Author: TechBrunch

Google Chat is rolling out instant audio conferencing similar to Slack's Huddles, allowing you to instantly switch to an audio or video call from within a chat. However, Google has not given the feature a new name and will also refer to it as “Huddles.” If you use Google Chat, click the dropdown menu next to the call icon,[ハドルを開始する]You can start your huddle right away by selecting your options. Image credit: Google Calls default to audio calls, but similar to Google Meet, users can turn on video and share their screen. This feature, first announced by Google last year as…

According to the Financial Times, Chinese investment firm Hongshan, which spun off from Sequoia Capital in 2023, is facing both “shrinking options” in China and a limited number of partners who have grown frustrated with Hongshan's slowness. As a result, it is actively expanding into Europe and North Asia. It leveraged $9 billion in capital commitments secured two years ago. (As the FT points out, LPs typically have to pay management fees on capital even if the capital is not used.) The nearly 20-year-old Hong Kong-based company is taking a bigger bite out of existing Chinese portfolio companies such as…

India bucked global trends with this year's initial public offerings, establishing itself as a rare bright spot for tech listings as other major markets continue to face headwinds. The world's most populous country is now preparing for an even bigger wave of startup IPOs in 2025. More than 20 startups are preparing to go public next year, according to people familiar with the plans. These include B2B marketplaces Inframarket and Zetwerk, farm-to-production venture CaptainFresh, professional services marketplace UrbanCompany, jewelry retailer Bluestone, security company OneAssist, and offline-to-online retailer Magicpin. It will be. Quick commerce startup Zepto, managed workspace provider Table Space,…

Introducing a new “inference” AI model, QwQ-32B-Preview. It is one of the few comparable to OpenAI's o1, and the first to be made available for download under a permissive license. Developed by Alibaba's Qwen team, QwQ-32B-Preview contains 32.5 billion parameters, can consider prompts up to 32,000 words in length, and in certain benchmarks is better than the two inferences released by OpenAI. It performs better than the models o1-preview and o1-mini. so far. Parameters roughly correspond to the model's problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than models with fewer parameters. According to Alibaba's tests, QwQ-32B-Preview outperforms…

Spotify will no longer allow developers who build third-party apps using its Web API to access some features within its music streaming platform, such as song and artist recommendations, the company said in a developer statement on Wednesday. Announced in a blog post. The company appears to be restricting third-party developers from using data from Spotify listeners to build AI apps. “We are making changes to our public API as part of our ongoing efforts to address the security challenges that many companies currently face,” a Spotify spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch. . This change is intended to…

According to the Wall Street Journal, European investigators say the Chinese merchant ship intentionally dragged its anchor around to cut two critical data cables. The Chinese ship had just left Russia carrying Russian fertilizer while passing through the Baltic Sea. Investigators say they believe the attack may have been orchestrated by Russian intelligence and that the Chinese government was not involved. The Kremlin denied these claims. The investigation is in a precarious situation. NATO countries cannot legally request Chinese ships to enter their ports, so Swedish and German officials are negotiating with the shipowners to gain access to the ship…

U.S. mobile giant T-Mobile said Wednesday that hackers were “unable to access” customers' calls, texts and voicemails during an ongoing industry-wide cyberattack targeting internet and phone companies. Jeff Simon, T-Mobile's chief security officer, said in a statement that the company has detected “attempts to infiltrate our systems” in recent weeks, with sources connected to T-Mobile's network. He said it was another telecommunications company. The company's name was not mentioned. “We immediately disconnected the provider's network because we believe that the provider's network has been and may be compromised,” Simon said. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a Chinese-backed…

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced Wednesday that Threads is rolling out a redesign to keep feeds on the home screen. The redesign now allows you to quickly swipe between different feeds, just like in X. The change is rolling out on Android on Wednesday and is expected to launch on iOS in the coming days. “You can now swipe to follow and easily swipe between custom feeds,” Mosseri said in the announcement. “This may seem like a small change, but it should make navigating the app much easier.” The latest features build on updates Threads has rolled out over the…

Google Labs, the experimental arm of the tech giant, has introduced a new online project that offers an interesting variation on the game of chess. The web experiment is called GenChess, and as the name suggests, it uses Gemini Imagen 3, Google's image generation model, which allows players to customize their own chess pieces using text prompts. To try the game, users must sign in with their Gmail account. Once logged in, you can select the Generate button and enter the theme you want for your chess set, such as something inspired by sushi or pizza. GenChess offers two styles:…

Hello everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to have this sent to your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Thanksgiving is almost here, and you know what that means. This means stuffing your face until you're in a coma. Well, that and having to entertain all those obnoxious relatives you've managed to keep at bay for the rest of the year. For those of us lucky (unlucky?) who have been given the task of deciding on this year's feast, there isn't much time left to decide on the menu. Deciding what to prepare is always a…