Author: TechBrunch

Sez Us, a social app founded by Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, is trying to build a platform without anger bait. Rage-Bait refers to posts intended to stop controversy. This could be a deliberately controversial political take, or a fully manufactured scenario designed to farm farming (for example, the satirical creator has earned 1.5 million views on Tiktok, who claims to file for divorce after her husband booed Taylor Swift). Most existing social networking apps incentivize Rage-Bait such as Instagram, X, Tiktok, YouTube, and more. These platforms have programs for creators. These programs pay based on the number of views you…

YouTube changes the way YouTube shorts views are counted, allowing creators to have a deeper understanding of how short form content works. The Shorts view counts how many times a creator's Short Start is played or replayed. In the past, views were counted after being considered short in a certain number of seconds. This change results in a higher progression in view counts. YouTube says it's making a change because it heard the creator wants to understand how often their shorts are actually seen. The idea is to help creators better showcase the full reach, inform content strategies and make…

Since Waze's Google Assistant was integrated with iOS in 2020, iPhone users have faced an ongoing problem that the company has struggled to solve “a year or more.” On Wednesday, the navigation app officially discontinued its functionality. Many users reported on Reddit that when they clicked the microphone button and spoke, they didn't respond, even though their assistant seemed to detect their voice. Alternatively, the company plans to introduce “Extended Voice Interaction Solutions” in the near future, as mentioned in a recent announcement on the official forum. Waze has been testing the AI-powered “conversation report” feature since October 2024, allowing…

Wednesday's Audio Startup Krisp said it will launch a new feature that uses AI to change user accents during calls. The company initially deployed support to change the Indian English accent to US English. According to the startup, the accent conversion process simply saves the speaker's voice and switches phonemes to match the American accent. This feature has been clearly tested in an enterprise environment, with a beta version appearing on the Krisp desktop app. Users can flip through features at any time on a call or before a call. The company's co-founder, Arto Minasyan, said the idea for the…

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Google said it fixed a vulnerability in the Chrome browser for Windows that a malicious hacker used to infiltrate the victim's computer. In a brief note on Tuesday, Google said it had fixed a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-2783. This was discovered earlier this month by researchers at security company Kaspersky. Google said it is aware of reports that bug exploitation is “existing in the wild.” The bug is called zero day because the vendor (in this case Google) was not given time to fix the bug before it was exploited. According to Kaspersky, the bug was exploited as part of…

More and more hackers are targeting regular people with the goal of breaking into their bank accounts, stealing their crypto, or simply stalking them. These types of attacks are still relatively rare, so there’s no need for alarm. But it’s important to know what you can do to protect yourself if you suspect someone accessed your email, social media account, chat apps, or any other major service and platform. A few years ago, I wrote a guide to help people protect themselves, and understand that most of the companies you have an account with already offer you tools to take…

Eggence Capital has closed its $1 billion seventh fund, which reported Tuesday This is the first salary increase for the company in almost four years. In May 2021, the San Mateo, California-based venture company rounded up nearly $1 billion in capital commitments across two funds. At the time, it closed its sixth early stage fund for $575 million. The company also raised the Opportunity Fund for the first time, closing it with a $375 million capital commitment. Established in 2003, the emergence historically focused on enterprise tech startups. Like many other ventures, the emergence appears to be all present in…

On Tuesday, Instagram announced a new school partnership program aimed at facilitating processing of moderated reports submitted from verified school accounts. The program is currently available to all middle and high schools in the United States, allowing schools to report posts or student accounts that may directly violate Instagram with the app guidelines. These reports will be automatically prioritized for reviews and the school will be warned about the actions taken. The company says the goal is to help educators report more directly on potential teen safety issues, including bullying. Participating schools feature a “school partner” banner in their profile,…

During Tuesday's live stream, Openai CEO Sam Altman announced his first major upgrade to ChatGpt's image generation capabilities in over a year. ChatGPT can now natively create and modify images and photos using the company's GPT-4O model. The GPT-4o has long supported AI-powered chatbot platforms, but up until now, models have been able to generate and edit text, not images. According to Altman, GPT-4o Native Image Generation today said Openai's AI video generation products ChatGpt and Sora are live for the company's $200 monthly Pro Plan subscribers. According to Openai, the feature is quickly rolling out to ChatGPT users and…