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Aurora takes feds to court over safety rules as it nears self-driving truck launch
Aurora Innovation is taking federal safety regulators to court in a case that could have far-reaching implications for self-driving truck companies operating in a regulatory environment designed around humans. The fight centers around the rather commonplace practice of placing physical warning triangles around semi trucks stopped along highways. The court denied Aurora’s request to be…
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DOJ confirms FBI operation that mass-deleted Chinese malware from thousands of US computers
The FBI says it was authorized to mass-remove “PlugX” malware from more than 4,000 compromised machines in the United States © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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EV startup Harbinger’s obsession with simplicity fuels $100M Series B
It’s not an easy time to raise money for an electric vehicle startup, especially given how many have failed or are close to failing. But Los Angeles-based Harbinger has pulled it off by taking a hyper-focused approach to electrifying commercial trucking. The reward is a $100 million Series B, co-led by early Tesla investor Capricorn…
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Decentralized Instagram alternative Pixelfed launches mobile apps
Pixelfed, a decentralized alternative to Instagram, has launched its official mobile apps. The service today runs on the same ActivityPub protocol that powers open source X alternative Mastodon, YouTube competitor PeerTube, and other decentralized social apps, now including Meta’s Threads and Flipboard (plus its newer app, Surf), that are part of a growing push toward…
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Massachusetts senator seeks to extend deadline for TikTok ban
Senatory Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is planning to introduce legislation to extend the TikTok ban deadline by 270 days. TikTok has warned of a looming shutdown in just five days, but the new legislation, officially called the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, would give TikTok more time to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, if approved by Congress. TikTok…
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OpenAI’s AI reasoning model ‘thinks’ in Chinese sometimes and no one really knows why
Shortly after OpenAI released o1, its first “reasoning” AI model, people began noting a curious phenomenon. The model would sometimes begin “thinking” in Chinese, Persian, or some other language — even when asked a question in English. Given a problem to sort out — e.g. “How many R’s are in the word ‘strawberry?’” — o1…
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Boardy AI raises $8M seed round months after closing pre-seed
Months after announcing a $3 million pre-seed, the AI networking startup Boardy is back with an $8 million seed announcement led by Creandum. The company connects users with other people when they call an AI agent who chats with them for a bit and then connects them with others it thinks they ought to know.…
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Kayak founder returns with Steppin, an app that locks you out of social media until you go for a walk
App stores are filled with different services that are designed to help you cut down on your screen time and count your steps. A new iOS app called Steppin combines these two ideas to help users do both at the same time to bridge the gap between physical and mental health. Steppin blocks your social…
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Thoras helps companies reach reliability without overspending on cloud costs
For years, twin sisters Nilo Rahmani and Jen Rahmani swapped stories — and commiserated — over the pain points they were facing in their respective engineering jobs. Nilo told TechCrunch that a frequent topic of conversation was about frustrations over the reliability platforms they were using at work. When they noticed the reliability landscape starting…
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AWS pledges to spend $5B in Mexico, launches new Mexico server region
In an announcement Tuesday, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division, said it plans to invest $5 billion in Mexico over the next 15 years as a part of a “long-term commitment” in the region. A portion of that investment is a new server region in Mexico launching today, AWS Mexico, that will allow…