1 hour ago Meta fires around 20 employees for leaking confidential information

Meta has fired “roughly” 20 employees for leaking confidential information, The Verge reports. “We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent,” Meta told the publication. “We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Events

1 hour ago Waymo has doubled its weekly robotaxi rides in less than a year

Waymo is logging more than 200,000 paid robotaxi rides every week, according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who shared the stat about the tech giant’s subsidiary on X. Waymo commercially operates robotaxis in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. The 200,000-weekly trips milestone is notable for a company that was providing only 10,000 rides a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

1 hour ago Twitch is letting more streamers access its monetization tools

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy published an open letter on Thursday outlining the platform’s plans for 2025, which include upcoming features, updates to the mobile experience, as well as a significant change to its monetization policy.   Of note, Clancy revealed that Twitch is opening up subscriptions and “Bits,” the virtual items that viewers buy to cheer […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

2 h. ago Isaiah Collier explores 400 years of Black history — one movement at a time

Saxophonist Isaiah Collier'sThe Story of 400 Years is a sweeping suite that traces Black American history from the Middle Passage to today, and the personal and historical moments that shaped it.

Events

2 h. ago Spyzie stalkerware is spying on thousands of Android and iPhone users

Another little-known phone monitoring outfit has quietly amassed half a million customers, whose email addresses are now in Have I Been Pwned. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Events

2 h. ago TikTok sunsets its creator marketplace for TikTok One, a broader solution with AI tools

TikTok is preparing to sunset its creator marketplace in favor of a new, more expanded experience, the company has informed businesses and creators via email. The online platform, which connects brands with creators for collaborating on ads and other sponsorships, will stop allowing creator invitations or the creation of new campaigns as of Saturday the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Technology

2 h. ago The U.S. resumes hundreds of millions in security aid to Taiwan, annoying China

The U.S. has unfrozen millions in security assistance for Taiwan, with an eye toward China.

Politics

2 h. ago Accounting hasn’t fully embraced AI yet. Quanta just raised $4.7M to change that

Quanta, founded by a former Affirm engineer, sells an AI-powered accounting platform to software companies. It has raised a seed round led by Accel. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Economics

2 h. ago Figure will start ‘alpha testing’ its humanoid robot in the home in 2025

Figure is planning to bring its humanoids into the home sooner than expected. CEO Brett Adcock confirmed on Thursday that the Bay Area robotics startup will begin “alpha testing” its Figure 02 robot in the home setting, starting later in 2025. The executive says the accelerated timeline is a product of the company’s “generalist” Vision-Language-Action […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Science

4 h. ago Stripe CEO says AI startups are growing faster than SaaS ever did and calling them wrappers ‘misses the point’

In its annual letter released Thursday, payments giant Stripe declared that it was “seeing an AI boom” with its data revealing that artificial intelligence startups are growing more rapidly than traditional SaaS companies have historically. In a chart, Stripe showed that the top 100 AI companies (by revenue) were able to achieve $5 million in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Technology

4 h. ago Stripe says AI startups are growing faster than SaaS ever did and calling them wrappers ‘misses the point’

In its annual letter released Thursday, payments giant Stripe declared that it was “seeing an AI boom” with its data revealing that artificial intelligence startups are growing more rapidly than traditional SaaS companies have historically. In a chart, Stripe showed that the top 100 AI companies (by revenue) were able to achieve $5 million in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Technology

4 h. ago AI models trained on unsecured code become toxic, study finds

A group of AI researchers has discovered a curious — and troubling — phenomenon: Models say some pretty toxic stuff after being fine-tuned on unsecured code. In a recently published paper, the group explained that training models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Alibaba’s Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct, on code that contains vulnerabilities leads the models to give dangerous advice, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

4 h. ago A robot nearly headbutted a festival spectator in China. Here are four urgent steps to make the tech safer

Humanoid robots are supposed to be our loyal assistants, but we saw another side to them the other day. Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree was demonstrating its latest H1 robots at a lantern festival in the city of Taishan, Guangdong province, when one walked up to the crowd barrier and seemed to lunge at an elderly woman, nearly headbutting her.

Politics

4 h. ago Commanders' Jayden Daniels 'generates a lot of excitement', says assistant GM

Commanders' Jayden Daniels 'generates a lot of excitement', says assistant GM  Sports Illustrated

Politics

4 h. ago Apple introduces new child safety initiatives, including an age

Apple on Thursday announced a range of new initiatives designed to help parents and developers create a safer experience for kids and teens using Apple devices. In addition to easier setup of child accounts, parents will now be able to share information about their kids’ ages, which can then be accessed by app developers to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

5 h. ago Archipelo comes out of stealth with $12M funding to secure human and AI

When it comes to AI software, you can build something clever, but that’s not always the same as building something that is secure. With so much software now getting written by AI, having a window into its security can be a challenge. That’s the premise of Archipelo, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that is today […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Events

5 h. ago Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez headed to space on Blue Origin mission

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, announced the crew for its next mission on Thursday, which can only mean one thing: more random rich people are going to space. The crew most notably includes popstar Katy Perry and broadcast journalist Gayle King. They will be joined by two scientists — Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

5 h. ago YC grad Deepnight nabs $5.5M for AI night vision software that disrupts a multi

The founders created military-grade night vision with AI software that began as a smartphone app. And now the military is a customer. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Events

5 h. ago Workhelix taps years of research to help enterprises figure out where to apply AI

AI has the power to transform how people work, but getting tangible value out of AI isn’t as easy as throwing any AI application at any workflow. It can be hard for enterprises to figure out which AI applications help their business and which are just hype. Workhelix wants to solve that problem. Workhelix is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Politics

5 h. ago Amazon's Goodreads builds community but breeds division. Rival StoryGraph is playing it safe—and gaining ground

Reading, once a largely private activity, has become more public and communal with the emergence of book-centered social media spaces. But while the "BookTok" and "Bookstagram" communities are often in the news, Goodreads, founded in 2006 and estimated to have 150 million users, was arguably the first digital network to focus on reading.

Technology