Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Happy Halloween

Twitter takes a strong stand on political advertising, Apple and Facebook beat Wall Street expectations with their earnings and Microsoft powers instructor-less driver tests. Here’s your Daily Crunch for October 31, 2019.

Jack Dorsey says Twitter will ban all political ads

Arguing that “internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse,” CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter will be banning all political advertising — albeit with "a few exceptions" like voter registration.

Not only is this a decisive move by Twitter, but it also could increase pressure on Facebook to follow suit, or at least take steps in this direction.

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We analyzed Brex data to learn how startups spend their money

Sponsored by Brex

Successful startups invest heavily in growth. Between finding product-market fit and investing in cloud services and marketing, taking a startup from Pre-Seed to Series A can be an expensive journey. Find out how startups are spending their hard-earned cash.

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Apple beats on Q4 earnings after strong quarter for wearables, services

Apple's iPhone sales still make up over half of its quarterly revenues, but they are slowly shrinking in importance as other divisions in the company pick up speed.

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Facebook shares rise on strong Q3, users up 2% to 2.45B

More earnings news: Despite ongoing public relations crises, Facebook kept growing in Q3 2019, demonstrating that media backlash does not necessarily equate to poor business performance.

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Driving license tests just got smarter in India with Microsoft's AI project

Hundreds of people who have taken the driver's license test in Dehradun (the capital of the Indian state of Uttarakhand) in recent weeks haven't had to sit next to an instructor. Instead, their cars were affixed with a smartphone that was running HAMS, an AI project developed by a Microsoft Research team.

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Crunchbase raises $30M more to double down on its ambition to be a 'LinkedIn for company data'

Good news for our friends at Crunchbase, which got its start as a part of TechCrunch before being spun off into a separate business several years ago. CEO Jager McConnell also says the site currently has tens of thousands of paying subscribers.

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Deadspin writers quit after being ordered to stick to sports

The relationship between new management at G/O Media (formerly Gizmodo Media Group/Gawker Media) and editorial staff seems to have been deteriorating for months. This week, it turned into a full-on revolt over auto-play ads and especially a directive that Deadspin writers must stick to sports.

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What Berlin's top VCs want to invest in right now

As we gear up for our Disrupt Berlin conference in December, we check in with top VCs on the types of startups that they’re looking to back right now. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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• Digital Marketing Executive at Activist Artists Management (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• C#/.NET Developer at Codagami, Inc. (Champaign, IL, USA)
• Senior Full Stack Engineer at AJ Madison (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
• iOS/Android Mobile Application Developer at Scm Products, Inc. (Hauppauge, NY, USA)
• Machine Learning Engineer at Facet.ai (San Francisco, CA, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

Happy Wednesday

WarnerMedia shares more details about its HBO Max streaming service, WhatsApp sues an Israeli spyware company and Tencent makes a big investment in streaming video. Here’s your Daily Crunch for October 30, 2019.

HBO Max will cost $14.99 per month and launch in May 2020

AT&T and WarnerMedia announced the pricing, launch timetable and content lineup of their HBO Max streaming service. They also revealed that HBO has placed a straight-to-series order for “House of the Dragon,” a spin-off of “Game of Thrones.”

Even though distinguishing between HBO and HBO Max will probably be a bit of a headache over the next few years, this is a service that I’m genuinely excited about, with a rich library of HBO shows and Warner Bros. films at its core. And while the price is high compared to competing services, there’s no additional cost compared to the existing HBO Now.

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Webinar: Business Process Automation: Are Clinical Trials Next?

Sponsored by TransCelerate BioPharma Inc.

Is your company involved in business process automation? Get an inside look at how TransCelerate's initiative will collect and leverage metadata to optimize, transform and automate clinical trial start-up processes.

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WhatsApp blames — and sues — mobile spyware maker NSO Group over its zero-day calling exploit

WhatsApp has filed a suit in federal court accusing Israeli mobile surveillance software maker NSO Group of creating an exploit that was used hundreds of times to hack into targets’ phones.

