The US Espionage Act is about to expire, and lawmakers are divided over protecting Americans from warrantless surveillance.
A long-standing law that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of foreign communications without a search warrant is set to expire on April 30, but lawmakers are deadlocked on whether to allow the Trump administration to extend the law unchanged. The law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance […]
Who is the next Apple CEO John Ternus?
After 15 years, Tim Cook will be handing over the role of Apple’s CEO to John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but unless you’re an avid Apple fan, you may have never heard of the man who has largely […]
Anthropic receives $5 billion from Amazon and promises $100 billion in cloud spending in return
Anthropic announced Monday that Amazon has agreed to invest an additional $5 billion, bringing Amazon’s total investment in the company to $13 billion. Anthropic has agreed to invest more than $100 billion in AWS over the next 10 years and acquire up to 5 GW of new compute capacity to train and run Claude. The […]
North Korean hacker accused of $290 million cryptocurrency theft
Over the weekend, hackers stole over $290 million in cryptocurrencies from Kelp DAO, a protocol that allows users to earn yield on their idle crypto investments. By Monday, LayerZero, one of the projects affected by the hack, had accused North Korea of carrying out the robbery. The hack is the biggest cryptocurrency theft so far […]
FAA orders investigation into Blue Origin New Glenn accident
The Federal Aviation Administration directed Blue Origin to investigate an apparent failure of the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday, the Orlando Sentinel reported. This means the company will not be able to operate New Glenn again until the exploration is completed. This could put a damper on Blue Origin’s ambitions to […]
WhatsApp is testing a premium subscription, but it’s mostly cosmetic
WhatsApp is testing a new subscription tier that will allow users to pay for customized icons, themes, ringtones, and more, similar to Instagram Plus and Snapchat+. The paid plan features are mostly cosmetic. Many additional features are not available to users. WhatsApp Plus has attracted the attention of many users, including social media consultant Matt […]
Deezer announces that 44% of songs uploaded to its platform each day are generated by AI
Deezer announced Monday that AI-generated tracks now account for 44% of all new music uploaded to its platform. The company said it receives about 75,000 AI-generated tracks per day and more than 2 million per month. Consumption of AI-generated music on the platform remains very low, at 1-3% of total streams, and 85% of these […]
App host Vercel claims it was hacked and customer data stolen
Over the weekend, cloud app hosting giant Versel announced that hackers had infiltrated its internal systems and accessed customer data. The hackers claim to have stolen sensitive customer credentials from Vercel’s systems and sold that data online. Vercel said in a statement Sunday that the breach originated from another software maker, Context AI. One of […]
Rivian factory hit by tornado before R2 launch
Rivian’s factory in Normal, Illinois, was hit by a tornado over the weekend and sustained damage, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Rivian said no one was injured and staff were still assessing the extent of the damage. The tornado, which has an EF-1 strength rating, struck what Rivian calls “Building 2,” where the company manufactures […]
OpenAI’s existential questions | Tech Crunch
OpenAI has been all over the news lately, whether it’s about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or the larger conversation about AI’s impact on society. In the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I do our best to round up all the latest news in OpenAI. While the company’s latest acquisition […]