Author: TechBrunch

CES 2025 is in full swing. While the conference features announcements from tech giants like Nvidia, Samsung, and Toyota, there are also some very strange product concepts and announcements making the rounds on the show floor. We've rounded up the weirdest, silliest, and most eyebrow-raising products from CES 2025. A robot cat that cools down your coffee Image credit: Yukai Engineering Yukai Engineering's new adorable gadget is “Nékojita FuFu,” a tiny cat robot that can attach to mugs and bowls and blow air at human-like intervals to cool coffee or soup. According to the company, the product was created in…

How to cancel and delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts since Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would be shutting down its third-party fact-checking system, relaxing and rolling back its content moderation policies Google searches for are increasing explosively in the United States. Previous limits on the amount of political content in user feeds. Experts see the move as an attempt to pander to the incoming Trump administration and avoid political retaliation. The impact of Meta's new policies could have a profound impact on the types of posts, hateful and violent language, and misinformation that could spread even…

Watch Duty, an app that tracks wildfires with live maps and alerts, was the No. 1 free app on Apple's App Store as of Wednesday morning. As devastating fires continue to rage across Southern California, the fire tracking app has surpassed the ChatGPT app to take the number one spot. ChatGPT had held the No. 1 spot in the US since August 9, according to app intelligence provider Appfigures. Watch Duty has been available since 2021 and is used by firefighters and first responders across the western United States. Fire tracking apps are spreading rapidly amid wildfires. Image credit: Maxwell…

Education technology giant PowerSchool warned customers that hackers had accessed highly sensitive information, including customers' Social Security numbers, grades and medical information, during a recent data breach, TechCrunch has learned. I found out. In an FAQ obtained by TechCrunch and sent to affected customers this week, PowerSchool said “sensitive personal information” was accessed during the December breach, which PowerSchool confirmed on Wednesday. It is. The company previously announced that hackers used stolen credentials to break into PowerSchool's internal customer support portal. The breach affects users of PowerSchool's school information system, which schools use to manage student records, grades, attendance, and…

Google is testing a new “Daily Listen” feature that automatically generates podcasts based on your Discover feed. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that Daily Listen is a personalized, AI-powered audio experience designed to keep you updated on the topics you care about. The feature is currently rolling out in the Google app on Android and iOS, and will be available to users in the US who opt-in to the company's Search Labs experiment. With Daily Listen, you can get up to 5-minute podcast episodes that provide summaries of stories and topics that interest you. The podcast also includes links to…

Finnish startup Doublepoint announced WowMouse, a free app for Apple Watch, this week at CES 2025. This app uses your wearable's sensors, compass, and accelerometer to turn your hand into a mouse, allowing you to control your device through hand gestures. Apple Watch already uses similar technology for its Double Tap feature when it released in 2023. Apple Watch detects small wrist movements when you tap your thumb and index finger together and records them as clicks on your device. Mac Control Image Credit: Maxwell Zeff Doublepoint also does this, but takes it a step further, although they make more…

Video editing app Captions is looking to capitalize on uncertainty about the future of TikTok and ByteDance's video editing app CapCut in the US by switching to a freemium model. The app is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz and has previously been a pay-only app. However, the company is moving towards becoming more competitive in the video editing market by competing more directly with the likes of CapCut, InShot, and Invideo. The free tier includes basic video editing tools with features like a teleprompter for adding subtitles, recording, narration, and more. The company puts all of…

A startup hoping to provide a reliable alternative to Amazon has raised funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ), which provides technology to retailers that allows them to customize and test different delivery and checkout flows, has been awarded a unique contract. That's $25 million in Series A to expand the business. New York-based PDQ already has about 200 customers since its founding in 2020, and says it currently processes about 30 million orders each month. This translates to $4 billion in total merchandise volume to date, and the company expects to process 300 million…

When it comes to data, perhaps no other sector has as much data, divided into so many separate silos, as the healthcare industry. Hundreds of millions of patient records are stored in various electronic health records (EHRs) managed by vendors such as Epic, Cerner, and Athena. Insurers maintain extensive data sets regarding coverage, reimbursement rates, and patient demographics. Pharmacies and laboratories provide additional data points on drug usage and diagnostic results. Over the past decade or so, multiple companies have attempted to unify all patient data across health systems and practices, but in recent years San Francisco-based Innovaccer has taken…

French startup Rounded believes that AI voice agents will become the default way for customers to interact with businesses, and rather than building an out-of-the-box AI voice agent, it has created an orchestration platform that allows businesses to build their own voice agents. We are building a ration platform. Rounded began developing its Web3 product and then shifted its focus to exploring AI voice agents in June 2023. “The idea was that after transcription, it would be worthwhile to just put ChatGPT in front of the synthesizer,” says the co-founder. Aymeric Vaudelin (pictured above, first from left) told TechCrunch. However,…