According to a new report from app subscription service Setapp, 42% of Mac users use AI-based apps daily, and 63% believe they are more beneficial than those without AI. Mac app developers are also adopting AI, with 44% having implemented AI or machine learning models and 28% working on it. …
Read More »Asia offers hope amid the crypto winter
At Token2049, it was hard to tell the crypto industry was in “winter” mode. The September crypto conference in Singapore drew an unprecedented 20,000 attendees, who visited hundreds of side events across the city to avoid the expensive main event ticket. While the government’s actions against FTX, Ripple, Binance, and …
Read More »Autonomous vehicle arm of Didi raises $149M from state investors
Was Didi’s 2020 autonomous vehicle subsidiary a Chinese equivalent to Uber’s? Since then, China’s tech landscape has changed, with internet firms regulated and foreign investments plummeting due to U.S.-China tensions. Despite Beijing’s data security probe into Didi’s parent company, its AV unit has survived and received new funding. Didi Autonomous …
Read More »Lakera launches to defend large language models from evil prompts
The generative AI movement relies on large language models (LLMs) to interpret and create human-language texts from simple prompts, such as summarizing a document, writing a poem, or answering a question using data from multiple sources. Bad actors can use “prompt injection” to trick an LLM-powered chatbot into giving unauthorized …
Read More »Yepic fail: This startup promised not to deepfake without consent but did
According to Yepic AI, it uses “deepfakes for good” and will “never reenact someone without their consent.” However, the company did what it said it would never do. Yepic AI sent a TechCrunch reporter two “deepfaked” videos of the reporter, who had not consented to their likeness, in an unsolicited …
Read More »Linda Yaccarino tells EU: 700 Community Notes, 5K+ Israel-Hamas war images, “thousands” of content removed
Earlier this week, European Commissioner Thierry Breton sent a stark open letter to X, formerly Twitter, criticizing its failure to curb disinformation and illegal content on the platform after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Today, X responded with a lengthy letter that was short on numbers and directly acknowledged …
Read More »Strange Object Movements Beyond Neptune The Alternative Gravity Effect, Astrophysicists Say
The “Planet Nine” has been sought many times, but without success. In a new paper, a team proposes that gravity is wrong. Astronomers have been puzzled by a Kuiper Belt clustering for decades. Astrophysicists believe small objects are being “shepherded” by a large unknown planet far beyond Neptune’s orbit. Theoretical …
Read More »Open OSIRIS-REx cannister live today from NASA. How to Watch
A few weeks ago, OSIRIS-REx delivered priceless Bennu samples to Earth. NASA’s Johnson Space Center will livestream the opening of the canister today, revealing the precious material. To avoid contamination from Earth’s atmosphere, the asteroid bits will be opened in a glovebox. On Wednesday, October 11, showtime is 11 am …
Read More »Yooga wants its restaurant OS to be ‘Toast of Latin America’
Yooga, a Brazilian restaurant management system developer, received $2.3 million in seed capital. Gilgamesh, Apex Partners, and Backfuture joined SaaSholic in the round. Vinicius Melo, Victor Sortica, and Cassiano Guerra Fernandes co-founded Yooga in 2017 and bootstrapped it for three years before raising $300,000 in a 2020 friends-and-family round. Melo …
Read More »Formant handles data for robotics companies
Ten years ago this December, Google acquired Bot & Dolly and about a dozen other robotics companies. San Francisco-based firm known for special effects work on films like “Gravity,” was merged into a new portfolio with ambitious industry-changing plans. Things didn’t go as planned for many reasons we won’t discuss. …
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