The Latest

Gartner has released its quarterly PC sales survey for the fourth quarter of 2018, and it was the same old story. PC sales plunged in the fourth quarter and were…

Gartner finds PC sales doldrums continued in 2018

After weeks of teasing renderings and production photos, Elon Musk finally showed off the finished Starship test rocket last night. Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the @SpaceX Texas…

Elon Musk shows off the assembled Starship test rocket

It’s another week, and another bevy of hits on Chinese tech by the U.S. government. Let’s get up to speed, plus a request for startup lawyer recommendations. TechCrunch is experimenting…

The US continues to hammer Chinese tech

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you…

Daily Crunch: Bing has a child porn problem

Tor, the open-source initiative that provides a more secure way to access the internet, is continuing to diversify its funding away from its long-standing reliance on U.S. government grants. The…

Tor pulls in record donations as it lessens reliance on US government grants

In a government shutdown, everything deemed non-essential stops. As we found out, renewing the certificates on its websites is considered non-essential. Several government sites are currently inaccessible or blocked by…

Some US government websites won’t load after HTTPS certificates expire during shutdown

Xiaomi, the Chinese company best known for budget phones, is betting big on a future of connected homes. It plans to plough at least 10 billion yuan, or $1.48 billion,…

Xiaomi’s five-year plan is a $1.5 billion bet on smart homes

Two months ago, NASA quietly fixed a buggy internal server that was leaking sensitive information about the agency’s staff and their work. The leaking server was — ironically — a…

Another server security lapse at NASA exposed staff and project data

The Fortnite community may be polite, but that doesn’t mean they’re getting the customer service they deserve. The Better Business Bureau gave Fortnite maker Epic Games an “F,” the lowest…

Epic Games receives an ‘F’ from the Better Business Bureau

Amazon’s Dash buttons have been found to breach consumer e-commerce rules in Germany. The push-to-order gizmos were debuted by Amazon in 2015 in an attempt by the e-commerce giant to shave…

Amazon Dash buttons judged to breach consumer rules in Germany

Where we’ll be next

Lisbon, characterized occasionally by some tech scene observers as “the warm Berlin,” has been threatening to generate more startups in the last few years, not least because it will now…

Lisbon finally gets a substantial VC fund in the shape of Indico Capital Partners

VLC, the hugely popular media playing service, is filling one of its gaps with the addition of AirPlay support as it has just crossed an incredible three billion downloads. The new…

VLC prepares to add AirPlay support as it crosses 3 billion downloads

The personal details belonging to more than 202 million job seekers in China, including information like phone numbers, email addresses, driver licenses and salary expectations, were freely available to anyone…

An unsecured database exposed the personal details of 202M job seekers in China

The world’s highest-valued artificial intelligence startup SenseTime has set foot in Japan. The Beijing-based firm announced on Friday that it just opened a self-driving facility in Joso, a historic city…

World’s most valuable AI startup SenseTime unveils self-driving center in Japan

Home security is just a hop away

Recorded on January 9, 2019. Kangaroo is taking on the antiquated home security industry with motion sensors you can install anywhere and monitor with your…

Home security is just a hop away

Improbable is taking a daring step after announcing earlier today that Unity had revoked its license to operate on the popular game development engine. The U.K.-based cloud gaming startup has…

Improbable and Epic Games establish $25M fund to help devs move to ‘more open engines’ after Unity debacle

That’s not the kind of headline one expects to write going into the week. But here we are. Universal Space’s analog Pong table is a mindblower in a whole unexpected…

A Pong table managed to wow CES 2019

Samsung’s look-but-don’t-touch policy left many wondering precisely how committed the company is to its new robots. On the other hand, the company was more than happy to let me take…

Taking a stroll with Samsung’s robotic exoskeleton

A pair of highly-funded gaming unicorns are publicly skirmishing and the deal could have major repercussions for game developers. Today, UK-based cloud gaming startup Improbable, announced that Unity, a hugely…

Unity pulls nuclear option on cloud gaming startup Improbable, terminating game engine license

Amazon-owned smart doorbell maker Ring is facing claims that might give some smart home enthusiasts pause. Recent reports from The Intercept and The Information have accused the company of mishandling…

Reports raise video privacy concerns for Amazon-owned Ring