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Daily Crunch: Uber will deactivate low-rated riders
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. Uber will start deactivating riders with low ratings
Uber drivers have been able to rate their passengers before this, but those passengers were never really at risk of deactivation — until now. In a blog post, Uber’s Kate Parker said that while only “a small number of riders” should be affected, “it’s the right thing to do.”
The company isn’t announcing a specific rating cutoff. Instead, it says it will deactivate users who fall significantly below a city’s average, after “several notifications and opportunities to improve his or her rating.”
2. Huawei files motion to challenge sweeping US ban, calling it ‘not normal’
The Chinese hardware giant has filed a motion for summary judgement that questions the constitutionality of the section of the National Defense Authorization Act that the Trump administration used to halt imports.
3. Flipboard hacks prompt password resets for millions of users
Hackers stole usernames, email addresses, passwords and account tokens for third-party services. According to Flipboard, “not all” users’ account data were involved in the breaches, but the company declined to say how many users were affected.
4. Amazon just launched a $90, 5.5-inch Echo Show
The Echo Show 5 (that’s “five” for inches) doesn’t replace any existing Amazon smart screen, even though the price point will no doubt make many think twice about the $130 Spot.
5. Talkspace picks up $50 million Series D
Talkspace launched back in 2012 with a mission to make therapy accessible to as many people as possible. The platform allows users to pay a subscription fee for unlimited messaging with one of the company’s 5,000 healthcare professionals.
6. NYC subway riders will be able to swipe in with Apple Pay starting Friday
Apple Pay is hitting select subway stations this Friday, May 31. New Yorkers will then be able to swipe their iPhones or Apple Watches to catch a ride.
7. Q&A with J Crowley, Head of Product at Airbnb Lux, on what makes a great PM
Crowley has run product at three big-name companies: Foursquare/Swarm, Blue Apron and now Airbnb. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Samsung delays the Galaxy Fold
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. Samsung reportedly pushes back Galaxy Fold release
Four days out from the Galaxy Fold’s official release date, Samsung is pushing things back a bit, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. There’s no firm time frame for the launch, though the phone is still expected “in the coming weeks.”
TechCrunch’s reviewer Brian Heater says he hasn’t experienced any issues with his device, but a number of others reported malfunctioning displays.
2. Tencent’s latest investment is an app that teaches grannies in China to dance
Called Tangdou, or “sugar beans” in Chinese, the app announced that it has raised a Series C funding round led by Tencent.
3. SiriusXM’s new streaming-only ‘Essential’ plan targets smart speaker owners
The company has launched a new plan called SiriusXM Essential, targeting those who listen in-home and on mobile devices. The streaming-only plan is also more affordable — $8 per month, versus the $15.99 per month (and up) plans for SiriusXM’s satellite radio service for cars.
4. Confirmed: Pax Labs raises $420M at a valuation of $1.7B
That’s right, $420 million for a vape maker. CEO Bharat Vasan said, “This financing round allows us to invest in new products and new markets, including international growth in markets like Canada and exploring opportunities in hemp-based CBD extracts.”
5. Sony launches a taxi-hailing app to rival Uber in Tokyo
The service is a joint venture between Sony, its payment services subsidiary and five licensed taxi companies. Because ride-hailing with civilian cars is illegal in Japan, the service will focus on connecting licensed taxis with passengers.
6. The Exit: an AI startup’s McPivot
An in-depth interview with investor Adam Fisher about the recent McDonald’s acquisition of Dynamic Yield. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
This week’s episode of Equity addresses the aforementioned cannabis vaping round, followed up by an Equity Shot about the Fastly S-1. Meanwhile, on Original Content we reviewed Donald Glover’s “Guava Island” and discussed the new season of “Game of Thrones.”
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Daily Crunch: Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy Fold
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. Unfolding the Samsung Galaxy Fold
After eight years of teasing a folding device, Samsung finally pulled the trigger with an announcement at its developer’s conference late last year. But the device itself remained mysterious.
Earlier this week, Brian Heater finally held the Galaxy Fold in his hands, and he was pretty impressed.
2. YouTube’s algorithm added 9/11 facts to a live stream of the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire
Some viewers following live coverage of the Notre-Dame Cathedral broadcast on YouTube were met with a strangely out-of-place info box offering facts about the September 11 attacks. Ironically, the feature is supposed to fact check topics that generate misinformation on the platform.
3. Hulu buys back AT&T’s minority stake in streaming service now valued at $15 billion
Disney now has a 67 percent ownership stake in Hulu — which it gained, in part, through its $71 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Comcast has a 33 percent stake.
