If you’re enrolled in the beta version of the Cortana app for Android, you’ve already got access to one of its more interesting updates in recent memory. As spotted by MSPoweruser, Microsoft has introduced a feature that brings its AI assistant front and center on Google’s mobile OS. Enabling “Add Cortana to my lock screen” will add a shortcut to the app directly… Read More
President-elect Trump has called for a trillion dollars in infrastructure investment, but he wants the private sector to play a critical role. Fortunately, one of our nation’s immediate infrastructure needs will not have to rely on the federal government at all. Read More
Silicon Valley is no stranger to protests against tech companies. But it’s unusual when the tech workers themselves protest tech. Such was the case this morning in front of Palantir headquarters in Palo Alto where 50 people in the tech community came out in the pouring rain to demand the data mining startup take a firm stand against the makings of a Muslim registry. The organizers… Read More
The new Touch Bar MacBooks were pretty well stocked with first-party software support when they launched last year. One proprietary program that was notably absent from the shiny new input device, however, was Logic Pro X, Apple’s pro-level audio editor, with the company promising delivery in early 2017.
On cue, Cupertino has dropped an update that brings the functionality to the… Read More
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a Dallas court yesterday as part of a lawsuit claiming that Oculus VR, the startup Facebook acquired for roughly $2 billion, was based on stolen technology. Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg defended Oculus and in the process revealed a number of new details about the negotiations involved in purchasing the company. Among them: that Facebook agreed to… Read More
Just under two years ago, Facebook introduced a web interface for its private chat application, Messenger. Now, Facebook is integrating that same web app into the desktop version of Facebook, where it replaces the older messaging experience. The change has been spotted by a number of users in multiple markets – including TechCrunch staff in the U.S. and Europe – which… Read More
Drone delivery startup Flirtey has raised $16 million in Series A funding to bring its high-flying service to new customers, companies and possibly countries. Earlier, the startup raised $120,000 in seed funding and participated in the Y Combinator accelerator. Flirtey was also the first company to attain FAA approvals to conduct a drone delivery in the US in 2015. That fact helped it… Read More
The U.S. Department of Labor has sued Oracle for discriminatory employment practices, the government body announced on Wednesday. The Department of Labor specifically states that the company has “a systemic practice” in place of paying white male workers more than others in the same role, including “women, African American and Asian employees.” The suit also alleges… Read More
Google is taking over Twitter’s mobile app developer platform Fabric, as well as its Crashlytics crash reporting system, Answers mobile app analytics, Digits SMS login system and FastLane development automation system. Twitter launched Fabric as a modular SDK in 2014 to allow developers to pick and choose different tools to improve their apps, and it now serves apps reaching 2.5… Read More
Deepgram, a YC backed startup using machine learning to analyze audio data for businesses, is open sourcing an internal deep learning tool called Kur. The release should further help those interested in the space get their ideas off the ground more easily. The startup is also including 10 hours of transcribed audio, spliced into 10 second increments, to expedite the training process. Similar… Read More
It’s hard to believe that the Crunchies is already 10 years old. Time really does fly when you’re having fun, and the Crunchies is (almost) always fun! The 10th Annual Crunchies Awards goes down on February 6 at the SF War Memorial Opera House and tickets are still available. If you want to hang out with our host Chelsea Peretti, our wonderful presenters such as Marissa Mayer,… Read More
Tidal’s latest feature has arrived with as little fanfare as humanly possible. The music service has snuck in a new Track Edit, accessible by opening the Option menu while playing a song. Available on the music service’s mobile app, the new feature lets users trim down tracks viewable in a wave format, setting the beginning and end at specific time, fading in and out and even… Read More
Slack has spent most of its life as a dead-simple workplace communications tool, with small changes happening here or there. But to keep things dead simple means that you have to be very careful when you decide to make any big changes — even if it’s something users have wanted for a long time.
Today, Slack is finally starting to roll out one of those major changes in threaded… Read More
Netflix is really tapping into the appetite of its sci-fi audience, with another trailer for a new film that imagines a weird future. In the first teaser for The Discovery, a film soon coming to the streaming service, we get a glimpse into a love story unfolding in a world where Robert Redford has proven the afterlife is real, and suicides are spiking as a result. It looks kind of like a… Read More
The clock is ticking down, and you only have a few more days to submit an application to participate in the TC Meetup + Pitch-offs in D.C. and Miami. The events go down on February 21 (Washington D.C.) and February 23 (Miami) respectively, and only ten companies will be competing, so don’t tarry! If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, let me get you up to speed. The… Read More
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox every day of the week, sign up here. Obama’s clemency, the true size of Facebook’s bet on VR and Theranos in trouble again. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for January 18, 2017. And if a… Read More
Small-plot farmers in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania can now go digital―coordinating sales, payments, and distribution of crops thanks to a pilot program called 2KUZE launched by Mastercard. The pilot program for the agricultural technology app was announced this week. 2KUZE, which means “let’s grow together” in Swahili, was developed at Mastercard’s Nairobi Labs… Read More
A streaming service for stand-up comedy called Laugh.ly, which publicly launched this past August, has now closed on $2.25 million in seed funding led by New York Angels, the company announced today. Available for both iOS and Android devices, Laugh.ly is the first to offer an extensive library of comedians’ stand-up sets, with content from top names in the biz, including Kevin Hart,… Read More
DataSift, which taps and structures data from social networks to provide more insights into it, has added a new partner to its own network. The company has linked up with LinkedIn — the social network for the working world with 467 million users that was acquired by Microsoft recently for $26.2 billion — to help develop a stronger marketing profile for LinkedIn by parsing its… Read More
Amazon’s ComiXology is delivering on the promise it made last year to create original content exclusively for users of its platform and Kindle customers, with Adventure Time Marshall Lee Spectacular, an Adventure Time tale focusing on the Vampire King from the franchise’s alternate gender-swapped story universe. The Marshall Lee story is available as a $3.99 one-time purchase,… Read More
