Technology

American Airlines today announced that it will fly a handful of cargo-only flights to Europe, using its standard 777-300 passenger planes, over the course of the next few days. The company says these flights will carry medical supplies, mail for active U.S. military, telecommunications equipment and electronics, as well as packages from e-commerce firms.

This marks the first time American is operating cargo-only flights since 1984, when it retired its last 747 freighter (one of those retired planes, by the way, was then modified to carry NASAshuttle on its back).

By default, virtually all airlines carry cargo on their domestic and international flights. American, for example, notes that it shipped more than 400 tons of flowers from Amsterdam to the U.S. in the two weeks around ValentineDay. As airlines started shrinking their operations in light of various travel restrictions and plummeting customer demand during the current COVID-19 outbreak, that cargo capacity shrunk, too, even though there is still plenty of demand for moving cargo between countries. As of now, American and the other major U.S. airlines have suspended the majority of their international long-haul flights.

&We have a critical role to play in keeping essential goods moving during this unprecedented time, and we are proud to do our part and find ways to continue to serve our customers and our communities,& said Rick Elieson, president of Cargo and vice president of International Operations at American. &Challenging times call for creative solutions, and a team of people across the airline has been working nonstop to arrange cargo-only flight options for our customers.&

For now, American only plans to make two round-trips between Dallas and Frankfurt over the course of the next four days. &The flights provide much-needed cargo capacity for many of the airlineregular cargo customers, allowing them to continue operating in this challenging environment,& the company says in its announcement.

Delta, too, recently announced that it would use some of its grounded passenger planes to move cargo. As airlines continue to grapple with the fallout of this pandemic, we&ll likely see more of them do this in the coming weeks.

The dating startup world is notorious for few exits, and a similarly slim number of buyers. ThereMatch Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, and thereSpark Networks, which owns Christian Mingle, JSwipe, Jdate and Zoosk.

Dating.com Group also owns a slew of dating brands, like Dil Mil, a dating app for South Asians. And it just closed a $50 million corporate venture capital fund to invest in more.

Dmitry Volkov, the founder of Dating.com Group, said that helooking for startups beyond swipe mechanics, referring indirectly to companies like Hinge, Tinder and Bumble, in which users can swipe through profiles of eligible individuals.

&The new mainstream product mechanic is yet to be discovered,& he noted. Beyond capital, Volkov thinks startups can use Dating.com Group for technical talent and product advice. He also thinks the strategic investments could lead to acquisitions down the road, which isn&t revolutionary, considering this is a corporate venture capital fund. Volkov claims he is in multiple talks with companies across Asia, the U.S. and Europe. With more talent under its umbrella, he says that Dating.com Group will plan to exit via IPO.

Dating.com Group is launching this fund during a time where people are told to socially isolate, not commiserate over dates and dinners. Volkov thinks that people spending less money in times of crisis could add to some &softness in revenue,& but he finds promise in streaming services.

&People will spend more time online, in social networks and dating apps, so I expect a spike in user activity in video dating and chatting online,& he said. &Younger generations are more native with video-first content. New niche players will always appear. But sooner or later there will be a mainstream disruptor, like Tinder was some time ago.&

To pull on the video thread a bit more, Volkov said that streaming services have gotten interest in Asia and across Europe and the USA. Itthe idea of video broadcasting from one individual to a big group, and he pointed to Meet Group for developing these services in the dating industry, too.

It was the first time I&ve heard of video dating, and since we&re seeing new use cases for literally everything during this time of social isolation, I decided to dig a little deeper. Sure enough, The League, which matches you with people you have on LinkedIn or Facebook, offers video speed dating.

According to a press kit from The League [PDF], the speed dating option lets users go on three two-minute speed dates every Sunday night. People can also video chat their matches — an option that The League touted was both &safe and cost effective.&

We&ll see if virtual dating catches on as it moves from a cost-effective option to the only opportunity some people have right now. We know at least for now, at least one company has an appetite for it.

