Author: TechBrunch
How many times does the letter “R” appear in the word “strawberry”? According to leading AI products like GPT-4o and Claude, the answer is 2 times. Massive language models can write an essay or solve an equation in seconds, synthesizing terabytes of data faster than a human can open a book. But these seemingly omnipotent AIs sometimes screw up spectacularly and turn their mistakes into viral memes, leaving us to rejoice with relief that we might still have time before we succumb to our new AI overlords. The inability of large-scale language models to understand the concepts of letters and…
The SEC raised the threshold for a fund to be considered a “qualified venture fund” from $10 million to $12 million. A qualified venture fund is a subset of venture funds that can raise capital from up to 250 accredited investors and is not required to register with the SEC as an investment company and is exempt from the financial burdens of being an investment company (though it must adhere to the core regulations as a VC fund). The only way a private fund does not have to register with the SEC as an investment company is if it has…
As tensions rise across the Middle East, the US military is running ads across Lebanon warning people not to attack the US or its allies, and some of these ads have appeared in an unlikely place: the dating app Tinder. Freelance journalist Seames Malekafzali posted a screenshot of an advert that appeared on the Tinder app to X, warning Lebanese residents not to “take up arms.” Written in Arabic, the ad stated that the US will “protect our partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies,” which operate across the region and are a reference…
Eric Li has had an impressive resume, beginning as an engineering intern at IBM and 20 years later co-founding LinkedIn and serving as its first CTO, before going on to start a number of companies, including his latest, KarmaCheck, which uses AI-driven technology to make background checks easier. Ly sat down with Becca and Dom at Found to talk about how they came to start KarmaCheck and how much technology has changed since they launched decades ago. For example, background checks were traditionally a manual process involving people filling out forms and bringing in physical records. Today, the process is…
As part of its efforts to beef up its security measures, Lyft on Tuesday announced a new passenger verification pilot program to allow drivers to verify the identity of passengers to ensure they are really who they say they are. Starting today, Lyft's new program is rolling out to nine markets: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, Phoenix and Seattle. The company didn't say when it would launch in other cities. A verification badge will now appear next to riders' profiles to indicate that Lyft has verified that they are using their real name. To verify that riders are…
Some see open source AI as a way out of the familiar quagmire of proprietary software that the technology inevitably finds itself mired in. Irene Solaiman of Hugging Face and Ali Farhadi of AI2 will discuss this complex issue during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place in San Francisco from October 28-30. AI may be a very new technology in some ways, but in other ways it's stuck in the past, with a few decades-old companies pulling the strings and upfront funding. But unlike a desktop OS or office suite, the resource requirements of AI models make open…
Back-to-school season is a time when expenses skyrocket. Or maybe you've recently graduated and are job hunting. Either way, it can be a tough time for your wallet. We have a limited time offer for you: get $200 off your student pass to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. This discount is valid until September 6th at 11:59pm PST, so don't miss out. More than 10,000 tech leaders will attend Disrupt 2024, taking place October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco. This is the perfect opportunity to make valuable connections and maximize your chances of landing your first job after college. Click…
Snapchat is officially launching native support for the iPad, the company announced in the app's latest release notes. Since Snapchat's launch in 2011, the social networking app has only been available on the iPad as an iPhone app with a large black border around it, rather than a native app for the iPad's larger screen. The new update brings support for iPad, 13 years after Snapchat was released on iOS. “Snapchat now offers native support for iPad,” the App Store release notes state simply, “which means Snapchat now appears full screen on your iPad, giving you a larger canvas when…
Security researchers have discovered that a group of hackers linked to the Chinese government have been targeting U.S. internet service providers using a previously unknown software vulnerability. Researchers at Black Lotus Labs, a division of cybersecurity firm Lumen, said the group known as Bolt Typhoon exploited a zero-day vulnerability (meaning the vulnerability went unnoticed until the software maker patched it) in Versa Director software developed by Versa Networks. Versa sells software that manages network configurations and is used by internet service providers (ISPs) and managed service providers (MSPs), making it a “highly valued and attractive target” for hackers, the researchers…
Elon Musk's X has already declared that it aims to compete with LinkedIn in job listings and PayPal in payments, and now the company wants to take on the likes of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams in video conferencing tools. One of X's employees, Chris Parkposted last week that the company had held its first internal meeting using the tool, and Park claims that initial feedback from the team has been good, and the company will likely work on improving the ability to pin speakers and notifications showing who's joining or leaving. X owner Elon Musk responded to the…