The 13 Funniest Online Name Generators

We don’t get to choose our birth names and most of the time they are pretty standard. That’s why you should use a funny name generator to create a new nickname or persona.

We’ve rounded up some of the best random and silly name generators available online so that you can have a new moniker within minutes. See what hilarious name you get given!

1. Harry Potter Name Generator

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a witch or wizard, there’s no better magical universe to be a part of than Harry Potter. But how can you pick up a wand and don a cloak without having a magical name? The Harry Potter name generator solves that—just input your real name and gender. I’m Jimmy Kettleburn, ready to put on the Sorting Hat.

If you are a Harry Potter fan, take a gander at our recommended Harry Potter apps.

2. North Pole Name Generator

Courtesy of the folks behind Elf on the Shelf comes this North Pole name generator. With this, you can find out what your name would be if you were one of Santa’s little helpers. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice. Select a character, input your real name, then click to submit and pull the lever.

3. Adele Dazeem Name Generator

We all remember when John Travolta got on stage at the Oscars and introduced singer Idina Menzel. Except, that’s not what he said. Instead, he welcomed the “wickedly talented Adele Dazeem.”

We’re not sure how he arrived at that name either. Nevertheless, the Adele Dazeem name generator lets your name get butchered in the same way.

4. Mob Name Generator

The National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement has created this great mob name generator. If you’ve ever watched a mob film and been drawn in by the idea of smooth-talking criminals in fancy suits, now you can have a name to go alongside.

Choose things like your region, crime, and role, and your mob name will pop out.

5. Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator

The Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop group from Staten Island, New York City. Their unique slang made its way into many of their songs, giving nicknames to everything and anything.

The members all have their own nicknames, like Inspectah Deck and Raekwon. Even the Rapper Childish Gambino found his name through a generator like this. Now you too can become an honorary member of the Wu-Tang Clan with this name generator.

6. James Bond Villain Name Generator

His name is Bond. James Bond. And his mission is to stop you once you’ve generated yourself a villain name. You can choose between a Fleming name and a modern name.

Ian Fleming authored the James Bond books, and he often gave his male villains Soviet names and his female characters some questionable names. Have fun and try out both versions to see which you prefer.

7. Dungeons & Dragons Name Generator

Dungeons & Dragons has always been popular, but it had a mainstream resurgence in part thanks to everyone’s love for Stranger Things. If you’ve been tempted to dive into the fantasy role-playing game, you first need to come up with a name for your character.

This Dungeons & Dragons name generator will help you out, asking you about your character’s race, class, and profession, before giving you a powerful new name.

8. Pirate Name Generator

You have your peg leg. You have your parrot. But you also need a pirate name. You can’t set sail on the sea without one. Your pirate name will help inform what type of person you’re going to be.

Pirate Palgrave the Swollen? Decrepit Wenchy Cutler? High-Pitched Benjamin? Just enter your real name, select your gender, and you’ll be ready to raise the Jolly Roger in no time.

9. Dinosaur Name Generator

Dinosaurs may be long gone from Earth, but people are rightly still fascinated with them. Of course, learning about them is one thing, but actually being a dinosaur is something else altogether. You can get one step closer to that fantasy with this dinosaur name generator.

Kids especially will love all the silly names that are generated from your name, favorite color, and birth month.

10. Music Star Name Generator

Put down the hairbrush in front of the mirror. It’s your moment to become a worldwide music sensation with this music star name generator. Don’t worry if you can’t sing—autotune will take care of that.

You can choose between a pop, rock, rap, or country name. All you need to do is enter your name, select your gender, and you’re ready to grab the microphone.

11. Vampire Name Generator

This name generator is a bit different from the others on this list because you don’t need to input any information. Instead, it will randomly generate as many vampire names as you want. If none takes your fancy, click the Generate button to get some more.

The names are perfect for adopting a new identify for Halloween. Just avoid any garlic.

12. Cat Name Generator

If you have a new kitten that needs naming, or simply think your existing cat needs rebranding, you can use this cat name generator made by the folks behind the Exploding Kittens game.

As such, you can expect some very silly names. Input things like your cat’s age, color, and favorite thing to find out what it should be called.

13. Hipster Business Name Generator

Put two random words together and you have an excellent name for your new hipster business. This generator goes one step further and even creates a logo for the business at the same time. You can also click either the name or the logo to change its style.

Go ahead and try it out—it’ll work great for your hipster bakery, pub, or barbers.

Let The Naming Fun Continue

Hopefully, you’ve found the perfect funny name through one of our recommended silly name generators. You could go by a new name every day of the week.

If you want to have more comedic names in your life, check out our list of funny Wi-Fi names to amuse your neighbors.

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The Best Sites to Design Your Own Custom Shoes Online

We could argue that the ability to design shoes online is always free—it’s just the “buying the shoe” part that costs money.

How we dress has long been an indicator of social status, occupation, or position. Take for example the saying “well-heeled” as a reference to the upper class, or the shorthand “slip-shod” to talk about poor craftsmanship. When you look at these phrases, you can see how our shoes and the status they bring became a huge part of everyday fashion.

But where can you buy custom shoes? Or better yet, how can you design your own sneakers? Here are the best places to design your own shoes online.

1. Zazzle

Zazzle is a great place to design your own sneakers online, ranging from slipons to high tops. With an easy-to-understand interface, Zazzle will immediately kick your creativity into high gear. This is especially true when you see all the ways that you can make your own shoes from scratch.

With Zazzle, the possibilities for designing custom shoes are endless. The website gives you unisex shoe styles to choose from.

When you open the edit screen, you’ll be taken to a 3D mockup of your shoe. Here, you can apply visual elements to your preferred style.

Take for example this shoe I’m designing. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see five expandable categories: Layers, Images, Icons, Text, and Shapes. In the bottom right-hand corner, you can also see a preview window of what your new custom shoes will look like.

Through Zazzle, you can change the color on your shoes, apply pre-made shapes, text, and emojis. You can also upload a piece of artwork and apply it, but we should stress that you should have permission to use this artwork first.

Zazzle will show you how to make your own shoes from scratch, but it’s very important to choose your shoe size before you start designing. Images will show up differently on different shoe sizes unless they are to-scale.

Once you have finished designing your own shoes online, click the Done button. Zazzle will take you back to your order screen.

On your order screen, you’ll see a mockup of your new shoe design from all sides. You can then add the shoes to your cart.

Note: These custom slipons would have cost me $74.90 plus applicable taxes, but there are different types of shoes on the website. As such, not all prices will be the same.

2. Nike By You

Nike By You is another place where you can design your own trainers online. Brought to you by Nike itself, this website offers a slick, simplified way to design your own sneakers to factory-specific standards. The pricing is competitive, and the application is easy to use.

In our opinion, Nike By You is one of the easiest ways to learn how to customize your shoes online. All you have to do is click on the Customize button, then pick a shoe from the list.

For this article, I’m going to design some sneakers that are wider in the toe. Once I click on a design I like, I can choose a shoe from some premade options, or I can edit a design instead. I’m going to click on Edit Design now:

While you cannot apply artwork or decals to these sneakers, you can change the colors on each individual part of the shoe. Each time you apply a new color, your previewed shoe will update automatically.

You can also click the < > arrows to cycle through different angles, to see what the shoes look like from each side.

After you’re finished designing your custom shoes, you can click on the Done button to go back to the order screen. Here are the updated shoes that I created:

Not bad if we don’t say so ourselves! With a price tag of $110.00, it’s not ridiculously expensive either. You can consider it money well spent.

As an aside: If you want to customize your “sporty” look even further, here’s some Apple Watch Sports Bands that you can buy for cheap.

3. Vans Customs

Now by this point, we think it’s important to reiterate that we’re going for quality websites over quantity when it comes to our recommendations. We want to make sure that the shoe shops we’re talking about have a track record for bringing you the best possible gear.

With that in mind, the last place that we want to recommend is the Vans “Customs” option, where you can customize shoes for men, women, and kids.

Like Nike By You, Vans Customs can be designed in a slick, easy-to-use interface. You can choose between different colors, patterns, and fabrics to decorate each part of your shoe:

There doesn’t seem to be the option to add personal artwork, but Vans makes up for this by having premade art prints that you can apply, ranging from abstract patterns to animal prints. Just go to the Patterns section and you’ll find them.

As far as the price? Each shoe varies—and the type of material that you use can increase the price—but overall Vans are set at a reasonable cost, and comparable to Nike By You in terms of quality. We definitely recommend giving this site a quick look.

Design Your Own Sneakers Online

While buying custom shoes will never be 100% cheap, it’s safe to assume that you’ll get what you pay for when it comes to shoes, and you don’t want something that’s super cheap anyways.

Not only will you get something that’s as individualistic as you are, but you’ll wear something that’s well-made too. Customizing your shoes online through these services can work out to a great deal.

Looking for other ways that you can customize your life and the gear you carry around? Here’s a list of the best MacBook keyboard covers you can buy.

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How Overwatch Competitive Mode Works

Each year, Overwatch players flock to Competitive Mode with hopes of reaching the top 500 leaderboard. However, you can’t waltz right into Competitive Mode if you’re accustomed to Quick Play mode. There are certain differences to look out for.

Elements such as Role Queue, Skill Rating, Seasons, Point Systems, and Rewards have changed the dynamic of the game and the Overwatch ranking system. In this article we explain how Overwatch Competitive Mode works and how the Overwatch rankings work.

Competitive Play Seasons

You’ll get the chance to play Overwatch competitively six times per year. Every season lasts two months with a few days of offseason play. Players receive rewards at the end of each season depending on their rank.

If you achieved a high rank during the season, you can’t keep it—your rank is reset at the end of each season, but your matchmaking rating (MMR) isn’t.

Role Lock and Role Queue

Before we get into the technicalities of the Overwatch ranking system, it’s important to understand the types of Overwatch heroes, along with the changes that come along with Role Lock.

Overwatch has implemented Role Lock in both Competitive and Quick Play modes, which forces players to play in balanced teams. The rule change was mainly added because of the Overwatch GOATS eSports team, and their unique team composition. Their team consisted of three Tanks (Reinhardt, Zarya, D.VA), along with three Supports (Moira, Lucio, Brigitte). This led many aspiring professional teams to copy the same overpowered formation.

Since the introduction of the Role Lock, teams must now have two Supports, two Damage characters, and two Tanks. While some view this change as beneficial, other players are frustrated that they might have to take on a role they aren’t familiar with. Once you choose a role, you’re only able to swap between characters of the same type during a match.

Role Lock also affects your ability to play the game. When you decide whether to play as a Damage, Tank, or Support character, you’ll enter into a queue for that role. Unfortunately, many players wanting to play as a Damage character get stuck with long wait times, as this type is the most popular to play.

How Does Overwatch Ranking Work?

The Overwatch ranking system has been through a fair amount of scrutiny from the game’s userbase thanks to the latest Role Lock rule change. These are the basics of skill rating (SR) as they stand today.

Overwatch SR Basics

At level 25, players unlock Competitive Play mode. To get an official rank, players must complete a minimum of five placement matches in one specific role. That means you’ll have to play a maximum of 15 placement matches if you decide to play as a Tank, Damage, and Support character. In other words, you have to play five matches per role.

Image Credit: Blizzard

According to the number of games won in each role, players are granted an SR between one and 5,000. The higher the ranking, the greater the skill. Unlike the previous Competitive Play mode, you’ll receive three SRs—one for each role you play.

Overwatch Competitive Ranks

Blizzard has developed a ranking system that consists of seven different ranks. Players are given up to three of these ranks according to their SR:

• Bronze: 1,500
• Silver: 1,500-1,999
• Gold: 2,000-2,499
• Platinum: 2,500-2,999
• Diamond: 3,000-3,499
• Masters: 3,500-3,999
• Grandmaster: 4,000 and up

The lowest rank, Bronze, usually consists of mostly new players, while the highest rank, Grandmaster, is reserved for the best of the best.

Maps and Game Modes

There are four game types, all with distinct challenges, player requirements, and maps. Here’s a brief overview of each mode.

Escort and Hybrid (Payload) Maps

Escort maps are similar to Hybrid maps, as Hybrid mode combines elements of both Assault and Escort modes.

The Escort maps are: Dorado, Route 66, Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Havana, Rialto, and Junkertown.

The Hybrid maps are: Hollywood, King’s Row, Numbani, Eichenwalde, and Blizzard World.

In Escort maps, the attacking team must escort a payload to an ultimate destination. Each team is randomly assigned an attacking or defending role. The team on offense must escort a payload to the objective, while the team on defense attempts to stop them.

In the next round, the teams switch roles. Whoever pushes the payload farther wins. If both teams manage to reach the objective, additional rounds will start.

Like Escort Mode, Hybrid Mode also involves a payload. The only difference is that the team must assault a map location first before moving the payload.

Control (King of the Hill) Maps

Control maps work off of a best-of-three, single objective system. The Control maps are: Ilios, Lijiang Tower, Nepal, Oasis, and Busan.

Both teams aim to capture and control their objective. The first team to score two points wins. Points are scored by achieving a 100 percent tally on the map objective. The more players on the point, the faster the point is taken.

Assault (Capture) Maps

Assault maps have one team play as offense, while the other plays as defense. The Assault maps include: Hanamura, Horizon Lunar Colony, Paris, Temple of Anubis, and Volskaya Industries.

Teams take turns defending and attacking certain objectives. Wins are contingent on the point system, with a possibility of two points each map. If the ally team scores more points, thereby taking more objectives, than the enemy team, the ally team wins.

Assault map matches split into attacking and defense rounds. Time is added to your clock by capturing objectives, and the specific time added by each objective is subject to change based on patch updates. The match is considered a draw if no team captures more than 33 percent of a point.

Competitive Play Rewards

Competitive Play wouldn’t be competitive without a rewards system. These rewards are subject to change with the upcoming seasons.

Player Icons and Sprays

Once a player has completed the placement matches, they’re officially a part of Competitive Play. That means they’ll earn a special spray and player icon at the end of the season.

New icon and spray sets get released every season, giving players an incentive to keep playing Competitive. Additionally, a special icon will be available to the top 500 players of the season.

Golden Weapons

By far the most appealing items received through Competitive Play are the golden weapons. Golden weapons cost Competitive Points (CP), which players receive whenever they win a Competitive match. Keep in mind that these weapons do not provide added damage to the character—they’re for aesthetic purposes only.

Leaver Penalties

Blizzard has instituted hard penalties for players that leave matches early in Competitive Overwatch mode. For one, you will not be able to join a new match for the span of the original match.

If you experience issues with connecting to a match, you can Rejoin. However, failing to rejoin a match will result in a penalty.

Continued infractions will lead to locked Competitive Play. Players will no longer be able to join Competitive matches for a certain period of time. More infractions may lead to a season-wide ban and the forfeiture of any rewards acquired during that season, along with a skill rating penalty.

If a player leaves a beginning match, the match is canceled and your SR is not affected. If, however, a player or players leave(s) while the match is well underway, the match will continue and you will be given the choice of leaving the match. Although you will lose SR for leaving the match, the leave will not count as an infraction.

Tips for Taking Over the Competition

These tips will tilt the scales of Competitive Play in your favor. Use them to prevent an SR freefall.

Use a Mic

No matter how skilled the enemy player’s Genji is, there’s no better indicator of a winning team than communication. All Overwatch maps feature choke points—individual map locations designed to narrow a team’s maneuvering ability.

The team that meets at a point and pushes towards the other points as a unit is often the team that wins. This is true for all maps and skill levels, so if you can, use a mic as often as possible to group, warn, and communicate with other players.

Here are the best gaming headsets to get you started.

Exploit Map Vulnerabilities

Every map has certain vulnerabilities that players can use to reach target objectives faster. Don’t settle for the main path. If your character can jump, fly, or otherwise maneuver around a map, take that into account when maneuvering the map.

Emulate the Pros

Twitch and other streaming services have changed the video game industry—you can now watch professional players play your favorite game. Tuning into Overwatch tournaments, and watching the pros play on Twitch can help you improve your own gameplay.

If you want to take your skills to the next level, use Overwatch pro settings to get the same setup as some of the best players.

Keep Track of Character Usage and Patch Updates

The better you can counter the most-used heroes in Overwatch Competitive Play, the more likely you are to defeat the players. That’s why sites like MasterOverwatch provide seasonal statistics ordering characters by popularity, win rate, K/D ratio, etc.

Character popularity will change according to the different nerfs (performance limitations) and buffs (performance additions) of future patches. Minor character fixes like this will push your game to the next level before players even realize where your added edge came from.

Read Guides

It’s surprising to note just how much information is out there for competitive players already. Excellent players will gladly create large write-ups for free, and post them online for everyone to enjoy. If you want to get better at Overwatch Competitive Mode, read character and map guides online.

Group and Go

The best teams in Overwatch are those that commit two simple actions: group and go. Running towards objectives without teammates usually results in death, while working as a team often results in wins. You can only overwhelm objectives as a team. The faster everyone on your team can reach a point together, the faster you’ll win.

Learning How Overwatch Competitive Works

Overwatch Competitive Play is a serious matter, and should be treated as such. Quick Matches are for character testing, while Competitive Play is for players attempting to prove their worth.

Once you’re acquainted with the basics, you shouldn’t have any problem climbing the Overwatch ranks. If you’re thinking of playing Competitive Mode in Overwatch, gear up, study up, and get ready for an arduous climb.

One of the reasons why Overwatch is such a great game is because it’s cross-platform. If you want a break from Overwatch, check out these other awesome cross-play games worth buying.

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GameClub offers mobile gaming’s greatest hits for $5 per month

Apple Arcade introduced the idea of all-you-can-eat subscription-based mobile gaming to the mainstream. Google Play Pass soon followed as a way to subscribe to a sizable collection of both apps and games on Android devices. Today, a startup called GameClub is launching in the U.S. to offer an alternative. For $4.99 per month, mobile consumers will be able to access a library that includes some of the best games to have ever hit the App Store.

To be clear, GameClub is not a cloud gaming platform, like Google Stadia. It’s a way to subscribe to actual App Store games, similar to Arcade. In GameClub’s case, however, the focus is not on new releases but on quality games that already have proven track records and high ratings.

In fact, many of GameClub have Apple’s own editorially selected “Game of the Year” lists in years past. And like the games offered on Apple Arcade, they don’t have ads or any in-app purchases.

 

At launch, GameClub’s library includes over 100 titles with around half that available for play today. More titles will roll out on a weekly basis in the months ahead. Combined, the games have over 100 million collective downloads, the company says.

On GameClub, you’ll find games like: Super Crate Box, Hook Champ, Mage Gauntlet, Space Miner, Forget-Me-Not, MiniSquadron, Plunderland, Pocket RPG, Sword of Fargoal, Incoboto, Tales of the Adventure Company, Hook Worlds, Orc: Vengeance, Mr. Particle-Man, Legendary Wars, Deathbat, The Path to Luma, Mage Gautlet, Grimm, Zombie Match, Faif, iBlast Moki 2, Kano, Baby Lava Bounce, Run Roo Run, Gears, and many others.

It’s a selection that extends across gaming categories, like Action, Arcade, Puzzle, Adventure, Platformer, Retro, Role Playing, Simulation, Strategy, and more.

To use the service, you first download the main GameClub app, which becomes the hub for your GameClub activities. You then sign up for the $4.99 per month subscription, which includes a 30-day free trial. Within the main app, you can browse the available titles as well as read editorial content like in-depth overviews, histories, get tips, and learn about gaming strategies.

The startup was founded last year by game industry vets Dan Sherman and Oliver Pedersen.

Sherman, GameClub CEO, has worked in the gaming industry for around 17 years including time spent at EA and his own startup, Tilting Point. His experience has involved, predominantly, signing content partnerships with game creators. Pedersen, meanwhile, built backend systems and platforms for games, including at Yahoo Games.

Though GameClub is seemingly arriving after Apple Arcade’s debut, it actually began before that. The startup was founded in 2018, ahead of any Apple Arcade rumors. It went live on iOS outside the U.S. before Arcade launched.

The founders say they were inspired to address the issues caused by the free-to-play model that’s infiltrated the gaming industry. In addition, they had witnessed a decline in consumers’ willingness to purchase content upfront, which was impacting the industry.

“I was seeing all these amazing game developers leave mobile because the types of games they make are not the types of games that monetize through in-app purchases and ads,” Sherman tells TechCrunch. “The free-to-play model actually only works for a handful of genres,” he explains. “A lot of companies make a lot of money through a very small number of genres and game experiences — to the exclusion of a lot of other types of genres that GameClub is bringing back — action, adventures, arcade, tower defense — anything that can be completed.”

With free-to-play, games are built around perpetual retention loops. “And the freemium model comes out of the casino industry, not the premium game industry,” Sherman points out.

But because this is how games could make money, it led to homogeneity in the marketplace, he says.

GameClub aims to offer a subscription to the premium games that got left behind.

They are meant to be wholesome and fun, not overly addictive. They’re not designed to manipulate you into spending money. You simply pay your subscription fee every month to access the catalog, then play unencumbered.

Thanks to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, consumers are now comfortable with the idea of the subscription model for mobile games. And other services — like Spotify, Netflix, and Xbox Game Pass, for example — have pushed the idea of subscription access to content across platforms and genres.

GameClub is different from Arcade, however, because it’s not funding the development of content upfront — at least, not yet. Instead, it’s forging agreements with largely indie developers to release their existing IP as a GameClub exclusive.

This may include bringing an older game into the 64-bit era – something GameClub handles on their behalf.

“Many of [the GameClub titles] have been gone for many years,” says Sherman. “It’s with our team, our technology, and our developers that they’ve been brought back. And they’ve been brought back in a way that is 100% using the original code and the exact same design…but making them look and feel new, with higher resolution, Retina Display assets, and by optimizing for the latest screen sizes and configurations,” he adds.

The company doesn’t discuss the business model for GameClub, but it’s not the same as Apple Arcade pay-upfront model.

What Sherman could say is that the more important the game is to the GameClub service, the more money the creator makes. Additionally, GameClub says it’s transparent with developers about its subscription revenue, so there’s no question about which games are earning or why.

The same can’t be said for Apple Arcade, which is a total black box to the point that consumers don’t know which Arcade games are most popular, developers can’t see how they’re doing compared with others, and third-party measurement firms have no data.

Of course, there could be concerns that GameClub exists in a gray area, with regard to App Store policy. Those with longer memories may recall that Apple banned app stores-within-a-store starting back in 2012. The company had kicked out apps that recommended other apps like AppHero, FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream, AppShopper, and more. It also banned the more popular app recommendation service, AppGratis the following year.

But Apple’s concern was that these apps were leveraging their power to manipulate App Store charts and rankings, and often charging for that service. GameClub, on the other hand, plays fairly. Its service also benefits Apple, by offering subscription access to quality games that couldn’t thrive as free-to-play titles.

Longer-term, GameClub wants to produce its own original content and offer its service across platforms, starting with Google Play, but eventually tackling PC and console gaming.

The startup is headquartered in New York City with offices in Copenhagen. In addition to the founders, it includes Eli Hodapp, the former editor-in-chief of the popular game news and review site TouchArcade, and COO Britt Myers, the former chief product officer of subscription-based ed-tech apps platform Homer.

With the close of a seed round last week, GameClub is backed by $4.6 million in funding.

Investors from a round that closed last year include GC VR Gaming Tracker Fund, CRCM Ventures, Watertower Ventures, Ride Ventures, BreakawayGrowth Fund, and others. New investors include GFR Fund, Gramercy Fund, Century Gold and others.

GameClub is available on the App Store.

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Here’s what the Pixel 4’s radar chip looks like

I’ve been tearing my gadgets apart for as long as I can remember. Consoles, phones, printers, whatever — I’ve always needed to see what makes it all work. Sometimes they even work when I put them back together.

As soon as Google announced that the new Pixel 4 had friggin’ radar built-in for detecting hand gestures, I needed to see under the hood. While I haven’t picked up a Pixel 4 yet, our friends over at iFixit busted out the heat guns and did what they do best, tearing the Pixel 4 XL down to parts and uncovering the Project Soli radar chip along the way.

Image Source: iFixit

That board you’re looking at contains a good amount of stuff beyond the Soli chip — it’s also where you’ll find the earpiece speaker and the ambient light sensor, for example. The Soli chip seems to be that little greenish box in the upper-right area.

Alas, there’s… not a ton to learn just from looking at it. Google has spent the last few years working on this, and they’ve ended up with something that’s honestly a bit wild. With no moving parts, and without line of sight, these chips are able to do things like detect when people are near the device (and how many), whether they’re standing or sitting, how they’re moving their hands and more. As iFixit so succinctly puts it, “TL;DR: magic rectangle knows your every move.”

For anyone looking to tear apart the Pixel 4 XL themselves, be it to make repairs or just out of curiosity, make sure you know what you’re getting into. iFixit gives the device a relatively paltry 4 out of 10 on its repairability score, citing easily breakable pull tabs and particularly strong adhesives as obstacles along the way. You can find their full teardown here.

Image Source: iFixit

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How you can help transform the internet into a place of trust | Claire Wardle

How you can help transform the internet into a place of trust | Claire Wardle

How can we stop the spread of misleading, sometimes dangerous content while maintaining an internet with freedom of expression at its core? Misinformation expert Claire Wardle explores the new challenges of our polluted online environment and maps out a plan to transform the internet into a place of trust -- with the help everyday users. "Together, let's rebuild our information commons," she says.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat

In a wide ranging interview with Wall Street Journal global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying his company represented an existential threat to the software giant.

The interview took place at the WSJ Tech Live event. When Butterfield was asked about a chart Microsoft released in July during the Slack quiet period, which showed Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users compared to 12 million for Slack, Butterfield appeared taken aback by the chart.

Chart: Microsoft

“The bigger point is that’s kind of crazy for Microsoft to do, especially during the quiet period. I had someone say it was unprecedented since the [Steve] Ballmer era. I think it’s more like unprecedented since the Gates’ 98-99 era. I think they feel like we’re an existential threat,” he told Dean.

It’s worth noting, that as Dean pointed out, you could flip that existential threat statement. Microsoft is a much bigger business with a trillion dollar market cap versus Slack’s $400 million. It also has the benefit of linking Microsoft Teams to Office 365 subscriptions, but Butterfield says the smaller company with the better idea has often won in the past.

For starters, Butterfield noted that of his biggest customers, more than two-thirds are actually using Slack and Office 365 in combination. “When we look at our top 50 biggest customers, 70% of them are not only Office 365 users, but they’re Office 365 users who use the integrations with Slack,” he said.

He went on to say that smaller companies have taken on giants before and won. As examples, he held up Microsoft itself, which in the 80s was a young upstart taking on established players like IBM. In the late 1990s, Google prevailed as the primary search engine in spite of the fact that Microsoft controlled most of the operating system and browser market at the time. Google then tried to go after Facebook with its social tools, all of which have failed over the years. “And so the lesson we take from that is, often the small startup with real traction with customers has an advantage versus the large incumbent with multiple lines of business,” he said.

When asked by Dean if Microsoft, which ran afoul with the Justice Department in the late 1990s, should be the subject of more regulatory scrutiny for its bundling practices, Butterfield admitted he wasn’t a legal expert, but joked that it was “surprisingly unsportsmanlike conduct.” He added more seriously, “We see things like offering to pay companies to use Teams and that definitely leans on a lot of existing market power. Having said that, we have been asked many times, and maybe it’s something we should have looked at, but we haven’t taken any action.”

