TechCrunch Industry News

Chris Hogg Contributor Share on Twitter Chris Hogg is a digital health advocate interested in how new forms of health data are changing the relationship between physician and patient. As CCO of Propeller Health, he leads the company's San Francisco office and oversees the pharma BD, health system and payer sales, clinical and medical affairs and data science teams. Silicon Valley is obsessed with growth. And for digital health startups, that obsession is not only misguided, but dangerous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starbucks’ mobile ordering app has proven wildly popular for the company, with reports indicating that it had more users than the likes of Apple Pay or Google Pay last year. The convenience is just too alluring. When you’re late for work and forgot to eat, being able to order up a drink and a sandwich with a tap or two and have it ready for pick up by the time you pass the store seems sort of like magic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HQ Trivia’s troubles continue after a failed mutiny to oust the CEO, a 92% decline in downloads since versus a year ago, and layoffs of 20% of its staff last week. Now TechCrunch has learned HQ has failed to install a new CEO after months of searching. Meanwhile, users continue to complain about delays for payouts of their prizes from the live mobile trivia game, and about being booted from the game for no reason while on the final question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was late afternoon on May 12, 2017. Two exhausted security researchers could barely unpack the events of what had just happened. Marcus Hutchins and Jamie Hankins, who were working from their homes in the U.K. for Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company Kryptos Logic, had just stopped a global cyberattack dead in its tracks. Hours earlier, WannaCry ransomware began to spread like wildfire, encrypting systems and crippling businesses and transport hubs across Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Kateman Contributor Share on Twitter Brian Kateman is President and Cofounder of the Reducetarian Foundation. Fish make up 16% of animal protein consumed globally, anddemand is set to rise, accordingto the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, largely thanks to rising disposable incomes. But overfishing is hugely problematic – and it’s not sustainable to continue with the way things are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If these past few weeks felt like the sky was falling, you weren’t alone. 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 calendar and email unavailable for hours at a time. It’s not believed any single event tied the outages together, more so just terrible luck for all involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re driving your car from Portland to Merced, you probably rely on GPS to see where you are. But what if you’re driving your Moon rover from Oceanus Procellarum to the Sea of Tranquility? Actually, GPS should be fine — if this NASA research pans out. Knowing exactly where you are in space, relative to other bodies anyway, is definitely a non-trivial problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the first time, Apple has published the number of requests it’s received from governments to take down apps from its app store. In its latest transparency report published Tuesday, the tech giant said it received 80 requests from 11 countries to remove 634 apps from its localized app stores during July 1 and December 31, 2018. Apple didn’t list the apps that were removed but noted in most cases why the apps were pulled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a recent interview, Samsung CEO DJ Koh noted that the company was hard at work on Galaxy Fold fixes (he also said people won’t be using smartphones in five years, so who knows?). And now, a report from Bloomberg confirms that the company has put the finishing touches on those fixes two months after the handset was originally set to debut. So now what? We still don’t have a date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tired of cleaning up after take-out or getting hangry waiting at your table in restaurants? Well Uber Eats is barging into the dine-in business. A new option in some cities lets you order your food ahead of time, go to the restaurant, then sit down inside to eat, a tipster from competing dine-in app Allset tells us. We tested it, and Uber Eats Dine-In even waives the standard Uber delivery and service fees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For four months in 2018, U.S. prosecutors in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show. The wiretap, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, was granted as part of a narcotics investigation and became the federal wiretap with the most intercepts in 2018, according to the government’s annual wiretap report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nielsen reports a record half a trillion on-demand music streams in U.S. so far this year Music streaming services have already delivered a new high of half a trillion (507.7 billion) on-demand streams in the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen’s mid-year Music Report released this week. This record number — an increase of 31. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It looks like choose-your-own-adventure Twitter games won’t be a one-hit wonder, now that Apple’s social team has adopted the format. A new tweet from the @AppleTV Twitter account today helps users find a movie to watch by having them click through a series of Twitter threads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In its most recent report, Synergy Research, a company that monitors cloud marketshare, found that enterprise SaaS revenue passed the $100 billion run rate this quarter. The market was led by Microsoft and Salesforce. It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that these two enterprise powerhouses come in at the top. Microsoft reported $10.1 billion in Productivity and Business Processes revenue, which includes Office 365, the Dynamics line and LinkedIn, the company it bought in 2016 for $26. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, so remember earlier today when I said that new 5G cities still qualify as news, for a little while longer, at least? AT&T is making it under the wire with the addition of Las Vegas to its growing portfolio of 5G business cities. The addition of Sin City brings the carrier’s total up to 20 cities for its 5G+ — a confusing branding it gave to avoid confusion with its purposefully confusing 5G E branding. Confused? Good. That was kind of the point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, it’s official: The Office is leaving Netflix . Michael Scott and the rest of Dunder Mifflin will be heading for another streaming service come January 2021. By far the most popular show on Netflix in 2018, The Office was bound to leave the service eventually — or, at the very least, see some HUGE contract renegotiations. The show’s departure had been rumored a few times before now, but were quickly debunked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter Lists have never gotten the attention they deserve. A feature largely adopted by Twitter power users, lists allow you to create custom timelines by adding only those users whose tweets you want to track. And this can be done without having to also follow those Twitter accounts, which keeps your main timeline clutter-free. But the Twitter Lists feature has always been somewhat buried in Twitter’s interface — at least until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As 5G networks begin rolling out and commercializing around the world, telecoms vendors are rushing to get a headstart. Huawei equipment is now behind two-thirds of the commercially launched 5G networks outside China, said president of Huawei’s carrier business group Ryan Ding on Tuesday at an industry conference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The enterprise drone space has been heating up over the past couple years, but a startup in the entertainment drone space is raising the big cash now. The Drone Racing League is in the process of raising up to $50 million from investors in a Series C round according to SEC docs published today. The startup has already raised over $26 million of that figure and is looking to secure additional investors to close out the rest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Netflix hack lets you feel the action in a scene by vibrating your phone Netflix Hack Day, the company’s internal hackathon, has a habit of producing some amazing gems — like a brain-controlled interface, a Fitbit hack that shuts off Netflix when you fall asleep, a Netflix app for the original NES, and a way to navigate the Netflix app with Face ID and ARKit, to name a few. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While mirrorless cameras accelerate into the future, medium format models are hearkening unto the past — and Hasselblad chief among them. Its new digital back fits lenses going back to the ’50s, and the tiny 907X camera body is about as lovely a throwback as one can imagine. The new set of systems, announced today, are somewhat different from what most people are used to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Among the many spacecraft and satellites ascending to space on Monday’s Falcon Heavy launch, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 may be the most interesting. If all goes well, a week from launch it will be moving through space — slowly, but surely — on nothing more than the force exerted on it by sunlight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The writing has been on the slate for some time now. Roughly this time last year, we reported that Google had wiped all tablet sales off its site. Turns out that was just a bug, but it seemed like an ominous portent of things to come. Google still went ahead and launched the Pixel Slate late last year, hoping the device would give users a much-welcome form factor alternative to its high-end Pixel Book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You surely know the whole deal about carts and horses by now. When Samsung’s first 5G handset, the Galaxy S10 5G, arrives on Sprint tomorrow, users will be able to get those blazing fast mobile speeds in all of four markets: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Kansas City. Those all launched last week, after the arrival of the carrier’s first 5G handset, LG’s V50 ThinQ. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startup Battlefield is known around the world as TechCrunch’s premier startup competition, and today we’re proud to announce that on November 11-12 we are producing our hardware-focused competition, Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen in that amazing heartland of hardware, Shenzhen, China. The event this November will be TechCrunch’s fifth Hardware Battlefield, but our first ever in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA’s X-59 QueSST experimental quiet supersonic aircraft will have a cockpit like no other — featuring a big 4K screen where you’d normally have a front window. Why? Because this is one weird-looking plane. The X-59, which is being developed by Lockheed Martin on a $247 million budget, is meant to go significantly faster than sound without producing a sonic boom, or indeed any noise “faster than a car door closing,” at least to observers on the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good news for Apple Watch owners who don’t want to clutter up their Watch with unused apps. With the release of the new watchOS 6 operating system later this year, Apple will allow Apple Watch device owners to remove many more of the built-in, first-party apps from their smartwatch — including previously unremovable apps like Alarm, Timer, Stopwatch, Remote, Camera Remote, Radio, and others, as well as health apps like ECG, Breathe, Noise, and Cycle Tracking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Making pourover coffee is a cherished ritual of mine on most mornings. But there are times I wish I could have a single cup of pourover without fussing about the kitchen — and the Geesaa, a new gadget seeking funds on Kickstarter, lets me do that. But it’s definitely still a ways from being a must-have. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sad news for anyone who loves geeky goods and top-notch April Fools’ jokes: ThinkGeek.com, the 20 year old online retailer known for selling more geek-centric gadgets and peripherals than you could fit in a TARDIS, is going away. According to an FAQ sitting at the top of its site, ThinkGeek isn’t “shutting down”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Freelance marketplace Fiverr had a good first day on the New York Stock Exchange. The company priced its IPO at $21 per share last night, raising around $111 million. It then started trading this morning at $26, with shares climbing for most of the day and closing at $39.90 — up 90% from the IPO price. Fiverr is one of the most well-known companies facilitating the so-called gig economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Walmart is taking aim at Instacart, Target’s Shipt, and Amazon Prime Now/Whole Foods with a new grocery delivery subscription service called simply, “Delivery Unlimited.” Before, Walmart shoppers could order groceries online and pick them up at their local store for free or they could opt to pay the $9.95 (or sometimes less) per-order delivery fee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A computer science student has scraped seven million Venmo transactions to prove that users’ public activity can still be easily obtained, a year after a privacy researcher downloaded hundreds of millions of Venmo transactions in a similar feat. Dan Salmon said he scraped the transactions during a cumulative six months to raise awareness and warn users to set their Venmo payments to private. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lightspeed Venture Partners, a firm behind the likes of BetterUp, Aurora, Goop and dozens of others, will allocate more capital to mature companies with the hiring of three new partners. Adam Smith, Amy Wu and Arsham Memarzadeh join the Menlo Park-headquartered venture capital fund’s growth practice. The team is led by longtime partner Will Kohler and Brad Twohig, who joined LSVP in 2018 to amp up the firm’s late-stage efforts, leading a $1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ask any venture capitalist about the most important ingredient to success in startups, and they’ll tell you it centers on founders who can persuade not only investors to part with some of their capital but, more important, who can convince people to leave what are often more stable jobs in order to build a company from scratch. Ryan Cohen certainly fits the description. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Details of the Pixel 4 have been swirling around this week, so Google has decided to just leak the design of its next phone via its official Twitter account, revealing the backplate and new camera module on the smartphone. “Well, since there seems to be some interest, here you go! Wait ’til you see what it can do. #Pixel4″ the tweet from the company’s verified @MadeByGoogle account read. Renders of the Pixel 4 had leaked this week via smartphone blog Pricebaba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk: There is not a demand problem for the Tesla Model 3 Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s opening comments at the annual shareholder’s meeting went straight to a question that has been looming over the automaker since it reported wider-than-expected losses and a one-third drop in deliveries in the first quarter: demand. “We get this question a lot. I want to be clear, there is not a demand problem,” Musk said. But he didn’t stop there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor Which public US universities graduate the most funded founders? Big revenues, huge valuations and major losses: charting the era of the unicorn IPO Sometimes a person (I’m not naming names here) tires of staring at startup funding data, and her hungry mind wanders to pizza. But ordering a pizza in real life isn’t always the best choice for such people/reporters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vive Pro Eye launches in US, costs four times as much as Rift S HTC had the hottest VR headset out of the gate in 2016, but the thinning margins on consumer hardware thanks to Oculus have pushed them into the enterprise business. Today, the company released the Vive Pro Eye headset, its latest enterprise play that integrates eye-tracking camera to give users an additional input mode and a way for users to signal attention. It’s available in a bundle with SteamVR 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the bigger security announcements from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference this week is Apple’s new requirement that app developers must implement the company’s new single sign-on solution, Sign In with Apple, wherever they already offer another third-party sign-on system. Apple’s decision to require its button in those scenarios is considered risky — especially at a time when the company is in the crosshairs of the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Xiamoi recently discovered a safety issue with the M365 electric scooter where a screw could become loose in the folding apparatus. That would then cause the vertical component of the scooter to break off while in use. Xiaomi said it only affected a “limited number of production units” — 10,257 to be exact. The recall program will start in the United Kingdom on June 26 and in other markets July 1. The United States is not one of the markets affected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber’s chief operating officer Barney Harford and chief marketing officer Rebecca Messina are stepping down as part of an organizational shakeup put into motion just a month after the ride-hailing company went public. CNBC first reported the departures. The departures, which CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained in an email to employees, were prompted by his decision to more directly control core parts of the business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

E3 2019 is shaping up to be a bit of an in-between year. Nintendo Switch sales have finally started slowing, but the company’s a ways off from its next-generation console. Microsoft and Sony will be offering info on theirs soon, but we likely won’t be seeing much — especially from the latter, which has opted to sit out this show altogether. Still, there will be plenty to see next week in Los Angeles. Here’s what we expect so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bungie aims to fortify the popular but flagging Destiny 2 with an expanded free-to-play plan and universal cross-platform saving, the company announced today. It’s an interesting and player-friendly evolution of the “games as a service” model, and other companies should take note. The base game, which is to say the original campaign and the first year of updates, will be available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Google Stadia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drew Olanoff Contributor Editor’s note: Drew is a geek who first worked at AOL when he was 16 years old and went on to become a senior writer at TechCrunch. He is now the VP of Communications for venture equity fund Scaleworks. I have a confession to make. It’s something that I live with daily. It’s not that I’m not proud of it…it’s just that I’m never sure how people will see me after they know my “secret.” Here goes nothing. I. Was. A. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grow Mobility, the entity that consists of electric scooter startup Grin, and bike and scooter-share startup Yellow, has merged with payments startup Flinto. Flinto enables people to make peer-to-peer payments, add minutes and text messages to your phone, and pay bills and merchants. Flinto works for those with or without bank accounts. If someone doesn’t have a bank account, they can deposit cash at local shops and restaurants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week four security companies changed hands. The shopping spree continued this week with CDN company Imperva announcing it was buying bot mitigation startup Distil Networks. The companies did not share the acquisition price. Imperva CTO Kunal Anand says his company had a narrow bot capability, but was looking to bring a more complete solution to the platform and Distil fit the bill nicely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brooklyn and Queens are now flush with 1,000 of Revel’s shared electric mopeds Revel Transit has released 1,000 of its shared electric mopeds onto the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, following the end of a nine-month pilot program in the area. The New York-based startup pulled the original 68 mopeds it used in its limited pilot and has replaced them with new models (and hundreds more of them) built for two riders and equipped with kickstands for parking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s a whole lot of ocean on this planet, and we don’t have much of an idea what’s at the bottom of most of it. That could change with the craft and techniques created during the Ocean Discovery Xprize, which had teams competing to map the sea floor quickly, precisely, and autonomously. The winner just took home $4 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drawing inspiration from games of yore but with dog and cat protagonists that signal light adventures rather than grim, dark ones, Gato Roboto and Dig Dog are easy to recommend to anyone looking to waste a couple hours this weekend. Not only that, but the latter was developed in a fascinating and inspiring way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft has issued its second advisory this month urging users to update their systems to prevent a re-run of attacks similar to WannaCry. The software giant said Thursday that the recently discovered “wormable” vulnerability in Remote Desktop Services for Windows can allow attackers to remotely run code on a vulnerable computer — such as malware or ransomware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices