Claim OwnershipTechCrunch Industry News
Subscribed: 1,937Played: 115,723
Subscribe
© 2023 TechCrunch
Description
Listen to articles handpicked by our editors, and stay updated on top technology news from TechCrunch.
3569 Episodes
Reverse
Tesla has proposed a new 10-year compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk that could be worth as much as $1 trillion even as the EV maker’s car business stumbles and it sets its sights on humanoid robotics and AI.
Also, Snapchat is launching a new Lens that lets users create and edit images using a text-to-image AI generator, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The new “Imagine Lens” is available to Snapchat+ Platinum and Lens+ subscribers.
And, Rivian is laying off around 150 workers — its second small staff cut in a matter of months — as the company readies itself for the all-important launch of its more-affordable R2 SUV next year.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The classic feature from Facebook’s early days lets users get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge of sorts. While the poke fell out of use ages ago, the company has more recently seen an uptick in its use among younger users, which has now prompted it to make the poke a more central part of the Facebook experience.
Also, the classic feature from Facebook’s early days lets users get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge of sorts. While the poke fell out of use ages ago, the company has more recently seen an uptick in its use among younger users, which has now prompted it to make the poke a more central part of the Facebook experience.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Captions, an AI-powered video creation and editing app for content creators that has secured over $100 million in venture capital to date at a valuation of $500 million, is rebranding to Mirage, the company announced on Thursday.
Also, JetBlue will use Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites for free in-flight internet.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Amid lawsuits alleging child safety concerns, online gaming service Roblox announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its age-estimation technology to all users and partnering with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to provide age and content ratings for the games and apps on its platform. The company said that by year’s end, the age-estimation system will be rolled out to all Roblox users who access the company’s communication tools, like voice and text-based chat. This involves scanning users’ selfies and analyzing facial features to estimate age.
Also, Scale AI, which helps tech companies prepare data to train their AI models, filed a lawsuit against one of its former sales employees and its rival Mercor on Wednesday. The suit claims the employee, who was hired by Mercor, “stole more than 100 confidential documents concerning Scale’s customer strategies and other proprietary information,” according to a copy seen by TechCrunch.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Netflix launched a scene-clipping feature for mobile last year called “Moments,” which lets users quickly save their favorite scenes from shows and movies within the Netflix app. The streaming giant rolled out an update on Wednesday, allowing users to specify both a starting point and an endpoint when saving a scene.
Also, invites to Perplexity’s new AI-powered web browser, Comet, are one of the web’s hottest commodities these days. The new product was made available first to the AI firm’s $200-per-month Max subscribers and a small group of invitees. But now there’s a new way to jump ahead on the waitlist. On Wednesday, PayPal announced it’s giving its customers, including PayPal and Venmo users, early access to Comet as well as a free year’s subscription to Perplexity’s premium service, Perplexity Pro, normally $200 per year.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google will not be forced to break up its search business, but a federal judge has tentatively ordered other changes to the tech giant’s business practices to keep it from further anticompetitive behavior.
Also, the battle over $20 billion worth of climate-related funding authorized by Congress continues as an appellate court ruled on Tuesday in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency, which had terminated Biden-era grants made to nonprofits.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI said Tuesday it plans to route sensitive conversations to reasoning models like GPT-5 and roll out parental controls within the next month — part of an ongoing response to recent safety incidents involving ChatGPT failing to detect mental distress. The new guardrails come in the aftermath of the suicide of teenager Adam Raine, who discussed self-harm and plans to end his life with ChatGPT, which even supplied him with information about specific suicide methods.
Also, Instagram is testing a new Picture-in-Picture feature for watching reels, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. The feature allows users to watch reels in a small, floating window on their screen while browsing other apps to allow for multitasking. The feature was first spotted by app researcher Radu Oncescu. Users who are part of the test will see a pop-up notifying them about the new feature and how to turn it on.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Five years ago, investor Katelin Holloway made what she calls a “literal moon shot” investment. A founding partner of the generalist venture firm Seven Seven Six admits she and her team had “no clue” what rocket company Stoke Space was talking about when they pitched the firm on its reusable launch technology. She says, ‘we knew full well we were not the specialist.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Taco Bell’s chief digital officer says the company is having an “active conversation” about when to use and not use AI. The company has apparently rolled out voice AI-powered ordering at more than 500 drive-throughs.
Also, it’s only been since June that Meta invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling vendor Scale AI, bringing on CEO Alexandr Wang and several of the startup’s top executives to run Meta Superintelligence Labs. But the relationship between the two companies is already showing signs of fraying.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A homicide investigation has rocked the final days of Burning Man after a man was found dead “lying in a pool of blood” Saturday night at the Nevada desert festival, according to the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office. According to the New York Times, the grim discovery occurred around 9:14 p.m. just as the festival’s iconic wooden “Man” effigy began its traditional burn.
Also, customers, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last week the chipmaker reported record revenue of $46.7 billion during the quarter that ended on July 27 — a 56% year-over-year increase largely driven by the AI data center boom.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can’t comply with Mississippi’s age verification law — the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state — because it doesn’t have the means to do so. Also, The Trump administration seems intent on controlling Intel’s ability to make key business decisions around its floundering foundry business unit. According to reporting from the Financial Times, at a Deutsche Bank conference on Thursday, Intel’s CFO David Zinsner shared new details about the company’s recent deal with the Trump administration, which gave the U.S. government a 10% equity stake.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As TechCrunch's Connie Loizos writes, Anthropic is making some big changes to how it handles user data, requiring all Claude users to decide by September 28 whether they want their conversations used to train AI models. While the company directed us to its blog post on the policy changes when asked about what prompted the move, we’ve formed some theories of our own.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Following a successful pilot program at 30 colleges and universities in the U.S., MathGPT.ai is preparing to nearly double its availability this fall, with hundreds of instructors planning to incorporate the tool. Schools implementing MathGPT.ai in their classrooms include Penn State University, Tufts University, and Liberty University, among others. In other news, an overly broad age assurance law in Mississippi is leading to arguments about which platforms — Bluesky, Mastodon, or others — offer the best solution for avoiding crackdowns on internet freedoms.
The company that makes the Bluesky social app announced last week that it would block access to its service in the state of Mississippi, rather than comply with the new age verification law.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, reported another quarter of sustained sales growth in its earnings statement Wednesday, with $46.7 billion in revenue, a 56% increase compared to the same period last year. That growth was largely fueled by AI-dominated data center business, which saw a 56% year-over-year increase in revenue.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Thanks to an unexpected surge in popularity on TikTok, Radiohead now has its fourth-ever song on the Billboard Hot 100: the morosely gorgeous track “Let Down” from the 1997 album “OK Computer.” “Let Down” never broke through to mainstream attention like Radiohead’s “Creep” or “Karma Police,” but it’s by no means a deep cut, like the Pavement B-side “Harness Your Hopes” that went viral due to a quirk in Spotify’s recommendation algorithm. This Radiohead song is a fan favorite from an album that’s considered among the best rock records of all time.
Anthropic has settled a class action lawsuit with a group of fiction and nonfiction authors, as announced in a filing on Tuesday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned an international fraud network used by North Korea to infiltrate U.S. companies with hackers posing as legitimate job seekers, agency officials announced Wednesday.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A top Social Security Administration official turned whistleblower says members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE uploaded hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of most Americans at risk of compromise.
Library e-book and audiobook app Libby is adding AI, much to the disappointment of some readers and librarians, who would prefer not to have AI inserted into their favorite apps. The new feature, “Inspire Me,” allows users to get book recommendations by using prompts or from their previously saved titles in Libby.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Months before a jury awarded a $242.5 million verdict against Tesla over its culpability in a 2019 fatal crash, the automaker had a chance to settle for $60 million. Instead, Tesla rejected that offer, according to new legal filings that were first reported by Reuters. Also, Google is tightening security measures around Android app distribution, the company announced on Monday. Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store. And, Tech founder Ethan Agarwal, who has raised tens of millions of dollars from VCs across two startups, is running for the 2026 California gubernatorial seat, as reported by Axios.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today, Mastodon users unhappy with the service can opt to move their account to a different Mastodon server, while Bluesky is developing technology that allows users to migrate their account to a new PDS (Bluesky’s term for “personal data server”) on its network. However, Mastodon runs on the ActivityPub Protocol and Bluesky on the AT Protocol, which has limited the ability to migrate accounts across the two platforms until now. Also, Elon Musk’s X and xAI filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the two companies are colluding to stifle competition. And Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are among the Silicon Valley veterans putting more than $100 million into a network of political action committees (PACs) that will advocate against strict AI regulations in next year’s midterm elections, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Intel officially announced an agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday afternoon, following Trump’s statement that the government would be taking a 10% stake in the struggling chipmaker. While Intel says the government is making an “$8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock,” the administration does not appear to be committing new funds. Instead, it’s simply making good on what Intel described as “grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel.” Also, Meta’s former policy chief Nick Clegg seems to be walking a tightrope as he promotes his upcoming book, “How to Save the Internet.” And in a new blog post, OpenAI warns against “unauthorized opportunities to gain exposure to OpenAI through a variety of means,” including special purpose vehicles, known as SPVs.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When Meta selected a site in Louisiana for its largest data center to date, it signed a deal with Entergy to power the site with three massive natural gas power plants. Earlier this week a state regulator approved Entergy’s plans.
The power plants are expected to come online in 2028 and 2029, and at full strength, they’ll generate 2.25 gigawatts of electricity. Ultimately, the AI data center could draw 5 gigawatts of power as it’s expanded. The power plant project has been controversial among Louisianans.
Waymo has been granted a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City, the first such approval granted by the city. The company told TechCrunch it plans to start testing “immediately.”
And a former software developer has been sentenced to four years in prison for sabotaging his former employer’s network after leaving the company.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
At first, I was skeptical about AI data scraping, but it’s a game changer. The AI automatically adapts to different site structures and even bypasses minor layout changes without breaking the workflow. Makes scaling projects so much easier. Perhaps such actions can simply increase the services of companies like https://groupbwt.com/blog/ai-data-scraping/
Versa Networks, a provider of software-defined networking and security solutions, has raised $120M in funding to fuel its growth. Need to check this https://hiretop.com/ and get more new ways for developers for hire. The company's capital comes from the Silicon Valley-based investment firm Y Combinator and other funders including Andreessen Horowitz, Naval Ravikant’s AngelList syndicate fronting Andreessen Horowitz and data center services company General Electric.
Samsung provides a lot of cool new products that allow you to have fun to the fullest. In addition, they have reliable support who will always help you to deal with problems, you can find out more about this here https://samsung-electronics.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html
Sponsoreds, an Amazon ppc automation tool - https://sponsoreds.com/ , enables marketers to boost the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns by using sponsored search results. For those who lack coding or technological expertise, this is the most suitable option for them. If you have a few fundamental computer abilities, you may be able to get started right away and get results nearly quickly. Based on industry best practices, AMZ Advisers Group LLC promises to be able to assist clients with keyword research and campaign management services.. As a result of real-time information into performance indicators offered by AMZ Advisers Group LLC, you'll be able to make intelligent decisions about your investments.