1 July - Tech News CA - NextWeb / Tech Crunch / The Verge

The NextWeb

Eight ethical questions about exploring outer space that need answers7 minutes agoMetallic shrapnel flying faster than bullets; the Space Shuttle smashed to pieces; astronauts killed or ejected into space. The culprit? Space debris – remnants of a Russian satellite blown up by a Russian missile. The one survivor, Ryan Stone, has to find her way back to Earth with oxygen suppli...

An entrepreneur’s guide to Aruba’s startup sceneabout 2 hours agoMany people dream of building a business. Many others dream of living on a sunny island. But those who dream of doing both need look no further than Aruba. Located just 18 miles off the coast of Venezuela, the tiny Caribbean island has been making serious waves over the past few years. But unlike...

Astronomers watch as black hole drags an exploding star to its death

Here are some simple tips to not get fooled by shady ICOs

Asteroid mining could be the next big thing in space – but we’re not ready

Become a Google Analytics guru in 48 hours — for less than $10

GDPR is here, but it doesn’t mean your business is done prepping

Fortnite gamers are motivated, not addicted

Fake news tools helped us unravel a viral infidelity video

Russia blocking Telegram showed us how fragile the i

World Cup online bookmakers are set to make record $36B this yeara day agoSports betting is worth up to £625 billion per year, with 70% of that trade reckoned to come from football. During big sporting competitions, such as the World Cup, even more money is spent gambling than usual. Over the 2018 World Cup, bookmakers are estimated to make a profit of US$36.4 billion ...

OnePlus CEO confirms company is in talks with US carriersa day agoOnePlus has found tremendous success in a stalling smartphone market. But it’s always had one major limitation stateside: it’s not available through any US carrier. That could soon be a thing of the past. During an interview with PCMag, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said the company was in discussion with...

Review: Vivitar’s Follow Me Drone is a refined quadcopter with a sweet 360 camera

Facebook and Twitter’s new focus on ad transparency is a welcome, flawed improvement

Report: Microsoft really is working on a ‘pocket-sized’ folding Surface

Review: Unravel 2 is a delightful local co-op experience

Facebook says it would totally never use its patent to spy on you with your phone’s mic

DeepMind’s AI learned to turn flat images into 3D scenes

Report suggests Tether market manipulation on Kraken cryptocurrency exchange

After The Rock’s headphones, what other products should celebs release?

Build games on the platform that spawned Fortnite — the training is only $192 days agoThe best way to learn something is to actually do it, which is why following steps to construct games that actually work in the Learn to Code By Building 6 Games in the Unreal Engine course ($19, 90 percent off from TNW Deals) is a prime avenue for learning the fine art of game creation.

EOS creator Block.one to ‘participate’ in blockchain governance2 days agoEOS, the world’s fifth largest cryptocurrency, has been mired in chaos over ‘governance,’ ever since its blockchain went live earlier this month. Block.one, the currency’s parent company, is now jumping in to take control in its own hands. Block.one will participate in the EOS block producer elec...

Lightning-powered app lets you play roulette on the blockchain

Honda pulls the plug on its cute ASIMO humanoid robots

Google is reportedly building hardware for its game streaming service

12 fast-rising technologies to get ready for

This company wants to stop hackers from stealing your cryptocurrency

YouTube makes picture-in-picture video (mostly) free for Android users in the US

Review: The Wyze Cam Pan provides 360 degrees of security on a budget

Halo is (finally) coming to the small screen

Nobody cares whether you want to own a driverless car or not3 days agoCompanies such as Ford and Waymo are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D for driverless cars despite indications that few people seem interested in buying one. Luckily for proponents of autonomous vehicle technology the future of transportation is about access, not ownership. Try...

You can now put music on Instagram Stories3 days agoInstagram Stories – everyone’s favorite Snapchat rip-off – has launched a feature that lets you put music over your visual creations. We reported on this potentially happening around two months ago, but it’s set to roll-out to some users shortly. Over 400m people use Stories every day, so there’s...

