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As the year comes to a close, some of our editors share their top stories from 2020. Read more: For Seattle’s cop-free protest zone, tech is both a revolutionary asset and disastrous liability Uber in talks to sell ATG self-driving unit to Aurora Uber sells self-driving unit Uber ATG in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B Aurora sends offers to majority of Uber ATG employees, but not the R&D lab Uber leads $170M Lime investment, offloads Jump to Lime Uber sells air taxi business Elevate to Joby Aviation, shedding its last moonshot Uber sells $500M stake in its freight business as the ride-hailing giant works to conserve cash COVID-19 blamed as smartphone sales plummet 20% in Q2 Edtech is surging, and parents have some notes SpaceX makes history with successful first human space launch SpaceX and NASA successfully launch four astronauts to space for first operational Dragon crew mission SpaceX flies its Starship rocket to 40,000 feet, just misses the landin...

Amazon today announced a new Alexa feature, Live Translation, that will translate conversations between people who speak two different languages. The feature uses Amazon’s speech recognition technology and neural machine translation technology to work, and supports translating between English and French, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese (Brazilian), German or Italian. To use Live Translation, an Echo device owner can issue a voice command like “Alexa, translate French” to get started with translating between English and French. When you hear the beep, you can speak in either language, even taking natural pauses between your sentences, Amazon claims. Alexa will then automatically detect the language being spoken and translate each side of the conversation. On Echo Show devices, you can also see the translation in addition to hearing it. To end a translation session, you say “Alexa, stop.” The company had been revealed to be working on a universal language translation feature according to ...

You don’t have to buy into 5G conspiracy theories to think that you could do with a little less radiation in your life. One way of blocking radiation is a Faraday cage, but this is usually a metal mesh of some kind, making everyday use difficult. Researchers at Drexel University have managed to create a Faraday fabric by infusing ordinary cotton with a compound called MXene — meaning your tinfoil hat is about to get a lot comfier. Faraday cages work because radiation in radio frequencies is blocked by certain metals, but because of its wavelength, the metal doesn’t even have to be solid — it can be a solid cage or flexible mesh. Many facilities are lined with materials like this to prevent outside radiation from interfering with sensitive measurements, but recently companies like Silent Pocket have integrated meshes into bags and cases that totally isolate devices from incoming signals. Let’s be frank here and say that this is definitely paranoia-adjacent. RF radiation is not harmfu...

You don’t have to buy into 5G conspiracy theories to think that you could do with a little less radiation in your life. One way of blocking radiation is a Faraday cage, but this is usually a metal mesh of some kind, making everyday use difficult. Researchers at Drexel University have managed to create a Faraday fabric by infusing ordinary cotton with a compound called MXene — meaning your tinfoil hat is about to get a lot comfier. Faraday cages work because radiation in radio frequencies is blocked by certain metals, but because of its wavelength, the metal doesn’t even have to be solid — it can be a solid cage or flexible mesh. Many facilities are lined with materials like this to prevent outside radiation from interfering with sensitive measurements, but recently companies like Silent Pocket have integrated meshes into bags and cases that totally isolate devices from incoming signals. Let’s be frank here and say that this is definitely paranoia-adjacent. RF radiation is not harmfu...

The European Commission must block the Google -Fitbit merger as a matter of democratic imperative, prominent academic and author Shoshana Zuboff has warned. The Harvard professor who wrote the defining book on surveillance capitalism has become the latest voice raised against the $2.1BN data+devices deal — that’s now been delayed at the regulatory clearance stage for over a year. Others calling for the Google- Fitbit acquisition to be blocked — unless or until robust competition, democratic and human rights safeguards can be baked in — include Amnesty International ; scores of consumer , privacy and digital rights groups across civic society; and the EU’s very own data protection advisor , to name a few. EU regulators are still considering whether or not to greenlight the merger. The deadline for them to make up their minds was recently extended into early 2021 — although a decision could come as soon as next week. Back in August , the Commission opened an in-depth investigat...

The AirPods Max are joining the AirPods and AirPods Pro in Apple’s audio accessory lineup. As you can see on the photo, Apple is releasing its first over-ear headphones under the AirPods brand. The wireless headphones feature active noise cancellation and cost $549. With this product, Apple competes directly with Sony’s and Bose’s wireless headphones — the Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose 700. Pre-orders start today and they’ll ship on December 15. This isn’t the company’s first over-ear headphones as Apple acquired Beats back in 2014. Apple has released new Beats headphones over the past few years. For instance, last year, Apple released the Beats Solo Pro , wireless headphones that feature Apple’s H1 chip and cost $300. They also have active noise cancellation. The AirPods Max come in multiple colors — silver, space gray, sky blue, pink and green. They are foldable and can be stored in a case — or, as Apple calls it, a Smart Case. When you put your headphones in the case, the device e...