If thereone face of scientific authority in the U.S. in the throes of COVID-19 chaos, itDr. Anthony Fauci. One of the worldtop HIV/AIDS researchers, Dr. Fauci has served in his post as director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, helping steer the federal response to viral diseases like SARS, MERS, Ebola — and now COVID-19.

Today at 4PM Pacific, Mark Zuckerberg is speaking live with Dr. Fauci to discuss steps that everyday people can take to help fight the spread of COVID-19. To watch the conversation, head over to ZuckerbergFacebook page.

The conversation is part of Facebookrecent thrust to put COVID-19 information from established health authorities front and center on the platform in an effort to get good information into the hands of users while mitigating potentially dangerous misinformation that could worsen outcomes as the novel coronavirus spreads worldwide.

Instagram is finally preparing to copy Snapchatmost popular feature, and one of the few it hasn&t already cloned. Instagram has prototyped an unreleased ephemeral text messaging feature that clears the chat thread whenever you leave it, a Facebook spokesperson confirms to TechCrunch. That could make users more comfortable with having rapid-fire, silly, vulnerable, or risque chats, thereby driving up the reply notifications that keep people opening Instagram all day long.

Instagram already has disappearing photo and video messaging which it launched in February 2018 to let users choose if chat partners can &view once&, &allow replay& multiple times for a limited period, or &keep in chat& permanently. Technically you could use the Create mode for overlaying words on a colored background to send an ephemeral text, but otherwise you have to use the &Unsend& feature which notifies other people in the thread.

But today, reverse engineering specialist and TechCrunchfavorite tipster Jane Manchun Wong unearthed something new. Buried in the code of the Android app is the a new & & mode, labeled in the code with the ‘speak-no-evil& monkey emoji.

How Instagram Disappearing Messages Work

When users enter this mode by swiping up from Instagram Direct message thread, they&re brought to a dark mode messaging window that starts as an empty message thread. When users close this window, any messages from them or their chat partners disappear.The feature works similarly to Snapchat, which clears a chat after all members of a thread have viewed it and closed the chat window.

Herehow Instagram disappearing messages work

The ephemeral messaging feature is not currently not publicly available but a Facebook spokesperson confirms to me that they are working on it internally. &We&re always exploring new features to improve your messaging experience. This feature is still in early development and not testing externally.& The company later tweeted the confirmation. They gave no indication of a timeline for if or when this might officially launch. Some features never make it out of the prototype phase, but others including many spotted by Wong end up being rolled out several months later.

Instagram has seen great success using Snapchat as a product R-D lab. Instagramversion of Stories rocketed to 500 million daily users compared to just 218 million users on Snapchat as a whole.

But ephemeral messaging has kept Snapchat relevant. Back in late 2017, just 51 million of Snapchat178 million users were posting Stories per day, and that was when Instagram Stories was still in its first year on the market. According to Statista, Snapchattop use case is staying in touch with friends and family, not entertainment.

Instagram Stories caused Snapchat to start shrinking at one point, but now itgrowing healthily again. That may signaled that Instagram still had more work to do to steal Snapthunder. But Instagramexisting version of ephemeral messaging that is clunkier, Facebook scrapped a trial of a similar feature, and WhatsApptake that started testing in October hasn&t rolled out yet.

Thatleft teens to stick with Snapchat for fast-paced communication they don&t have to worry about coming back to haunt them. If Instagram successfully copies this feature too, it could reduce the need for people to stay on Snapchat while making Instagram Direct more appealing to a critical audience. Every reply and subsequent alert draws users deeper into Facebookweb.

Wag!, the petcare company known for connecting pet owners with local dog walkers, has recently undergone a series of sweeping changes.

In late November, after I was named the new CEO, my management team and I began plotting a radically different path to profitability. We began by assessing our relationship with users. First and foremost, we recognized that Wag! needed to improve the way we supported the community, including pet parents, pet caregivers and their pets.

Next, we examined the companyfinancial health and analyzed the competitive climate, investment community and direction in which the tech industry appeared headed. The time has come to share how this influenced our decisions.

Late in 2019, a lot of smart people began to note a philosophical shift taking place in the capital markets. Investors had begun to lose patience with startups that spent massive sums on acquiring market share, but had demonstrated little to no ability at creating lasting businesses.

We concluded that funding in some sectors would quickly dry up. Based on our analysis, we expect a growing number of startups will be forced to hew out self-sustaining business niches to survive. This assessment is partly what led us to conclude that accepting another funding round wouldn&t necessarily benefit the company in the area that matters most: providing value to customers.

A consensus formed after we took control, and found a constant drumbeat of bills coming in and payments going out, notably to Amazon (Web Services), Google (to help extend our brand), Facebook (to reach customers) and for our office space. These costs were growing faster than revenue.

This is a difficult time. Whoever and wherever you are, your life is likely already changing in ways you never could have anticipated as the world grapples with the fast-spreading global outbreak of a virus we don&t yet fully understand.

Itweird and hard and we&re feeling it too. Now more than ever, diving into new skills, old interests and even — perhaps especially — totally fluffy mindless entertainment can keep our minds refreshed and our days full. From at-home workouts and soothing virtual farming simulators to Catherinehonestly uncannily good drawings of our staff pets, herewhatworking for us.

Natasha Mascarenhas, Reporter

Bon Appétit YouTube videos

While this is not at all a revolutionary concept, Bon AppétitYouTube videos are the calming distraction I&ve been using after work. I give double points to Priya Krishna, their in-house Indian American chef, for inspiring me to go back to some old classics with confidence. If you like New Jersey, watch any of Bradvideos. And If you like watching a gourmet cook try to recreate niche food items like Hot Pockets, watch Clairevideos.

Overcooked

This is the perfect video game for people who don&t like video games but enjoy high-intensity conversations about flipping burgers with their housemates. You act like a chef with other users and try to complete recipes. And yes, things do catch on fire if you aren&t on top of your game.

Catherine Shu, Writer

Procreate app + Apple Pencil

I was skeptical about digital art because my favorite part of sketching is messing around with different mediums, but the combination of Procreate (I use it on an iPad Air) and my Apple Pencil have been a very welcome distraction. I do a combination of freehand sketching and tracing photos to make my own versions of coloring sheets. I&ve been keeping a sketch journal and drawing pet portraits for my friends: this one is of TechCrunchhardware editor Brianrabbit, Lucy.

Keeping a journal

….or you can try sketching with pen and paper, too! If you don&t own an iPad or drawing is not your thing, then journal. Seriously. This is a very strange time and things keep changing and escalating. I live in Taiwan, where COVID-19 has impacted daily life for months already, but I find it very hard to remember the details of what happened or how I felt from week to week. Keep a regular record, even if itjust a couple sentences. It will keep you centered when the days start to blend together.

Brian Heater, Hardware Editor

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

A thick tome that deconstructs the roles Philip K Dick, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson played in developing the psychedelic subculture of the 70s. Heavy, man.

On cinema

The lore runs deep with Tim Heidecker and Gregg TurkingtonOn Cinemaverse. Therethe podcast, the series, a motion picture, another series (Dekker), a multi-hour mock trial and seven live-streamed Oscar specials — all of it is deeply hilarious.

Kettlebells

I dusted my old kettlebell off. This and morning yoga (see: Natasha L&s) have been the extent of most of my exercising, but the number of things you can do with the dumb piece of cast iron is mind-boggling.

&The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place& by Explosions in the Sky

I can&t say why for certain, but I&ve only been able to listen to largely instrumental music since this whole thing went into overdrive here in the U.S. My playlist at the moment mostly consists of jazz piano like Monk and Bill Evans, guitarists like John Fahey, Jim O&Rourke and Khaki King and more noise-oriented work like Can and Boris. But post-rock has been my real rock, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mowai and this absolute classic.

Devin Coldeway, Writer

Ring Fit Adventure

This Switch fitness game with its ring controller has helped me exercise regularly even after I finished my review. Iteven more helpful now that the actual gym is not an option.

Stardew Valley

This peaceful farming game is a great one to play with friends who might not be interested in more &serious& gaming. Download Discord, start a farm and have fun. Make sure you&re all on the same platform!

Generative.fm

People who haven&t worked from home much likely don&t have a big selection of ambient music thateasy to work through. This site has dozens of pleasant but not distracting procedurally generated streams that go forever.

Korean and Chinese historical dramas

Tired of the same old U.S. prestige TV and sitcom reruns? Korea and China have been making AMAZING historical dramas like &Nirvana in Fire& and &Mr Sunshine& that are very different from what you&re used to.

Darrell Etherington, Science Editor

RimWorld

A great resource-gathering and crafting sim with a fun style and very light system requirements thatavailable on both PC and Mac. A recent expansion provides even more fun.

Zooniverse

You might have a lot of extra time on your hands, and Zooniverse turns that time into crowdsourced contributions to ongoing scientific research. Verify lab results! Identify raccoons! Do all kinds of fun stuff, easily and from the comfort of home.

Hello from the Magic Tavern

This is a long-running podcast with the simple premise that a normal guy from Chicago finds himself trapped in a high-fantasy, Tolkien-esque world. All improv on-the-spot storytelling, and plenty of archives to catch up on.

Josh Constine, Editor-at-Large

Cowboy Bebop

If you were ever curious about anime, or thought it was too childish or ridiculous, you need to try Cowboy Bebop, the 1997 animated series. Itabout a group of bounty hunters in the near future navigating the gig economy as they try to find where they fit in the universe after an accident nearly destroys earth. Cowboy Bebop offers gorgeous noir-ish illustration, stylish fashion, thrilling action and suspenseful romance, all set to hip jazz soundtrack. You can binge the two seasons, but most episodes are relatively self-contained for a satisfying quick hit of entertainment.

Overwatch

Most first-person shooter games are pure tests of reflexes and experience, making them daunting to those who end up getting pwned by long-time players. Overwatch is different. Instead of everyone having similar weapons or skills, in this 6-on-6 battle you pick one of 21 different characters with unique attack, shield and healing abilities. Be a ghostly dual-wielding assassin, a viking knight with a giant hammer or angelic doctor who can revive teammates. Itmore about the interplay of your squadcharacters than individual effort, which is perfect for those feeling lonely amidst quarantine.

Greg Kumparak, Editor

Apex Legends

If you&re into the concept of battle royale games but aren&t into the building aspects of Fortnite, check out Apex. You pick one of 12 &Legends& (each with their own strengths and abilities) and team up with two other players to try to be the last squad standing. Like most battle royale games, iteasy to keep saying &OK, OK, one more game,& until you look up and realize you&ve been playing for eight hours straight. Itavailable for Windows, Xbox One and PS4… and itfreeeeeee!

Ask the StoryBots

Working with a young kid at home and need to give them a bit of TV time for everyonesanity? Can&t stand to watch any more Daniel Tiger? Ask the StoryBots. Kids ask questions (Where do planets come from? How do ears hear?), and the StoryBots go and find the answer. Created by the brothers behind JibJab (a viral internet thing before viral internet things were a thing) and acquired by Netflix, itsomehow perfectly tuned for us to watch when everyone just needs some down time… and, I admit, I&ve totally learned a thing or two from it. Bonus: A lot of the music in the show is by Parry Gripp, the unreasonably clever songwriter behind Nerf Herder. The songs will get stuck in your head forever… but hey, better than Baby Shark.

MasterClass

Itthe best kind of &distance learning.& No one is going to complain about getting schooled by Steph Curry and the many other greats who appear on the platform.

Lucas Matney, Reporter

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

My hype had already been building for Animal Crossingrelease Friday, but after being under government-enforced shelter-in-place in San Francisco, I&ve been yearning for the relaxation of repaying predatory home loans to Tom Nook. We have little idea how this will compare to past versions, but given its been eight years since a major release in the series, I have sky-high hopes.

Natasha Lomas, Senior Reporter

YouTubefitness community is going to be essential to stay sane and healthy during this lockdown — whether you need specialised training or just want to keep (or obtain!) a general level of fitness. If I had to pick one longtime favorite channel I&d probably go for Yoga with Kassandra. The channel offers a mix of vinyasa and yin yoga classes, including some hour-long classes. The content caters to various levels and interests. For the more advanced she offers some minimal cues classes, which can be especially great if you&re sharing a living space and don&t want to take over too much of the general ambiance with yogi chatter. Namaste.

Matt Burns, Managing Editor

Gundam Models

I&ve never watched Gundam nor read the books. I don&t know anything about these robot guys. But they&re great fun to construct. The best part is thereno glue involved. Everything snaps together in a satisfying way and the only tool required is a pair of snippers. A couple hours later, bam, robot dude with a giant gun. Things can get even more involved. Some builders take ultra-fine pens and line the panels, which gives the models more depth. Others add weathering marks and battle damage. I&ve taken to painting a few panels. There are no rules.

Anthony Ha, Senior Writer

Star Trek: Picard

The latest Star Trek spin-off on CBS All Access (and Amazon Prime Video outside the United States) is a bit of a slog in its early episodes, wallowing in a future that has gotten considerably bleaker since the days of &Next Generation.& But the pace is quickening, and the darkness increasingly feels like a reminder that an enlightened Star Trek future is something that has to be continually fought for and earned — and that we will always need compassion, curiosity and optimism.

The park

While the rules around going outside differ from location to location, itworth emphasizing that for many of us, walking and exercising at a safe social distance are still encouraged. Here in New York, with bars and restaurants and theaters closed, it looks like plenty of city dwellers are rediscovering the joy of green space. (Just remember to stay six feet apart!)

Ingrid Lunden, Editor

Pandemic (and other table-top games)

Not wallowing in coronavirus pity here! Pandemic is a group game, away from the screen, where everyone has to work together to cover the globe with research centers. Wonderful lesson to be had here: There is no single &winner.& You have to collaborate to reach the objective, which is to find a cure. Other table-top games my family likes include Catan, Ticket to Ride, Istanbul and Perudo.

Kirsten Korosec, Senior reporter and editor

Jump rope

I rediscovered a jump rope hanging on the back of my door and thought, hmm this is something i can do. In moments of frustration or when I feel like I&ve been sitting too long I just jump rope for a few minutes.

Organize!

In such a chaotic world, organizing and cleaning has been a go-to for me. Thathow I found that jump rope. ^^

Photo journal

I&ve been playing around with my Pixel 3 camera, digging into some of features and stuff I never bothered to learn. I have started taking macro and more artistic (in my mind) pictures of stuff in my immediate world. There are a number of cat photos too of course. But each dayphoto seems to perfectly capture my mood.

Taylor Hatmaker, Writer

Pokémon Sword/Shield

The world may feel upside down, but the latest Pokémon game is as relaxing and formulaic as ever. And theresomething about catching virtual animals and relegating them to tiny spherical prisons that makes home quarantine feel not so bad.

Duolingo/Memrise

I get bored when I don&t feel like I&m learning anything, so language apps are perfect. I got started with learning beginner Japanese in a classroom, so now I use apps to refresh my (very rusty) knowledge. And happily, the language has enough memorization to keep me busy from now until the end of time.

Fortnite

Against all odds I somehow got my non-gamer wife into Fortnite and we play it when we absolutely can&t otherwise turn our brains off. Fortnite is a 180 from relaxing games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, but itaddictive and absorbing if you&d like to teleport forward in time a few hours. Also the new season has a really buff calico cat named Meowscles, so don&t sleep on that.

Cooking e-books

Itthe perfect time to hit the virtual library and check out e-books that embody the skills you&d like your very impressive aspirational self to have. In my case, I&m trying to learn the principles of Japanese and Thai cooking so I never need to eat out again, pretty much. Lately, I cook every day and itgone a long way toward keeping me sane. Cook something and waste a bunch of time taking artsy photos of what you made. You&ll feel accomplished, even if you won&t be winning any Michelin stars. If all else fails, make pancakes and don&t stop until you feel better.