Author: Jason

  • EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and connected devices

    The European Union has sent Apple preliminary instructions on how it expects the iPhone maker to comply with interoperability provisions in the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), its flagship market contestability reform. According to the Commission, device manufacturers and app developers should be able to access nine iOS connectivity features that were restricted to Apple’s… Read more

  • ‘The Last of Us’ to stream in American Sign Language on Max

    Max announced on Wednesday that the HBO series “The Last of Us” will be available to stream in American Sign Language (ASL). Season 2 premieres on April 13. Notably, this is the first time HBO’s original content will be accessible for streaming in ASL on the service, representing a step towards inclusivity for deaf and… Read more

  • Hugging Face’s new iOS app taps AI to describe what you’re looking at

    AI startup Hugging Face has released a new app for iOS that only does one thing: uses offline, local AI to describe what’s in view of your iPhone’s camera. The app, called HuggingSnap, taps Hugging Face’s in-house vision model, smolvlm2, to analyze what your phone sees in real-time without sending data off to the cloud.… Read more

  • Mortgage as an employee benefit? Kleiner Perkins leads $23.5M Series A for Multiply Mortgage

    After hitting record lows at the start of the pandemic, mortgage rates began to climb in 2022 and haven’t come down significantly since.  With 30-year mortgage rates hovering at over 6.5% today (they were as low as 2.49% in 2020!), buying a home is simply not that attainable for many people. One Denver-based startup is… Read more

  • Hunted Labs lands $3M to find suspicious open source contributors

    Former NSA deputy director George Barnes has made his first investment as a venture capitalist for his new job at the VC incubation studio Red Cell Partners. It’s a $3 million seed deal in an open source cybersecurity startup called Hunted Labs, he told TechCrunch exclusively. Barnes spent his entire 35-year career at the spy agency,… Read more

  • The AI leaders bringing the AGI debate down to Earth

    During a recent dinner with business leaders in San Francisco, a comment I made cast a chill over the room. I hadn’t asked my dining companions anything I considered to be extremely faux pas: simply whether they thought today’s AI could someday achieve human-like intelligence (i.e. AGI) or beyond. It’s a more controversial topic than… Read more

  • Google unveils redesigned $499 Pixel 9a

    Google has officially unveiled the Pixel 9a smartphone, its new midrange phone that will retail for $499. The A-series smartphone’s biggest change is its appearance, as the latest model ditches the camera bar on the back of the phone. The smartphone is getting a chip upgrade, as the new model features Google’s Tensor G4 processor,… Read more

  • Zoox recalls 258 self-driving cars over unexpected braking

    Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous driving unit, has issued a voluntary recall for 258 vehicles due to issues with its autonomous driving system that could cause unexpected hard breaking. The recall follows a preliminary investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last May after the agency received two reports of incidents in which motorcyclists collided… Read more

  • Cape opens $99/month beta of its privacy-first mobile plan, inks Proton deal, raises $30M

    Mobile networks continue to be a major target for cybersecurity breaches, and Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon‘s persistent attacks on multiple carriers are only the latest known examples.  The mobile carrier startup Cape is taking a novel approach to addressing the problem: it has built a service it says can provide a more secure, private… Read more

  • Google now lets kids use Google Wallet for in-store payments in select countries

    Google announced on Wednesday that kids with Android phones can now tap to pay at stores using Google Wallet in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and Poland. Parents and guardians in these countries can now allow their children to access digital payments on their Android devices with supervision. Kids can also use Google… Read more