Elon Musk says he will show off Tesla’s prototype “robotaxi” at an event on October 10. He had planned to do this on August 8, but changed his mind. Musk also said that Tesla would show off “a couple of other things,” but he didn’t say what those things were. The comments made on Tuesday during Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call mostly back up Bloomberg’s original story about the delay, including the fact that Musk wanted to change some parts of the prototype. Musk said earlier this month that he had asked for a “important design change to the front.”Musk said…
Author: David
People who make content are very busy. Most of them work more than 20 hours a week to add new information to their own websites. That doesn’t give the crowd much time to get involved. But Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that AI could resolve this issue. Zuckerberg talked about his dream for the future with internet star Rowan Cheung. He said that creators will have their own “bots” that reflect their personalities and “business objectives.” Zuckerberg says that creators will use these bots to do some community outreach so that they have more time to do other, probably more…
The people in the town are likely to hold special poojas every day until the official Democratic candidate for president is named. On Monday, there were special prayers at the Dharma Sastha Temple in Painganadu-Thulasendrapuram village, which is where Kamala Harris’ grandfather was born. The US vice president seemed to be the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination. People in the village, which is 350 km from Chennai, celebrated Harris’s election as vice president in 2020 by making rangolis in front of their houses and feeding a lot of people. On Monday, from 9:30 am to 10:00 am, they…
Telegram, a messaging app, now has 950 million active users. The company’s founder Pavel Durov said on his channel on Monday that they want to hit 1 billion users this year. Durov said last week that the company also plans to release an app store and an in-app browser that can read web3 pages this month. It passed 900 million users in March. When asked by the Financial Times at the time, Durov said that the company hopes to make money next year. The speed at which Telegram is adding web3 technology to its app seems to be increasing. The…
Brian Kim, the founder of the South Korean internet giant Kakao, was given an arrest warrant by a court in Seoul on charges of manipulating stock prices during the company’s takeover of K-pop agency SM Entertainment in 2023. Thursday, the Seoul Southern District Court said that Kim should be arrested because of “concerns of evidence destruction and flight.” The hearing took place on Monday. He could go to jail for up to 20 days while the police look into the case more before charging him. The founder has been very important to Kakao’s strategic decisions, so this could affect how…
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, made an offer to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23 billion, but Wiz turned it down, according to a person who knows about the talks. The offer is a big jump from Wiz’s last private value of $12 billion, but the company’s management team and investors have decided to stay independent, the person said. In an email to Wiz’s 1200 workers around the world, CEO Assaf Rappaport said, “It’s hard to say no to such humble offers, but with our great team, I feel confident in making that choice.” Based in New York Wiz…
One of India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, WazirX, has “temporarily” stopped all trading on its website. This comes just a few days after a security breach cost the company about $230 million, which is almost half of its reserves. In a tweet on Sunday night, the Mumbai-based exchange said that the cyberattack had made it much harder to keep the important 1:1 collateral ratio with assets. This makes people even more worried about WazirX’s reserves and its ability to fully repay its customers. This week, WazirX stopped customers from withdrawing money because someone got into one of the exchange’s multi-signature wallets…
Since Vice President Kamala Harris dropped out of the race, President Joe Biden may not be running again. Biden said he “fully supports and endorses Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year” when he announced his plans. Harris, on the other hand, said she “intention is to win and earn this nomination.” That being said, it’s not clear if other Democratic politicians will run against her for the ticket at an open convention or in some other way. If Harris is chosen, the Democrats will have a presidential candidate with ties to the Bay Area and the…
The next big Google tech event is on August 13 at 10 a.m. PT. That gives the Made By Google show, which usually happens in the middle of fall, about two months early. In a big deal, the company will also unveil its newest top phone, the Pixel 9, before the iPhone 16. Apple will show off its newest product in September. Google hasn’t explained why they changed things. Not even a month away from what has already become the strangest presidential election in modern U.S. history, there may be too much noise. The company also has a lot to…
The latest small AI model from OpenAI, GPT-4o mini, was released on Thursday. The company says that starting today, a cheaper and faster AI model called GPT-4o mini will be made available to developers as well as to customers through the ChatGPT web and mobile app. Next week, enterprise users will be able to get in. The company says that GPT-4o mini does better than the best small AI models in the business at tasks that require reasoning with both text and images. As small AI models get better, developers like them more because they are faster and cheaper than…
It’s clear that Elon Musk doesn’t like Joe Biden. But since Musk officially backed Donald Trump for president this year and is said to be giving him money, Biden is returning the favor. Musk and other famous and rich Silicon Valley VCs are now being directly urged by the president to back Trump’s campaign. The next post Biden made on Musk’s social media site X after testing positive for COVID said, “I’m sick.” In the next post, he revealed a trick: “of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election.” A few hours before, Biden’s campaign sent…
After looking into it, the mail service did something to “fix” the problem. Found that the U.S. Postal Service gave the mailing addresses of its online users to Meta, LinkedIn, and Snap, all of which are big names in advertising and technology. The USPS said on Wednesday that it had fixed the problem and stopped doing what it was doing, saying that it was “not aware” of it. Tech found that USPS shared customer information by using tracking pixels, which are secret pieces of code that collect data. Tech and advertising companies make this kind of code so that every…
As the investigation unfolds into Trump’s assassination attempt, dreadful news came by with the passing of a rallygoer. The victim has been identified as Corey Comperatore. A 50-year-old, a supporter of Trump, was present at the rally with his family, a wife, and daughters. Corey Comperatore was shot while protecting his wife, and his daughters. Moreover, he was a former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department. Moreover, he was an active Christian and a community member. Corey’s loss has left his family devasted, calling it a ” terrible nightmare … our painful reality.” Further, Corey’s sister, Dawn Comperatore…
Zoologists from Britain faced 249 years in prison for raping and killing dogs. 53-year-old Britton broke down in the court when his mental condition was discussed. Britton, a 53-year-old former researcher from Charles Darwin University admitted to 60 charges placed on him in court. Moreover, these charges included rape, torture, and killing of dogs inside a shipping container on his property. While the proceeding angered animal rights activists, there were, however, legal experts who fought for the zoologist’s mental condition. Furthermore, citing psychological disorder. Arguing he suffers from paraphilia – a condition met with intense sexual desires for atypical objects,…
Kat Torres, a Brazilian from a humble beginning to an influencer who has inspired millions and many more, was found involved in human trafficking, and sex slavery. News circulated when two female fan-cum-clients working for Kat, living with her went on missing. Additionally, the FBI was able to uncover more about Kat Torres with her key victim, Ana. Ana in 2019 escaped an abusive, ending up with Kat Torres. Hollywood A-listers such as Leonardo DiCaprio were seen with Kat. Moreover, she provided tips to happiness and success. Furthermore, she promised connections with Hollywood. Kat Torres’s Trafficking, Hypnotisms, and Prostitution Ana…
Donald Trump, who used to be president, chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate on Monday. Trump is trying to get back the office he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. Vance is best known for his autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He worked as a venture investor for many years before becoming a U.S. senator in 2022. Vance went to San Francisco after graduating from Yale Law School in 2013. There, he worked as a principal at Mithril Capital, a fund that Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan help to start. Mithril raised two funds, one for $540 million in…
The most important changes to Apple’s iMessage and Messages app in iOS 18 aren’t the Genmoji or AI emoji or even the option to send texts via satellite. Texting with Android users will be a lot easier now that you can finally plan messages to go out at a later time and date. You will also be able to use RCS, the next generation of messaging that will replace SMS. These changes can now be found in the public test of iOS 18, which just started this week. These messaging tools will have a big effect on how people talk…
In answer to a request from India’s cricket board, an Indian tribunal court started the insolvency process for Byju’s on Tuesday. Byju’s was once India’s most valuable startup. The decision essentially puts in place an interim resolution professional who will run the business, kicking out the founder of the startup. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked the National Company Law Tribunal (PDF) to make a decision. The BCCI wants to get back almost $19 million from the Bengauluru-based edtech company. The Indian cricket team used to be supported by Byju’s. Creditors, employees, and vendors have been…
Today, most people agree that creative AI will have a huge impact on business, and those who don’t adapt will be quickly forgotten. As companies learn more about AI, they want proof, or real business data, that show how it is actually helping them make more money and run their businesses better. They shouldn’t and can’t just believe what the seller says. Still, it’s not simple to find a direct link between something like Microsoft Copilot and how well a business does generally. After that, should CIOs just believe it? Jamin Ball, an investor, says in this week’s Clouded Judgement…
The idea of a “factory in a box” picks up where the failed electric vehicle company Arrival left off. Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Pegg sees a second chance when he looks at Daisy, Helixx’s 3D-printed prototype delivery car. And McDonald’s is giving him ideas on how to get there. The prototype is an interesting proof of concept. It was shown to the world for the first time this week at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Standard PLA+ filament has been used to 3D print almost every part of Daisy on 14 household printers from Creality. There are clear layer…
Betabet, the company that owns Google, may be about to make its biggest purchase ever. The Wall Street Journal says Alphabet is close to agreeing to pay about $23 billion to buy Wiz. The WSJ says the deal might go through soon, but it’s not official yet. Wiz is an all-in-one cloud security solution that takes in data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and other cloud systems and checks it all for security holes. Alphabet officials probably see the deal as a way to strengthen Google’s cloud business, which grew 28% in the first quarter of this…
Starting August 5, Bytedance’s CapCut app for changing videos will no longer offer free cloud storage to store creative files. Users have been told in the past few days that Capcut has changed the rules for the free plan. The company used to offer 1 GB of free cloud storage, but that’s no longer the case. You’ll have to pay now to store things in the cloud on Capcut. There are two plans with CapCut: one costs $2.49 a month for 100GB of storage and the other costs $7.49 a month for 1000GB. They will have to either pay for…
In robots, generative AI has already shown a lot of promise. Natural language interactions, robot learning, no-code writing, and even design are all uses for it. This week, Google’s DeepMind Robotics team is showing off guidance as a possible area where the two fields could work well together. The team shows in the paper “Mobility VLA: Multimodal Instruction Navigation with Long-Context VLMs and Topological Graphs” how they used Google Gemini 1.5 Pro to teach a robot how to follow directions and move around an office. Naturally, DeepMind used some of the Every Day Robots that have been lying around since…
Millions of AT&T customer phone numbers, call and text records, and location-based info were stolen. A spokesman for AT&T told on Friday that the company will start telling millions of customers about a new data breach that let hackers steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers. The company said in a statement that the stolen information includes the phone numbers of both cell phone and landline users, as well as AT&T records of calls and text messages from May 1, 2022, to October 31, 2022. This information includes things like who called or texted whom. AT&T said…
To end a long-running competition review, the European Union has agreed to what Apple said about how it runs Apple Pay. In a news conference Thursday, Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of the EU’s competition division, talked about the change. She said that Apple has until July 25 to make changes that will let makers of competing mobile wallets offer contactless payment using NFC, which is the most common technology used in the EU. This will let their users “tap and go” with their payments. A double-click to open apps, Face ID, Touch ID, and passcodes for…
With the recent addition of comments to podcasts, Spotify is taking another step toward making its app, which is mostly known for music, more like a social networking site. Commenting lets podcasters interact with their fans right in Spotify, just like Polls and Q&As let them do with other features. The 2023 update to the app added a discovery feed like on TikTok, artist profiles where creators can sell merchandise and concert tickets, and the ability to post to stories. This makes Spotify’s app more like a social network for all things audio, not just a music-streaming app. This week,…
Elon Musk is being sued for firing more than 6,000 Twitter workers, including Parag Agrawal, who was CEO at the time, after Musk took over the social media site in 2022. On Tuesday, Musk won one of those lawsuits when a federal judge said X Corp. doesn’t have to pay the former workers any more severance pay. People who used to work for Twitter and one of its managers filed the lawsuit, saying that X Corp. did not pay fired Twitter workers as much severance as the contracts said they would. According to the lawsuit, Twitter gave these 6,000 fired…
After getting an observer seat on OpenAI’s board for a few months, Microsoft is now leaving that place without voting. Axios reports that Microsoft told OpenAI in a letter sent on Tuesday that the company is confident in the AI company’s direction because it has seen enough progress. They told us that there will no longer be any monitors on the board after this change. That likely puts an end to rumors that Apple will get an observer place. OpenAI told TechCrunch in a statement, “We’re grateful to Microsoft for putting their faith in the Board and the direction of…
Henrik Fisker and his wife Geeta Gupta-Fisker, co-founders of Fisker Inc., are lowering their salaries to $1 to keep their failed electric vehicle (EV) startup’s bankruptcy proceedings funded while lawyers work to finish a sale of its leftover inventory. John DiDonato, Fisker Inc.’s restructuring officer, said in a filing Tuesday morning that the couple, who co-founded the company in 2016, made the choice on July 8. This was only five days after Linda Richenderfer, a lawyer for the U.S. Trustee’s office, questioned him about the matter. That meeting on July 3 was when Richenderfer asked DiDonato if the Fiskers were…
Hebbia, a startup that uses generative AI to search through big documents and find answers to complex questions, has raised $130 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which was worth about $700 million, and Index Ventures, Google Ventures, and Peter Thiel also contributed. Its funding shows that 50x annual recurring revenue (ARR) is now the rule for AI startups, especially those that have already made millions of dollars in profit early on. Already reported on most of the details of the formal funding announcement. However, Hebbia continued to raise more money, this time another $30 million,…
Poe is Quora’s cross-platform, subscription-based collection of AI-powered chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-4o. They just released a new tool called Previews that lets users make interactive apps right in chats with chatbots. When Poe users type things like “Analyze the information in this report and turn it into an easy-to-understand and interactive presentation to help me understand it,” Previews lets them make data visualizations, games, and even drum machines. The apps can be made with more than one chatbot, like Meta’s Llama 3 and GPT-4o. They can use information from uploaded files, like movies, and send a link…
A complaint has been filed against an adtech company owned by Microsoft. The case was backed by the European privacy advocacy group noyb, a non-profit that does a lot to take down tech giants that break data protection laws. As its most recent move, noyb is helping a person in Italy who has not been named file a complaint against Xandr with that country’s data protection authority. The protest was made under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union. If it is upheld, the company could be fined up to 4% of Microsoft’s global annual turnover. People…
VPN makers say that Apple took down a number of VPN apps from its Russian App Store at the request of the government’s communications body. Last week, the Russian news agency Interfax said that Apple had taken down 25 VPN apps from its Russian App Store because Roskomnadzor, the government agency that controls the internet and what Russians can access, asked them to be taken down. Russia’s internet is heavily censored and controlled, so people who use it often use VPNs to get around restrictions and access material that is blocked. Two VPN services, Le VPN and Red Shield VPN,…
The latest fight between Apple and Epic Games, the company that makes Fortnite, doesn’t seem to be over yet. Apple’s rules about how to split profits in the App Store have been a problem for Epic for years. Apple was sued by Epic for antitrust violations last year, but that case was thrown out. In March, the Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general filed a new claim against Apple that shared many of the same complaints. In Europe, the new Digital Markets Act seemed to let Epic open its own Epic Games Store on iOS and bring Fortnite…
In the past few years, it has become more common for media companies to add games to their services. Streaming services and apps are looking for ways to keep their users’ attention in a world where users are becoming more competitive and their attention spans are getting shorter. To keep people on their site, it makes sense for businesses to branch out into gaming: The gaming business is worth about $221 billion around the world, which makes it an appealing way to make money. Here are the newest companies getting into the gaming business, along with information about what they’re…
Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, said this week that the company will temporarily turn off its “Make Design” AI feature after being accused of “heavily” teaching the tool on other apps. The new feature, shown off at the company’s annual Config conference, was meant to speed up the design process by creating UI layouts and components from text prompts. However, it was criticized for looking too much like Apple’s Weather app. YouTube changed its rules in a quiet way this week, letting users ask for the removal of AI-generated or other fake content that imitates their voice or face. The…
Stars are a digital currency that Telegram added last month that can be used inside the app. The company is now adding paid material to its list of uses. Toncoin is the cryptocurrency that Telegram uses over The Open Network (TON) blockchain. The chat app also lets channels turn the stars they have into Toncoin. They can also use them to get channel deals at a discount. At first, Stars were only used to pay for digital things sold by bots and apps in Telegram. Now, people who make content can post it, and users can access it with starts.…
Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, says the company will briefly turn off its “Make Design” AI feature, which was accused of copying the looks of Apple’s own Weather app. Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, was the first person to notice the problem. NotBoring Software makes a suite of apps that includes a famous Weather app that can be customized and other useful apps. He tested Figma’s tool and found that when it was used as a design aid, it would constantly copy Apple’s Weather app. Allen went on X, which used to be Twitter, to say that Figma was…
Some of SpaceX’s rivals are upset about its big plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times a year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance sent comments to regulators asking them to make sure that other launch providers in the area were affected as little as possible. Blue Origin even suggested that Starship operations should be limited to certain times and that other launch providers should have the right to refuse launches that would conflict with Starship’s operations. But SpaceX might have even bigger plans for Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37…
Meta isn’t the only business that has to deal with the rise of material made by AI and how it impacts its platform. In June, YouTube also quietly changed its rules so that people can ask for the removal of AI-generated or other fake material that uses their voice or face. With this change, people can use YouTube’s privacy request process to ask for this kind of AI material to be taken down. This is more of what they had planned when they first talked about their approach to responsible AI in November. YouTube wants people who are touched by…