Author: TechBrunch
Amazon is losing money on its Echo smart speakers. This has been an open secret ever since Alexa was born. It's the product of the kind of money-losing strategy that only a company the size of Amazon could sustain for a decade. Of course, selling hardware at a loss can be an effective strategy: think about printers and razors, which are footholds for companies and allow them to make up their losses on ink cartridges and blades, respectively. From a saturation perspective, Amazon's strategy has been successful: Earlier this year, founder Jeff Bezos claimed that Alexa is now in 100…
Turkey appears to have restored access to the Meta-owned Instagram app after blocking it on August 2. The country's Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Abdulkadir Ularoglu, Posts It announced that the ban will be lifted at 9:30pm Turkish time today. Cybersecurity Monitor NetBlocks say”Live metrics show that Instagram is gradually being restored on internet providers in #Turkey after authorities and Meta negotiated the removal of terrorist content and the reinstatement of unjustly closed accounts.” The ban came after Turkish officials accused Instagram of censoring condolence posts related to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Uraloglu wrote today that the…
Elon Musk doesn't want Tesla to just be a car company — he wants it to be an AI company, the company that figures out how to make cars drive themselves. Critical to this mission is Dojo, Tesla's custom-built supercomputer designed to train Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) neural network. FSD is not actually full self-driving; it can perform some self-driving tasks but still requires an attentive human behind the wheel. But with more data, more computing power, and more training, Tesla believes it can cross the boundary from near self-driving to fully self-driving. This is where Dojo comes in. Musk…
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…