Samsung Plans Galaxy S5 by April With Possible Eye-Scan Security
Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) will release its Galaxy S5 smartphone by April and is considering using iris scanning technology for the first time as it readies the new high-end handset to compete w...
Obama Readies Revamp of NSA
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is leaning toward extending broad privacy protections to non-U.S. citizens and is seriously considering restructuring the National Security Agency program that collec...
Yahoo malware turned European computers into bitcoin slaves
Search firm remains silent on how its ad servers infected Windows PCs of visitors to homepage — As many as two million European users of Yahoo may have received PC malware from virus-laden ads serve...
Matthew Panzarino replacing Eric Eldon as TechCrunch co-editor, Leena Rao becomes managing editor
And Now For Something Completely Different, Leadership Changes — As you may have read, our beloved co-editor Eric Eldon is moving on to do other things.
Overstock.com becomes the first major online retailer to accept bitcoins, will use Coinbase's payment system
The Grand Experiment Goes Live: Overstock.com Is Now Accepting Bitcoins — Overstock.com is now accepting payments in bitcoin, making it the first major online retailer to embrace …
New Gmail Feature Allows Anyone On Google+ To Email You & Vice Versa, But Opt Out Is Provided
Google is today making a change to Gmail that will further bake in Google+ to its webmail product in a way that's actually somewhat practical, though also potentially invasive.
Snapchat apologizes for leaked user data, updates app to let you opt out of ‘Find Friends’
Snapchat today rolled out the security fix it promised last week, which lets users opt out of the app's “Find Friends” feature. The feature, which let users plug in their phone number to find friends...
It's Never Too Early To Say Goodbye
“You can't just quietly slip out the door,” I've been told by too many people I trust. So okay, fine, here's this post! — Since you asked, TechCrunch is in a really good place right now. — The va...
The Bitcoin-Mining Arms Race Heats Up
Joel Flickinger's two-bedroom home in the hills above Oakland, Calif., hums with custom-built computing gear. Just inside the front door, in a room anyone else might use as a den, he's placed a desk ...
Google Data Chief Says ‘Flawed’ EU Privacy Law Is Dead
Google Inc. (GOOG)'s top privacy official said the European Union's “flawed” attempt to overhaul data-protection rules is “dead” and urged politicians to go back to the drawing board. — “Europe's mu...
Apple Devices Flow Into Corporate World
The popularity of the iPhone and iPad among employees is prompting corporate tech managers …
Gartner: PC shipments slip 6.9% to 82.6m units in Q4, as 2013 sees the worst yearly decline in history
The PC market continues to be in free fall, having now seen its seventh consecutive quarter of declining worldwide shipments. Worldwide PC shipments dropped to 82.6 million units …
Surprise: Amazon tests physical retail with ‘Kindle Kiosk’ vending machines
LAS VEGAS — Amazon, the company that defined the world of online commerce, is venturing further into the world of physical retail — experimenting with standalone, automated “Kindle Kiosk” vending mach...
Google updates Play services with turn-based multiplayer, Google Drive API, improved battery life, and more
Google today updated Google Play Services to version 4.1, adding turn-based multiplayer support, a preliminary Google Drive API, improved battery life for all users …
Social calendar app Sunrise finally comes to iPad
Launching on iPhone in February 2013, Sunrise changed our perception of calendar apps with its ability to provide more context to daily events. By connecting to Google, iCloud, Facebook, LinkedIn and...
Barnes & Noble Reports Steep Drop in Holiday Sales
Barnes & Noble, the nation's last remaining major bookstore chain, experienced steep sales declines in its digital division during the nine-week holiday period, the company announced on Thursday. — ...
Online Privacy Could Spark U.S.-EU Trade Rift
French, Spanish Fines Against Google Are Latest Flare-Ups in Trans-Atlantic Disagreement … PARIS—Knowing what Europeans like Rémi Boulle bought for Christmas could spark the next trans-Atlantic trade ...
Lenders Use Social Media to Screen Borrowers
Regulators Have Concerns About Lenders' Use of Facebook, Other Sites — WASHINGTON—More lending companies are mining Facebook, Twitter and other social-media data to help determine a borrower's credi...
