TechCrunch Industry News

Earlier this week, in Brooklyn, near the waterfront, Amazon opened what looks from the outside like a typical Whole Foods store. It isn’t open to the public, however; it’s a fulfillment center. “Grocery delivery continues to be one of the fastest-growing businesses at Amazon,” the company said in a statement about the location, noting that […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amid a racial justice reckoning following countless events of police brutality (justice for Breonna Taylor), it’s high time companies and investors in the tech industry do more than just say “Black Lives Matter,” but show that Black lives matter. As Human Utility CEO Tiffani Ashley Bell aptly put it, “Make the hire, send the wire!” […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yesterday’s overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn’t for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company just unleashed a whole slew […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As far as launches for revolutionary products are concerned, the Galaxy Fold could have gone a lot better. It’s not for lack of hype, of course. Years of prelude punctuated by Samsung’s own breathless expectations provided plenty of build-up, but in the end, the device felt like a partially baked disappointment. A number of early […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2020 was going to be the year 5G went truly mainstream. Things obviously haven’t gone according to plan these past several months, but this is undoubtedly the year Samsung went all-in on the next generation technology. After being one of the first to market with a 5G device, it’s since made its way across the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Digital locker service Movies Anywhere is today officially launching its movie-sharing feature dubbed “Screen Pass,” which lets you lend out one of your purchased movies to a friend or family member. The feature was rushed into beta testing this March, followed by a more open public beta trial in April, thanks to increased demand from […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 Much was made during the Republican Convention of the lack of a party platform. The media characterized this as a capitulation to the Cult of Trump phenomenon, but the questioned begged was: so what? If you’re running as a candidate to disrupt the status quo…. But beneath the media framing, an important question emerges. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Smart Clock Essential really blurs smart display lines. Aesthetics aside, Lenovo’s news device probably has more in common with the Echo Dot with Clock than it does the company’s first generation Smart Clock. In fact, at $50, it’s actually $10 less expensive than Amazon’s offering. Lenovo Smart Clock review Essentially the Essential is a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you can’t keep up with the latest rumor mill on TikTok’s impending doom acquisition, my suggestion is simple: don’t. Or instead, enjoy it for what it is: one of the most absurd bakeoff deals in investment banking history. Walmart and its always low prices are in the fray. Oracle is looking to find synergies […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s been a flurry of TikTok news today, and the flood doesn’t seem to be letting up. First was the announcement that Kevin Mayer, who joined the company just a bit more than three months ago, has stepped down overnight. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigns after 100 days Now, we are receiving a bunch of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the nice things about virtual events is you can essentially hold as many as you’d like. It’s one thing to ask people to fly across the country or world to attend and another entirely to get them to tune into a livestream for an hour. On September 1 at 10AM ET, Samsung will […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New York-based startup Muze is rethinking mobile messaging. While today’s messaging apps have expanded over the years to include support for sharing photos and videos, voice messages, reactions and more, Muze has fully redesigned the traditional messaging experience as a blank canvas, allowing for more creative interactions. The company’s new mobile app on iOS allows […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fronted, the new London-based startup aiming to make life easier for renters, including lending the cash needed for a deposit, has picked up seed investment from Passion Capital. The investment showed up in a recent regulatory filing for the company. The exact cheque size isn’t yet disclosed, but what we do know is that Passion […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fitbit’s big news for today was the launch of the Sense, a new, more premium smartwatch line designed to compete directly against the likes of Apple and Samsung. But Fitbit has never been one for solitary product launches. As such, two of its biggest lines are also getting key updates. First off is the Versa. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Desktop Metal’s had no shortage of investor interest in its business during in its half-decade existence. To date, the metal 3D printing company has raised $430 million, becoming one of the fastest U.S. companies to achieve unicorn status in the process. Today it also became the latest in a recent string of firms to announce […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perhaps some day in the not-so-distant future, we’ll all be wearing smart glasses. Stranger things have happened. And hey, most people were fairly skeptical in the early days of smartwatches. And while I’m not saying that it will definitely take Apple launching its own pair to accelerate mainstream acceptance à la the Apple Watch, I […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Google announced Anthos last year at Google Cloud Next, it was a pretty big deal. Here was a cloud company releasing a product that purported to help you move your applications between cloud companies like AWS and Azure — that would be GCP’s competitors — because it’s what customers demanded. Google tapped into genuine […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Long story short, I borrowed a new Bentley Bentayga for 24 hours. What follows is a brief overview of the $177,000 sport utility vehicle. As I had the vehicle for a short time, I was unable to dive deep into the SUV, and it feels disingenuous to write a full review after driving just a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter flagged one of President Donald Trump’s tweets on Monday, placing it behind a notice that warns users it violates the platform’s rules against dissuading people from voting. In the tweet, posted on Monday, Trump claimed mail drop boxes are a “voter security disaster” and also said they are “not COVID sanitized.” Twitter’s notice says […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So you’re looking for a storage unit to put some stuff in for a few months. Maybe you’re moving and your new place isn’t ready yet – or maybe you’re just looking to declutter and want to tuck some stuff away for a while and see if you’re really ready to part with it. As […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.S. market has no real frontrunner poised to claim TikTok’s throne if the app is banned in the country. According to Trump’s executive order, TikTok’s owner ByteDance has to divest of TikTok’s U.S. operations or the app will be banned from the U.S. market on November 12. A number of companies have considered the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Between the IPO buzz and a raft of new federal contracts for COVID-19 work, it’s been a year of big moves for Palantir. Now, the company is making a more literal one: decamping from its Palo Alto headquarters to Denver, Colorado. The decision to relocate its Palo Alto headquarters, first reported by the Denver Business […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earlier today, Facebook said it has removed hundreds of QAnon groups from its site, and that it’s restricting many more groups, along with hundreds of pages, and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts. As the New York Times observed in its report about the maneuvers, four-year-old QAnon, once a fringe phenomenon, has gone mainstream in recent […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jelani Memory, an entrepreneur and father, had been wanting to write a kids book for years. While in the midst of raising a Series B round for his startup Circle Media, he started to feel burned out and wanted to start doing something more creatively fulfilling, Memory told me. That’s what led Memory to create […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, how are you? Are you doing well? Great. Or, condolences, depending. Anyway, last week the Equity crew was discussing bankers, and how they love to talk up stuff. The topic matters as there is a big impending transaction out there in the world, namely the shotgun sale of TikTok. And all sorts of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Galaxy Note Ultra is a $1,399 smartphone. Even by Samsung’s standards, this is a high-end luxury device. It’s the phone for people who board the plane early and derive a sense of pride in watching the rest of us slowly shuffle onto the plane, wondering just how close to the back we’ll get. Sure, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla shares surpassed $1,800 for the first time today, the latest in an eye-popping run up of the stock that has propelled the company’s valuation to more than $341 billion. Let’s put these numbers in perspective. Tesla, an automaker that delivered 367,500 vehicles in 2019 and is aiming to exceed the 500,000-mark in 2020, is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Businesses will now be able to monetize online events on Facebook, thanks to a new feature that the social network is launching in the United States and 19 other countries today. In a call with reporters, Head of Facebook App Fidji Sumo said that Facebook’s Events feature was designed for in-person events, but with the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Friday that the company was ‘embarrassingly late’ rolling out a security layer known as two-factor authentication for its mobile app. “Sorry, this is embarrassingly late. Two factor authentication via sms or authenticator app is going through final validation right now,” Musk wrote Friday in response to a question from a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I enjoy driving the Polestar 2 more than the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 is more comfortable, seemingly better built, and has a better infotainment system. In all the traditional automotive metrics, it’s a better car, and yet I find it hard to recommend over the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 often excels […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell Kirsch, whose research going back to the ’50s underlies the entire field of digital imaging, died earlier this week at the age of 91. It’s hard to overstate the impact of his work, which led to the first digitally scanned photo and the creation of what we now think of as pixels. Born to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today after the bell, Lyft reported its second-quarter financial performance. The American ride-hailing company’s results helped illustrate just how much the economy has changed in the wake of COVID-19 and its resulting disruptions to life, travel and work. Uber’s own results, which were shared last week, provided hints of what was coming for Lyft. The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cash App, the peer-to-peer payments service from Square, is giving select users a way to get short-term loans. The company said it’s only testing the feature with around 1,000 users for now. But it could become more broadly available — and there are probably plenty of people who could use the money, given the state […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hyundai has launched a dedicated EV brand called Ioniq with plans to bring three all-electric vehicles to market over the next four years. The Ioniq brand is part of the Korean automaker’s broader strategy to sell 1 million battery electric vehicles — and take a 10% share of the EV market — by 2025. If […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A state court has dismissed a high-profile case showing unsportsmanlike conduct by Google, which was caught red-handed using lyrics obviously scraped from Genius. Unfortunately for the latter, the complaints amount to a copyright violation — which wasn’t what the plaintiffs alleged, sinking the case. The lawsuit, filed in December, accused Google of violating Genius’s terms […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has updated its Lookout app, an AI toolkit for people with impaired vision, with two helpful new capabilities: scanning long documents and reading out food labels. Paper forms and similarly-shaped products at the store present a challenge for blind folks and this ought to make things easier. Food labels, if you think about it, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lucid Motors said Tuesday that its upcoming all-electric luxury sedan can travel 517 miles on a single charge — a range that, if validated by the U.S. EPA, blows past every other EV on the road today including Tesla. The estimated EPA range was released ahead of the September 9 reveal of the Lucid Air. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google Maps is now also available on the Apple Watch so you can get your walking, biking and driving directions right on your wrist. Don’t expect to get a full-blown Maps app on your wrist, though. The new app is mostly focused on giving you directions to know places (think home, work, etc.). To start […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moft is a clever company that makes clever products. For a while there, I was sporting their laptop stand. It was a head-turner when I used to unfold it during meetings — back when we used to do those in-person. The truth is, I ended up having to tear it off the bottom. It lasted […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WordPress.com, a division of Automattic, is launching a new product called P2. And this time, it’s all about improving internal communications for private groups. As a remote company, Automattic has been using P2 internally for years to communicate asynchronously. It’s a place to share long-form posts, a repository to keep onboarding documents and other important […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sony knows how to make a great pair of headphones. The WH-1000XM3 are one of the best received pairs of over-ear models in recent years. Two years later, the company is ready to unveil their successors, which sport a number of smart connected features. In fact, the WH-1000XM4 bring all sorts of nice upgrades to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samsung’s made quality earbuds for a number of years now. They’re never particularly exciting or innovative, but they’re always a solid choice in an overcrowded market. Today’s big Unpacked event adds yet another model to the growing list of options. Already sporting the Galaxy Bean nickname based on early leaks, and for reasons that should […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

YouTube has banned a large number of Chinese accounts it said were engaging in “coordinated influence operations” on political issues, the company announced today. 2,596 accounts from China alone were taken down from April to June, compared with 277 in the first three months of 2020. “These channels mostly uploaded spammy, non-political content, but a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Identifying the new context we’re asking the system to understand is the first step towards moving visual AI forward. Then we need more content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple sold a lot of Macs last quarter — a record, in fact, for Q3, jumping a full 21%, year over year. Given the state of the world, with most office workers moving to a remote setup, there’s little surprise the company’s desktop and laptops moved at such an impressive clip. For that reason alone, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise. The latest version of Google’s budget Pixel device will be one of the first two to get its next-gen technology. It’s an odd strategy, to be sure, but sometimes roadmaps work out like that, I guess. You can read basically everything you need to know about the Pixel 4a in my review here. It’s […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Pixel line has always felt like more of an underdog product than one should reasonably expect from a corporation as massive as Google. After years of partnerships and Nexus devices, when Google finally did enter the smartphone market in earnest, it found itself attempting to chip away at an already mature category — an […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TikTok’s U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas has posted a video message to the platform that appears to be a response to reports from Friday that President Trump is working on an effective “ban” of the app in the U.S., a plan he shared with reporters from the White House pool on board Air Force One. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lyft continues to expand beyond its core ride-hailing business into bikes, scooters, transit and now rental cars. The company said Thursday that it’s taking Lyft Rentals, a pilot program that launched in December, and expanding it through a partnership with Sixt. Lyft Rentals initially gave folks in Los Angeles and San Francisco the ability to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Social video platform Triller has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against its biggest rival TikTok and parent company ByteDance. The suit, which was filed in the U.S District Court for the Western Division of Texas, claims TikTok is infringing on Triller’s U.S Patent No. 9,691,429. The patent covers a “systems and methods for creating music […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices