Latest News in the category TechNews
A news aggregator from various RSS feeds, like technology, gaming, development and general news sites.
Techstars increases startup funding to $220,000, mirroring YC structure
Techstars, a nearly 20-year-old startup accelerator, announced new terms for startups that enter its three-month program. The organization will now invest $220,000, which is $100,000 more than it offered previously, in companies starting with its fall 2025 batch. The capital will be divided into two components. The group is offering companies $20,000 in exchange for […]
1 hours ago
OpenAI’s new reasoning AI models hallucinate more
OpenAI’s recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects. However, the new models still hallucinate, or make things up — in fact, they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI’s older models. Hallucinations have proven to be one of the biggest and most difficult problems to solve in AI, impacting even today’s […]
1 hours ago
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […]
2 hours ago
Bluesky may soon add blue check verification
Bluesky may soon get a new blue checkmark verification system, according to changes to the app’s public GitHub repository spotted Friday by reverse engineer alice.mosphere.at. The blue checks may have a similar look to the system pioneered by Twitter, now X, but Bluesky’s version seems like it will work quite differently. Bluesky’s blue check system […]
2 hours ago
TechCrunch Mobility: Lyft buys its way into Europe, Kodiak SPACs, and how China’s new ADAS rules might affect Tesla
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Enough with my typical small talk. Let’s jump into the news right away this week. And there’s plenty of it, including Lyft’s entry into Europe, AV startup […]
3 hours ago
White House replaces covid.gov website with ‘lab leak’ theory
The government-run website covid.gov used to host information about COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment. Now, under President Trump’s purview, the page redirects to a White House website espousing the unproven theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. The theory, which has been opposed by many virologists, was espoused in a report by House Republicans […]
3 hours ago
ChatGPT is referring to users by their names unprompted, and some find it ‘creepy’
Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: Occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI […]
3 hours ago
Cops can’t do cell tower mass surveillance ‘dumps,’ court rules
A federal judge in Nevada has ruled that it’s unconstitutional to obtain swaths of cellular records through “tower dumps” — but will still let police get away with using it as evidence, as reported earlier by 404 Media and Court Watch. With tower dumps, authorities can dig through the cell records that pinged off a […]
3 hours ago
CEO reorganizes Intel with new CTO and AI lead
Intel's Lip-Bu Tan has overhauled leadership by naming Sachin Katti as CTO and AI chief, flattening the structure, and taking direct control of key technology developments.
4 hours ago
Kia’s affordable EV4 will still be imported to the US
This week, Kia announced its affordable EV4 electric sedan will launch in the US early next year. While the US won’t get a hatchback edition of the EV4 that was mentioned when it was revealed in February, there will be two battery configurations: a 58.3kWh battery with a Kia-estimated range of 235 miles, and a […]
4 hours ago
World's fastest Flash memory developed: writes in just 400 picoseconds
By re-configuring the architecture of flash memory, researchers have managed to achieve unprecedented data write and read speeds
4 hours ago
OpenAI spends millions to process polite phrases such as "Thank You" and "Please" with ChatGPT
Sam Altman says OpenAI spends tens of millions of dollars on ChatGPT to respond to simple courtesies like "Thank You" and "Please".
4 hours ago
AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the star of Micro Center’s discounted PC part bundle
Building (or rebuilding) a gaming PC can be difficult. It’s complex stuff, making sure everything’s compatible and whatnot. The next toughest part is finding a deal — and having the patience to wait for price drops without getting so antsy you buy everything at full price (shamefully raises hand). If you’re considering an AMD build, […]
4 hours ago
Target announces when its Switch 2 preorders will kick off
Target’s Nintendo Switch 2 preorders in the US will kick off on April 24th at 12AM ET, according to Target’s website. The preorder time applies to consoles, games, and accessories, the website says. The timing update follows Nintendo’s announcement this morning of the new April 24th date for Switch 2 preorders. The company originally planned […]
5 hours ago
Judge pauses mass firing of consumer protection workers
A judge has paused the termination of nearly 1,500 employees from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) while she considers whether the Trump administration violated a court order to avoid mass layoffs. As CNN reports, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the mass reduction in force was “not going to happen” for now and scheduled an […]
5 hours ago
How to scan a QR code with your phone
The humble QR (or Quick Response) code has become ubiquitous. Invented back in the 1990s to scan car parts, the barcodes got a popularity boost during the pandemic when touchless tech became prioritized, and they’re now a regular part of daily life. You’ll find them deployed to help you order food, connect to Wi-Fi, shop […]
5 hours ago
Startups Weekly: Mixed messages from venture capital
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. This week brought us mixed messages. A fresh IPO filing, but a bleak outlook for exits overall. New funding rounds, but founders frustrated over lack of capital. […]
6 hours ago
Where to buy Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards
Where to buy the latest microSD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2.
6 hours ago
64-core Ryzen Threadripper 9985WX spotted in shipping manifests — 16- and 12-core siblings also spotted
AMD is shipping a handful of upcoming Ryzen 9000 Threadripper CPUs to its global testing facilities, hinting at a near-future launch.
6 hours ago
TikToker sues Roblox over her Charli XCX ‘Apple’ dance
TikTok content creator Kelley Heyer sued the video game Roblox for using her dance to Charli XCX’s “Apple” without permission. Heyer posted the viral dance in June 2024, which fed off of the hype of Charli XCX’s hit summer album Brat. The dance became so popular that Charli XCX incorporated it into her live show […]
6 hours ago
Huawei's new AI CloudMatrix cluster beats Nvidia's GB200 by brute force, uses 4X the power
Huawei unveils AI CloudMatrix 384 system based on 384 Ascend 910C processors that can beat Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 in performance, but at the cost of efficiency.
6 hours ago
Apple replaced Mythic Quest’s series finale after the show was canceled
If you didn’t catch Mythic Quest’s series finale when it first debuted last month, there’s a chance you may never be able to see the episode as it originally was. Shortly after Mythic Quest’s fourth season and its Side Quest spinoff hit Apple TV Plus, the streamer announced that it was cancelling the series. The […]
6 hours ago
ChatGPT will now use its ‘memory’ to personalize web searches
OpenAI is upgrading ChatGPT’s “memory” again. In a changelog and support pages on OpenAI’s website Thursday, the company quietly announced “Memory with Search,” a feature that lets ChatGPT draw on memories — details from past conversations, such as your favorite foods — to inform queries when the bot searches the web. ChatGPT release notes were […]
6 hours ago
iRobot’s Roomba Combo 10 Max is nearly 50 percent off for Verge readers
Wouldn’t it be nice to tidy up your home without breaking a sweat? The Roomba Combo 10 Max robovac / mop hybrid can make that dream a reality, as it delivers an almost fully hands-free cleaning experience. And now through tomorrow, April 19th, it’s on sale at Wellbots for $741.47 (about $658 off) when you […]
7 hours ago
Covid․gov now points to a ‘lab leak’ conspiracy website
Covid.gov, the government website where you could previously find information about covid, now redirects to a page that pushes the conspiracy theory that the virus originated from a lab. Navigating to the website reveals a prominent banner with the words “Lab Leak” and a photo of Donald Trump, as spotted earlier by Wired’s Andrew Couts. […]
7 hours ago
Blower-style RTX 5090D leaked on Bilibili — two-slot GPU design built for AI rigs
A blower-style RTX 5090D has been leaked on Bilibili, showing a two-slot design that's likely built for multi-GPU setups.
7 hours ago
Trump EPA targets two-man geoengineering startup for ‘polluting the air’
The company sells “cooling credits” for its sulfur dioxide-based geoengineering projects.
7 hours ago
Subaru’s only EV adds 25 percent more range, faster charging, and improved AWD
Subaru’s first and only EV, the Solterra, is getting a facelift for 2026 with many upgrades that include a better AWD system, longer range, and improved performance. Subaru gave the new model a standard symmetrical all-wheel drive system that allows front and rear motors to work independently and offer better control in various weather conditions. […]
8 hours ago
The MAGA-tech situationship
I have been reporting in Washington for nearly six years, and on politics for over a decade, and I’ve attended more corporate-sponsored policy events (and tend to nod off during them) than I can remember. I’ve also reported on the gradual disintegration of reality caused by the rise of MAGA, so I thought my tolerance […]
8 hours ago
From Bogotá to the Battlefield: LatAm startups are winning big in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield
For startups around the world, the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield program offers unmatched exposure, credibility, and connections to scale their businesses. TechCrunch has long been committed to spotlighting companies solving real-world problems in scalable and sustainable ways — making it a powerful launchpad for startups both in and outside the U.S. Several Latin American startups have […]
8 hours ago
Nvidia vows to continue making products for Chinese market
Nvidia CEO reaffirmed the company's commitment to serving China despite escalating U.S. export restrictions.
8 hours ago
The Nintendo Switch 2 will still cost $450 in the US, despite tariffs
Nintendo announced on Friday that it will open Switch 2 pre-orders in the U.S. on April 24, following a delay due to the Trump administration’s hefty tariffs. Fans feared the long-awaited console would spike in price due to Trump’s export rules on international goods, but Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2 will still cost $449.99 and […]
8 hours ago
Latest Nvidia drivers boost synthetics by 6-8% on RTX 50 GPUs — Users still report stability woes
Nvidia's 576.02 drivers are said to increase (synthetic) performance by up to 8%, but user reports suggest stability issues still persist.
9 hours ago
Final day to submit your speaker application and shape the next wave of startups at TechCrunch All Stage
Today’s the day! The application to speak at TechCrunch All Stage closes tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT — this is your final chance to share real-world insights with 1,200+ startup founders and VCs attending the event. Whether you’ve built or backed startups, battled bottlenecks, or cracked the code on growth, the stage is yours. TC […]
9 hours ago
Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders will start April 24 — the system still costs $449.99
Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders will start on April 24 in the United States, and the price isn't changing from the original $449.99.
9 hours ago
WD launches HDD recycling process that reclaims rare earth elements, cuts out China
Western Digital claims it’s saved 47,000 pounds of hard drives from becoming e-waste, creating a system that could help both the planet and U.S. businesses that need to depend less on China.
9 hours ago
The humble screenshot might be the key to great AI assistants
If you want to make the most out of a world increasingly filled with AI tools, here’s a habit to develop: start taking screenshots. Lots of screenshots. Of anything and everything. Because for all the talk of voice modes, omnipresent cameras, and the multimodal future of everything, there might be no more valuable digital behavior […]
9 hours ago
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly the ‘frontrunner’ for Trump’s missile shield contract
SpaceX is in the lead to help President Donald Trump create the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, according to Reuters. The Elon Musk-owned company is reportedly working with the data analysis firm Palantir and the defense company Anduril to build “key parts” of the Golden Dome that, like Israel’s Iron Dome, would intercept and destroy […]
9 hours ago
Intel is looking into CPU overhead associated with Arc GPUs on older chips
Intel is developing a fix to improve the performance of its Arc B580 GPUs when paired with an older processor.
9 hours ago
Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders start April 24th and the price is still $449.99
Nintendo has announced a new date for when Switch 2 preorders will kick off in the US; April 24th. As a part of the announcement, Nintendo said that the price of the Switch 2 will remain at $449.99 despite fears that the Trump administration’s new tariff policy would lead to increased pricing for the console. […]
10 hours ago
QIDI Plus4 Review: Bigger is Better
QIDI Plus4 has more elbow room and a heated chamber for large technical prints.
10 hours ago
EcoFlow’s new Glacier fridge and Wave A/C look like worthy successors
EcoFlow just announced improved versions of its Glacier refrigerator-freezer combo and Wave air conditioner-heater combo, two battery-powered off-grid appliances that can be recharged with the sun. The Wave 3 is more powerful than its predecessor, which means it can cool and heat larger spaces than the Wave 2 I reviewed last summer. But that 6100BTU (1800W) of cooling and […]
10 hours ago
Big Tech is back on trial
Our plan for this episode was to spend some time talking about antitrust regulation, because one of the biggest companies on the planet is currently in the midst of a trial that could fundamentally reshape the internet economy. And that was before Google lost its adtech trial! Two’s definitely a trend, in this case: Meta’s […]
10 hours ago
Razer Blade 16 (2025) review: ultra settings on an ultra-thin laptop for an ultra-high price
Few gaming laptops stand out like Razer’s Blades. They’ve long been the gaming alternative to the MacBook Pro: sleek, powerful, and grown-up looking, without the bulk and garish stylings of most gaming laptops. But cramming powerful graphics cards into slim confines means Blade laptops have a tendency to run hot, get loud, and carry ridiculous […]
10 hours ago
Netflix is revamping search with AI to improve discovery
Netflix is building a new search experience aimed at improving the discovery experience, and it’s going to use AI to do it, the company’s CEO Greg Peters said during its first-quarter results conference call. Peters said Netflix is working on “interactive search that’s based on generative technologies” to help people find different titles. Answering an […]
10 hours ago
Ubuntu 25.04 launches with host of new features
We go hands-on with the latest version of Ubuntu and see how it runs.
10 hours ago
The Trump tariff auto sales rush is on
If there’s one thing the auto industry hates, it’s uncertainty. When it takes upward of five or six years to bring a new car model to market, a certain administration throwing caution and global goodwill to the wind with a raft of unpredictable tariffs is decidedly bad news. Right now, the US tariff situation is […]
11 hours ago
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin flop is bigger than Katy Perry
You know, I was simply going to ignore the bizarre Blue Origin stunt flight from earlier this week. But then it flopped beyond my wildest imagination, and so here we all are. Doubtless you know the contours already: Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez, pop star Katy Perry, and four other women did a big space […]
11 hours ago
OpenAI pursued Cursor maker before entering into talks to buy Windsurf for $3B
When news broke that OpenAI was in talks to acquire AI coding company Windsurf for $3 billion, one of the first questions on the mind of anyone following the space was likely: “Why not buy Cursor creator Anysphere instead?” After all, OpenAI Startup Fund has been an investor in Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, since the […]
20 hours ago
Star Wars: Starfighter stars Ryan Gosling and hits theaters in 2027
A new theatrical Star Wars movie is on the way — and this time, it actually has a premiere date. At Star Wars Celebration in Japan, Lucasfilm announced Star Wars: Starfighter, a standalone feature that is set five years after The Rise of Skywalker. It’s being directed by Shawn Levy, who most recently directed Deadpool […]
21 hours ago
CFPB workers are receiving mass layoff notices
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is sending out mass layoff notices that appear to be in defiance of a court order blocking further layoffs following DOGE-induced cuts. “I regret to inform you that you are affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,” says a notice reviewed by The Verge that was sent by […]
17/04/2025
Defense tech Theseus landed Y Combinator, the US Special Forces, and $4.3M from a tweet
On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he’d just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Lévy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech […]
17/04/2025
Tesla’s spring update activates adaptive high beams that won’t blind oncoming drivers
Tesla’s vehicles may be in a sales slump, but that’s not stopping the company from regularly introducing fresh features for owners. Tesla’s spring software update includes several useful new functions in its EVs, including adaptive high beams on compatible cars and better trip planning. The update will allow some Tesla owners to use high beams […]
17/04/2025
Ramp is trying to get the US government as a customer after seeing a tweet from DOGE
Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being […]
17/04/2025
OpenAI launches Flex processing for cheaper, slower AI tasks
In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API option that provides lower AI model usage prices in exchange for slower response times and “occasional resource unavailability.” Flex processing, which is available in beta for OpenAI’s recently released o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, is […]
17/04/2025
Netflix revenue rises to $10.5 billion following price hike
Netflix said in its first quarter earnings report on Thursday that revenue reached $10.5 billion in the months since it raised prices. That’s a 13 percent increase over the same time last year. The streaming service’s net income also grew to $2.9 billion, and the company says it expects more growth in the coming months […]
17/04/2025
Razer has quietly un-paused some laptop sales
Razer is selling laptops on its site again after a recent and sudden halt. In what seemed like a response to ongoing tariff tumult, the US Razer site had quietly pulled its Blade laptops from direct sales, including its new Blade 16 with Nvidia’s 50-series GPUs. Things seemed normal in other regions like Canada. But […]
17/04/2025
Carbon removal startup Holocene bought by oil and gas giant Occidental
The deal was executed through Oxy Low Carbon Ventures for an undisclosed amount.
17/04/2025
As the trade war escalates, Hence launches an AI ‘advisor’ to help companies manage risk
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every […]
17/04/2025
Chinese shopping app Taobao joins DHgate in Top 5 on US App Store
The Chinese e-commerce marketplace app DHgate, which is now the No. 2 free iPhone app in the U.S., isn’t the only one that’s oddly benefiting from President Trump’s tariffs on U.S. imports from China. Another Chinese shopping app, Taobao, has now also entered the Top 5 as of Thursday. U.S. consumers began flocking to these […]
17/04/2025
Judge blocks Ohio’s online parental consent law
A federal judge has struck down an Ohio law that would’ve required children under 16 to get parental consent to use social media platforms. In a decision on Wednesday, US District Court Judge Algenon Marbley ruled that the law is unconstitutional, saying it violates the First Amendment. Signed in 2023, Ohio’s Social Media Parental Notification […]
17/04/2025
Former Y Combinator president Geoff Ralston launches new AI ‘safety’ fund
Geoff Ralston, known for his years at Y Combinator, has a new AI VC fund called SAIF. It is seeking AI startups focused on safety.
17/04/2025
Lawmakers demand answers from Nvidia over suspected GPU diversions to China, Nvidia denies any wrongdoing
U.S. lawmakers are investigating whether Nvidia's restricted GPUs were diverted to Chinese AI firms through Singapore, demands the company to disclose all notable clients from China and other ASEAN countries in the last four years.
17/04/2025
Just look at Huawei’s trifold phone
After 24 hours with Huawei’s Mate XT — a.k.a. the world’s first trifold smartphone — I have this to say for it: the novelty hasn’t worn off. I’ve tried the Mate XT twice before, first shortly after it launched last September, and then again in February after it was released outside of China. But now Huawei […]
17/04/2025
Google’s latest AI model report lacks key safety details, experts say
On Thursday, weeks after launching its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety evaluations. However, the report is light on the details, experts say, making it difficult to determine which risks the model might pose. Technical reports provide useful — and unflattering, […]
17/04/2025
Automakers selling cars in China banned from using ‘autonomous driving’ in ads
China is cracking down on how automakers advertise driver-assistance features, banning terms like “autonomous driving,” “self-driving,” and “smart driving,” Reuters reported, citing a transcript of a meeting between the government and industry representatives. The updated rule will also prohibit automakers from rolling out improvements via software updates to advanced driver-assistance systems in vehicles already in […]
17/04/2025
AI benchmarking platform Chatbot Arena forms a new company
Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.” […]
17/04/2025
Donald Trump’s crusade against offshore wind just got more serious
The Trump administration dealt a major blow to the fledgling US offshore wind industry yesterday by ordering a major wind project off the coast of New York to stop construction. Secretary the US Department of the Interior Doug Burgum announced the move on X yesterday, pausing the Empire Wind Project pending “further review of information […]
17/04/2025
Microsoft researchers build 1-bit AI LLM with 2B parameters — model small enough to run on some CPUs
Microsoft researchers developed a 1-bit AI model that's efficient enough to run on traditional CPUs without needing specialized chips like NPUs or GPUs.
17/04/2025
A retro hardware maker willing to pay Trump’s tariffs is suspending US shipments anyway
RetroTINK, a company that sells hardware for playing retro consoles on modern screens, says it will be temporarily suspending US shipments — even though the company wants to pre-pay President Donald Trump’s tariffs, as reported by Time Extension. The company is suspending shipments “due to lack of guidance on how tariffs will be collected starting […]
17/04/2025
Playdate’s second season of games starts in May
Playdate is about to get a big batch of new games. Today, Panic confirmed the first details of the handheld’s upcoming season 2, which will include 12 new games and run from May 29th to July 3rd, with two titles releasing each week. The full season will cost $39. When the Playdate first launched back […]
17/04/2025
Preview 2 of the .NET AI Template Now Available
Preview 2 of the .NET AI Chat Web App template introduces support for .NET Aspire and Qdrant vector database integration, making it easier to create cloud-native AI-powered chat applications with custom data. The post Preview 2 of the .NET AI Template Now Available appeared first on .NET Blog.
17/04/2025
Facebook considered offering an ad-free subscription after the Cambridge Analytica scandal
After the Cambridge Analytica data scandal broke in 2018, things got bad enough for Meta (then Facebook) that Mark Zuckerberg had to face Congress to try to explain what had happened. The focus on how much data Facebook had on everyone, including “shadow profiles” for non-Facebook users, was enough to shake financial markets and, eventually, […]
17/04/2025
Discord gets sued for allegedly violating child safety laws
The state of New Jersey has filed suit against Discord claiming the company engaged in “deceptive and unconscionable business practices” that put children at risk. The suit was filed Thursday and alleges the popular messaging app of not doing enough to keep its youngest users safe from predators and violent content. Here’s a link to […]
17/04/2025
The first folding e-reader is smaller than a paperback
Smartphones with folding OLED screens have been around for over six years, but China’s Readmoo is the first company to announce a consumer-ready e-reader with a folding E Ink display. Details on when its mooInk V will ship, or how much it will cost, haven’t been announced. Yet the company says it has spent nine […]
17/04/2025
Florida draft law mandating encryption backdoors for social media accounts billed ‘dangerous and dumb’
A digital rights group blasted the Florida bill, but lawmakers voted to advanced the draft law.
17/04/2025
Google One AI Premium is free for college students until Spring 2026
Google is the latest AI service provider to court users in higher education. Starting today, college students in the US can sign up for Google’s One AI Premium plan for free, shirking the usual $20 monthly subscription fee until June 30th, 2026. Applicants will need to sign up before the deal expires on June 30th, […]
17/04/2025
Seagate claims hard drives are more environmentally friendly than SSDs
Seagate investigated the most efficient storage solution that produces the least amount of carbon emissions. Out of the three storage types it tested, it discovered that hard drives produce the fewest emissions.
17/04/2025
Chinese brain computer interface user reportedly plays 'Black Myth: Wukong,' other games
Chinese researchers claim their high-precision real-time BCI is good enough for Black Myth: Wukong gaming.
17/04/2025
Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra are nearly $200 off in refurbished condition
Whether you’re traveling or working from home, the noise-canceling Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones can help you find calm and focus amid the everyday hustle and bustle. Normally priced at $429, sadly that peace and quiet doesn’t come cheap — but luckily today, you can grab a refurbished pair from Bose’s official eBay storefront for just […]
17/04/2025
Instagram’s new Blend feature creates a custom reels feed for you and your friends
Instagram on Thursday announced that it’s rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. Blends are invite-only and can be created with a singular friend or with a group chat. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day. The launch doesn’t […]
17/04/2025
Instagram Blend lets you share a Reels feed with friends
Instagram is launching a new feature called Blend that’s a custom Reels feed shared between you and members of a DM group. If you’ve invited members of a DM chat to a Blend, then when you tap the Blend icon in a chat, Instagram will show you Reels that are suggested for people in the […]
17/04/2025
Framework Laptop 13 (2025) review: getting better with age
On the outside, Framework’s new Laptop 13 looks about the same as it has for the past four years. But the modular, upgradable, easily-repairable laptop has changed plenty where it counts: on the inside. It’s getting a chip bump for 2025, which would normally be pretty boring for any other laptop. But for the Framework, […]
17/04/2025
Brendan Carr threatens Comcast over coverage of Abrego Garcia
Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has accused Comcast of “news distortion” over its networks’ coverage of Kilmar Armando Abrego, a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador due to what the government said was an “administrative error.” “Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public,” Carr wrote in a reply to a post […]
17/04/2025
Here are all the tech companies rolling back DEI or still committed to it — so far
Companies around America have started cutting DEI programs and eliminating DEI commitments from public documents in response to legal and political threats from the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize,” DEI programs deemed illegal in private sector companies that receive […]
17/04/2025
Massive 366% chip shipment surge to Malaysia amid increased Nvidia AI GPU smuggling curbs, ahead of looming sectoral tariffs
Following U.S. restrictions on advanced GPU exports to China, Taiwan's shipments of computing systems and components to Malaysia have surged dramatically, raising questions about whether Malaysia is emerging as a new hub for AI data centers or a transshipment point for circumventing U.S. export controls.
17/04/2025
OpenAI’s Stargate project sets its sights on international expansion
Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report. While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is […]
17/04/2025
The latest viral ChatGPT trend is doing ‘reverse location search’ from photos
There’s a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate and zoom in on photos — even blurry […]
17/04/2025
AMD RX 9070 GRE rumored to have 48 CUs, 12GB VRAM, 2.79 GHz clocks — about 15% slower than the vanilla RX 9070
Leaked RX 9070 GRE specifications position it right between the premier RX 9070 XT and rumored RX 9060 XT.
17/04/2025
Judge rules Google illegally monopolized ad tech, opening door to potential breakup
A federal judge has found that Google has violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company. The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate […]
17/04/2025
Galactus hungers in Fantastic Four: First Steps’ new trailer
In Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, everyone sees Reed Richards and his family as heroes capable of protecting the planet from any threat. But the film’s latest trailer makes it seem like the team’s first big villain might be a little more than they can handle. Everyone in the world of First Steps knows the […]
17/04/2025
Make a brand impact by hosting a Side Event during TechCrunch All Stage Week in Boston
Want to tap into the energy of 1,000+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for TechCrunch All Stage on July 15? Host your own Side Event during “TC All Stage Week,” happening July 13–19! Whether it’s a networking mixer, workshop, morning run, fireside chat, or cocktail hour — you call the shots. […]
17/04/2025
Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series) review: Increased performance at the expense of battery life
Modularity is king with the Framework Laptop 13, and you’ll pay a premium for that luxury.
17/04/2025
Google loses adtech monopoly case
The US Department of Justice has won its antitrust case against Google, which accused the company of operating a monopoly in the advertising technology industry. In a ruling on Thursday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema says Google’s anticompetitive practices “substantially harmed” publisher customers and users on the web. “Plaintiffs have proven that Google has willfully […]
17/04/2025
Reviews show the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8GB matches the 16GB model in most tests, falls behind in DLSS 4
An in-depth review compares both 8GB and 16GB VRAM models of the RTX 5060 Ti. For many games, the 8GB is just as fast, but there are also plenty of instances where it can run out of VRAM.
17/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok slowed Meta’s growth
In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. The reports come from a packed first week of […]
17/04/2025
At $79, Google’s TV Streamer 4K has never been cheaper
All of the best lessons from Google’s Chromecast lineup through the years were filtered into the TV Streamer 4K, its fastest and smartest set-top box currently available. While the last-gen Chromecast 4K with Google TV nailed the software aspect, this gadget brings the hardware to make it sing. And, presumably for a limited time, you […]
17/04/2025
Audio-Technica’s new $9,999 turntable levitates and glows
Making its debut at Milan Design Week, where function often takes a back seat to form, Audio-Technica’s new Hotaru turntable manages to balance both. The upper section not only floats above the base using a series of magnets that help dampen vibrations, it also glows from within with a color-changing light show that responds to […]
17/04/2025
Sinners is a breathtakingly horrific ode to Black mythology
Horror movies centering Black characters are not a new phenomenon, but the genre’s resurgence in recent years has ushered in a fresh wave of ambitious and occasionally phenomenal features that spin the United States’ legacy of racism into captivating, supernatural tales. Sinners, writer / director Ryan Coogler’s latest project, feels very much like a product […]
17/04/2025
How shippers are trying to keep up with Trump’s trade war
On today’s episode of Decoder, we’re talking tariffs and trade wars. One of the ways I’ve been trying to sort out the chaos of this moment is by talking to the people behind the software that actually runs our global trade systems. We got a lot of notes from listeners who really appreciated our episode […]
17/04/2025
AMD-optimized Stable Diffusion models achieve up to 3.3x performance boost on Ryzen and Radeon
Amuse 3.0 is finally here, offering Stable Diffusion models that are fine-tuned for AMD hardware.
17/04/2025
Shein and Temu to raise prices for US shoppers in response to tariffs
Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting next week on April 25th, due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports. The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump’s decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to […]
17/04/2025
Save a whopping $70 on this MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi AM5 motherboard deal
You can save $70 on an MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard in Newegg's limited-time sale.
17/04/2025
microSD Express cards sell out after Switch 2 announcement — more than 337 units sold per hour
microSD Express cards sell out in both online retailers and physical stores after the Switch 2 announcement.
17/04/2025
Nintendo shows off Mario Kart World’s new courses, items, and open world features
Nintendo is possibly hoping to steer the narrative regarding the Switch 2 back in a positive direction by showing off its most exciting game, Mario Kart World. The publisher held a Mario Kart World direct presentation on April 17th debuting 15 minutes of gameplay which showcased many of the game’s new features. Mario Kart World […]
17/04/2025
Perplexity is reportedly key to Motorola’s next Razr
Perplexity’s AI voice assistant will reportedly play a significant role in the upcoming Motorola Razr expected to be announced April 24th, Bloomberg reports. The news comes after Motorola posted a teaser video of the Razr on social media last week, showing the foldable device animate into the word AI. Perplexity is also working with T-Mobile’s […]
17/04/2025
TSMC to build 30% of its 2nm and more advanced chips in the U.S., to speed up Fab 21 build out
TSMC plans to produce 30% of its 2nm and 1.6nm chips in Arizona as part of a its effort to transform its Fab 21 site into a major U.S. semiconductor hub.
17/04/2025
Temu and Shein are raising their US prices next week
Shein and Temu are preparing to raise their prices in the US. In almost the same notice to customers, the ultra-cheap retailers warn that they will start adjusting their prices on April 25th due to changes to “global trade rules and tariffs.” President Donald Trump has raised tariffs on goods imported from China to up […]
17/04/2025
Old HDD modded into a variable speed disc sander
A step-by-step guide showing how to convert an old HDD into a small variable speed sanding tool has been shared.
17/04/2025
Wasp’s platform is the glue that holds web dev apps together
When Matija Šošić started working in web development, he was surprised by how hard it was to build a full-stack production-ready web application. One of the biggest hurdles Šošić faced was navigating the fragmented dev tooling landscape. Coding a web application required utilizing different tools for developing the front-end versus the back-end, and so on. […]
17/04/2025
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro Review: The best AIO for Ryzen 9950X3D, and Intel too
Can Arctic’s Liquid Freezer III Pro deliver where its predecessor failed? Can it handle the heat of AMD and Intel’s hottest CPUs?
17/04/2025
Archer Aviation wants to help New Yorkers skip airport traffic with electric air taxis
New York City is one of those places in the world where you can get a dollar slice at 2 in the morning or have a burger delivered in under 30 minutes, but you’ll still spend two hours crawling down the highway to catch a flight. Archer Aviation wants to change that with air taxis […]
17/04/2025
Archer and United plan NYC air taxi service for airport trips
Archer says it will launch an air taxi service in New York City with United Airlines, which will include routes between Manhattan and major airports like JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. The aviation company aims to replace hourlong taxi rides along congested roads with breezy flights lasting between 5-15 minutes. Archer and United would utilize preexisting […]
17/04/2025
Discord is verifying some users’ age with ID and facial scans
Discord is preventing some users from accessing sensitive content unless they allow the platform to verify their age by scanning their face or ID. The new age verification process is described as an “experiment” by Discord, and is being trialed in the United Kingdom and Australia in response to local laws that require online platforms […]
17/04/2025
JEDEC finalizes HBM4 memory standard with major bandwidth and efficiency upgrades
HBM4 offers faster data rates, more channels, and higher memory capacities, with features like Directed Refresh and flexible voltage options to boost performance and reliability.
17/04/2025
Wikipedia is giving AI developers its data to fend off bot scrapers
Wikipedia is attempting to dissuade artificial intelligence developers from scraping the platform by releasing a dataset that’s specifically optimized for training AI models. The Wikimedia Foundation announced on Wednesday that it had partnered with Kaggle — a Google-owned data science community platform that hosts machine learning data — to publish a beta dataset of “structured […]
17/04/2025
Smashing, the reading curation app by Goodreads’ founder, shuts down
Smashing, an AI-powered app that lets users build a curated list of news and posts, is shutting down, because of its inability to scale rapidly enough.
17/04/2025
Strava acquires massively popular Runna app
Go to any run club in the world and there’s a good chance that everyone there has two things: a Garmin smartwatch to track their run and a Strava account to brag about it. Given the global running boom, it makes Strava’s lack of any modern, in-app training plans a curious and glaring omission. Or, […]
17/04/2025
xAI adds a ‘memory’ feature to Grok
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is slowly bringing its Grok chatbot to parity with top rivals like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Wednesday night, xAI announced a “memory” feature for Grok that enables the bot to remember details from past conversations. Now, if you ask Grok for recommendations, it’ll give more personalized responses — assuming you’ve […]
17/04/2025
Zuckerberg tells court he made WhatsApp, Instagram better
Towards the end of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in a Washington, DC courthouse, a smile flashed across his face. Meta’s lead attorney, Mark Hansen, had asked the CEO if he was “happy†about paying $19 billion for WhatsApp in 2014. Zuckerberg flashed a grin, took a brief pause, and responded, “I’d do it again.†Over the […]
17/04/2025
Zoom restores service after an hours-long outage
Zoom says its platform is back online after suffering an outage for much of Wednesday afternoon. “Service has now been restored after the earlier outage, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding,” Zoom said in a post on X at around 2 p.m. Pacific. The trouble began around 11:40 a.m., according to The Verge, […]
16/04/2025
Chapter, a Medicare startup with links to Vance, Thiel and Ramaswamy, just raised a round at $1.5B valuation
Chapter, a Medicare advisory startup co-founded by former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, has closed a $75 million funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion led by private equity and venture firm Stripes. The startup helps seniors choose Medicare health plans analyzing doctors, hospitals, and prescription drug coverage. Unlike many other Medicare insurance brokers, […]
16/04/2025
Gemini Live’s screensharing feature is now free for Android users
Gemini Live’s feature that lets it see and respond to what’s on your camera and your screen will now be free for all Android users via the Gemini app, Google announced today. The AI-powered feature officially launched earlier this month for everyone on Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 using the Gemini app. At the […]
16/04/2025
Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban
The Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips, and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The restrictions are part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after […]
16/04/2025
Rippling wants UK fintech Revolut to reveal who paid off Deel’s alleged “spy”
Another highly-valued startup has just been added to the mix in the ongoing legal drama between Rippling and Deel: U.K. fintech giant Revolut. In his blockbuster affidavit that reads like it’s straight out of a movie, Irish Rippling employee Keith O’Brien claimed that he was paid about $6,000 a month to spy on Rippling. He […]
16/04/2025
Microsoft Copilot can now ‘see’ what’s on your screen in Edge
Copilot Vision, Microsoft’s AI assistant feature that can interpret what’s on your screen and help you use apps, is now available for free use within the Edge browser, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, announced on Bluesky today. Vision is a “talk-based experience,” as Microsoft calls it, meaning you use it by speaking into the […]
16/04/2025
Former CISA director Chris Krebs vows to fight back against Trump-ordered federal investigation
The former cybersecurity chief is the latest to push back on the Trump administration's targeting of critics and dissenters.
16/04/2025
OpenAI’s latest AI models have a new safeguard to prevent biorisks
OpenAI says that it deployed a new system to monitor its latest AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, for prompts related to biological and chemical threats. The system aims to prevent the models from offering advice that could instruct someone on carrying out potentially harmful attacks, according to OpenAI’s safety report. O3 and o4-mini represent […]
16/04/2025
Build MCP Remote Servers with Azure Functions
Build AI-powered tools quickly using Azure Functions to create remote MCP servers that seamlessly integrate with GitHub Copilot and other LLM-based applications. The post Build MCP Remote Servers with Azure Functions appeared first on .NET Blog.