4. I asked the US government for my immigration file and all I got were these stupid photos
The “I” in question is our security reporter Zack Whittaker, who filed a Freedom of Information request with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to obtain all of the files the government had collected on him in order to process his green card application. Seven months later, disappointment.
Video app TikTok has become a global success, but it stumbled hard in one of the world’s biggest mobile markets, India, over illicit content.
6. Smart speakers’ installed base to top 200 million by year end
Canalys forecasts the installed base will grow by 82.4 percent, from 114 million units in 2018 to 207.9 million in 2019.
7. Salesforce ‘acquires’ Salesforce.org for $300M in a wider refocus on the nonprofit sector
The company announced that it will integrate Salesforce.org — which had been a reseller of Salesforce software and services to the nonprofit sector — into Salesforce itself as part of a new nonprofit and education vertical.
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Daily Crunch: Meet the new CEO of Google Cloud
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. Google Cloud’s new CEO on gaining customers, startups, supporting open source and more
Thomas Kurian, who came to Google Cloud after 22 years at Oracle, said the team is rolling out new contracts and plans to simplify pricing.
Most importantly, though, Google will go on a hiring spree: “A number of customers told us ‘we just need more people from you to help us.’ So that’s what we’ll do.”
2. Walmart to expand in-store tech, including Pickup Towers for online orders and robots
Walmart is doubling down on technology in its brick-and-mortar stores in an effort to better compete with Amazon. The retailer says it will add to its U.S. stores 1,500 new autonomous floor cleaners, 300 more shelf scanners, 1,200 more FAST Unloaders and 900 new Pickup Towers.
3. Udacity restructures operations, lays off 20 percent of its workforce
The objective is to do more than simply keep the company afloat, according to co-founder Sebastian Thrun. Instead, Thrun says these measures will allow Udacity to move from a money-losing operation to a “break-even or profitable company by next quarter and then moving forward.”
Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
4. The government is about to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic filing system
That’s right, members of Congress are working to prohibit a branch of the federal government from providing a much-needed service that would make the lives of all of their constituents much easier.
5. Here’s the first image of a black hole
Say hello to the black hole deep inside the Messier 87, a galaxy located in the Virgo cluster some 55 million light years away.
6. Movo grabs $22.5M to get more cities in LatAm scooting
The Spanish startup targets cities in its home market and in markets across Latin America, offering last-mile mobility via rentable electric scooters.
7. Uber, Lyft and the challenge of transportation startup profits
An article arguing that everything you know about the cost of transportation is wrong. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Telegram soars after Facebook outage
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. Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage
In a message sent to his Telegram channel, founder Pavel Durov wrote, “I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours.” Durov doesn’t offer an explicit explanation for Telegram’s sudden spike in signups, but he does take a thinly veiled swipe at social networking giant Facebook.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Facebook and its related family of apps went down for most of Wednesday.
2. Google removed 2.3B bad ads, banned ads on 1.5M apps + 28M pages, plans new Policy Manager this year
Using both manual reviews and machine learning, Google said that in 2018 it removed 2.3 billion “bad ads” that violated its policies — which at their most general forbid ads that mislead or exploit vulnerable people.
3. Uber reportedly raising $1B in deal that values self-driving car unit at up to $10B
Uber is in negotiations with investors, including the SoftBank Vision Fund, to secure an investment as large as $1 billion for its autonomous vehicles unit. The deal would value the business at between $5 billion and $10 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
4. Opportunity’s last Mars panorama is a showstopper
The Opportunity Mars Rover may be officially offline for good, but its legacy of science and imagery is ongoing — and NASA just shared the last (nearly) complete panorama the robot sent back before it was blanketed in dust.
5. AI photo startup Polarr raises an $11.5 million Series A
At the moment, Polarr is probably best known for its photography app for iOS and Android, which utilizes machine learning and AI to improve image editing. The company says it has around four million monthly active users.
6. WeWork Labs is launching a food tech accelerator
WeWork is committing $1 million to back the first batch of companies.
7. Facebook won’t store data in countries with human rights violations — except Singapore
When Mark Zuckerberg said in a lengthy blog post that Facebook would not build data centers in countries with poor human rights, he chose to ignore Singapore — known for a lack of privacy and freedom of expression.
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Daily Crunch: TikTok faces children’s privacy fine
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.
