Tech Drop Every Minute

Alongside today’s announcements of new iPads and Mac, Apple also rolled out an updated version of its Siri Shortcuts app. The app, first introduced at WWDC , arrived with iOS 12 as a way to unlock Siri’s potential by allowing users to create their own custom voice commands and workflows. Now, it can do a few new things, too – including setting alarms and timers, getting the latest weather, and more. The weather actions should be especially useful for those who have created custom morning routines with Siri Shortcuts, as you’ll now be able to use the latest weather in your shortcuts with the new “Get Current Weather” and “Get Weather Forecast” actions. Being able to ask for this sort of information is already among the top use cases for voice assistants, like Alexa and Google Assistant, so it makes sense to offer these sorts of commands to Siri Shortcuts users, as well. With these options, you can now ask for current conditions, forecasts (hourly, daily or 10 days out), or for any s

Monzo , the U.K. challenger bank that now boasts more than a million customers, has raised £85 million in Series E funding. The round is led by U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst, and Accel. Existing backers Passion Capital, Goodwater, Thrive Capital, Orange Digital Ventures, and Stripe also participated. The latest funding was at a pre-money valuation of £1 billion (~$1.27b), meaning that Monzo is now a bonafide member of the U.K. fintech unicorn club, joining recent entrant Revolut. Meanwhile, the bank upstart is also planning to launch a large crowdfunding round later this year. Like a lot of other fintechs — and before it was fashionable — Monzo has historically opened up its fundraising to its passionate community and other armchair investors. In a brief call earlier today with Monzo co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield, he told me the new funding will be primarily used for increasing headcount to further develop the Monzo product line and to cover other operational cost

As Axios first reported, Richard DeVaul, a director at the entity formerly known as Google X, has left the company. An incident involving DeVaul behaving inappropriately toward a Google interviewee was cited in a New York Times report  centered on the sexual misconduct of Andy Rubin last week. Google confirmed that DeVaul had resigned and will not receive an exit package. The story recounts a 2013 incident during which DeVaul brought up his own polyamory in an interview with Star Simpson, a female hardware engineer. DeVaul reportedly invited Simpson to Burning Man. When she attended, DeVaul asked her to remove her shirt so that he could give her a massage. Simpson was not hired at Google. Google has faced wide criticism of its decision to give Rubin a $90 million exit package in spite of an investigation finding the claims against him credible. Axios reports that DeVaul did not receive an exit package, consistent with Sundar Pichai’s recent claim that the company had fired 48 indiv

Everything is already big. The iPhone SE died. The iPad Mini was last upgraded in 2015. The 11-inch MacBook Air died years ago. The smaller Series 4 Apple Watch has a bigger display than the larger Series 3 Apple Watch. Apple’s smallest devices are slowly getting bigger and the company’s events don’t suggest those ambitions are going to stop. While the release of the truly monstrous 6.5” iPhone XS Max last month embodies this trend in the most readily apparent way, the way Apple has emphasized external displays on its new iPad Pro and its MacBook Pro line are perhaps more telling of the company’s future ambitions, a world where displays are boundless. If you’re thinking that Apple can only make displays so much bigger while reducing the sizes of the device, there’s a lot further they can take this. Apple’s wants bigger displays. The old iPad Pro was perhaps too big; it’s massive form factor was great for creative tasks but it was one of the most niche devices Apple had released i

Today, Jack Dorsey tweeted a link to his company’s latest gesture toward ongoing political relevance, a U.S. midterms news center collecting “the latest news and top commentary” on the country’s extraordinarily consequential upcoming election. If curated and filtered properly, that could be useful! Imagine. Unfortunately, rife with fake news, the tool is just another of Twitter’s small yet increasingly consequential disasters. The midterm elections right now #Midterms2018 https://t.co/7T2IojpxWw — jack (@jack) October 30, 2018 Beyond a promotional tweet from Dorsey, Twitter’s new offering is kind of buried — probably for the best. On desktop it’s a not particularly useful mash of national news reporters, local candidates and assorted unverifiable partisans. As Buzzfeed news details , the tool is swimming with conspiracy theories, including ones involving the migrant caravan. According to his social media posts, the Pittsburgh shooter was at least partially motivated by sim

The News Feed won’t sustain Facebook forever, and that’s scaring investors. Today on Facebook’s earnings call , Mark Zuckerberg stressed that sharing is shifting to private chat, where people send 100 billion messages per day on Facebook’s family of apps, and Stories, where he says people share 1 billion of these slideshows per day (though it’s unclear if that includes third-party apps like Snapchat). But that means Facebook will have to realign its business towards these mediums where monetization is more complex and it has less experience. The result of Zuckerberg’s comments was a reversal of Facebook’s  initial 2 percent share price gain after earnings were announced that dragged it down to a 3.5 percent loss. That was only reversed when Zuckerberg said Facebook would reduce limits on video advertising, pushing shares up 3 percent in after-hours trading. Facebook’s year-over-year revenue growth has already slowed from 59 percent in Q3 2016, to 49 percent a year ago, to 33 percent

After nine years of service, half a million stars surveyed, and thousands of planets discovered around those stars, NASA’s astonishingly successful Kepler space telescope is finally taking a well-earned rest . Out of fuel but in a safe orbit, the spacecraft will drift through the solar system looking at nothing in particular as its immense trove of data continues to drive discoveries here on Earth. Kepler launched in 2009 after, as is so often the case, decades of preparation, studies, and delays. Its mission, slated to last three and a half years, was to stare unblinkingly at one small patch of sky, watching each star for the minute changes that could indicate a planet briefly blocking its light. The mission was successful beyond all expectations , and once the telescope was operational the data began producing exoplanets not by the dozen but by the thousand. And some came closer to an Earth analogue than astronomers had dared hope — suggesting rocky planets about our size aren’t a