BMW feels the heat, stops charging for warming cheeks
When BMW started charging an $18 per month subscription for heated seats in 2022, the backlash was swift and brutal. Customers banded together, urging others not to encourage this type of behavior from automakers, lest it open the door to more perceived avariciousness. “You’ve already paid for it!” cried one
Read moreRelativity Space leases historic test stand from NASA to boost Terran R development
Relativity Space is amping up its investment at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, with the company announcing today that it would lease a historic first-stage test stand to advance the development of the Terran R launch vehicle. Per the new agreement, Relativity will lease the A-2 Test Stand from NASA for
Read moreCruise nears approval to mass-produce robotaxis with no steering wheel, pedals
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said Thursday at an investor conference that the company is “just days away” from getting the green light to begin mass production of its purpose-built autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told TechCrunch that no decision to
Read moreArtists sign open letter saying generative AI is good, actually
Artists are among the many groups who will feel the effects of AI over the next few years, but it’s not doom and gloom for everyone. A group of artists have organized an open letter to Congress, arguing that generative AI isn’t so bad and, more importantly, the creative community
Read moreApple fixes zero-day bugs used to plant Pegasus spyware
Apple released security updates on Thursday that patch two zero-day exploits — meaning hacking techniques that were unknown at the time Apple found out about them — used against a member of a civil society organization in Washington D.C., according to the researchers who found the vulnerabilities. Citizen Lab, an
Read moreFTX exec Ryan Salame pleads guilty to criminal charges
One more exec has pleaded guilty. | Illustration: The Verge Ryan Salame, who ran FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary, pleaded guilty to two criminal charges on Thursday. They are conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transferring business. “I made
Read moreFCC finally gets its 5th Commissioner in Anna Gomez
The FCC is whole again with the Senate’s confirmation of Anna Gomez as the agency’s 5th Commissioner, empowering it to take more and faster action regarding all matters regulatory in communication and, increasingly, space. Gomez was nominated to the seat in June after a year and half of Republican resistance
Read moreGenerative AI Mindset
Figure 1. Large language models seem to have infinite knowledge. How should we work with them? Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash.I learned three critical lessons using large language models (LLMs) during the summer of the generative AI hype. These lessons should be valuable for years to come.1. “Prompting” means
Read moreThreads expands search to ‘most’ English and Spanish-speaking countries, including U.S.
A week after Instagram Threads announced it had begun testing a search feature in Australia and New Zealand, the feature is today expanding to “most” English and Spanish-speaking countries,, according to a post on Threads by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The expansion will impact countries where people post in English and
Read moreStartup Battlefield 200: Fintech and Hardware edition at TC Disrupt 2003
If fintech, robotics and hardware are your thang, then get ready to get busy on the exhibition floor at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 — it’s less than two weeks away! That’s where you’ll find the Startup Battlefield 200, our hand-picked cohort of standout startups. They span many industries, and today we’re
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