Violent video games have attracted attention in recent weeks, being partially blamed for the mass shootings in the United States. Despite this, sales data from some of the biggest retailers in the country reveal that players are actually enjoying a huge variety of video games, and very few of the best sellers in July were…
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 can subscribe here. 1. Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress.com parent, Automattic It’s been six years since Yahoo acquired the popular blogging platform for more…
Recharge, a startup that tried convincing hotels to let its customers rent their rooms by the hour and even minute, has revamped and rebranded. Now Globe, the company is hoping to convince guests to sign up for short stays instead in people’s homes so that they can kick back between other commitments, and, if the…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a bit special. Instead of meeting up at the TechCrunch HQ to record the episode, Kate and Alex met up in muggy Boston at Drift’s office, where we linked up with Axios’s Dan Primack. And…
You may soon be able to organize Twitter’s web of hashtags and handles in a smarter way — that is, if the company can pull off its ambitious new rethinking of the app’s timelines. The company isn’t getting rid of the process of following users, but at a press event in SF, company execs announced…
As part of new efforts toward accessibility, Google announced Project Euphonia at I/O in May: An attempt to make speech recognition capable of understanding people with non-standard speaking voices or impediments. The company has just published a post and its paper explaining some of the AI work enabling the new capability. The problem is simple…
GettyImages/NeonJellyFish Minneapolis recently took the first step in denying the significance of automobiles in American culture when the city council enacted a ban on drive-throughs. The local authority argued that getting rid of drive-throughs will result in safer roads for drivers and pedestrians and cleaner air, according to StreetsBlog. The blog also cited research that…
“The future is private.” Clearly, Facebook still has a way to go. Facebook has become the latest tech giant to face scrutiny over its handling of users’ data, following a report that said the social media giant collected audio data and recordings from its users and transcribed it using third-party contractors. The report came from…
Xiaomi has now been India’s top smartphone seller for eight straight quarters. The company has become a constant headache for Samsung in the world’s second largest smartphone market as sales have slowed pretty much everywhere else in the world. The Chinese electronics giant shipped 10.4 million handsets in the quarter that ended in June, commanding…
Y Combinator has kept an eye on cannabis startups over the years, but it’s their latest investment that’s sure to attract the attention of both marijuana users and law enforcement. SannTek Labs, which is launching with new funding out of Y Combinator’s latest jumbo class of startups, is building a new kind of breathalyzer that…