In an app update released yesterday, all users will need to verify their age, and the under 13-year-olds will then be directed to a separate, more restricted in-app experience that protects their personal information and prevents them from publishing videos to TikTok .
And if you’re confused about Musical.ly versus TikTok: The Federal Trade Commission had begun looking into TikTok back when it was known as Musical.ly, and the ruling itself is a settlement with Musical.ly.
2. How Disney built Star Wars, in real life
Over the course of the past five years, Walt Disney Imagineering has been hard at work making the world of Star Wars a reality on Earth. Matthew Panzarino has all the details, with plenty of tantalizing images.
3. Amazon Prime members can choose a weekly delivery date with launch of ‘Amazon Day’
The option lets shoppers pick a day of the week to take delivery of their recent orders. The boxes will then arrive together on the selected Amazon Day, in fewer boxes.
4. Zūm, a ridesharing service for kids, raises $40M
Zūm is a mobile app that enables parents to schedule rides for their kids from fully vetted drivers. It also partners with school districts to support their transportation needs.
5. Dow Jones’ watchlist of 2.4 million high-risk individuals has leaked
The data, since secured, is the financial giant’s Watchlist database, which companies use as part of their risk and compliance efforts.
6. SoftBank’s Vision Fund invests $1.5B in Chinese second-hand car startup Chehaoduo
The Beijing-based company operates two main sites — peer-to-peer online marketplace Guazi for used vehicles, and Maodou, which retails new sedans through direct sales and financial leasing.
7. Netflix may be losing $192M per month from piracy, cord cutting study claims
As many as one in five people today are mooching off of someone else’s account when streaming video from Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Video, according to a new study from CordCutting.com. Of these, Netflix tends to be pirated for the longest period.
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Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils Galaxy S10 lineup
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. Here’s everything announced at Samsung’s Galaxy S10/Galaxy Fold event
Samsung announced five new phones, some new earbuds, a virtual assistant and a watch.
And one of those phones is foldable. Folded, the handset sports a 4.6-inch display that only takes up about three-fourths of the front. Unfolded, it turns into a 7.3-inch tablet. Pricing starts at $1,980.
2. Lyft reportedly plans to debut on Nasdaq next month
Two reports, one from Reuters, the other from WSJ, indicate Lyft plans to list its shares on Nasdaq next month. The WSJ, citing unnamed sources, reported Lyft may make the filing public as early as next week.
3. Clutter confirms SoftBank-led $200M investment for its on-demand storage service
There’s plenty of speculation right now around apparently disgruntled investors in SoftBank’s Vision Fund, but the drum continues to beat and the checks continue to be written.
4. Highlights & transcript from Zuckerberg’s 20K-word ethics talk
Zuckerberg said it would feel wrong to charge users for extra privacy controls.
Days after a YouTube creator accused the platform of enabling a “soft-core pedophilia ring,” several companies have suspended advertising on the platform. Other advertisers, including Peloton and Grammarly, said they are calling on YouTube to resolve the issue.
6. Trump calls for 6G cellular technology, because why the heck not?
6G isn’t a thing. But … maybe it could be?
7. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Patreon
TechCrunch’s media consultant Eric Peckham spent dozens of hours interviewing Patreon’s management team and investors, as well as poring over data, in order to write this deep analysis of the company and the lessons learned. (Extra Crunch subscription required.)
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Daily Crunch: Facebook (possibly) considered buying Unity
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 mulled multi-billion-dollar acquisition of gaming giant Unity, book claims
Less than a year after making a $3 billion investment into the future of virtual reality with the purchase of Oculus VR, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was considering another multi-billion-dollar bet by buying Unity, the popular game engine that’s used to build half of all gaming titles.
At least, that’s the claim made in a new book, “The History of the Future,” by Blake Harris, which digs deep into the founding story of Oculus and the drama surrounding the Facebook acquisition, subsequent lawsuits and personal politics of founder Palmer Luckey.
2. Alibaba’s Ant Financial buys UK currency exchange giant WorldFirst reportedly for around $700M
Although the companies were relatively quiet about the deal, it could end up being pretty significant, showing both the market connections between China and Europe and the margin pressures that many smaller remittance companies are under in the wake of larger companies like Amazon building their own money-moving services.
3. Nintendo makes the old new again with Mario, Zelda, Tetris titles for Switch
We round up everything Nintendo announced yesterday, from Super Mario Maker 2 to the unexpected remake of Game Boy classic Link’s Awakening.
