TechCrunch Industry News

Singapore has passed a controversial bill that could equip the government with extensive powers to police online media and free speech. The bill was first drafted last month and, as had been expected, it passed 72-9 in Singapore’s parliament, dominated by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) party, late on Wednesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The stock market has already seen some wild fluctuations this week in anticipation of the latest volley in a trade war ramping up between the U.S. and China. Now it seems the President is making good on his promise to further increase tariffs on goods from the country. Reuters is reporting that the U.S. is set to increase import tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent. The change is set to go into effect on Friday, May 10. …. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google today announced that the Kotlin programming language is now its preferred language for Android app developers. “Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement. “Many new Jetpack APIs and features will be offered first in Kotlin. If you’re starting a new project, you should write it in Kotlin; code written in Kotlin often mean much less code for you–less code to type, test, and maintain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello old friend. I knew you would be back. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew we would be reunited again. It turns out all it would take was a cratering smartphone market to bring you back around. Google, of course, famously stood its ground on the importance of the 3.5 mm for the first Pixel, only to drop it a generation later. Now that the company’s got a budget offering in the form of the Pixel 3a, it’s returned to the nurturing arms of the hardwired headphone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you just open Firefox only to find all of your extensions disabled and/or otherwise not working? You’re not alone, and it’s nothing you did. Reports are pouring in of a glitch that has spontaneously disabled effectively all Firefox extensions. Each extension is now being listed as a “legacy” extension, alongside a warning that it “could not be verified for use in Firefox and has been disabled”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Uber expected to make its debut on the public market by Friday, May 10, on-demand ride-hailing drivers are planning to strike on Wednesday. The New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to stand in solidarity with drivers in London and log off from both Uber and Lyft on May 8 between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE! We are calling on all people of good conscience in NYC to log off of the apps in 7 AM to 9 AM Wednesday, May 8th to support our strike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2006, New Line Cinema added five days of reshoots for Snakes on a Plane, six months after principal filming had wrapped. The new shoots helped change the film’s rating from PG-13 to R, courtesy of, among other things, the addition of the line “I have had it with these motherf****** snakes on this motherf****** plane!” It was an early and still one of the best known instances of a film being altered in post-production over internet consensus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coinbase, the $8 billion-valued crypto exchange, has lost its CTO after Balaji Srinivasan announced his departure from the company. Srinivasan became the U.S. company’s first CTO one year ago after it acquired Earn.com, where he was CEO and co-founder. Given the tenure — one year and one day — it looks like Srinivasan’s departure comes after he served the minimum agreed period with Coinbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bradley Tusk’s story is well-known by now. A political operative who managed Michael Bloomberg’s successful third mayoral campaign, Tusk soon turned a bonus from his powerful boss into an opportunity that most people can only dream about. He launched his own business to help clients navigate turbulent regulatory waters, and one of his first calls came from Uber. Which paid him in stock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Developer season has begun! Next week, Google will be putting on a big party at the pointy outdoor amphitheater in Mountain View. It’s shaping up to be a biggie, too, if this week’s Google earnings call was any indication. Sundar Pichai teased out a number of upcoming offerings from the company that we can expect to see on full display at the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once a major name in smartphones, LG Mobile is now irrelevant — and still losing money LG was once a stalwart of the smartphone industry — remember its collaboration with Facebook back in the day? — but today the company is swiftly descending into irrelevance. The latest proof is LG’s Q1 financials, released this week, which show that its mobile division grossed just KRW 1.51 trillion ($1.34 billion) in sales for the quarter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You expect to lose money gambling, but you don’t really expect to lose it abstaining from gambling. But if you’re Fanduel user who hasn’t made any bets or deposits for two years, the site will now deduct $3 per month until you put some money on the table. You have to play to win, it seems, but not to lose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ready or not, the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer is here It’s been 28 years since Sonic the Hedgehog first arrived on home gaming consoles. In some senses, a feature film is long overdue. But if history has taught us anything, that might be for the best. Take Sonic’s semi-contemporary, Mario, who was given the large screen treatment two years after Sonic debuted on Sega’s