What’s behind ballooning video game budgets?
Why does it cost some companies hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a popular video game? A couple weeks ago, The New York Times blamed the never-ending quest to deliver more photo-realistic graphics— and it suggested the industry is beginning to see diminishing returns, leading to layoffs and studio
Read moreEverything you missed at CES 2025
Welcome back to Week in Review. I missed you! This week, we’re diving into all the gadgets and announcements out of this year’s CES, Meta’s decision to roll back its fact-checking program, TikTok’s response to employees affected by the California wildfires, and more! Let’s do this. CES 2025 came and
Read moreI got soaked driving the Arc Sport electric boat
I did not go to CES 2025 with the goal of getting drenched by Lake Mead’s chilly January waters. But when I discovered Los Angeles-based boat startup Arc had brought its new sport boat to Las Vegas, I figured it was worth the risk. It was. The Arc Sport was
Read moreMatt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project. While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September
Read moreConsulting Podcast
A friend just sent me an audio file of a podcast about my consulting that he created by asking an AI to crawl my web site. The podcast is a remarkably natural-sounding conversation between two synthetic hosts. The only clues that the audio is automatically generated are a couple of
Read moreNvidia’s AI empire: A look at its top startup investments
Over the last two years, Nvidia has used its ballooning fortunes to invest in over 80 AI startups. Here are the giant semiconductor's largest investments. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreSnappy aquires swag-gifting startup Covver as it seks to roll-up players
It’s now broadly accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts end up appreciating the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay. The market for this has thus exploded. One market player, the New York-based Snappy, which has raised over $125 million to date, is now
Read moreMicrosoft accuses group of developing tool to abuse its AI service in new lawsuit
Microsoft has taken legal action against a group the company claims intentionally developed and used tools to bypass the safety guardrails of its cloud AI products. According to a complaint filed by the company in December in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a group of
Read moreMark Zuckerberg defends Meta’s latest pivot in three-hour Joe Rogan interview
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to scale back Meta’s content moderation policies in a Friday appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Zuckerberg faced widespread criticism for the decision, including from employees inside his own company. “Probably depends on who you ask,” said Zuckerberg when asked how Meta’s updates have
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