The Olympic Committee is hosting an esports forum

Financial overlords are spreading cryptocurrency misinformation disguised as ‘research’

Interstellar space travel will require lots of sex

It’s official: Samsung will reveal the Galaxy Note 9 on August 9

EU police seize $5.2M cryptocurrency in continent’s largest LSD bust in history

This top App Store and Google Play Store app makes it easy to learn a new language

The Solo speaker is jack of all trades, master of none

Nostalgiasm: YouTuber reimagines Windows 95 as a mobile OS

Line is launching its own cryptocurrency exchange next month3 days agoTokyo-based messaging titan Line is gearing up to launch its own cryptocurrency exchange desk – but the service will not be immediately available to all users. In an announcement on its website, the company said its new undertaking, called BITBOX, is set to take off in July. Unfortunately, the se...

Here’s how Google will help you avoid Independence Day traffic3 days agoGoogle is helping American holiday-goers in major cities avoid the heavy traffic jams by predicting the times when most cars will be out on the road. It’s set up a handy site where you can check the optimal time to drive into each city for your celebratory freedom fireworks. To use the site, sele...

Patients should control their data, and this blockchain startup wants to make it happen

Apple reportedly wants to sell you news, TV shows, and music for a single monthly fee

Colossal 128TB SD cards could soon be on the way

Instagram launches a Lite app for low-end Android devices

Pixel 3 renders give us our best look at the devices yet

Who should get to decide what’s ethical as technology advances?

Facebook is testing a keyword snooze button

Review: The Sonos Beam is a major upgrade to your TV’s sound (and brains)

Tech Crunch

• The five best reasons you don’t want to miss Disrupt SF this Septemberabout 5 hours agoTechCrunch’s Disrupt SF (Sept. 5-7) is our most ambitious event ever. And if we’re sure of one thing, it’s that people in the startup scene will extract more insights and inspiration from this Disrupt than any before. Here’s why… More, better programming. For the first time ever at Disrupt, we ha...
• Hydrate, intoxicate, caffeinate, repeat: Meet the startups pouring the futureabout 18 hours agoThese days, it seems like everyone with extra cash has some kind of pricey drinking habit. No matter what your preference, startups and their backers likely have you covered.
• Announcing TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Latin America in São Paulo on Nov. 8about 24 hours agoTechCrunch is excited to announce that the Startup Battlefield Latin America is coming to São Paulo on November 8 this year. This is the first event TechCrunch has ever held in Latin America, and we are all in to make it a memorable one to support the fast-emerging startup ecosystem in the region...
• The hottest investors at The Europas, & your specially discounted ticket
• Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky will reportedly step down from Snap’s board of directors
• WhatsApp copies Telegram to add one-way ‘broadcast’ mode to group chats
• California man arrested for sending death threats to FCC’s Ajit Pai over net neutrality
• Here’s what it was like to stumble into Netflix and Lyft’s activation for GLOW at ‘Muscle Beach’
• What we know about Maryland’s controversial facial recognition database
• Replacing pills with a Band-Aid? Avro Life Science thinks there’s a patch for that
• Hackers took over the Gentoo Linux GitHub repositorya day agoPopular Linux distribution Gentoo has been “totally pwned” according to researchers at Sophos, and none of the current code can be trusted. The team immediately posted an update and noted that none of the real code has been compromised. However, they have pulled the GitHub repository until they c...
• Instagram PR director Gabe Madway exits, replaced by Facebook’s Anna Whitea day agoFacebook likes to keep it in the family. Gabe Madway, Instagram’s director of comms who’s run its day-to-day efforts for the past four years, is departing to work for a new company later this summer, and he’ll be replaced by Anna White from Facebook’s internal PR team. She’ll report to Kristina S...
• Sign up for the Disrupt SF Virtual Hackathon todaya day agoDevelopers and creators, this is your shot to flex your technical building skills for a chance to win free passes to Disrupt SF 2018 — and maybe even $10,000! Sign up today to participate in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 virtual hackathon! Here’s how the virtual Disrupt SF Hackathon works. Our e...
• Tinder bolsters its security to ward off hacks and blackmail
• A robotic astronaut named CIMON is on its way to the ISS
• YouTube’s picture-in-picture mode is live for all US Android users
• These 50 founders and VCs suggest 2018 may be a tipping point for women: Part 1
• Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition adds support for Spotify
• Electric scooter startup Spin is finalizing a $125 million security token offering
• Thousands of cryptocurrency projects are already dead
• Leena AI builds HR chatbots to answer policy questions automaticallya day agoSay you have a job with a large company and you want to know how much vacation time you have left, or how to add your new baby to your healthcare. This usually involves emailing or calling HR and waiting for an answer, or it could even involve crossing multiple systems to get what you […]
• Ben Horowitz is coming to Disrupt SF2 days agoIt’s been more than four years since “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” was published, and it remains — including to minds of many of us at TechCrunch — one of the best, most authentic, most instructive business books ever written. It’s partly for this reason that we’re so excited to announce its...
• Questions about Apple’s new Maps, answered2 days agoEarlier today we revealed that Apple was re-building maps from the ground up. These are some questions from readers that came up when we went live. You can ask more questions here and I’ll try to add them. What part of Maps will be new? The actual map. Apple is building them from scratch, with […]
• Business analytics firm Domo closes at $27.30/share, up 30% after raising $193M in its muted IPO
• TMGcore is running high-efficiency crypto mines in Texas
• Meet founders and investors at Disrupt SF 2018 with CrunchMatch
• Uber appoints Rachel Holt as head of New Modalities
• Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up
• TrendKite expands its PR analytics platform by acquiring Insightpool and Union Metrics
• Twitter gets a re-org and new product head
• AT&T’s low-cost TV streaming service WatchTV goes live2 days agoAT&T’s newly announced WatchTV, a low-cost live TV streaming service announced in the wake of the AT&T / Time Warner merger, is now up and running. The company already has one over-the-top streaming service with DirecTV Now, but this one is cheaper, has some restrictions and doesn’t inclu...
• Hellman & Friedman deal values SimpliSafe at $1B2 days agoSimpliSafe, the company behind the well-received SimpliSafe home security service, today announced that Hellman & Friedman, the massive venture fund and private equity firm, has taken a controlling interest in the company. While the two companies didn’t disclose the terms of the transaction, ...
• Bird and Lyft raise $900M, a16z launches a crytpo fund and $6B more for Sequoia2 days agoHello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Connie Loizos and I were joined by Norwest’s Scott Beechuk. Sadly, Matthew Lynley was reading slam poetry to ambivalent cacti in the Sonora Desert and thus co...
• Doctrine raises $11.6 million for its legal search engine
• Airbnb aims to be ‘ready’ to go public from June 30, 2019, creates cash bonus program for staff
• Verizon is shutting down go90
• Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 accepted into YC, raises $1.2 million
• In London, Uber has won the battle but risks losing the war
• Big tech companies are looking at Hollywood as the next stage in their play for the cloud
• India’s Cashify raises $12M for its second-hand smartphone business
• Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates2 days agoTesla has opened the Model 3 waitlist floodgates, inviting all reservation holders in the U.S. and Canada to order the electric sedan that’s inextricably tied to its survival. As of Thursday, existing reservation holders in the United States and Canada can log onto the Tesla website and complete ...
• Bank says Ticketmaster knew of breach months before taking action2 days agoTicketmaster UK announced on its site yesterday that it identified malicious malware on June 23rd that had affected nearly five percent of their customers, allowing an unknown third-party access to customers’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, payment details and login information between...
• Hands on with the Echo Dots Kids Edition3 days agoEarlier this year, Amazon introduced an Echo Dot for kids, with its $80 Echo Dot Kids Edition device, which comes in your choice of a red, blue, or green protective case. The idea is to market a version of Amazon’s existing Dot hardware to families by bundling it with an existing subscription ser...
• Researchers train bipedal robots to step lightly over rough terrain
• Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison is dead
• California passes landmark data privacy bill
• Television content creation in China
• Honda reportedly retires the iconic Asimo
• Instagram Stories now lets its 400M users add soundtracks
• Facebook is using machine learning to self-tune its myriad services