Sometimes it’s just not worth it to try to top Mother Nature. Such seems to have been the judgment by engineers at the University of Washington, who, deploring the absence of chemical sensors as fine as a moth’s antennas, opted to repurpose moth biology rather than invent new human technology. Behold the “Smellicopter.” Mounted on a tiny drone platform with collision avoidance and other logic built in, the device is a prototype of what could be a very promising fusion of artificial and natural ingenuity. “Nature really blows our human-made odor sensors out of the water,” admits UW grad student Melanie Anderson, lead author of the paper describing the Smellicopter, in a university news release . And in many industrial applications, sensitivity is of paramount importance. If, for instance, you had one sensor that could detect toxic particles at a fraction of the concentration of that detectable by another, it would be a no-brainer to use the more sensitive of the two. On the other ...

Portable audio recording solutions abound, and many recently released devices have done a lot to improve the convenience and quality of sound recording devices you can carry in your pocket – spurred in part by smartphones and their constant improvement in video recording capabilities. A new device from Austria’s mikme, the mikme pocket (€369.00 or just under $450 USD) , offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and quality in a very portable package, delivering what might just be the ultimate pocket sound solution for reporters, podcasters, video creators and more. The basics mikme pocket is small – about half the size of a smartphone, but square and probably twice as thick. It’s not as compact as something like the Rode Wireless GO, but it contains onboard memory and a Bluetooth antenna, making it possible to both record locally and transmit audio directly to a connected smartphone from up to three mikme pockets at once. [gallery ids="2083738,2083739"] The mikme pocket ...

The FCC has just published the results of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, which sounds rather stiff but involves distributing billions to broadband providers that bring solid internet connections to under-served rural areas “on the wrong side of the digital divide.” Included is $885 million earmarked for SpaceX, whose Starlink satellite service could be a game-changer for places where laying fiber isn’t an option. Only three other companies garnered more funds: Charter with $1.22 billion; Minnesota and Iowa provider LTD Broadband with $1.32 billion; and utility collective Rural Electric Cooperate Consortium, with $1.1 billion. Those are all traditional wireline-based broadband, and a quick perusal of the list of grantees suggests no other satellite broadband provider made the cut (180 bidders were awarded support in total). The $9.2 billion auction (though the specifics of the process itself are not relevant) essentially asks for bids on how much a company can...

Apple is reportedly developing a number of Apple Silicon chip variants with significantly higher core counts relative to the M1 chips that it uses in today’s MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini computers based on its own ARM processor designs. According to Bloomberg , the new chips include designs that have 16 power cores and hour high-efficiency cores, intended for future iMacs and more powerful MacBook Pro models, as well as a 32-performance core top-end version that would eventually power the first Apple Silicon Mac Pro. The current M1 Mac has four performance cores, along with four high-efficiency cores. It also uses either seven or eight dedicated graphics cores, depending on the Mac model. Apple’s next-gen chips could leap right to 16 performance cores, or Bloomberg says they could opt to use eight or 12-core versions of the same, depending primarily on what kinds of yields they see from manufacturing processes. Chipmaking, particularly in the early stages of new designs, oft...

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here. The pandemic has meant we leave our homes far less often, and that means fending for ourselves when it comes to coffee. But too many of us have old, cheap coffee makers or worse, pod-based ones at home. Here are the best ways to elevate your coffee game or delight the java lover in your life. This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission. Superior drip coffee makers Every grocery store sells a cheap drip coffee maker that does the job adequately, but if anyone is going to use a device every day, it should be something they look forward to, not the bare minimum. That said, a coffee maker shouldn’t be an IQ test — you have to operate it before you’ve had your coffee, after all. I...

With the amount of time you’re spending at home these days, you deserve a better headset. A wireless one that works with your computer and maybe your console as well, with a mic for calls and great sound for games and movies. Fortunately there are a lot to choose from, and I’ve tested out your best options. I asked the leading audio and peripheral companies to send over their flagship wireless headset, with prices ranging from about $100 to $250. Beyond this price range returns diminish swiftly, but right now that’s the sweet spot for comfort, sound, and usability. For years I’ve avoided wireless headsets because there were too many compromises, but I’m pleased to say that the latency has been eliminated and battery life in the ones I reviewed is uniformly excellent. (NB: If the wireless version feels too expensive, you can often get wired ones for $50-100 less.) To test the headphones, I used them all for a variety of everyday tasks, from video calls to movies and music (with only...