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Tencent leads $111M investment in India's video streaming service MX Player

Times Internet, which acquired a majority stake in MX Player in late 2017, also participated in the Series A financing round. The post-money valuation was $500 million, according to a source.

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Spotify launches a dedicated Kids app for Premium Family subscribers

The app allows children three and up to listen to their own music, both online and offline, as well as explore playlists and recommendations picked by experts. The music selection is filtered so songs won't have explicit content.

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Slack investor Index Ventures backs Slack competitor Quill

Quill, a startup led by Stripe’s former creative director Ludwig Pettersson, claims to offer "meaningful conversations, without disturbing your team."

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Where top VCs are investing in cybersecurity

Many of the rising cybersecurity startups focus on the same or overlapping problems, which could lead to a "cybersecurity consolidation.” (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Let's have a word about what3words with Clare Jones at Disrupt Berlin

What3words wants to map the entire world and overhaul addresses, three words at a time. The startup has divided the world into three-meter squares, each one assigned three words as an identifier.

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• Digital Marketing Executive at Activist Artists Management (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• C#/.NET Developer at Codagami, Inc. (Champaign, IL, USA)
• Senior Full Stack Engineer at AJ Madison (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
• iOS/Android Mobile Application Developer at Scm Products, Inc. (Hauppauge, NY, USA)
• Machine Learning Engineer at Facet.ai (San Francisco, CA, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

Happy Tuesday

Apple reveals AirPods with noise cancellation, Amazon starts offering free grocery delivery for Prime members and Lyft revamps its monthly membership plan. Here’s your Daily Crunch for October 29, 2019.

Apple announces AirPods Pro with noise cancellation

These new Airpods feature active noise cancellation, with two microphones in each earbud to listen to background noise and actively cancel sound around you.

AirPods Pro will be available for $249 starting on October 30. Regular AirPods remain available for the same price of $159 to $199, depending on whether you get the wireless charging case.

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The Digital Marketing Strategy Program

Sponsored by Columbia Business School

Marketers today face a constant proliferation of marketing channels, the growing power of the connected customer, and an explosion of new digital tools. To succeed, marketers must be able to plan, implement, and measure the impact of their digital strategies.

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Amazon axes $14.99 Amazon Fresh fee, making grocery delivery free for Prime members to boost use

Alongside free delivery, Amazon is giving users one- and two-hour delivery options for quicker turnarounds, and it's making local Whole Foods inventory available online and through the Amazon app.

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Lyft replaces pricey All-Access monthly plan with Lyft Pink

Lyft is ditching its All-Access plan and replacing it with Lyft Pink, which costs just $19.99 per month. The perks of the membership differ (for Pink, they include 15% off on all car rides), but this lower price point will likely prove to be much more of a win-win for Lyft and its riders.

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FCC proposes rules requiring telcos remove Huawei, ZTE equipment

The Federal Communications Commission said it will move ahead with proposals to ban telecommunications giants from using Huawei and ZTE networking equipment, which the agency says poses a "national security threat."

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Amazon Echo Buds review -- $129 for Alexa in your ears

Brian Heater says there's a lot about the Echo Buds that would have made them an excellent addition to the category two or three years ago. Now, however, it’s all-but-assured that third-party products will eclipse Amazon’s earbuds shortly.

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ByteDance denies it will go public in Hong Kong next quarter

TikTok-owner ByteDance has responded to a report in the Financial Times that said the Chinese internet startup plans to go public in Hong Kong as early as the first quarter of next year: "There is absolutely zero truth to the rumors that we plan to list in Hong Kong in Q1.”

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Will the quantum economy change your business?

Google and NASA have demonstrated that quantum computing isn't just a fancy trick, but almost certainly something actually useful — and they're already working on commercial applications. What does that mean for existing startups and businesses? (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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• C#/.NET Developer at Codagami, Inc. (Champaign, IL, USA)
• Senior Full Stack Engineer at AJ Madison (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
• iOS/Android Mobile Application Developer at Scm Products, Inc. (Hauppauge, NY, USA)
• Machine Learning Engineer at Facet.ai (San Francisco, CA, USA)
• .Net Technology Director at Genuine (Boston, MA, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.