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Daily Crunch: Twitter revenue disappoints

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Twitter Q3 misses big on revenues of $824M and EPS of $0.05 on the back of adtech glitches

Twitter said the huge drop in performance “was impacted by revenue product issues, which we believe reduced year-over-year growth by approximately 3 or more percentage points, and greater-than-expected seasonality.”

The company has made a significant shift in the last year to tracking a new user metric of its own making — monetizable daily active users, which is the number of users who are being served ads. More established metrics like daily and monthly active users have stagnated and even declined in recent years.

2. Lowlights from Zuckerberg’s Libra testimony in Congress

“I don’t control Libra” was the central theme of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony yesterday, while the House of Representatives unleashed critiques of his approach to cryptocurrency, privacy, encryption and running a giant corporation.

3. Announcing the Disrupt Berlin 2019 agenda

Disrupt Berlin will run on December 11 and December 12, when we’ll sit down with CEOs from big-name companies such as Away, UIPath and Naspers, as well as leading investors from Atomico, SoftBank and GV. (Tickets are available here.)

4. By tweeting from a SCIF, House lawmakers put national security at risk

If you thought storming into a highly secured government facility with your electronics but without permission was a smart idea, you’d be wrong. But that didn’t stop Rep. Matt Gaetz and close to three-dozen of his Republican colleagues from doing exactly that.

5. Virgin Galactic becomes the first public space tourism company on Monday

The company’s shareholders have approved a merger with Chamath Palihapitiya’s special Social Capital Hedosophia holding company, with a debut on the NYSE for the newly merged public entity scheduled for Monday.

6. Cybersecurity automation startup Tines scores $4.1M Series A led by Blossom Capital

Tines automates many of the repetitive manual tasks faced by security analysts so they can focus on other high-priority work. The founders have bootstrapped the company until now.

7. Bill McDermott aims to grow ServiceNow like he did SAP

During the company’s earnings call, outgoing CEO John Donahoe said that McDermott met all of the board’s criteria for its next leader — all in the service of building toward a $10 billion revenue goal. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Twitter Q3 misses big on revenues of $824M and EPS of $0.05 on the back of adtech glitches

Twitter today reported its earnings for the quarter that ended September 30, and the numbers delivered a big surprise, falling on both sales and earnings per share. Revenues came in at $824 million, and EPS at $0.05. That represents sales up 9% year-over-year but far below what analysts had been expecting: (non-GAAP, diluted) EPS of 20 cents per share and revenues of $874.03 million (or higher, $883 million, depending on which group of analysts you’re following). The stock is down around 20% in pre-market trading.

Twitter said the huge drop in performance “was impacted by revenue product issues, which we believe reduced year-over-year growth by approximately 3 or more percentage points, and greater-than-expected seasonality.” Specifically, it also noted that it discovered and took steps to fix bugs “that primarily affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) product, impacting our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners.” Also its adtech personalization was also not “operating as expected.” It also blamed the bad numbers on a slower summer for big events and launches compared to a year ago. 

Meanwhile, monetizable daily active users came in at 145 million, versus 124 million a year ago and 139 million in Q2. That actually exceeds the 14% growth analysts had been expecting (it’s up 17% year-on-year). Net income came in at $37 million.

“We drove strong growth in monetizable DAU (mDAU), up 17% year-over-year, driven by ongoing product improvements,” said Jack Dorsey in a statement. “We’re continuing to improve relevance while testing ways to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for on Twitter.  We also continue to make progress on health, improving our ability to proactively identify and remove abusive content, with more than 50% of the Tweets removed for abusive content in Q3 taken down without a bystander or first person report.”

Ned Segal, CFO, spoke more directly to the disappointing numbers:

“Despite its challenges, this quarter validates our strategy of investing to drive long-term growth. More work remains to deliver improved revenue products. We’ll continue to prioritize our ad products along with health and our investments to drive ongoing growth in mDAU. We remain confident that focusing on our most important priorities, and delivering higher performing, better ad formats will deliver better outcomes for all of our stakeholders for years to come.”

The company has made a significant shift in the last year to tracking a new user metric of its own making, monetizable daily active users, which tracks those who are being served ads.

Twitter’s argument is that these are the main users to watch, since their growth (or decline) is more closely linked to how Twitter’s business is doing. It helps also to take attention away from more established usage metrics such as daily and monthly active users, both of which had stagnated and even declined in recent years, which mark a longtime challenge for the company: Twitter is addictive and used almost religiously by some people, but ultimately the company had not managed to grow traction with a mass market.

The U.S. continues to be Twitter’s largest single market but is still outweighed by business outside those borders. Average U.S. mDAU was 30 million, compared to 26 million in the same period of the previous year and 29 million in the previous quarter, Twitter said, while average international mDAU was 115 million, compared to 98 million in the same period of the previous year and 110 million in the previous quarter.

Ad revenue was $702 million, up 8% year-over-year, with data licensing and other revenue coming in at $121 million, up 12%. U.S. revenue continues to outpace international, at $465 million versus $358 million.

For some context: Last quarter the company reported EPS also of $0.20 on revenues of $841 million; and actually down by one cent on a year ago, when the company reported earnings of $0.21 on sales of $758 million. 

More to come.

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LinkedIn’s degree problem

A couple of years ago, the co-founder and CEO of a blood-testing company was publicly taken to task for implying in articles and professional profiles that he has a PhD, when, in reality, he’d left a prestigious graduate group three years after enrolling, without a degree.

The CEO is hardly alone in intentionally or otherwise sowing confusion around his credentials, however. Over the years, we’ve mistakenly believed that a number of founders have obtained specific college degrees based on their LinkedIn bio, only to learn offline that they enrolled for some period of time in a particular program that they didn’t complete.

It happened most recently with the co-founder of a startup who one might surmise has a master’s degree from Harvard based on his LinkedIn profile, but does not. We also misunderstood the CEO of a robotics company to have a PhD based on her LinkedIn. It was our fault; it mentioned under the credit that she’d left to start a company. But anyone scanning the site might have come to the same wrong conclusion. (We pointed this out to her team, and mention of the PhD was deleted.)

In a higher-profile case, James Damore, the fired Google engineer who authored that infamous memo about the company’s diversity practices and whose LinkedIn page cited a PhD in systems biology, removed mention of the degree after Wired confirmed with Harvard that he was enrolled in the program but didn’t complete the doctorate.

Damore tried to defend his own LinkedIn profile, tweeting at the time, “I never told anyone I have a PhD. LinkedIn can’t distinguish between being in the PhD program and having a PhD (I forgot to update it).”

Though few on Twitter found him credible, he wasn’t mistaken on this front. In creating a profile on LinkedIn, the choices one is given are to a) list a completed degree and leave off anything partially completed, no matter how much time was invested in a program or how minuscule its acceptance rate or b) list an incomplete degree without a clear way of explaining that it’s no longer being pursued or whether it will ever be obtained.

LinkedIn doesn’t view the issue as its fault. Asked whether LinkedIn members might be posting incomplete degrees because of the company’s user interface, a spokesperson emailed us today, writing that LinkedIn’s user agreement and “professional community policy” guidelines are “clear that members should provide factual information about themselves on LinkedIn.”

Added this person: “People should definitely add their education details to their LinkedIn profile. The education section includes ‘Start Year’ and ‘End Year (or expected)’ fields. If a member has a partial degree, we recommend they clearly state the status of their degree within the ‘Degree’ and/or ‘Description’ fields.”

Still, that “description” field isn’t easy to find. And why LinkedIn — which has more than 600 million users — hasn’t added fields for partially completed degrees is a bit of a mystery, particularly given that so many people drop out.

A cynic might note that LinkedIn makes a lot of its revenue off recruitment services. Before it was acquired by Microsoft, and the companies’ financials were consolidated, 65% of LinkedIn’s revenue came from recruitment services. And often the more distinguished the degree, the more people will pay to associate themselves with the ostensible degree holder. (LinkedIn itself strongly encourages loading up one’s profile with education-related details, saying these attract “11x” more profile views.)

Yet Jeffrey Pfeffer, a renowned professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who has written extensively about organization theory, suggests that human nature is just as big a factor in the problem.

Asked if he has reason to think more students are listing incomplete degrees on LinkedIn, he points us to research published in 2001 by the payroll and benefits company ADP. What it shows is that of 2.6 million background checks that ADP performed that year, 44% of applicants were discovered to have lied about their work histories, 41% lied about their education and 23% falsified credentials or licenses.

“People lie about everything all the time,” says Pfeffer. “I’m not sure that it’s any worse now than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.”

It’s something recruiters even anticipate, he says, recalling a conversation with a top executive from the search giant Heidrick & Struggles, who Pfeffer had interviewed for one of the many books he has authored. “He said to me, ‘So many people make up credentials that we no longer use fudged credentials as a reason to disqualify a candidate.’ He said recruiters will correct what they find wrong with someone’s resume. But he said if recruiters used exaggerated — even made-up — credentials as a reason to disqualify people, they would never have enough candidates.”

Indeed, while LinkedIn’s limited menu may give more cover to people, Pfeffer cautions not to assign the company too much blame. It’s a little like shooting the messenger, he suggests.

“Sure, LinkedIn could play some role. But they could change the way they operate tomorrow, and people would still find a way to make themselves look more accomplished than they are.”

Maybe so. Given its reach, we’d prefer to see some changes and find out.

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