Uber and Lyft instituted new safety features and policies this week. The move follows the death of Samantha Josephson, a student at the University of South Carolina, who was kidnapped and murdered in late March. She was found dead after getting into a vehicle that she believed to be her Uber ride. The murder, which […]

Scientists discover 1.8 million previously undetected earthquakes in the Golden State.

Pinterest is the latest high-profile tech unicorn to go public.

Facebook has confirmed its password-related security incident last month now affects “millions” of Instagram users, not “tens of thousands” as first thought. The social media giant confirmed the new information in its updated blog post, first published on March 21. “We discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format,” the company […]

History can tell us a lot about the Crusades, the series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the Near East. But the DNA of nine 13th century Crusaders buried in a pit in Lebanon shows that there's more to learn about who the Crusaders were and their interactions with the populations they encountered.

This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's 29th anniversary in space. The nebula, created by a binary star system, is one of the many objects that Hubble has demystified throughout its productive life. This new image adds to our understanding of the nebula and demonstrates the telescope's continued capabilities.

Researchers have found that general anesthesia induces unconsciousness by hijacking the neural circuitry that makes us fall sleep. They traced this neural circuitry back to a cluster of cells at the base of the brain responsible for churning out hormones to regulate bodily functions, mood, and sleep. The finding could lead to better drugs capable of putting people to sleep with fewer side effects.

A team of researchers has observed chirality for the first time in polar skyrmions, in a material with reversible electrical properties -- a combination that could lead to more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information, even after they've been turned off.

Researchers use GPS to track the timing and patterns of giant tortoise migration over multiple years. The tortoises often take the same migration routes over many years in order to find optimal food quality and temperatures. The timing of this migration is essential for keeping their energy levels high, and climate change could disrupt a tortoise's ability to migrate at the right time.

Microsoft has never been shy about being acquisitive, and today it announced it’s buying Express Logic, a San Diego company that has developed a real-time operating system (RTOS) aimed at controlling the growing number of IoT devices in the world. The companies did not share the purchase price. Express Logic is not some wide-eyed, pie-in-the-sky […]

The Mueller report contains new information about how the Russian government hacked documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee . At one point, the Russians used servers located in the U.S. to carry out the massive data exfiltration effort, the report confirms. Much of the information was previously learned […]

He invented modern social media, then had it stolen from him. So how does Evan Spiegel feel about it, and how will he turn Snapchat’s product leadership into a profitable business? We’ll bring you the answers at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, where Snap CEO Evan Spiegel will join us. Come learn how Spiegel analyzes behavior to […]

Following reports that Amazon is preparing to launch a free, streaming music service for Echo owners, Google today announced YouTube Music will be free on its Google Home smart speakers and other Google Assistant-powered speakers — like those from JBL, Panasonic, Sony and others. The free service will be ad-supported, and available in select markets, […]

CloudBees, the enterprise continuous integration and delivery service (and the biggest contributor to the Jenkins open-source automation server), today announced that it has acquired Electric Cloud, a continuous delivery and automation platform that first launched all the way back in 2002. The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but CloudBees has […]

Venture investors, private equity, and corporations funneled $2 billion into digital health startups in the first quarter of 2019, down 19% from the nearly $2.5 billion invested a year ago. There were also 38 fewer deals done in the first quarter this year than last year, when investors backed 187 early stage digital health companies, […]

Over the past half a decade, the tidal wave of niche brands delivering new kinds of products to consumers and doing so online has changed the retail and CPG landscapes forever.

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. Samsung responds to reviewer complaints about its Galaxy Fold phone Samsung has issued a statement about its new folding phone. Apparently […]

Today at TechCrunch’s TC Sessions: Robotics + AI event at UC Berkeley, Nvidia VP of Engineering Claire Delaunay announced that the company’s Isaac SDK is available for download. Announced last month, the software development kit is part of the chipmaker’s ongoing push to help make robotics development more accessible for a wider range of users. […]

Many species of the leggy critters glow under UV light.

NASA is giving university students an opportunity to interact with agency leadership, including NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, as well as astronauts abroad the International Space Station, during a live event 2 p.m. EDT Monday, April 29, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

Pete Curley and Garret Heaton, who previously co-founded team chat app HipChat and sold it to Atlassian, are officially launching their new product Swoot today. The app makes it easy for users to recommend podcasts and see what their friends are listening to. This might seem like a big leap from selling enterprise software — and […]

The USDA this morning announced the launch of a pilot program that will open up online grocery shopping to those on public assistance. During a two-year pilot program, those receiving SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits — often referred to as “food stamps” — will be able to shop for groceries from online retailers, including […]

A new report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo obtained by 9to5mac details the cameras in the next-generation iPhones. The report confirms previous rumors — the successors of the iPhone XS and XS Max will have three camera sensors on the back of the device. In addition to the main camera and the 2x camera, Apple […]

Zoom, a profitable tech unicorn, has begun trading on the Nasdaq.

A team of researchers has developed a neural network, a form of artificial intelligence, that can read scientific papers and render a plain-English summary in a sentence or two.