3. ICE mined driver’s license photos for facial recognition

News broke over the weekend that the FBI and immigration officials access images — often without obtaining a search warrant or court order — in order to identify criminal suspects but also witnesses, victims and innocent bystanders. In some cases agents would simply email the state department of motor vehicles for assistance.

4. 15Five raises $30.7M to expand its employee development toolkit

15Five builds software and services to help organizations and their employees evaluate their performance, as well as set and meet goals.

5. UK’s ICO fines British Airways a record £183M over GDPR breach that leaked data from 500,000 users

The fine — 1.5% of BA’s total revenues for 2018 — is the highest-ever that the U.K.’s information commissioner has leveled at a company over a data breach.

6. The startups creating the future of RegTech and financial services

From a practical perspective, everything from the security requirements to the sales process are substantially different for RegTech startups targeting financial services. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

There was no holiday break for the Original Content team, as we reviewed the new season of “Stranger Things.”

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Daily Crunch: Layoffs at HQ Trivia

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. HQ Trivia lays off ~20% as it preps subscriptions

The cuts hit HQ’s HR, marketing and product engineering teams, according to LinkedIn profiles of employees let go. The cuts could further hamper morale at the startup following a tough first half of the year.

It also could leave the company short-handed as it attempts to diversify revenue with the upcoming launch of monthly subscriptions.

2. Tesla shows off next-gen automated emergency braking stopping for pedestrians and cyclists

The upcoming features include automatically engaging the brakes on a vehicle when the system detects a pedestrian crossing the car’s path, and doing the same for a cyclist.

3. Internet group brands Mozilla ‘internet villain’ for supporting DNS privacy feature

The trade group for U.K. internet service providers nominated Mozilla for the title because of a proposed security feature that ISPs say will allow users to “bypass U.K. filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the U.K.”

4. Apple reportedly shifting to new keyboard design in 2019/2020 MacBooks

Apple is set to replace the technology underlying the keyboards found in its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro computers, according to a new report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

5. Sony’s new wireless earbuds pack great noise-canceling and battery life

Brian Heater has only had a limited time with Sony’s WF-1000XM3, but he says they seem custom-built for long flights.

6. Waresix hauls in $14.5M to advance its push to digitize logistics in Indonesia

Like others in its industry — which include Chinese unicorn Manbang and BlackBuck in India — Waresix is focused on optimizing logistics by making the process more transparent for clients and more efficient for haulage companies and truckers.

7. What everyone at a startup needs to know about immigration

Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: FaceTime gets an eye contact upgrade

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Apple’s iOS 13 update will make FaceTime eye contact way easier

Apple has added to the latest iOS 13 Developer beta a feature called “FaceTime Attention Correction.” The feature apparently does a terrific job of making it appear like you’re looking directly into the camera, even when you’re looking at the screen during a FaceTime call.

A couple of catches: Your eyes can end up looking kind of dead in the process. And the feature is only available on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

2. Uber Eats invades restaurants with Dine-In option

A new option in some cities lets you order your food ahead of time, go to the restaurant, then sit down inside to eat.

3. Waymo is now allowed to transport passengers in its self-driving vehicles on California roads

The California Public Utilities Commission granted Waymo a permit on Tuesday to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot.

ive inner glow

4. Apple Sans Ive

Matthew Panzarino has some thoughts on what the departure of Jony Ive means for Apple.

5. KKR confirms it has acquired Canadian software company Corel, reportedly for over $1B

Founded in the 1980s as one of the first big software companies to capitalize on the first wave of personal computer ownership, Corel tried to compete against Microsoft in those early days (unsuccessfully), and has seen a lot of ups and downs.

6. Sony announces a new $185M fund to invest in tech startups

While Sony launched a fund in 2016, this new vehicle has been set up in partnership with other organizations, including Daiwa Capital Holdings.

7. When is the right time to pitch VCs for funding?

Aggregate data from 2016 to 2018 points to three major themes you should consider as you’re raising capital. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Tim Cook fires back at the WSJ

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Tim Cook hits ‘send’

Apple’s CEO isn’t happy with The Wall Street Journal.

A day after a WSJ report describing departing design guru Jony Ive’s cooling relationship with Apple, Tim Cook made the rare move of responding directly in an email sent to a reporter at NBC, where he called the story “absurd” and said it doesn’t “match with reality.”

2. Facebook News Feed changes downrank misleading health info and dangerous ‘cures’

The social network today announced it will minimize the spread of health content that’s sensational or misleading. (Maybe it should go ahead and block this stuff, instead of just downranking it?)

3. Loon breaks its stratospheric balloon flight record with 223 days aloft

This beats the Alphabet-owned company’s previous record of 198 days in the air by nearly a month, and it’s great news for its goal of delivering internet connectivity to hard-to-reach areas.

LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 21: Cloudflare Partner, Matthew Prince appears on stage at the 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt Europe/London, at The Old Billingsgate on October 21, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

4. A Cloudflare outage is impacting sites everywhere

If you’ve been experiencing “502 Bad Gateway” notices all morning, for better or worse, you’re not alone.

5. Netflix is officially making a show based on Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ comics

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news over the weekend that a deal was in the works, and it claimed that this will be DC Entertainment’s most expensive TV series yet.

6. Calm raises $27M to McConaughey you to sleep

Meditation app unicorn Calm lets you doze off to the dulcet tones of actor Matthew McConaughey’s southern drawl or writer Stephen Fry’s English accent.

7. How startups can make influencer marketing work on a budget

Influencer marketing has ballooned into a $25 billion industry, yet for many marketing managers, it’s not delivering the results to justify the hype. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Facebook is ‘too narrow’ on removing white supremacy

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Facebook civil rights audit says white supremacy policy is ‘too narrow’

Over the last six months, Facebook has made changes around enforcing rules against hate speech, fighting discrimination in ads and protecting against misinformation and suppression, according to a new progress report on an audit led by former ACLU Washington Director Laura Murphy.

However, the report says Facebook’s policy is still “too narrow.” That’s because it solely prohibits explicit praise, support or representation of the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism,” but does not technically prohibit references to those terms and ideologies.

2. Rocket Lab successfully launches seventh Electron rocket for ‘Make It Rain’ mission

The private rocket launch startup’s latest mission took off yesterday from the company’s private Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

3. Analysts think global 5G smartphone shipments will overtake 4G in 2023

A new report from Canalys suggests that 2023 will be the true pivot point for 5G.

netease music streaming

4. China silences podcast and music apps as online crackdown widens

On Friday, a total of 26 audio-focused apps were ordered to terminate, suspend services or have talks with regulators as they were investigated and deemed to have spread “historical nihilism” and “pornography,” according to a notice posted by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

5. Samsung launched an app store for Bixby

Now vendors can make their Bixby-integrated services (or “capsules”) available to users. The store opens today in the U.S. and Spain, launching with a handful of key apps, including Google Maps, Spotify, iHeartRadio, NPR and Yelp.

6. Assistive technologies will be a $26 billion-dollar market, and investors are only now addressing it

Organizations like Not Impossible Labs, a Los Angeles-based company, and startups like OrCam Technologies, eSight, B-Temia, Kinova Robotics, Open Bionics, Voiceitt and Whill are harnessing technology to bring solutions to people with disabilities across the world. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The Equity team has some thoughts about reports of internal drama at Brandless, while Original Content reviews the Netflix sketch comedy “I Think You Should Leave.”