Author: TechBrunch
Cindy Taff was standing on flat ground in Starr County, Texas, when she felt an earthquake in early 2022. “The ground was literally vibrating,” she told TechCrunch. “That was an 'aha moment' for me.” Her startup, Sage Geosystems, has been testing equipment it uses to extract heat from deep underground. The team has pumped water into wells and is now releasing it. The result is a gush of hot, clean water that could replace natural gas as a reliable source of power around the world, rather than oil. People have long been harnessing heat from deep within the earth, and…
If your target market has 22 official languages and its people speak over 19,000 dialects, does it make sense to offer a text-only AI chatbot that works best in some languages? That's the problem Indian AI startup Sarvam has been trying to solve, and on Tuesday it unveiled a suite of products including a voice-enabled AI bot that supports more than 10 Indian languages, as it believes people in India would prefer to talk to an AI model in their own language rather than chatting over text. The company also unveiled a compact language model, an AI tool for lawyers,…
After weeks of beta testing, Opera is rolling out a stable release of its redesigned Opera One browser for iOS. The new browser features a bottom search bar for easier browsing, instant search suggestions as you type, and an integrated Aria AI assistant. A placed search bar will be the default option, but users can switch to the standard navigation or fast action button style. Additionally, users can swipe down at any time to reveal the search bar, just like Spotlight search on iOS. When you type a query into a search engine, you are usually presented with autocomplete options.…
In Puerto Rico, tax breaks enacted in 2012 were meant to encourage mainland U.S. residents to do business and live on the island, boosting the economy by exempting them from capital gains taxes. But recent data suggests that the tech (mostly cryptocurrency) entrepreneurs who arrived in droves to save their fortunes didn't do much to improve the island's fortunes. If anything, some left behind a mountain of unfinished business, reports a new New York Times article. The article focuses on Brock Pierce, the 43-year-old former child actor who created the now-struggling digital currency Tether and whose local business deals (including…
Elon Musk and Donald Trump's joint X Spaces event appeared to crash on Monday afternoon. The conversation between the X owner and the former president was scheduled for 5pm PST, but users who attended at that time received an error message. When I tried to join the space, X showed me the message “This space is not available.”The highly anticipated conversation, which had been pushed by President Trump and Musk, was meant to mark the former US president's return to X. The Spaces event, which Musk called “the conversation,” began at 5:42 PM PST. The live event was scheduled to…
Score, a dating app for people with good to excellent credit scores, shut down in early August, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. As TechCrunch previously reported, Score was only meant to be available as a pop-up app for 90 days. This was back in February. But interest from users was so strong that parent company Neon Money Club decided to keep it available for six months. In that time, it's gained about 18,000 users, generated 8,000 matches, and gained a lot of insight into the current dating scene, the company told TechCrunch. “Score was started to make people aware of…
Tally, a nine-year-old fintech company that helped consumers manage and pay off their credit card debt, has closed down, according to the company. In a LinkedIn post shared early Monday, founder and CEO Jason Brown said the “sad and difficult” decision to close Tully was not the outcome the company “wanted,” and that it “considered all options” and “was unable to secure the capital necessary to continue operations.” Tully was last valued at $855 million, according to PitchBook, and had 183 employees. Tally's business model was initially designed to help people manage credit cards and pay off high-interest debt by…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing cryptocurrency startup NovaTech, alleging that it fraudulently raised more than $650 million from over 200,000 investors in the Haitian-American community. The SEC has accused Novatec, founded in 2019 by husband and wife duo Cynthia and Eddie Petion, of operating as a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme that lured investors with promises of lucrative cryptocurrency and foreign exchange market investments. In reality, Novatec only used a small portion of investor funds for trading, while the majority was used to pay existing investors and provide commission to promoters, according to the SEC. The SEC…
FBI seizure notice for Radar/Dispossessor ransomware and extortion ring. Image courtesy of FBI The FBI announced on Monday that it had seized the servers of a ransomware and extortion ring called Radar (aka Dispossessor). At the time of writing, Radar's website still had a message from law enforcement stating, “This website has been seized.” This marks a rare victory for the FBI, which has been fighting alongside law enforcement agencies around the world to contain and curb the growing threat of ransomware. Federal investigators have seized the group's domains and servers in the United Kingdom and Germany, according to a…
We're halfway through 2024, but this year has already seen some of the largest and most damaging data breaches in recent history. And just when you thought these hacks couldn't get any worse, they do. From untold amounts of personal customer information being scraped, stolen and posted online to the mass theft of medical data for most people in the United States, the worst data breaches to date in 2024 have already seen at least a billion records stolen and counting. These breaches not only impact the individuals whose data has been irretrievably compromised, but they also embolden criminals who…