16/04/2025
Zuckerberg: Snapchat would have grown faster if it accepted $6B buyout offer
During Meta’s antitrust trial this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Snapchat would have grown faster if it accepted his company’s offer to buy the social network back in 2013, Business Insider reports. Court documents revealed that Meta, then called Facebook, offered to buy Snapchat for $6 billion (reports at the time said that […]
16/04/2025
This ICE-snitching app is actually promoting a meme coin
Right-wing influencers are shilling an app that purportedly lets people earn crypto for reporting sightings of undocumented immigrants. ICERAID, a “GovFi protocol that delegates intelligence gathering tasks to citizens,†has recently been promoted by the likes of conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, Proud Boy-turned-media personality Jacob Engels, and disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz. […]
16/04/2025
Trump-appointed judge orders Trump admin to ‘turn the funding spigots back on’
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy said that the administrations actions were “neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.”
16/04/2025
OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Codeium for $3B, with news expected later this week
Codeium, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant tool Windsurf, is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported. If the deal happens, it would put OpenAI in direct competition with a number of other AI coding assistant providers, including Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, which OpenAI backed from […]
16/04/2025
Apple’s carbon footprint is shrinking
Apple’s making steady progress toward its climate goals, the company’s latest environmental progress report shows. Its planet-heating pollution shrank by 800,000 metric tons last year compared to 2023, about a 5 percent drop. Looking back over the past decade, Apple says its global greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by more than 60 percent. That’s no […]
16/04/2025
Zoom is down
Zoom is suffering from a major outage, preventing people from connecting to video calls or even accessing its website. As shown by data on Downdetector, the outage appeared to have started around 3PM ET. Users across X are posting about the outage, with some getting an “Unable to Connect” error message when entering meetings, and […]
16/04/2025
Rivian’s first non-Amazon van customer is HelloFresh
Meal-kit company HelloFresh has added 70 all-electric Rivian vans to its fleet, the first major customer to buy the commercial EVs since the automaker ended its exclusive deal with Amazon. The 70 all-electric commercial vans represent nearly one quarter of HelloFresh’s fleet, which has already helped the company save an estimated 20,000 gallons of gasoline, […]
16/04/2025
Apple says zero-day bugs exploited against ‘specific targeted individuals’ using iOS
One of the bugs was discovered by Google's security researchers who investigate government-backed cyberattacks.
16/04/2025
Google, Apple, and Snap aren’t happy about Meta’s poorly-redacted slides
During Meta’s antitrust trial today, lawyers representing Apple, Google, and Snap each expressed irritation with Meta over the slides it presented on Monday that The Verge found to contain easy-to-remove redactions. Attorneys for both Apple and Snap called the errors “egregious,” with Apple’s representative indicating that it may not be able to trust Meta with […]
16/04/2025
OpenAI partner says it had relatively little time to test the company’s o3 AI model
An organization OpenAI frequently partners with to probe the capabilities of its AI models and evaluate them for safety, Metr, suggests that it wasn’t given much time to test one of the company’s new releases, o3. In a blog post published Wednesday, Metr writes that one red teaming benchmark of o3 was “conducted in a […]
16/04/2025
New PCIe adapters turn your x16 slot into a clown car of GPU and SSD connectivity
HighPoint’s new PCIe Gen 5 and Gen 4 adapters bring modular, high-bandwidth expansion to workstations and servers, ideal for AI, storage-heavy tasks, and GPU-dense configurations.
16/04/2025
Pick up an Inspiron 16 Plus laptop on clearance sale for just $599 from Dell — perfect for school or work
It's a good time to pick up a cheaper laptop as Dell clears out some older stock. This Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is yours for only $599.
16/04/2025
India’s Uber-rival BluSmart appears to suspend service in wake of EV loan probe
BluSmart, India’s all-electric cab-hailing startup that was once seen as an emerging rival to Uber, appears to have suspended service in some cities just as the country’s market regulator launched a probe into Gensol Engineering, the publicly listed company that shares two of its co-founders. The cab service, which had been operating in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, […]
16/04/2025
Galax confirms monstrous dual 16-pin RTX 5090D extreme overclocking GPU for the Chinese market
Galax is prepping to debut the first RTX 5090 GPU with two 16-pin power connectors, but availability will be limited to China.
16/04/2025
Xbox will soon let you purchase games in its mobile app
Xbox is finally rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC, as well as sign up for Game Pass directly from its mobile app. But there’s a catch: you’ll no longer be able to access remote play within the Xbox app. The update is arriving for beta testers on iOS and Android, but Xbox […]
16/04/2025
OpenAI launches a pair of AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini
OpenAI announced on Thursday the launch of o3 and o4-mini, new AI reasoning models designed to pause and work through questions before responding. The company calls o3 its most advanced reasoning model ever, outperforming the company’s previous models on tests measuring math, coding, reasoning, science, and visual understanding capabilities. Meanwhile, o4-mini offers what OpenAI says […]
16/04/2025
OpenAI debuts Codex CLI, an open source coding tool for terminals
In a bid to inject AI into more of the programming process, OpenAI is launching Codex CLI, a coding “agent” designed to run locally from terminal software. Announced on Wednesday alongside OpenAI’s newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, Codex CLI links OpenAI’s models with local code and computing tasks, OpenAI says. Via Codex CLI, OpenAI’s […]
16/04/2025
How to set up Do Not Disturb modes on your Android phone
In recent years, Do Not Disturb has evolved on both iPhones and Android phones: it’s no longer just a simple block on notifications and distractions, but rather a selection of modes you can customize to suit all the different scenarios in your life (like driving, sleeping, working, or exercising at the gym). This means you […]
16/04/2025
OpenAI’s upgraded o3 model can use images when reasoning
OpenAI is releasing two new AI reasoning models today: o3, which the company calls its “most powerful reasoning model,” and o4-mini, which is a smaller and faster model that “achieves remarkable performance for its size and cost,” according to a blog post. The company also says that o3 and o4-mini will be able to “think” […]
16/04/2025
Digital frame maker Aura introduces the Aspen, a $299 frame with more intelligent features
Aura, a digital photo frames company founded by early Twitter employees, is introducing its latest model, Aspen, which adds new technology to the device and its accompanying mobile app. In addition to hosting your digital photos in its 12-inch HD display, the device now also allows you to add captions to your photos when they […]
16/04/2025
Gigabyte chops PCIe finger in half on its dual-fan RTX 5060 Ti cards
Photos of Gigabyte's RTX 5060 Ti Eagle have cropped up revealing a incredibly short PCB that only makes up half the width of the dual-fan graphics card.
16/04/2025
Amazon’s newest Kindle Scribe has returned to its best price to date
As a part of its ongoing Book Sale, Amazon isn’t just cutting prices on its budget-friendly Fire HD tablets — it’s also offering a great deal on the latest Kindle Scribe. Right now, you can buy it with 16GB of storage for an all-time low of $324.99 ($75 off). If you need more storage, you […]
16/04/2025
Intel has championed High-NA EUV chipmaking tools, but costs and other limitations could delay industry-wide adoption: Report
Intel has taken an early lead in High-NA EUV lithography, but widespread adoption remains constrained by high tool costs, limited exposure field size, and potential need for substantial ecosystem upgrades.
16/04/2025
Lyft gets a toehold in Europe with FreeNow acquisition
Lyft said it is acquiring mobility platform FreeNow, giving the ridehailing company its first major presence in Europe after years of operating exclusively in the US and Canada. FreeNow aggregates taxis alongside private vehicles, including luxury rides. The acquisition of FreeNow nearly doubles Lyft’s potential market and will aide the company as it seeks to […]
16/04/2025
Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs
Synology will no longer allow the new Plus Series NAS models, coming out in 2025, to use non-Synology or non-certified hard drives.
16/04/2025
Bluesky feed builder Graze raises $1M, rolls out ads
Graze, a startup that lets people build and monetize custom feeds for Bluesky’s social network, has attracted new capital. Pre-seed investors, led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $1 million in the company’s small team, which is working to give users control over their algorithms and social media experiences. Graze’s software, available via the […]
16/04/2025
Apple races to surpass rivals in quest to eliminate carbon pollution
Apple reported on Wednesday that is more than halfway to its 2030 goal.
16/04/2025
Anker’s new UV printer can create fake wood and paint textures on various materials
Falling somewhere between a 3D printer and the inkjet you use to churn out color photos, Anker’s eufyMake brand has announced what it’s calling the “industry’s first 3D-texture UV Printer designed for personal use.” The UV Printer E1 is closer in size to a 3D printer than an inkjet, but is designed to produce 2D […]
16/04/2025
Startup funding hit records in Q1. But the outlook for 2025 is still awful.
Startups attracted $91.5 billion in venture capital funding in Q1, according to the latest report from data provider PitchBook. This figure not only exceeds the previous quarter’s allocation by 18.5% but also represents the second-highest quarterly investment in the last decade. Despite this seemingly positive news, Kyle Stanford, lead U.S. venture capital analyst at PitchBook, […]
16/04/2025
Microsoft researchers say they’ve developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs
Microsoft researchers claim they’ve developed the largest-scale 1-bit AI model, also known as a “bitnet,” to date. Called BitNet b1.58 2B4T, it’s openly available under an MIT license and can run on CPUs, including Apple’s M2. Bitnets are essentially compressed models designed to run on lightweight hardware. In standard models, weights, the values that define […]
16/04/2025
AMD takes $800M haircut as US gov't cuts off China's AI GPU supply
AMD is projected to write off $800 million because of expanded export restrictions on AI chips.
16/04/2025
NSO lawyer names Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan as spyware customers behind 2019 WhatsApp hacks
This is the first time representatives for the spyware maker have publicly named its government customers.
16/04/2025
NSO lawyer names Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan as spyware customers accused of 2019 WhatsApp hacks
This is the first time representatives for the spyware maker have publicly named its government customers.
16/04/2025
Figma tells AI startup to stop using the term ‘Dev Mode’
Figma slapped Swedish AI coding startup Loveable with a cease-and-desist warning for naming one of its new product features “Dev Mode.” It turns out Figma successfully trademarked the term Dev Mode in November last year, according to the US Patent and Trademark office, having introduced its own Dev Mode feature in 2023. “We’re flattered that […]
16/04/2025
DJI’s new drone speaker lets cops yell at you from the sky
DJI’s new drone accessory is designed to ensure public safety and emergency officials are heard loud and clear — and I mean really loud. Its enterprise-focused Zenmuse V1 speaker can broadcast the sound of someone’s voice at up to 127 decibels at 1 meter, a number DJI says is “on par with the sound level […]
16/04/2025
TikTok is getting its own version of community notes
TikTok has announced “Footnotes,” its own take on the community notes features that started on Twitter and have been spreading to other social networks. As elsewhere, it’s a crowd-sourced approach to moderation — TikTok says contributors will be able to “add relevant information to content on our platform.” US users can apply to become Footnotes […]
16/04/2025
Trump administration decides to fund CVE cybersecurity tracker after all
The government will continue funding the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. In a statement to The Verge, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) spokesperson Jared Auchey said it “executed the option period on the contract to ensure there will be no lapse in critical CVE services” last night. On Tuesday, MITRE, the government-funded organization […]
16/04/2025
Budget-friendly RX 9060 XT GPUs tipped for Computex unveil next month — on-shelf inventory expected by early June
AMD’s affordable RX 9060 XT GPUs are almost here, poised to challenge the RTX 5060 Ti series.
16/04/2025
As Deezer approaches profitability, it rolls out a custom algorithm and other new features
Last month, Deezer reported its first positive cash flow in 2024, marking a significant milestone in its history. As the music streaming platform nears profitability, it’s launching new features to differentiate itself in the highly competitive market. On Wednesday, Deezer announced several features aimed at providing listeners with a more personalized experience. These include a […]
16/04/2025
TikTok begins testing Footnotes, a new Community Notes-like feature
TikTok is testing a new “Footnotes” feature that works similarly to Community Notes on X. The social network announced on Wednesday that Footnotes will allow users to add additional context and relevant information to videos to help others better understand certain content, starting in the United States. The company says Footnotes will complement its current […]
16/04/2025
Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds severe data loss and performance issues
A year-two update on the How long can SSDs store data unpowered video series is another reminder about the importance of regular backups.
16/04/2025
Deck raises $12M to ‘Plaid-ify” any website using AI
Deck, a startup that claims to be building “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round — about nine months after closing its seed financing, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The new raise, led by Infinity Ventures, brings Montreal-based Deck’s total raised since its January 2024 […]
16/04/2025
Nvidia addresses 40 black screen, monitor, and crashing issues with new RTX 5060 Ti game-ready driver
Nvidia solves 40 black screen, display and game-related crashing issues in latest game ready driver supporting the all-new RTX 5060 Ti.
16/04/2025
Kia is pitching Americans an affordable EV sedan with EV4 debut
Kia debuted its 2026 EV4 sedan at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday, its first global electric sedan and one designed for customers looking for an affordable EV. Whether U.S. customers will gravitate towards a sedan is an open question — and one Kia isn’t necessarily betting on. The company launched sales of […]
16/04/2025
Bolt’s Ryan Breslow pins his hopes on a new app that takes on Coinbase, Zelle, and PayPal
Ryan Breslow is officially back. While the founder of one-click checkout company Bolt re-assumed its helm as CEO in March, Breslow is unveiling Wednesday a new “superapp” that he hopes will formally mark his return as the fintech’s leader. He describes the new product as “one-click crypto and everyday payments” in a single platform, in […]
16/04/2025
Less than a month left to claim your brand’s spotlight at TechCrunch Sessions: AI with an exhibit table
TechCrunch Sessions: AI is right around the corner — and the deadline to reserve your exhibit table is nearly gone. If you’ve got an AI innovation worth shouting about, now’s your moment. Don’t sit on the sidelines while others take the spotlight. Put your product where it belongs — in front of the leaders and […]
16/04/2025
A first look at Microsoft’s new Xbox Copilot
Microsoft has started testing an early version of its Copilot for Gaming experience. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Xbox plans tell me that employees can now access Copilot within the Xbox mobile app, and that while it looks similar to the existing Copilot chatbot, it’s designed to tap into your Xbox account. Announced last month, Copilot […]
16/04/2025
Capsule captures $12M to build the next version of its AI video editor for brands
Capsule is upgrading its AI-powered video editing assistant for marketing, sales, and media teams following the close of a $12 million round of Series A funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The upgraded editor will include new features like AI suggestions and support for real-time collaboration. The new version of its studio software will feature […]
16/04/2025
TechCrunch All Stage: Full agenda revealed
The ultimate founder summit returns — now bigger than ever! Formerly TechCrunch Early Stage, TC All Stage is bringing together founders and VCs from every stage, not just early stage. We’re thrilled to unveil the full breakout session lineup at TC All Stage. Packed with scaling pioneers and top-tier VCs, these sessions are designed for […]
16/04/2025
Subaru debuts Trailseeker, an all-electric SUV coming for Rivian’s outdoorsy EV customer base
Subaru is back with a new EV, and like its predecessor the Solterra, the all-electric Trailseeker SUV includes a bit of Toyota handiwork. Subaru of America revealed the 2026 Trailseeker SUV on Wednesday at the New York International Auto Show. The EV, the second in the Japanese automaker’s portfolio, looks familiar in a hey-that-looks-like-a-Subaru sort […]
16/04/2025
Spotify is down
Spotify is down according to widespread user reports across the US and Europe, with issues preventing the platform from loading or streaming music. At 8:45AM ET on Wednesday morning, the Spotify Status account on X said it was “aware of some issues” affecting the service right now, and is currently “checking them out.” While most […]
16/04/2025
Lyft to buy taxi app FREENOW for $197M to enter Europe
Ride-hailing giant Lyft said it has agreed to acquire FREENOW, a German multi-mobility app with ride-hail at its core, from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility for about $197 million in cash. The acquisition opens up the European market to Lyft for the first time. The company has only operated in the U.S. and Canada since it […]
16/04/2025
AMD takes $800M charge on US license requirement for AI chips
AMD says that the U.S. government’s license control requirement for exporting AI chips to China and certain other countries may impact its earnings materially. If AMD doesn’t successfully obtain a license, the company could be on the hook for roughly $800 million in inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves charges, the company said in a […]
16/04/2025
'Pristine' RTX 4090 returned to eBay seller with GPU and VRAM chips missing
An engineer recounts being 'stressed out for the two weeks,' after someone bought their used RTX 4090 on eBay then had the cheek to return it with the GPU and memory chips missing.
16/04/2025
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB review: More VRAM and a price 'paper cut' could make for a compelling GPU
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB packs plenty of VRAM, with a base MSRP that looks reasonably attractive. It's not a huge generational improvement (outside of MFG numbers), but it will be a good option if it's readily available at $450 or less.
16/04/2025
Where to buy Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti graphics card as 16GB and 8GB flavors hit the shelves
Nvidia's new lower-end RTX 5060 Ti GPU is the latest graphics card to launch. Check our handy list for all the RTX 5060 Ti models on sale and retailer links.
16/04/2025
Patreon tests a native live video feature where creators can stream 24/7
Patreon is finally experimenting with a native livestreaming, a new feature that could attract more creators and help them earn more money. The capability is rolling out to select testers this week and will become more widely available this summer. Similar to other platforms, Patreon’s new livestream feature comes with a live chat where fans […]
16/04/2025
Patreon is getting livestreaming
Patreon is taking on Twitch with a new feature that lets creators offer live video streams directly on the platform. The feature will be available “starting this week” to “select creators” in an early access test, and the company plans to roll it out more widely this summer, according to a press release. In the […]
16/04/2025
Aura’s new Aspen looks even more like a traditional photo frame
Digital picture frame company Aura Home’s newest product, The Aspen, displays your digital photos in analog style. With a 12-inch anti-glare display, a 4:3 aspect ratio, and a super slim bezel, the $229 frame improves on the company’s 10-inch Carver frame ($149) while retaining Aura’s core photo-sharing feature. It also brings two new software features […]
16/04/2025
Eindhoven researchers achieve 5.7 Tb/s data transfer speeds using highly focused infrared light
The researchers utilized multiple wavelengths to boost wireless speed without interference
16/04/2025
A dev built a test to see how AI chatbots respond to controversial topics
A pseudonymous developer has created what they’re calling a “free speech eval,” SpeechMap, for the AI models powering chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and X’s Grok. The goal is to compare how different models treat sensitive and controversial subjects, the developer told TechCrunch, including political criticism and questions about civil rights and protest. AI companies have […]
16/04/2025
X’s UK division saw revenue decline 66% in 2023 following Musk’s takeover
X has not been faring well in the U.K., which used to be a major source of revenue for the social network prior to Elon Musk’s takeover. Still named Twitter UK Ltd, revenues and profits for X’s U.K. entity collapsed by over 60% in 2023, according to accounts filed this week with the U.K.’s Companies […]
16/04/2025
Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers fix lots of bugs and crashes
Nvidia is releasing a new GPU driver today that includes a massive amount of fixes for bugs and crashes that have plagued its Game Ready drivers recently. After widespread reports of black screens, game crashes, and general stability issues, today’s 576.02 driver release (.exe download) not only bumps the version number significantly from last month’s […]
16/04/2025
Cosmic Robotics’ robots could speed up solar panel deployments
Cosmic Robotics has developed a robotic assistant that does the heavy lifting on solar job sites.
16/04/2025
In pursuit of a viral, five-year-old compact camera
I’ve been trying to buy a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III for two weeks, and I no longer believe this camera exists. The Canon G7 X III is so popular that strategies for buying them have become a whole sub-genre of videos on TikTok It definitely existed at one point. The camera was released […]
16/04/2025
Nvidia writes off $5.5 billion in GPUs as US gov't chokes off supply of H20s to China
Apparently, Jensen Huang's $1 million dinner with Donald Trump did not help to ease U.S. government's concerns over H20 GPUs exports to China.
16/04/2025
Microsoft lets Copilot Studio use a computer on its own
Microsoft has enabled a new “computer use” feature for Copilot Studio this week that lets AI agents interact with websites and desktop applications. Much like OpenAI’s Operator or Claude’s identically named “computer use” feature, businesses will be able to use Copilot Studio to build AI agents that treat websites and desktop apps as if they’re […]
16/04/2025
Hammerspace, an unstructured data wrangler used by Nvidia, Meta and Tesla, raises $100M at $500M+ valuation
Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: you need data — a lot of it — to build the models, and then the models need efficient ways to ingest and output data to work. A company called Hammerspace has built a system to help AI and other organisations tap into data troves […]
16/04/2025
Made in the USA: Inside Nvidia's $500 billion server gambit
The scale and timeline of Nvidia's plans to build AI server supply chain in the U.S. look ambitious, but can they actually be fulfilled?
16/04/2025
The ‘Oscars of Science’ can’t take a Trump joke
When the Breakthrough Prize, founded by Facebook, Apple, and Google moguls and sometimes called “the Oscars of Science” by people who want that to be true, invited a comedian to present one of its awards it probably should have expected a few topical jokes. Remarks made by Seth Rogen during the April 5th livestream about […]
16/04/2025
Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud
Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend […]
16/04/2025
Visa-backed African unicorn Moniepoint tackles remittances. But is it late to the game?
When Visa invested in Nigerian fintech Moniepoint earlier this year, it didn’t just validate the newly minted unicorn — it signaled a bold new direction. As part of that deal, the Nigerian fintech best known for building one of Africa’s largest business banking platforms, hinted at plans to integrate with Visa Direct, a move that […]
16/04/2025
Opera adds its Aria AI assistant to Opera Mini browser
Norway-based browser company Opera said today that it is making its AI assistant Aria available to Opera Mini users on Android. This move will help users with low-end devices and data constraints access better AI features. Aria AI can help users get the latest news and information on different topics, learn more about various subjects, and […]
16/04/2025
TS Anil, CEO of Monzo, is joining our StrictlyVC London lineup
StrictlyVC, the boutique brand powered by TechCrunch and known for evening events that invite headliners into smaller rooms to connect with live audiences, is headed back to London on May 13 — and its latest speaker lineup is one of its strongest yet. Joining the stage is TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, the digital […]
16/04/2025
BougeRV’s electric wagon is the uphill king and downhill menace
Not to brag, but I’m somewhat of an expert in folding wagons. Huge flex, I know. But I’ve never tested one with a motor like BougeRV’s new Electric Foldable Wagon. I have a little surf shack that sits almost exactly 1km (0.6 miles) from the parking lot, where I regularly carry supplies and sports gear […]
16/04/2025
How Musk manages his growing family: WSJ
Elon Musk says it’s his duty to “make new humans.” Now, a WSJ investigation suggests he may have fathered more than the 14 children already known, with sources claiming the real number could be significantly higher. The report also describes how Musk keeps those details under wraps. At the center of it all, per the […]
16/04/2025
Grok gains a canvas-like tool for creating docs and apps
Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has gained a canvas-like feature for editing and creating documents and basic apps. Called Grok Studio, the feature was announced on X late Tuesday. It’s available for both free and paying Grok users on Grok.com “Grok can now generate documents, code, reports, and browser games,” wrote […]
16/04/2025
Zuckerberg’s antitrust testimony aired his wildest ideas in Meta’s history
Making Instagram a separate company. Buying Snapchat. Wiping everyone’s Facebook friends. Creating a feed of only ads. These were some of the ideas that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered over the years as he built his social media empire. Over the past two days, he talked about them from the witness stand at a federal […]
16/04/2025
Skullcandy partners with Bose for its new $99 ANC earbuds
Skullcandy has made a name for itself in recent years with well-featured budget earbuds that don’t sound awful. Although its new Method 360 ANC earbuds are launching with a “special $99.99 introductory price” (that will eventually go up to $129.99) making them one of the brand’s most expensive offerings, the company has partnered with Bose […]
15/04/2025
The student arrested at his naturalization interview knew it was coming
Mohsen Mahdawi had a feeling his naturalization appointment would go awry. A week before his meeting with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Mahdawi called his friend Chris Helali and told him he was concerned. “He thought it was likely — and I agreed — that he would be arrested, that they would ambush him […]
15/04/2025
OpenAI names new nonprofit ‘advisors’
OpenAI has revealed the “advisors” for its new nonprofit commission: Dolores Huerta, Monica Lozano, Dr. Robert K. Ross, and Jack Oliver. The company says the four advisors will help “inform OpenAI’s philanthropic efforts,” according to an announcement on Tuesday. Huerta was a prominent labor activist during the 20th century, while Lozano was the president and […]
15/04/2025
Nvidia H20 chip exports hit with license requirement by US government
Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government […]
15/04/2025
Figma ignores the fear, files paperwork for an IPO
Design software startup Figma announced Tuesday it has filed its confidential paperwork for an IPO. We won’t know more until that paperwork becomes public, which, best-case scenario would be in about a month. However, with the stock market in groundhog mode — seeing its shadow with every new gyration of the Trump administration’s trade policies […]
15/04/2025
ChatGPT now has a section for your AI-generated images
OpenAI is adding an image library to ChatGPT to make it easier to access your AI-generated images, the company announced today. It’s rolling out to all Free, Plus, and Pro users on mobile and on the web. In a short video, OpenAI shows how it works. From the ChatGPT sidebar, you’ll be able to see […]
15/04/2025
Telli, a YC alum, raises pre-seed funding for its AI voice agents
Former Y Combinator startup telli is helping companies alleviate the bottleneck that occurs when a high-volume of customers try to, for example, book appointments. Its AI voice agents kick in and handle basic operations while handing off more-complex processes to human operators. The Berlin-based startup has now raised $3.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led […]
15/04/2025
For security, Android phones will now auto-reboot after three days
The update comes months after Apple pushed its own “inactivity reboot” feature.
15/04/2025
TikTok takes on Google Maps by surfacing reviews in the comments tab
As TikTok continues to build out its search experience, the social network is now surfacing reviews for select places right within the comments tab of a video. The new feature, which appears to be a test, eliminates the need to conduct a new search or open up Google when you come across a place on […]
15/04/2025
The CVE program for tracking security flaws is about to lose federal funding
Funding is about to run out for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program – a system used by major companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, and AMD to identify and track publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The program helps engineers identify how bad an exploit is and how to prioritize applying patches or other mitigations. […]
15/04/2025
Meta’s antitrust trial slide redactions aren’t actually hiding anything
A PDF of Meta’s opening statement slides in its FTC antitrust hearing yesterday contains easy-to-remove redactions that make it possible to see everything the company didn’t want made public, The Verge has discovered. Thanks to the poor redactions, we can see sections comparing the use of Apple’s Messages app to Meta apps like Instagram and […]
15/04/2025
Stop doomscrolling and watch the ‘Great Moose Migration’ livestream
You could say that TikTok is ruining our attention spans, and yet, viewers around the world are tuning in to watch a monotonous livestream from a Swedish TV station that they’ve probably never heard of. It’s time for the Great Moose Migration. For thousands of years, moose have crossed the Ångerman River each spring, trekking […]
15/04/2025
OpenAI may ‘adjust’ its safeguards if rivals release ‘high-risk’ AI
In an update to its Preparedness Framework, the internal framework OpenAI uses to decide whether AI models are safe and what safeguards, if any, are needed during development and release, OpenAI said that it may “adjust” its requirements if a rival AI lab releases a “high-risk” system without comparable safeguards. The change reflects the increasing […]
15/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg once suggested wiping all Facebook friends lists to boost usage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a “potentially crazy idea” in 2022 to get people using Facebook more: deleting everyone’s friends’ lists. The possibility was discussed on Monday via internal emails shown by the FTC as Zuckerberg testified during Meta’s antitrust trial. Zuckerberg floated the idea of considering “wiping everyone’s graphs” — their friends lists — […]
15/04/2025
Blackmagic Design says tariffs have made camera price hikes ‘unavoidable’
Blackmagic Design, an Australia-based digital cinematography camera company, was gearing up to start making products in the United States before the Trump administration blew a tariff-shaped hole in its plans. Now, not only is Blackmagic having to increase prices in the US to mitigate some of the levies on imported goods, but those same tariffs […]
15/04/2025
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 graphics card roundup: Every announced card from every AIB partner
RTX 5060 series cards consist of triple-fan and dual-fan solutions, as well as unorthodox options such as a single-fan option from Zotac, a low-profile variant from Gigabyte, and some Gigabyte models with a physical x8 PCIe finger.RTX 5060 series cards consist of triple-fan and dual fan solutions, as well as unorthodox options such as a single fan option from Zotac, a low-profile variant from Gigabyte, and some Gigabyte models with a physical x8 PCIe finger.
15/04/2025
India’s BluSmart swept up in Gensol investigation alleging misuse of EV loans
India’s market regulator launched a probe Tuesday into Gensol Engineering after finding alleged misuse of electric vehicle loans. BluSmart, a ride-hailing startup connected to Gensol that was once seen as an emerging Uber rival in the South Asian market, has also been swept up into the investigation. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) […]
15/04/2025
Figma sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lovable over the term ‘Dev Mode’
We may be witnessing the makings of a new tech industry feud between competitors. Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch. The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term “Dev Mode” for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode, […]
15/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg suggested spinning off Instagram
About a year before the Federal Trade Commission first opened its antitrust investigation into Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, CEO Mark Zuckerberg internally suggested “the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company.†In a 2018 email to his executives, Zuckerberg wrote that, ​​”while most companies resist break-ups, the corporate history is […]
15/04/2025
Anthropic is reportedly launching a voice AI you can speak to
Anthropic is getting ready to introduce a new “voice mode” feature that could rival OpenAI’s similar option within ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg. The AI voice assistant will reportedly live within its Claude AI chatbot and could start rolling out “as soon as this month.” According to Bloomberg, Anthropic plans to roll out three English-language voices […]
15/04/2025
Join the .NET & C# Teams at Microsoft Build 2025
The countdown to Microsoft Build 2025 is on! Join us May 19-22 either in-person in Seattle or online and explore an exciting lineup of .NET and C# content, including sessions on AI integration, app modernization, and the latest language features. The post Join the .NET & C# Teams at Microsoft Build 2025 appeared first on .NET Blog.
15/04/2025
On TikTok, Chinese factories are trolling anxious American shoppers
Hermès handbags, Birkenstocks, Tide Pods, Lululemon activewear, and mountains of luxury furniture — what if I told you you could cut out the middleman and buy it straight from the source for a fraction of the cost? So goes a genre of viral videos cropping up on social media that claim to show Chinese manufacturers […]
15/04/2025
Google Search is going to be google.com globally
Google announced Tuesday that it’s going to redirect country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) for Google Search to google.com over the coming months to “streamline people’s experience on Search,” according to a blog post. The change means that if, for example, you used google.ng (for Nigeria) or google.com.br (for Brazil), you’ll see google.com in your […]
15/04/2025
OpenAI hires team behind GV-backed AI eval platform Context.ai
Context.ai, a startup building evaluations and analytics for AI models, announced Tuesday that its co-founders will join OpenAI. Context.ai plans to wind down its products following the acqui-hire, per a message on the company’s website. When reached for comment, OpenAI declined to reveal the terms of the deal. “Evals are a requirement to building high-performing […]
15/04/2025
Google bets on geothermal to power data centers in Taiwan
Swedish company Baseload Capital is developing the project.
15/04/2025
Dune: Awakening will slumber for just a bit longer
Players looking to harness desert power will have to wait as Dune: Awakening has been delayed. Funcom, developers of the MMORPG based on Frank Herbert’s Dune sci-fi series, announced the news saying the game will be pushed back from its May release date to June 10th. Players who have pre-purchased one of the game’s deluxe […]
15/04/2025
Experience amazing VR gaming with Meta’s Quest 3S VR headset deal - now at an all-time-low price
Step into virtual worlds with this amazing deal on the Meta Quest 3S VR headset.
15/04/2025
Microsoft warns of Outlook Classic bug that can crank CPU use up to 50% when typing
Microsoft has confirmed that Outlook Classic is plagued by a bug causing high CPU usage spikes, triggered whenever you're typing a message.
15/04/2025
Anthropic forms a new team to grow its AWS business
In a sign of Anthropic’s increasingly cozy relationship with Amazon, Anthropic has formed a new team to recruit AWS customers to use its AI products. The team, which Anthropic appears to have begun hiring several months ago, aims to “accelerate” the adoption of Anthropic’s AI among AWS accounts by “building programs that […] scale across […]
15/04/2025
Amazon’s latest Fire HD tablets are now on sale starting at $95
If you want a mental escape from today’s constant bombardment of alarming news, one method is to lose yourself in a good book — and an excellent way to do that is to read that good book on one of Amazon’s Fire tablets. Amazon has put many of the latest Fire HD tablets on sale […]
15/04/2025
Google’s geothermal energy ambitions are growing
Google, for the first time, inked an agreement to purchase geothermal energy for its facilities in Asia. The deal also marks the first geothermal power purchase agreement for Taiwan, according to the company. Google is working toward climate goals of cutting the company’s planet-heating emissions in half and matching its electricity use with carbon-free energy […]
15/04/2025
Publishing platform Medium says it’s sticking with DEI
Publishing platform Medium says it’s still committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even as many other U.S. tech companies have scaled back their efforts in this space to appease the Trump administration. In a blog post published on Monday, Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine backed the company’s diverse community, saying that businesses shouldn’t have to […]
15/04/2025
It’s time for Europe to choose between US or Chinese satellite tech, says FCC chair
European allies who have reservations about working with Elon Musk’s Starlink will have more to worry about if they side with Chinese satellite internet services, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr told the Financial Times. Carr said that politics having an influence on long-term decisions in Europe was “unfortunate,” and that “allied Western democracies” should […]
15/04/2025
Google’s Veo 2 video generating model comes to Gemini
Google is bringing its Veo 2 video-generating AI model to users who pay for Gemini Advanced, the company’s premium AI plan. The expansion comes as Google looks to deliver an answer to OpenAI’s Sora video generation platform, and as competition in the space grows fiercer. Two weeks ago, one of the more formidable synthetic media […]
15/04/2025
Anthropic’s Claude can now read your Gmail
Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its AI chatbot, Claude, now integrates with Google Workspace, allowing it to search and reference your emails in Gmail, scheduled events in Google Calendar, and documents in Google Docs. The integration is rolling out in beta first to subscribers to Anthropic’s Max, Team, Enterprise, and Pro plans. Administrators managing multi-user […]
15/04/2025
Anthropic launches research tool and Google Workspace integration
Anthropic is launching two major features today: Research and Google Workspace integration. The company announced today that Claude can now connect directly to your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Documents, turning the AI assistant into what Anthropic calls “your frontline workplace assistant.” Instead of manually digging through countless emails, calendar invites, and documents to find information, […]
15/04/2025
Google rolls out its AI video generator to Gemini Advanced subscribers
Google is letting Gemini Advanced subscribers try out Veo 2, its text-to-video AI model that it says is capable of creating high-resolution clips with “cinematic realism.” Starting today, subscribers can select Veo 2 from the Gemini model dropdown on the web and mobile, where they can enter a prompt to generate an eight-second video in […]
15/04/2025
Kill your crewmates in 3D when Among Us 3D launches in May
An emergency meeting has been called to announce Among Us 3D will launch on May 6th. The game was originally planned to be a VR-exclusive before the development crew at Innersloth and Schell Games pivoted to making this version of the game accessible to those without the expensive hardware too. Among Us 3D is compatible […]
15/04/2025
Notorious image board 4chan hacked and internal data leaked
The infamous website was taken down and working intermittently, while hackers leaked alleged data like moderators email addresses, and source code.
15/04/2025
Google must stop favoring Search and Chrome on Android in Japan
Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has ordered Google to stop making deals that give preference to Google Search and Chrome on Android devices. Nikkei Asia says that it’s the first time the regulator has issued a cease and desist order to a major tech company. The regulator found that Google had asked at least six […]
15/04/2025
Deel’s CEO is now in Dubai, complicating Rippling’s lawsuit
Rippling’s efforts to serve Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz have been significantly complicated by the fact that Bouaziz and his lawyer are now in Dubai, according to internal correspondence seen by TechCrunch. The UAE is a country with a reputation of being a safe haven for those wanting to avoid extradition. Rippling is trying to serve […]
15/04/2025
Witness a dynamic dialogue between two visionary CEOs
Step into an extraordinary fireside chat featuring Ali Ghodsi, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Databricks, alongside Dario Amodei, the innovative co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Discover how their groundbreaking partnership is set to accelerate the evolution of domain-specific AI agents. During this free, virtual event, you’ll also gain exclusive access to three additional sessions […]
15/04/2025
Limited-edition Severance keyboard features a built-in trackball, but aptly, there’s no Escape
This ‘Dasher’ style input device from Atomic Keyboards was inspired by the Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller.
15/04/2025
OpenAI is reportedly developing its own X-like social media platform
OpenAI is building its own X-like social media network, according to a new report from The Verge. The project is still in the early stages, but there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that contains a social feed. The report states that it’s unknown if OpenAI plans to launch the social network as a […]
15/04/2025
OpenAI ships GPT-4.1 without a safety report
On Monday, OpenAI launched a new family of AI models, GPT-4.1, which the company said outperformed some of its existing models on certain tests, particularly benchmarks for programming. However, GPT-4.1 didn’t ship with the safety report that typically accompanies OpenAI’s model releases, known as a model or system card. As of Tuesday morning, OpenAI had […]
15/04/2025
Tom Hiddleston dances through the new Life of Chuck trailer
After a light teaser trailer last month, we finally have our first proper look at The Life of Chuck. And while it doesn’t give too much away, the new trailer provides a good taste of the emotional tone of the movie, which is a heartwarming story of one man’s life that has a touch of […]
15/04/2025
Comcast announces a five-year price lock for Xfinity internet plans
Comcast has announced that new customers can choose a five-year, guaranteed price lock-in for its Xfinity internet plans. The plans won’t require an annual contract, and range in price from $55 to $105 per month, according to a release emailed to The Verge. They also include unlimited data. It’s a nice thought, being able to […]
15/04/2025
Former Tesla supply chain leaders create Atomic, an AI inventory solution
Tesla famously struggled to scale up production of the Model 3 sedan in 2018 — so much so that CEO Elon Musk said his company was weeks away from collapsing. That near-death experience helped spawn a whole new company called Atomic that’s built around using AI to streamline supply chains. Co-founded by former Tesla employees […]
15/04/2025
Here’s how Pacific Fusion plans to build a fusion power plant
Pacific Fusion also announced the hiring of a key executive from competitor Helion.
15/04/2025
Founder’s Fund’s new $4.6B fund indicates an era of big VC spending
Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund has completed the raise of its third growth fund, according to an SEC filing. Beyond the sum — which is a big step up from its last previous $3.4 billion growth fund closed in early 2022 — there’s a couple of other interesting things to note about this raise. For one, it’s more […]
15/04/2025
4chan’s ‘cesspool of the internet’ is down after apparently being hacked
4chan appears to be down following a major hack that reportedly exposed its source code. A user on a competing messaging board claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday night and claimed to have reopened the site’s /qa/ board. 4chan is, obviously, also notorious for trying to trick outsiders about things happening on the site, […]
15/04/2025
OpenAI is building a social network
OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While the project is still in early stages, we’re told there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that has a social feed. CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, our […]
15/04/2025
Second-gen Snapdragon X PC chips may boost performance up to 22%
A Chinese blogger claims that Qualcomm's second-gen Snapdragon X processors for PCs featuring Nuvia-designed Oryon cores will start at 4.4 GHz and deliver 18–22% higher performance.
15/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting all your Facebook friends
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting everyone’s Facebook friends in an effort to boost the social network’s cultural relevance. This “potentially crazy idea,” as the exec called it at the time, was revealed on Monday as a part of the evidence introduced during the first day of the U.S. government’s antitrust trial against Meta. […]
15/04/2025
A peek into the future of 3D printing: Rapid + TCT 2025 in Detroit
Over 400 exhibitors from all facets of the 3D printing industry were at Rapid + TCT 2025 in Detroit to showcase their latest and greatest offerings.
15/04/2025
DUG Nomad is an mobile, immersion-cooled data center cube for edge AI
The DUG Nomad is an immersion-cooled data center is capable of handling a handful of rugged environments so you can take edge AI computing on the go.
15/04/2025
Leaked images suggest Oblivion remaster coming soon
An Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered announcement seems imminent. Images from the game were found in the website files of the developer Virtuous before being removed. The images, which can still be seen on the hosting site imgur, included several side-by-side comparisons between the game’s 2006 release and the remaster. Several photos show off the […]
15/04/2025
Final days to apply to speak at TechCrunch All Stage
The application to speak at TechCrunch All Stage closes this Friday, April 18 — don’t miss your chance to share hard-won insights with 1,200+ startup founders and VCs. If you’ve been in the trenches and cracked tough growth problems, now’s the time to step up and share your scaling strategies onstage at TC All Stage, […]
15/04/2025
Notion releases an AI-powered email client for Gmail
Notion released Notion Mail, an AI-powered email client for Gmail that integrates with the rest of Notion’s workflow management platform, on Tuesday. Notion Mail connects to Notion users’ Gmail accounts and uses AI to help users organize their emails, draft responses, schedule meetings, and search across messages. Any Notion user can sign up, and Notion […]
15/04/2025
Reach 1,000+ AI leaders: Host a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Looking to position your brand in front of the brightest minds in artificial intelligence? Hosting a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week is your opportunity to do just that. Reach 1,200+ attendees and the surrounding Berkeley tech scene. From June 1 to June 7, TechCrunch invites startups, investors, and builders to bring unique and […]
15/04/2025
Notion Mail is a minimalist but powerful take on email
Notion is launching the third app in its suite of work tools, an email app called Notion Mail. (The other two, of course, are Notion Calendar and Notion itself.) The app, available now for web and Mac and in testing for iOS, is the next step in Notion’s attempt to compete with Microsoft Office and […]
15/04/2025
Why Doctor Who’s latest robot threat is a dangerous AI: ‘this is what’s happening’
The newest season of Doctor Who opens as the series often does — with an unsuspecting human stumbling into some alien strangeness that doesn’t make any sense until an odd yet charming Time Lord shows up in a police box ready to save the day. The premiere episode, “The Robot Revolution,†feels like classic Doctor […]
15/04/2025
Where to buy refurbished products
Buying a refurbished device rather than a new one can save you a ton of money. It can also be a savvy method of getting what you want during yet another moment of global trade instability, with the latest blow coming from the Trump administration’s intense tariffs on US imports from China. However, these products […]
15/04/2025
What you should know before buying refurbished gadgets
Most people know that buying a refurbished tech product will save you money compared to buying it new. It also gives a device a second life instead of sending it off to be recycled. Not only that, buying refurbished is sometimes a clever workaround for finding new or tough-to-find products at a lower price. If […]
15/04/2025
Intel's P-Core only Bartlett Lake chip inches closer to reality with new Linux patch
An Intel engineer has validated the existence of a P-core only counterpart to Bartlett Lake-S, rumored to arrive with up to 12 Raptor Cove cores.
15/04/2025
Lucid Gravity First Drive: An electric SUV that doesn’t make compromises
Lucid has spent years working on its second EV — a plush van-like SUV designed to be the category killer that could take market share from the likes of other luxury EV and internal combustion people haulers like the Rivian R1S, Cadillac Escalade IQ, BMW X7, and Audi Q8. The Saudi-backed company’s aim was to […]
15/04/2025
World's first 3D-texture UV printer for consumers now available for pre-order — prints onto 'nearly any surface'
Anker Innovations has just kicked off pre-orders for what is claimed to be the 'first 3D-texture UV Printer designed for personal use.'
15/04/2025
Buried Steam tool shows how much you've spent on your account in your lifetime
You can see how much money you've sunk into your Steam account by going to this page.
15/04/2025
Nvidia announces GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060, starting at $379 and $299
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB will arrive on April 16, 2025, with a $429 base MSRP. The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, starting at $379, also technically launches tomorrow, though retail availability is a bit of a question mark. The RTX 5060 will arrive in May with a $299 MSRP.
15/04/2025
Fusion power has a fuel problem; Hexium has a laser-powered solution
Hexium has emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding.
15/04/2025
Gigabyte GS27U 27-inch Ultra HD 160 Hz Gaming Monitor Review: Raising The Value Standard
Gigabyte raises the bar for value with its GS27U. It’s a 27-inch IPS Ultra HD gaming monitor with 160 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDR10 and wide gamut color, and has everything you need for high-res gaming on a budget.
15/04/2025
Nanoleaf’s new pegboard dock lights up your accessories and room
The latest addition to Nanoleaf’s lineup does more than just light up a room. Like the company’s Expo Smart Display Cases, Nanoleaf’s new Pegboard Desk Dock is designed to both organize and put accessories like controllers and headphones on display using color-changing LED lighting that can be synced to what you’re watching, playing, or listening […]
15/04/2025
Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti arrives on April 16th starting at $379
Nvidia is announcing its RTX 5060 family of GPUs today, just a day before it releases the RTX 5060 Ti on April 16th. Two variants of the RTX 5060 Ti are launching, the $379 8GB of VRAM model and the $429 16GB version. The $299 RTX 5060 will launch at some point in May with […]
15/04/2025
Phantom Neuro grabs $19M to help amputees put their phantom limbs to use
The science fiction trope of humans superpowered by computer and bionic implants is fast becoming a reality, and today, a startup hoping for a role in how that plays out is announcing some funding. Phantom Neuro, which is developing a wristband-like device that gets implanted under the skin to let a person control prosthetic limbs, […]
15/04/2025
The 2025 Vergecast streaming draft
(Before we get started, a reminder: The Vergecast is nominated for a Webby Award! Voting is only open for a few more days, and the award is decided by your votes. We’re up against some steep competition, but we really want to win — and we’d love your help. Thanks so much to everyone who […]
15/04/2025
Polaroid’s new instant camera warns you about exposure and focus issues before you shoot
Polaroid’s new Flip camera can prevent unwanted surprises when an instant photo develops. Using a new scene analysis feature, the instant camera warns you when the image you’re framing is overexposed, underexposed, or when there’s potential focus issues before you press the shutter button — all through a red LED warning light in the viewfinder […]
15/04/2025
Android phones will soon reboot if they’re locked for a few days
Android is launching a new security feature that will force devices to reboot themselves if you haven’t unlocked them for a while, making it harder for other people to access the data inside. The feature included in the latest Google Play services update says that Android phones will automatically restart “if locked for 3 consecutive […]
15/04/2025
Atomic-scale chip alignment: Laser holograms could set new standard for 3D semiconductor overlay accuracy
UMass Amherst researchers have developed a laser-based holographic alignment method that could revolutionize overlay accuracy in semiconductor manufacturing, though its industrial adoption may hinge on integration with existing lithography systems.
15/04/2025
Apple details how it plans to improve its AI models by privately analyzing user data
In the wake of criticism over the underwhelming performance of its AI products, especially in areas like notification summaries, Apple on Monday detailed how it is trying to improve its AI models by analyzing user data privately with the aid of synthetic data. Using an approach called “differential privacy,” the company said it would first […]
15/04/2025
Waymo and Uber prepare to launch robotaxi service in Atlanta this summer
Uber is inviting customers in Atlanta to join a list if they’re interested in hailing a Waymo robotaxi as the companies prepare to launch a commercial service in the city. Uber and Waymo last September announced plans to offer a robotaxi service in Austin and Atlanta in early 2025 as part of an expanded partnership. […]
15/04/2025
Hertz says hackers stole customer credit card and driver’s license data
Car rental giant Hertz is alerting customers that personal information including credit card details and Social Security numbers may have been stolen in a data breach that impacted one of the firm’s vendors. In a notice posted to its website, Hertz says that company data “was acquired by an unauthorized third-party” during a cyberattack exploiting […]
15/04/2025
Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani spills business tea with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
Reshma Saujani, founder of the non-profit Girls Who Code, got straight to the point. “If I had applied to be the CEO of Girls Who Code, I wouldn’t have gotten the job,” she told Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on the latest episode of the duchess’ podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder.” “I didn’t code,” Saujani […]
15/04/2025
Marshmallow, the UK insurance startup for migrants, raises $90M at a $2B+ valuation
U.K. startup Marshmallow has blown up over the years by using innovations in data science to build car insurance policies for immigrants and other consumers who have been overlooked or priced out of traditional insurance. Now, with a million drivers insured and a profitable annual revenue run rate of $500 million, Marshmallow has raised a […]
15/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand
“Your honor, the FTC calls Mark Zuckerberg.†Flanked by two bodyguards, Meta’s CEO solemnly strode into a Washington, DC courtroom. Despite his last-ditch efforts to avoid a trial, he was there, jaw clenched, to defend his company from being broken up by the US government. Shortly after he was sworn in, the Federal Trade Commission’s […]
15/04/2025
RLWRLD raises $14.8M to build a foundational model for robotics
As robotics has advanced, industry has steadily adopted more robots to automate away many kinds of grunt work. More than 540,000 new industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2023, taking the number of total industrial robots active to above 4 million, per IFR. Industrial robots typically excel at repetitive tasks, but they find it challenging […]
15/04/2025
AMD teases its first 2nm chip, EPYC 'Venice' fabbed on TSMC N2 node — also announces USA production of current-gen chips
AMD tapes out and powers on a 2nm CCD for its 6th Generation EPYC 'Venice' processor.
14/04/2025
Debates over AI benchmarking have reached Pokémon
Not even Pokémon is safe from AI benchmarking controversy. Last week, a post on X went viral, claiming that Google’s latest Gemini model surpassed Anthropic’s flagship Claude model in the original Pokémon video game trilogy. Reportedly, Gemini had reached Lavendar Town in a developer’s Twitch stream; Claude was stuck at Mount Moon as of late […]
14/04/2025
Lime’s scooter and ebike batteries will be recycled by Redwood Materials
Shared micromobility company Lime has reached an agreement to send batteries used in its scooters and e-bikes to Redwood Materials, which will extract and recycle critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper. The agreement announced Monday makes Redwood Materials the exclusive battery recycling partner for Lime’s shared scooters and e-bikes located in cities […]
14/04/2025
Apple’s complicated plan to improve its AI while protecting privacy
Apple says it’s found a way to make its AI models better without training on its users’ data or even copying it from their iPhones and Macs. In a blog post first reported on by Bloomberg, the company outlined its plans to have devices compare a synthetic dataset to samples of recent emails or messages […]
14/04/2025
Rippling is trying to serve Deel’s CEO, but bailiffs can’t find him
HR tech startup Rippling is trying to serve Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz with papers as part of a blockbuster lawsuit against its competitor. There’s just one problem: French bailiffs hired by Rippling can’t seem to find Bouaziz, Irish newspaper Business Post reports. Rippling sued Deel earlier this year in Ireland alleging the company paid one […]
14/04/2025
Trump says he wants to deport some US citizens, too
President Donald Trump wants to expand his already chaotic and cruel mass deportations. On Monday, he told reporters that he’s looking into the possibility of sending US citizens to a megaprison in El Salvador. “I’d like to go a step further,†Trump claimed at a press conference with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele on Monday. “I […]
14/04/2025
The best smart rings for tracking sleep and health
So, you’re thinking of buying a smart ring. Well, some good news. Picking the best of the lot is incredibly easy right now. The “bad” news is that, as far as trustworthiness and reliability, your choices are somewhat limited, as this is still a niche and emerging gadget category. Smart rings are in the middle […]
14/04/2025
Chinese marketplace DHgate becomes a top US app as trade war intensifies
The Trump trade war has gone viral on TikTok, pushing a Chinese e-commerce app, DHgate, to the top of the Apple App Store in the U.S. After Trump increased U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports by 145%, numerous Chinese suppliers and manufacturers began making TikTok videos explaining to consumers how the global luxury goods market actually […]
14/04/2025
Meet Neptune, a TikTok alternative where creators can hide likes and follower counts
Neptune is one of the newest short-form video apps on the block seeking to compete with major players like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. The app, currently in beta, has attracted attention from hundreds of thousands of users, with 970 testers participating and 400,000 people on the waitlist, per the company. Neptune announced Monday […]
14/04/2025
Seagate's 28TB Expansion portable HDD drops to $329 — Massive storage for your desktop
28TB backup storage for just $329 with this Seagate Expansion HDD deal from Best Buy.
14/04/2025
Intel sells 51% of Altera FPGA business to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion
Intel is selling a 51% stake in Altera to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion as part of a strategy to streamline operations and focus on core products.
14/04/2025
Hertz says customers’ personal data and driver’s licenses stolen in data breach
The car rental giant attributed the breach to Cleo, whose customers had data stolen by a ransomware gang in 2024.
14/04/2025
Sony’s excellent WF-1000XM5 earbuds have hit their lowest price ever
Want a premium pair of earbuds without having to pay a premium price? Right now, Sony’s noise-canceling WF-1000XM5 are on sale at Amazon and Target for $179.99 ($120 off), their best price to date. It’s possible Sony could release the WF-1000XM6 sometime later this year, but for now, few wireless earbuds offer as much value […]
14/04/2025
OpenAI debuts new flagship AI model
OpenAI has introduced GPT-4.1, a successor to the GPT-4o multimodal artificial intelligence model launched by the company last year. During a livestream on Monday, OpenAI said GPT-4.1 is better than GPT-4o “on just about every dimension.” Two smaller model versions are also included in this rollout: a lightweight GPT-4.1 Mini model that, like its predecessor, […]
14/04/2025
OpenAI’s new GPT-4.1 AI models focus on coding
OpenAI on Monday launched a new family of models called GPT-4.1. Yes, “4.1” — as if the company’s nomenclature wasn’t confusing enough already. There’s GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano, all of which OpenAI says “excel” at coding and instruction following. Available through OpenAI’s API but not ChatGPT, the multimodal models have a 1-million-token context […]
14/04/2025
OpenAI plans to phase out GPT-4.5, its largest-ever AI model, from its API
OpenAI said on Monday that it would soon wind down the availability of GPT-4.5, its largest-ever AI model, via its API. GPT-4.5 was released only in late February. Developers will have access to GPT-4.5 via OpenAI’s API until July 14, after which they’ll have to transition to another model in OpenAI’s catalog, the company says. […]
14/04/2025
Government-funded AI tool developed to help monitor and manage nuclear reactors
The Argonne National Laboratory has developed an AI system that can help with various aspects of nuclear reactor management.
14/04/2025
Star Wars is getting a turn-based strategy game called Zero Company
The Star Wars strategy game announced in 2022 finally has a name: Zero Company, as EA revealed today. A website about the game describes it as a “single-player turn-based tactics game,” includes an image, and says that a “first look” will be shown at Star Wars Celebration Japan on April 19th. Bit Reactor, a studio […]
14/04/2025
Meta AI will soon train on EU users’ data
Meta has announced that it’s preparing to train AI on the data of EU users of its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The company says that includes things like public posts, comments, and their chat history with Meta AI, but won’t include “private messages with friends and family.” It also only applies to those who […]
14/04/2025
Google’s newest AI model is designed to help study dolphin ‘speech’
Google’s AI research lab, Google DeepMind, says that it has created an AI model that can help decipher dolphin vocalizations, supporting research efforts to better understand how dolphins communicate. The model, called DolphinGemma, was trained using data from the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), a nonprofit that studies Atlantic spotted dolphins and their behaviors. Built on […]
14/04/2025
AMD splits ROCm toolkit into two parts – ROCm AMDGPU drivers get their own branch under Instinct datacenter GPU moniker
AMD is bifurcating its ROCm open-source software stack with a separate branch for its Linux AMDGPU drivers that now take on the AMD Instinct moniker.
14/04/2025
Google Classroom gives teachers an AI feature for quiz questions
Google Classroom introduced a new AI-powered feature designed to help teachers generate questions. Launched on Monday, this tool lets educators create a list of questions based on specific text input. Using this text-dependent question generation tool, which utilizes Gemini, teachers can either upload files from Google Drive or manually enter text for the AI to […]
14/04/2025
You can hot swap the battery on Samsung’s new rugged tablet
Samsung has announced new versions of its rugged tablets and smartphones designed for use in environments where they’re going to get dirty, wet, and knocked around. Both the Galaxy XCover7 Pro and Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro feature improved battery life, but the tablet goes one step further with a “dual hot-swap” feature allowing the battery […]
14/04/2025
Nvidia aims to build $500 billion worth of AI servers in the USA by 2029
To avoid looming U.S. tariffs and strengthen supply chain resilience, Nvidia is partnering with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor, and SPIL to localize production of its AI servers and chips in the U.S.
14/04/2025
HBO’s Harry Potter TV series has cast its regulars (not those ones)
After weeks of speculation, Warner Bros. Discovery has officially announced the first cast members who will appear in its upcoming Harry Potter TV adaptation. The casting confirmations, focused around some of the most notably adult characters from the Harry Potter novels, are one of the most reassuring signs of life for the wizarding world series […]
14/04/2025
Nvidia starts producing its Blackwell AI chip at TSMC’s Arizona plant
Nvidia has brought some of its chip production stateside. On Monday, Nvidia announced that it has started producing its Blackwell AI GPUs at TSMC’s plant in Phoenix, Arizona, while companies within the state package and test them. TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is the world’s biggest chipmaker and announced a $100 billion investment in […]
14/04/2025
AMD RX 9060 XT specs leak: Navi 44 takes on Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti with 8 and 16GB flavors, 3.2 GHz boost clocks
AMD is extending its wings into the budget market with the RX 9060 XT, which is reportedly arriving in both 8GB and 16GB models.
14/04/2025
Blue Origin’s all-female crew, including Katy Perry, successfully launched
Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, successfully launched its New Shepard rocket at around 9:30 a.m. ET on Monday, as it seeks to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism industry. What stands out most about this mission is that it featured the first all-female space crew since 1963, when Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova […]
14/04/2025
Eddington doomscrolls back to the pandemic’s darkest days in new trailer
As easy as it has been for some people to downplay the covid-19 pandemic as part of putting it behind them, Ari Aster’s next feature looks like a sobering reminder of how bad things really were. Set in May of 2020, Eddington revolves around sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) […]
14/04/2025
Chipolo’s newest AirTag competitor works with both Apple and Google’s finding networks
Chipolo, the maker of AirTag-like devices, on Monday introduced the latest version of its product. Now, instead of offering models that only work with either Apple or Google’s lost-item finding technology, the new Chipolo POP devices work with both companies’ finding networks out of the box. By combining these different functionalities into one device, Chipolo […]
14/04/2025
Should you buy a used graphics card?
Should you buy a used graphics card? Cryptomining is largely dead, but AI-induced shortages have caused GPU prices to shoot up. If you're looking for a good deal on a used card, here's our guide for things to consider and what to expect.
14/04/2025
Meta to start training its AI models on public content in the EU
Meta announced on Monday that it’s going to train its AI models on public content, such as posts and comments on Facebook and Instagram, in the EU after previously pausing its plans to do so in response to regulatory pressure due to to data privacy concerns. The company will start training its AI on users’ […]
14/04/2025
Hugging Face buys a humanoid robotics startup
AI dev platform Hugging Face has acquired Pollen Robotics, a robotics startup based in France, for an undisclosed amount. Wired reports that Hugging Face plans to sell Pollen’s humanoid robot, Reachy 2, and let developers download and suggest improvements to its code. Pollen Robotics, which aims to bring affordable humanoid robots to the home, was […]
14/04/2025
The Meta Quest 3S just got its first discount
Due to the fluctuating tariff situation, a lot of people are seriously mulling over tech purchases they might otherwise be content to put off for a while. And it makes sense. While I don’t endorse panic buying, your reasons for buying now are more justified because prices may increase. In light of that instability, it’s […]
14/04/2025
Trump says new chip tariffs will be announced next week
President Trump announced new semiconductor tariffs to be introduced next week as part of an effort to shift tech manufacturing to the U.S.
14/04/2025
In The Last of Us season 2, Joel finally goes to therapy
Joel is a troubled guy. Throughout the first Last of Us game (and subsequent TV adaptation on HBO, where he’s played by Pedro Pascal), he sees and does a lot of things he’d rather forget. He certainly doesn’t seem to want to talk about them much. Which is why it’s nice to see that, in […]
14/04/2025
Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting not
Today, I’m talking with Vlad Tenev, the cofounder and CEO of Robinhood, which is one of the most well-known consumer finance apps in the world. It started as a way to open up stock trading, but the company’s ambitions have grown over time — and they’re getting even bigger. Just a day before Tenev and […]
14/04/2025
be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 650W power supply review
The be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 650W offers a solid balance of performance, efficiency, and modularity, ideal for users seeking a reliable, ATX 3.0-compliant power supply with quiet operation and long-term reliability.
14/04/2025
Meta antitrust trial: updates from the monopoly battle with the FTC
A long-awaited trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicks off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Judge James Boasberg will hear arguments about whether Facebook illegally monopolized the market for personal social networking services through its 2012 and 2014 acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC first brought the […]
14/04/2025
Autonomous trucking startup Kodiak Robotics to go public via SPAC
Self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics plans to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II. The transaction values Kodiak, which has raised around $243 million to date, at about $2.5 billion pre-money. New and existing Kodiak institutional investors, like Soros Fund Management, ARK Investments, and Ares, have funded or […]
14/04/2025
Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg’s voices
The crosswalk buttons, which include audio alerts, were hacked over the weekend.
14/04/2025
HBO’s The Last of Us had to speed up Abby’s reveal
In The Last of Us Part II, it takes a long time before players understand just who Abby is. A new character introduced as both an antagonist and protagonist, Abby is locked in a violent game of revenge with Ellie, but her reasoning and history don’t become clear until around midway through the game, when […]
14/04/2025
Katy Perry is going to space with Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is preparing to put pop singer / songwriter Katy Perry into space, along with five other women: former NASA scientists Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, journalist Gayle King, journalist and Bezos fiancée Lauren Sánchez, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Their flight, called NS-31, will launch aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, […]
14/04/2025
China's Moore Threads polishes homegrown CUDA alternative — MUSA supports porting CUDA code using Musify toolkit
Moore Threads' MUSA shows China's intent to break away from CUDA with its own GPU programming environments.
14/04/2025
Nvidia says it plans to manufacture some AI chips in the U.S.
Nvidia says it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips in Arizona and Texas as part of an effort to move a portion of production to the U.S. The chipmaker says that Nvidia Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona, […]
14/04/2025
Conifer locks down $20M seed round for its ‘drop-in’ electric hub motor
A handful of engineers who worked at Lucid Motors and on Apple’s electric car project have launched a new startup that puts a fresh spin on electric hub motors. The new startup, called Conifer, has developed its motor to be free of rare earth elements by using more abundant ferrite magnets, which the company says […]
14/04/2025
Ocypus Iota A62 Digital CPU Cooler Review: A stylish debut, effective debut
We tested Ocypus Iota A62 WH with Intel’s i7-14700K and Core Ultra 9 285K CPUs.
14/04/2025
Lime will recycle bike and scooter batteries with Redwood Materials
Lime, the largest bike- and scooter-sharing company in the world, announced that it has struck a deal with Redwood Materials to recycle its lithium-ion batteries. Lime says its e-bike and e-scooter batteries typically last 500 charge cycles, or between five and seven years. Once those batteries reach their end of life, Lime will ship them […]
14/04/2025
Chipolo’s colorful new trackers now work with Apple’s and Google’s networks
Chipolo has announced a new Bluetooth tracker called the Pop, featuring the same bright color options as its Chipolo One but with support for both Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find My Device networks. The Chipolo Pop also has a much larger Bluetooth range than the company’s current lineup of trackers and features improved water […]
14/04/2025
Apple’s picked a very fitnessy way to mark a decade of smartwatches
April 24th will be the 10th anniversary of the day the first Apple Watch shipped to customers. A decade is a major milestone in the gadget world, but you won’t see a lot of anniversary-themed fanfare to mark the occasion. Instead, Apple is dubbing the 24th as Global Close Your Rings Day — and it […]
14/04/2025
Intel agrees to sell controlling stake in Altera chip business
Intel on Monday announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell 51% of its Altera semiconductor business to Silver Lake, a private equity firm. The deal, which values Altera at $8.75 billion, will make Altera “operationally independent,” Intel said in a press release. Intel will retain 49% ownership in Altera, which will […]
14/04/2025
New high-fidelity brain-computer interface is so small it can fit between hair follicles
Researchers from Georgia Tech have developed a tiny, minimally invasive, brain-computer interface which they reckon is perfect for everyday use.
14/04/2025
Samsung pauses One UI 7 rollout worldwide
Samsung has, by all accounts, halted the rollout of its long-awaited One UI 7 update following the discovery of a bug that prevented some Galaxy S24 owners from unlocking their phones. The pause was first reported by leaker and tipster Ice Universe, who said that a “serious bug” had been found. While the complaints seem to […]
14/04/2025
PS5 price rises substantially in UK and Europe
Sony has raised the price of most of its PlayStation 5 console hardware in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand by 10-15 percent, blaming “a challenging economic environment.” With rising US import costs thanks to tariffs likely a contributing factor, an equivalent price rise in the US is probably on the way. Sony manufactures […]
14/04/2025
Bill Gates-backed Arnergy to expand solar access in Nigeria with $18M as demand surges
Demand for solar energy in power-starved Nigeria has soared in the last decade thanks to worsening grid reliability and rising fuel costs. That’s drawn investor interest to Arnergy, a cleantech startup meeting that need. The company just raised a $15 million Series B extension (on top of a $3 million B1 round last year), bringing […]
14/04/2025
UK founders grow frustrated over dearth of funding: ‘the problem is getting worse’
According to Dealroom data cited by the Financial Times, British start-ups raised just £16.2 billion last year, far less than the more than £65 billion raised by their counterparts in Silicon Valley during the same period. In fact, the U.S. appears to be pulling further ahead each year. In 2024, 57% of global venture capital […]
13/04/2025
People are turning on Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s popularity with the American public is waning, according to the latest polling average from Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin. The billionaire CEO of multiple companies wears many hats, but the most visible one of late has been as the face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an organization that has been tearing through […]
13/04/2025
Access to future AI models in OpenAI’s API may require a verified ID
OpenAI may soon require organizations to complete an ID verification process in order to access certain future AI models, according to a support page published to the company’s website last week. The verification process, called Verified Organization, is “a new way for developers to unlock access to the most advanced models and capabilities on the […]
13/04/2025
Apple reportedly working on a Vision Pro that plugs into your Mac
Apple isn’t giving up on its mixed reality headset the Vision Pro, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company has been debating the best direction forward for the product after disappointing sales, Gurman says, but is now moving forward with two different models. One would address probably the two biggest complaints about the initial product […]
13/04/2025
Simulated Musk, Zuckerberg voices are speaking from hacked crosswalk buttons
Crosswalk buttons in at least three California cities appear to have been hacked this weekend to give them the seemingly AI-generated voices of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In videos posted online, the apparent voice of Musk begs listeners to be his friend, or that of Zuckerberg brags about “undermining democracy” […]
13/04/2025
Smartphone tariffs are coming back in ‘a month or two,’ says Trump admin
Smartphones, laptops, and other products that are exempt from Trump’s April 9th tariffs will be lumped in with duties on semiconductors in “a month or two,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl on This Week. Yesterday, the Trump administration released updated guidance that excluded smartphones, laptops, and more from Trump’s new […]
13/04/2025
Leaked RTX 5060 Ti 16GB benchmarks show a 20% uplift over the 4060 Ti 16GB
Benchmarks of the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in 3DMark, likely sourced from a reviewer, suggest a 20% performance increase, on average, versus the 4060 Ti 16GB.
13/04/2025
Tech tariff exemptions are only temporary, according to Trump’s commerce secretary
The tech industry may not be safe from new tariffs, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The Trump administration announced Friday evening that consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones would be exempt from the tariffs it unveiled earlier this month. (While Trump delayed many of those tariffs this week, he left a 10% […]
13/04/2025
Crosswalks in Silicon Valley hacked to play satirical messages from Musk and Zuckerberg sound-a-likes
A number of Silicon Valley crosswalks were hacked to sound like U.S. big-tech broligarchs, according to reports published by local media this weekend.
13/04/2025
Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.” X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.” It’s not clear what exactly brought these comments on, but they come at […]
13/04/2025
How the Switch 2 compares to the ROG Ally
The Nintendo Switch 2 has entered the ring, possibly complicating your decision of which handheld to buy this year. While Nintendo’s new console, which comes out on June 5th, may seem similar to handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally, there’s a lot that sets them apart. Everything like how you […]
13/04/2025
Samsung 49-inch dual-QHD curved business monitor drops to $749 at Amazon
Right now at Amazon, you can snag this 49-inch dual-QHD curved business monitor for one of its lowest prices to date.
13/04/2025
Jim Zemlin on taking a ‘portfolio approach’ to Linux Foundation projects
The Linux Foundation has become something of a misnomer through the years. It has extended far beyond its roots as the steward of the Linux kernel, emerging as a sprawling umbrella outfit for a thousand open source projects spanning cloud infrastructure, security, digital wallets, enterprise search, fintech, maps, and more. Last month, the OpenInfra Foundation […]
13/04/2025
Wool, water, Wi-Fi: Modernizing an ancient business at the final frontiers of e-commerce
One night in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a felting artisan ended her day with a prayer. May our partners have good health. May they be ambitious, and successful, and may their businesses grow. The next morning, sisters-in-law Chinara Makashova and Nazgul Esenbaeva, and the people they worked with awoke to what seemed like a miracle: Shopify orders. […]
13/04/2025
iPads could get more Mac-like features soon
By the time Apple releases M5-powered iPads, using iPadOS may feel closer to working on a Mac, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. It won’t be macOS running on a tablet, but he writes that the changes will be significant enough to make people who want such a thing happy. Updates […]
13/04/2025
Charred RTX 4070 fell victim to a PSU without protection feature
One of the most horrifyingly burned graphics cards that we have seen has been featured in a components salvage video.
13/04/2025
AMD's latest ROCm 6.4 release continues to lack RDNA 4 support
Over a month has passed since the Radeon RX 9000 GPUs launched, and ROCm support is still absent.
13/04/2025
Old-school Creative Sound Blaster cards repaired and demoed
Two ancient Creative Sound Blaster cards have been repaired, and TechTuber Necroware has demonstrated them.
13/04/2025
Asus launches the flagship ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme, starting at $1,400
Asus China has officially introduced the ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme, set to hit shelves by late April at $1,400.
13/04/2025
12 Horrifying Windows Self-Destruct Keys You Can Hit By Accident
From making your computer read everything on the screen out loud to closing your tabs or highlighting text seemingly at random, these Windows hotkeys can cause more harm than good. Stay away.
13/04/2025
LaserPecker LP5 Review: More Laser, Less Screen
The LaserPecker LP5 is a powerful, portable laser that can engrave almost anything.
13/04/2025
Pat Gelsinger turns to particle accelerators for a new way to make chips, joins xLight
Pat Gelsinger is back in the semiconductor game with xLight, a company that plans to make an EUV light source using a collider.
13/04/2025
Freitag’s newest messenger bag is made from trash to last
I remember the day: a sinewy bicycle messenger skillfully weaved through honking automobiles and came to a stop at the traffic light in front of me. But instead of dropping a foot, he balanced high above his fixed-gear pedals for nearly a minute, his crossbody bag bulging against the urgent deliveries within. That was ‘90s […]
13/04/2025
Could an Amazon driver could be the one who saves your life?
In a quiet transformation from merchandising giant to (also) healthcare giant, Amazon may be positioning its sprawling logistics network and growing medical footprint to potentially save lives, starting with your front door. According to Bloomberg, back in 2023, Amazon piloted a several months-long pilot program called Project Pulse, equipping delivery vans with defibrillators and training […]
13/04/2025
Science Saru’s The Ghost in the Shell series gets a new teaser trailer
A new teaser trailer for Science Saru’s The Ghost in the Shell anime series has been announced on the official Ghost in the Shell website in a post spotted by Anime News Network. The post also revealed some of the staff heading up the series, which includes people who’ve worked on other shows from the […]
12/04/2025
Apple’s ‘Mythic Quest’ is ending with an updated Season 4 finale
“Mythic Quest,” the Apple TV+ workplace comedy about the making of a popular online roleplaying game, is ending after four seasons. A new version of the show’s fourth season finale — first aired on March 26, and now the de facto series finale — will premiere on Apple TV+ next week, with a new ending. […]
12/04/2025
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence reportedly valued at $32B
Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup led by OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised an additional $2 billion in funding at a $32 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. The startup had already raised $1 billion, and there were reports that an additional $1 billion round was in the works. […]
12/04/2025
Cofertility’s radical model for women: Freeze your eggs for free by donating half of them
In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing. But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s. Cofertility, a startup founded […]
12/04/2025
Bungie’s slick-looking Marathon shooter arrives on September 23rd
The creators of Halo and Destiny are finally ready to show off their next big project: Marathon. It’s a long-awaited title from Bungie and revives the classic Marathon IP in the form of a PvPvE extraction shooter. After a teaser nearly two years ago, the Sony-owned studio just spent an hour showing off Marathon gameplay […]
12/04/2025
Trump exempts smartphones, laptops, and semiconductors from new tariffs
The Trump administration is carving out big tariff exemptions for the tech industry. While President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would delay many of the market-shaking tariffs that he’d announced the previous week, he kept a universal baseline 10% tariff in place, while also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% (on top of […]
12/04/2025
Apple’s Mythic Quest has come to an end
Mythic Quest, the Apple TV Plus comedy about a game studio, isn’t getting a fifth season, reports Variety. And, like a developer issuing a farewell patch, Apple is updating the final episode of season four with a new “goodbye†ending next week. Variety published a statement from Mythic Quest’s executive producers: “Endings are hard. But […]
12/04/2025
Week in Review: Jeff Bezos’ secret EV startup
Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got tons of cool stuff for your reading pleasure this week: Jeff Bezos backs EV startup Slate; a Meta whistleblower accuses the company of collusion; Waymo may use interior camera data; and much more. Let’s get to it! I want this: Slate, an EV startup, has the ambitious […]
12/04/2025
Trump enacts tariff exemptions for computers, smartphones, and more
The tech industry is delighted that computers, smartphones, semiconductor chips, and more are officially exempt from tariffs on foreign imports.
12/04/2025
This $666 box can play Doom — Limited Run Games unveils the ultimate collector's edition set for Doom fans
Limited Run Games' "Will It Run" edition is a Doom collector's wildest dream. It features novelties, including a box and a handheld device that can play the iconic game.
12/04/2025
This Core i7, RTX 4060 gaming laptop is at an all-time low
This HP Omen 16 Pro gaming laptop edition is available at Amazon for just $1,439 instead of its usual $1,599.
12/04/2025
TV-signal based BPS tested as fallback for GPS — digital TV infrastructure could come to the rescue if satellites are compromised
The recent NAB show charted progress in developing the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS).
12/04/2025
Trump excludes smartphones, computers, chips from tariffs
The Trump administration has excluded “smartphones, computers, and other electronics” from tariffs, even those imported from China, reports Bloomberg. Late last night, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) updated its guidance to exempt smartphones, laptops, hard drives, computer processors, and memory chips from the tariffs, according to Bloomberg. The same goes for the machines used […]
12/04/2025
The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empire
When Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, had acquired his social media company, X (formerly known as Twitter), in an all-stock deal, it raised some eyebrows. But in many ways, the deal made sense. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, was already deeply integrated with X, X was floundering financially, and Musk needed a way to […]
12/04/2025
Cooler Master X Silent Edge Platinum 850W power supply review
The Cooler Master X Silent Edge Platinum 850W is a high-end, fanless powerhouse with top-tier components and exceptional efficiency, but at an ultra-premium price.
12/04/2025
There’s nothing wrong with a thong made out of a keyboard
In December 2024, actor and fashion icon Julia Fox stepped out on the street with a flip-phone buckle strapped across her chest, wires on her nails, and an old Discman-turned-compact mirror hanging from her wrist. Fox didn’t start the retro-tech fashion trend. Celebrities and internet fashionistas were already wearing iPod Shuffle Minis as hair clips […]
12/04/2025
Blue Prince will steal your time just like Balatro
I know, I know. It’s become a bit of a faux pas to describe one game using another and yet I am compelled. After a few hours with Blue Prince, I realized this game elicits the same feelings in me as Balatro. Not because it has anything to do with cards or passive-aggressive clowns named […]
12/04/2025
RayNeo Air 3s AR glasses review: Cheaper and better in every way
The RayNeo Air 3s is superior to its predecessor and manages to come in at an even lower price point.
12/04/2025
Chinese chip giants say they don't care about U.S. tariffs — many don't sell to the U.S. anyway due to existing sanctions
Multiple publicly traded Chinese companies have notified their investors that the recently imposed tariffs from the trade war do not concern them largely because US sanctions have already prevented them from selling into the US.
12/04/2025
33-year-old AmigaOS for Commodore computers gets an unexpected update
Work continues on AmigaOS 3.2 with the stewards of this classic Motorola 680x0 friendly operating system, Hyperion Entertainment, releasing version 3.2.3 a few days ago.
12/04/2025
Best Linux distros for reviving an old PC
Revive that old laptop with a choice of Linux operating systems.
12/04/2025
Forerunner’s long game: As startups stall before IPO, all options are on the table
Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held, along with many other […]
12/04/2025
Big Tech cozied up to Trump — it’s not getting much in return
For a while, it looked like President Donald Trump was going to have Big Tech’s back. Now, the tech industry is collateral damage in his global trade war. On Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated the idea of placing “a levy on the advertising revenues of digital services†if tariff negotiations with […]
11/04/2025
Netflix is testing a new OpenAI-powered search
Netflix is starting to test search that’s powered by OpenAI, according to Bloomberg. The new search engine will let users “look for shows using far more specific terms, including the subscriber’s mood, for example, the company said,” per the report. This OpenAI-powered search will also allow users to make queries that “go well beyond genres […]
11/04/2025
Meta’s vanilla Maverick AI model ranks below rivals on a popular chat benchmark
Earlier this week, Meta landed in hot water for using an experimental, unreleased version of its Llama 4 Maverick model to achieve a high score on a crowdsourced benchmark, LM Arena. The incident prompted the maintainers of LM Arena to apologize, change their policies, and score the unmodified, vanilla Maverick. Turns out, it’s not very […]
11/04/2025
The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next
Google Cloud announced a long list of impressive AI startups as customers during its Cloud Next conference this week
11/04/2025
Meta adds Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to its board
Banking executive and former presidential advisor Dina Powell McCormick and Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison are joining the board of Meta, according to a report from Axios. Powell McCormick spent 16 years in several leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. She also served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald J. Trump during his […]
11/04/2025
Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting 12 new subclasses next week
Baldur’s Gate 3’s Patch 8, which brings changes like 12 new subclasses, crossplay, and a photo mode, launches on April 15th, developer Larian Studios announced on Friday. The patch, set to be the game’s last major update, was originally announced in November 2024, so it’s been a long time coming (though Larian has been stress […]
11/04/2025
Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case
A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on ebooks without permission. The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a […]
11/04/2025
This algorithm wasn’t supposed to keep people in jail, but it does in Louisiana
A new report from ProPublica published Thursday showed how the Louisiana government is using TIGER (Targeted Interventions to Greater Enhance Re-entry), a computer program developed by Louisiana State University to prevent recidivism, to approve or deny parole applications based on a score calculating their risk of returning to prison. Though the algorithm was initially designed […]
11/04/2025
YouTube’s new AI tool generates free background music for videos
YouTube is giving creators a new AI tool that can generate instrumental tracks to use in videos for free without worrying about copyright claims, TechCrunch reports. The new feature was demonstrated in a video posted on the company’s Creator Insider channel this week. In the video, the host, Lauren, shows a new tab in the […]
11/04/2025
38 consumer startup founders lobby over Trump tariffs: One faces a surprise $200K bill
Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries – setting the rate at 10% for now – China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the […]
11/04/2025
TechCrunch Mobility: Jeff Bezos backs a secretive EV startup and Lucid snaps up Nikola’s assets
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. If there is one certainty in this uncertain moment, it’s this: U.S. tariff policy is likely to change again. As of Friday morning, there […]
11/04/2025
Nikola founder Trevor Milton accused of trying to derail bankruptcy case
A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola’s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy Judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call towards the end of […]
11/04/2025
You can run Doom on this $666 collector’s edition box
Will it run Doom? The question that has challenged tinkerers and hardware hackers for years has now come full circle. Limited Run Games has announced a new collector’s edition of the iconic first-person shooter that ships in a box that itself can play Doom on a built-in screen. The Doom plus Doom II Will It […]
11/04/2025
ChatGPT is transforming LinkedIn users into really dull dolls
ChatGPT’s latest image generator had an explosive debut thanks to the viral Studio Ghibli art trend, and LinkedIn users have now jumped on a new gimmick: turning yourself into a toy. There are several flavors of the trend being shared. The “AI Action Figure” variant appears to have gained the most traction, in which a […]
11/04/2025
Blue Water Autonomy comes out of stealth promising autonomous naval ships
A new ship-building startup called Blue Water Autonomy has emerged from stealth with the promise of developing captain-less naval ships. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company has raised a $14 million seed round from Eclipse VC, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. The startup was founded in 2024 by former members of the U.S. Navy, leaders of Amazon Robotics, […]
11/04/2025
Ex-OpenAI staffers file amicus brief opposing the company’s for-profit transition
A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI’s planned conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit corporation. The brief names twelve former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard […]
11/04/2025
You can save up to $1,800 on Samsung’s last-gen Frame TV
Now that Samsung has launched its 2025 lineup, including the high-end Frame Pro, we’re starting to see steep discounts land on the 2024 models. Right now, for example, Samsung’s 85-inch Frame TV — its largest Frame TV to date — has dropped to around $2,498 ($1,800 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Samsung’s online storefront. […]
11/04/2025
Razer's PC Remote Play app lets you stream PC games to your mobile devices
Razer has announce a new PC-to-mobile streaming platform that enables gamers to stream PC games from their gaming PC to a mobile device.
11/04/2025
GM cuts 500 jobs because of weak demand for BrightDrop electric vans
General Motors is laying off 500 workers at a factory in Canada because of weak demand for its all-electric BrightDrop vans, according to CNBC. GM told CNBC that the cuts were not related to the ongoing trade war being waged by President Donald Trump. The company is cutting one of the two shifts at the […]
11/04/2025
ChatGPT became the most downloaded app globally in March
ChatGPT became the world’s most downloaded app in March, excluding games, topping the usual contenders for the No. 1 spot, Instagram and TikTok. This is the first time the app has topped the monthly download charts and ChatGPT’s biggest month ever. According to new data, ChatGPT’s installs jumped 28% from February to March to reach […]
11/04/2025
South of Midnight is a game worth hollerin’ about
Black folks are loud. We laugh loud, we love loud, we protest loud. But when we really want to show our approval, we get quiet first. When we laugh at something funny, like really laugh, it sounds like a thin wheeze before sound bursts forth like a storm. And within seconds of starting South of […]
11/04/2025
YouTube considers a daily timer for users looking to cut back on Shorts
YouTube is looking into potentially offering a feature that would allow users to set a daily timer to limit how long they spend on Shorts. Recent findings from the beta version of the YouTube app, first reported by Android Authority, suggest that the platform is developing a feature to help users stop the endless scrolling […]
11/04/2025
China fires back at Trump’s tariff increases with 125% levies on U.S. goods
China increased its tariffs on U.S. imports from 84% to 125% in response to Trump's moves.
11/04/2025
DoorDash is expanding into sidewalk robot delivery in the US
DoorDash’s international arm Wolt has already been experimenting with Coco’s fleet of sidewalk robots in Helsinki, Finland. Now, DoorDash is linking up with sidewalk robot maker Coco to expand automated food deliveries to the US. It’s live in Los Angeles and Chicago with nearly 600 merchants set up to drop your lunch and other goods into […]
11/04/2025
Buckle up for more subscriptions
Two weeks ago, Garmin announced it was launching a new subscription. Where the Garmin Connect app had previously offered everything from in-depth metrics and training plans for free, the beloved fitness tech company was now adding premium AI summaries, among other features, behind a paywall. In The Verge comments, my social media mentions, and the […]
11/04/2025
Stripe CEO says company management regularly asks customers for ‘candid feedback’
Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is […]
11/04/2025
Ireland’s data regulator investigates X’s use of European user data to train Grok
Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the […]
11/04/2025
RTX 5070 dips below MSRP at UK retailer — £518.99 marks a rare low in this unpredictable market
In an unexpected turn of events, OCUK has an RTX 5070 listed £10 ($13) below Nvidia's recommended MSRP on their website, with units in stock.
11/04/2025
Parallel Systems is building autonomous electric rail for short-distance freight
The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handles about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO Matt Soule wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system. The Los Angeles-based company […]
11/04/2025
Hacked documents reveal guide to serving Elon Musk on private jets
A recent breach of Berkshire Hathaway-owned private jet company NetJets has revealed a guide for flight attendants serving Elon Musk, per a Bloomberg report. The memo offers an interesting glimpse into the personal preferences of the world’s richest man. Some of the preferences are surprising for the CEO of Tesla, a company dedicated to sustainability. […]
11/04/2025
Why Nest co-founder Matt Rogers is still bullish on HVAC
Matt Rogers says Quilt is picking up where his old startup, Nest, left off.
11/04/2025
Spotify invests over $1M to grow its catalog of non-English audiobooks
Spotify announced on Friday that it plans to invest €1 million–or approximately $1.1 million — to boost audiobook production in languages other than English, beginning with French and Dutch. The investment indicates that Spotify is eager for more non-English titles in its limited library as it tries to compete with major players like Audible in […]
11/04/2025
Microsoft's Windows 95 startup sound has been immortalized in the Library of Congress
The US Library of Congress has decided to immortalize the Windows 95 startup sound in the National Recording Registry.
11/04/2025
Apple’s Siri upgrade may arrive in fall
Apple may finally be ready to roll out its smarter, more personalized Siri features before the 2025 holiday season, according to The New York Times. The publication cited three sources with knowledge of Apple’s plan to release a virtual assistant “in the fall” that can edit and send photos to a friend on request — […]
11/04/2025
China's new semiconductor rule spares Taiwan fabs, punishes Intel, GlobalFoundries & Texas Instruments
China now considers wafer fabrication location as origin of chips, no matter where they were packaged or developed, which is good news for those outsourcing to Taiwan, but bad news for those who manufacture in America.
11/04/2025
Bring your vinyl to the beach with Toshiba’s new portable wireless record player
Toshiba has announced a new record player designed for vinyl enthusiasts who want to make their analog music collections more portable. The Aurex AX-RP10 is by no means pocket-friendly like Sony’s Walkman or Apple’s iPod, but it’s small enough to haul around in an included shoulder bag while still accommodating 12-inch records, and it can […]
11/04/2025
The Verge is nominated for two Webby Awards — help us win them!
The time of year has arrived — Webby Award season. For the 29th annual Webby Awards, The Verge is nominated in two categories: best technology podcast and best technology video. The award show is basically a competition for “Best of the Internet,†and each nominee is up for two awards: the Webby Award and the […]
11/04/2025
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […]
11/04/2025
Tesla’s latest Cybertruck has longer range and the cheapest price yet
Tesla has a new entry-level Cybertruck with longer range, and it’s the cheapest model yet at $69,990 before the federal $7,500 credit. Tesla pulled some significant features to achieve the price cut. The new “long range” Cybertruck has just a single RWD motor compared to the two in the AWD model. It also lacks a […]
11/04/2025
Pixel Watch 4 leaks suggest Google is doubling down on battery again
Ever since Google debuted the original Pixel Watch in 2022, improving battery life has been a major focus of subsequent iterations of the smartwatch. Based on new leaks of the upcoming Pixel Watch 4, it looks like that might be the case again. Renders published by 91mobiles from leaker OnLeaks show a slightly thicker watch […]
11/04/2025
OpenAI is winding down its GPT-4 AI model in ChatGPT
OpenAI will soon retire GPT-4, an AI model it launched over two years ago, from ChatGPT, the company announced in a changelog on Thursday. Effective April 30, GPT-4 will be “fully replaced” by GPT-4o, the current default model for ChatGPT, OpenAI said. However, GPT-4 will remain available in OpenAI’s API. “In head‑to‑head evaluations, [GPT-4o] consistently […]
11/04/2025
‘Book Boyfriends’ and ‘Shadow Daddies’: the men cashing in on romantasy
Six hours into a fantasy ball, actor Zach Harrison is sweating. He’s been wearing handmade leather armor, huge boots, and heavy six-foot bat wings all night, all while ballroom dancing and taking pictures with hundreds of fans without taking a break. But they’re not here to see Harrison. They’re here to meet Cassian, Lord of […]
11/04/2025
Less than a month to get your exhibit table for TechCrunch Sessions: AI
TechCrunch Sessions: AI is fast approaching. So, what does that mean for you? It means exhibit tables are nearly gone — and now’s your chance to grab one before they’re all sold out. If you’ve got a game-changing product to showcase to the AI world, don’t keep it quiet. Exhibit your brand in front of […]
11/04/2025
Intel's performance-enhancing IPO program debuts in gaming PCs across China — overclocked performance with full warranty
Pre-built systems in China are now arriving with Intel's IPO profiles, designed to enhance performance without voiding your warranty.
11/04/2025
Dropbox Chief Customer Officer Eric Cox plans to step down, per filing
Dropbox’s chief customer officer, Eric Cox, plans to step down, according to a document filed with the SEC on Friday. Cox will remain in his current role for “a period of time” to help with the transition, per the filing, and then will continue as a “non-executive” employee through mid-August. Dropbox didn’t immediately respond to […]
11/04/2025
Pick up 32GB of Patriot Viper Venom RAM for just $79 — these sticks hit the 6000MHz sweet spot for AM5 Ryzen gaming
Pick up 32GB of DDR5 RAM for your gaming PC. Patriot's Viper Venom 6000MHz RAM is $79.
11/04/2025
Doctor Who’s new companion is going to keep him on his toes
Doctor Who’s shapeshifting Time Lord almost always has a plan when they encounter new threats from beyond the stars. And the Doctor’s companions can usually count on them to pull a convoluted, crisis-averting trick out of their sleeves whenever things get too hairy. In the past, the Doctor has often been presented as more of […]
11/04/2025
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 review: Mobile RTX 5080 gets the job done
The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 is a powerful RTX 5080 laptop with a bright screen, but its AI is gimmicky and plastic shell leave something to be desired.
11/04/2025
Custom MSI RTX 5060 Ti models surface with 16-pin power connectors and PCIe 5.0 x8
VideoCardz leaks renders of MSI's upcoming GeForce RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards.
11/04/2025
How the tech world is responding to tariff chaos
(If you’re reading this, please go vote for The Vergecast in the Webby Awards! Voting is open for roughly another week, and we’re up against some steep competition — it would mean the world to us if you’d pick us. Thank you so much!) It’s important to keep saying that we still don’t know much […]
11/04/2025
Meta goes to trial to avoid a breakup
On Monday, Meta will face the Federal Trade Commission in a legal fight that could reshape the social media landscape. Over the next two months, the US government will make its case that the company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp squashed potential threats to its dominance. Meta, which went by the […]
11/04/2025
A comprehensive list of 2025 tech layoffs
A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.
11/04/2025
Elon Musk’s xAI allegedly uses illegal generators to power Colossus supercomputer facility
xAI has reportedly built a 420 MW power facility to power the Colossus supercomputer that is set to expand to 200,000 GPUs and beyond.
11/04/2025
Why Nintendo can get away with a $450 Switch 2 price
When Nintendo announced the Switch 2 would cost $450, my initial reaction was disappointment. “Why does it cost so much more?†I thought to myself. “Why does Japan get it cheaper?†my brain jealously added, once I learned that Nintendo would sell a Japan-only model for the equivalent of just $333. It felt like Nintendo […]
11/04/2025
Researchers make breakthrough in cleaning up the 'forever chemicals' used in chip manufacturing
Monash University has developed a water filter to catch PFAS used in chip manufacturing and other industries. The chip industry has been lobbying for years against any progress on legislating PFAS-use.
11/04/2025
WhatsApp gets a dozen new features inspired by others
WhatsApp has rolled out a dozen new features across chats, calls, and channels that make it easier to manage group conversations, alongside other general quality-of-life improvements. One of the more notable additions is a new “Online” indicator for groups, which displays how many participants are currently using the app in real time. This is one […]
11/04/2025
Digg will let you reserve your username (for a price)
Digg’s return to the modern internet is one step closer with the launch of an “early access” group called Groundbreakers. For a one-off $5 fee you can claim your username before someone else does and get a behind the scenes look at the new Digg as it comes together. Digg says that the $5 fee […]
11/04/2025
Startups Weekly: Enjoying the reprieve
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. Startups aren’t isolated from the world. But this week, funding news felt positively uncorrelated from the overall news cycle, offering somewhat of a reprieve — or perhaps […]
11/04/2025
Microsoft inks massive carbon removal deal powered by a paper mill
The purchase covers 12 years of emissions from CO280’s first carbon capture project at a mill on the Gulf Coast.
11/04/2025
Cooling chips with lasers: Innovative cooling method removes heat precisely from hot spots, recycles heat into energy
A startup is developing a laser-based cooling system using ultrapure gallium arsenide plates to target chip hotspots, but at high costs.
11/04/2025
ChatGPT will now remember your old conversations
OpenAI is giving ChatGPT a memory upgrade that allows it to recall old conversations that you didn’t ask it to save. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X that the chatbot can “now reference all your past conversations,” and that the update aligns with the company’s goal to develop “AI systems that get to know […]
11/04/2025
China calls US a ‘joke’ as it raises tariff for final time
China has once again raised its tariff on US goods to match Trump’s, for what it says is the final time. China’s tariff is now set at 125 percent, as it warns that the US is on track to become an economic “joke.” In a statement from China’s Ministry of Finance, which we’ve translated using […]
11/04/2025
Leaders from Accel and Paladin Capital Group join the stage at StrictlyVC London in May
Mark your calendar — StrictlyVC London is just around the corner on 13 May. Designed for founders, entrepreneurs, and investors, this exclusive gathering promises deep VC insight and high-value connections. We’re thrilled to welcome our first pair of confirmed speakers: Nazo Moosa, managing director of Paladin Capital Group, and Sonali De Rycker, partner of Accel […]
11/04/2025
Lucid Motors wins bankruptcy auction for Nikola’s Arizona factory and other assets
EV startup Lucid Motors has emerged as a surprise winner in the bankruptcy auction for electric trucking company Nikola’s Arizona factory and other assets, according a late Thursday court filing. Lucid committed around $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations in exchange for the factory, Nikola’s lease on its Phoenix headquarters, and “certain machinery, equipment […]
11/04/2025
Microsoft is about to launch Recall for real this time
Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders, according to a blog post published Thursday. This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. […]
10/04/2025
Tesla used car listings skyrocketed in March
A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk’s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The […]
10/04/2025
Stripe CEO says he ensures his top leaders interview a customer twice a month
Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is […]
10/04/2025
Bluesky gets a revamped search page and emoji reactions in DMs
Bluesky is updating its app to version 1.100, and the update includes a more comprehensive search page and new chat reactions. The search page is now known as “Explore,†where you can find trending topics, suggested accounts, and starter packs to jump-start stuff for you to follow on the app. This new Explore page still […]
10/04/2025
Stunts are finally getting their own category at the Oscars
After years of stuntwork largely being overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars are about to add a new category. Today, the Academy announced that it intends to start giving out Oscar statues for stunt design starting with films released in 2027 for the awards ceremony’s 100th anniversary. “Since the […]
10/04/2025
How Chef Robotics found success by turning away its original customers
A few years ago, Chef Robotics was hurting. But founder Rajat Bhageria turned it around by doing something that early-stage founders fear to do.
10/04/2025
Fintech founder charged with fraud after ‘AI’ shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines
Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising […]
10/04/2025
Yahoo removes DEI pages from its website
Several tech companies have scaled back public commitments to DEI amid a broader crackdown by the Trump administration.
10/04/2025
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Google will eventually combine its Gemini and Veo AI models
In a recent appearance on “Possible,” a podcast co-hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Google plans to eventually combine its Gemini AI models with its Veo video-generating models to improve the former’s understanding of the physical world. “We’ve always built Gemini, our foundation model, to be multimodal from the […]
10/04/2025
Razer’s PC-to-mobile streaming platform is now available
Razer has finally launched its platform for streaming PC games to mobile devices at their native screen resolutions, aspect ratios, and refresh rates. Razer PC Remote Play is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play and is compatible with Windows, Apple, and Android mobile devices running at least Windows 11, iOS […]
10/04/2025
.NET 10 Preview 3 is now available!
Find out about the new features in .NET 10 Preview 3 across the .NET runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, C#, .NET MAUI, and more! The post .NET 10 Preview 3 is now available! appeared first on .NET Blog.
10/04/2025
Cofertility lets women freeze their eggs for free through its donor-matching program
In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing. But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s. Cofertility, a startup founded […]
10/04/2025
NHTSA staffers evaluating the risks of self-driving cars were reportedly fired by DOGE
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired about 30 members of the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in February, and many of them were part of a department that assesses the risks of self-driving cars, according to the Financial Times. One worker laid off from the NHTSA’s so-called “office of vehicle automation […]
10/04/2025
Mira Murati’s AI startup is reportedly aiming for a massive $2B seed round
Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup from ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. Business Insider reported on Thursday that Thinking Machines Lab has doubled the target for its seed funding round to $2 billion. The round, should it close according to plan, would […]
10/04/2025
Garmin’s new cycling headlight includes a 4K incident camera
Garmin has announced a new addition to its Varia line of safety and visibility accessories for cyclists. The Varia Vue is the first to pair a bright headlight with a front-facing 4K camera designed to automatically record incidents and save the footage locally or send it to the cloud through a smartphone. It’s available now […]
10/04/2025
Google tool spurs contest to Run RISC-V on AMD Zen CPUs: But is it possible?
A new contest inspired by Google's Zentool challenges developers to modify AMD Zen CPU microcode to run RISC-V programs natively, but experts argue the goal is unfeasible.
10/04/2025
What is Bluesky? Everything to know about the X competitor
Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been over two years since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, leading people to set up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which have already shuttered operations) and Spill have been presented as […]
10/04/2025
OnePlus won’t say why its Watch 3 suddenly costs $170 more than promised
If you were hoping to cop a OnePlus Watch 3, you can finally buy one starting today. The problem is it’s no longer the $329.99 price that was originally intended when OnePlus announced the device a few months ago. It’s now $499, a $170 or roughly 52 percent markup. The price hike was spotted by […]
10/04/2025
AI models still struggle to debug software, Microsoft study shows
AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other top AI labs are increasingly being used to assist with programming tasks. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that 25% of new code at the company is generated by AI, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed ambitions to widely deploy AI coding models within the social […]
10/04/2025
BeReal, which says it has 40M monthly users, is rolling out ads in the U.S.
It’s time for BeReal to get real — it’s difficult to turn a profit on a social photo sharing app without selling ads or memberships. Now, after its €500 million exit to French mobile publisher Voodoo, BeReal is rolling out advertising in the U.S. Its initial products include in-feed ads in the app’s same dual-camera […]
10/04/2025
Vampire Survivors will let you share saves across platforms — but not on PlayStation
Vampire Survivors is finally launching cross-saves today, but they won’t be available on PlayStation to start and have a “very slim” chance of coming to the platform because of a “legal issue.” “Last month, we told everyone that cross-save would be available on PlayStation 4 / 5, PC, Xbox, Android and iOS alongside our next […]
10/04/2025
Bluesky’s latest update adds chat reactions and an Explore page, similar to X
Social network Bluesky is rolling out a new version of its software, which adopts some of the features former X users have missed. Nope, it’s not an edit button! Instead, the open social network is adding support for chat reactions in its direct messages feature and is revamping its search page as “Explore,” directing users […]
10/04/2025
Mike Flanagan is adapting Stephen King’s Carrie for Amazon
Three years after signing an overall TV production deal with Amazon, Mike Flanagan is finally developing a new project for the studio. Deadline reports that Amazon is moving forward with a Carrie series adaptation from Flanagan based on Stephen King’s 1974 novel about a girl born with telekinetic powers. In addition to writing and showrunning […]
10/04/2025
Canva is now in the coding and spreadsheet business
Canva is launching its latest smorgasbord of generative AI-powered workspace tools in its attempt to cram everything that Microsoft, Google, and Adobe can do into a single platform. Canva’s Visual Suite is being redesigned to combine its design and productivity tools into a single interface, alongside adding new coding, photo editing, spreadsheet, and AI chatbot […]
10/04/2025
Bezos-backed EV startup Slate Auto’s pickup truck spotted in the wild
Just one day after TechCrunch revealed that Jeff Bezos is backing a secretive EV startup called Slate Auto, an early version of the company’s low-cost electric pickup truck was spotted in the wild. Reddit user u/discostranger09 posted a photo to the r/whatisthiscar subreddit on Wednesday of a small, dark gray two-seater pickup truck on a […]
10/04/2025
The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attended the ASU+GSV Summit this week, where experts in education and technology gathered to discuss how AI will impact learning. While speaking on a panel about AI in the workforce, McMahon repeatedly referred to AI as “A1,” like the steak sauce. “You know, AI development — I mean, how […]
10/04/2025
Sonos appoints software veteran Hugo Barra to its board after app troubles
As Sonos continues a company-wide effort to redeem itself after last year’s app snafu, it’s adding a well-known industry name to its board of directors. This morning, Sonos announced that Hugo Barra is joining the board to replace Mike Volpi, who is stepping down after 15 years — the longest tenure of any board member. […]
10/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs ‘pause’ could help Nintendo ship more Switch 2s
President Donald Trump’s “90-day pause” on high tariffs for many countries could be good news for Nintendo. The shift marks an opportunity for the company to ship more Switch 2 units from Vietnam to the US. And customs data reported on by Bloomberg suggests the company has already been stockpiling Switch 2 units from Vietnam […]
10/04/2025
Sony is now selling both Last of Us games in one package
Just ahead of the second season of The Last of Us on HBO, Sony is making it a little easier for newcomers to get the full game experience. The company just announced The Last of Us Complete for the PS5, which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection feature The Last of Us Part […]
10/04/2025
Apple quickly shipped 600 tons of iPhones to ‘beat’ the new tariffs
Apple airshipped 600 tons of iPhones to the US from India before new US tariffs were scheduled to take effect, as reported by Reuters and The Times of India. Meanwhile, Nikkei Asia reports Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Lenovo were pressing to ship as many “premium” devices as possible, like high-priced computers above $3,000 that would […]
10/04/2025
Netflix’s latest season of ‘Black Mirror’ comes with a mobile game
Season 7 of “Black Mirror” premiered on Thursday, introducing a new mobile game connected to one of its episodes. The game, titled “Thronglets,” from Netflix’s own Night School Studio, serves as a companion to the episode called “Plaything.” Players interact with virtual yellow pets and strive to keep them alive. If players are successful in […]
10/04/2025
Jobandtalent raises $103M on a down-round $1.5B valuation as it looks to AI to recruit temps
Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers, announced it has raised €92 million ($103 million). The Series F — which includes participation from Atomico, BlackRock, DN Capital, Hercules, Infravia, Kibo, and Kinnevik — values the Madrid, Spain-based company at €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) post-money. On the surface, […]
10/04/2025
LiveKit’s tools power real-time communications, including OpenAI’s Voice Mode
A challenge for many tech companies is delivering high-bandwidth, multimodal data — for example, simultaneous audio and video — to users in real time without interruptions. Some firms build solutions in-house, but these often require a lot of upkeep and maintenance. To ease the burden, Russ d’Sa and David Zhao created LiveKit, an open-source software […]
10/04/2025
Canva is getting AI image generation, interactive coding, spreadsheets and more
Although there has been significant pushback from artists regarding the proliferation of AI design tools and the content used to train generative models, the companies making the software for creative work are nevertheless building AI into their toolkits. It’s a signal of just how quickly AI has gained importance — regardless of what their customers […]
10/04/2025
OpenAI updates ChatGPT to reference your past chats
OpenAI announced on Thursday that it’s starting to roll out a new memory feature in ChatGPT that allows the chatbot to tailor its answers to users based on the contents of their previous conversations. OpenAI says the feature, which appears in ChatGPT’s settings as “reference saved memories,” aims to make conversations with ChatGPT more relevant […]
10/04/2025
Rare Steam Deck prototype sold for $2,000 on eBay — Features a 6-year-old AMD Picasso APU with Zen+ and Vega
A Steam Deck prototype has seemingly been sold for $2,000 on eBay, shown to feature different silicon than the retail units we have today.
10/04/2025
The tariff apocalypse has not been canceled
Last week, President Donald Trump declared a series of tariffs that pitted the United States against the rest of the world. Big companies stayed nervously silent; small ones panicked. The stock market plunged. And surely worst of all, Switch 2 preorders were delayed. Then, the same day the largest tariffs went into effect, Trump hit […]
10/04/2025
Meghan Markle has made another angel investment
Meghan is stepping further into the world of business and entrepreneurship. In an interview with Fortune, Meghan revealed that she is an angel investor in the healthcare company Midi, which provides a virtual platform to help treat women experiencing menopause and other health-related concerns. She joined the company’s $63 million Series B round last March, […]
10/04/2025
Nvidia RTX 5090 allegedly handles DirectStorage GPU decompression better than RTX 4090
Benchmarks of Nvidia's RTX 5090 in two games using DirectStorage GPU decompression reveal that the GPU has better performance consistency when toggling between CPU and GPU decompression compared to the RTX 4090.
10/04/2025
Glossier might lose its unicorn status, report says
Glossier is reportedly fundraising again, aiming to raise $100 million with a valuation “south of a billion dollars,” according to Puck. Glossier, still one of the more popular beauty brands, was last valued at $1.8 billion nearly four years ago but has struggled with profitability and scale these past few years. Glossier did not immediately […]
10/04/2025
Sydney Thomas’s Symphonic Capital raises $13.5M for inaugural fund
Symphonic Capital announced today in a blog post that it raised $13.5 million for its inaugural fund to invest in early-stage companies. Sydney Thomas launched the firm in 2022 after leaving Charles Hudson’s Percursor Ventures, where she was the first hire. Thomas said her fund will focus on founders outside of the Bay who are […]
10/04/2025
YouTube rolls out a free AI music-making tool for creators
YouTube is launching a new feature that will allow creators to use AI technology to generate instrumental backing music that can be added to their videos. In an update published to its Creator Insider channel this week, the company shared that it’s beginning to roll out an update to its Creator Music marketplace that will […]
10/04/2025
Arctic's Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 All-In-One liquid CPU cooler is now only $89 — its lowest-ever price on Amazon
This 360mm all-in-one CPU cooler takes a massive price cut. Keep your processor chilled for just $89.
10/04/2025
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has invested in 600 Chinese firms, some linked to the Chinese military
Intel's CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese companies linked to the military and surveillance sectors, raising national security questions amid Intel's ties with the U.S. defense industry.
10/04/2025
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy urges companies to invest heavily in AI
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thinks companies should invest “aggressively” in AI now to reap the full financial rewards in the future. In his annual letter to Amazon shareholders published Thursday, Jassy said “substantial capital” is required to keep up with the pace of AI innovation and customer demand for AI products. He added that Amazon, […]
10/04/2025
Here come the e-bikes using DJI’s excellent Avinox drive system
Bosch should be worried after several bicycle brands just announced their first e-bikes built on top of DJI’s compact and lightweight Avinox drive system, which is surprisingly powerful and torquey. These international brands include Forbidden, Unno, Smartmotion, Megamo, Paprika 53, and Teewing, all of which have new e-bikes built around the 1000W Avinox motor that’s capable […]
10/04/2025
Microsoft’s 50th birthday party sure was eventful
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Microsoft’s 50th birthday party. Sure, cofounder Bill Gates and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would be there, but I was keen to see how Microsoft would create a party atmosphere while also launching new Copilot features. As it happens, having three CEOs onstage, some energetic hosts, and […]
10/04/2025
.NET Aspire 9.2 is Now Available with New Ways to Deploy
.NET Aspire 9.2 is now available with cool new dashboard features and introducing the publishers feature The post .NET Aspire 9.2 is Now Available with New Ways to Deploy appeared first on .NET Blog.
