Author: TechBrunch
The European Union has sent preliminary instructions on how Apple expects iPhone manufacturers to comply with the interoperability clauses of the Floc's Digital Markets Act (DMA). According to the committee, device manufacturers and app developers should have access to nine iOS connectivity features previously restricted to Apple's exclusive use, including peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connectivity, NFC features, and device pairing. As a result, Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches, connected TVs or other non-apple devices should work better on your iPhone. Google can use this opportunity to get Airdrop to work on Android devices. Headphone makers can support SharePlay. This is a feature that only…
AI Startup Hug Face has released a new app for iOS. This is to use only one. We'll explain it from the iPhone camera perspective, using offline, local AI. An app called HuggingSnap embraces Face's internal vision model, Smolvlm2, to analyze what your phone is seeing in real time without sending data to the cloud. When you point to the camera and ask questions or request an explanation, HuggingsNap will identify the object, explain the scene, read the text, and generally try to understand what you are seeing. Image credit: hugging your face The concept is certainly not novel. Many…
Former NSA Deputy Director George Burns is making his first venture capitalist investment for his new job at VC Incubation Studio Red Cell Partner. This is a $3 million seed deal for an open source cybersecurity startup called Hunted Labs. Burns began his entire 35-year career at Spy Agency as an engineer, travelling from flexible challenges to war zones in places like London, he said. He worked as assistant director from 2017 to 2023. Meanwhile, “The NSA was actually positioned to permeate our enemies,” he told TechCrunch. The ability to hack “really prepare you to become a better defender” said…
Mortgage rates began to rise in 2022 after hitting record lows at the start of the pandemic, and it hasn't been a big deal since. With the 30-year mortgage rates above 6.5% today (2.49% in 2020!), buying a home is not achievable for many people. One Denver-based startup can help change that. Founded in 2022, Multiply Mortgage originally gave high-tech employees access to some of the value of their stock compensation while their employers are still private. Interestingly, however, founders Michael White and Gautam Gupta observed that most employees of Square, Opendor, Durdasch and Uber alumni – use liquidity provision…
Mobile networks remain the main target of cybersecurity violations, and the persistent attacks on multiple carriers of Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon are just the latest known examples. Mobile carrier startup capes are taking new approaches to addressing problems. It built a service that says it can provide a safer, private alternative because it doesn't collect any data about you at all. Today, Cape announces some major developments in its efforts. The Washington, D.C.-based company was founded by former head of the National Security Business of Palantia, who previously worked for the US Army Special Forces, but is releasing an…
Google announced Wednesday that children on Android phones can tap and pay in stores using Google wallets in the US, UK, Australia, Spain and Poland. Parents and parents of these countries now have access to digital payments on Android devices with supervision for their children. Kids can also use Google Wallet to access supported passes such as event tickets, library cards, gift cards, and more. Google points out that payment cards can only be added with parental consent and that they can receive emails every time a child makes a transaction. Additionally, parents can use Family Link, Google's Parental Control…
TechCrunch Sessions: AI is coming closer to us. You have the power to decide who wants to lead a dynamic breakout session. On June 5th, he scraped the speaker application to six incredible finalists to take the stage at Zellerabach Hall in Berkeley, California. Who wants to share their wisdom with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts? The choice is in your hands now. You can vote for viewers' choices until 11:59pm on March 21st. However, you can only select one speaker, so please count the number of votes! Don't forget to lock your tickets now, save up to $210 and…
Booking an ad campaign with social media influencers is not at all easy now. First of all, influencer's approaches to marketing are unconventional and there is no standard way to engage them. Meanwhile, marketing agencies that employ many people to book and track brand campaigns are limited by the number of influencers they can be involved at any time. Simply put, the Creator Marketing Ecosystem is suppressed in many ways by the old world advertising/marketing agency model. If AI chatbots can do all the heavy lifting, wouldn't it be easy to interact with influencers through a platform that can scale…
Governments in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel and Singapore are likely customers of Israeli spyware manufacturer Paragon Solutions, according to a new technical report from the well-known Digital Security Lab. On Wednesday, Citizen Lab, a group of academics and security researchers who were housed at the University of Toronto, has been investigating the spyware industry for over a decade, released a report on surveillance startups set up in Israel, identifying six governments as “suspected paragon deployment.” At the end of January, WhatsApp notified about 90 users that it believed the company was targeting Paragon Spyware, prompting a scandal in Italy,…
Prezent is a starzent that allows customers to build slide decks using generated AI, raising $20 million to further develop and refine AI models for a variety of use cases and expand into new markets. AI has a wide variety of applications. One of these is generating decks for business presentations. Ready-made models tend to be less good at this as they don't understand industry-specific languages and terminology. That's where Prezent's technology comes into play. Based in Los Altos, a subsidiary in Bengaluru, Prezent was founded in 2021 by Rajat Mishra. Rajat Mishra previously worked for companies such as Cisco…