From the very beginning, technology has attempted to predict the rhythms of our private and collective desires. When music streaming services rocketed into public favor at the tail end of the new millennium, they implemented “discovery” options that, in effect, proposed songs based on what a user listened to or liked or shared with a…

In the wake of extensive mishandling of user data and a series of security missteps, Facebook has deployed a number of security and privacy initiatives. A key focus: expanding its long-standing bug bounty program. Now Facebook is courting outside hackers more aggressively than ever.Last year, the company began paying bounties for certain bugs researchers might…

Say what you will about the US health care system; if you're trying to stay healthy in space, it’s a dream. Just ask Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut who has flown to space twice for extended stays.Getting medical treatment on the International Space Station is complicated, so NASA does its best to ensure astronauts…

The first generation of Google’s Airpod-contenders sounded fine, if you could get past the many frustrations of getting them to work properly. Pairing was a mess, some features only worked with Pixel phones—even turning them off was overly complicated. The newly announced Pixel Buds (yep, the name stays) aim to be the refresh that fixes…

The fourth is with us—the fourth Democratic primary debate, that is. And there have been ju-u-u-st a few notable developments out of Washington, DC, since candidates last took the debate stage in September. The Nationals made the playoffs, for one thing. Oh, and the president faces an impeachment inquiry for using US diplomatic channels to…

A few years ago, Google started selling its own smartphones. These handsets, named Pixels, represented a shift in Google’s approach to mobile hardware. Previously, the company had shipped Nexus-branded products that were manufactured by different hardware partners, but Pixel was supposed to be all Googley from the ground up: Designed, developed, and sold by the…

I knew the end was coming when the Weather widget on Apple’s Dashboard stopped showing daily temperature lows over the last year or so. Soon enough, there were no forecasts at all—the Weather widget became a blank blue box, at least for me. You don’t just let one of your marquee widgets deteriorate into a…

In March 2015, when Salesforce’s employee success chief, Cindy Robbins, arrived at my home for one of the regular meetings I host with my senior executives, I could tell that something was a little off. Not only did she seem oddly reserved, even a bit anxious, she’d taken the unusual step of bringing backup, namely…

Climate change. Flawed algorithms. Deadly diseases. Tech monopolies. We are facing many existential challenges that need to be tackled head-on before it’s too late. Many of these problems are of our own making, consequences of our relentless push for progress. Fortunately, there are lots of people who are racing to save us from ourselves—progress we…

If you haven’t heard, TechCrunch has officially launched a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in…