10/04/2025
Rebooted Digg launches early-access community with $5 fee
The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an early-access community for some of the first people who signed up after last month’s announcement that the pair had bought Digg and planned to relaunch it as something new. The early-access program is […]
10/04/2025
OpenAI gets ready to launch GPT-4.1
OpenAI is getting ready to unveil a number of new AI models, sources familiar with the company’s plans tell The Verge. Among the new AI models will be a release of what I’m expecting will be branded GPT-4.1, which one source describes as a revamped version of OpenAI’s GPT-4o multimodal model. GPT-4o was originally introduced […]
10/04/2025
Google thinks AI can untangle the electrical grid’s bureaucracy
Google, PJM, and Tapestry announced a partnership to develop AI tools to speed interconnection requests through the queue.
10/04/2025
NHTSA’s self-driving safety staff reportedly ‘disproportionally affected’ by DOGE cuts
The cuts that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency made at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February “disproportionately affected” employees working on vehicle automation safety, according to The Financial Times. That division was formed in 2023 and therefore included a number of staffers who were still in their initial probationary hiring period, which […]
10/04/2025
PC manufacturers race ahead of tariffs with rush shipments, Q1 market share booms as a result
Data from Canalys and International Data Corporation (IDC) suggest 2025 Q1 PC shipment increases are likely due to manufacturers striving to avoid initial tariff impacts.
10/04/2025
Why hundreds flock to play with decades-old computers
Over a weekend in April each year, the InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall Township, New Jersey host the Vintage Computer Festival East, which welcomes hundreds of attendees to a former army base to check out a bunch of vintage hardware — not only on display, but also currently in working order. “ That’s one […]
10/04/2025
WhatsApp introduces new features across chats, calls, and channels
WhatsApp has announced a slew of new updates across chats, calls, and channels designed to enhance the messaging and calling experience for users as it continues to compete with popular services like Telegram and Discord. Among the most notable additions is an “Online” indicator that appears at the top of a group chat to show […]
10/04/2025
Why DOGE is killing the agency that keeps banks from ripping you off
Today, I’m talking to Rohit Chopra. He was the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until the end of January, when President Donald Trump fired him and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began trying to dismantle the agency. The CFPB has been around for just under 15 years now. Congress created […]
10/04/2025
There are several ways to save on a Google Pixel 9A
After a bit of a brief, unexpected delay due to a component issue, the Google Pixel 9A is here — and it was worth the wait. Allison Johnson’s review of the midrange phone just went live today, and the 9A seems like the ideal phone for those who want many of the same perks found […]
10/04/2025
A UK edition of Saturday Night Live is premiering in 2026
“Live from London, it’s Saturday Night” is a phrase you’re going to start hearing on a weekly basis next year. Variety reports that Sky Studios is working on a British adaptation of NBC’s long-running Saturday Night Live sketch series. Like its American counterpart and previous international riffs on the series, Saturday Night Live UK will […]
10/04/2025
Inventex founder, an engineer for Coinbase at 14, wants to revolutionize patent applications
Daniel Ruskin started his career when he was a mere 14 years old as an engineer for Coinbase. As he tells it, he was a teenager “who knew how to code and wanted to build cool things.” Obviously too young to get a bank account, Ruskin did freelance development work he found on reddit in […]
10/04/2025
Polestar EV sales jump in Q1 on discounts like its ‘Tesla conquest’ bonus
Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar saw its first-quarter sales jump 76% compared to the same period in 2024 after it began offering discounts and other promotions, including ones geared towards locking in Tesla owners. Polestar sold 12,304 cars in the first three months of the year compared to 6,975 in Q1 2024. Sales were relatively […]
10/04/2025
Windows Update drops empty 'intepub' folder in system, leaves users scratching heads after April update
Computer security researchers have been left scratching their heads after applying Microsoft’s latest raft of Patch Tuesday updates - as an 'inetpub' folder has been left behind.
10/04/2025
How these guitar modeling companies are recreating rare vintage sounds for the digital age
Around 2009, Dweezil Zappa ran into a space problem. He was busy touring the US, performing some songs written by his father, Frank. Recreating those signature “peculiar sounds,†as Zappa calls them, required lugging around a massive rig — roughly the size of two large refrigerators — held together by more than 200 connections and […]
10/04/2025
Canoo CEO can buy bankrupt EV startup’s assets, judge rules
The sale of bankrupt EV startup Canoo’s assets to its CEO has been approved by the judge overseeing the case. After evaluating a number of limited objections to the sale, Judge Brendan Shannon said in a hearing Wednesday he believes the process was fair and that no one else but Canoo CEO Anthony Aquila made […]
10/04/2025
Incident.io raises $62M at a $400M valuation to help IT teams move fast when things break
In the world of tech, some might argue that the term of the decade is AI, but in the bigger scheme of things beyond this single sector, the most important word may well be “resilience.” How well prepared are people, organizations and countries for unforeseen, negative economic, geopolitical, social and environmental developmen? It’s a question […]
10/04/2025
Trump orders federal investigation into former CISA director Chris Krebs
Trump fired Krebs by tweet in 2020 after he publicly debunked Trump's false claims of election fraud.
10/04/2025
What’s on your desk, Allison Johnson?
Preview in a new tab Allison Johnson is the smartphone reviewer for The Verge, along with, as she says, “a bit of telecom on the side, which means I am a professional phone user.” She came to The Verge from DPReview, where she covered digital cameras and smartphone cameras. That looks like a cozy space. […]
10/04/2025
The rise of AI ‘reasoning’ models is making benchmarking more expensive
AI labs like OpenAI claim that their so-called “reasoning” AI models, which can “think” through problems step by step, are more capable than their non-reasoning counterparts in specific domains, such as physics. But while this generally appears to be the case, reasoning models are also much more expensive to benchmark, making it difficult to independently […]
10/04/2025
Big Tech’s tax bill is on the table in tariff talks
The United Kingdom is preparing to respond to the series of tariffs President Donald Trump has introduced since taking office. New taxes on everything from pure-bred horses to bourbon are on the table, but the Labour government seems more interested in a conciliatory approach, and it’s considering sacrificing a popular tax on American tech companies […]
10/04/2025
The Flipper Zero creators have a new tool to fight work distractions
The creators of the Flipper Zero, a sort of electronic Swiss army knife for communicating with other devices, have come up with another tool that’s designed to boost productivity and reduce distractions. The Busy Bar is a customizable app-connected pixelated display that lets others know when you need to be left alone to focus, but […]
10/04/2025
Google Pixel 9A review: a midrange phone done right
The A-series Pixels have been very good over the past few years. And in the Pixel 9A, Google has taken a good midrange phone and made it great. It’s $499, which feels just right for what you get in the 9A. Spend a bit more for the Pixel 9, and you’ll get some upgrades like […]
10/04/2025
Drafted uses AI and video resumes to help early-career professionals land jobs
As the job market continues to get more competitive, it’s taking months for new grads to land employment, with many settling for roles that don’t align with their goals. To address this problem, Drafted, a new startup emerging from stealth, has built a jobs platform for students and early-career professionals, a subset of people who […]
10/04/2025
Onkyo Creator Series GX-10DB, GX-30ARC speakers review: Pretty connectivity
Onkyo's Creator Series speakers deliver capable audio in a mostly premium-looking package, with nearly every connectivity option you can think of, plus a built-in phono preamp, included (plastic) speaker stands, and ARC (HDMI) support on the GX-30ARC.
10/04/2025
Leaked Geekbench results show RTX 5060 Ti 14% faster than Nvidia's previous gen — Matches aging 3070 Ti
We have the first leaked benchmarks of Nvidia's upcoming budget RTX 5060 Ti, which is reported to launch in 8GB/16GB capacities.
10/04/2025
Black Mirror has a clever new game tied to season 7
Along with a new season of Black Mirror, Netflix might have just released its most interesting licensed game today. Season 7 of the sc-fi anthology includes an episode called “Plaything,” in which a genius coder in the ‘90s — the same one from the interactive “Bandersnatch” episode — creates a new game that’s a little […]
10/04/2025
Black Mirror season 7 tugs at your heartstrings while skewering tech
Black Mirror started out as a grim, dark, and nihilistic exploration of near-future tech. But with the tragic romance of “San Junipero†in season 3, the anthology slowly started to shift its priorities. Early on, everything was bad: the technology and the people. And the former was used to show how awful the latter was, […]
10/04/2025
Oppo’s Find X8 Ultra squeezes better specs into a slightly thinner phone
Oppo’s new Find X8 Ultra is the latest entrant in the ongoing competition between Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo to produce the world’s best camera phone. But unlike its rivals, Oppo has decided that bigger might not be better. Let’s be clear: the Find X8 Ultra isn’t a small phone by any means, with a 6.82-inch […]
10/04/2025
RTX 50 series GPUs selling below market price at Walmart returns aisle, multiple customers score great deals
Some folks were able to score RTX 50 series GPUs with deep discounts from Walmart.
10/04/2025
Trump reportedly suspends Nvidia H20 export ban plan after $1 million dinner with Jensen Huang
U.S. gov't no longer plans to curb sales of Nvidia's H20 to China after Trump and Huang met in Mar-a-Lago to discuss Nvidia's investments in U.S.
10/04/2025
Judge berates AI entrepreneur for using a generated ‘lawyer’ in court
A man’s recent attempt to use an AI-generated avatar in his legal appeal made an immediate impression on a New York courtroom, but probably not the one he was hoping for. Jerome Dewald — a 74-year-old that The Register notes is behind a startup that says it’s “revolutionizing legal self-representation with AI” — was chewed […]
10/04/2025
U.S. tariffs to heavily impact HDD and SSD manufacturers, increasing costs
U.S. tariffs are reshaping the global storage industry, hitting HDD and SSD makers the hardest due to their complex supply chain.
10/04/2025
China will show fewer US films in response to tariffs
China says it will cut the number of US films that are imported into the country in retaliation against the latest wave of tariff increases imposed by the Trump administration. A statement issued by the Chinese Film Administration (CFA) on Thursday, which we’ve translated using Google, said that the decision to increase tariffs against China […]
10/04/2025
AI insurtech Ominimo bags its first investment at a $220M valuation
How do you get talented engineers to work for a startup in a mundane field at a time when more exciting companies are paying well and hiring aggressively? Here’s an answer from one insurance startup out of Poland called Ominimo: make pay competitive, yes, but more importantly, give those engineers the license to apply their […]
10/04/2025
ChargePoint’s new Level 2 chargers are faster and go both ways
ChargePoint is ready to speed things up. On Thursday, the EV charging company revealed new AC Level 2 EV chargers that it says effectively double the speed of typical Level 2 chargers. The new architecture also supports bidirectional charging, so owners can use their EVs to power their home or business if the need arises. […]
10/04/2025
Revent rocks the boat with a fresh $100M to invest in people and the planet
It would appear the environment and society remain relevant, whatever you might hear in some other quarters. At least, that’s one conclusion to be drawn from the news that European specialist VC Revent has closed a €100 million ($109 million) Fund II to invest in “planetary and societal health” startups. Launched out of Berlin in […]
10/04/2025
A fresh $100M rolls into DIG Ventures as it bids to woo early-stage European startups
The number of “operator VCs” — former founders turned VCs — in Europe in recent years. This is common in the U.S., where the majority of VCs are former founders. The reverse is true in Europe, where most come from banking or finance. Recent examples in Europe include Wise founder Taavet Hinrikus, Glovo founder Oscar […]
10/04/2025
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, launches an API for Grok 3
Billionaire Elon Musk might’ve just been countersued by OpenAI. But that isn’t stopping his AI company, xAI, from making its flagship Grok 3 model available via an API. It has been several months since xAI unveiled Grok 3, the company’s answer to models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini. Grok 3 can analyze images and respond to questions, […]
10/04/2025
Waymo readies autonomous cars for first international tests in Japan
Next week, Waymo’s driverless vehicles will begin testing on public roads in Japan for the Alphabet company’s first international trip. Waymo has yet to confirm whether it will eventually launch a commercial robotaxi service in the country, but the company is still celebrating the excursion as a “significant milestone.” Waymo describes it as a simple […]
10/04/2025
Wayve’s self-driving tech is headed to Nissan vehicles
Nissan said it will use self-driving software developed by Wayve to beef up its advanced driver assistance system starting in 2027, a landmark deal for the buzzy UK startup that has raised more than $1.3 billion from Nvidia, Microsoft, SoftBank Group, and Uber. Nissan will integrate Wayve’s software as well as sensors, including lidar from an undisclosed […]
10/04/2025
OpenAI countersues Elon Musk to stop his attacks and ‘fake takeover bid’
OpenAI filed a countersuit against Elon Musk on Wednesday, saying on X that “Elon’s nonstop actions against us are just bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI and seize control of the leading AI innovations for his personal benefit.” In the lawsuit, OpenAI’s lawyers argue that “Musk’s continued attacks on OpenAI, culminating most recently in the […]
10/04/2025
How a hydrogen explosion led a teenage founder to become Sequoia’s first defense tech investment
As Sequoia Capital’s first defense tech investment, Mach Industries is an industry darling, raising over $80 million since its founding in 2023. Its founder, Ethan Thornton, now 21, began Mach as a teenage MIT student before dropping out to focus full-time on his startup. But a few months before landing a seed investment from Sequoia […]
09/04/2025
Google says it’ll embrace Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data
Just a few weeks after OpenAI said it would adopt rival Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides, Google is following suit. In a post on X on Wednesday, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis announced that Google will add support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, or MCP, to its Gemini […]
09/04/2025
Solid, which claimed to be the ‘AWS of fintech,’ files for bankruptcy after raising nearly $81M in funding
Banking-as-a-service startup Solid (formerly called Wise) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to documents filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on April 7. Founded in 2018, the fintech company had raised a total of nearly $81 million in funding from investors such as FTV Capital and Headline. […]
09/04/2025
Lawmakers are skeptical of Zuckerberg’s commitment to free speech
Meta’s latest whistleblower, Sarah Wynn-Williams, got a warm reception on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as the Careless People author who the company has fought to silence described the company’s chief executive as someone willing to shapeshift into whatever gets him closest to power. The message was one that lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime […]
09/04/2025
OpenAI counter-sues, calls for Musk to be enjoined from ‘further unlawful and unfair action’
The dramatic suit between OpenAI and its estranged co-founder, billionaire Elon Musk, shows no sign of letting up. In a filing Wednesday, attorneys for OpenAI and the other defendants in the case, including CEO Sam Altman, called for Musk to be enjoined from “further unlawful and unfair action” and “held responsible for the damage he […]
09/04/2025
a16z backs Base Power in $200M round for home backup batteries
The money will fund a rapid expansion, including dozens more megawatt-hours of battery storage and plans for a domestic battery factory.
09/04/2025
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted ads at teens based on their ’emotional state’
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former Director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book “Careless People,” told U.S. senators during her testimony on Wednesday that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. This claim was first documented by Wynn-Williams in her book, which documents […]
09/04/2025
A Waymo robotaxi got trapped in Chick-fil-A drive-through
A Waymo robotaxi caused a traffic jam at a Chick-fil-A in Santa Monica, California, this week after getting stuck in the fast food restaurant’s drive-thru lane. Waymo confirmed the incident, which was first reported by local broadcast station KTLA 5, to TechCrunch via email. Waymo told TechCrunch that there weren’t any passengers in the robotaxi. […]
09/04/2025
Whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams accuses Meta of colluding with China
Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former Head of Global Public Policy, testified before the U.S. Senate today about the company’s relationship with China. According to Wynn-Williams, the company now known as Meta worked directly with the Chinese Community Party (CCP) to “undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,” she said. She alleges that Facebook created custom-built […]
09/04/2025
Adobe is building AI agents for Photoshop and Premiere Pro
Adobe is building AI agents for Photoshop and Premiere Pro that can suggest ways to edit your photos or videos and then carry out the tasks for you, according to a blog written today by Ely Greenfield, Adobe’s CTO of digital media. Adobe Photoshop’s agentic AI, or what the company calls its “creative agent,” will […]
09/04/2025
Nvidia’s H20 AI chips may be spared from export controls — for now
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appears to have struck a deal with the Trump administration to avoid export restrictions on the company’s H20 AI chips. The H20, the most advanced Nvidia-produced AI chip that can still be exported from the U.S. to China, was reportedly spared thanks to a promise from Huang to invest in new […]
09/04/2025
Aqara adds support for 50 new Matter device types
Aqara is adding support for over 50 new Matter device types, making it one of the most comprehensive smart home platforms in terms of Matter support, alongside Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant. The company is also bringing advanced bridging to all its Matter controllers, allowing you to integrate Aqara’s many advanced automation features into any […]
09/04/2025
Threads is testing a feature that lets you follow the same creators you follow on X
Meta is starting to test a new feature in Threads that lets users follow the same creators they follow on X, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. “We’re currently testing a way for you to find and follow creators from other platforms on Threads, making it easier to connect with the people and conversations that matter […]
09/04/2025
Framework’s entry-level modular Laptop 12 starts at £499
Earlier this year, modular computer company Framework began a quest to fix “entry-level laptops” with the Framework Laptop 12, its first 12-inch laptop and its first 2-in-1 touchscreen PC. And as you might expect, Trump’s new US tariffs are making entry-level pricing difficult for Framework, which has at least briefly delayed US preorders of the […]
09/04/2025
AMD quietly announces Ryzen 8000HX series — Dragon Range Refresh arrives to replace AMD's top laptop CPUs
AMD has announced its Ryzen 8000HX line of processors, codenamed Dragon Range Refresh. The premium laptop processors will launch with products soon.
09/04/2025
Trump says the future of AI is powered by coal
The day before several major tech leaders appeared before Congress, begging for ways to get more energy for the nascent American artificial intelligence industry, Donald Trump signed an executive order offering a solution: increased coal production. As part of a series of executive orders released Tuesday designed to promote the rapid growth of the coal […]
09/04/2025
Framework raised prices and then un-raised them an hour later because of Trump
Thanks to Framework, one of the most transparent computer companies out there, we now have a sterling example of just how ridiculous President Donald Trump’s tariffs can make life in the year 2025. Today, the company made all of its computers more expensive. Then, it almost immediately reversed that to bring its computers back to […]
09/04/2025
.NET and .NET Framework April 2025 servicing releases updates
A recap of the latest servicing updates for .NET and .NET Framework for April 2025. The post .NET and .NET Framework April 2025 servicing releases updates appeared first on .NET Blog.
09/04/2025
Gemini can now turn your Google Docs into podcasts
Were you clamoring for two AI-generated podcast hosts to talk through the key points of your document before you send it to your boss? No? Well, you’re getting it anyway. Google has announced new Gemini features coming to Workspace apps, including NotebookLM-style AI podcasts integrated right into Google Docs. There’s a wide spread of new […]
09/04/2025
Trump pauses most global tariffs for 90 days but increases China tariffs to 125%
Trump says that he's suspending reciprocal tariffs on 75 countries, except for China, which gets even more import taxes.
09/04/2025
Ilya Sutskever taps Google Cloud to power his AI startup’s research
OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever’s new AI startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), is using Google Cloud’s TPU chips to power its AI research, part of a new partnership the companies announced on Wednesday in a press release. Google Cloud says SSI is using TPUs to “accelerate its research and development efforts toward building […]
09/04/2025
Canoo CEO can buy bankrupt EV startup’s assets, judge rules
The sale of bankrupt EV startup Canoo’s assets to its CEO has been okayed by the judge overseeing the case. After evaluating a number of limited objections to the sale, Judge Brendan Shannon said in a hearing Wednesday he believes the process was fair, and that no one else but Canoo CEO Anthony Aquila made […]
09/04/2025
Smart home device manufacturers are bracing for chaos — again
President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs — including a now 125 percent levy on Chinese imports — will hit the smart home industry hard. Many smart home device makers are already struggling, thanks, in part, to Trump’s first round of tariffs. Increased competition from budget smart home companies largely based in China has also […]
09/04/2025
Court document reveals locations of WhatsApp victims targeted by NSO spyware
The list of 1,223 victims in 51 countries hints at the “true scale of the spyware problem,” per one researcher.
09/04/2025
Are graphics cards subject to new U.S. tariffs of up to 125%? It isn't entirely clear yet
Graphics cards, motherboards, and other PC parts may soon see steep price hikes as new U.S. tariffs of up to 104% target imports from China and Taiwan.
09/04/2025
Trump tariffs will hit consoles, monitors, and laptops hardest — U.S. imports 66% or more from China
The U.S. imports 66% or more of several electronic consumer goods from China, and they're about to become more expensive.
09/04/2025
More good news for New York startups: Lerer Hippeau raised another $200M
New York’s A-list venture capital seed fund, Lerer Hippeau, announced it closed a ninth $200 million fund on Wednesday. That’s a step up from its eighth fund, which closed at $140 million, it said. With the new fund, Lerer Hippeau has $1.4 billion of assets under management. Since its inception in 2010, Lerer Hippeau has […]
09/04/2025
One of our favorite video doorbells is on sale for $80
One of our favorite doorbells, TP-Link’s Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera, is on sale for just $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon. That’s a buck shy of its best price. A lot of video doorbells come with extra hidden subscription fees if you want to make the most of them, but this one doesn’t. It lets […]
09/04/2025
AI costs drop 280-fold, but harmful incidents rise 56% in last year — Stanford 2025 AI report highlights China-US competition
Stanford's 2025 AI Index Report finds several key takeaways on the state of the AI sphere in 2025, including its rapid growth and causes for concern.
09/04/2025
Trump announces a ’90-day pause’ on tariffs outside of China
President Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariffs have only been in effect since midnight ET, and he has already announced “a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff” of 10 percent for countries that haven’t retaliated against the tariffs he created. However, Trump also said in his post on Truth Social that he will […]
09/04/2025
Teenage Engineering has updated its KO II synthesizer with new sampling powers
Nearly a year and a half after it first launched the EP-133 KO II synthesizer in late 2023, Teenage Engineering has released its first major software update. The OS 2.0 update, which can be downloaded to the synth through a web browser or installed using a USB cable, includes features like creating new samples from […]
09/04/2025
OpenAI launches program to design new ‘domain-specific’ AI benchmarks
OpenAI thinks AI benchmarks are broken. Now the company is launching a program to fix how AI models are scored. The new OpenAI Pioneers Program will focus on creating evaluations for AI models that “set the bar for what good looks like,” as OpenAI phrased it in a blog post. “As the pace of AI […]
09/04/2025
The best AirPods to buy
Whether you’re buying your first pair of AirPods or replacing a well-used older pair, it’s easy to understand why so many iPhone owners prefer Apple’s earbuds and headphones over other options. Apple has spent years gradually adding new features that work best — and sometimes only work at all — within the company’s walled garden. […]
09/04/2025
The best AirPods to buy
Whether you’re buying your first pair of AirPods or replacing a well-used older pair, it’s easy to understand why so many iPhone owners prefer Apple’s earbuds and headphones over other options. Apple has spent years gradually adding new features that work best — and sometimes only work at all — within the company’s walled garden. […]
09/04/2025
WordPress.com is offering a new AI site builder
WordPress.com has launched a new AI-powered site builder in early access that can construct your WordPress webpage, including fully written text, layout, generated images, and more. WordPress.com says the AI website builder can make “beautiful, functional websites in minutes.” However, it can’t yet do the heavy lifting of creating an ecommerce site or one with […]
09/04/2025
The Switch 2’s Joy-Con charging grip has two extra buttons
The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller isn’t the only new Nintendo gamepad getting two back buttons: the Joy-Con 2 Charging Grip has the additional buttons as well, according to Nintendo’s online listing for the controller. Like the Pro Controller, the new back buttons are GL and GR that can be remapped to other buttons, the […]
09/04/2025
China retaliates with 84% tariff on US imports in response to Trump's 104% tariff
Beijing hit back against Trump's 104% tariffs by increasing its own taxes on U.S. imports to 84%.
09/04/2025
You can now give Google’s AI video model camera directions
Google is trying to make it easier for users of its video AI model Veo 2 to make cinematic-looking generations and edit real footage. The new Veo 2 capabilities are available to preview via Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, alongside other updates to improve Google’s text-to-image generator, Imagen 3, and audio-related AI models. New Veo […]
09/04/2025
Why I love Twinkly Strings and Twinkly Flex
Jess Weatherbed is a news writer and part of our international team. Jess describes herself as “mostly a generalist who covers a wide range of stories before my US and Canadian colleagues jump online.” Their main beat, however, is with the creative industries, where they cover what tech and software they are using, how creators […]
09/04/2025
Adobe brings 1,500 new fonts to Creative Cloud
Adobe has launched its largest typeface expansion in five years, giving Creative Cloud subscribers access to 1,500 new fonts that can be used on websites and apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. More than 750 of these fonts have been provided via a collaboration with Monotype, which owns the licenses for Helvetica, Gotham, and Avenir. […]
09/04/2025
YouTube is supporting the ‘No Fakes Act’ targeting unauthorized AI replicas
Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are again introducing their Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe, or NO FAKES, Act, which standardizes rules around using making AI copies of a person’s faces, names, and voices. This time, the bill — previously introduced in 2023 and 2024 — has the backing of a […]
09/04/2025
How we ended up rewriting NuGet Restore in .NET 9
Learn about the journey that led to a full rewrite of the NuGet Restore algorithm in .NET 9, achieving break-through scale and performance. The post How we ended up rewriting NuGet Restore in .NET 9 appeared first on .NET Blog.
09/04/2025
Trump’s chaos is threatening the bipartisan movement to break up Big Tech
At Y Combinator’s Little Tech Competition Summit in downtown DC last week, there was an air of optimism and something verging on camaraderie among a surprising crowd. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) — barely recovered from his 25-hour speech about preserving democracy on the Senate floor a day earlier — showed up to discuss the importance […]
09/04/2025
Anthropic rolls out a $200-per-month Claude subscription
Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new, very expensive subscription plan for its AI chatbot Claude: Max. An answer to OpenAI’s $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro tier, Max comes with higher usage limits than Anthropic’s $20-per-month Claude Pro subscription as well as priority access to the company’s newest AI models and features. A bit confusingly, […]
09/04/2025
Anthropic launches a $200 per month tier for “power users”
Anthropic just announced a new premium tier called “Claude Max” that significantly increases usage limits for “power users†who’ve been maxing out their existing plans. The new offering comes with two options: a $100 per month tier with 5x more usage than the Pro plan, and a $200 per month tier with 20x more usage. […]
09/04/2025
Kalshi CEO: ‘State law doesn’t really apply’ to us
Last week, prediction market startup Kalshi sued New Jersey and Nevada after they tried to shut down its recently launched sports trading operation. In the lawsuit, Kalshi claimed that, since they’re a federally regulated platform, state gaming commissions don’t have the authority to set rules for them. “We’re not necessarily very concerned [because] we are […]
09/04/2025
MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values
A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that hyperbolic notion, drawing the conclusion that AI doesn’t, in fact, […]
09/04/2025
YouTube expands its ‘likeness’ detection technology, which detects AI fakes, to a handful of top creators
YouTube on Wednesday announced an expansion of its pilot program designed to identify and manage AI-generated content that features the “likeness,” including the face, of creators, artists, and other famous or influential figures. The company is also publicly declaring its support for the legislation known as the NO FAKES ACT, which aims to tackle the […]
09/04/2025
Senator puts hold on Trump’s nominee for CISA director, citing telco security ‘cover up’
Sean Plankey's nomination to head up CISA will be blocked, for now.
09/04/2025
The Last of Us renewed for season 3 just ahead of HBO return
The Last of Us’ second season hasn’t even debuted yet, but Warner Bros. Discovery renewed the show for a third season. The company hasn’t shared details about when the third season may air or how many episodes it might be. The second season’s first episode debuts on Sunday on HBO and Max. Season 2 is […]
09/04/2025
Samsung is finally releasing Ballie
Samsung’s home robot Ballie is finally poised to roll into our homes… and maybe our hearts? Following teasing a release sometime this year at CES 2025, the company has now announced that the cute rolling bot will arrive in the US this summer, with pre-registration open on Samsung’s website. The ball-shaped robot is equipped with […]
09/04/2025
These might be Microsoft’s new Office icons
Microsoft appears to be working on new 3D icons for its Office suite. Reddit users have discovered the new icons in an email survey from Microsoft, reports Windows Central. The survey includes a brief look at the new icons, with Microsoft asking for feedback on its changes to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office apps. […]
09/04/2025
Sony adds three new wireless speakers to bass-boosted ULT Power Sound lineup
Sony is upgrading three of its wireless Bluetooth speakers with significant redesigns and new features as it integrates them into the ULT Power Sound series it introduced a year ago that includes speakers and headphones with improved bass-boosting sound modes. All three speakers will now have a dedicated ULT shortcut button for those sound modes […]
09/04/2025
Sony seemingly bakes tariff penalty into its new US TV pricing
Earlier this month, we got a close look at Sony’s new Bravia 8 II OLED. Despite the name, this TV is actually the spiritual successor of the company’s acclaimed A95L. It’s going to be one of the very best TVs you can buy in 2025, and now Sony has revealed how much the Bravia 8 […]
09/04/2025
AMD Zen 5 CPUs also affected by microcode vulnerability — Granite Ridge, Turin, Ryzen AI 300, and Fire Range at risk
A vulnerability targeting AMD CPUs that can execute unsigned microcode on your processor also affects AMD's Zen 5.
09/04/2025
US may fine TSMC $1B over chip allegedly used in Huawei AI processor
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) may have to pay a fine of $1 billion or more to resolve a U.S. export control investigation related to a chip it made that was used in a Huawei AI processor, according to a report by Reuters. TSMC did not provide any further comments as it is now “in […]
09/04/2025
Tired of doing laundry? These startups want to help.
Doing laundry can be a chore. It takes time and is tedious. Few of us like to do it. So it’s no surprise that startups have emerged to take that load off your back — literally. And investors are lining up to fund new and older players alike. Eleven-month-old NoScrubs has just raised $2 million […]
09/04/2025
Samsung’s SmartThings app gets more home automation capabilities
Samsung has updated SmartThings, its app that lets users control the company’s IoT devices, with new home automation capabilities in an apparent bid to cross-sell more of its smart home devices and appliances to existing customers. Besides the automation features, users will get new integrations with the Samsung Health app, an intercom feature, and support […]
09/04/2025
Artisan, the ‘stop hiring humans’ AI agent startup, raises $25M – and is still hiring humans
It’s been a tough but exciting year for 23-year-old Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, founder and CEO of AI sales agent startup Artisan. Artisan just raised a $25 million Series A led by Glade Brook Capital, Carmichael-Jack exclusively tells TechCrunch. Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, Oliver Jung, Fellows Fund, and others participated as well. A year […]
09/04/2025
Murderbot is going through it in the first trailer for Apple’s sci-fi series
For a being named Murderbot, the star of Apple’s next sci-fi show is surprisingly relatable. The show — which is also called Murderbot — just got its first trailer, and it sets up the titular lead, played by Alexander Skarsgård, who has just become sentient and is, well, struggling. The bot is forced to hide […]
09/04/2025
Samsung’s The Frame Pro was never going to be cheap — and it isn’t
Samsung made waves at CES earlier this year when it announced The Frame Pro. We eventually learned that the company was over-selling the TV’s “Mini LED” technology, but the new model does come with legitimate upgrades like a Wireless One Connect Box, meaning the only cable running to the TV itself will be for power, […]
09/04/2025
Trump’s new tariffs leave small creators scrambling
If you’ve ever been to an anime or any fan convention, you know that the place that’s often the busiest is artists alley. There, creators sell their wares ranging from commissioned artwork to stickers, enamel pins, stuffed toys, apparel, food, and more. Often these goods are made with the artist’s own hand. Other times, merchants […]
09/04/2025
WordPress.com launches a free AI-powered website builder
Hosting platform WordPress.com on Wednesday launched a new AI website builder that allows anyone to create a functioning website using an AI chat-style interface. The feature, which is being made available to WordPress users for free, is targeted at entrepreneurs, freelancers, bloggers, and others who need a professional online presence, the company says. At this […]
09/04/2025
Google used AI to enhance The Wizard of Oz for the Las Vegas Sphere’s giant screen
Following an announcement last week that Sphere Entertainment was creating an immersive version of The Wizard of Oz for its unique Las Vegas venue, we now have more details on how companies like Google and Magnopus are using AI to enhance the 86-year-old film to fill the Sphere’s massive 160,000-square-foot semi-spherical screen. But a collaboration […]
09/04/2025
Instagram tests locked reels that can be accessed with secret codes
Instagram appears to be quietly testing locked reels that viewers would have to unlock with a code and a provided hint. The feature is a simple way to increase engagement with the creator’s content, but it could also offer creators and celebrities a way to share exclusive reels with their most dedicated fans, who are […]
09/04/2025
Nuro’s $106M raise backs its shift from delivery robots to licensing autonomy tech
After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale technology demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in fresh funding to help scale its autonomous driving technology and advance commercial partnerships. The Series E round brings Nuro’s total funding raised to $2.2 billion and its valuation to $6 billion. That’s a drop from the […]
09/04/2025
Trump triples tariffs on low value packages from China and Hong Kong
Donald Trump is making it even more expensive for US consumers to shop online from Chinese retailers like Temu and Shein. In an executive order amendment published Tuesday night, Trump raised the tariff rate for packages valued under $800 entering the US from China and Hong Kong that previously were exempt. The increase essentially triples […]
09/04/2025
Xbox’s next major games showcase streams in June
It’s looking like another busy summer of gaming news: Microsoft just announced its next Xbox Games Showcase livestream, which will take place on June 8th at 1PM ET. The company says that the event will include “a look at upcoming titles from across our first-party studios, in addition to incredible new titles from our third-party […]
09/04/2025
Hacking GoPros to help save the Atlantic’s rarest bird
The image streams over YouTube in crisp grayscale: a young cahow — known outside Bermuda as the Bermuda petrel — scrambles through a sandy tunnel and pokes its tiny head above the ground for the first time. It’s a few months old, but it has never seen daylight. Gray fluffball hatchlings spend their whole lives […]
09/04/2025
Solve Intelligence raises fresh $12M to bring AI to IP, patent workflows
Legal tech has come a long way, but the bulk of an intellectual property or patent lawyer’s work today is still done with spreadsheets, word processors and PDFs. A startup out of Delaware, Solve Intelligence, is using generative AI to speed up that work, believing its tech is uniquely suited to the needs of patent […]
09/04/2025
Tessell snags $60M to drive data management at scale
Tessell, a startup developing a multi-cloud database-as-a-service, has raised $60 million in a new funding round led by WestBridge Capital ahead of its plans to expand its market presence and launch an AI-powered conversational database management service. As data becomes more critical than ever, many companies are struggling to manage and store it efficiently. Legacy […]
09/04/2025
The complete agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: AI unveiled
It’s been a couple of years since our last topic-focused, one-day event — but with AI transforming the tech landscape, we couldn’t miss the chance to gather 1,200 founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone shaping the future of AI for a deep dive into what’s next. On June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, […]
09/04/2025
Corsair confirms the slight wiggle room in its 16-pin connectors for Nvidia GPUs is by design
Corsair says the added play improves terminal alignment and reduces wear.
09/04/2025
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan loses $5 million on his $25 million Intel investment as stock tumbles
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan lost around $5 million in value when Intel stocks dropped from around $24 per share to less than $19.
09/04/2025
President Trump threatens TSMC with 100% tariff if it doesn't build in the U.S.
President Donald Trump claimed his threat of steep import tariffs pushed TSMC to boost its U.S. investment from $65 billion to $200 billion without government aid.
