In 2016, Facebook began a secret project to listen in on and decrypt the network data going between Snapchat users and the company’s servers. Newly released court papers say the goal was to learn about how users behaved and help Facebook compete with Snapchat. Facebook named this “Project Ghostbusters,” which is a clear nod to Snapchat’s image, which looks like a ghost. A federal court in California released new papers on Tuesday that were found as part of the class action lawsuit between Facebook users and Meta, the company that owns Facebook. The recently made public papers show that Meta…
Author: David
Robinhood launched its new Gold Card today, eight months after buying credit card startup X1 for $95 million. The card has a long list of features that might even make Apple Card users jealous. Robinhood is best known for its brokerage app for regular investors. To get people to use its new card, it is advertising a lot of perks. The card doesn’t charge any fees for using it abroad or once a year. But only Robinhood Gold users will be able to use it. Robinhood Gold costs $5 a month or $50 a year. Gold is a programme that…
Cyera is a cybersecurity startup that thinks AI will be the next big problem in protecting corporate data. As demand for AI grows, Cyera is raising a lot of money. Sources close to the deal say that the company is almost done closing a round of nearly $300 million that will triple its value to $1.5 billion. The tools that the company makes use AI to get accurate pictures of where and how data is being used in organisations’ networks. Sources say that the well-known venture capital company Coatue is in charge of the round of funding. The deal should…
Some of Arrival’s assets, such as advanced production equipment, have been sold to Canoo, another struggling startup that is also trying to make and sell electric cars. Arrival is now bankrupt. The purchase was advertised as a way to save money as it will cut capital costs by 20%. However, Canoo is still having trouble moving from trials to mass production. Canoo said that the bought goods, which will be sent to the company’s plant in Oklahoma in more than 20 container ships, will be used. The business held all of Arrival’s “like-new” and brand-new assets in the United States…
Trading in shares of electric vehicle startup Fisker will stop right away, the New York Stock market said Monday. The company is also being taken off the market. Because the price of Fisker’s stock is “abnormally low,” the exchange said Monday that it is “no longer suitable for listing.” The decision comes a month after the NYSE told Fisker that its stock price had been selling below $1 for 30 days, which was against the rules of the exchange. When Fisker filed on Monday afternoon, it said that it expects its stock to be moved to an over-the-counter market like…
Apple is being accused by the DOJ of acting like a monopoly. This case has a lot of effects beyond just iOS and iPhones. Apple is being closely watched by trade authorities more than ever. The U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday, saying that the company was acting like a monopoly by keeping iPhone customers locked in and making it hard for rivals to make hardware and software. There have already been major antitrust cases against Apple outside of the U.S. This lawsuit is very broad and difficult, but we’ll talk about the DOJ’s case, the industry’s response,…
Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI, has quit his job as CEO and from the board of the unicorn startup, the company announced Friday night. This is the second big change at a hot AI startup this week. Some of the investors in Stability AI are Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management. The company said in a blog post that it doesn’t have a permanent CEO yet but has named its COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte as temporary co-CEOs. Stability AI has lost more than six important employees in the last few months, and they…
It has made a name for itself in the music streaming, radio entertainment, and audiobook business. Spotify is adding e-learning as a new type of material to its platform in order to get its more than 600 million users to spend more time and money there. Starting with a test run in the U.K., Spotify is looking into the possibility of giving free and paid video courses for education online. Because it was made with help from outside groups like the BBC and Skillshare, at least two lessons will be free. The average price of the whole course is between…
A company earnings call on Thursday said that Intuitive Machines’ second trip to the moon is still on track to launch before the end of the year. This is because the company only needed to make small changes to the design of the lunar lander. This year, the company made history when it was the first business to put a spacecraft on the moon’s surface. There were some problems with that operation, called IM-1. The lander came in a little too hot and flipped over on the surface, but it did test the lander’s main parts, engine, and other systems.…
At a virtual event today, Microsoft showed off two new Surface devices and a bunch of new accessories. The first part of the talk, however, was all about how its AI Copilot is becoming more and more built into Windows. But this event was mostly about hardware, with some business software thrown in for good measure. But that’s how things work at Microsoft these days: even the simplest hardware events have to have a Copilot angle. Microsoft spent a lot of time telling a story about Copilot that was mostly made up of updates that had already been revealed, customer…
A group of 16 state and federal solicitors general, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, sued Apple this morning in federal court for antitrust violations. The lawsuit says that the company has an unfair advantage in the high-end smartphone market and does many illegal things to keep that advantage. You can read the whole lawsuit here if you’re interested in the specifics of those methods and whether they were legal. The case is a lot like the DOJ’s antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s, which I wrote about at Directions on Microsoft from 2000 to 2010. Even Merrick…
Gitai, a company based in Los Angeles, said on Tuesday that its self-driving robotic arm had successfully completed a tech display outside of the International Space Station. Last year, Sho Nakanose, CEO of Gitai, told TechCrunch that the company wants to cut the cost of work in space by 100 times, similar to how SpaceX and other providers have cut the cost of launch by a huge amount. It will still be a while before autonomous robotic systems can do everything that humans can do. This is especially true here on Earth. But in space, where jobs are expensive and…
India-based audio app Pocket FM has raised $103 million in Series D funding. Lightspeed Ventures led the round, and Stepstone Group also participated. Tencent and Times Internet are investors in the company. It wants to grow into Europe and Latin America after seeing success in the U.S. market. This is the first time TechCrunch has heard that the company has raised $196 million in various rounds, putting its value at $750 million. Last year, TechCrunch said that the company was in talks with Lightspeed to lead the funding round that it revealed today. How Does The Site Work? Pocket FM…
An important step forward in the field of artificial intelligence is artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is also called “strong AI,” “full AI,” “human-level AI,” or “general intelligent action.” AGI will be able to do a wide range of cognitive tasks at or above human levels. This is different from narrow AI, which is designed to do specific tasks like finding flaws in products, describing the news, or building you a website. When CEO Jensen Huang talked to the press this week at Nvidia’s annual GTC developer meeting, he seemed really tired of talking about the subject. He says that…
One of the crimes listed is “an act of dishonesty against the company.” Sources and internal documents seen by TechCrunch say that SpaceX makes its workers agree to some strange rules about their stock awards, which makes them less likely to work there. There is a clause in that agreement that lets SpaceX buy back vested shares within six months of an employee quitting the company for any reason. SpaceX also lets itself keep current and former workers from taking part in tenders if, among other things, they are found to have done “an act of dishonesty against the company”…
Truecaller, a caller ID app, stops between 38 and 40 billion spam calls every year for its more than 374 million users. It is now making its screening tech stronger in order to get more people to sign up for its premium plans. TechCrunch has learned that the new “Max” update for Android paid users blocks all calls that aren’t from a permitted contact or that the AI thinks might be spam, even if the caller isn’t already in Truecaller’s database. Before, blocking and other actions were based on how numbers were mentioned in that database and on the person’s…
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, says, “Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today.” This is hard to disagree with. The humanoid form factor is one of the most controversial topics in robots right now. It’s bringing in a lot of venture capital while also making a lot of people very skeptical. Nvidia wants a piece, of course. In recent years, the chip giant has made a strong case for itself as a leader in robotics innovation through projects like Isaac and Jetson. It is now probably the most…
The EU Data Act says that cloud service providers need to make it easy for people to switch. After AWS and Google made similar moves, Microsoft has now said that it will also let business users move data out of its Azure cloud infrastructure with no “egress fees” attached. Microsoft says that the statement was made voluntarily to help customers, but the fact that it was made public in a short blog post without much fanfare could mean that Microsoft had other goals in mind. In fact, the company said that it supports “customer choice, including the choice to migrate…
The sun is just coming out from behind the clouds, and birds are singing. That can only mean one thing: it’s almost time for developer season. Other people are touching the grass, both figuratively and literally. But developers around the world are crammed into meeting rooms to learn what the next year holds for AI and OSes. The first event is Nvidia’s GTC next week. The next few months have Microsoft Build, Apple’s WWDC, and, of course, Google I/O. For the second one, invites just came out. It will take place on May 14 and 15 at the usual place,…
Bloomberg reported that Apple has added another AI company to its list of purchases. DarwinAI, based in Canada, uses vision-based technology to keep an eye on parts while they are being made to make the process more efficient. Officially, neither Apple nor DarwinAI have said anything about the deal. However, several members of the startup’s team joined Apple’s machine learning teams in January, according to their LinkedIn accounts. Over $15 million had been raised for DarwinAI by backers such as BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, Honeywell Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and Inovia Capital. On its website, BDC Capital says that…
Grok is X’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. You may have heard of it. It’s a robot, so it does what you’d expect it to do: it answers questions about culture, current events, and other things. Grok, on the other hand, has “a bit of wit” and “a rebellious streak,” as Elon Musk, the owner of X, puts it. To make a long story short, Grok is ready to talk about things that other chatbots won’t, like controversial political theories and conspiracies. Sometimes it will use rude language, like when asked “When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music?” and…
The legal fight between OpenAI and The New York Times over data to train its AI models may still be going on. Of course, OpenAI is moving forward with deals with other companies, such as some of the biggest news outlets in France and Spain. OpenAI said on Wednesday that it had signed deals with Le Monde and Prisa Media to add news from France and Spain to its ChatGPT robot. OpenAI said in a blog post that the agreement will bring current events coverage from brands like El País, Cinco Días, As, and El Huffpost to ChatGPT users where…
After U.S. officials gave the go-ahead, SpaceX will try to launch the huge Starship rocket into orbit for the third time early Thursday morning. Within a 110-minute time that starts at 7:00 a.m. CT, the company hopes to go live. SpaceX tests the Starship at its huge Starbase campus near Boca Chica, Texas. The launch will be livestreamed on SpaceX’s website and the social media site X at 6:30 a.m. CT, though. So far, SpaceX has sent the 400-foot-tall rocket up for two test runs. During the first one, in April, both the upper stage (also known as Starship) and…
LG Electronics isn’t a well-known brand when it comes to smartphones anymore, but the company still thinks that stuff like robots will be big in the future. Today, the company announced that it will invest $60 million in Bear Robotics, a Californian startup that makes server robots for restaurants and other places that are powered by artificial intelligence. These robots are autonomous tray towers on wheels that are meant to replace waiters. LG Electronics now has the most shares in Bear thanks to the investment. According to PitchBook, Bear’s last round of funding in 2022 put the value of the…
Reddit’s plans for its initial public offering (IPO) are becoming clearer after a new S-1 filing came out Monday morning. It sets the price range for its stock at $31 to $34 per share at the start. Its value should reach about $5.4 billion if buyers agree to pay its high end range. If 158.98 million shares are issued, Reddit would be worth $4.93 billion, which is the low end of this range of $31 billion. Others have come up with a possible valuation that is closer to or higher than $6 billion by taking into account employee or other…
There was a lot of talk that a recent picture of Kate Middleton and her kids was made by AI, so the Duchess of Cambridge had to address the issue. Middleton said in a statement, “Like many amateur photographers, I do sometimes try out editing.” In case the family picture we shared yesterday caused any confusion, I’d like to say sorry. There’s something off about the picture. It’s like four people are smiling and looking right into your soul. The hands, though. It’s the right number of hands—eight hands for four people—but they all look little off. Kate’s arms are…
After being questioned recently, Sen. Katie Britt talked about a story she told during her response to Vice President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on Sunday. Britt gave a sharp answer in which she criticised Biden’s policies on the border and immigration. She also told the story of a woman who was sexually assaulted in a trafficking operation run by drug cartels. The Alabama member said the victim told her the abuse started when she was 12 years old. But the story made people wonder right away about the timing and other facts. According to Sean Ross, a…
After a busy week of talks, China’s annual parliamentary sitting ended on Monday with a big hole in the schedule. A press meeting by the prime minister is usually the last thing that happens at the National People’s Congress. But for some reason, the practice was stopped this year and for the rest of the term. Officials said it wasn’t necessary because reporters could ask questions in other ways. Even though top officials talked about being open, many people saw it as another sign of control and consolidation, which became a theme of the meeting. For the first time in…
Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI will open-source Grok, its chatbot rivaling ChatGPT, this week, the entrepreneur said, days after suing OpenAI and complaining that the Microsoft-backed startup had deviated from its open-source roots. xAI released Grok last year, arming it with features including access to “real-time” information and views that countered “politically correct” approach. The service is available to customers paying for X’s $16 monthly subscription. Musk helped co-found OpenAI with Sam Altman nearly a decade ago as a counterweight to Google’s dominance in artificial intelligence. But OpenAI, which was required to also make its technology “freely available” to the…
Lahore, March 9, 2024 – Pakistan Super League titans Multan Sultans have joined hands with the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme to support the noble cause of polio eradication in Pakistan.An initiative led by the Punjab Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator Mr Khizer Afzaal, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Multan Sultans and the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication at an event in Islamabad. Multan Sultans General Manager Ms Hijab Zahid and Coordinator of the NEOC Dr Shahzad Baig signed the MoU, while senior Polio Programme leadership and members of the Multan Sultans squad were in attendance. “We…
Today, X introduced Articles, a new type of long-form post. Users can write posts with text formatting, other X posts, and embedded videos and images. This tool is only available to Premium+ subscribers and verified organizations. It’s similar to a post on a content management system like WordPress or an article on Medium. By posting an article, the company’s @Write account told people about the new feature on the site. The social network run by Elon Musk raised the length limit for long posts to 25,000 characters for paid users last year. Engadget pointed out that the limit for a…
It was reported on Friday that a German branch of Sam Altman’s controversial crypto blockchain digital identity business, Worldcoin, had filed a court challenge against a suspension order from Spain’s data protection authority. This week, it came to light that the AEPD, the Spanish government agency, had told Worldcoin to temporarily stop reading people’s eyes or processing any more data they had already gathered from people in the market. According to what we reported on Wednesday, the AEPD said it would start a “urgency procedure” under Article 66 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) against Worldcoin. It said it…
Apple launched VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday. The most important change is that user personas are now better. In particular, the new update makes the hair and makeup look better, as well as the neck and mouth, as well as the eyes for EyeSight, which lets other people see your eyes when you wear the mask. Users can now set up their personas without touching the device. To do this, go to Settings > Persona and choose “Hands-free Capture” mode after the initial setup steps. Mobile Device Management (MDM), a way for businesses to control their devices, is also added to…
SpaceX said in a social media post Wednesday that it plans to launch its huge Starship rocket for the third time as soon as March 14. SpaceX is still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to give its OK for the launch. If they don’t, Starship will stay on the ground. But even though the FAA hasn’t given SpaceX the go-ahead for the next flight yet, there are signs that the company has been waiting for it and will soon. Teams at the Starbase facility in southwest Texas finished a very important “wet dress” practice for launch this past weekend.…
The company says that France will now have to pay the most in EU fees. As a result of a new tax in France that targets music streaming services, Spotify has announced that it will raise membership fees in that country. This comes almost three months after the company said it would stop spending in France. It started by pulling its support from two festivals, saying that there would be more action this year. Now we have a better idea of what “action” Spotify has been planning. The tax started on January 1 and will be a 1.2% fee on…
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, said on Wednesday that people who use the chat app and have personal accounts can now pay a monthly fee to turn them into business accounts. This lets people list things like where they are and when they’re open, which could be useful for small shop and café owners. For business accounts, you can use color labels to organize your chats, set up automatic greetings or away notes, and set up shortcuts for quick replies. Durov said on his channel that Telegram is going to add more business features this month, such as a…
Spotify said today that it has put a new version of its app into the App Store that shows price and feature details for its different EU plans. The update, which hasn’t been approved by Apple yet, also has a link on Spotify’s website that lets users buy monthly plans. The European Commission fined Apple a huge €1.84 billion ($2 billion) earlier this week for acting in ways that hurt competition in the music streaming market. Merkel, who is in charge of competition in the EU, told reporters that Apple needs to stop its anti-steering actions. “From now on, Apple…
Not long ago, in 2021, Windows 11 got official support for Android apps. This was made possible by the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), a virtual machine that Microsoft looked after. Thanks to a deal between Amazon and Microsoft, Windows 11 users could purchase and run almost all Android apps through the WSA. They could also do this through Amazon’s Android market, the Amazon Appstore. Now Windows 11 no longer works with approved Android apps and can’t get them from the Amazon Appstore either. Microsoft said today that it will no longer be supporting the WSA after a year. People…
OpenAI, the most valuable AI startup, said on Wednesday that it plans to throw out all of Elon Musk’s claims in a recent lawsuit. The company claimed that Musk, a billionaire businessman who helped start the company, didn’t have that much of an effect on its growth and success. In a blog post written by Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, Wojciech Zaremba, and OpenAI as a whole, the Microsoft-backed startup said that Musk had given them less than $45 million since they started in 2015, even though he had promised to give them as much as $1…
Your privacy may be at risk with the new X calling function. In an effort to make the simple and useful Twitter app into X, the app that does everything badly, Elon Musk added voice and video calling to X last week. This new feature is turned on by default, so anyone you talk to can see your IP address, and it’s very hard to figure out how to limit who can call you. “Audio and video calling are now available to everyone on X!” said X’s official news account in a post on Wednesday afternoon. Who do you want…