Category: Tech news

 Perhaps to counter concerns over iPhone sales and China, Apple this week released numbers related to the App Store’s growth that demonstrate the very real impact China is having on its app ecosystem and developer community. The company said that, in July, it had its largest number of transacting customers with over $1.7 billion in billings. In addition, the same month broke records… Read More

 Greetings from the gaudy hellscape of Las Vegas, and that overcrowded maelstrom of surly hackers known as DEF CON! What follows is a brief rundown of the talks here (and its big corporate sister Black Hat) that seemed particularly interesting. Short version: software is eating the world; software can be hacked; ergo, the world can be hacked. Be afraid. Read More

 Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of CrunchWeek, TechCrunch’s recurring roundup of the biggest tech stories of the week. This week our humble band delved into recent earnings by Etsy and Fitbit, Twitter’s share price declines, hints about the social company’s next CEO, and, of course, that VR thing you might have heard of. Read More

 Tired of earnings and financials and share price changes and non-GAAP operating margins and future cash positions? Too bad.
It’s earnings season in the markets, and that means that the tech companies we can spell and have heard of are collectively spilling their guts about their recent performance. For some firms, this means recurring record highs. And for others, recurring record lows. Read More

 I’m not a betting man — but if someone were to say “Quick! When will Apple announce the next iPhone?!”, I’d say September. It’s… just what they do.
Sure enough: word around the rumor mill is now that the next announcement will come on September 9th. Read More

 Gillmor Gang – John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. LIVE recording session has concluded for today.
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 An NPD survey is suggesting that the Apple Watch has pushed watch sales to the lowest point since 2008. NPD has found that watchmakers sold $375 million worth of watches in July, down 11 percent from last year.
This decline is the largest since a similar decline in 2008 due to the financial crisis. Read More

 “The way I like to think about this project is that we’re trying to put a humans brain inside of the robot”
Don’t worry: it’s less techno-horror-movie-esque than it sounds.
We’re getting closer and closer to robots that can roam about on their own. DARPA’s Atlas robot is climbing stairs and opening doors; Google’s Small Dog is running around… Read More

 Language is a distinctly human trait. Or is it? A new wave of consumer-focused startups are now developing artificial intelligence programs that can mimic, adapt and interpret the complex semantic patterns that were previously unrecognizable to logical, mathematically driven machines. Read More

 Last night, Fox News hosted one of the most ridiculous, deeply entertaining GOP Presidential debates I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing a drinking game to. In the midst of the Moscow Mules, Lagunitas and amazing Trump-isms came a pretty heated (and unexpected) shouting match between former Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul regarding the spying capabilities of the NSA.… Read More

 It’s earnings season, and HTC is having a rough few years quarter. Meanwhile, OnePlus released the OnePlus 2, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 seems to have leaked all over the place. Plus, the Drifter waterproof speaker (with its own operating system) is now available for pre-order. We discuss all of this, and our future romantic relationships with robots, on the latest episode of the… Read More

 Browser maker Opera today announced that it has acquired Bemobi — a subscription-based mobile-app-discovery service with a focus on the Latin American market. Opera expects the acquisition to close in the third quarter of 2015. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Read More

 Verizon announced a brand new line-up of monthly plans for new customers. Following T-Mobile’s model, plans are now a bit cheaper and easier to understand. But you should expect to pay more for your phone as Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent parent company) will sell you unsubsidized phones. Read More

 This week Apple.com got a significant redesign, a Time magazine cover featuring Palmer Luckey went viral, Netflix announced a huge perk for its employees, and we found out what it’s like to use Amazon Dash buttons. Here are the stories of the week. Read More

 Kids are mean. Just ask any robot. Robotics engineers have discovered a tendency for little kids – kindergarteners and grade schoolers – to be abusive towards robots when they’re not near their parents. To prove this, the researchers sent a wheeled robot out into a mall and watched it perambulate around foot traffic. When a little kid approached with his or her parent, the… Read More