09/04/2025
Ironwood is Google’s newest AI accelerator chip
During its Cloud Next conference this week, Google unveiled the latest generation of its TPU AI accelerator chip. The new chip, called Ironwood, is Google’s seventh-generation TPU and is the first optimized for inference — that is, running AI models. Scheduled to launch sometime later this year for Google Cloud customers, Ironwood will come in […]
09/04/2025
Google’s newest Gemini AI model focuses on efficiency
Google is releasing a new AI model designed to deliver strong performance with a focus on efficiency. The model, Gemini 2.5 Flash, will soon launch in Vertex AI, Google’s AI development platform. The company says it offers “dynamic and controllable” computing, allowing developers to adjust processing time based on the complexity of queries. “[You can […]
09/04/2025
Google Workspace gets automation flows, podcast-style summaries
Google is upgrading Workspace, its suite of cloud-based productivity tools, with new AI capabilities. The suite is gaining Workspace Flows, a tool designed to automate multi-step processes such as updating spreadsheets and digging through documents for information. Flows can tap Gems, Google’s brand of custom AI-powered chatbots, to handle specialized tasks, and it can also […]
09/04/2025
Samsung adds Google’s Gemini to its home robot Ballie
Samsung said on Wednesday that it’s adding Google’s Gemini AI to its home robot Ballie through a partnership with Google Cloud. Users will be able to ask the robot different queries to get answers from Gemini, said the companies. Samsung aims to tap into Gemini’s multimodal capabilities for its robot. The Korean tech giant said […]
09/04/2025
Google’s enterprise cloud gets a music-generating AI model
On Wednesday, Google rolled out updates to several of its first-party media-generating AI models available through its Vertex AI cloud platform. Lyria, Google’s text-to-music model, is now available in preview for select customers, and the company’s Veo 2 video creation model has been enhanced with new editing and visual effects customization options. The company has […]
09/04/2025
Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, gets ‘agentic’ abilities
Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview. During its Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, Google said Code Assist can now deploy new AI “agents” that can take multiple steps to accomplish complex programming tasks. These agents can create applications from product specifications in Google Docs, for example, or […]
09/04/2025
Reddit’s conversational AI search tool leverages Google Gemini
Reddit Answers, the platform’s conversational AI search tool, gets an upgrade through an integration with Google Gemini. This comes over a year after Reddit expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to access its Vertex AI platform to build AI agents. Google and Reddit announced the update on Wednesday, explaining that by incorporating Gemini on Vertex AI, […]
09/04/2025
Google Maps is launching tools to help cities analyze infrastructure and traffic
Google is opening up its Google Maps Platform data so that cities, developers, and other business decision makers can more easily access information about things like infrastructure and traffic, the company announced on Wednesday. Google is integrating new datasets for Google Maps Platform directly into BigQuery, the tech giant’s fully managed data analytics service, for […]
09/04/2025
China retaliates with additional 50 percent tariff on US goods, matching Trump’s
Hours after Donald Trump’s latest tariffs came into effect, China has announced retaliatory measures: an additional 50 percent tariff on US goods, on top of a planned 34 percent charge, and adding a further 12 US companies to its export control list. “The US’s practice of escalating tariffs on China is a mistake on top […]
09/04/2025
Intel enforces strict tariff compliance for steel and aluminum shipments amid new U.S. tariffs
Intel is tightening supplier compliance policies to account for the significant amount of these metals used across its products and infrastructure.
09/04/2025
Nvidia reportedly sources GDDR7 chips from SK hynix for RTX 50-series GPUs
A hardware leaker claims that Nvidia is supposedly purchasing GDDR7 chips from SK hynix in addition to Samsung.
09/04/2025
Intel's market cap plummets to 16-year low as stock rout continues
U.S. gov't's tariffs and market uncertainties plunge Intel stock to 16-year low.
09/04/2025
Universal is building a UK theme park
Universal, having just completed its latest Nintendo- and Harry Potter-filled theme park in the US, is now planning to build a new theme park and resort in the United Kingdom. The multi-billion dollar project will be Universal’s first European theme park, with construction on the 476-acre complex expected to start next year in Bedford, England, […]
09/04/2025
Lyst, the fashion marketplace once valued at $700M, sells to Japan’s Zozo for $154M
Fashion goes in and out of style, and so, it turns out, do fashion startups. Lyst — the high-end fashion marketplace with 160 million users that was once valued at $700 million — has been acquired for just $154 million in an all-cash deal. The buyer is Zozo, a Japan-based fashion and e-commerce business. Zozo […]
09/04/2025
Governments identify dozens of Android apps bundled with spyware
The advisories say the spyware apps are used to target members of civil society who may oppose China’s state interests.
09/04/2025
Framework delays Laptop 12 orders in the US over tariffs
Framework has confirmed it will no longer be opening US preorders for the new Laptop 12 today, or announcing a price, as it evaluates the impact of Trump’s tariffs. The modular, convertible laptop will still be available later today for buyers elsewhere, including Canada and Europe. The Laptop 12 is Framework’s smallest laptop yet, and […]
09/04/2025
Microsoft starts testing Copilot Vision update that can ‘see’ your screen and apps
Microsoft has started testing a new update to its Copilot app on Windows that will let you share your screen or apps with the AI assistant. Copilot Vision was originally limited to Microsoft’s Edge browser, but it’s now extending to any app on your PC. Copilot Vision will be able to do things like coach […]
09/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs are officially in effect, including 104 percent on China
President Donald Trump’s promised higher tariffs have gone into effect today, targeting many countries whose goods imported to the US were already subject to a 10 percent base tariff that started on April 5th. The White House announced the tariffs on April 2nd, dubiously claiming they were “reciprocal” based on a nonsensical formula that far […]
09/04/2025
You can grab three months of Apple TV Plus for $2.99 a month right now
Curious what all the fuss over shows like Severance and The Studio is about? If you’re interested in streaming either, new and eligible returning subscribers can sign up for Apple TV Plus through April 24th for just $2.99 a month for the first three months. Apple TV Plus would normally cost you $9.99 a month, […]
08/04/2025
Instagram might finally release an iPad app
Meta is developing a version of Instagram for iPad, according to The Information. Currently, running Instagram on an iPad is just a blown-up version of the iPhone app, so an official Instagram app from Meta would be a very welcome change. Why would Meta do this now, after ignoring Apple’s tablet for over a decade? […]
08/04/2025
Arduboy creator says his tiny Game Boy won’t survive Trump’s tariffs
Kevin Bates managed to quit his day job and move to China after his game-playing business card, the Arduboy, went viral in 2014. But a decade later, Trump’s staggering and inexplicable new US tariffs are driving him out of business. Just as he was about to turn a profit for the first time, just before […]
08/04/2025
A 25-year-old police drone founder just raised $75M led by Index
If you ever call 911 from an area that’s hard to get to, you might hear the buzz of a drone well before a police cruiser pulls up. And there’s a good chance that it will be one made by Brinc Drones, a Seattle-based startup founded by 25-year-old Blake Resnick who dropped out of college […]
08/04/2025
SmartThings gets Matter 1.4 support for water heaters, heat pumps, and more
Samsung’s smart home platform SmartThings now works with Matter 1.4, the latest version of the interoperable smart home standard, adding compatibility with things like water heaters, heat pumps, and solar panels that use the spec. The company has also introduced new smart home automation triggers, as well as a broadcast feature for SmartThings-connected speakers. Matter […]
08/04/2025
Amazon is already changing its ultra-cheap Temu copycat
As Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are set to take effect, Amazon is tweaking some of how it does business — specifically how it operates Amazon Haul, the company’s version of bargain bin Chinese sites like Temu and Shein. The Information reported Tuesday that Amazon Haul offerings will now include products from well-known brands like Adidas, […]
08/04/2025
Predator: Killer of Killers teases a most dangerous, multigenerational game in new trailer
The next phase of director Dan Trachtenberg’s plan to reenergize the Predator franchise is another foray into the past. Today, Hulu shared a new trailer for 20th Century Studios’ upcoming animated anthology movie, Predator: Killer of Killers. Similar to Prey, Killer of Killers will tell the story of how human warriors have to fight for […]
08/04/2025
Instagram is beefing up its search to compete with TikTok
Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the company is looking to improve the app’s search functionality, admitting this is an area where Instagram could do more to compete. The remarks, made on a recent episode of the “Build Your Tribe” podcast, come at a time when younger Gen Z users often turn to social apps like […]
08/04/2025
Nintendo has already shipped ‘some’ Switch 2 inventory to the US
Nintendo has already shipped a supply of Switch 2 units to the US, months before the system goes on sale. That’s according to Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who said on CNBC Monday that Nintendo had time to build up an inventory of the next-gen portable gaming system “on a global basis,” and that […]
08/04/2025
TSMC faces $1 billion US fine for making chips for blacklisted Huawei
Doing business with Huawei may be particularly expensive as TSMC is facing a massive fine for 'unknowingly' supplying the blacklisted Chinese company with an AI processor.
08/04/2025
Razer halts laptop sales to US consumers — this response to US tariffs could become commonplace
Razer has seemingly halted direct laptop sales to the US from its website. This comes in the wake of major US tariffs sweeping the globe, and seems to be a likely response from many companies.
08/04/2025
AMD Dragon Range Refresh CPU specs confirmed via early retail listing — Ryzen 9 8940HX sees 100 MHz increase
AMD's Dragon Range Refresh CPU family has had more details revealed thanks to a new Asus listing on a Chinese retailer.
08/04/2025
Deep Cogito emerges from stealth with hybrid AI ‘reasoning’ models
A new company, Deep Cogito, has emerged from stealth with a family of openly available AI models that can be switched between “reasoning” and non-reasoning modes. Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 have shown great promise in domains like math and physics, thanks to their ability to effectively fact-check themselves by working through complex problems step […]
08/04/2025
No, Stripe is not becoming a bank
Last week, details emerged about an application that fintech giant Stripe had submitted for a U.S. banking license. There was a lot of chatter on X about whether this meant Stripe – already the largest privately valued fintech in the world – would now be adding bank to the list of descriptions of what it […]
08/04/2025
Inside the EV startup secretly backed by Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is funding a secretive EV startup based in Michigan called Slate Auto that could start production as soon as next year, according to multiple sources and documents that link the billionaire’s family office to the startup. Slate, which took root in another Bezos-connected company called Re:Build Manufacturing, has been operating quietly since its […]
08/04/2025
Trump believes iPhones can be made in the US, says White House
With time continuing to tick down until President Trump’s higher tariffs take effect after midnight, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down on the idea that products like iPhones could realistically shift to US manufacturing, claiming that “if Apple didn’t think the United States could do it they probably wouldn’t have put up that […]
08/04/2025
Tesla Supercharger damaged in possible explosion in Washington
A Tesla Supercharger station was severely damaged in a possible explosion in Lacey, Washington. The local police department is investigating the incident, along with the FBI, which has been probing a number of acts of vandalism involving Tesla. The Lacey Police Department said it received multiple calls of a “loud noise” at 1:34am PT, which […]
08/04/2025
At last, MrBeast weighs in on the global economic crisis du jour
Your 401k is suffering. The billionaires are fighting. The gamers are imperiled. Not even the penguins on McDonald Island, where no humans reside, have been spared. But at long last, 26-year-old YouTuber and chocolatier MrBeast has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports. Jokes aside, the prolific YouTuber […]
08/04/2025
Trump’s DOJ will no longer prosecute cryptocurrency fraud
The Trump administration is disbanding a Department of Justice unit dedicated to enforcing cryptocurrency fraud, ending what it calls “regulation by prosecution.†In a memo obtained by The Washington Post, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche directed federal prosecutors to cease “litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.†[…]
08/04/2025
Loss of Pulse alerts are rolling out on Pixel Watch 3
Google is beginning to roll out its Loss of Pulse Detection feature to Pixel Watch 3 owners in the U.S. Loss of Pulse Detection, the smartwatch’s marquee health feature, calls emergency services if the Pixel Watch 3 can’t pick up your heartbeat while wearing it. It was initially announced alongside the Pixel Watch 3 in […]
08/04/2025
Amazon plays catchup with new Nova AI models to generate voices and video
Amazon is showing off new AI technology this week, including its take on a more conversational voice model to better compete with things like Gemini Live and OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode and an update to its model that can generate video. The new Nova Sonic voice model handles real-time speech processing and AI voice generation […]
08/04/2025
The next season of Love, Death, and Robots is coming to Netflix this May
The last installment of Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots anthology series was nothing short of fantastic, and we’re just a few weeks away from the show returning to Netflix with new episodes. Today, Netflix announced that Love, Death, and Robots’ fourth volume is set to debut in May with 10 new animated stories about people […]
08/04/2025
Razer pauses direct laptop sales in the US as new tariffs loom
Razer’s upcoming Blade 16 and other laptops are no longer available for preorder or purchase on its US site. The configurator for preordering its new Blade 16 laptop was available as recently as April 1st, according to the Internet Archive — one day before the Trump administration announced sweeping US tariffs on China, Taiwan, and […]
08/04/2025
Trump will hit China with 104 percent tariffs
The US will impose a cumulative 104 percent tariff on goods imported from China after midnight tonight alongside a host of tariffs on other countries, the White House confirmed to CNBC. It’s one of the most staggering figures from President Donald Trump’s worldwide trade war launched last week. The Trump administration calls the tariffs part […]
08/04/2025
Windows 11
You can get more out of Windows 11 with helpful tips, the latest news and insightful features.
08/04/2025
My go-to budget Bluetooth SoundPeats headphones have been reduced to a staggeringly cheap $29 — these cans have amazing battery life for the price
Great sound, amazing battery life, and an outstanding price. The SoundPeats Space headphones are available for just $29 in this deal.
08/04/2025
The kid-friendly Fitbit Ace has returned to its best price to date
If you’re struggling to get your kids off their phones and outside, the Fitbit Ace LTE is packed with a number of features that are designed to help kids get out and exercise while keeping unwanted distractions to a minimum. And right now, it’s matching its all-time low of around $149.95 ($30 off) at Amazon […]
08/04/2025
UALink has Nvidia's NVLink in the crosshairs — final specs support up to 1,024 GPUs with 200 GT/s bandwidth
The UALink Consortium has finalized the UALink 1.0 specification, enabling tapeouts of chips that support a high-speed, low-latency, industry-standard interconnect for AI and HPC accelerators in rack scale solutions.
08/04/2025
Hades II will launch first for consoles on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2
Hades II will be a console exclusive on Nintendo Switch systems when it eventually launches out of early access. Nintendo announced last week that the game was coming to the Switch and Switch 2, and today, the company released a new Creator’s Voice video highlighting more about the game. In the video, Supergiant employees don’t […]
08/04/2025
Does Colossal Biosciences’ dire wolf creation justify its $10B+ valuation?
On Monday, the “de-extinction” startup Colossal Biosciences announced its most ambitious results to date: the dire wolf. These are creatures that have been extinct for more than 12,000 years and made famous by the HBO show “Game of Thrones.” These white, fluffy animals live on a 2,000-acre preserve in a location so secretive that journalists, […]
08/04/2025
Kioxia optical-based PCIe 5.0 SSDs support cable lengths up to 40 meters — now they just need optical-ready data centers
Kioxia has completed the development of its next-generation PCIe 5.0 optical-based SSD. The new technology is being made for next-generation 'green' data centers that will be compatible with optical-based storage devices.
08/04/2025
A nonprofit is using AI agents to raise money for charity
Tech giants like Microsoft might be touting AI “agents” as profit-boosting tools for corporations, but a nonprofit is trying to prove that agents can be a force for good, too. Sage Future, a 501(c)(3) backed by Open Philanthropy, launched an experiment earlier this month tasking four AI models in a virtual environment with raising money […]
08/04/2025
YouTube says Nope! to age-gating Balatro videos
On Friday, the YouTube channel Balatro University posted a video highlighting how some of their videos had recently been age-restricted after the company tightened its policies about gambling content. But in a post Monday night, YouTube said the restrictions shouldn’t have been applied. “Videos featuring Balatro gameplay should not be age-restricted,” YouTube says in a […]
08/04/2025
Tapestry’s app can now de-dupe your social feeds
Tapestry, a new app designed to organize the open social web, is adding a valuable feature to help people who are keeping up with multiple social networks: It will now remove duplicate posts from your feed. That means if you follow the same person across social networking services like Bluesky and Mastodon, you won’t have […]
08/04/2025
Most Americans don’t trust AI — or the people in charge of it
AI experts are feeling pretty good about the future of their field. Most Americans are not. A new report from Pew Research Center released last week shows a sharp divide in how artificial intelligence is perceived by the people building it versus the people living with it. The survey, which includes responses from over 1,000 […]
08/04/2025
Most Americans don’t trust AI — or the people in charge of it
AI experts are feeling pretty good about the future of their field. Most Americans are not. A new report from Pew Research Center released last week shows a sharp divide in how artificial intelligence is perceived by the people building it versus the people living with it. The survey, which includes responses from over 1,000 […]
08/04/2025
Nintendo is delaying Switch 2 preorders in Canada, too
Nintendo has delayed Switch 2 preorders in Canada, which were set to start on April 9th, according to a statement shared with MobileSyrup. Last week, the company delayed preorders in the US because of the potential impact of the Trump administration’s new tariffs. “Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in Canada will not start on April […]
08/04/2025
Nintendo is delaying Switch 2 preorders in Canada, too
Nintendo has delayed Switch 2 preorders in Canada, which were set to start on April 9th, according to a statement shared with MobileSyrup. Last week, the company delayed preorders in the US because of the potential impact of the Trump administration’s new tariffs. “Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in Canada will not start on April […]
08/04/2025
Shopify CEO: teams must prove AI can’t do a task before asking for new hires, resources
Everyone in the company is expected to use AI effectively.
08/04/2025
Google fixes two Android zero-day bugs actively exploited by hackers
The most severe security bug can be exploited without user interaction, per Google.
08/04/2025
Elon Musk dies to tutorial boss in Path of Exile 2 livestream
Elon Musk, seemingly keen to repair some of his gamer cred after he admitted to account boosting, streamed himself playing Path of Exile 2 during a flight as a part of an “airborne continuity test” of his Starlink internet service. But during the stream, he was bombarded by messages from viewers bullying him for his […]
08/04/2025
Take the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Apply to speak now
If you’re reading this, consider it your signal: the opportunity to influence the future of tech is here. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is now accepting speaker applications. Join us on stage this October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco and share your ideas with 10,000+ tech leaders, VCs, and innovators shaping what’s next. Apply to […]
08/04/2025
Amazon’s Zoox begins robotaxi testing in Los Angeles
Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle unit, is deploying a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles starting Tuesday – a modest, yet meaningful step as the company inches toward offering public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco later this year. The data-collection effort marks Zoox’s entrance into its sixth city […]
08/04/2025
FreeDOS 1.4 released with updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help
The development of the FreeDOS marches onwards with an updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help system in version 1.4.
08/04/2025
AMD EPYC 9005 'Turin' CPUs see 14% higher performance on average with Ubuntu 25.04 beta release
Ubuntu 25.04 brings several performance enhancements for AMD's EPYC Turin processors, providing 14% higher average performance and reaching up to 75% in some workloads.
08/04/2025
Nintendo VP confirms Switch 2 Joy-Cons won't feature Hall effect sticks
A recent interview with Nintendo's Nate Bihldorff confirms that the new console will not utilize Hall effect sensors in its Switch 2 controllers, a sore spot for Switch's stick-drift sufferers.
08/04/2025
Los Angeles-based Rain raised a $75M Series B in another good sign for fintech
Rain, a startup offering employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add credit […]
08/04/2025
Founders, TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 is calling! Apply to enter!
Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll compete against 199 of the world’s most promising startups. And […]
08/04/2025
Trump to endorse coal for data center power in the face of grim market realities
An executive order will direct the federal government to list coal as a critical mineral and force some coal-fired power plants to keep generating electricity.
08/04/2025
The modifiers
Technology doesn’t need to die. So much of our consumer habits frame old gadgets, instruments, and concepts as disposable. So The Verge wanted to talk to small businesses, creators, and fans across the world who have a different view. In this week-long series, we explore unexpected repurposing — and the remix of the old with […]
08/04/2025
Is there a ‘right’ way to use AI in art?
The arguments against AI in art are obvious. Most visual artists hate Midjourney, Stability AI, and similar image generators, decrying the scraping of training data without compensation and the onslaught of generic “slop.†But is it possible to deliberately misuse generative AI for creative work? Oakland, California-based painter Brett Amory uses image generators as tools constantly. Instead of passively […]
08/04/2025
Google tools for required for classwork are allegedly being used to build data profiles of each student
A new lawsuit alleges that Google is spying on school children and harvesting their data to create profiles, due to the mandated use of Google hardware and software.
08/04/2025
Volunteer your time for a free ticket to TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5! We’re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings, now’s your chance to find out firsthand. Apply here by […]
08/04/2025
CalDigit’s new Thunderbolt 5 docks bring plenty of ports
CalDigit is well-known for its Thunderbolt docks that don’t skimp on ports. After debuting a compact but well-equipped Thunderbolt 5 dock at CES 2025, the company is finally upgrading its larger docks with Thunderbolt 5 and boosting the number of ports offered. While the cheaper Thunderbolt Station 5 (TS5) maxes out at 15 ports, the […]
08/04/2025
Google accused of paying employees to do nothing for up to a year to stifle AI talent migration
Google is making use of aggressive noncompete clauses and extended notice periods, leaving employees who wish to change track in limbo, claims former GoogDeepMinder Nando de Freitas.
08/04/2025
Waymo may use interior camera data to train generative AI models, but riders will be able to opt out
Waymo is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including video from interior cameras tied to rider identities, to train generative AI models, according to an unreleased version of its privacy policy found by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, raising fresh questions about how much of a rider’s behavior inside autonomous vehicles could be repurposed for […]
08/04/2025
How an unused nuclear power plant became home to a world-class acoustics lab
It’s kind of impossible to grasp the enormity of a cooling tower until it’s suddenly right next to you. Never used for their intended purpose, the cooling towers of Washington Nuclear Projects 3 and 5 (WNP-3 and WNP-5) loom over treetops as I drive up to Satsop Business Park, about an hour and a half […]
08/04/2025
Meet the new Audience Choice winners to lead breakouts at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
You voted. They rose to the top! Meet the two Audience Choice winners who’ll take the breakout stage at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley to share their insights with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts. We sifted through hundreds of Call for Content submissions and narrowed them down to […]
08/04/2025
Corsair Frame 4000D Case Review: Lightweight, effective, and right-priced
Corsair’s Frame 4000D promises modularity, but does it deliver otherwise? We test it with Intel’s i9-14900K and Ocypus fans to determine if it performs well.
08/04/2025
IBM boosts mainframes with 50% more AI performance: z17 features Telum II chip with AI accelerators
IBM's next-generation z17 mainframe combines the high-performance Telum II processor and accelerators to deliver secure transaction processing and advanced AI capabilities for mission-critical enterprise workloads.
08/04/2025
Mira Murati’s AI startup gains prominent ex-OpenAI advisors
Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab, has gained two new prominent advisors: Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company’s more transformative innovations. Thinking Machines Lab’s website was quietly updated with McGrew and Radford’s names sometime in March. A spokesperson […]
08/04/2025
Mira Murati’s AI startup gains prominent ex-OpenAI advisers
Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab, has gained two new prominent advisers: Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company’s more transformative innovations. Thinking Machines Lab’s website was quietly updated with McGrew and Radford’s names sometime in March. A spokesperson […]
08/04/2025
Microsoft’s new Windows 11 Start menu is bigger and fixes a major pain point
Microsoft is working on a new Windows 11 Start menu design that’s bigger and more customizable than what exists today. Windows watcher phantomofearth discovered the new design in recent builds of Windows 11, where the updated Start menu has a larger layout and finally lets you disable the recommended feed of files and apps. The […]
08/04/2025
Motorola’s stylish stylus phone comes in blue or blue
Motorola is refreshing its budget-oriented stylus phone with the 2025 edition of the Moto G Stylus in two bold colors: blue, and for a change of pace, blue. They both come with a “leather-inspired” back panel finish and a stacked spec sheet when you consider its $399 price — though it might come with a […]
08/04/2025
Snapchat rolls out Sponsored AI Lenses for brands
Snapchat is introducing Sponsored AI Lenses, a new ad format that lets brands engage with consumers in an immersive way. While Snapchat has offered brands the opportunity to pay for sponsored lenses on the platform for years, now they can leverage AI-generated experiences powered by Snap’s proprietary generative AI technology. With these interactive lenses, brands […]
08/04/2025
Amazon unveils a new AI voice model, Nova Sonic
On Tuesday, Amazon debuted a new generative AI model, Nova Sonic, capable of natively processing voice and generating natural-sounding speech. Amazon claims that Sonic’s performance is competitive with frontier voice models from OpenAI and Google on benchmarks measuring speed, speech recognition, and conversational quality. Nova Sonic is Amazon’s answer to newer AI voice models such […]
08/04/2025
Switch 2: the good news and bad news
In most ways, Nintendo’s Switch 2 is exactly what we wanted: a Switch, only better. Nintendo has an occasional tendency to follow its best and most successful consoles with some of its weirdest ideas – Wii U, anyone? — but this time seems to have stayed the course in the best way. Still, this is Nintendo, […]
08/04/2025
China-exclusive RTX 5090D dominates in 3DMark benchmark records - Galax HOF edition eclipses RTX 5090 challengers
Galax's RTX 5090D Hall Of Fame edition GPU has been making a splash at HWBot, seemingly breaking every world record in sight.
08/04/2025
Blackbird gobbles up $50M for its blockchain-based payment-loyalty app for restaurants
A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million for his latest startup: a new take on the idea of customer loyalty. Blackbird Labs has built a payments-meets-loyalty-meets-blockchain platform for restaurants to grow repeat business while reducing some of the […]
08/04/2025
Teen restrictions expand on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger
Meta is broadening Instagram restrictions that prevent minors from being exposed to inappropriate contact and content, bringing those protections to Facebook and Messenger and adding new limits for teenage Instagram users. After introducing “Teen Accounts” to Instagram in September — which automatically make younger users’ accounts private and restrict them from accessing certain features — […]
08/04/2025
XL Batteries is using petrochemical infrastructure to store solar and wind power
The startup has commissioned a demonstration unit of its organic flow battery.
08/04/2025
Sizl raises $3.5M to expand its cook-to-order food delivery service
Dark kitchens– also referred to as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or virtual kitchens– often receive criticism for their food quality. Sizl, a cook-to-order delivery service based in Chicago, seeks to change this perception by delivering meals made with fresh ingredients in around 30 minutes flat. The company announced its recent $3.5 million seed round on […]
08/04/2025
Framework pauses U.S. sales of base Laptop 13 models due to tariffs — company says other vendors are pausing sales too, but not making announcements
The cheapest Framework Laptop 13s powered by a Core Ultra 5 125H or Ryzen 5 7640U becomes temporarily unavailable in the U.S.
08/04/2025
New 'DRAM+' memory designed to provide DRAM performance with SSD-like storage capabilities, uses FeRAM tech
FMC and Neumonda develop non-volatile FeRAM products, revive memory production in Germany.
08/04/2025
Nvidia may avoid recent tariffs on its AI servers — 60% of Nvidia servers pass through Mexico, may be exempt from Trump tariff flurry
High-profile asset management firm Bernstein has published findings showing that around 60% of Nvidia's AI datacenters will completely avoid the recent wave of tariffs levelled by the U.S.
08/04/2025
Apple beat the tariffs, shipped five extra planeloads of goods from India to the U.S. in March
To avoid a new 10% U.S. import tax, Apple rushed five planeloads of iPhones, PCs, and other devices from India to the U.S. in late March, buying time to assess the impact of the tariff policy.
08/04/2025
Meta introduces restricted Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger
Meta is introducing Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger. The feature, which automatically enrolls young users into an app experience with built-in protections, will be available on these platforms in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada before expanding to additional regions in the future. Teen Accounts first rolled out to Instagram last September after Instagram […]
08/04/2025
Turkey’s Sipay raises $78M to expand its Stripe-like services into emerging markets
Billing itself as “Stripe for emerging markets,” Turkish Fintech Sipay has raised a $78 million Series B funding round, claiming a valuation of $875 million in the process. This round is significant, as Sipay plans to expand into markets outside of Turkey, offering additional services like remittances that Stripe currently does not offer in those […]
08/04/2025
Apple might import more iPhones from India to side-step China tariffs
Apple is considering importing more iPhones from India to side-step the 54% additional tariffs on goods imported from China that U.S. President Donald Trump announced last week, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. The company sees this as a short-term measure while it seeks to negotiate with the Trump administration to get an […]
08/04/2025
IBM releases a new mainframe built for the age of AI
IBM is releasing the latest version of its mainframe hardware that includes new updates meant to accelerate AI adoption. The hardware and consulting company on Monday announced IBM z17, the latest version of its mainframe computer hardware. This fully encrypted mainframe is powered by an IBM Telum II processor and is designed for more than […]
08/04/2025
Meta got caught gaming AI benchmarks
Over the weekend, Meta dropped two new Llama 4 models: a smaller model named Scout, and Maverick, a mid-size model that the company claims can beat GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash “across a broad range of widely reported benchmarks.†Maverick quickly secured the number-two spot on LMArena, the AI benchmark site where humans compare outputs […]
08/04/2025
Framework stops selling some of its cheapest laptops due to Trump tariffs
Framework says it’s “temporarily pausing” US sales on some of its laptops due to the Trump administration’s tariffs that went into effect on April 5th, according to a post on X. The affected models are “a few base Framework Laptop 13 systems (Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U),” the company says, and it has […]
07/04/2025
Gemini Live’s screensharing feature is rolling out to Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25 devices
Google’s Gemini Live camera and screenshare functions, which let the conversational AI chatbot answer questions about the stuff you’re looking at in real-time, are rolling out now on Pixel 9 series phones and Samsung Galaxy S25 devices. The free update is also coming soon to other Android devices, but you’ll need to be a paid […]
07/04/2025
Google is allegedly paying some AI staff to do nothing for a year rather than join rivals
Retaining top AI talent is tough amid cutthroat competition between Google, OpenAI, and other heavyweights. Google’s AI division, DeepMind, has resorted to using “aggressive” noncompete agreements for some AI staff in the U.K. that bar them from working for competitors for up to a year, Business Insider reports. Some are paid during this time, in […]
07/04/2025
Shopify CEO says no new hires without proof AI can’t do the job
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent a memo to employees saying that before they ask for more headcount or resources, teams must show why they “cannot get what they want done using AI,” as reported by CNBC. “What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can […]
07/04/2025
Some Shein and Temu ‘haul video’ creators are stocking up
TikTok creator @pwinpudding specializes in ‘haul videos,’ specifically all things pink, pastel, and cute. Her videos show a collection of packages received from sites like the Chinese retailer AliExpress, as well as Amazon and the Japanese retailer Daiso and the accessories, clothes, plushies, and other items she took out of them. In her most recent […]
07/04/2025
It’s not looking good for Tesla’s Cybertruck range extender
Tesla’s battery range extender accessory for Cybertruck, which promised to give the electric pickup the capability to drive about 445 miles on a single charge, was removed from the online configurator over the weekend, Electrek reports. The Cybertruck Range Extender was announced at the vehicle’s delivery event as a $16,000 add-on that appears to take […]
07/04/2025
Microsoft reportedly fires staff whose protest interrupted its Copilot event
On Monday, Microsoft reportedly terminated the roles of two software engineers, Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, who protested the company’s reported dealings with the Israeli military during Microsoft’s Copilot and 50th anniversary event last week. According to an internal message viewed by CNBC, Microsoft wrote that Aboussad could have raised concerns “confidentially with your manager, […]
07/04/2025
You can build these marble runs and connect them to your smart home over Wi-Fi
Marble run toys typically rely on just gravity to send a marble careening through a complex maze of obstacles, but the creator of Marblelous thinks they can be improved through technology. These new marble run building sets feature powered Wi-Fi-connected components that can keep balls rolling continuously and a marble-detecting sensor that can incorporate your […]
07/04/2025
Amazon says its AI video model can now generate minutes-long clips
Amazon has upgraded its AI video model, Nova Reel, with the ability to generate videos up to two minutes in length. Nova Reel, announced in December 2024, was Amazon’s first foray into the generative video space. It competes with models from OpenAI, Google, and others in what’s fast becoming a crowded market. The latest Nova […]
07/04/2025
How one tweet wreaked havoc on the stock market
Amid a morning of pandemonium on Wall Street, a popular news aggregator on X, known as Walter Bloomberg, posted a false report declaring that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his controversial tariff proposal. This news was not true, and yet, index funds like the Dow Jones whipsawed, rapidly rising for a brief […]
07/04/2025
Nikola founder Trevor Milton wants to buy the bankrupt startup’s assets
Nikola founder Trevor Milton, who was recently pardoned after being convicted of securities fraud, is trying to buy the assets of his former company out of bankruptcy, according to new court filings and a person familiar with the matter. Nikola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February and has said it hopes to sell […]
07/04/2025
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen’s high-stakes test amid tariff turmoil: ‘You can’t be freaking out’
At 11 a.m. in California last Thursday, the day after President Donald Trump declared sweeping new tariffs under what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” Ryan Petersen was live on camera, fielding questions from a virtual room packed with more than 2,300 anxious customers. The founder and CEO of Flexport, a now 12-year-old global logistics and customs […]
07/04/2025
Waymo: ‘no plans’ to use in-car camera data for targeted ads
Waymo has “no plans” to use footage from cameras inside its robotaxis to train AI models for targeted ads, spokesperson Julia Ilina said in an email to The Verge. Ilina was responding to an unreleased page from Waymo’s privacy policy that appears to offer customers the ability to opt-out from having their “personal information,” including […]
07/04/2025
You can borrow and resell Nintendo’s Switch 2 game-key cards
Following the reveal of Nintendo’s new game-key cards during its Nintendo Switch 2 event last week, we’re finally getting more details about why they exist and how they can be used. Although they don’t contain a physical copy of a game, Nintendo’s Tetsuya Sasaki explained to GameSpot that game-key cards aren’t permanently tied to a […]
07/04/2025
Microsoft fires employee protestor who called AI boss a ‘war profiteer’
Microsoft has fired one of the employees who disrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary event. In an email seen by The Verge, Microsoft told Ibtihal Aboussad that their employment has been terminated due to “acts of misconduct.” Aboussad was one of two protesters that interrupted Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event on Friday by calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa […]
07/04/2025
Whoopsie daisy Bitcoin!
Sure, the stock market is melting down after the US declared a global trade war. But have you considered that crypto is also melting down? Starting around April 6, the Bitcoin price fell off a cliff — and is sitting at $78,800 as of this writing, after touching a low of about $74,000. That’s quite […]
07/04/2025
Google TV remotes are getting a ‘Free TV’ button
Google TV streaming devices will be required to have a “Free TV” or “Live TV” button on their remotes that opens up the Live tab where you can watch free, ad-supported TV channels via Google TV FreePlay, a company spokesperson confirmed to Android Authority. “Google TV gives users access to a wide range of free […]
07/04/2025
Meta exec denies the company artificially boosted Llama 4’s benchmark scores
A Meta exec on Monday denied a rumor that the company trained its new AI models to present well on specific benchmarks while concealing the models’ weaknesses. The executive, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said in a post on X that it’s “simply not true” that Meta trained its Llama 4 Maverick […]
07/04/2025
Nvidia RTX 5090D GPU features a magnetic shroud and fans for easy maintenance
Galax's latest GeForce RTX 5090D graphics cards feature a magnetic, removable shroud.
07/04/2025
Analyst says Apple, Tesla have biggest exposure to Trump’s tariffs
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives slashed his price targets for Apple and Tesla over the weekend as President Trump’s tariffs threaten to disrupt both businesses. “The tariff economic Armageddon unleashed by Trump is a complete disaster for Apple given its massive China production exposure,” Ives said in a warning note over the weekend. “In our […]
07/04/2025
Former Tesla exec Drew Baglino’s new startup is rethinking the electrical transformer
Heron Power is raising between $30 million to $50 million for a Series A, according to a report.
07/04/2025
Major publishers call on the US government to ‘Stop AI Theft’
Hundreds of publishers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Verge parent company Vox Media, are running an ad campaign this week urging the government to protect content from AI. The campaign, called Support Responsible AI, is run by the News/Media Alliance trade association and consists of several ads that […]
07/04/2025
Asus ProArt PA32UCDM 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor review: Precision, performance and elegance
Asus’ ProArt PA32UCDM is a precision reference OLED monitor that’s pro-gamer ready. It’s a 32-inch QD-OLED with 4K resolution, 240 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDR10, Dolby Vision, 1,000 nits, wide gamut color and all metal construction.
07/04/2025
Build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in C#
Learn how to build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server using the C# SDK to enable seamless communication between AI models and applications. The post Build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in C# appeared first on .NET Blog.
