Latest from Anthony Ha
The journal Nature recently published a package of 44 papers about aerospace medicine and space biology. Beyond the specific findings of each paper, what was…
Media & Entertainment
YouTube is testing another way to combat ad blockers
7:53 am PDT • June 16, 2024
YouTube continues its efforts to circumvent ad blockers. Earlier this week, ad blocker SponsorBlock posted that the Google-owned video service is testing out server-side ad injection with a limited number…
Care/of, a company offering personalized subscription vitamin packs, says it will be canceling all subscriptions as of Monday, June 17 and will no longer be accepting new orders. The news…
Every big social network and internet platform has been hyping new AI features, so it’s probably no surprise that LinkedIn is moving in that direction,…
I learned a new word today — “sherlocking,” which is how some folks refer to Apple releasing a new feature that does the same thing…
Social
TechCrunch Minute: Apple’s Genmoji will let you generate infinitely customizable emojis
9:00 AM PDT • June 12, 2024
One of the many new features that Apple announced earlier this week under the broad umbrella of Apple Intelligence is something it calls Genmoji, which…
AI
TechCrunch Minute: Apple unveils Apple Intelligence, its new generative AI offering
9:00 AM PDT • June 11, 2024
Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it’s making its big move into AI with a new technology it calls Apple Intelligence. Apple CEO Tim Cook…
A recent study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Amsterdam and the AI startup Hugging Face looked at different text-analyzing AI models…
Space
William Anders, astronaut who took the famous ‘Earthrise’ photo, dies at 90
1:12 pm PDT • June 9, 2024
William A. Anders, the astronaut behind perhaps the single most iconic photo of our planet, has died at the age of 90. On Friday morning, Anders was piloting a small…
Government & Policy
New York moves to limit kids’ access to ‘addictive feeds’
8:49 am PDT • June 9, 2024
New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent. The Stop Addictive…
Artists got an unpleasant surprise when they opened Photoshop this week, as they were shown a pop-up window asking them to agree to new terms…
AI
TechCrunch Minute: Is Elon Musk putting Tesla’s AI ambitions in the slow lane?
9:00 AM PDT • June 6, 2024
Elon Musk has said that Tesla has ambitious plans for AI, which will require it to more than double its usage of Nvidia’s flagship AI…
Gadgets
TechCrunch Minute: Spotify kills the Car Thing, leading customers to demand refunds
9:00 AM PDT • June 3, 2024
Back in 2022, Spotify announced an in-car streaming gadget that was actually called the Car Thing — and then it discontinued the Car Thing just…
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short-form video app that he once tried to ban. Trump’s TikTok account, which launched on Saturday night, features…
President Joe Biden has vetoed H.J.Res. 109, a congressional resolution that would have overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current approach to banks and crypto. Specifically, the resolution targeted the…
Media & Entertainment
TechCrunch Minute: Is meme tech the next big startup category?
9:00 AM PDT • May 31, 2024
Meme Depot, which launched earlier this week, is a startup aiming to create a new category called “meme tech.” More specifically, founder Alex Taub said…
AI
TechCrunch Minute: What Sam Altman’s firing and rehiring reveals about OpenAI
9:00 AM PDT • May 30, 2024
You probably remember that back in November, OpenAI’s board fired the company’s co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. What followed was this incredibly complicated power struggle…
The families of victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas are suing Activision and Meta, as well as gun manufacturer Daniel Defense. The families bringing the…
Google has been taking heat for some of the inaccurate, funny and downright weird answers that it’s been providing via AI Overviews in search. AI Overviews are the AI-generated search…
AI
TechCrunch Minute: Meet Meta’s all white, all male AI advisory council
9:00 AM PDT • May 24, 2024
Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more) announced a new AI advisory council that’s supposed to help guide the company’s decision-making around AI…
Just a month after launching its much-hyped Ai Pin, a report in Bloomberg says Humane is looking to get acquired. Specifically, the company is looking…
Space
Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022
7:47 am PDT • May 19, 2024
Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of…
Commerce
Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’
6:30 am PDT • May 19, 2024
Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…
Gadgets
TechCrunch Minute: Apple uses AI to make iPhones and iPads more accessible
9:00 AM PDT • May 16, 2024
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day — perfect timing for Apple to announce new features that should make iPhones and iPads more accessible for people…
Google kicked off its annual Google I/O developer conference with a big dose of AI. The company’s core AI model Gemini is getting multiple upgrades,…
AI
TechCrunch Minute: Everything you need to know about OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model
9:00 AM PDT • May 14, 2024
If you’ve been following the news around OpenAI, you’ve probably seen reports that the company is working on a search product that was going to…
The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”
Media & Entertainment
TechCrunch Minute: Streaming services are basically just cable now
9:00 AM PDT • May 13, 2024
The streaming world continues its transformation into the new cable bundle. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery recently announced that they’ll be launching a bundle this…
It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted…
Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang…
