Author: TechBrunch
This story has been updated throughout with updated details as the story unfolds. We will continue to do so as litigation and disputes are ongoing. There is a lot of controversy going on in the world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites. The central issue is a dispute between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. WordPress technology is open source, free, and powers a huge portion of the internet (approximately 40% of websites). Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a…
The fields of synthetic biology and precision fermentation are hotbeds of entrepreneurial activity today. But it's not every day that you come across a start-up company that uses genetic engineering to produce natural rubber. Natural rubber is a material that is difficult to reproduce in the laboratory due to its long polymers. Paris-based baCta has initiated and is running a proof of concept to produce natural rubber in vitro using engineered bacteria (E. coli). The company claims its method, which relies on renewable raw materials (currently using glucose but aiming to diversify into acetate and carbon), is carbon neutral. The…
The Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization that digitizes and archives web pages and other materials, was attacked on Wednesday. Several users, including The Verge, faced the following pop-up when visiting the site: It just happened. Meet 31 million people at HIBP!” Data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) later acknowledged the breach and announced that 31 unique email addresses and usernames had been stolen. So does Brewster Carre, a self-proclaimed digital librarian who founded the Internet Archive in 1996. Indeed, after related distributed denial-of-service attacks against the service (one hacktivist group claimed responsibility for, but not the other),…
Health and life insurance providers face rising claims due to chronic disease and aging, but their processes lack scalability. AI automation can help, but it requires more coordination than other types of insurance. For example, automation in property and casualty insurance led to the creation of the publicly traded company Guidewire decades ago, but health insurance is a tougher field. “You can't automate it in a simple way like if your car's windshield breaks,” Paris-based entrepreneur Tariq Dadi told TechCrunch. His startup, Qantev, wants to solve this problem. The company provides software that helps clients such as AXA and Generali…
It's been a great week for thoughtful co-founder Casey Mackrell. First, he got married. After that, he went viral. At a wedding reception, Mackrell needed to quickly give a colleague access to a code that could only be unblocked from his own laptop. His co-founder, Torrey Leonard, captured the moment by snapping a photo of Mackrell putting together a pull request, staring at a computer in a ballroom where friends and family danced in a backdrop filled with flower arrangements and fairy lights. I caught it. Leonard posted a photo of his co-founder on LinkedIn with a respectful caption. Images…
Star Health and Allied Insurance, one of India's largest health insurance companies, has been arrested nearly two weeks after cybercriminals claimed to have posted customers' health records and other sensitive data online. The company admitted that it had been the target of a “malicious cyber attack.” The Chennai-headquartered insurance giant told TechCrunch in a statement on Wednesday that the cyberattack resulted in “unauthorized and illegal access to certain data,” but that its operations were not affected and its services remain unchanged. He said it continued. “A thorough and rigorous forensic investigation led by independent cybersecurity experts is underway, and we…
While X continues to alienate advertisers, recently suing groups over boycotts of the platform, the company has changed its creator pay policies to be less dependent on advertising. Previously, creators were paid a portion of the ad revenue they earned from ads that appeared in their replies. Now, X says it will instead pay creators directly based on engagement with their content from X's premium users. This change means creators will instead benefit from posts that drive engagement. This is a move that could change the type of content that becomes popular on X. Often, once a platform starts rewarding…
About two months ago, Brandon Tseng, co-founder of Shield AI, and one of his employees were in an Uber in Kiev, Ukraine. They were on their way to a meeting with military officials to sell AI pilot systems and drones, when suddenly an employee flashed a warning on his cell phone. Russian bombs were flying. Tseng shrugged off the possibility of death. “When it’s time to go, it’s your time to go,” he said. Instead, Tseng, a former Navy SEAL, wanted more action. Shield AI employees previously traveled to more dangerous regions of Ukraine to train troops using the company's…
Jeffrey Hinton was awarded the Nobel Prize this week for his fundamental research in artificial neural networks, which has earned him the nickname “Godfather of AI.” In his Tuesday speech, Professor Hinton praised a student who rebelled against OpenAI's CEO, alluding to former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Satskeva. “I was especially fortunate that I had a lot of very smart students who were much smarter than me and really made things work,” Hinton said. “They've continued to do great things. I'm especially proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman.” Hinton is, of course, referring to…
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. Synthetic data took center stage in AI this week. Last Thursday, OpenAI introduced Canvas, a new way to interact with ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot platform. Canvas opens a window with a workspace for creating and coding your project. Users can generate text or code in Canvas and optionally use ChatGPT to highlight sections for editing. From a user's perspective, Canvas greatly improves quality of life. But what's most interesting about this feature for us are the tweaked…