Author: TechBrunch
There are several shady industries for people who want to monitor or spy on their family members, with app makers selling software, also known as stalkerware, to jealous partners that can remotely access the victim's phone. However, despite how sensitive this data is, a growing number of businesses are losing huge amounts of it. Including the latest hack of mSpy, at least 20 stalkerware companies have been hacked or have had their customers or victims' data leaked online since 2017, according to a TechCrunch tally. That's not a typo: 20 stalkerware companies have been hacked or suffered significant data leaks…
Community colleges are not immune to the current challenges facing higher education. Student enrollment is declining, while institutions continue to raise tuition fees, leading to students failing to complete their programs. Clearly, it's time for the industry to try something new. Tade Oyelinde thinks startups can help. Oyelinde is founder and CEO of Campus, a venture-backed, fully accredited online community college. Campus pays its professors higher salaries than other universities, but students pay less for tuition and get laptops and mentoring. Oyelinde said the system allows him to keep costs low for students while attracting top professors, and many students…
Anthropic on Tuesday launched the Claude Android app to bring its AI chatbot to more users, the company's latest effort to convince users to ditch ChatGPT by making Claude available in more places. The Claude Android app works the same as the iOS version released in May and includes free access to Anthropic's best AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, as well as upgrade plans with Anthropic's Pro and Team subscriptions. Users can sync their conversations with Claude across devices and upload photos and files to the app for real-time image analysis. The Claude Android app also includes real-time language translation,…
Trouble is looming for OpenAI, after a group of whistleblowers accused the company of requiring employees to sign illegally restrictive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Lawyers representing these whistleblowers sent a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler arguing that OpenAI's contracts with current and former employees may illegally prevent them from reporting adverse conduct to government agencies. The letter states that OpenAI is requiring employees, former employees and investors to seek prior consent before disclosing any information to the federal government, effectively discouraging anyone from speaking up except for a group of anonymous whistleblowers. The allegations are ominous given that several well-known,…
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, venture capitalist David Sachs took the stage to warn Republicans that “the world is on fire.” The Craft Ventures founder focused primarily on foreign policy during his six-minute speech, a topic he often discusses on the All In podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. And predictably, as is typical at political conventions, his speech was full of hyperbolic rhetoric placing blame on the state of the country and the world, and on the other party and its president, Joe Biden. For example, Sachs…
A new report says Apple's approach to leveraging the third-party developer community's ideas for new iOS and Mac features and apps could come at a significant cost. You can download the iOS 18 public beta now to see Apple's changes firsthand ahead of its fall release. The changes could affect apps that currently bring in an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded about 58 million times in the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference every June, the iPhone maker previews upcoming releases of its software and operating…
WhatsApp has announced the launch of a filter called “Favourites,” which allows you to quickly find chats with the people or groups that matter most to you and connect with them via call directly from the top of the Calls tab. The 'Favourites' filter will be available starting Tuesday and to all WhatsApp users in the coming weeks, allowing you to keep all your chats with your close friends or family groups in one place for quick access. The instant messaging app has also added a 'Favourites' section in the calls tab, allowing you to quickly dial your favourite contacts…
As the AI race heats up, Perplexity has persevered thanks to its focus on using technology strictly as a tool for people to “learn anything, their own way.” But how will the company stand up to tech giants, AI rivals, and the growing debate over AI and intellectual property? CEO and co-founder Aravind Srinivas explains at Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco. Perplexity is one of a handful of top AI providers vying to succeed search engines, but questions abound, including the suitability of language models for this purpose, the cost and complexity of building and running them, and, more recently,…
Current secondary ticket exchange systems are fraught with a variety of issues, including tickets being resold at prices far above face value, exorbitant fees and other additional costs, not to mention the risk of purchasing counterfeit or invalid tickets, resulting in a frustrating user experience. CrowdVolt aims to revolutionize the space with a user-centric bid-and-sell ticket marketplace that aims to provide buyers with affordable ticket prices with full transparency. A graduate of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, CrowdVolt operates on a model similar to sneaker resale marketplace StockX, where buyers bid on tickets and sellers set their asking price. If…
Echo Chunk, developer of the Wordle-style daily chess puzzle game Echo Chess, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding from a16z Speedrun (Andreessen Horowitz's early-stage games accelerator), Zynga founder Mark Pincus, South Park Commons (SPC), Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu, and Roblox head of generative AI Stef Corazza. Echo Chunk founder and CEO Sami Ramley told TechCrunch that the main reason for the investment was to enable the community to create more puzzles using AI, and while the company is focused on Echo Chess for now, it plans to release more titles in the future. Josh Lu, a partner…