Daily Crunch: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps

India continues to crack down on Chinese apps, Microsoft launches a deepfake detector and Google offers a personalized news podcast. This is your Daily Crunch for September 2, 2020. The big story: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps The Indian government continues its purge of apps created by or

Facebook now lets you customize your Watch video feed with #Topics

Facebook’s video destination, Facebook Watch, is introducing a new feature called “Your Topics” that will allow you to tailor its feed to include more of the content you want to see. Currently, Facebook leverages its existing understanding of each viewer’s interests to perso

Samsung's got a new budget 5G handset and a fitness tracker with a two-week battery

Yesterday's overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn't for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company

FCC dings company for $164K after its false broadband claims distorted national report

The FCC was deeply embarrassed last year when it was found that its rosy broadband deployment report was off by millions, owing to a single, extremely suspect filing that conjured 62 million customers out of thin air. The company responsible is being assessed a $163,912 fine, but the underlying pro

Snapchat had a big August amid TikTok uncertainty

The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. Or maybe it was just the Disney eyes filter that went viral. In any event, preliminary estimates from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicate that Snapchat’s mobile app across

Venture capital LPs are the missing link to solving Silicon Valley’s diversity problem

In the last few months, we've seen much of Silicon Valley finally start to acknowledge generations of systemic racial inequity and take actionable steps to empower and support underrepresented people in tech. Funds are looking to invest capital more equitably and have started to take concrete s

Edtech startups find demand from an unlikely customer: Public schools

School district technology budgets are tight. But Kami CEO and founder Hengjie Wang wanted to make his company’s digital classroom product a go-to tool anyway. He landed on trying to disrupt the printers. Wang found that school districts spend an average of $150,000 every year

Hypatos gets $11.8M for a deep learning approach to document processing

Process automation startup Hypatos has raised a €10 million (~$11.8 million) seed round of funding from investors including Blackfin Tech, Grazia Equity, UVC Partners and Plug & Play Ventures. The Germany and Poland-based company was spun out of AI for accounting startup Smacc at the back end

CBP does not make it clear Americans can opt out of airport face scanning, watchdog says

A government watchdog has criticized U.S. border authorities for failing to properly disclose the agency’s use of facial recognition at airports, which included instructions on how Americans can opt out. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), tasked with protecting the border and screening

Submit your pitch deck to Disrupt 2020’s Pitch Deck Teardown

Disrupt 2020 is a few weeks away and we’re looking for founders to submit their pitch decks. In the Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees' pitch decks. First impressions are everything, and pitch decks ar

3 ways COVID-19 has affected the property investment market

Two in five people would never invest their money — but those who would are most likely to invest in properties. This is the conclusion of a recent survey by Hargreaves Lansdown, and it shows that unless you invested in the stocks of a few companies like Amazon, PayPal, Apple or Nvidia, real esta

Deep Science: Dog detectors, Mars mappers and AI-scrambling sweaters

Research papers come out at far too rapid a rate for anyone to read them all, especially in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers, particularly in

Hear E-Prix Champion di Grassi on the future of electric motor sports (including scooters)

Lucas di Grassi is returning to technewss's stage, and we're going to talk racing electric vehicles. Again. Because electric is the future of motoring including motorsports. There's a lot to talk about with di Grassi. He's an outspoken proponent of electric vehicles, previously hel

Dear Sophie: Can we sponsor an H-1B university researcher for an EB-1B green card?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says