4. Tesla ‘Dog mode’ and ‘Sentry mode’ are now live to guard your car and pets
Dog mode is meant to accomplish two things: to keep dogs (or perhaps a hamster or cat) in a climate-controlled environment if left unattended in a vehicle, and to let passersby know their status.
5. Happy Valentine’s Day: your dating app account was hacked, says Coffee Meets Bagel
Users of the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel woke up this morning to find an email in their inboxes warning that their account information had been stolen by a third-party who gained unauthorized access to the company’s systems.
6. Apple is selling the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 in Germany again
Apple was forced to pull the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models from shelves in the country last month, after chipmaker Qualcomm posted security bonds to enforce a December court injunction.
7. Malt raises $28.6M for its freelancer platform
Malt has created a marketplace for companies and engineers working as freelancers. There are currently 100,000 freelancers on the platform and 15,000 companies using Malt regularly.
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Daily Crunch: Apple’s subscription fix
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 update makes it easier to get to your subscriptions
Moving the Manage Subscriptions menu so that it’s just one click away from your App Store profile might seem like a minor change, but it was needed: As more mobile apps have adopted subscriptions as a means of generating revenue, it’s become critical to ensure consumers know how to turn off their subscriptions.
Plus, Apple is expected to launch some subscriptions of its own, namely for its streaming video and news services.
2. Instagram confirms that a bug is causing follower counts to change
Don’t panic! Instagram says it’s “aware of an issue that is causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now” and is “working to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
3. Autonomous truck startup TuSimple hits unicorn status in latest round
Today, TuSimple is taking three to five fully autonomous trips per day for customers on three different routes in Arizona.
4. Sixteen percent of US adults own a smartwatch
The latest figures out of NPD show a continued uptick in smartwatch sales here in the States. The category has been a rare bright spot in an overall flagging wearable space, and the new numbers show gains pretty much across the board.
5. JibJab, one of the first silly selfie video makers, acquired by private equity firm Catapult Capital
Founded in 1999 by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis after they saw “an animated dancing doodie streaming over a 56K modem,” JibJab’s big break came during the 2004 presidential campaign, when its satirical “This Land” racked up more than 80 million views.
6. Eight Sleep unveils The Pod, a bed that’s smarter about temperature
Eight has been focused on bed temperature for a while, first by offering a smart mattress cover and then a smart mattress that allows owners to adjust the surface temperature and even set different temperatures for different sides of the bed. But The Pod goes even further, with a smart temperature mode that will change bed temperature throughout the night to improve your sleep.
7. Ubisoft and Mozilla team up to develop Clever-Commit, an AI coding assistant
Clever-Commit is an assistant that learns from your code base’s bug and regression data to analyze and flag potential new bugs as new code is committed.
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Daily Crunch: Facebook lets you unsend recent messages
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 now lets everyone unsend messages for 10 minutes
For up to 10 minutes after sending a Facebook Message, the sender can tap on it and they’ll find the delete button has been replaced by “Remove for you” and “Remove for everyone” options. If you select the latter, recipients will see an alert saying that you removed a message, and they can still flag the message.
The feature could come in handy in those moments when you realize, right after hitting send, that you’ve made an embarrassing typo or said something dumb. It won’t, however, let people change ancient history.
2. Alphabet revenues are up 22% but the stock is still dropping
The company’s beat of analyst estimates would have been a miss if not for a $1.3 billion unrealized gain “related to a non-marketable debt security.”
3. Toyota’s new car subscription company Kinto is gamifying driving behavior
Toyota has officially launched Kinto, a company first revealed late last year that will manage a car subscription program and other mobility services in Japan, including the sale and purchase of used vehicles as well as automotive repair and inspection.
4. Apple pays millions in backdated taxes to French authorities
“The French tax administration recently concluded a multi-year audit on the company’s French accounts, and those details will be published in our public accounts,” the company told Reuters. French authorities can’t confirm the transaction due to tax secrecy.
5. Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million
The startup was founded by veterans of Apple and Google, as well as Uber Advanced Technologies Group’s self-driving truck program. Its mission — expand and deploy — sounds a lot like other autonomous vehicle startups, but that’s where the parallels end.
6. Facebook bans four armed groups in Myanmar
Facebook has introduced new security features and announced plans to increase its team of Burmese language content translators to 100 people. While it doesn’t intend to open an office in Myanmar, it has ramped up its efforts to expel bad actors.
According to co-founder Nayeem Islam, Blue Hexagon has created a real-time, cybersecurity platform that he says can detect known and unknown threats at first encounter, then block them in “sub seconds” so the malware doesn’t have time to spread.
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