History of Science: First computer-to-computer messages lay the foundation for the Internet, but it crashes — October 29, 1969
simple facts Milestone: first computer-to-computer communication Date and time: October 29, 1969, 10:30 p.m. Location: Los Angeles to Menlo Park, California People: From graduate student Charlie Klein to computer engineer Bill Duvall. Late one evening, UCLA graduate student Charlie Klein sat down at a computer the size of a refrigerator and sent the message “lo” […]
CEO of spyware maker Memento Labs admits one of his government customers was caught using the company’s malware
On Monday, researchers at cybersecurity giant Kaspersky Lab released a report identifying a new piece of spyware called Dante that they say is targeting Windows victims in Russia and neighboring Belarus. Dante spyware is made by Milan-based surveillance technology maker Memento Labs, which was founded in 2019 after earlier spyware maker Hacking Team was acquired […]
Tata Motors admits it has fixed a security flaw that exposed company and customer data
Indian auto giant Tata Motors has fixed a series of security flaws that exposed sensitive internal data including customer personal information, company reports and dealer-related data. Security researcher Eaton Zuber told TechCrunch that he discovered the flaw in Tata Motors’ E-Dukaan division, an e-commerce portal for purchasing spare parts for Tata commercial vehicles. Tata Motors, […]
The five Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 are:
After two days filled with live demos and pitches, it’s time to announce the five finalists for this year’s Startup Battlefield. These finalists were initially selected from thousands of applicants, and TechCrunch’s editorial team narrowed the field to 200 companies that participated here at Disrupt, with the top 20 competing on the Disrupt stage. The […]
Super Teacher is developing an AI tutor for elementary schools — see us at Disrupt 2025
Private tutoring is one of the most effective tools for improving a child’s education, yet very few children in the United States are privately tutored. A 2023 study of the nation’s largest school districts found that less than 10% of students received tutoring. One factor is that tutoring is too expensive for many families, often […]
James Webb Telescope detects five ‘building blocks of life’ for the first time in the Milky Way’s outer ice
Scientists have discovered, for the first time, the complex building blocks of life in the ice surrounding a star in the Milky Way. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers detected five large carbon-based compounds around protostars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits close to the Milky Way. The discovery […]
A “miracle” photo that shows Comet Lemon and a meteor intertwined on Earth
Astronomers recently pointed their telescopes over Manciano, Italy, and captured something incredible. A bright comet appeared to be wrapped in a corkscrew trail of meteors, shining like a cosmic barber’s pole in the same part of the sky. Because there are millions of miles between the meteor in the foreground and the comet in the […]
Netflix’s CTO says more vertical video experiments are coming, but the streamer won’t compete with TikTok
Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Tuesday, Netflix said it is looking to vertical video as a way to experiment with new content types. The executive said the company doesn’t intend to compete directly with apps like TikTok or other short-form drama apps, but acknowledged there are other ways Netflix could leverage the […]
New TEE.Fail side-channel attack extracts secrets from Intel and AMD DDR5 secure enclaves
October 28, 2025Ravi LakshmananEncryption/Hardware Security A group of academic researchers from Georgia Tech, Purdue University, and Synchronix has developed a side-channel attack called TEE.Fail that can extract secrets from trusted execution environments (TEEs) on a computer’s main processor, such as Intel’s Software Guard eXtensions (SGX) and Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) and AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization […]
Sam Altman says OpenAI will have “legitimate AI researchers” by 2028
OpenAI says its deep learning systems are rapidly advancing, with more models able to solve complex tasks faster. So fast, in fact, that OpenAI internally aims to have intern-level research assistants by September 2026 and fully automated “regular AI researchers” by 2028, CEO Sam Altman said in a livestream on Tuesday. This ambitious timeline was […]