Tag: facebook
This Week in Apps: WWDC 21 highlights, Instagram Creator Week recap, Android 12 beta 2 arrives
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes…
Read More
Facebook buys game studio BigBox VR
Facebook has bought several virtual reality game studios over the past couple of years, and they added one more to their portfolio Friday with the acquisition of Seattle-based BigBox VR. The studio’s major title, “Population: One,” was one of the big post-launch releases for Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset and…
Read More
Messenger adds Venmo-like QR codes for person-to-person payments in the U.S.
This spring, Facebook confirmed it was testing Venmo-like QR codes for person-to-person payments inside its app in the U.S. Today, the company announced those codes are now launching publicly to all U.S. users, allowing anyone to send or request money through Facebook Pay — even if they’re not Facebook friends.…
Read More
Decades-old ASCII adventure Nethack may hint at the future of AI
Machine learning models have already mastered Chess, Go, Atari games, and more, but in order for it to ascend to the next level, researchers at Facebook intend for AI to take on a different kind of game: the notoriously difficult and infinitely complex Nethack. “We wanted to construct what we…
Read More
Twitter restricts accounts in India to comply with government legal request
Twitter disclosed on Monday that it blocked four accounts in India to comply with a new legal request from the Indian government. The American social network disclosed on Lumen Database, a Harvard University project, that it took action on four accounts — including those of hip-hop artist L-Fresh the Lion…
Read More
In search of a new crypto deity
Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, I wrote about tech taking on Disney. This week, I’m talking about the search for a new crypto messiah. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and…
Read More