TechCrunch Industry News

At a Samsung event last week, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins explained why he doesn’t stream with female gamers. “If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” said Ninja, who is married, in an interview with Polygon. As you might expect, this stance was met with plenty of backlash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trulia, the online real estate site owned by its former rival Zillow, wants to give you a better idea of what a certain neighborhood feels like before you move there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let’s get the fish in the barrel out of the way. Voatz are a tech startup whose bright idea was to disrupt democracy by having people vote on their phone, and store the votes on, you guessed it, a blockchain. Does this sound like a bad idea? Welp. It turned out that they seemed awfully casual about basic principles of software security, such as not hard-coding your AWS credentials. It turned out that their blockchain was an eight-node Hyperledger install, i.e. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launches tonight to “touch the sun” If you think it's hot on Earth right now... NASA’s ambitious mission to go closer to the Sun than ever before is set to launch in the small hours between Friday and Saturday — at 3:33 AM Eastern from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to be precise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 1960s were a beautiful time for watches. Horlogy was in its prime and the great names we know and love today – Rolex, Omega, Cartier – were just one of many watchmakers churning out commodity products to a world that needed to tell the time. Their watches – simple, elegant, and mechanically complex – were the ultimate in mechanical efficiency and design and no one did it quite as well as Seiko. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by 500 Startups CEOChristine Tsaifor what turned out to be a super packed episode. We kicked off with the latest from Slack: $400 million new dollars at a shiny, new $7 billion valuation,according to TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year I had a good time comparing Sony’s DPT-RP1 with the home-grown reMarkable. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, and one of the Sony’s was that the thing was just plain big. They’ve remedied that with a much smaller sibling, the DPT-CP1, and it’s just as useful as I expected. Which is to say: in a very specific way. Sony’s e-paper tablets are single-minded little gadgets: all they do is let you read and lightly mark up PDFs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Remember those rumors that Samsung would be working to keep costs of its new flagships at reasonable levels? Yeah, no such luck, bucko. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 starts at $999.95. That will get you the base-level model, with an admittedly generous 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM. The next SKU up will really make the eyeballs pop out of your head like a Tex Avery cartoon, however. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking about taking the company private, he said in a Tweet this morning. More specifically, he said he may buy back the company for $82 billion (at a share price of $420 plus debt), and already has the funding to do so. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018 I’ve reached out to Tesla — given that this could just be Musk trolling all of us — and will update this story if I hear back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IDC’s latest tablet numbers tell a familiar story. Shipments are down yet again, a trend that shows no sign of abating. There is, however, one clear bright spot in all of this, bucking the trend. Quarter after quarter, convertibles have continued to grow, as users have demanded more productivity than is traditionally possible with slates. It’s no surprise, then, that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Samsung are all vying for mindshare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let’s be honest, if you use a receiver as the hub of your home entertainment system, you probably only use about a quarter of the buttons, dials and inputs on it, at most. Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles of a receiver-driven surround sound system. For those looking to get their sound with a considerably smaller footprint, 2.1 powered systems consisting of a pair of bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer are just the ticket, and Edifier‘s $300 S350DB is solid option. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Clear, the biometrics company you’ve probably seen at airports and at a few other prominent queues, is rolling out the capability to simultaneously verify your ID and pay for an alcoholic drink with your fingerprint. It’s only at Seattle’s CenturyLink and Safeco Fields (and only a handful of concessions stands at those) but if it’s successful you can bet we’ll be seeing more of it. That makes it the first time in the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15 names that would have been better than Android Pie Let’s say, hypothetically, that you make a mobile operating system, and somewhere along the line, you decided whimsically to name major updates after alphabetical dessert foods. What a fun idea! Sure, some letters will prove harder than others. “K” and “O” are admittedly tough, but that’s nothing that little bit of clever cross-branding can’t fix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For being the richest