Technology: What Geeks are talking about from TechCrunch

Here is the latest Tech News from TechCrunch.

iBooks and iTunes Movies ordered closed in China by government regulator, just six months after launch
 The New York Times reports that a government regulator forced the closure of iBooks Store and iTunes Movies in China last week. The two services launched there in September, along with Apple Music (which is still available). Read More

Baidu’s video business goes independent and raises $155M from investors
 Baidu, China’s Google and an Uber investor, has continued its policy of spinning off promising business units. Following the spin-off of its student Q&A app Zuoyebang last September, Baidu Video has gone independent this week and raised RMB 1 billion ($155 million) in capital. Read More

Uber strikes $100M class action settlement to keep drivers independent contractors
 Uber’s driver vs. independent contractor debate just took a huge turn. In a blog post from Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, the company just announced that it has reached a settlement in two class-action lawsuits in California and Massachusetts. Both suits contested that Uber should be classifying its drivers as employees instead of independent contractors. And in a major win for Uber,… Read More

The automation revolution and the rise of the creative economy
 Only three main occupations were available to intrepid job seekers 10,000 years ago: hunting, gathering and procreation. Since then, the job market has advanced dramatically, developing into something not only more diverse, but also more abstract. This progress was the result of human evolution, but also human innovation — as the human race evolved, the scope of its needs changed (and so… Read More

AstraZeneca commits ‘hundreds of millions’ to sequencing genomes of 2M people over 10 years
 Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca today unveiled a ten-year project to sequence the genomes of two million people — with top-tier medical and tech partnerships and a nine-figure price tag. The resulting database would be the largest of its kind, and would be used to hunt rare genes that may contribute to diseases. AstraZeneca is dipping into its own stores for the first big source of… Read More

To the Moon! Lunar XPRIZE team looks to send Wikipedia into space aboard homemade rover
 Quick: you can send 20 gigabytes of data to the moon. What’s it going to be? Time’s up! Wikipedia? What a coincidence — that’s what the Part-Time Scientists, a team working on a homegrown lunar rover for Google’s Lunar XPRIZE, decided too! And they’re really planning to bring Wikipedia to the Moon. Read More

Why go Live? Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo will tell Disrupt NY
 How will Facebook video change the physics of news publishing, app downloads, commerce, and what we point our phones at? Find out at TechCrunch Disrupt NY May 9th to 11th when Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo joins us on stage for a fireside chat. By now, Facebook’s likely hit 10 billion video views per day. In a few short years, it became an 800-lb gorilla big enough to stand… Read More

California bill to give gig workers organizing rights stalls over antitrust concerns
 A controversial bill that would have given gig workers the right to collectively bargain with the tech companies they work for stalled in the California legislature today, meaning that workers will have to wait at least another year for the opportunity to bargain for higher wages, paid sick leave, and other perks. Uber drivers, TaskRabbit errand runners, Postmates couriers —… Read More

Medium raises another $50M
 Medium, the online publishing platform led by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, just announced that it has raised $50 million in Series C funding. It’s been less than a year since Medium raised a $57 million Series B, but Williams wrote that the company decided to raise additional funding “to bolster our resources now given the demand we’ve seen for the vision we are… Read More

Snapchat lets you Face-Swap with your camera roll, drops paid replays
 Snapchat is done selling you stuff. As of today’s update, every snap can be replayed once, but you can no longer buy extra replays. That means people with more money can’t break the rules of Snapchat any more. Snapchat launched $0.99 replays on top of the one free one you got per day, but along with the shut down of the Lens store that launched in November and closed in January… Read More

Chameleon raises $1.9M for smarter product tutorials
 Chameleon is a startup that wants to help other startups and online businesses do a better job of explaining their products to users. It announced today that it has raised $1.9 million in seed funding led by True Ventures. Co-founder and CEO Pulkit Agrawal said that for many companies “user on-boarding is really painful” — they can work really hard and spend lots of… Read More

The world isn’t ready to face the consequences of technology’s new biological breakthroughs
 Chinese researchers have edited human embryos. The cost of doing basic synthetic biology experiments is only a few thousand dollars, for lab gear and chemicals, and it is possible to design and order up DNA sequences on the Internet. We are not ready for the consequences of these technologies. Read More

Elon Musk has an idea for autonomous transit vehicles but he’s being coy about it
 Elon Musk has a plan to solve the traffic crisis in our cities. A vague, secret plan. He may not actually have a plan. But he did say something out loud in public about it, and he doesn’t usually do that unless he has at least kind of a plan. Read More

Norwegian PEN chapter sues its country to ensure Snowden can receive Ossietzky Prize in person
 The Norwegian chapter of writers’ rights organization PEN International is suing its own government in an attempt to make it safe for Edward Snowden to accept the prestigious Ossietzky Prize in person — without fear of extradition to the United States.Read More