Technical

When a company releases a new AI video generator, it’s not long before someone uses it to make a video of actor Will Smith eating spaghetti. It’s become something of a meme as well as a benchmark: Seeing whether a new video generator can realistically render Smith slurping down a bowl of noodles. Smith himself […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/dUOVuJ8

TechCrunch’s Found podcast, which has brought listeners the stories behind the startups since April 2022, released its final episode today. I’ve been one of the hosts of Found since November 2022 and in that time have spoken to more than 75 founders about the startups they are building. These founders hail from many different backgrounds […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/cyUPoGO

A New York Times investigation found that dozens of potential pedophiles have prolifically exploited the child influencer industry. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/e3abz7Y

Elon Musk had an eventful 2024, what with his hard push into right-wing politics and leveraging his X social media platform and considerable influence to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. Putting politics aside for a moment, it’s worth focusing on another Musk pastime: making promises for Tesla. The Tesla CEO’s promises — and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ba3id8T

Nearly a quarter century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is gearing up to launch an orbital rocket for the first time — and finally enter the competitive launch industry that is currently dominated by SpaceX.  Company executives have maintained that they are planning to launch the towering rocket, called New Glenn, before the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/jpc2VCJ

The data was found exposed on an Amazon cloud server, and contained precise location data on thousands of vehicles. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Asi2Een

The chipmaking giant Nvidia is leaning more heavily into robotics in 2025. More specifically, it’s launching a new generation of compact computers for humanoid robots, called Jetson Thor, in the first half of the new year, confims the Financial Times. The move, which was expected, is part of an evolving, years-long strategy. Back in March, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/0XaEML3

The proliferation of data centers aiming to meet the computational needs of AI could be bad news for the US power grid, according to a new report in Bloomberg. Using the 1 million residential sensors tracked by Whisker Labs, along with market intelligence data from DC Byte, Bloomberg found that more than half of the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9a2pKq4

Three crypto industry groups — the DeFi Education Fund, the Blockchain Association, and the Texas Blockchain Council — are suing the Internal Revenue Service to block new regulations that require decentralized finance (DeFi) entities to report customer information. The IRS has been finalizing crypto tax regulations as part of the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/sOPaxmT

Africa’s tech ecosystem just got a boost of attention, with South Africa’s TymeBank and Nigeria’s Moniepoint both raising funds in recent weeks at valuations of over $1 billion and joining the coveted unicorn pantheon. But those valuations don’t just reflect investor confidence. They signal the success they’ve had in taking disruptive fintech models originally developed […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/7ZsQK1c

It has been a busy year in the private equity realm, with countless big-money acquisitions unfolding. The take-private space specifically has seen some sizable transactions, with private equity firms spearheading more than a dozen billion-dollar deals for public tech companies. London-headquartered Permira was a key protagonist, joining Blackstone to acquire European online classifieds group Adevinta […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/plwbORa

CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told Google employees that 2025 will be a “critical” year for the company. CNBC reports that it obtained audio from a December 18 strategy meeting where Pichai and other executives put on ugly holiday sweaters and laid out their priorities for the coming year. “I think 2025 will be critical,” Pichai […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/uGwA1Nc

Earlier this week, DeepSeek, a well-funded Chinese AI lab, released an “open” AI model that beats many rivals on popular benchmarks. The model, DeepSeek V3, is large but efficient, handling text-based tasks like coding and writing essays with ease. It also seems to think it’s ChatGPT. Posts on X — and TechCrunch’s own tests — […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Gq82S0J

Lyft is suing the city of San Francisco, claiming the city unfairly charged the rideshare company over $100 million in taxes. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/W9vVOUp

LG may have the earliest big press conference of CES, but the Korean electronics giant still can’t help announcing a bunch of products ahead of the show. As ever, the pile of news is a mixed bag with a few interesting additions. These plant lamps undoubtedly qualify as the latter. Details on the products — […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/bgeAYmI

Researchers at the University of Leeds recently demonstrated a framework for a quadruped robot with a design inspired by the biomechanics of four-legged animals. The versatile robot is able to navigate complex environments, maintain stability on uneven ground, and recover after a fall — all without the use of extra-perceptive sensors. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TvMSAZ0

DeepSeek V3 can handle a range of text-based workloads and tasks, like coding, translating, and writing essays and emails from a descriptive prompt. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/iZpYsHK

Here is a timeline of the events that led fledgling automaker Fisker to file for bankruptcy. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/KZcFamk

Elon Musk’s jets took over 355 flights this year, with 31 of those flights heading to or from near Mar-a-Lago.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TmLlXQh

Blaming victims, months of silence, and suing security researchers all featured in cybersecurity in 2024. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/nJujwHF

Indian online pharmacy PharmEasy’s valuation now stands at about $456 million, according to disclosures from its investor Janus Henderson, a 92% drop from its peak valuation of $5.6 billion. The British American global asset firm’s Global Research Fund values its holding of 12.9 million shares in PharmEasy at $766,043, according to its latest filing for […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/a0CR82E

Social network Bluesky said on Christmas day that it launched trending topics feature in beta. The trending topics are available on both desktop and mobile apps of the social network. On the desktop, you can see trending topics on the right sidebar, and on the mobile apps, you can tap on the search button to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/48QUSH3

Sharing security advice can go a long way in protecting your loved ones from the most common and damaging online threats. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TBc91wU

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/KFROSfQ

A year after Onyx Motorbikes owner James Khatiblou died suddenly, leaving customers with unfulfilled orders and millions in unpaid debts, the brand has been revived by its original founder. “I’m excited to announce I have resurrected my original brand Onyx with incredible backers!” founder Tim Seward wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “Onyx is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/89q2KY6

Sony knows how to put on a show at CES. The company’s pressers are high-octane, star-studded affairs, as these things go. In addition to standard Sony fare like TVs and audio systems, there’s always a curve ball or two, be it a car, a drone, or a “Gran Turismo” movie. That’s one of the perks […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/K0Vemor

Instagram is testing a way for you to see content from friends that you might have missed. The social network has started displaying unseen Story Highlights from a user’s mutual followers at the end of the Stories tray, which is the area at the top of your feed where you see Stories from your friends. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/98ZHnhv

The first Juniper fund is $10.6 million and is oversubscribed. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/cU8NCX7

One of the most widely used techniques to make AI models more efficient, quantization, has limits — and the industry could be fast approaching them. In the context of AI, quantization refers to lowering the number of bits — the smallest units a computer can process — needed to represent information. Consider this analogy: When […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/UhlcwzF

Days after web hosting provider WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and rival hosting provider Automattic, Mullenweg announced that WordPress.org is taking a holiday break. WordPress.com — a site that provides access to WordPress plug-ins, themes, and other artifacts to the community — will take a break from providing free […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IJ2riWV

Two big defense tech players, Palantir and Anduril, are talking to tech companies including SpaceX, OpenAI, Saronic, and Scale AI about forming a consortium to bid on Pentagon contracts, according to a report in the Financial Times. The goal, the FT says, is to challenge the dominance of “prime” defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/zNa8XOT

With a US TikTok ban scheduled to take effect in less than a month, President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that he’d like to keep the app around, according to Reuters. “We’re going to have to start thinking because, you know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with billions of views, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/46dGY7A

Autonomous vehicle technology and electrification startups were once the darlings of the VC and corporate world. The two technologies promised billions of dollars in revenue — and a new pathway for automakers to make money beyond building and selling cars.  Those VC-money-printing days have been over for AVs for a while now, with a few […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TIGlDy6

There’s been a lot of reporting in recent months around Apple’s efforts to expand its footprint in customers’ homes with in-development products like a wall-mounted smart home hub. According to a new report in Bloomberg, that strategy could also include a smart doorbell. This doorbell would use Apple’s FaceID technology to scan people’s faces as […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9LSIxjg

LLM models are already capable of diagnosing scientific outputs, but, until now, had “no physical agency to actually perform" experiments. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/YsLdfBq

OpenAI’s efforts to develop its next major model, GPT-5, are running behind schedule, with results that don’t yet justify the enormous costs, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. This echoes an earlier report in The Information suggesting that OpenAI is looking to new strategies as GPT-5 might not represent as big […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/DFITNSe

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re looking at OpenAI’s last — and biggest — announcement from its “12 Days of OpenAI” event; Apple’s potential entrance into the foldable market; and why Databricks is choosing to wait to go public. Let’s get into it. P.S. We’re off for the holidays! Week in Review […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ae0OVo1

Chip company Nvidia gets the green light from the European Union to complete its acquisition of Run:ai. The EU came to a unanimous decision today that Nvidia could go ahead with its acquisition of Israeli GPU orchestration platform Run:ai, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The European Commission determined that if the merger went through other […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/8D3tSPe

OpenAI saved its biggest announcement for the last day of its 12-day “shipmas” event. On Friday, the company unveiled o3, the successor to the o1 “reasoning” model it released earlier in the year. o3 is a model family, to be more precise — as was the case with o1. There’s o3 and o3-mini, a smaller, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/FVw7Ice

Led by Markforged veterans and backed by a16z, Backlip has raised $30M to democratize product design thanks to AI. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/6X8ve9O

Instagram head Adam Mosseri is teasing upcoming generative AI features for the social app that will allow creators to “change nearly any aspect” of their videos using text prompts. The editing tools will be powered by Meta’s Movie Gen AI model, and are expected to launch on the social network sometime next year, Mosseri said […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/zqyBj6i

Microsoft-owned GitHub today announced a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool, which will also now ship by default with Microsoft’s popular VS Code editor. Until now, most developers had to pay a monthly fee, starting at $10 per month, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers getting free […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/KL6oPa4

Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the company announced on Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra will become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help turn Grammarly’s AI assistant into an “AI productivity platform” thanks to the addition […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tg7JIAy

OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers to start. Starting today, o1 will begin rolling out to devs in OpenAI’s “tier 5” usage category, the company said. To qualify for tier 5, developers have to spend at least $1,000 with OpenAI and have an account […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3aMGK6c

Twitter alternatives — new and old — have found audiences willing to try out a newer social networks since Elon Musk took over the company in 2022. Mastodon, Bluesky, Spill and T2 are some of the social media platforms people are among them. So is Meta’s Threads platform. What is Threads? How do you create […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/C6oNtd7

A speaker at the annual NeurIPS AI conference has drawn criticism — not for her opinions about AI, but the way she referred to a Chinese student. During her keynote presentation on “How to optimize what matters most,” MIT Media Lab Professor Rosalind Picard (pictured above) included a slide quoting an excuse given by a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/8CPuhT3

Regardless of how they're defined, the agents are for helping complete tasks in an automated way with as little human interaction as possible. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/7nzq65e

The next big upgrade to Apple’s mobile devices could be foldability, according to multiple reports published Sunday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is aiming to launch two foldable devices in the next few years. There’s a larger model with a 19-inch screen that could compete with desktop monitors, as well as a smaller […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/PKHvM6o

State officials said hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents could be affected by a cyberattack on the state’s online portal for social services, with a “high probability” that  personally identifiable information was breached. According to an update from Governor Dan McKee’s office, the attack targeted RIBridges, which Rhode Island residents use to apply for […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/sWOvPUK

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re looking at GM’s decision to pull out of the robotaxi business, Google alluding to the existence of multiple universes, and how you can make some serious cash by getting an AI bot to fall in love with you. Let’s get into it. General Motors will no […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/RYS8fvA

Facebook’s parent company Meta is supporting Elon Musk’s effort to block OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit company into a for-profit one. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Meta sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta arguing that allowing the shift would have “seismic implications for Silicon Valley.” And while the company asked […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/dA7BG1b

World models, also known as world simulators, are being touted by some as the next big thing in AI. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has raised $230 million to build “large world models,” and DeepMind hired one of the creators of OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, to work on “world simulators.” (Sora was released on […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/5FARZ8Q

These startups have fascinating new technologies, business models, founder stories or are pushing an industry forward in exciting ways. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/nAJIYca

A few months ago, Google’s NotebookLM note-taking app debuted an Audio Overviews feature that generates a podcast with AI virtual hosts based on information you have shared with the app. Now, NotebookLM is rolling out the ability for users to interact with the AI podcast hosts. The idea behind Audio Overviews and the AI hosts […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IBZTE5l

OpenAI is in the holiday spirit, it seems. The ChatGPT series of reveals, called “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be streamed live at 10 a.m. PT each weekday through December 23. So far, we’ve seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI’s $200 per month subscription plan, the full version of its “reasoning” o1 model, the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/wPyqDog

Stigg (not The Stig, just Stigg) describes itself as “the first scalable monetization platform for the modern billing stack.” There’s a lot going on in that sentence, but what it comes down to is that the startup, which on Wednesday announced a $17.5 million Series A round, helps SaaS companies model pricing, create pricing pages, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/5hpBFAV

The future of audiobooks and AI’s impact on the publishing industry were points of discussion for HarperCollins, whose CEO, Brian Murray, spoke at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday. During the event, the exec praised Spotify’s entry into the audiobooks market and detailed its future growth plans in the space. He also […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/30B1AlS

Google announced its latest quantum chip, Willow. But what really caught the industry's attention was a wild claim tucked into the blog post. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/lERC2yp

Tiger Global famously fueled the pandemic-era venture capital boom, investing heavily in a wide range of startups, setting up bidding wars for even the most unproven startup that led to sky-high valuations. In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data. And much of the VC industry was not happy about […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ACok4UN

The U.S. sanctioned a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees for exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Sophos firewalls to target U.S. organizations. On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said Guan Tianfeng, an employee of Sichuan Silence, used the vulnerability to compromise approximately 81,000 firewalls in April 2020. The hacking campaign, detailed by Sophos […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/BbNZlkW

Ai Pin maker Humane demoed CosmOS, a new operating system aimed at (potentially) improving all the tech devices in your life — from your car’s entertainment system to your smart speaker, TV, and Android phone. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/newKuOi

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on the subscription model when detailing its $15 million Series A back in October. Now, mockups teasing the upcoming Bluesky subscription, along with a list of possible features, have been published to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tJ0erRc

Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said in a report published over the weekend that a hacking group has been targeting the country’s defense and military companies with phishing attacks.  The CERT identified the hacking group as UAC-0185 — also known as UNC4221 — without saying who was behind the group. Earlier this year, however, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tHvYkRm

Single-board computer maker Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer-meet-keyboard device with better specifications. Named the Raspberry Pi 500, this successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is as powerful as the current flagship Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi 5. It’s available to buy now from Raspberry Pi resellers. The Raspberry Pi 500 is the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/HpwN6GJ

Apple is looking to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive to gamers and game developers, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Vision Pro has been pitched as more of a productivity and media consumption device than something aimed at gamers, due in part to relying on eye and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/7LzuC6U

In winter 2025, a comparative literature class at UCLA will feature a textbook, homework assignments, and TA resources generated by AI. The class in question is a survey of literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, while the materials are generated by Kudu — an “evolved” textbook platform founded by Alexander Kusenko, a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2xshjGP

Apple is being sued over its decision not to implement a system that would have scanned iCloud photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The lawsuit argues that by not doing more to prevent the spread of this material, it’s forcing victims to relive their trauma, according to The New York Times. The suit describes […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/dNVUctX

Google’s DeepMind team unveiled an AI model for weather prediction this week called GenCast. In a paper published in Nature, DeepMind researchers said they found that GenCast outperforms the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ENS — apparently the world’s top operational forecasting system. And in a blog post, the DeepMind team offered a more […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ugxGD5A

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Friday that it was placing Google’s payment arm under federal supervision. In response, Google filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move. Such supervision would subject Google to the same inspections that the bureau conducts with major banks and other financial institutions for potential violations of the law. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9C6MLWc

X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant. Just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, this one, called Aurora, appears to have few restrictions. Accessible through the Grok tab on X’s mobile apps and the web, Aurora can […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Y5UiZWP

A change to Meta’s developer tools is impacting third-party consumer apps that had previously integrated with Instagram. Among those affected by the changes are the Match-owned dating apps Tinder and Hinge, which had allowed their users to link their Instagram profiles to their accounts to display their posts to potential matches. Day One, the journaling […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/EIUjJxr

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The week after Thanksgiving is usually rich in announcements, and this year was no exception. Blame it on the holiday season, but we would even go as […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tdX8xhu

An Israeli startup specializing in penetrating IoT devices says it's hiring to "support new business growth" in the US government market. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3rAfo8Y

Threads is testing the ability for users to see how well their individual posts performed on the social network. Up until now, Threads’ “Insights” feature only showed you aggregated metrics for all of your posts. Now, the feature can show you metrics for each post. If you’re in the test, you can sort posts by […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ljNTsnf

OpenAI has launched a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its AI-powered chatbot platform — and it’s very, very expensive. Confirming leaks this morning, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pro, a new $200-per-month subscription tier that provides unlimited access to all of OpenAI’s models, including the full version of its o1 “reasoning” model. “We think the audience for ChatGPT Pro will […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/JaOnIg4

OpenAI is in the holiday spirit, it seems. The ChatGPT creator announced “12 Days of OpenAI,” a series of reveals that will be livestreamed starting December 5, 2024 at 10 a.m. PT and continue for the next 12 weekdays. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company event will feature announcements ranging from new demos to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/7PB3h1u

World Labs has announced a new AI feature that turns 2D images into tiny worlds. This tool, the first from Fei-Fei Li’s highly hyped startup, takes a prompt or 2D reference image and spits out a fully navigable 3D environment.  By generating in 3D, World Labs can avoid some of the the control and consistency […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/xtqDJ95

A new update from Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads allows users to connect more with the fediverse, which is also called the open social web and includes services like Flipboard, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and more. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that users can now follow profiles from other fediverse servers. Starting today, users […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/4xlFw3S

At its re:Invent conference on Tuesday, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division, announced a new family of generative AI, multimodal models called Nova. There’s four text-focused models in total: Micro, Lite, Pro, and Premier. Micro, Lite, and Pro are available today for AWS customers, while Premiere will launch in early 2025, Amazon CEO […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Uc40n83

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division, is launching a new tool to combat hallucinations — that is, scenarios where an AI model behaves unreliably. Announced at AWS’ re:Invent 2024 conference in Las Vegas, the service, Automated Reasoning checks, validates a model’s responses by cross-referencing customer-supplied info for accuracy. AWS claims in a press […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Ltgs5JI

The former head of Poland’s internal security agency Piotr Pogonowski was forced to appear in front of a parliamentary committee investigating the alleged abuse of Pegasus spyware in the country. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/j4ul1Lq

Spotify’s annual Wrapped feature — which is coming out soon — provides listeners with a fun, personalized summary of their listening habits, and it has gained immense popularity over the years. As a result, many companies have seized the opportunity to create similar year-in-review experiences, offering users a recap of their habits, preferences, or interactions […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/x7wlLWn

Slowly but surely, Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit has become a major player in the call/contact center space with its Amazon Connect cloud-based (and AI-centric) contact center service, which launched back in 2017. Today, companies like Air Canada, Dish Network and U.S. Bank use the platform for their customer service needs. At its annual re:Invent […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/KOGuTbU

As promised, startup accelerator Y Combinator’s imminent Demo Day will be happening in person. In fact, YC seems to have kicked off the IRL return of Demo Day at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, with an in-person Alumni Demo Day on Sunday for the Fall 2024 class of startups.  Squad founder (and later […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IP01E6O

A new app called Death Clock predicts the date of its users’ deaths and offers tips on how to push that date back. TechCrunch wrote about an iPod Death Clock app way back in 2006 — but developer Brett Franson told Bloomberg that with an AI trained on more than 1,200 life expectancy studies, his […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/lr2sU0v

Fidelity marked up the value of its holdings in Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) by 32.37% in October, according to a report in Axios. Even with this markup, Fidelity still values the company at 72 percent less than the $44 billion that Musk purchased it for in 2022. Axios reports that this move is probably […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Pg7AOx2

The Apple Watch helps people track their health and fitness, but it can also be a great tool to help people stay productive and get work done. This is especially true for people who gets easily distracted by their phone. Although the Apple Watch comes with simple built-in productivity apps like Reminders and Calendar, it’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/MJftcKT