company ever with $243 billion in cash, Apple sure cuts corners in the stingiest ways. The hardware giant became the first trillion-dollar company week. Yet it’s tough to reconcile Apple earning $11 billion in profit per quarter with it still screwing us over on cords and keyboards. The “it just works” philosophy has slipped through the cracks of the money-printing machine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch’s Matthew Lynley and Crunchbase News’s Alex Wilhelm were joined byJyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics and a partner at Unusual Ventures, among other startupwork. Our own Connie Loizos was off this week. This episode was effectively a news grab-bag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How should you feel to know your employer is far, far richer than Croesus? As Apple CEO Tim Cook tells it — in a memo to staff, obtained by BuzzFeed News, re: yesterday’s news that the computer company Steve Jobs founded back in 1976 is now worth more than $1,000,000,000,000 — you should feel A) pretty stoked that your labor has helped achieve a significant financial milestone but also B) know it’s not a success metric to get hung up about because it’s the passion for innovation and creation (not the towering mounds of gold) that really counts and so C) please,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Virtual reality is an isolating experience. You power it up, strap the headset on and just sort of drift off into your own world. But maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. Maybe there’s a way to slip into a virtual world and still interact with your surroundings. Electronauts presents an interesting example. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 12 a few days ago. 9to5mac discovered strings in configuration files that reference dual SIM devices. You should expect at least one new iPhone model with two SIM trays. Apple is said to unveil three new iPhone models in September. In addition to an updated iPhone X, the company should announce a bigger second generation “iPhone X Plus”. Apple also plans to bring the notch to more devices with a replacement to the iPhone 8. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, Elon Musk sure had a good run at fixing the world’s pressing problems. Stuff like climate change — with those fancy electric sports cars, built in a fancy tent. Or those fancysolar roof tiles. (Fancy rockets aren’t really a ‘fix’ at this point but he’s thinking about the extraterrestrial future of humanity, okay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You probably never think about the Google Clock app on your Android phone. And unless you are one of those happy early risers, it’s not exactly an app that brings you joy. But every day, it wakes you right on time, with either some annoying chirps or other sounds that, over time, will stress you out. But stress no more. Google today launched an update to the Clock app that now lets you choose any song or playlist from Spotify to wake you up. This works for any Android phone running Android 5. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Several dummy units of future iPhone models have leaked over the weekend. It gives a good idea of what you should expect to see in September when Apple introduces the next iPhone. Most likely, the iPhones on these photos aren’t actual iPhones. They are just dummy units. Every year, a few manufacturers create objects that look exactly like future iPhones. They are based on leaked design schematics and usually look just like the real thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back at Google I/O, Google announced two new features for Google Assistant: custom routines, and schedules. Both focusing on automating things you do regularly, but in different ways. The first lets you trigger multiple commands with a single custom phrase — like saying “Hey Google, I’m awake” to unsilence your phone, turn on the lights, and read the news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla is no stranger to branded merch. Its got the standard company swag — the hats, the shirts, and the mugs. It’s got quirkier stuff, like miniature Teslas for kids and USB chargers shaped like the Superchargers that juice up their vehicles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tickets to theTechCrunch Summer Party at August Capitalare on the verge of selling out. If you want to attend our 13th annual summer fete on July 27, there’s no time to waste. Reserve your ticket right now. This event draws an incredible mix of Silicon Valley’s startup community — a who’s who of founders, investors, tech makers, movers and shakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In what could be the biggest one-day drop of all time, Facebook shares opened at $174.89, down 19.6 percent compared to yesterday’s closing price of $217.50 (NASDAQ:FB). When it comes to market capitalization, Facebook was worth $629.6 billion yesterday. The company is now worth $506.2. In other words, Facebook has lost $123.4 billion in value overnight. Today’s performance isn’t due to yet another data misuse or election interfering scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This review took a lot of pork. Over the last few months, I’ve used the Traeger Timberline 850 several times a week. Cooking on this grill is easier than using an oven. With a little bit of planning, a person can simultaneously grill a flock of chickens, a couple of pork butts and a load of veggies and have them turn out perfectly. I did, and it was the best Mother’s Day ever. First the good. It’s simple: This grill