Author: TechBrunch

When AI companion startup Friend revealed last week that it had spent $1.8 million to buy the www.friend.com domain name, it sparked a debate about exactly how much branding is worth and how startups should spend the money. Founders of other companies, like Loom and Public, also came forward to talk about their own efforts to secure the domain, but the questions kept coming: Did Friend spend too much on the domain? Is it really working? Avi Schiffmann, founder and CEO of Friend, told TechCrunch in an email that the acquisition has already paid for itself. There may be a…

From internet protocols and operating systems to databases and cloud services, some technologies are so ubiquitous that most people don't even know they exist. The same can be said about OpenStreetMap, a community-driven platform that provides geographic data and maps to businesses and software developers, allowing them to be a little less reliant on monopolistic incumbents in the field (yes, mostly Google). OpenStreetMap is the creation of Steve Coast (pictured above), a University College London “dropout” (Coast's own words) who has since worked in a variety of mapping and location roles at Microsoft, TomTom, Telenav and, as of today, the…

Laundry giant CSC Serviceworks recently disclosed a cyberattack dating back to 2023, saying the personal information of tens of thousands of people was stolen from its systems. The New York-based laundry giant has delivered more than 1 million internet-connected laundry machines to homes, hotels and college campuses across North America and Europe. CSC employs more than 3,200 team members, according to its website. In a data breach notice filed late Friday, CSC confirmed that the breach affected at least 35,340 individuals, including more than 100 in Maine. News of the data breach is the latest security issue to plague CSC…

On Wednesday morning, thousands of cybersecurity professionals packed the halls of Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Convention Center, home to the annual Black Hat cybersecurity conference, where dozens of companies were promoting their wares. In the front row, and at one of the biggest booths, stood CrowdStrike, a company that's become pretty well-known these days — but not for its ability to thwart malicious hackers. On July 19, CrowdStrike pushed a flawed software update that crashed at least 8.5 million computers worldwide, causing flight delays, disrupting hospital operations including some surgeries, disrupting the operations of multiple U.S. government agencies, and forcing…

Tragedy has struck another prominent Silicon Valley family: Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has died at the age of 56, according to social media posts from her husband Dennis Troper and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of Susan Wojcicki. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children passed away today after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer,” Troper posted on Facebook early Friday night. “Susan was not only my best friend and life partner, she was a brilliant mind, a loving mother and a dear…

A purported student in Singapore has published documents revealing weak security in Mobile Guardian, a popular school mobile device management service that was targeted by a cyber attack a few weeks ago that wiped masses of student devices and caused widespread disruption. In an email to TechCrunch, the student, who declined to be named for fear of legal retaliation, said he reported the bug to the Singapore government in late May by email but was unsure whether it had been fixed. While the Singapore government told TechCrunch the bug was fixed before the Mobile Guardian cyberattack on August 4, the…

Anysphere, the two-year-old startup that built the AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, has raised more than $60 million in Series A funding, bringing its post-money valuation to $400 million, two sources familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison also participating. Anysphere, a16z and Collison did not respond to requests for comment. Thrive declined to comment. The company was co-founded by Michael Truell, Suare Asif, Arvid Runemark, and Aman Sanger while at MIT. Truell and Sanger later participated in Neo Scholars, a prestigious mentorship program for…

The internet is full of deepfakes, most of which are nude. According to a report by Home Security Heroes, deepfake porn makes up 98% of all deepfake videos online. Thanks to easy-to-use and freely available generative AI tools, the number of deepfakes online, many of which are non-consensual, has skyrocketed 550% from 2019 to 2023. Laws against non-consensual deepfakes have been slow to emerge, at least in the United States, but a new tool in Google Search is making it a little easier to remove them. Google recently introduced changes to search to combat deepfake pornography, including tweaks to its…

New research has found that malicious hackers could take control of Ecovacs vacuum cleaners and lawnmower robots, using the devices' cameras and microphones to spy on their owners. Security researchers Dennis Giese and Braelyn will be presenting their work on Ecovacs robots in detail at the Defcon hacking conference on Saturday. After analyzing several Ecovacs products, the researchers found several issues that could be exploited to hack the robots via Bluetooth and secretly turn on their microphones and cameras remotely. “Their security was really, really, really, really bad,” Giese told TechCrunch in an interview before the talk. The researchers said…

There's been a lot of talk on Threads about a “mass exodus” from X. Anecdotally, at least, new users and other online friends are flocking from Elon Musk's X to Meta's Threads, some deactivating their X accounts in the process. But while this chatter and various hashtag trends like “Xodus” and “TwitterExodus” have filled users' timelines, revealing a mass migration of users from X to Threads over the past week, app store and website traffic data has yet to reflect any major shifts between the two platforms. Threads, Meta's Twitter-esque, less politically charged version of the social network, has been…