World Of News

Disrupt Berlin 2018 kicks off in just three days, the holidays are upon us, and we here at TechCrunch are feelin’ the season. What better way to celebrate both events than to share the spirit of entrepreneurism and gift-giving with a Cyber Monday special. Today — and today only — when you buy any pass to Disrupt Berlin 2018  (excluding student and government passes) you’ll get to select a gift (up to a $200 USD value not including tax or shipping) from the  TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide . It’s our annual, curated list of all the really good stuff. Whatever puts you in the holiday mood, we’ve got you covered. STEM gifts for the kids, podcast tools , something for the frequent flyer in your life or maybe a little tchotchke just for you (we won’t tell). Gifts are great — especially the $200 variety. But the coolest gift you can give yourself this year is a ticket to Disrupt Berlin 2018. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving. It’s the gift of opportunity — network and conn...

In a dramatic development for CRISPR research, a Chinese scientist from a university in Shenzhen claims he has succeeded in helping create the world’s first genetically-edited babies. Dr. Jiankui He told the Associated Press that twin girls were born earlier this month after he edited their embryos using CRISPR technology to remove the CCR5 gene, which plays a critical role in enabling many forms of the HIV virus to infect cells. The AP’s interview comes after the MIT Technology Review reported earlier today that He’s team at the Southern University of Science and Technology is using CRISPR technology to eliminate the CCR5 gene and create children with resistance to HIV. The news also comes right before the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing is set to begin in Hong Kong tomorrow. According to the Technology Review, the summit’s organizers were apparently not notified of He’s plans for the study, though the AP reports that He informed them today. During his intervi...

Google paid £4,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit that claims it did not do enough to protect a contractor from being racially profiled while working on an undercover project for Google Maps in shopping malls, reports the Guardian . The contractor, a UK citizen of Moroccan descent, said he was subjected to frequent harassment, including being asked if he was a terrorist, while gathering information about wi-fi signals inside stores, and the situation was exacerbated because he was instructed not to disclose that he was conducting research for Google. Ahmed Rashid (not his real name) contracted with Google last year to work on Expedite, a project meant to help with indoor mapping within shopping centers. Rashid told the Guardian he sued the company when an offer for a new contract was withdrawn after he complained about being harassed while carrying out his duties. Google denied wrongdoing, but paid to settle the case. Rashid agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but decided ...

In a statement issued today, Logitech International said that while it had engaged in discussions with Plantronics about a potential transaction, it had terminated the negotiations. Over the weekend  we picked up a  Reuters  report that the two companies were in talks for a potential $2.2 billion merger. The company declined to comment further.  

A true apology consists of a sincere acknowledgement of wrong-doing, a show of empathic remorse for why you wronged and the harm it caused, and a promise of restitution by improving ones actions to make things right. Without the follow-through, saying sorry isn’t an apology, it’s a hollow ploy for forgiveness. That’s the kind of “sorry” we’re getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. Sometimes it’s delivered in a blog post. Sometimes it’s in an executive apology tour of media interviews. But rarely is it in the form of change to the underlying structures of a business that caused the issue. Intractable Revenue Unfortunately, tech company business models often conflict with the way we wish they would act. We want more privacy but they thrive on targeting and personalization data. We want control of our attention but they subsist on stealing as much of it as possible with d...

Starting Monday, businesses in Ohio will be able to pay their taxes in bitcoin — making the state that’s high in the middle and round on both ends the first in the nation to accept cryptocurrency officially. Companies who want to take part in the program simply need to go to OhioCrypto.com  and register to pay whatever taxes their corporate hearts desire in crypto. It could be anything from cigarette sales taxes to employee withholding taxes, according to a report in  The Wall Street Journal , which first noted the initiative. The brain child of current Ohio state treasurer, Josh Mandel, the bitcoin program is intended to be a signal of the state’s broader ambitions to remake itself in a more tech-friendly image. Already, Ohio has something of a technology hub forming in Columbus, Ohio, home to one of the largest venture capital funds in the midwest, Drive Capital . And Cleveland (the city once called “the mistake on the lake”) is trying to remake itself in cryptocurrency’...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg may yet regret underestimating a UK parliamentary committee that’s been investigating the democracy-denting impact of online disinformation for the best part of this year — and whose repeat requests for facetime he’s just as repeatedly snubbed . In the latest high gear change, reported in yesterday’s  Observer , the committee has used parliamentary powers to seize a cache of documents pertaining to a US lawsuit to further its attempt to hold Facebook to account for misuse of user data. Facebook’s oversight — or rather lack of it — where user data is concerned has been a major focus for the committee, as its enquiry into disinformation and data misuse has unfolded and scaled over the course of this year, ballooning in scope and visibility since the Cambridge Analytica story blew up into a global scandal this April. The internal documents now in the committee’s possession are alleged to contain significant revelations about decisions made by Face...