TechCrunch Industry News

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

Chandan Lodha Contributor Chandan Lodha is co-founder at CoinTracker, a Y Combinator and Initialized Capital-backed startup that offers a secure cryptocurrency tax calculator. He was previously the Product Manager on Project Loon at Google[x]. Fred traded bitcoin, ether and a handful of other cryptocurrencies on Gemini, Binance and Coinbase last year. Unfortunately, due to the crypto downturn, his trading yielded a capital loss of more than $35,000. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether you call it the Genesis or the Mega Drive, Sega’s 16 bit system holds a special place in the hearts of many a gamer who came of age in the 80s and 90s. Like the NES and Super Nintendo before it, the console that gave us a ring-hoarding hedgehog is about to get miniaturized. Sega announced the Genesis/Mega Drive Mini last year, only to delay sales in order to fine tune the retro console. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Mars 2020 mission is on track for launch next year, and nesting inside the high-tech new rover heading that direction is a high-tech helicopter designed to fly in the planet’s nearly non-existent atmosphere. The actual aircraft that will fly on the Martian surface just took its first flight and its engineers are over the moon. “The next time we fly, we fly on Mars,” said MiMi Aung, who manages the project at JPL, in a news release. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most buzzy announcements on Apple’s stage this week was Apple Card, its in-house credit card powered by Goldman Sachs and Mastercard. Consumers, tech press, financial press and Wall Street were all intrigued for various reasons. But there are still a ton of questions around the way it works mechanically, the terms involved for consumers and its overall benefits. Though I’m not a financial reporter, I did used to cover payments and I’m a huge points hound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Works with AirPower mat”. Apparently not. Looks like Apple doesn’t treat customers with the same “high standard” of care it apparently reserves for its hardware quality. 9 days after launching its $199 wireless charging AirPods headphones touting compatibility with the forthcoming Apple AirPower inductive charger mat, Apple has just scrapped AirPower entirely. It’s an uncharacteristically sloppy move for the “it just works” company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As of 2017, there were roughly 7,000 people living without homes in San Francisco, a number that comprises minors — a lot of them. The San Francisco Unified School District estimates that as of 2017, roughly 2,100 of the children in the school system were homeless — a number that it said looked to be escalating, not shrinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instant print cameras have been popular for a long, long time, but they’re seeing a renaissance now — led by Fujifilm, whose Instax mini-films and cameras lead the pack. But Canon wants in, and has debuted a pair of new cameras to challenge Fuji’s dominance — but their reliance on digital printing may hold them back. The cameras have confusing, nonsensical names in both the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As promised back in January by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the company today is rolling out an even darker version of the app’s existing dark mode. Before, Twitter’s dark theme was more of a blue-ish shade instead of a true black, which not everyone seemed to like. Now, there’s an optional setting that makes the current dark mode more of a pitch black. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Productivity nerds, rejoice! Flexibits, the company behind Fantastical, is releasing Cardhop on the iPhone and iPad today. Cardhop was originally released on macOS, and it lets you text or call your contacts as well as add information more quickly. If you have an iPhone, chances are you're using the default Contacts app. It's a pretty straightforward app, but it hasn't evolved in years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Huawei held a press conference today in Paris. And the company just unveiled its brand new flagship phone — the P30 and the P30 Pro. In many ways, this year’s update is a continuation of the P20 series — but everything has been upgraded. I played with both devices for a bit of time yesterday, here’s my experience. While Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has switched to a hole-punch design, Huawei is keeping the good old notch for its flagship device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The iPad mini is super enjoyable to use and is the best size tablet for everything but traditional laptop work. It’s very good and I’m glad Apple updated it. Using Apple Pencil is aces on the smaller mini, don’t worry about the real estate being an issue if you like to scribble notes or make sketches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is how much money Pinterest execs made last year Silicon Valley is known for its massive wealth. When these companies file to go public, we all finally get to know how much money these executives take home each year, and the millions they’ll take home after the IPO. In Pinterest’s S-1, which it filed earlier today, we see that co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann earned a salary of $197,100. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to the City of Paris, there are 15,000 free-floating vehicles of all forms and shapes in the city, from electric scooters to fluorescent bikes and motorcycle-like scooters. And the City of Paris announced today that companies that operate free-floating services will have to pay a tax depending on the size of their fleet. If the plan goes through and if you’re running a bike-sharing service, you’ll have to pay €20 per bike per year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can already find many leaked photos of Huawei’s next flagship device — the P30 and P30 Pro. The company is set to announce the new product at an event in Paris next week. So here’s what you should expect. Reliable phone leaker Evan Blass tweeted many different photos of the new devices in three different tweets: pic.twitter.com/nIlhxby1Ah — Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 20, 2019 As you can see, both devices feature three cameras on the back of the device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dyson’s got a very specific way of doing things. The British company makes super-high-quality products for a world where price isn’t an option. Using their devices is a bit like driving a sports car for the first time. You’ve got no idea why someone would pay that much money for something until you actually try them out. Fittingly, it offered a few handfuls of reporters a chance to try out a trio of new products at a closed-door event this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cost has always been a big part of the Kindle line’s appeal at the low end. Amazon’s very good at undercutting the competition, while still managing to provide a workhorse e-reader in the process. Of course, paying $90 for the device comes with a number of cut corners, not the least of which has been the device’s stubborn refusal to adopt the front-lighting found on the rest of the line. Amazon’s just amended that oversight with the latest version of the standard Kindle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PC gaming has grown to be a pretty wide niche of people with some far-flung similarities and differences, one thing they all share are souped-up rigs that rely on beefy GPUs. This is fine for those with dedicated machines but PC gaming isn’t too friendly to those trying to pull double-duty on their everyday machine. Vectordash, launching out of the latest Y Combinator batch, wants to turn your Macbook Air or other underpowered rig into a formidable machine through their cloud gaming service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drones are useful in countless ways, but that usefulness is often limited by the time they can stay in the air. Shouldn’t drones be able to take a load off too? With these special claws attached, they can perch or hang with ease, conserving battery power and vastly extending their flight time. The claws, created by a highly multinational team of researchers I’ll list at the end, are inspired by birds and bats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The games we see advertised the most aren’t necessarily the best representatives for what has become an incredibly diverse medium. Yearly AAA installments and massive open worlds are all well and good, but simplicity is rarely on display — which makes two recent releases, Ape Out and Baba Is You, all the more delightful. Both are, in a way, very simple games, but from that simplicity arises complex and enjoyable gameplay concepts that can entertain (or frustrate) for hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French premium TV channel Canal+ is facing increased competition from Netflix in France. The company is trying to reinvent itself with a new over-the-top offering called Canal+ Séries. The new service is launching today. As the name suggests, Canal+ Séries is focused on TV series — you won’t find any movie on the streaming service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At first glance, it appeared that Tesla Model 3 had a doppelganger. After years of teasers and hints, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally unveiled the Model Y, a mid-sized all-electric vehicle that will start at $39,000 and is slated to hit the marketplace in fall 2020. The Model Y bears a striking resemblance to Model 3. The vehicle, which will come in a standard, long range, dual-motor all-wheel and performance variants, is a bit larger, allowing it to accommodate seven people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices