The fall of HTC, the 10-year anniversary of the iOS App Store and a questionable "laser AK-47." Here's your Daily Crunch for July 2, 2018.

1. HTC is gone

To be clear, HTC hasn't actually disappeared or gone belly-up, and there are hopes for a resurgence with the HTC Vive. But as TechCrunch's Matt Burns explains, the HTC of 2018 is not the company that made devices like the HTC Dream and the Google Nexus One.

For one thing, HTC is reportedly preparing to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce, leaving it with less than 5,000 employees — compared to 19,000 five years ago.

2. These are the top iPhone apps of all time

That's according to App Annie, which is releasing retrospective lists in advance of the 10th anniversary of the iOS App Store on July 11. When it comes to downloads, Candy Crush Saga is the top game worldwide, while Facebook is the biggest non-game app.

3. MoviePass parent says it may sell up to $1.2B in equity and debt to finance operations and growth

This isn't the only move MoviePass-owner Helios and Matheson Analytics has made recently to raise money — last month, it issued $164 million in convertible notes.

4. Chinese company claims its 'laser AK-47' can set you on fire from half a mile away

There are a few red flags here. First: The weapon is only described and not demonstrated. Second: What is described sounds incompatible with physics.

5. Facebook is buying UK's Bloomsbury AI to ramp up natural language tech in London

According to sources, Facebook plans to deploy the company's team and tech to work on combatting fake news and to tackle other content issues.

6. WTF is dark pattern design?

The technique, as it's deployed online today, often feeds off and exploits the fact that content-overloaded consumers skim-read stuff they're presented with, especially if it looks dull and they're in the midst of trying to do something else.

7. Summer is the time for podcasts

In the latest TechCrunch podcasts, Equity covers big funding rounds for Bird and Lyft, Original Content discusses the summer's biggest movies and CTRL+T brings up issues with Apple's Memoji.