ratings

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. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in…

Nielsen is being acquired for $16 billion (roughly Rs. 1,21,160 crore), including debt, about a week after the media measurement company rejected a smaller offer earlier this month. Viewing data collected by Nielsen plays a big role in determining where billions in advertising dollars are spent each year. The company itself has annual global revenue of about $3.5 billion (roughly Rs. 26,500 crore).A group of private equity investors led by Evergreen Coast Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management, and…

A poster of Motion Picture Association film ratings hangs next to a poster displaying a message about new cleaning procedures in the lobby of Cinemark's Century 16 at the South Point Hotel & Casino on in Las Vegas, Nevada.Ethan Miller | Getty ImagesHow many F-bombs can a movie have before it's rated R?That's up to Kelly McMahon and a secretive panel of raters that is charged with dishing out the movie industry's five all-important designations — G, PG, PG-13, R and the extremely rare NC-17.Though it toils in relative…

A Rough Deal One of our favorite spoilers, the Australian Classification ratings board, has updated its website with a new PlayStation listing for Daniel Mullins Games’ deck-builder Inscryption, suggesting that the spooky roguelike card game is headed to PS4 in the very near future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPBP3kWDcNk Released on PC in the fall of 2021, Inscryption turned plenty of heads in double-quick time with its incredibly creepy and disturbing aesthetic, compelling strategy gameplay, and fascinating…

Peter Wayner / VentureBeat: Paris-based EcoVadis, which provides software for business sustainability ratings, raised a $500M Series C led by BeyondNetZero and Astorg at a $1B+ valuation — Can the supply chain become greener and more sustainable? Today, EcoVadis announced it's raised $500 million in a new funding round … Peter Wayner / VentureBeat: Paris-based EcoVadis, which provides software for business sustainability ratings, raised a $500M Series C led by BeyondNetZero and…

Most flagship phones these days boast some level of water resistance, and you’ll find “IP ratings” on everything from the Apple iPhone 13 to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. But that got us wondering: Just what do manufacturers mean when they use terms like “waterproof” and “water-resistant?” What constitutes a “rugged” device? Just how many times can you drop your phone in the toilet before you can expect it to bite the dust? As it turns out, some terms that describe a phone’s ruggedness are actually standardized, and…

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on economic growth, jobs, and deficit reduction in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2022. Evelyn Hockstein | ReutersFewer small business owners now than a year ago approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president. In fact, small business owners are twice as likely to disapprove than to approve of Biden, according to the latest CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey, which was conducted April 18-25 among 2,027 small business owners in the U.S. …