07/04/2025
The White House’s group chat screwup is even more ridiculous than we thought
Last month, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat about a military strike in Yemen planned for later that day. Now, sources inside the White House have apparently told The Guardian that an internal investigation revealed the roundabout way that happened: Siri was being helpful. When national security adviser Mike Waltz […]
07/04/2025
The see-through Beats Studio Buds Plus are on sale for less than $100
Apple’s AirPods Pro are some of the best wireless earbuds money can buy, but only if you’re embedded in Apple’s ecosystem. If you want a cheaper pair of earbuds that play well with both iOS and Android devices, the Beats Studio Buds Plus are a great alternative. They usually run $169.95, but right now you […]
07/04/2025
Nintendo’s Switch 2 upgrade packs for Zelda will cost $9.99
Nintendo’s hoping to relieve some of the sticker shock it gave fans with its game pricing with the news that the Switch 2 upgrades for both Legend of Zelda games will only cost $10 if you already own them. The games are priced for the Nintendo Switch 2 at $69.99 for Breath of the Wild […]
07/04/2025
Waymo may use interior camera data to train generative AI models, sell ads
Waymo is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including video from interior cameras tied to rider identities, to train generative AI models, according to an unreleased version of its privacy policy found by researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The draft language reveals Waymo may also share this data to personalize ads, raising fresh questions about […]
07/04/2025
GM’s UK design team imagines an electrified Corvette
General Motors is revealing a futuristic new electric-powered Corvette concept imagined by a new UK-based design team in Birmingham, England. The team developed a hypercar design inspired by the aviation industry, with a highly sculptured, aerodynamic design; powered gullwing doors; and an augmented windshield display for the driver. This Corvette concept comes from a “creative […]
07/04/2025
Google’s AI Mode can now see and search with images
Google is adding multimodal capabilities to its search-centric AI Mode chatbot that enable it to “see” and answer questions about images, as it expands access to AI Mode to “millions more” users. The update combines a custom version of Gemini AI with the company’s Lens image recognition tech, allowing AI Mode Search users to take […]
07/04/2025
Google’s AI Mode now lets users ask complex questions about images
Google is bringing multimodal search to AI Mode, its Google Search experiment that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups to dig deeper on a topic. Users who have access to AI Mode can now tap the feature to ask questions about photos they’ve uploaded or taken with their camera. The new image-analyzing functionality […]
07/04/2025
The Last of Us season 2 is a brutal, bloody expansion of the game
The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us wasn’t just one of the most impressive video game adaptations to date, it was also one of the most faithful. The show did a remarkable job of replicating the characters, locations, and moments of the game, to the point that it felt like it was just […]
07/04/2025
Shopify CEO tells teams to consider using AI before growing headcount
In a recent memo to employees, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke made a bold policy change: teams must demonstrate why AI can’t perform a job before they’re permitted to ask for more headcount and resources. “Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” Lütke […]
07/04/2025
HPE's unnamed 1,152-core system pushes Turbostat to support 8,192 cores in Linux 6.15
Linux 6.15 resolves Turbostat's incompatibility with high core count systems, now supporting up to 8,192 cores.
07/04/2025
TSMC and Foxconn hit hard in Taiwan following Trump's tariffs announcement
Taiwan's stock market suffered its worst-ever single-day drop after the U.S. announced a 32% tariff on Taiwanese goods and signaled potential duties on semiconductors, triggering panic selling of TSMC and Foxconn.
07/04/2025
Nintendo says it is ‘actively assessing’ the impact of U.S. tariffs
Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said that the company did not factor in possible tariffs from the U.S. when deciding on the pricing for its Nintendo Switch 2 console, according to Wired. Nintendo unveiled its highly anticipated Switch 2 last week and announced that the console would be released on June 5, priced at […]
07/04/2025
Death Stranding movie nabs director of Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One
The Death Stranding movie, an adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s supernatural UPS delivery guy walking simulator, has its director. A24 has announced that Michael Sarnoski will both direct and write the project. Sarnoski’s previous work includes directing the surprisingly stunning Nicolas Cage drama Pig and monster movie thriller A Quiet Place: Day One. Death Stranding, released […]
07/04/2025
22 years later, modders are keeping SimCity 4 alive
Search for “SimCity 4†on YouTube, and you’ll see players constructing multilevel highway interchanges and intricate railroad networks, or maybe even a swooping flyby of a sprawling metropolis. None of these features came with the original game, which was released just after the turn of the millennium. They’ve been developed slowly and painstakingly over the […]
07/04/2025
Git turns 20 as we celebrate decades of open-source software distribution
Git was founded 20 years ago today by Linux Tarvalds and Junio Hamano who continues to maintain the project today.
07/04/2025
One of the best 4K QD-OLED gaming monitors is cheaper than ever
Alienware’s 27-inch 4K QD-OLED, the AW2725Q, hit shelves about a month ago. It was the first of several faster, better models to launch after being announced at CES 2025, with a 240Hz refresh rate, VRR, and a high 166 pixels per inch display. In short, it rules, so I’m tickled to find it already selling […]
07/04/2025
AI video startup Moonvalley raised a fresh $43M, SEC filing shows
Los Angeles-based startup Moonvalley, which is developing AI tools for video creation, has raised a fresh $43 million in venture capital, according to an SEC filing. The filing, which lists 11 unnamed investors, comes roughly a week after Moonvalley launched its first AI video-generating model, Marey. Moonvalley previously raised $70 million in seed funding from backers […]
07/04/2025
UK’s demand for Apple backdoor should not be heard in secret, says court
A UK surveillance court said the backdoor order targeting Apple iCloud can be heard partly in public.
07/04/2025
U.S. Gov't eliminates tape data storage at the GSA to save $1M per year, but tape isn't dead yet
But the triumphant social media post gets a Community Note.
07/04/2025
Krea raises $83M to be the one-stop shop for genAI creatives
Overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the different models you can now use to build your content using AI? A startup called Krea that’s looking to solve this problem specifically for designers and other visual creatives has now raised $83 million for a platform it believes will make the task of working with generative […]
07/04/2025
Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons don’t use Hall effect joysticks
After several days of not providing a direct answer about the technology used in the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons, Nintendo has finally confirmed that the new console’s controllers do not employ anti-drift Hall effect joysticks. When asked about the technology inside the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons that “feels so different to the original Switch’s analog stick” during […]
07/04/2025
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’s new trailer is one big leap of faith
After multiple delays, Chris McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is finally making its way into theaters this summer, and Ethan Hunt is giving his all in the movie’s new trailer. Though it’s filled with footage from previous movies, the new trailer teases a bit of how Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is about to […]
07/04/2025
UK bans fake reviews and ‘sneaky’ fees for online products
The United Kingdom has banned “outrageous fake reviews and sneaky hidden fees” to make life easier for online shoppers. New measures under the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumer Act 2024 came into force on Sunday that require online platforms to transparently include all mandatory fees within a product’s advertised price, including booking or admin charges. […]
07/04/2025
WhatsApp tests letting you block people from exporting your chats
WhatsApp is testing a new “advanced chat privacy” option that lets you control whether others you’re chatting with can easily export your chats or automatically save media you send them, reports WABetaInfo. The feature appeared in a recent app beta on iOS, and WABetaInfo spotted the toggle in an Android beta on Friday as well. […]
07/04/2025
IBM acquires consultancy Hakkoda in continued AI investment push
IBM on Monday announced that it acquired Hakkoda, a data and AI consultancy based in New York, for an undisclosed amount. Mohamad Ali, SVP and head of IBM’s consulting business, said that the acquisition would “further expand” IBM’s ability to bring consultants and AI to clients, particularly customers in industries like financial services, public sector, […]
07/04/2025
SignalFire raises over $1B as LPs embrace data-driven investing
Thirteen years ago, when Chris Farmer founded early-stage venture firm SignalFire with data analysis at the core of its investment strategy, many were skeptical about the approach — conventional wisdom dictated that nascent companies didn’t have enough data to make investment algorithms effective. “This was a very radical idea, and everyone thought I was crazy,” […]
07/04/2025
The rise of ‘Frankenstein’ laptops in New Delhi’s repair markets
In a dimly lit, cluttered workshop in Delhi’s Nehru Place, the air hums with the sound of whirring drills and the crackle of soldering irons. Sushil Prasad, a 35-year-old technician, wipes the sweat off his brow as he carefully pieces together the guts of an old laptop. It is a daily ritual — resurrecting machines […]
07/04/2025
UiPath’s Daniel Dines on why he needed to become CEO again
Today, I’m talking with Daniel Dines, the cofounder and, once again, the CEO of UiPath, a software company that specializes in something called robotic process automation (RPA). We’ve been featuring a lot of what I like to call full-circle Decoder guests on the show lately, and Daniel is a perfect example. He was first on […]
07/04/2025
Netflix is getting a Peppa Pig mobile game
Netflix is adding a Peppa Pig game to its roster of available titles for subscribers in June, the company announced on Monday. World of Peppa Pig will be available alongside new episodes of the popular children’s show in the US. “From spot the difference and interactive mini games to coloring books, dress up games and […]
07/04/2025
Beef up your Steam Deck storage with this 2TB WD Black SN770M SSD deal - only $177 at Amazon
Expand the storage of your gaming handheld or laptop with this 2TB SSD deal on a small form-factor M.2 2230 WD Black SN770M, on sale for only $177 at Amazon.
07/04/2025
OpenAI reportedly mulls buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI hardware startup
OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products. Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm called […]
07/04/2025
Nintendo says tariffs aren’t the reason the Switch 2 costs $449.99
In addition to a new console and lineup of games, Nintendo also revealed some sticker shock at its Switch 2 event last week. The console will cost $449.99 — a big jump from the original Switch, which debuted at $299.99 in 2017. Some have speculated that the price hike was at least partly due to […]
07/04/2025
Why some Switch 2 carts won’t have games on them
One of the stranger details that came out of last week’s big Nintendo Switch 2 event was the existence of game-key cards. They won’t be used for all releases, but essentially they’re Switch 2 cartridges that don’t actually contain a game, but instead feature a “key†that’s used for “downloading the full game to your […]
07/04/2025
AMD RX 9070 vBIOS flash offers up-to 20% performance boost — modders claim OC beats 9070 XT
A member of the PCGH community flashed an RX 9070 XT vBIOS onto his RX 9070, reporting a 15-20% performance bump with boost clocks exceeding 3 GHz.
07/04/2025
China's rare earth export restrictions threaten global chipmaking supply chains
China's latest export restrictions on Scandium and Dysprosium threaten to disrupt global supply chains for major tech players, but also emphasize potential weaknesses of its anti-sanctions approach.
07/04/2025
Even Tim Cook doesn't use Apple's Magic Mouse — turns out he's a Logitech fan
Apple CEO Tim Cook's prefers uability of the Logitech MX Master 3 over the company's own Magic Mouse that has elegant design.
07/04/2025
Someone hacked ransomware gang Everest’s leak site
"Don't do crime," the ransomware gang's dark web leak site reads.
07/04/2025
Want to stay young? Peter Diamandis says survive the next 10 years
Peter Diamandis, a futurist with degrees from both MIT and Harvard, has spent much of the past two decades evangelizing a vision of an “abundant future” driven by exponential technologies that will lengthen our lives. The serial entrepreneur and founder of organizations like the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University has also cultivated close ties with […]
07/04/2025
DOGE plans now reportedly include an IRS ‘hackathon’
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is planning to hold a “hackathon” next week in order to create a “mega API” for accessing Internal Revenue Service data, reports Wired. The outlet says the API would be used to move the data into a cloud platform — potentially a third-party one — to serve as […]
06/04/2025
Meta’s benchmarks for its new AI models are a bit misleading
One of the new flagship AI models Meta released on Saturday, Maverick, ranks second on LM Arena, a test that has human raters compare the outputs of models and choose which they prefer. But it seems the version of Maverick that Meta deployed to LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to developers. […]
06/04/2025
BBC seeks more prominent credit in Apple and Google News
The British Broadcasting Corporation has filed a complaint with a UK antitrust regulator complaining that aggregators like Apple News and Google News minimize credit for the stories they feature. Apple Insider reports that the BBC is asking the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to require Apple and Google to more prominently credit news sources. And […]
06/04/2025
White House reportedly blames auto-suggested iPhone contact for Signal scandal
How did Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg get added to a Signal group chat with Trump administration officials discussing their plans for an airstrike in Yemen? The simplest explanation: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had Goldberg saved as a contact in his phone and accidentally added him. Indeed, when Waltz first claimed that Goldberg’s phone number […]
06/04/2025
Microsoft releases AI-generated Quake II demo, but admits ‘limitations’
Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a tech demo for the gaming capabilities of Microsoft’s Copilot AI platform — though by the company’s own admission, the experience isn’t quite the same as playing a well-made game. You can try it out for yourself, using […]
06/04/2025
WinRAR security flaw ignores Windows Mark of the Web security warnings
WinRAR users not running the latest version are subject to a security flaw that's capable of ignoring the Windows Mark of the Web security warnings.
06/04/2025
How to use your phone as a hotspot
If you’re taking your laptop away from the safe environs of your home or office desk and still want to stay online, you’ve got a couple of choices (assuming it doesn’t have cellular connectivity built in): hunt around for a Wi-Fi network you can connect to or run a Wi-Fi hotspot from your phone. Running […]
06/04/2025
Nvidia engineer breaks and then quickly fixes AMD GPU performance in Linux
An Nvidia engineer pushed a fix to the Linux kernel, improving performance on Radeon GPUs by correcting the same bug he had introduced.
06/04/2025
Sovol Zero Review: Good Things Come in Small Packages
Sovol revisits the Core XY printer with a pint-sized powerhouse.
06/04/2025
China launches HDMI and DisplayPort alternative — GPMI boasts up to 192 Gbps bandwidth, 480W power delivery
GPMI will make it simpler to set up high-end entertainment and streaming systems.
06/04/2025
‘Millions’ may have protested Trump and Musk yesterday
Hundreds of thousands of people signed up to attend over 1,300 “Hands Off!” protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk yesterday. Today, estimates from groups involved in planning the protests suggest the protesters in the US and abroad may have actually numbered in the millions. Activist group MoveOn is “estimating millions of attendees” went […]
06/04/2025
Samsung Galaxy AI Book4 Edge laptop with Snapdragon X CPU drops to $695 in limited time Amazon deal
The Samsung Galaxy AI Book4 Edge laptop is available today at Amazon for its lowest price to date — $695 instead of its usual $899.
06/04/2025
Wi-Fi is one of the great backward compatibility success stories
My home network is a small miracle of backward compatibility, slinging data across 60-plus devices that span five generations of Wi-Fi. Everything on it, from my iPhone 15 Pro all the way down to my Nintendo Wii, manages to connect to the internet, most of it wirelessly through my router, with shockingly few issues. That’s […]
06/04/2025
Delidded AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D runs 23 degrees cooler
Enthusiasts can expect up to 10% higher performance with a Ryzen 9950X3D using direct-die cooling. Or just run it at stock clocks but much cooler.
06/04/2025
Lian Li EDGE EG1000 ATX 3.1 power supply review
The Lian Li EG1000 Platinum ATX 3.1 PSU blends striking design with solid power delivery, offering modularity and performance for enthusiasts, but its unique shape may limit compatibility in standard builds.
06/04/2025
Quantum mechanics might have the solution to joystick drift
The Nintendo Switch may be remembered as much for repopularizing portable gaming as it will for a hardware issue that affected millions of gamers: joystick drift. Drifting is the most common term for an issue where joysticks detect false inputs — even when no one is touching a controller — causing unwanted movements to happen […]
06/04/2025
Nvidia's PhysX and Flow go open source — Running legacy PhysX on RTX 50 may be possible using wrappers
Nvidia's PhysX and Flow technologies are now open-source under the BSD-3 license, including the GPU acceleration kernels.
06/04/2025
Your House is like a choose-your-own adventure mystery book
Your House is a visual novel that is the closest game I’ve played to reading an actual book. In Your House, you play as Debbie, a girl who receives a mysterious postcard on her birthday with an address and a key. The address leads to a mansion that’s filled with secrets and puzzles for you […]
06/04/2025
‘Hands Off’: Protesters deliver a sweeping message to Trump and Musk at a DC rally
Surrounding the Washington Monument Saturday were thousands of signs with messages spanning innumerable topics.“Support Ukraine,†“Beware of DOGE,†“Protect Trans Lives,†were just a few of them.
06/04/2025
Another RTX 5090 connector melts down, reportedly taking a Redditor's PSU with it
A Redditor's $2,900 RTX 5090 was struck by a melted connector, also damaging their 1000W power supply.
06/04/2025
AMD sets new supercomputer record, runs CFD simulation over 25x faster on Instinct MI250X GPUs
Ansys Fluent leveraged 1,024 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs to 25X supercharge its CFD simulation.
06/04/2025
One streaming app to (almost) rule them all
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 78, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry everything’s about to get so expensive, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about baseball bats and work-life balance and […]
06/04/2025
Color is a mathematical nightmare
The best method that we have for defining color is by using math. Specifically, mind-boggling mathematical models called color spaces that use geometry to assign colors as a fixed point that we can reference, ensuring the blue that I see is the same blue you see. As a creative-leaning person who can barely split a […]
06/04/2025
Meta AI gets two new models as Meta releases Llama 4
Meta has announced the release of Llama 4, its newest collection of AI models that now power Meta AI on the web and in WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct. The two models, also available to download from Meta or Hugging Face now, are Llama 4 Scout, a small model capable of “fitting in a single […]
05/04/2025
DOGE reportedly planning a hackathon to build ‘mega API’ for IRS data
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to host a hackathon next week focused on the creation of a “mega API” that will provide access to taxpayer data, according to Wired. Wired says the hackathon is being organized by two DOGE staffers at the Internal Revenue Service — Gavin Kilger and Sam Corcos, who’s […]
05/04/2025
Meta releases Llama 4, a new crop of flagship AI models
Meta has released a new collection of AI models, Llama 4, in its Llama family — on a Saturday, no less. There are four new models in total: Llama 4 Scout, Llama 4 Maverick, and Llama 4 Behemoth. All were trained on “large amounts of unlabeled text, image, and video data” to give them “broad […]
05/04/2025
More than 1,200 rallies rally worldwide protest Trump and Musk
People are gathering in cities all over the United States and globally to protest an “illegal, billionaire power grab” by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They’re being put on by over 150 different organizations, including civil rights groups, labor unions, and LGBTQ+ advocates, and span more than 1,200 locations. Last weekend, “Tesla Takedown” protests […]
05/04/2025
Deel’s comms chief departs amidst spying lawsuit from Rippling
Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at human resources Deel, is no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg first reported the news that Diana had resigned from Deel, which was recently accused of planting a spy at rival company Rippling. TechCrunch reached out to Diana but had not heard back at the […]
05/04/2025
‘A Minecraft Movie’ is on-track for a $135M opening weekend
The big screen adaptation of video game mega-franchise Minecraft brought in $58 million on Friday, putting it on-track for a $135 million opening weekend domestically — or potentially even more. That would give “A Minecraft Movie” the biggest opening of the year, beating out “Captain America: Brave New World” (which earned $88.8 million during its […]
05/04/2025
Microsoft has created an AI-generated version of Quake
Microsoft unveiled its Xbox AI era earlier this year with a new Muse AI model that can generate gameplay. While it looked like Muse was still an early Microsoft Research project, the Xbox maker is now allowing Copilot users to try out Muse through an AI-generated version of Quake II. The tech demo is part […]
05/04/2025
Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition power supply review
The Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition PSU features effortless power delivery and advanced cooling.
05/04/2025
You can now play a real-time AI-rendered Quake II in your browser — Microsoft's WHAMM offers generative AI for games
Microsoft's latest WHAMM model builds on its predecessor. It is now capable of delivering a real-time AI-generated gaming experience with user input support.
05/04/2025
Week in Review: Nintendo unveils the Switch 2
Welcome back to Week in Review! Tons of stuff for you today, including Nintendo’s Switch 2; capacity issues at OpenAI; a story that deserves the Hollywood treatment; and much, much more. Let’s go! It’s finally (almost) here: After almost 10 years, Nintendo finally released its Switch successor, the Switch 2. According to TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling, […]
05/04/2025
Tron: Ares blends the real world with the digital in its first trailer
Disney just released the first trailer for Tron: Ares, the long-planned Tron: Legacy sequel. The minute-and-a-half trailer doesn’t say much about the story but shows plenty of the movie’s visuals, which look dark, moody, and filled with the series’ signature light trails. The trailer opens in the physical world at night, as Jared Leto’s Ares, […]
05/04/2025
The Best OctoPrint Plugins
Install these five plugins to get the most out of OctoPrint. The good news is that the majority of them are free.
05/04/2025
The 7 writing apps I used to start and finish my book
There’s a famous two-decade-old Paris Review interview with Haruki Murakami in which he, one of the world’s most celebrated novelists, details his daily routine. He wakes up at 4AM, works for five hours, goes for a run, reads, goes to bed, and then repeats it all over again. The rigor and repetition are the point. […]
05/04/2025
Vaio touts 'tariff free' inventory for sale — Intel-powered laptops on sale while supplies last
Vaio has contacted us to confirm that they are selling the Vaio SX-R laptop free of tariffs while inventory is available.
05/04/2025
Compact RTX 4070 with an aluminum CNC-machined shroud is perfect for SFF builds
Chinese GPU manufacturer Zephyr has launched a single-fan, dual-slot RTX 4070 with a unique CNC-machined aluminum shroud.
05/04/2025
Jaguar Land Rover pauses US shipments over Trump tariffs
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says it’s delaying shipments to the US this month while it works out how it will deal with the wide-ranging tariffs President Donald Trump announced this week, according to The Guardian. “As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including […]
05/04/2025
SF Mayor Lurie to tech CEOs: ‘How can we get you back?’
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he’s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver. “I’m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,” said Lurie during TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event on Thursday night. […]
05/04/2025
3D Gloop! Wants to Stick Customers to the Floor
3D Gloop! Is looking for Foundational Supporters
05/04/2025
Record-low $759 price for award-winning 32-inch 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor
The HP Omen Transcend 32-inch QD-OLED 4K monitor is available at Newegg for $759 instead of $999.
05/04/2025
‘Views’ are lies
Views are the most visible metric on the internet. You can see, in more or less real time, how many views something got on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and most other video platforms. X tracks views for every single thing you post, as does Threads. A view is the universal currency of success — more […]
05/04/2025
WOLED vs QD-OLED Monitors – which panel technology is better?
Find out which screen type is top dog for computer monitors.
05/04/2025
ChatGPT adoption skyrockets in India, but monetization may be trailing
ChatGPT has seen India as its largest market by monthly active users and the second largest by downloads, per the external data seen by TechCrunch.
05/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs killed his TikTok deal
Earlier this week, when it seemed as though TikTok’s fate in the US would actually be decided by April 5th, everyone — from Amazon to the founder of OnlyFans — was coming out of the woodwork to buy it. As it turns out, none of them had a chance. And now, thanks to President Donald […]
05/04/2025
DOGE staffers are listed in the FCC directory
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has infiltrated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency that has a say over resources Musk needs or could benefit from for some of his private sector business, The Verge has learned. Three people who have been identified as DOGE staffers are listed in a public directory called […]
05/04/2025
Ring’s founder is back at Amazon
Ring founder Jamie Siminoff returned to Amazon this week, coming back to the company just about two years after he left, Bloomberg reports. He’s now a vice president at the company, and he will be heading up the Ring, Blink, Amazon Key, and Sidewalk teams. Siminoff is replacing Liz Hamren, who had taken over following […]
04/04/2025
We just declared a trade war with the world
Nice economy you have there, said President Donald Trump’s administration. It would be a shame if something happened to it. The something, announced earlier this week, is a set of globally applied tariffs that make no sense on their face. No sane economist would endorse this. Through a combination of stupidity, incompetence and sheer gangsterism, […]
04/04/2025
Trump’s TikTok delay is ‘against the law’ top Senate Intelligence Democrat says
President Donald Trump’s additional 75 day delay to TikTok’s sale-or-ban deadline leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground, and, according to one influential Democrat, is straight-up “against the law.” After Trump announced the extension on Friday, 12 Republican members of the House Select Committee on China, including Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), […]
04/04/2025
Price hikes, idled factories, layoffs: how car companies are responding to Trump’s tariffs
President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on all auto-related imports have been called “a debacle of epic proportions†and a sure-fire way to tank the auto market by crushing demand. Analysts have been predicting everything from $12,000 per vehicle price hikes to the possible “Cubanization†of the US car fleet. Now that they’ve had a […]
04/04/2025
SSD Benchmarks Hierarchy 2025: We've tested over 100 different SSDs over the past few years, and here's how they stack up.
For our SSD benchmarks hierarchy, we've tested over a hundred different SSDs and ranked them in order of performance, grouped by capacity.
04/04/2025
TechCrunch Mobility: Tesla takes a hit, tariff chaos begins, and one EV startup hits a milestone
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Over the 13 years reporting on Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, I have watched the rise, fall, near misses, and rise again of the company and […]
04/04/2025
Pre-built PCs with unreleased RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 GPUs crop up at online retailers
Online retailers are publishing listings featuring pre-built machines with RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 graphics cards. One such pre-built is only $50 more than its identically configured RTX 40 series counterpart.
04/04/2025
DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ has access to immigration agency’s data
Four Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers have access to the government’s data on an untold number of immigrants, FedScoop reports. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles legal immigration, recently granted access to Kyle Shutt, Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, and Edward Coristine — the 19-year-old DOGE employee who also goes by […]
04/04/2025
Meta’s fact-checking program in the US officially ends soon
Meta’s US fact-checking program will come to an end by Monday afternoon. In a post on X, Meta’s global policy head Joel Kaplan said there will be “no new fact checks and no fact checkers” across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by that time as the company replaces it with Community Notes. Meta first announced its […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft CEOs interrupted by another employee protestor: ‘shame on all of you’
In the second major disruption of today’s 50th anniversary event at Microsoft’s headquarters, another employee stood up and began yelling at Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates — the company’s current and past CEOs — in protest of Microsoft’s dealings with the government of Israel. “Shame on you all. You’re all hypocrites,” she said […]
04/04/2025
How Kalshi helped prediction markets go mainstream
Kalshi is the largest prediction market in America, creating an entire trading economy around political, sports, and cultural events. To some, including several states, it’s an illegal effort that requires gambling licenses. To others, including some courts and members of the Trump administration, it’s just a new financial opportunity. In a conversation with TechCrunch’s Maxwell […]
04/04/2025
The AI industry doesn’t know if Trump just killed its GPU supply
AI companies can’t figure out if the Trump tariffs are about to decimate them – and the fact that no one has a clear answer is sending them, and the tech industry overall, into a confusion spiral. The markets are in disarray. Nvidia is down 7.59%, TSMC is down 7.22%. In San Francisco, sources tell […]
04/04/2025
Starlink competition is ramping up in Ukraine
French satellite network company Eutelsat has been providing Ukraine with much-needed internet access for almost a year with the help of the German government, Reuters reports. Eutelsat’s OneWeb division operates low-orbiting satellites that communicate with terrestrial terminals for internet connectivity — similarly to rival SpaceX’s Starlink network, which has been the primary supplier of satellite […]
04/04/2025
Chinese chipmaker Loongson's new laptop and industrial chips have higher core counts, better GPU
Loongson has successfully taped out its eight-core 2K3000 and 3B6000M chips, designed for mobile/industrial devices, including an iGPU capable of lightweight AI acceleration.
04/04/2025
OpenAI’s models ‘memorized’ copyrighted content, new study suggests
A new study appears to lend credence to allegations that OpenAI trained at least some of its AI models on copyrighted content. OpenAI is embroiled in suits brought by authors, programmers, and other rights-holders who accuse the company of using their works — books, codebases, and so on — to develop its models without permission. […]
04/04/2025
AI has opened a new era in venture capital according to Forerunner Founder Kirsten Green
Forerunner has seen a number of high-profile successes, showing an ability to get ahead of consumer trends with investments in Oura, Chime, the Farmer’s Dog, and beyond in non-B2C companies. To get a sense of how that happened, and what’s next for Forerunner in the AI era, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos spoke with […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary by letting Copilot see what you see
Microsoft's 50th anniversary celebration featured several Copilot announcements, including Vision, which lets the AI view your PC desktop or look through your phone camera.
04/04/2025
DeepSeek: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot app
DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its […]
04/04/2025
Meta officially says goodbye to its US fact checkers on Monday
Meta will no longer have any fact-checkers in the U.S. come Monday, according to Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan. Meta announced this significant policy change in January when it also loosened its content moderation rules. The timing of this change coincided with President Trump’s inauguration, which Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended after […]
04/04/2025
Trump delays TikTok ban again
Donald Trump’s 75-day delay of the TikTok ban law taking effect would’ve expired this weekend, but on Friday, he announced on Truth Social that “I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.” Despite several publicly announced bids to buy TikTok, its Chinese owner, ByteDance, has shown […]
04/04/2025
Mach CEO on building defense tech company in your 20s
Mach CEO Ethan Thornton has been building weapons systems of varying shapes and sizes since high school, but his ambitions have turned into a company that recently landed a contract with the U.S. military and a plan to develop cross-functional factories. TechCrunch’s Charles Rollet interviewed Thornton during the StrictlyVC 2025 event in San Francisco, exploring […]
04/04/2025
GitHub Copilot introduces new limits, charges for ‘premium’ AI models
GitHub Copilot, Microsoft-owned GitHub’s AI coding assistant, could soon become costlier for some users. On Friday, GitHub announced “premium requests” for GitHub Copilot, a new system that imposes rate limits when users switch to AI models other than the base model for tasks such as “agentic” coding and multi-file edits. While GitHub Copilot subscribers can […]
04/04/2025
Trump extends TikTok ban deadline by 75 days
President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok ban by 75 days. Trump shared a post on Truth Social on Friday stating that he is signing an executive order to allow for more time to finalize a deal. “My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we […]
04/04/2025
Grab a budget HP gaming laptop for just $449
In the ever-increasing price climate, you can still find gaming laptops at $449.
04/04/2025
Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol
A year ago, Bluesky was opening up to the public and was known as one of the many X competitors that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the network formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky’s social network has grown to over 33 million users, while the technology it’s built upon — the AT Protocol (or ATProto […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft employee disrupts 50th anniversary and calls AI boss ‘war profiteer’
A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI. “Shame on you,” said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. […]
04/04/2025
DOGE has arrived at the FTC
Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were spotted at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week, sources tell The Verge. Gavin Kliger and Emily Bryant were seen in the building and are now listed in the FTC’s internal directory under the Office of the Chairman with their own agency emails, according […]
04/04/2025
Protester interrupts Microsoft Copilot keynote, says company has ‘blood on its hands’
A protester interrupted Microsoft’s Copilot-focused keynote Friday afternoon, calling attention to the company’s reported dealings with the Israeli military. “Shame on you,” the protester said. “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military […] All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.” Microsoft Head […]
04/04/2025
An immersive version of The Wizard of Oz is coming to the Las Vegas Sphere
Sphere Entertainment has announced two new immersive experiences coming to its 516-foot wide spherical venue in Las Vegas. An enhanced version of The Wizard of Oz will premiere on the Sphere’s 160,000 square foot screen on August 28th, 2025, while a new film by Academy Award-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) […]
04/04/2025
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie thinks his city is on the verge of a rebound
The perception of San Francisco has been on the decline for years due to a number of factors. The city’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, joined TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff to talk about Lurie’s efforts to turn that around. Lurie highlighted his administrative and on-the-ground efforts in a push for San Francisco to remain the center of the […]
04/04/2025
Startups Weekly: Stay tuned for the Rippling espionage movie
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. This week reminded us that different startups share a different approach to news: Some choose to remain quiet for a very long time, even about their acquisition […]
04/04/2025
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen still sees opportunity in global trade despite Trump’s tariffs
Flexport’s business is built on supply chains, and the new tariffs the U.S. is placing upon its trading partners have plunged international trade into chaos. Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen joined TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos for a StrictlyVC conversation on the ins and outs of the tariffs’ impact, the industry’s reaction, and […]
04/04/2025
‘Careless People’ author to testify during a Senate hearing about Facebook
Sarah Wynn-Williams, the ex-Meta employee who authored Careless People, will testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee next week. On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wynn-Williams will address Facebook’s “cooperation with the Communist regime in China, including FB’s plan to build censorship tools.” Despite Meta’s attempts to silence Wynn-Williams with a gag order preventing her […]
04/04/2025
Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google’s most expensive AI model yet
On Friday, Google released API pricing for Gemini 2.5 Pro, an AI reasoning model with industry-leading performance on several benchmarks measuring coding, reasoning, and math. For prompts up to 200,000 tokens, Gemini 2.5 Pro costs $1.25 per million input tokens (roughly 750,000 words, longer than the entire “Lord of The Rings” series) and $10 per […]
04/04/2025
Nintendo's Switch 2 pre-orders delayed by Trump tariffs — June 5 launch date still on schedule
Nintendo indefinitely delayed the start of its pre-orders in the U.S. after President Trump's tariff announcements.
04/04/2025
Klarna and StubHub delay IPOs because of Trump tariff turmoil
Both firms hoped to raise at least $1 billion in their public market debuts.
04/04/2025
Microsoft updates Copilot with the greatest hits from other AIs
As it marks its 50th anniversary, Microsoft is updating Copilot with a host of new features all at once that bring it more in line with alternatives like ChatGPT or Claude. The AI assistant, which uses many OpenAI models, now supports memory, personalization, web-based actions, podcast creation, camera and screen analysis, deep research, and even […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft brings Copilot Vision to Windows and mobile for AI help in the real world
Microsoft is bringing its Copilot Vision feature to Windows and mobile, moving it beyond the web. Copilot Vision was a big part of Microsoft’s Copilot redesign last year, but so far, it has been limited to Edge webpages to help guide you through what you’re seeing. Copilot Vision will now be able to analyze real-time […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft Copilot can now use the web on your behalf
Microsoft is making changes to Copilot that will allow the artificial intelligence assistant to complete online tasks for you. Using “simple chat prompts,” these “Actions” can be performed in the background while you work on other tasks, according to Microsoft, and can do things like book restaurant reservations, event tickets, and purchase items to ship […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft’s Copilot can now browse the web and perform actions for you
For its 50th birthday, Microsoft is teaching its AI-powered Copilot chatbot a few new tricks. Copilot can now take action on “most websites,” Microsoft says, enabling it to book tickets, reserve restaurants, and more. The bot has gained the ability to remember specific things about you, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, like your favorite food and […]
04/04/2025
FromSoftware’s Miyazaki assures fans the studio will still make single-player games
In a multi-part interview with Nintendo about newly-announced Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods, director Hidetaka Miyazaki tried to dispel worries that developer FromSoftware is shifting focus away from single-player games. The studio known for single-player dark fantasy epics like Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series is now working on two multiplayer games. As a […]
04/04/2025
All of the news from Microsoft’s 50th Anniversary Copilot event
Microsoft is holding a 50th Anniversary Copilot livestream today at 12:30PM ET / 9:30AM PT on April 4th, the same day Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen started the company in 1975. Dubbed “Introducing your AI companion,” it’s set up for Microsoft to show off some significant updates to its Windows AI assistant. You […]
04/04/2025
Turbine raises $22M to help VC investors get cash without selling their stakes
Since IPOs slowed to trickle a few years ago, limited partners who invest in venture capital funds have had one giant problem: a dearth of liquidity. Lack of cash returns has been especially troublesome for wealthy individuals or their small family offices – who manage the assets of the wealthy – that made substantial investments […]
04/04/2025
China strikes back on Trump tariffs — bans rare earth exports to the U.S.
China applied a 34% tariff on all goods coming from America., as well as banning the export of seven rare earth metals to the U.S.
04/04/2025
Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders in response to tariffs
Nintendo is delaying preorders for the newly announced Switch 2 in the U.S. due to concerns around President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Preorders will no longer begin on April 9. “Preorders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025, in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft Copilot is now fully integrated with Windows 11 and Windows 10
The new Microsoft Copilot update is available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users with full integration into the Windows OS for a more optimized user experience.
04/04/2025
Z-Wave is remaking itself to find a new place in your smart home
The invention of Matter was a grand kumbaya moment for the smart home. Built on the foundations of almost every concept smart home companies had dreamed up — from Apple’s HomeKit to Google’s Thread — the idea was to create a new technology on top of existing ones. One common standard to make it easier […]
04/04/2025
Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi Review: Copious USB Ports and 5.0 M.2
Asus’ ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi is a premium board with loads of USB ports, five M.2 sockets, robust power delivery, high-quality audio, and a high-end appearance.
04/04/2025
Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns
Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th: Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April […]
04/04/2025
Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns
Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th: Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April […]
04/04/2025
OpenAI says it’ll release o3 after all, delays GPT-5
After effectively cancelling the consumer launch of its o3 reasoning model in February, OpenAI now says it plans to release both o3 and a next-gen successor, o4-mini, in “a couple of weeks.” In a post on X on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the reversal in course is related to OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5, which […]
04/04/2025
Philips Hue bulbs and lighting kits are deeply discounted today only
I’m always on the lookout for deals on Philips Hue gear, in part because that stuff’s expensive and I’m not keen on paying full price. Still, it’s worth the money to get the lighting exactly how I want it in each room — down to the precise color temperature that fits the mood or time […]
04/04/2025
Why I’ve covered Microsoft for 25 years
I’ve always been fascinated by Microsoft, and it’s led me on a somewhat surreal path to covering the company for most of my life. It all started in my teenage years, when my curiosity over the inner workings of Windows led to brief moments of fame and lots of moments of trouble with Microsoft’s lawyers. […]
04/04/2025
Here’s the original source code for Microsoft’s very first product
Bill Gates celebrated Microsoft’s 50th Anniversary by sharing the source code that created the company’s foundation. The 157-page PDF available to download on Gates’ blog contains the origins of Altair Basic — a programming language interpreter for the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer — and “remains the coolest code I’ve ever written to this day,” according […]
04/04/2025
NSA director fired after Trump’s meeting with right-wing influencer Laura Loomer
General Timothy Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, was fired on Thursday, according to a report from The Washington Post. His removal reportedly occurred just one day after right-wing activist Laura Loomer pushed for his firing during a meeting with President Donald Trump. Wendy Noble, the Deputy Director and […]
04/04/2025
How Microsoft made it through 50 years
In 2005, Microsoft’s leaders were starting to get worried. Windows and Office were doing well, but the company’s lead software architect, Ray Ozzie, warned them that an emerging trend threatened Microsoft’s very existence. “A new business model has emerged in the form of advertising-supported services and software,” warned Ozzie in his famous memo. “This model […]
04/04/2025
TechCrunch All Stage: Learn how AI can supercharge your MVPs with Chris Gardner
TechCrunch All Stage, our big event for founders of startups at all stages of funding (see what we did there?), is coming up July 15 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. And it’s our pleasure to announce that Underscore VC’s investing partner Chris Gardner will join a loaded lineup of speakers by leading a breakout session […]
04/04/2025
RTX 4060 is now the top GPU on Newegg despite ludicrous $500 price tag
Nvidia’s most affordable RTX 40 series desktop graphics card is starting to push towards $500 at US retailers but remains the top seller.
04/04/2025
Microsoft is now 50 years old
Fifty years ago today, Micro-Soft was founded by friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen. As the name implies, Microsoft was originally focused on microprocessors and software, and Gates and Allen created the company to develop software for the Altair 8800, an early personal computer. Founded on April 4th, 1975, Microsoft went on to strike a […]
04/04/2025
Microsoft turns 50
Microsoft was originally founded on April 4th, 1975, and the tech giant is now celebrating its 50-year anniversary. Microsoft started with a focus on personal computers, building the very software that helped it achieve an early goal of a PC on every desk and in every home. The success of Windows and Office has allowed […]
04/04/2025
Automakers jump on Tesla’s brand woes with discount EV offers
Tesla trade-ins in the U.S. are at an all time high as some owners become disillusioned with Elon Musk’s politics, and some just want to avoid their car getting keyed by Musk haters. Automakers are pouncing on the opportunity. Polestar, Lucid Motors, Volvo, and Ford — which have long trailed Tesla in EV sales — […]
04/04/2025
Trump says that chip tariffs are starting 'very soon'
The Trump administration plans to impose new chip tariffs soon, which could raise costs for American tech giants and sharply increase prices on everything from AI GPUs to consumer CPUs.
04/04/2025
How tariffs will change your gadgets
First things first, some exciting news: The Vergecast has been nominated for a Webby Award! This one means a lot to us, especially because it’s an award you get to vote on. We’d be so grateful if you’d go vote for us once, or 40 times, or however many times the site will allow. (Also, […]
04/04/2025
Honda is sending its hydrogen tech to space
Honda is looking to the stars for its next hydrogen breakthrough. The automaker is teaming up with space tech companies Sierra Space and Tec-Masters to test its high-differential pressure water electrolysis system on the International Space Station. The test is part of Honda’s vision to support life on the Moon and elsewhere in space using […]
04/04/2025
G.Skill unveils first 128GB DDR5-8000 memory kit and ultra-fast DDR5-9000 64GB options
G.Skill is introducing high-speed 64GB modules to the market with its latest Trident Z5 Royal Neo 128GB (64GBx2) memory kit, which is advertised to reach DDR5-8000 speeds.
04/04/2025
Trump fires head of National Security Agency and Cyber Command
Haugh’s firing has seemingly caught caught senior lawmakers by surprise
04/04/2025
Trump's tariffs on chipmaking tools could make U.S.-made processors more expensive
Trump's tariffs on foreign chipmaking equipment are set to raise costs for U.S. semiconductor manufacturers, threatening to disrupt investment plans and increase the cost of domestically produced chips.
04/04/2025
Intel discontinues Unison app for connecting PCs and smartphones
Intel set to discontinue its Unison app that connects smartphones with premium Windows PCs.
04/04/2025
We asked camera companies why their RAW formats are all different and confusing
When you set up a new camera, or even go to take a picture on some smartphones, you’re presented with a key choice: JPG or RAW? JPGs are ready to post just about anywhere, while RAWs yield an unfinished file filled with extra data that allows for much richer post-processing. That option for a RAW […]
04/04/2025
China retaliates with tariff that matches Trump’s
China has responded to Donald Trump’s new trade tariffs with its own charges on US imports. After Trump announced the imposition of an additional 34 percent charge on Chinese imports into the US, China has announced a levy at the same rate for US goods shipped to China. In a statement announcing the new tariff, […]
04/04/2025
A comprehensive list of 2025 tech layoffs
A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.
04/04/2025
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […]
04/04/2025
StrictlyVC is heading to London this May
StrictlyVC is crossing the Atlantic! On 13 May, London will play host to an exclusive StrictlyVC evening, delivering the same high-caliber VC insider content that has made these events a must-attend for investors and startup leaders alike. If you’re a venture capitalist or founder looking to exchange insights with peers and dive into powerful, no-filter […]
04/04/2025
Midjourney releases its first new AI image model in nearly a year
Midjourney, one of the earliest AI image-generating services on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year. Dubbed V7, the model, which began rolling out in alpha around midnight Eastern on Friday, comes a week after OpenAI debuted a new image generator in ChatGPT that quickly went viral for […]
04/04/2025
Superman’s latest trailer introduces his team of robot assistants
Though Superman is clearly going to get the living daylights beat out of him at some point in James Gunn’s upcoming DC Studios feature, the movie’s latest trailer puts a spotlight on how the Man of Steel gets put back together again. During its presentation at this year’s CinemaCon, Warner Bros. shared an extended sneak […]
04/04/2025
Amazon’s new AI agent will shop third-party sites for you
Amazon is starting to test a new AI shopping agent, a feature it calls “Buy for Me,” with a subset users, the company announced in a blog post Thursday. If Amazon doesn’t sell something that users are searching for, the Buy for Me feature will display products to users that other websites are selling. Then, […]
04/04/2025
Steve Jackson Games says tariffs are a ‘seismic shift’ for board games
The CEO of Steve Jackson Games, which makes board games and card games, says that the 54 percent tariff on goods imported from China that will go into effect on April 5th is a “seismic shift” for the board game industry and that “prices are going up.” “At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing […]
03/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs mean you’ll pay more for all gadgets
If you were wondering how President Trump’s tariffs may impact gadgets like smartphones, laptops, and smartwatches, there’s some bad, and perhaps slightly less-bad news. Unless something changes, Trump’s sweeping tariffs will lead to increased prices for consumers. But it will likely take some time before that actually happens. Modern gadgets generally aren’t made or assembled […]
03/04/2025
Google’s regular Pixel 10 will reportedly get worse (but more) cameras
Google’s upcoming base Pixel 10 might come with primary and ultrawide cameras that match the hardware recently introduced in the budget Pixel 9A, which aren’t as good as the cameras on the Pixel 9, Android Authority reports. However, the new phone may get a telephoto camera, which the Pixel 9 and other base Pixels haven’t […]
03/04/2025
PSA pauses card grading submissions from outside the US
The card grading service PSA will no longer take direct submissions from outside the US in response to the Trump administration’s new far-reaching tariffs. In an update on Wednesday, PSA says it’s “reluctantly taking these measures to protect our international customers from significant tariff expenses.” As noted by PSA, the tariffs are “against the value […]
03/04/2025
Federal judge allows the EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE and Elon Musk to proceed
A federal judge ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit attempting to stop the Department of Government Efficiency from obtaining records on millions of Americans may proceed. In conjunction with privacy watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two labor unions, more than 100 current and former federal employees sued DOGE, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management […]
03/04/2025
Intel and TSMC agree to form chipmaking joint venture: Report
Intel and TSMC have reportedly reached a tentative agreement to form a joint venture for operating Intel's U.S. fabs.
03/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs put the iPhone in a tough spot
The US smartphone market is weird. Most of us buy our phones through some combination of installment plans, trade-in offers, and carrier deals, so answering the question “How much does this phone cost?†can sometimes require a little galaxy-brain math. President Trump’s 34 percent tariff increase on Chinese goods is set to take effect on […]
03/04/2025
TikTok is shutting down its Instagram-like Notes app
TikTok is shutting down Notes, its photos-sharing app that rivaled Instagram. In a notification to users, the TikTok Notes team says the app will stop working starting May 8th, and “all related features will no longer be available.” TikTok first rolled out Notes in April of last year, which lets users share photos alongside a […]
03/04/2025
Windows 11 tests taskbar icons that scale up and down like on a Mac
Microsoft is testing out resizable taskbar icons in Windows 11 that can shrink as you open more apps or stay at a smaller size for good. The new options are included in the latest Insider Preview Beta. If you’re on the beta, under Taskbar settings > Taskbar behaviors, you can now select options under Show […]
03/04/2025
Amazon Kindle’s new feature uses AI to generate recaps for books in a series
Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series. While the company’s press release for the new feature doesn’t mention AI, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that recaps are AI-generated. “We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon […]
03/04/2025
Grace raises €5.9 million seed to offer insurance to luxury goods
Grace, an insurance company for luxury goods, announced a $6.4 million (€5.9 million) seed round led by FinTechCollective and Speedinvest. Grace, an insurance company for luxury goods, works with luxury brands to protect purchased consumer goods. If an item is stolen or damaged, a consumer can create a claim through the Grace app. For the […]
03/04/2025
OpenAI just made its first cybersecurity investment
OpenAI just co-led a $43 million Series A into deepfake defense startup Adaptive Security.
03/04/2025
Intel and TSMC are reportedly launching a joint chipmaking venture
Semiconductor giants Intel and TSMC are reportedly teaming up. The two firms are said to have reached a tentative agreement to create a joint venture that will operate Intel’s chipmaking facilities, according to The Information. TSMC will have a 20% stake in the new venture. Instead of funding its stake with capital, TSMC will share […]
03/04/2025
Ted Schlein’s Ballistic Ventures is raising $100M for a new fund
Ted Schlein's cybersecurity-focused Ballistic Ventures is raising $100 million for a new fund, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
03/04/2025
How the Nintendo Switch 2 stacks up to the Steam Deck
The biggest threat to the Steam Deck in 2025 won’t be the arrival of other Windows-based handheld gaming PCs. Instead, it’ll likely be the Nintendo Switch 2, which arrives on June 5 for $449.99 — smack dab between the cost of the $399 Steam Deck LCD and the $549 Steam Deck OLED. Ironically, the Steam […]
03/04/2025
The Kindle’s new Recaps feature will catch you up on a book series
Amazon is comparing a new feature for the Kindle to the “Previously on…” segments that TV shows frequently use. But the Kindle’s Recaps feature is instead focused on book series and provides a “quick refresher on storylines and character arcs” before readers start the next book, Amazon says. The short Recaps, which do include spoilers, […]
03/04/2025
Teen with 4.0 GPA who built the viral Cal AI app was rejected by 15 top universities
Zach Yadegari, the high school teen co-founder of Cal AI, is being hammered with comments on X after he revealed that out of 18 top colleges he applied to, he was rejected by 15. Yadegari says that he got a 4.0 GPA and nailed a 34 score on his ACT (above 31 is considered a […]
03/04/2025
TikTok quietly launches a new ‘TikTok for Artists’ platform
As TikTok’s fate in the United States remains uncertain, the tech giant has quietly started testing a new “TikTok for Artists” insights platform that is designed to help artists build their careers, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The platform will provide artists with tools to promote their songs, understand performance metrics, and engage with fans. […]
03/04/2025
Devin, the viral coding AI agent, gets a new pay-as-you-go plan
Cognition, the startup behind the viral AI programming tool Devin, has introduced a new low-cost plan to incentivize signups. When Cognition released Devin last year, the tool quickly blew up on social media for its ability to perform certain software development tasks autonomously. But it soon became apparent that Devin struggled with more complex coding […]
03/04/2025
PC prices up at least 20%: Trump Tariffs may hurt U.S. system integrators most
Boutique PC builders like Maingear and Falcon Northwest bear the brunt of the costs.
03/04/2025
Amazon can now buy products from other websites for you
Amazon is testing a new “Buy for Me” button that will let you purchase products from third-party websites without leaving the e-commerce giant’s mobile app. The feature is powered by agentic AI, allowing the company to purchase items on your behalf. Last month, Amazon rolled out a test that directs you to other brands’ websites […]
03/04/2025
Sonos says it’s ‘assessing potential implications’ of Trump tariffs for customers
Even with all the self-induced turmoil that Sonos has been through over the last year, if you’ve been eyeing any of the company’s products, it might be wise to buy sooner than later. In an email, spokesperson Erin Pategas tells me that Sonos is “closely monitoring developments related to the proposed tariffs and actively assessing […]
03/04/2025
Microsoft reportedly pulls back on its data center plans
Microsoft has pulled back on data center projects around the world, Bloomberg reports, suggesting that the company is wary of expanding its cloud computing infrastructure too rapidly. Microsoft has halted talks for or delayed development sites of data centers in the U.K., Australia, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, per Bloomberg. A spokesperson told the publication […]
03/04/2025
Dell's $35 AlienFX cable kit makes Alienware Area-51 desktop compatible with third-party motherboards
Dell has provided its Area-51 flagship gaming PC with an optional cable conversion kit that enables support for third party motherboards.
03/04/2025
Windows 11 Enterprise machines can now get updates while you work—no reboot required
Microsoft has announced the official release of hotpatch updates for various Windows 11 Enterprise builds, allowing users to update their machines without needing to restart.
03/04/2025
Genki has a magnetic battery for the Switch 2 and a better Joy-Con charging dock
With every new portable console comes a mountain of new third-party accessories. We’ve already seen Hori’s Piranha Plant alternative to the Switch 2’s USB-C camera, but Genki has announced a larger lineup of accessories designed to help protect the portable console while you’re playing away from home, plus some clever ways to keep it and […]
03/04/2025
X may soon start selling inactive usernames to Verified Organizations starting at $10K, code reveals
X’s plan to boost revenue by selling off dormant usernames on its service is starting to shape up. According to recent changes found in X’s web application, the company is setting up a “handle inquiry” process that will allow Verified Organizations — companies and other organizations that already have a $1,000 per month X subscription […]
03/04/2025
Nintendo’s Switch 2 era comes at a price
Just about everything with the Nintendo Switch 2 is more expensive than the original Switch. It’s perhaps not unexpected that the console itself costs more money than the first Switch. That device launched more than eight years ago, after all. But following yesterday’s big Switch 2 Direct, there has been a lot of sticker shock […]
03/04/2025
Studio Ghibli hasn’t commented on OpenAI’s onslaught of AI copies, but the fan subreddit has
When OpenAI debuted its image-generation feature in ChatGPT last week, social media exploded when users realized that they could make AI-generated images that looked like something out of an animated film from Studio Ghibli. Fans hoped that Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki would take a stand, but the 84-year-old animator has remained silent. In the […]
03/04/2025
Asus' budget AM5 motherboard, Prime B650-Plus WiFi, is now only $124
Build an AM5 system on the Asus Prime B650-Plus WiFi motherboard, now available for just $124.
03/04/2025
Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 redesign is a little sportier and a bit weirder
Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 electric sedan already had a polarizing “streamliner” design that only owners seem to love. Now the automaker has massaged the front a bit more for a new look for 2026. The latest Ioniq 6 has squintier daytime running lights and headlights that are lower down into the bumper, something that we’re seeing […]
03/04/2025
Apple loses $250B market value as tariffs tank tech stocks
Apple lost more than $250 billion in market value Thursday, with shares down as much as 8.5% as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff spree. The iPhone maker took one of the biggest hits on Wall Street, where tech stocks dropped as investors shifted money away from volatile assets. Tesla, Nvidia, and Meta were […]
03/04/2025
OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI
Two leading AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic, just announced major initiatives in higher education. It’s the constant one-upping we’ve all become familiar with: this week, Anthropic dropped their announcement at 8 AM Wednesday, while OpenAI followed with nearly identical news at 8 AM Thursday. For Anthropic, this week’s announcement was its first major academic push. […]
03/04/2025
Google is shipping Gemini models faster than its AI safety reports
More than two years after Google was caught flat-footed by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the company has dramatically picked up the pace. In late March, Google launched an AI reasoning model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, that leads the industry on several benchmarks measuring coding and math capabilities. That launch came just three months after the […]
03/04/2025
Trump’s tariff plan includes a potential death blow to cheap Chinese e-commerce
With President Donald Trump’s new tariff plan, your online shopping packages coming directly from China are about to get much more expensive. In February, the Trump administration moved to get rid of a little-known rule that allows US consumers to avoid tariffs on low-value packages. The de minimis exemption meant that packages valued under $800 […]
03/04/2025
Rural fiber internet expansion is at risk as Trump administration holds funds
Fiber internet providers are worried they won’t see the funds promised under a Biden-era initiative that would bring reliable internet service to rural areas. Louisiana fiber internet provider Cajun Broadband was granted $33 million as part of the plan, but the “money isn’t flowing” and concerns are growing over whether the new administration will prioritize […]
03/04/2025
Nvidia confirms the Nintendo Switch 2 has DLSS and real-time ray tracing
Nintendo’s Switch 2 tech specs yesterday vaguely said that the console is powered by a “custom processor made by Nvidia,” but in a new blog post, Nvidia has shared a little more detail about how it’s powering the device. Nvidia says that its chip enables DLSS support on the Nintendo Switch 2, allowing the console […]
03/04/2025
M3gan 2.0 gives the doll some upgrades in new trailer
Though Blumhouse’s first M3gan feature was a near-perfect blend of techno-horror and ridiculous comedy, the sequel looks like it’s going to blow its predecessor out of the water. Set a couple of years after the first film, M3gan 2.0 once again centers roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) — two of […]
03/04/2025
Trump’s tariffs are ‘a debacle of epic proportions’ for the auto industry
“Liberation Day†has arrived. Get ready to be liberated from affordable vehicle prices. As promised, President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs for imported vehicles went into effect Thursday, sending the auto industry into full panic mode. Some analysts are predicting a $5,000 to $10,000 price hike on new cars out of the gate, while others […]
03/04/2025
YouTube is updating Shorts with TikTok-like editing features
YouTube is adding new features to Shorts that aim to make it easier for creators to edit short-form videos. There are five new tools “coming this spring” according to YouTube’s announcement, including a revamped video editor that provides similar editing features to those already found on competing platforms like TikTok and Reels. The new video […]
03/04/2025
YouTube Shorts takes on TikTok with new creation tools
As YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok, the platform is announcing new upcoming features to help creators publish engaging short-form videos. Creators will get access to an improved video editor, the ability to generate AI stickers, a feature that syncs content to the beat of a song, enhanced templates, and more. The launch of […]
03/04/2025
This ’90s-esque social media site only works for three hours a day
For the past few weeks, every day at 7:38 PM ET, I get an email titled “seven39 is open again.†From 7:39PM, I have exactly three hours to check out an experimental new social media site before it completely shuts down. It’s not an empty threat, either. If you visit seven39.com outside of that three-hour […]
03/04/2025
Democrats demand probe into DOGE’s alleged mishandling of personal data
Democrats are calling on Treasury Department and General Services Administration watchdogs to investigate a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee’s access to sensitive data. In a letter to Deputy Inspectors General Loren Sciurba and Robert Erickson, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-MA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Shontel Brown (D-OH) say the probe should address DOGE staffer Marko […]
03/04/2025
Donkey Kong Bananza was best in show at the Switch 2 hands-on
One of the games I had on my personal Nintendo Switch 2 bingo card was a new 3D Mario. We didn’t get one at the Switch 2 hands-on, and at first I thought it was odd that Nintendo would be launching their next big thing without a dedicated title for their number one guy. But […]
03/04/2025
Elon Musk took a chainsaw to the US government. Tesla is taking the hit.
Elon Musk has long been credited with turning Tesla into a beacon of innovation, the visionary who pushed the world into an era of electrification. But his slide into politics – specifically his alignment with President Trump and activities within the federal government – has dragged Tesla into uncertainty. For many would-be Tesla buyers, the […]
03/04/2025
Windows 11 local account workaround discovered just as Microsoft closes previous loophole in Insider Build
An X poster has discovered yet another workaround to bypass Microsoft's Windows 11 online account requirement during installation. This latest workaround works in the CMD and doesn't require registry hacks.
03/04/2025
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
On today’s episode of Decoder, we’re talking about AI, art, and the controversial collision between the two — a debate that, to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you’ve been on the internet this past week, you undoubtedly know that controversy was just kicked up a notch by the Studio Ghibli memes — pictures […]
03/04/2025
Thatch raises $40M to give employees more control of their health care choices
Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Index Ventures led the financing, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, SemperVirens, PeopleTech Partners, The General Partnership, and new […]
03/04/2025
Nvidia confirms Nintendo Switch 2 SoC's AI, ray tracing features, keeps real specs to itself for now
Nvidia is promising its Nintendo Switch 2 chip offers 10x the peformance of the prior console.
03/04/2025
This sneaky Android spyware needs a password to uninstall. Here’s how to remove it without one
A simple trick can remove malicious Android spyware apps that require a password to uninstall.
03/04/2025
ChatGPT users have generated over 700M images since last week, OpenAI says
OpenAI’s new image-generation feature is on track to be one of the company’s most popular product launches ever. According to Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images since the upgraded image generator launched in ChatGPT on May 25. “[W]e appreciate […]
03/04/2025
Seven RTX 5090 GPUs power AI server worth over $30,000 — over 4000W of power and 224GB of memory in a single frame
A Vietnamese store has set up an AI rig for a customer, boasting seven RTX 5090s shelved in an open-air GPU frame, estimated to cost $30,000 or more.
03/04/2025
China’s push for chip independence continues with its first RISC-V server CPU
China accelerates its shift from x86 and ARM with RiVAI’s high-performance RISC-V chip.
03/04/2025
Twelve South’s 3-in-1 HiRise 3 Deluxe charging stand is cheaper than ever
If you’re trying to declutter your desk space, a versatile charger that won’t eat up a lot of space like the Twelve South HiRise 3 Deluxe could be a good investment. That’s especially true today now that the $149.99 charging stand is down to a new all-time low price of $99.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, […]
03/04/2025
Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s
When President Donald Trump began yesterday’s announcement of the White House’s latest trade policy brandishing a novelty-sized cardboard sign labeled “Reciprocal Tariffs,†the immediate and nearly unanimous response was bafflement. Trump slapped a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports into the US, including from uninhabited islands, plus absurdly high rates on specific countries, supposedly […]
03/04/2025
Indie studio Heart Machine is experimenting with Patreon because ‘money is tough to come by’
Heart Machine, the studio behind games like Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash, and the upcoming platformer Possessor(s), launched a Patreon last December. Like many other developers, it has dealt with its share of struggles, including layoffs late last year. With the many challenges in the gaming industry right now, the studio is experimenting with using […]
03/04/2025
Voice AI platform Phonic gets backing from Lux
The quality of AI-generated voices is good enough for things like creating audiobooks and podcasts, having articles read aloud to you, and basic customer support. But many businesses don’t think AI voice tech is quite reliable enough to deploy. That’s why two MIT grads, Moin Nadeem and Nikhil Murthy, founded Phonic, a company offering an […]
03/04/2025
Call for speakers: Showcase your knowledge at TechCrunch All Stage
Calling founders, VCs, and startup experts — share your scaling strategies! TechCrunch All Stage 2025 is assembling top minds in startups and venture capital on July 15 in Boston. If you have valuable insights on scaling, now’s your chance to share them with 1,200+ founders, investors, and entrepreneurs. Lead thought-provoking sessions, interactive roundtables, and actionable […]
03/04/2025
What to know about TikTok’s uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it
TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it […]
03/04/2025
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds sets phasers to kitsch in new season 3 trailer
Though the last season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ended on a perilous note, when the Paramount Plus series returns, it’s going to lean into the whimsical energy that made the original ‘60s show feel fun. Ahead of Strange New Worlds’ season three premiere, Paramount Plus has dropped a new trailer teasing how the […]
03/04/2025
Apple has its biggest stock drop in five years because of Trump’s tariffs
Shares of Apple, Amazon, and other tech stocks are getting walloped on Thursday as the markets digest the impact of President Donald Trump’s new round of tariffs announced on Wednesday evening. Shares of Apple were down about 9 percent on Thursday morning, which would mark the biggest drop in about five years if it holds […]
03/04/2025
Nikon upgraded its entry-level full-frame camera with better autofocus and faster shooting
Five years after Nikon released its entry-level and more affordable alternative to its original Z7 and Z6 full-frame cameras, the company is finally updating its Z5 with improved autofocus and image stabilization, and a much brighter electronic viewfinder. Nikon says the new Z5 II is also its first camera that can capture video in its […]
03/04/2025
Spotify debuts Gen AI ads, programmatic ad buying
Spotify announced Gen AI ads, among other changes to its advertising business, at an event in New York City on Thursday. Notably, the company introduced a new programmatic offering, the Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach Spotify’s logged-in users via real-time auctions. On the latter, Spotify announced new partnerships with Google’s demand-side […]
03/04/2025
New session at TechCrunch All Stage: Jahanvi Sardana on how top startups reshape markets
TechCrunch All Stage — the ultimate founder summit — is shaping up to be a powerhouse event where 1,200 founders and VCs across all stages will come together to forge meaningful connections and gain practical insights they can immediately apply to scale their startups. Join us on July 15 at SoWa Power Station in Boston […]
03/04/2025
Microsoft’s miniature Windows 365 Link PC is available to buy now
Microsoft’s business-oriented “Link” mini-desktop PC, which connects directly to the company’s Windows 365 cloud service, is now available to buy for $349.99 in the US and in several other countries. Windows 365 Link, which was announced last November, is a device that is more easily manageable by IT departments than a typical computer while also […]
03/04/2025
Bitcoin miners front-running tariffs by scrambling to ship thousands of machines before penalties hit
Before tariffs apply, bitcoin mining hardware manufacturers rush to move units into the U.S..
03/04/2025
Trump administration exempts computer chips and copper from sweeping tariffs, but only for now — report says chip tariffs coming later
Donald Trump's new tariff plan imposes sweeping import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners starting in April, but key exclusions, especially for semiconductors, offer relief to American tech firms even as high-tech goods from Asia face steep price hikes.
03/04/2025
RX 9070 GRE is reportedly in development to provide an affordable entry point into RDNA 4
AMD is reportedly prepping an RX 9070 GRE (Great Radeon Edition) GPU as a budget RDNA 4 option, though availability might be limited to the Chinese market at launch.
03/04/2025
Runway, best known for its video-generating AI models, raises $308M
Runway, a startup developing a range of generative AI models for media production, including video-generating models, has raised $308 million in a Series D funding round. General Atlantic led the round, which had participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Nvidia, SoftBank, and others. The fresh capital will be put toward AI research […]
03/04/2025
Nintendo Switch 2's support for MicroSD Express standard is going to hurt your wallet: Here's why
The Nintendo Switch 2 uses a memory standard named MicroSD Express, and the pricing of the newly announced products is going to make your wallet sting.
03/04/2025
The Nintendo Switch 2, hands-on: It’s pretty good!
At a presentation unveiling the Nintendo Switch 2, longtime Nintendo producer Kouichi Kawamoto revealed that at one point, he considered calling the Switch’s successor the “Super Nintendo Switch.” It would have been a nice nod to Nintendo’s second console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which followed the original NES about 35 years ago. But Kawamoto, […]
03/04/2025
Nintendo Switch 2 developers confirm DLSS, hardware ray tracing, and more
At a roundtable with the Switch 2's developers, we learned more about the capabilities that Nvidia's custom chip delivers.
03/04/2025
Nintendo Switch 2 Hands-on: Bigger, faster, and with mouse controls
We went hands-on with the Nintendo Switch 2, trying its newest games, mouse mode, and improved Joy-Cons.
03/04/2025
A web3 startup aims to change the game in the tariff wars
With President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs coming out today — a day he is calling “Liberation Day” — a Web3 startup thinks it could track tariffs automatically on goods coming into and out of the USA using its blockchain platform. The claim may well be bold — and typical of many such bold claims […]
03/04/2025
Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on: it’s all in the games
The value proposition of the Nintendo Switch 2 may seem pretty clear, but it’s much more obvious when you use one. Nintendo’s new console is the Switch but slightly bigger and slightly better, and that has been apparent since the device was first revealed in January in a mostly detail-free presentation. Now, we finally have […]
03/04/2025
Mario Kart World is pure chaos
A new Mario Kart is usually built around some kind of notable feature. Double Dash added co-op play, while the DS iteration let you play other people online. With Mario Kart 8, it was gravity-defying tracks and, later, the idea of expanding the game through DLC courses. With Mario Kart World, perhaps the biggest launch […]
03/04/2025
The Nintendo GameCube still rules
One of the most exciting parts of Nintendo’s new console is, well, an old console. GameCube games are coming to the Switch 2 for Nintendo Online subscribers, and it’s starting off with a pretty killer trio of releases: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (which somehow was never ported to the Switch), Soulcalibur II […]
03/04/2025
I’m not sold on the Switch 2’s mouse-like controls
Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the original Nintendo Switch and the Switch 2 – besides the more expensive price – is the new Joy-Con controller and its come-out-of-nowhere mouse functionality. I got the chance to demo them at a hands-on event and damn are my shoulders and wrists sore. There were several games at […]
03/04/2025
Thermalright Hyper Vision 360 Review: Confusing SKU Spam
We tested Thermalright’s Hyper Vision 360 with Intel’s i7-14700K and Core Ultra 9 285K CPUs.
03/04/2025
Fuse raises $6.6M to fix a payment problem for companies expanding to MENA
Expanding into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a costly and complex challenge for global businesses, thanks to fragmented regulations and banking systems. Dubai-based fintech Fuse aims to simplify that with a cross-border payments API and has raised $6.6 million in seed funding to make it happen. Founded in 2023 by George Davis, […]
03/04/2025
Universities are giving up the fight for free speech — students aren’t
As the US government launches investigations and threatens to pull federal funding, some elite universities have decided to take the path of least resistance. Colleges across the country have responded to the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity programs and student protesters by complying with these “anti-woke†witch hunts. In recent weeks, university administrators at Columbia […]
03/04/2025
Verizon now offers a three-year price lock — but there’s a catch
Verizon is announcing a new price lock policy today, and the timing is probably no coincidence. The company is extending a three-year price guarantee on certain plans, both for new and existing customers. The announcement comes a day after President Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs, and Verizon says it’s hoping to give customers more “predictability” in […]
03/04/2025
Truecaller now has over 450M monthly active users
Caller ID app Truecaller said on Thursday that it crossed the 450 million user mark earlier this week. The company said that it added 50 million users in the past 10 months and 15.5 million users since the beginning of 2025. India is the company’s biggest user base, so it wasn’t surprising to see Truecaller […]
03/04/2025
Trump creates U.S. Investment Accelerator to manage CHIPS Act and 'negotiate much better deals'
President Trump established the U.S. Investment Accelerator office to manage CHIPS Act awards and make it easier for investors to build businesses within the U.S.
03/04/2025
Intel refreshes iconic brand with 'That's the power of Intel Inside' campaign
Intel revives and redefines its iconic 'Intel Inside' campaign with the new slogan 'That's the power of Intel Inside. ' The company aims to reconnect its legacy brand with today's pervasive role of technology and highlight the impact of its products.
03/04/2025
Fintech Plaid raises $575M at a $6.1B valuation, says it will not go public in 2025
Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, has sold about $575 million worth of common stock at a $6.1 billion post-money valuation, the fintech company confirmed to TechCrunch. The valuation is about less than half of the $13.4 billion that San Francisco-based Plaid was valued at when it raised a $425 million Series D […]
03/04/2025
AV1 is supposed to make streaming better, so why isn’t everyone using it?
When you jump into a video on YouTube or Netflix, a lot happens very quickly behind the scenes. Video data is rapidly downloaded to your device, which then has to unpack and normalize that information into a smooth, hiccup-free stream. The process of encoding and decoding video data has changed greatly over the years, with […]
03/04/2025
Google’s NotebookLM can now find its own sources
Google has added a new feature to NotebookLM that lets the AI note-taking tool find its own web sources to summarize and narrate. Instead of manually uploading sources like documents or YouTube links, users can now tap the “Discover” button and simply describe the topic they want to get a better understanding of, with the […]
03/04/2025
Amazon is ready to launch its Starlink competitor
The first batch of 27 Project Kuiper space internet satellites are scheduled to launch next week. Amazon has secured 80 such launch missions that will each deliver dozens of satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) to create a constellation capable of competing with Elon Musk’s Starlink juggernaut. Amazon says it expects to begin offering high-speed, […]
03/04/2025
What will the Switch 2 cost after the Trump tariffs?
Nintendo revealed its Switch 2 in full yesterday, just hours before Trump took to the White House Rose Garden for his own launch: his latest, and largest, round of tariffs yet. Unfortunately for Nintendo, the tariffs hit the countries where it builds its consoles, with new rates of up to 49 percent that it may […]
03/04/2025
Y Combinator neobank Djamo raises $17M with 1M users across Francophone Africa
Djamo is one of several digital banking startups targeting Africa’s underbanked. But unlike many that focus on large markets like Nigeria, Egypt, or South Africa, Djamo has carved out a niche in Francophone West Africa, specifically the Ivory Coast and, more recently, Senegal. It now serves over one million customers across both countries. The Y […]
03/04/2025
Can I interest you in an app that tracks your driving behavior?
Smartphone apps that track our driving behavior may be the key to safer road conditions. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety just published a study that found that using smartphone apps to monitor driver behavior, and then providing summaries of that behavior via text message or a data dashboard, leads to safer driving. Researchers borrowed […]
03/04/2025
The Nintendo GameCube is about to get its due
Before this morning, I knew I was going to buy the Nintendo Switch 2 but I didn’t know when. After watching Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct today, in which a purple block traced the GameCube’s stylized “G” logo, followed by high-res footage from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and F-Zero GX and an announcement […]
02/04/2025
How the Nintendo Switch 2 compares to prior models on paper
The Switch 2 is here — well, almost. Nintendo took the wraps off its new console during its latest Direct event, providing us with a closer look at the $449.99 console ahead of its release on June 5th. In many ways, the sequel is a generational leap from the original console / handheld hybrid that […]