consoles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facebook has bet a lot on its VR dream. The industry has become the butt of a few jokes in the past couple years as hype has deflated, but there’s been no question that the tech is interesting, the question has been whether it’s sustainably cool. Oculus made a gamble on the high-end three years ago, but the $399 standalone Quest is where they see whether that bet was worth it. In a lot of ways, this is a VR headset built in the spirit of the Nintendo Switch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Google Assistant can now tell you a story on your phone For the last year or so, you could ask the Google Assistant on your Google Home device to read your kids a story. Today, just in time for National Tell a Story Day, Google is bringing this feature to Android and iOS phones, too. It’ll be available in English in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla,Elon Musk and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reached an agreement Friday that will give the CEO freedom to use Twitter —within certain limitations — without fear of being held in contempt for violating an earlier court order. Musk can tweet as he wishes except when it’s about certain events or financial milestones. In those cases, Musk must seek pre-approval from a securities lawyer, according to the agreement filed with Manhattan federal court. U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The only job named in and protected by the U.S. constitution is journalism. But when it’s under attack from fake news, misinformation, and the supposed defender-of-the-constitution-in-chief, who looks out for the press? Reporters have an unlikely ally in the late night comedy circuit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the one hand, you’ve got Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey lamenting the “like” button’s existence, and threatening to just kill the thing off entirely for incentivizing the wrong kind of behavior. On the other hand, you have twttr — Twitter’s prototype app where the company is testing new concepts including, most recently, a way to make liking tweets even easier than before. Confused about Twitter’s product direction? Apparently, so is the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber is reportedly looking to sell shares between $44 to $50, aiming to raise $8 to $10 billion in the offering. This would value the company between $80 billion to $90 billion, Bloomberg reports. Previous reports had pegged Uber’s valuation at around $120 billion. Still, that valuation is higher than its last valuation of $76 billion following a funding round. It’s likely this decrease in valuation is influenced by Lyft’s performance on the public market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple is rolling out a fix for an App Store bug that was preventing users from downloading new iOS apps or app updates. The issue, which impacted an unknown number of users, involved a Terms & Conditions dialog box that would continue to pop up even when users tapped the “Agree” button. The issue had frustrated users who took to Twitter in an attempt to get help from Apple Support. 9to5Mac and AppleInsider previously reported on the problem, citing the social media complaints. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Snapchat appears to have turned the corner after a year of flat or negative user growth thanks to a strong Q1 2019 earnings report. It reached 190 million daily active users, up 2 percent from 186 million in Q4 2018 but still down from 191 million a year ago, in part thanks to its newly reengineered Android app. Snap saw $320 million in revenue and -$0.10 non-GAAP EPS, beating Zack’s consensus estimates of $306 million and -$0.12 EPS, with revenue up 39 percent year-over-year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With just a few days until the release of “Avengers: Endgame,” Marvel fans everywhere are probably wondering A) Who dies?? and B) Will this actually resolve the cliffhanger ending of “Infinity War” in a satisfying way? So, just to get it out of the way: A) I’m not telling, and B) Kind of? Mostly? It depends? Certainly, if you’re like me and found yourself fatigued by the constant, overcrowded battles of “Infinity War,”the beginning of “Endgame” will come as an enormous relief.There’s a brief... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s one thing to be able to get everything delivered to your doorstep, it’s another to then have to actually have to leave your home, brace the elements and return those things that just didn’t work out (or work at all). Typically, that means a run to your local FedEx or UPS store. For the last two years, Amazon and department store chain Kohl’s had a limited partnership that allowed you to bring your return to 100 Kohl’s stores across the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I know, I know. I will say this about the Galaxy Fold, however: it’s been a hell of a conversation piece. I’ve had a LOT of dialogues with strangers since I started using it as my day-to-day. And let’s be honest, that’s a big part of being an early adopter. The Galaxy Fold is also the most polarizing device I can recall have used. Everyone who sees the thing wants to play with it, but reaction has been very mixed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today at Tesla’s first Autonomy Day event, Elon Musk took questions from the press but didn’t have time for questions about lidar. Historically, he’s been vocal about the technology, and this time he put it as clear as he could. “Lidar is a fool’s errand,” Elon Musk said. “Anyone relying on lidar is doomed. Doomed! [They are] expensive sensors that are unnecessary. It’s like having a whole bunch of expensive appendices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apologies for skipping day