can cook the perfect brisket every time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX confirmed on Twitter this morning that it recovered the booster from the latest Falcon 9 launch. Shortly after launchingfrom Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California at 7:39AM ET this morning, the booster stage landed on theJust Read The Instructions drone ship. The company will now try to catch the rocket’s fairing with a giant net attached to the ship Mr. Stevens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Xiaomi gave Google’s well-intentioned but somewhat-stalled Android One project a major boost last year when it unveiled its first device under the program, Mi A1. That’s now joined by not one but two sequel devices, after the Chinese phone maker unveiled the Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite at an event in Spain today. Xiaomi in Spain? Yes, that’s right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pokémon GO just got a little surprise update, complete with a curious new feature: “Lucky” Pokémon. Most things in Pokémon GO are adapted from things that already exist in the Pokémon universe. Items like incense, lucky eggs and the like all exist in the main Pokémon series (though what these items actually do tends to be a bit different in GO). Lucky Pokémon, as far as I know, is a new concept altogether. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet the Travel Backpack 45L. It’s Peak Design’s latest creation and the company just launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to life. This product marks the eighth Kickstarter campaign for Peak Design — all of which have been wildly successful. Peak Design turned to Kickstarter in 2014 to launch the first generation of its Capture camera clip. Over 5,200 people pledged support to bring that product to life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Niantic explains how and why it bans players in Pokémon GO Getting banned for cheating is nothing new in Pokémon GO. There’ve been big ol’ ban waves every few weeks for ages now. The policies have never been totally set in stone, however — at least not publicly. Like many of the game’s mechanics, the player base has had to share info amongst themselves to figure out the offenses and their relative punishments, from slaps on the wrist to lifetime bans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’ve been working with an ugly but functional lopsided two-monitor setup for years, and while it has served me well, I can’t say the new generation of ultra-wide monitors hasn’t tempted me. But the truth is they just aren’t wide enough. Or rather, they weren’t. Samsung has just blown my mind with a monitor so wide it will serve as a ramp that you can trick off of in the summer. It’s so wide that when it puts on a pair of BVDs they read BOULEVARD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TheTechCrunch Summer Party at August Capitalis the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. We’re celebrating 13 years of libations and convivial conversation while toasting the entrepreneurial spirit on the deck at August Capital in Menlo Park on July 27. And we want you to join us. If you have not yet secured your ticket to this summer soiree, heed our call. We’ve just released the last round of tickets. Once they go — and go quickly they will — that’s it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Galaxy Note 9 won’t be announced until August. You wouldn’t know it by reading the internet, however. Every nook and cranny of the upcoming phablet has been bared for the world, in a series of leaks over the past several weeks. Sure, not all of them will pan out, but plenty have come from leakers with established track records, and enough of the details line up so as to paint a wholly believable portrait of the phone we’ll finally get an official look at early next month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Worried about a slowdown? It already happened in 2016, says one new venture study In today’s market, it’s hard to make sense of what’s what. Deals have grown incestuous for the first time, with outfits like GV investing alongside Uber last week — just months after its parent company, Alphabet, was at Uber’s throat. A $10 million-plus round of seed funding is no longer a joke. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple just released the third version of the iOS 12 beta as part of the public beta program. It means that everyone can now install a development build of iOS 12, the next major version of the operating system for iPhone and iPad. Don’t forget this is still a beta version. Things will crash, things won’t work. Don’t be surprised if you lose data in your Photos, Notes or Messages apps for instance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bitcoin is moving up, and it’s taking 99 of its best friends along for the ride. In the last 24 hours, every one of the top 100 coins by market cap was in the green with 84 of them posting gains of over 5 percent. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was sitting at $7,310, up 14 percent in the last 7 days and up almost 10 percent in the last 24 hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Founder and investor Elad Gil has a new book that aims to help startups with their later-stage challenges — before they get to that point Serial entrepreneur and angel investor Elad Gil has become renowned in Silicon Valley startup circles, largely because he not only funds startups but he advises many, too. Some of the tech companies he has logged time with include Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Instacart, Coinbase, Stripe, and Square. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon is kicking off today’s Prime Day a bit early. Although its annual sale technically begins at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET this afternoon, it put its own devices on sale 12 hours early. The company is marking down its Alexa-enabled products like Echo, Fire TV, and Fire tablets, as well as its home security products like the Cloud Cam and more recently acquired Ring Video Doorbell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When reviewing hardware, it’s important to integrate it into your life as much as possible. If you can, swap it in for your existing devices for a few days or a week, to really get an idea of what it’s like to use it day to day. There are certain nuances you can only discover through this approach. Of course, that’s easier said than done in most cases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Specs? We’ll talk specs later. Right now we’re focused on something far more important: keyboard noise. It’s been a common complaint among MacBook users since the company shifted to the butterfly switch. Some of that can no doubt be chalked up to the fact that people really hate change when it comes to something as fundamental as a keyboard. Even so, there’s no mistaking the fact that, in the right hands, this thing can cause a ruckus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When one of the main selling points for your service is the ability to stream live sports, the last thing you want is a full-on service meltdown during a huge game. Alas, that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday to YouTube TV. Just as the World Cup semi-finals game between Croatia and England started heating up, . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the first time, Netflix tops HBO for most Emmy nominations Netflix has broken HBO’s 17-year streak as the most nominated network at the Emmy Awards. In the nominations released this afternoon, Netflix came out slightly ahead, with 112 nominations compared to HBO’s 108. Those include Best Comedy nods for GLOW and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as well as Best Drama nominations for The Crown and Stranger Things. Other Netflix shows got some love as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our 13th annual TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital takes place on July 27, and we’re happy to announce we’ve just released a fourth batch of tickets to this fun Silicon Valley tradition. These tickets have been moving at a brisk pace, so if you’d like to join us in Menlo Park, be sure to buy your ticket today. Come and spend a relaxing evening of cocktails and conversation with your peers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Croatia scored and the score is now 1-1 against England. If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you might not know that because YouTube TV has been down for around 40 minutes. Update: It’s back just in time for extra time. People who pay $40 a month to subscribe to live TV on YouTube are arguably mad. One of the main reasons YouTube TV makes sense is that it lets you watch live sports. You won’t find any soccer match on Netflix or HBO Now after all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mozilla’s Test Pilot program for Firefox has long been the organization’s way to trial some of its more experimental ideas for new browser features. Now it’s expanding this program to include mobile apps, too, with the launch Firefox Lockbox, of a password manager for iOS, and Notes by Firefox, a note-taking app for Android. Both apps have a connection to Firefox (hence their names), but we’re not talking about Firefox plugins here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People ask me all the time about my favorite gadgets and I rarely have any answers. I’ve been playing with stuff since 2004 and I’m pretty gadget-ed out. But this year I’ve finally found something that I really enjoy: the GPD XD, an Android-based gaming handheld that lets you play multiple emulators including an endless array homebrew and classic ROMS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Toward the end of his life, it became somewhat common practice to post a picture of his door. It was an otherwise unremarkable thing, with a mail slot and a metal plate at the bottom. Up top, a large plate read simply, “S. Ditko.” Most wouldn’t venture beyond that, respectful of not disturbing the legendary cartoonist who’d become something akin to a comic book version of J.D Salinger, or maybe Thomas Pynchon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft all but announced as much via the official Surface account. The company tweeted out the leading question “Where will Surface go next?” along with a image of the full lineup — the Pro, Laptop, Book 2 and swiveling all-in-one Studio. The desktops each displaying 6:00 on Tuesday, July 10 is the other key hint here. The big news will probably drop tomorrow, most likely in the A.M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a rapid ascent, it’s been a rough couple of months for MoviePass. And while last night’s outage isn’t exactly the end of the world for the theater subscription service, Friday night is the least the opportune moment for your service to crap the proverbial bed. That goes double now that competitors like AMC and Sinemia is pushing back hard. The company says it had the situation fully taken care of as of 9:30 ET last night. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices