The effort to keep President Joe Biden in office has finally set up shop on TikTok.Even though the app has caused problems in Congress, experts say that presidential candidates can’t do without TikTok to reach young voters.Annie Wu Henry, a digital communications strategist who has run social media for several political campaigns, said, “I wasn’t surprised at all that the campaign made a TikTok account. It would have been such a waste to go through this cycle and a missed opportunity to not be on that platform.”She told TechCrunch, “I always thought it would happen; it was just a matter…
Author: David
The National Transportation Safety Board, a government body in the U.S. that looks into crashes, told the Dawn Project to stop using its seal after it was used in a Super Bowl ad that told people to stop buying Tesla cars.In a letter, the NTSB said that its seal had to be taken off of the Dawn Project’s website and YouTube page right away, along with any other airings of the commercial. In a news statement, the NTSB said that the Dawn Project did not have permission to use its seal and that the NTSB does not support their work.“We…
Zee told the Indian stock markets that Sony was asking for $90 million in termination fees for allegedly breaking the terms of their merger agreement and by “invoking arbitration” for emergency support. Zee said it doesn’t agree with any of Sony’s claims and will take legal action if necessary. Sony said in a statement that “closing conditions” for the merger had not been met despite “good faith discussions” with Zee. The companies also said they had not been able to agree on an extension by the date of January 21. “They are very disappointed with us after more than two…
Everything Is Going As Planned For Epic’s Big Fortnite Plans The race to build a linked, avatar-driven virtual world didn’t stop over the last year, even though the M word isn’t used as much these days.It doesn’t matter what we call the metaverse—a tech buzzword that came out between the talk of NFTs and AI—it’s still being built. And because of recent events, one company is becoming more and more likely to rule in the near future.Epic Games and Disney said on Wednesday that they are working together to create a “entertainment universe” with Disney-themed games and other items to…
Google’s Gemini robot, which used to be called Bard, thinks that the 2024 Super Bowl already happened. If you needed more proof that GenAI makes things up, this is it. There are even (fake) numbers to back it up.A Reddit thread says that Gemini, which is driven by Google’s GenAI models with the same name, is answering questions about Super Bowl LVIII as if it happened yesterday or weeks ago. It looks like a lot of bettors think the Chiefs will beat the 49ers (sorry, 49ers fans).Gemini adds on pretty creatively. In one case, they gave a breakdown of player…
AP reports that in Tokyo, People have said that Japan’s current foreign trainee program is just a way to bring in cheap labor. On Friday, the Japanese government decided to get rid of the program and replace it with a system that they say will teach skills and protect trainees’ rights. Japan needs more foreign workers to help its aging and shrinking workforce.A group of related Cabinet ministers passed a new program on Friday that lets people who come with a three-year trainee visa change their status to a skilled worker category. This will let them stay for up to…
Russia vs. Ukraine War After a Russian attack on a private neighborhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Saturday, February 10, 2024, firefighters put out a fire. The city government says that Russian drones attacked a civilian area and fired on about 12 private homes. A lot of people had to leave the area. Picture by Andrii Marienko for APTHE ASSOCIATED PRESSMore The news came from Kyiv, Ukraine. Kharkiv is the second biggest city in Ukraine. Overnight, a Russian drone strike killed at least seven people, three of them children, according to Oleh Syniehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region.He said that the…
An option to Twitter/X Bluesky is getting ready for one of the biggest weekends in social media by putting out news feeds just for Super Bowl fans. One feed is all about talks about the big game, and the other is about Taylor Swift. She’s planning to go to support her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Fans of different sports have different opinions on how much attention was paid to Swift’s participation at Kelce’s games this season. This led the NFL to defend its coverage of the pop star, especially after Kelce said that the NFL was…
Could 2024 be the year that fintech companies go public? The State of Fintech 2024 study from F-Prime Capital says it’s possible.F-Prime is a venture capital firm that manages more than $4.5 billion and keeps an eye on the progress of new, publicly traded, and privately held financial technology companies. The firm is still very optimistic about the fintech space, stating that “In aggregate, fintech companies have captured ~10% of financial services revenue, yet many scaled private fintech companies are generating $1B+ revenue, still growing quickly, and are expected to list in public markets.””A lot of big companies are filing…
Pinterest made a new ad deal with Google as part of its plan to make more money from ads. Amazon made a deal with Pinterest last year for a number of years, and Google is the first third-party ad partner for the social network.On its earnings call for Q4 2023, the company talked about its relationship with Google. The call came after the company reported results that were worse than expected by analysts. During that time, Pinterest made $981 million, which is 12% more than the same time last year. While the number of monthly active users rose by 11%…
As part of a reorganization, Getaround, a company that helps people rent out their cars, trucks, and SUVs to other people, is letting go of 30% of its North American staff.In a statement, the company said it would reorganize its operations and staff to cut costs. The goal is to create more cash flow and speed up “its path to profitability.”The company Getaround wouldn’t say how many employees it has in North America or Europe, where it also does business. The most recent report on the company’s full-year earnings says that as of December 31, 2022, it had 283 full-time…
The software giant Microsoft has become the most valuable company in the world thanks to its smart bets and bold investments in AI. But Satya Nadella, the company’s usually quiet CEO, couldn’t help but poke fun at the rest of the business. “Today we have the best model…” “GPT4 is better now, after all the fuss, a year later,” Nadella said at a company event in Mumbai on Wednesday. “We are waiting for the other teams to come in.” It will get here, I’m sure, but the truth is that we have the best LLM out there. A rare dose…
Bollegraaf Group, a Dutch recycling company, is investing in Greyparrot, a UK AI startup that uses computer vision for waste analytics. This is another sign of the rush to speed up the adoption and transformative possibilities of AI. The company that makes MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities) and “turnkey” recycling systems was founded in 1961 as a maker of baler machinery. In recent years, it has been experimenting with AI, opening an innovation test center in its home country of the Netherlands in 2021 and hiring an in-house AI team to work on integrating AI analytics with its recycling machinery, which…
Alan Clarke, who used to be in charge of both Tesla and Ford’s Advanced EV development, is now in charge of a Ford skunkworks project to make a cheap electric car. A “skunkworks” team has been set up to make a “low-cost” electric vehicle platform, Ford CEO Jim Farley said briefly during the company’s fourth-quarter results call on Tuesday. Since then, TechCrunch has revealed that Clarke is in charge of the skunkworks project. The project has been going for about two years and is based in Irvine, California. It has engineers from Auto Motive Power (AMP), the EV power startup…
Today, Bumble announced that it will be adding a new tool that uses AI to help users spot spam, scams, and fake profiles. The goal of the new tool, which is called Deception Detector, is to block harmful material before Bumble users even see it. Based on their tests, Bumble found that the tool could immediately block 95% of accounts that were flagged as spam or scam accounts. Bumble saw a 45% drop in user reports of spam, scams, and fake accounts in the first two months of trying the tool. Deception Detector works with Bumble’s human review team. A…
Snap, the company that makes Snapchat, is the latest tech company to lay off workers. On Monday, the company announced plans to cut its workforce by 10%. Based on Snap’s headcount numbers from November 2023, when it laid off a few of its more than 5,000 workers, the layoffs would affect more than 500 people. An SEC statement said that Snap was letting people go, saying that the move was needed to help the company grow even more. In order to put our business in the best situation to carry out our top priorities and to make sure we can…
There don’t seem to be any sidewalk delivery robot services going, but the person who came up with the idea says it makes money and has now raised more money to grow to meet market demand. A startup from Estonia called Starship Technologies was one of the first to use robots for delivery. It has now raised $90 million to solidify its place at the top of its field. There are two new investors in this round: Plural, a venture capital firm with roots in both Estonia and London that announced a new $430 million fund last month; and Iconical,…
People were hopeful that the value of the well-known cryptocurrency would rise quickly after the long-awaited start of bitcoin spot ETFs in the US this year. It made sense: now that regular investors have an easy and cheap way to buy bitcoin, the supply-and-demand curve would change, and each bitcoin would be worth more. But people have had a range of reactions. Bitcoin has almost doubled in value in the past year and is now worth about $43,000. However, it has mostly stayed the same in value over the last few weeks. Was all the talk and reaction another case…
A South Korean court ruled on Monday that Jay Y. Lee, executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, is not guilty of manipulating stock prices and cheating on taxes linked to the 2015 merger of Samsung affiliates. At the November hearing, authorities wanted Lee to spend five years in jail and pay a fine of 500 million KRW ($375,000). They said he broke the Capital Markets Act by manipulating stocks and lying about finances related to a 2015 $8 billion merger of Samsung companies. South Korean authorities said the merger helped Lee take control of the huge Korean tech company. At the…
A false seven-second video of Vice President Biden could change Facebook’s rules on fake news before the 2024 election, but the site and the people who vote are running out of time. The Oversight Board, an outside advisory group that Meta set up to look over its moderation choices on Facebook and Instagram, made a decision on Monday about a video of Biden that was changed and shared on social media last year. The first video showed the president going with his granddaughter Natalie Biden to early voting in the 2022 midterm elections to help her cast her vote. Trump’s…
That Was Quick A settlement was reached just two days after district attorneys from 25 California counties sued Tesla, saying the company regularly messed up the handling of hazardous waste at its facilities across the state. A press statement from the Office of the District Attorney in San Francisco says that Tesla has agreed to pay $1.3 million in fines and $200,000 to cover the costs of the investigation. Tesla is also subject to a detailed injunction that lasts for five years and says it must train its workers and hire a third party to check the trash cans at…
A Chinese company called Xpeng is competing with Tesla. It wants to sell its cars all over the world and hopes to use its smart driving software as a selling point. At an event this week, the electric vehicle startup from Guangzhou said that it will begin working on its highway-specific Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP) for users around the world in 2024. In the same year, it will start working on the foreign version of its next-generation, all-purpose XNGP feature. Ai Wei, founder and CEO of Xpeng, said at the event, “We look forward to letting overseas users access Xpeng’s…
Apple said almost a week ago that the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules require big changes to the App Store. The company also said that the market brings in 7% of its total App Store sales. If developers choose to use different methods, the company’s CFO, Luca Maestri, said that these changes will have an effect on the company’s finances. “The decisions that are made will have a big impact. To put things in perspective, the changes only affected the EU market, which makes up about 7% of our total app store income, he told an analyst. Because…
Washington, D.C. (Reuters) -When U.S. and Australian troops practiced amphibious landings, ground fighting, and air operations last summer, it made news that the allies were working together more on defense to counter China’s growing military ambitions. U.S. officials told Reuters that the high-profile Talisman Sabre exercises had a much more hidden benefit for war planners in the U.S. who were getting ready for a possible conflict over Taiwan: they helped build up new stocks of military equipment that were left behind in Australia after the drills finished in August. The US and its allies are getting more and more worried…
Twenty-five counties in California have sued Tesla, saying that the car company has regularly messed up with hazardous waste at facilities across the state. It seems that settlement talks that had been going on for months fell through. Tesla is being sued in San Joaquin County Superior Court for mislabeling and getting rid of things like “lead acid batteries and other batteries,” paints, brake fluid, aerosols, antifreeze, acetone, diesel fuel, and more at its factories and service centers across the state. Tesla is also said to have thrown away the trash in the wrong way, both on-site and at sites…
The headset that cost $3,500 just got here. What now? Today is February 2, 2024, a Friday. It’s time now. You’ve been interested in the Vision Pro ever since Tim Cook showed it off at WWDC last year. It’s been longer than that if you count the years of whispers, leaks, and renderings. It’s a first-generation product, so the price wasn’t even close to what you had hoped for. Manufacturing isn’t at full market scale yet, and you have to think about the millions of dollars that were spent on research and development over seven or eight years. After debating…
On Tuesday, a judge in Delaware said that Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay plan is unfair. This means that the biggest pay deal in the history of business is no longer valid. Judge Kathaleen McCormick made the decision Tuesday in the Delaware Court of Chancery. It means that Musk, who is the richest person in the world, can’t keep the 2018 pay deal. The decision can be fought. Chancery Daily, a website that keeps up with the Delaware Chancery Court, was the first to report the ruling on Threads. The decision doesn’t give Musk or the Tesla board a clean…
CEO Sundar Pichai of Google said that the number of people who use its Google One cloud storage service is “just about to cross” 100 million. Pichai said that the company wants to add more AI-powered features to the Google One service during Alphabet’s Q4 2023 earnings call. Google One was first released by the search giant in 2018. It has changed since then, and now Google Photos has added features like magic eraser, portrait light and portrait blur, color pop, and sky suggestion for editing photos. If you pay $1.99 a month for Google One, you can use its…
The KOSA bill, which is controversial, will be a big deal at the meeting on Wednesday. The heads of some of the biggest social networks will go before Congress on Wednesday to defend their businesses against growing claims that they don’t do enough to keep kids and teens safe online. The meeting, which starts at 10 a.m. ET, is the latest in a long line of tech hearings in Congress that go back years. Despite all the work, there haven’t been many new rules or policies made. The latest meeting will be held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is…
Washington, D.C. (Reuters) -Toyota Motor said on Monday that owners of 50,000 older U.S. cars should get recall fixes right away because an air bag inflator could explode and kill drivers. The Japanese car company said the “Do Not Drive” notice applies to some Corollas, Matrix, and RAV4s from 2003 to 2004 that have Takata air bag inflators. Since 2009, Takata air bag inflators that can blow and send metal shrapnel flying inside cars and trucks have been linked to more than 30 deaths, including 26 deaths in the U.S. and hundreds of injuries. In the past ten years, more…
Rebellions, a self-made AI chip company in South Korea, announced today that it has raised $124 million (165 billion KRW) in a Series B round of funding to make Rebel, its third AI chip. The startup will also use the new money—more than the initial goal of $90 million—to hire more people and make more of its Atom chip, which is designed for use in data centres. In an exclusive chat with TechCrunch, Rebellions’ CFO Sungkyue Shin said that the three-year-old company is worth about $658 million (880 billion KRW) after the money is added. With this new round of…
The story goes like this: the founder of a startup gets a huge amount of VC money. The next step is to find a product-market fit. Simple, right? They should put all that money into promotion and sales, and things will go well. Not so quickly. Anyone can make the growth line go up and to the right if they spend enough money on ads. But you need to do growth the right way, which is much harder. Matt Lerner was in charge of marketing at PayPal for 11 years and then at 500 startups for 4 years. He has…
Yimusanfendi is an old form of art that has roots in the kingdoms of ancient China. It has stood the test of time and continues to amaze people all over the world. Yimusanfendi has changed and adapted over the ages thanks to its mysterious mix of art and identity. It was first created as a way to tell stories and have fun. This one-of-a-kind art form, which is pronounced “Yee-moo-sahn-fen-dee,” shows off the rich cultural history and subtleties that keep people interested in it. Artists and makers from a wide range of backgrounds are welcome to try new things and…
Byju’s, the most valuable edtech startup in the world, changed the amount of money it wants to raise through a rights issue on Monday. The Indian company needs the money to pay its bills. The startup wants to raise $200 million through a rights issue. It says this money is “essential to prevent any further value impairment.” A person familiar with the situation said that the startup is lowering its value to “next to nothing” in the rights issue, and all of its current investors can take part. According to the source, who asked to remain anonymous because they were…
This time, I’ll talk about Brex’s most recent round of cuts, the state of investing in fintech in 2023, and more! Fintech will still be around even though I may be taking a break in the next few weeks. We’ll be right back! The Main Plot Things that go up have to come back down. For the number of employees at spend control startup Brex, this was the case. When interest rates were low, business went up and it was easier to get venture capital money. Before it let people go in October 2022, it had grown to about 1,300…
Many of the owners that Garry Tan coaches are likely inspired by his success in Silicon Valley. Now, his posts on the social platform X are getting a lot of attention again. The president of Y Combinator, an investor, and a past business owner wrote something on Friday night that might have made some people wonder if his X account was hacked. Tan wrote to seven supervisors in San Francisco who are in charge of running the city’s government services: “As a label and motherfucking band, Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan… Also, if you like Peskin…
At a news meeting on Friday, New York’s governor Kathy Hochul said that Tesla will spend $500 million to build one of its “Dojo” supercomputers at its factory in Buffalo. This came just a few days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the project a “long shot.” Hochul’s office says Tesla made its choice based on “New York’s reliable power supply, strong talent pipeline, and availability of usable space for the project.” Dojo is a supercomputer that was first shown off at Tesla’s “AI Day” event in 2021. Its purpose is to help the company reach its still-unachieved goal of…
There are people, like Spotify, who don’t like how Apple has chosen to follow the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). This law allows sideloading apps, different app shops, browser choice, and other things. The streaming music service responded to Apple’s new DMA rules on Friday. They called the new fees developers have to pay “extortion” and Apple’s plan to follow the rules “a complete and total farce,” which shows the tech giant doesn’t think the rules apply to them. In the beginning of the week, Apple revealed a number of changes that are in line with EU law, if not…
Putting hot sauce in your lunch to keep it from getting stolen from the office fridge is like that. It is never morally right to kill someone on purpose. But if someone at work keeps stealing your lunch, wouldn’t you get back at them? It’s hard for artists to keep their work from being used to train AI models without their permission. Opt-out requests and do-not-scrape codes depend on AI companies to act honestly, but companies that care more about making money than protecting privacy can easily ignore these steps. For most artists, sequestering themselves offline isn’t a choice because…
This week, nonconsensual deepfake porn of Taylor Swift went popular on X. Before it was taken down, one post got more than 45 million views, 24,000 reposts, and hundreds of thousands of likes. The pop star has one of the most devoted, online-only, and unimaginably large fan groups in the world. The Swifties are now ready to kill. Mega-fandoms can do amazing things when they get together, like when K-pop fans bought hundreds of tickets to a Donald Trump gathering to try to lower the number of people who showed up. As the 2024 U.S. presidential election draws near, some…