The Verge

• Fortnite players are mad after being killed during the epic rocket launchabout 14 hours agoThis afternoon, Epic Games unveiled its latest in-game event in Fortnite: a rocket launch that appears to have opened up a dimensional rift. The launch was a one-time event that saw thousands of players logging into the game to watch what would happen. While many people took in the spectacular si...
• Tesla keeps changing how it builds the Model 3
• Fortnite’s rocket launch created a spectacular dimensional rift in the sky
• Disney’s flying robot stunt double can pose just like a superhero
• The mobile airbag may be coming to save your phone
• Drake’s Scorpion breaks Apple Music’s single-day streaming record with over 170 million streams
• Jimmy Fallon will kick off Tonight Show book club with YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone
• 8 new trailers you should watch this week
• The best Fourth of July tech deals from Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Walmart, and more
• ‘Local Twitter’ finally gives a name to being performatively basic online
• Paul Tremblay’s apocalyptic novel The Cabin at the End of the World is a parents’ worst nightmareabout 22 hours agoOver the last couple of years, Paul Tremblay has consistently written some of the scariest stories that I’ve picked up. In A Head Full of Ghosts, a blue-collar Boston family contends with the abnormal behavior of their teenage daughter, who may or may not be possessed by a demon. In Disappearance...
• There might be poop in the water you’re swimming in so please don’t swallow it, CDC says
• California man arrested for threatening to kill FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s family over net neutrality
• On Scorpion, Drake rages against the internet
• T-Mobile is rolling out support for the next-gen texting standard backed by Google
• Instagram is testing a persistent Stories bar that follows you down the feed
• Comcast is experiencing a nationwide outage
• Your kids will soon be able to listen to Spotify through their Echo Dot Kids Edition
• What’s in your bag, Lakeith Stanfield?
• Tinder finally encrypted everyone’s photos
• The Vivo Nex S’s pop-up selfie camera is making unwanted appearancesa day agoThe Vivo Nex S smartphone caused a stir for doing away with bezels and notches in favor of a pop-up selfie camera that’s hidden in the top edge of the phone. Now users in China who have gotten their hands on the Vivo Nex S say the selfie camera is making surprise appearances when they’re casually...
• Eight new anime shows to check out this summer
• The EFF, the Internet Archive, and human rights groups have sued to stop FOSTA
• Microsoft details secret ‘pocketable’ Surface device in leaked email
• Here’s what’s next now that the FDA has approved a cannabis drug for seizures
• Netflix’s Kiss Me First has an unusually personal take on gamer culture
• How facial recognition helped police identify the Capital Gazette shooter
• After 16 years of war, Battlefield V is a turning point
• Apple is rebuilding Maps with its own data
• Sony’s futuristic earbuds are a pain in the present
• Nintendo’s NES Classic is getting a new wireless controller in time for its relaunch2 days agoNintendo is relaunching the miniature NES Classic today, but that’s not all retro fans have to get excited about. 8BitDo has also announced a new, redesigned wireless controller for the micro console, which is available today for preorder. The company previously made the best wireless option for ...
• AT&T’s new WatchTV streaming service is now available
• Google Maps may be getting Waze’s best feature: incident reporting
• Fortnite’s big Saturday event will only happen once, in real time
• Vergecast: Mojave beta, a culture roundup, and this week in Elon
• Oppo’s O-Free truly wireless headphones are designed to match the Find X
• Humanity inherits the galaxy in The Expanse’s season 3 finale
• The best electric skateboard
• The NES Classic is back: here’s where you can pick one up
• Five newspaper staff killed by man who sued them for covering his online threats and harassment
• Wolfenstein II on the Switch is the best way to kill Nazis on the go2 days agoWhen the Nintendo Switch first debuted, I marveled at the ability to play a vast open world like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild both in my living room and on the go. Sixteen months into the console’s life and the novelty still hasn’t worn off. The latest such game to inspire those feelin...
• Verizon is shutting down its original video app Go90
• This flying ‘dragon’ drone can change shape in midair
• Apple to reportedly get its OLED displays from LG to reduce reliance on Samsung
• Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction’s most controversial authors, has died
• Former Pixar employee details how the company’s rampant sexism went far beyond John Lasseter
• No, Facebook did not patent secretly turning your phone mics on when it hears your TV
• Amazon’s online pharmacy acquisition proves it’s serious about disrupting healthcare
• AT&T fined $5.25 million for 911 outages that dropped at least 15,000 calls
• SpaceX is sending an AI robot ‘crew member’ to join the astronauts on the space station