Google’s Gemini comes to more apps, Cruise slashes its workforce and Tesla issues a recall
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering the major happenings in the tech-o-sphere — or most of them, anyway. As the world’s largest AI conference, NeurIPS, got underway in sunny New Orleans, Google shared more on Gemini, its flagship AI model family — and lots
Read moreDemocracies are fragile, and hardware is hard
Sometimes it's important to state the obvious. That democracies are fragile but that technology can help. And also that crowdfunding isn't always the best way to launch an innovative product. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreGoogle moves to end geofence warrants, a surveillance problem it largely created
Google will soon allow users to store their location data on their devices rather than on Google’s servers, effectively ending a long-running surveillance practice that allowed police and law enforcement to tap Google’s vast banks of location data to identify potential criminals. The use of so-called “geofence warrants” have exploded
Read moreRobotics Q&A with UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg
For the next few weeks, TechCrunch’s robotics newsletter Actuator will be running Q&As with some of the top minds in robotics. Subscribe here for future updates. Part 1: CMU’s Matthew Johnson-Roberson Part 2: Toyota Research Institute’s Max Bajracharya and Russ Tedrake Part 3: Meta’s Dhruv Batra Part 4: Boston Dynamics’
Read moreDeal Dive: Training the workforce for the clean energy transition
Montamo hires and trains people to work in the clean energy transition with an emphasis on helping migrants build a new career. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreStartups and physicians must unite to empower women’s health
Women's health, as it has existed for the past 200 years, is dead. One hammer for all of our problems will no longer suffice. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreRobotics Q&A with Nvidia’s Deepu Talla
A version of this q&a first appeared in TechCrunch’s free robotics newsletter, Actuator. Subscribe here. We’re wrapping up our end-of-year robotics Q&A series with this entry from Deepu Talla. We when I paid a visit to NVIDIA’s Bay Area headquarters, back in October. For more than a decade, Talla has
Read moreAI plushie Grok, voiced by Grimes, was trademarked before Elon Musk’s Grok
Grimes is stepping into the toy business with “Grok,” a character that she voiced for Curio’s new line of screen-free AI plushies. The toy is not affiliated with the AI chatbot backed by Grimes’ ex, Elon Musk, which is also named Grok. Musk described xAI’s Grok as having a “rebellious streak”
Read moreApple fixed the iPhone’s Flipper Zero problem
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Apple has blocked a Bluetooth attack carried out with the Flipper Zero that sent a barrage of pop-ups to iPhones, causing them to lock up and crash. While Apple hasn’t formally announced the change, it appears the company has rolled out a fix
Read moreWhat is the point of a public key fingerprint?
Public key cryptography uses two keys: a private key and a public key. The nature of these keys depends on the encryption scheme, such as whether one is using RSA, ECC, or some other method, but you can think of a key as a long number. A key may be
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