When you board a United Airlines plane, the gate agents, flight attendants and others involved in making sure your plane leaves on time are in a chatroom coordinating a lot of the work that you, as a passenger, will hopefully never notice. Is there still space for carry-on bags? Did the caterer bring the missing … Read more
Lawmakers passed legislation early Saturday reauthorizing and expanding a controversial U.S. surveillance law shortly after the powers expired at midnight, rejecting opposition by privacy advocates and lawmakers. The bill, which passed on a 60-34 vote, reauthorizes powers known as Section 702 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to collect the … Read more
How many AI models is too many? It depends on how you look at it… but 10 a week is probably a bit much. That’s how many we had in the last few days, or close to it, and it’s increasingly hard to say whether and how these models compare to one another — if … Read more
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. After years of booming growth, the AI industry is now experiencing a significant slowdown in investment, as detailed in a recent report from Stanford’s Institute for … Read more
Midas, a fintech startup that allows people in Turkey to invest in U.S. and Turkish equities, says it has raised $45 million in a funding round led by Portage Ventures of Canada. The startup is aimed at Turkey’s retail investor market and claims to have more than 2 million users. Its pitch is that it … Read more
Apple has removed the Meta-owned end-to-end encrypted messaging app WhatsApp from its App Store in China following a government order citing national security concerns, the news agency Reuters reported Friday. Meta’s newer, Twitter-esque text-based social networking app, Threads, has also been pulled from the App Store for the same reason, it said. “The Cyberspace Administration … Read more
Artificial intelligence has been in the crosshairs of governments concerned about how it might be misused for fraud, disinformation and other malicious online activity; now in the U.K. a regulator is preparing to explore how AI is used in the fight against some of the same, specifically as it relates to content harmful to children. … Read more
NASA’s decision to scrap its $11 billion, 15-year mission to Mars to bring back samples could create a startup feeding frenzy, TechCrunch reports. Describing its plans as too slow, and too expensive, NASA is going back to the drawing board, with an eye on getting the space industry to help. Sure, you might worry that … Read more
Apple finally updated its App Store guidelines to allow global developers to host retro game emulators on iOS. Now, you don’t need to jailbreak your iPhone or download any sketchy software — you can get a sophisticated emulator right in the palm of your hand for free on the App Store. No one is more … Read more
Tesla is pushing forward with a plan to build an electric big rig charging corridor stretching from Texas to California, despite being snubbed by a lucrative federal funding program that’s part of Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But the original scope of the project could still change, TechCrunch has learned. The company had been seeking nearly … Read more