Closing Windows: Microsoft and its platforms are nowhere to be found at CES
For over a decade, Microsoft was the dominant presence at CES. But after pulling out the show in 2013, the company has faded almost completely from view this year: the biggest Microsoft story at CES ...
First look: iOS-connected smart watches, health trackers, home automation from Archos
Archos is hitting the wearable devices market hard in 2014, with a new range of products showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show capable of connecting to Apple's iOS mobile platform via Bluetooth L...
Motorola offering free Google Chromecast with purchase of off-contract Moto X
After the Cyber Monday madness surrounding the $349 Moto X, Motorola officially dropped the device's off-contract price to just $399 last week, looking to get the device into even more consumer's hand...
Nokia brings folders to Windows Phone with its Lumia Black rollout
Nokia is once again extending and improving Windows Phone. While Microsoft has implemented Live Tiles across Windows Phone, Nokia is adding a new App Folder interface that allows Windows Phone users ...
Jason Calacanis's mobile news startup Inside.com has hired former The Wire editor Gabriel Snyder, launches Jan. 23
Gabriel Snyder, Former Editor of The Wire, Joins Mobile News Start-Up — Gabriel Snyder, the former editor in chief of The Wire, a website owned by Atlantic Media …
How SnapchatDB Attacked Snapchat's Servers
Snapchat, the social network that allows people to send photo and video messages that disappear within ten seconds, had a grim end to 2013. Late on New Year's Eve, SnapchatDB, an anonymous collective...
Facebook To Sunset Sponsored Stories April 9
Facebook's sponsored stories have seen their highs and lows, with the lowest low occurring when the ad unit became the subject of a class-action lawsuit, but sponsored stories will be history after Ap...
ZTE shows off its own Project Ara alternative, the Eco-Mobius modular concept
When we first heard about Phonebloks, we though it was a cool idea but mostly just a pipedream that had little chance of becoming a reality. Shortly after that, Motorola announced their own modular p...
NSA and GCHQ activities appear illegal, says EU parliamentary inquiry
Civil liberties committee report demands end to indiscriminate collection of personal data by British and US agencies — Mass surveillance programmes used by the US and Britain to spy on people in Eu...
The Most In-Demand Tech Skills: Why Java And The Classics Ruled 2013
If you're a Java developer, chances are you did pretty well for yourself in 2013. — At least, that's according to statistics from Stack Overflow. Thousands of companies use the website's Careers 2....
Uber Slashes UberX Fares In 16 Markets To Make It The Cheapest Car Service Available Anywhere
Riding Uber just got a lot cheaper — at least for most customers using its low-cost UberX option. That's because Uber has committed to slashing fares for its on-demand car service in a majority …
Source: Yahoo Bought Aviate For $80M
Earlier this week, Yahoo announced that it had acquired Aviate, a startup providing contextually relevant information on Android homescreens, but it didn't say anything about the acquisition price. N...
Google's master plan for Android: More Internet users paying $6.30 a pop
The mobile industry is headed to Google, who is in an ideal position to clean up at roughly $6.30 per Internet user per year. — Forget today's smartphone profits: Apple and Samsung increasingly spli...
From Stephen Colbert to Obama: the origin and evolution of Reddit's AMA
AMA: How a Weird Internet Thing Became a Mainstream Delight — Reddit's question-and-answer format imports the aspirational norms of honesty and authenticity from pseudonymous Internet forums into ma...
Meet Airlock: Facebook's mobile testing framework
It's taken a while, but Facebook has started to move in the direction of “mobile-best”. With popular mobile apps on iOS and Android, how exactly does the company know what works and what doesn't? Wi...
Dish Pulling Its Bid for LightSquared
Letter of Termination of Bid Expected to Be Disclosed as Soon as Thursday Morning — Dish Network Corp. is officially pulling its bid for LightSquared Inc., the telecommunications firm in bankruptcy ...
Tech Angels Cross The $1 Billion Mark In 2013
Buoyed by a stronger economy, angel investors companies worldwide poured a record amount of cash into early-stage technology and life-sciences companies, according to data from CrunchBase. — Angel i...