Author: TechBrunch

With an explosion of weather and climate data that previous generations of tools can't process, is AI the future of prediction? Research certainly suggests that this is the case, and a newly funded startup called Brightband is taking on the challenge of turning machine learning predictive models into both a business and open source standard. Today's weather forecasting and climate monitoring technology is based on statistical and numerical models that are decades old. That doesn't mean they're bad or wrong, just that they're not particularly efficient. These physics-based models are the kind that take weeks to create on a supercomputer.…

The final report of the UN's High Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence makes for surreal reading at times. Titled “AI Governance for Humanity”, the document highlights the paradoxical challenges of anchoring any control over a technology that is developing rapidly, being heavily invested in and being heavily promoted. On the one hand, the report points out a “lack of global governance on AI,” which is quite correct. On the other hand, the UN advisory body has “considered hundreds of [AI] “Guides, frameworks and principles are being adopted by governments, companies, consortia, regional and international organizations.” The report adds another…

When it comes to climate change, there are no “excuses,” but there may be a cheaper alternative: direct air capture. The technology, more like a community service than a pardon, promises to suck vast amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, making up for more than a century of illegal burning of fossil fuels. A scientifically sound idea, but commercially not. Currently, it costs about $600 to $1,000 to capture a tonne of carbon dioxide, far more than anyone would consider commercially viable, which has led to countless startups racing to reduce costs and capture a tonne of carbon…

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark told the WSJ that he plans to donate $100 million to further strengthen U.S. cybersecurity in response to what he sees as growing threats from foreign governments. Half of the money will be focused on protecting the power grid and other infrastructure from cyberattacks, while the other half will be allocated to educating people about so-called cybersecurity hygiene. Newmark, 71, has donated or pledged more than $400 million since he began his philanthropic endeavors in 2015, and cybersecurity has long been at the top of his cause list. (He told Fortune magazine last year that threats…

Ashraf Hebera, head of startup banking at JPMorgan, may run startup finance these days, but he's once sat in the founder's chair. His experience in both worlds — as a founder and a decades-long career in finance, including 13 years at Silicon Valley Bank — has shaped his insights today. Hebera appeared on the Equity Podcast to discuss the recent Startup Insights report, specifically taking a closer look at data that illuminates the latest early-stage investment trends, emerging sectors, and startup hubs outside of the Bay Area (Austin and Miami being two of those.) Taken as a whole, Hebera explained,…

Bluesky, a social networking startup that is building a decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), provided an update on Wednesday about how it is addressing various reliability and safety concerns on its platform. The company is in various stages of developing and piloting various initiatives focused on addressing bad actors, harassment, spam, fake accounts, video safety, and more. To combat malicious users and those harassing others, Bluesky says it is developing new tools that can detect if multiple new accounts are created and controlled by the same person, potentially reducing the number of different personas bad actors can create to…

Fal.ai, a platform focused on developing AI-generated audio, video, and imagery, today revealed that it has raised $23 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Black Forest Labs co-founder Robin Rombach, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. This is a two-round deal: $14 million of Fal's total funding came from a Series A tranche led by Kindred Ventures. The remaining $9 million came from a previously unannounced seed round led by a16z. Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven co-founded Fal (short for “Features and labels”) in 2021. Gur previously worked as a software developer at Amazon, while Yurtseven, a former…

Just days after telling owners they would have to pay for labor costs for recall repairs, bankrupt EV startup Fisker reversed course: The company edited a FAQ page on its website to say, “Fisker will provide any necessary parts (including labor) at no charge.” Fisker initially delivered the bad news to thousands of Ocean SUV owners in a FAQ published Sunday night, saying that three of the five recalls (sudden power loss, false warning lights and reduced regenerative braking) could be fixed with a free over-the-air software update. But two other recalls require parts and labor costs: some Oceans have…

With the release of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a new level. It's always been easy to add widgets to your home screen, rearrange pages, apply your own wallpaper, and most recently customize your lock screen. Meanwhile, power users have been downloading apps that let them customize icons using iOS Shortcuts, or creating their own icons using icon designer tools or images they find on Pinterest, Google, etc. However, with iOS 18, changing all your icons to the new color scheme is now a built-in tool. Icons and widgets no longer have to be placed next to…

LinkedIn may have trained AI models with user data without updating its terms of service. LinkedIn users in the U.S. (but not the EU, EEA or Switzerland, presumably due to data privacy regulations in those regions) have an opt-out toggle switch in their settings that reveals that LinkedIn scrapes their personal data to train “content creation AI models.” The toggle switch is not new; however, as first reported by 404 Media, LinkedIn did not initially update its privacy policy to reflect the data's use. The terms of service have now been updated, but typically they are updated before any big…