three. This kept me extremely busy yesterday. Though the Galaxy Fold remained a constant companion. Before you ask (or after you ask on Twitter without having read beyond the headline), no it’s hasn’t broken yet. It’s actually been fairly robust, all things considered. But here’s the official line from Samsung on that, A limited number of early Galaxy Fold samples were provided to media for review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Malware researcher Marcus Hutchins has pleaded guilty to two counts of creating and selling a powerful banking malware, ending a long and protracted battle with U.S. prosecutors. Hutchins, a British national who goes by the online handle MalwareTech, was arrested in August 2017 as he was due to fly back to the U.K. following the Def Con security conference in Las Vegas. Prosecutors charged Hutchins with his involvement with creating the Kronos banking malware, dating back to 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Netflix is testing a new feature that can help you start streaming when you don’t know what to watch. The company confirmed it’s testing a shuffle mode of sorts, that will allow you to easily click on a popular show to start playing a random episode. The idea with the feature is to offer an experience that’s more like traditional TV — where you could just turn the set on, and there would be something to watch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pinterest is up more than 25% in its first day of trading Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) is a public company. Ben Silbermann’s virtual pinboard rose 25 percent in its NYSE debut, opening at $23.75 per share. Currently, shares of its stock are up another 2 percent, trading at more than $24 each. The company priced its shares above range last night at $19 apiece. The IPO price gave the company a fully diluted market cap of $12.6 billion, a figure slightly larger than its Series H valuation of $12. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samsung has issued a statement about its new, folding phone as early photos of tech reviewers with their shiny new toys were replaced on social media (and in numerous columns) with complaints from those same tech reviewers about problems with the phone’s screen. Apparently a number of reviewers either mistakenly destroyed their phone screens or had the screens bork on them after a few days of use. It’s not a good look for Samsung. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon has finally given up the fight with Chinese online shopping giants to capture the domestic market. On Thursday, the Seattle-based ecommerce company announced it will shut down its marketplace on Amazon.cn, which connects mainland Chinese buyers and sellers, while other units of its local venture will stay intact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Discs! What are they good for? Well, they’re nice if you don’t want to be tied to an online-only ecosystem. But if you don’t mind that, Microsoft’s latest Xbox One S “All-Digital Edition” might be for you. With no slots to speak of, the console is limited to downloading games to its drive — which is how we’ve been doing it on PC for quite some time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Netflix just released its earnings letter for the first quarter of 2019. The company says it saw growth of 9.6 million paying subscribers, up 16 percent year-over-year. That’s significantly ahead of the 8.9 million new subscribers that analysts had predicted. On the financial side, the quarter came in right at expectations, with revenue of $4.5 billion and earnings per share of 76 cents. Netflix says it now has 148.9 million paid streaming memberships. Most of this growth (7. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jarno M. Koponen Contributor Jarno M. Koponen is working on intelligent systems and human-centered personalization. He currently is product lead at Yle, one of the leading media houses in the Nordics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber has filed its S-1, setting the stage for the transportation company to go public next month. This comes less than one month after competitor Lyft’s debut on the public market. Uber is listing under the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “UBER,” but has yet to disclose the anticipated initial public offering price. In the filing, Uber reported 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion. Though, we knew this thanks to Uber’s previous disclosures of its financials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been more than a half-decade sinceAileen LeeofCowboy Ventureskicked off the unicorn craze. Noting in awell-read post for TechCrunchthat an interesting cohort of private companies worth a billion dollars or more was worth examining, the post brought the “unicorn” into its current usage inside of tech. And then tech itself did the term a favor, building and financing hundreds more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drones are great. But they are also flying machines that can do lots of stupid and dangerous things. Like, for instance, fly over a major league baseball game packed with spectators. It happened at Fenway Park last night, and the FAA is not happy. The illegal flight took place last night during a Red Sox-Blue Jays game at Fenway; the drone, a conspicuously white DJI Phantom, reportedly first showed up around 9:30 PM, coming and going over the next hour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DARPA wants to be able to launch anywhere, any time, and several times in a row. Is that too much to ask? Not for Vector Space, Virgin Orbit, and an unnamed startup that just qualified to take place in the agency’s Launch Challenge, which will push their responsive and mobile launch capabilities to the limit. In the challenge, the teams will be notified that