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Every smartphone in LA accidentally received a wildfire evacuation alert
As wildfires rage for the third consecutive day through parts of Los Angeles, now including the Hollywood Hills, several neighborhoods have been forced to evacuate for safety purposes. But on Thursday afternoon, a wildfire evacuation alert was mistakenly sent to the smartphone of every resident in Los Angeles County, a region with more than 9…
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This security system shoots paintballs at intruders
Doorbell cameras are standard fare these days. More and more people have invested in connected security systemss, as the technology has become both cheaper and more user friendly. There’s one important thing these system won’t do, however: shoot people and animals with paintballs. That is, however, pretty much the Eve PaintCam’s whole M.O. Carrying the…
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Tesla launches new-look Model Y in China
Tesla has revealed a new-look Model Y meant for the Chinese and other Asian-Pacific markets, marking the first major update to the SUV since its launch in 2020. The redesign comes as Tesla finished 2024 having delivered fewer vehicles than it did in 2023. It was the first year-over-year drop since the company started selling…
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Hippocratic AI raises $141M for creating patient-facing AI agents
Hippocratic AI, a startup building AI solutions that can handle non-diagnostic patient-facing tasks, secured a massive $141 million Series B at a valuation of $1.64 billion led by Kleiner Perkins, the company announced Thursday. The funding comes nine months after Hippocratic AI raised a $53 million round from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz and five…
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Nvidia’s AI avatar sat on my computer screen and weirded me out
Nvidia unveiled a prototype AI avatar at CES 2025 that lives on your PC’s desktop. The AI assistant, R2X, looks like a video game character, and it can help you navigate apps on your computer. The R2X avatar is rendered and animated using Nvidia’s AI models, and users can run the avatar on popular LLMs…
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ICON, a builder of 3D printed homes last valued around $2 billion, cuts about 25% of staff
ICON Technologies Inc., which builds homes using 3D printing, is laying off 114 people, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to TechCrunch, providing a statement that ICON had “recently made a difficult decision to re-align” its team and team size “to focus…
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Defense startup Epirus in talks to raise over $150M, potentially cutting valuation
The round could give the company a valuation of about $1 billion, a decrease from the company’s previous $1.35 billion valuation. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Apptronik’s Apollo humanoid robot gets to work at CES 2025
CES 2025 has been a mixed bag for humanoid robots. The form factor had a watershed moment, as images of the top players flanked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang during his Monday keynote. Of these, Agility’s Digit also showed up alongside a miniature conveyer belt at a closed access NVIDIA booth. It was a nice return…
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TikTok tells LA staff impacted by wildfires to use personal/sick hours if they can’t work from home
Wildfires are currently devastating the greater Los Angeles area, burning over 45 square miles, torching over 1,300 structures, and putting nearly 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday. And yet, TikTok’s LA-based employees are being told to either continue their work from home or use their personal/sick days if that’s not possible, while the…
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ChatGPT’s newest feature lets user assign it traits like ‘chatty’ and ‘Gen Z’
OpenAI is introducing a new way for users to customize their interactions with ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot. Some users on X on Thursday reported that ChatGPT’s existing custom instructions menu on the web has been revamped with new fields. Now, users can specify a preferred name or nickname, their profession, other things they’d like…