they need to launch a payload to orbit from a given location only days beforehand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No matter what your politics, beliefs, or even your sports team, we can all agree on one thing: robocalls are the scourge of modern times. These unsolicited auto-dialed spam calls bug you dozens of times a week — sometimes more — demanding you “pay the IRS” or pretend to be “Apple technical support.” Even the now-infamous Chinese embassy scam, recently warned about by the FBI, has gained notoriety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The beauty of the foldable is 2019 is that there’s no consensus yet on the “right” way to do things. We’ve seen a number of different takes on the space as the year has progressed, and no two are exactly the same. Keep in mind that this device from Sharp is still very much a concept. And even if it does come to market, it’s still going to be tough to get your hands on the product here in the States, as Sharp has a virtually non-existent mobile footprint. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Echo Link Amp is designed to give Echo owners options. Instead of settling for the sound from a couple of Echo speakers, this amp lets owners use a set of nice bookshelf speakers. Best yet, this replaces a large receiver generally needed to power speakers. At $299 the Echo Link Amp lives in a curious spot. It’s less expensive and smaller than a traditional home audio system. Yet it’s more expensive than smaller desktop amps with a similar power rating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Flying cars definitely sound cool, but whether they’re actually a good idea is up for debate. Fortunately they do seem to have some surefire benefits, among which you can now count improved efficiency — in theory, and on long trips. But it’s something! Air travel takes an enormous amount of energy, since you have to lift something heavy into the air and keep it there for a good while. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nintendo’s Labo VR kit may just be a little cardboard experiment, but Nintendo is taking a chance on throwing its most beloved titles into the headset. Today, the company announced that they will be adding support to play two of the Switch’s flagship titles. Though Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems to just be gaining VR viewer support, Super Mario Odyssey is actually getting some new content alongside the updates which adds a trio of new mini-games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning, The WSJ reported Apple’s streaming music service overtook Spotify in paid subscribers in the U.S., and now it hopes to do the same in the Indian market by way of a big price cut. The company’s individual plan in India is now 99 rupees per month ($1.43 USD), versus the 120 rupees per month ($1.73 USD) it was previously. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Global Positioning System time epoch is ending and another one is beginning, an event that could affect your devices or any equipment or legacy system that relies on GPS for time and location. Most clocks obtain their time from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But the atomic clocks on satellites are set to GPS time.The timing signals you can get from GPS satellites are very accurate and globally available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

About half a year ago, Google gave the Assistant on phones a major visual refresh. Today, the company is following up with a couple of small but welcome tweaks that’ll see the Assistant on Android provide more and better visual responses that are more aligned with what users already expect to see from other Google services. That means when you ask for events now, for example, the response will look exactly like what you’d see if you tried the same query from your mobile browser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Point and shoot? No, point and interact. Snapchat can now help with your homework. The app’s camera is becoming the foundation of an augmented reality developer platform known as “Scan”. Snap today announced partnerships with Photomath to add the ability to solve math problems, and Giphy for detecting objects which then spawn related GIFs on screen. Scan will roll out to all Snapchat users soon, and developers interested in joining the platform can contact Snap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s a big day for space: launches, tests, orbits, and now a distant probe is going to shoot an asteroid with its space gun and make a new crater to play in. It’s Hayabusa 2, Japan’s ambitious and so far highly successful sample return mission to an object called Ryugu. Launched in 2014, Hayabusa 2 has been in the region of Ryugu for several months, carrying out a series of investigations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has completed the first tethered jump for its Starship prototyped, Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet Wednesday evening. Called the Starhopper because it’s making limited hops to test the landing capabilities of the Starship vehicle, the tethered jump represents the first firing of a rocket engine at the company’s Boca Chica launch site. The hops are similar to the testing that preceded the commercial development and use of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If it feels like your Amazon search results have been overwhelmed with promotions for their private-label brands, like Amazon Basics, Mama Bear or Daily Ritual, that may be changing. As lawmakers pay more attention to the most powerful tech companies, Amazon has begun quietly removing some of the more obvious promotions, including banner ads, for its private-label products, reports CNBC, which spoke to Amazon sellers and consultants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices