Author: TechBrunch
Popular online tabletop and role-playing game platform Roll20 announced on Wednesday that it had suffered a data breach that exposed personal information of some of its users. In a post on its official website, Roll20 said it detected that a “malicious actor” had accessed an account on its administrative website for an hour on June 29, after which the company “blocked all unauthorized access and terminated the network breach.” “A malicious actor made changes to one user account that we immediately reverted. During this time, the malicious actor was able to access and view all user accounts,” the company wrote.…
Sidney Scott has decided to quit the venture capital rat race and is now jokingly auctioning off his best pieces, with prices starting at $500,000. Driving Forces' sole general partner announced on LinkedIn this week that he was closing the $5 million fintech and deep tech VC fund he launched in 2020, calling the past four years “eventful.” But the healthy performance of his first small fund wasn't enough: He told TechCrunch he recognized that increased competition for what are essentially a handful of hard tech and deep tech deals would be a challenge for a small fund like his.…
If you've ever moved your hand during a video call and seen thumbs-up bubbles or confetti fly up on your screen, you're not alone. Many people consider this a strange feature for Zoom or WhatsApp, but it's an Apple feature built into iOS and Mac. However, you can turn off the reactions feature to prevent these effects from appearing on your screen during work calls. How to turn off video call responsiveness on Mac While you're in a video call on your Mac, click the video menu in the menu bar. This is the green camera icon at the top…
Hey everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. In AI news this week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned “Chevron deference,” a 40-year-old ruling on federal agency power that required courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of Congressional statutes. The Chevron deference allowed agencies to make their own rules if Congress had left parts of the statute vague. Now courts will be asked to make their own legal decisions, with potentially far-reaching implications. Scott Rosenberg of Axios writes that because agencies can no longer apply basic rules to new enforcement situations, Congress (an institution that is barely functional today) must…
Aiming to put the “social” back into “social media,” a new app called “noplace” moved out of invite-only mode and rocketed to the top of the App Store on Wednesday. Designed for the younger generation or anyone looking to connect with friends and shared interests, noplace is like a modern-day MySpace, with colorful, customizable profiles where you can share everything from your relationship status to what you're listening to, watching, reading, and doing. A harbinger of potential in the often-fractious consumer social market, noplace was already generating buzz before its public launch due to its ability to let users express…
It's easier than ever to create deepfakes of someone else's voice or face, but at least YouTube is making some small changes that make it easier to report videos that use your likeness without your consent. Previously, you could only report these impersonations as misleading, but now you can submit a deepfake removal request to YouTube through our privacy request process. This change shows that YouTube considers deepfakes as a privacy issue, not a content moderation issue. And it is a privacy issue. The more AI tools we have at our disposal, the more opportunities there are for those tools…
Publicly traded cloud services provider Cloudflare has released a new free tool to prevent bots from scraping data from websites hosted on its platform to train AI models. Some AI vendors, including Google, OpenAI, and Apple, allow website owners to block bots used for data scraping and model training by modifying their site's robots.txt, a text file that tells bots which pages they can visit on a website. But as Cloudflare points out in a post announcing its bot-fighting tools, not all AI scrapers respect this. “Customers don't want AI bots visiting their websites, especially not bots that are engaging…
Hackers claimed last week to have stolen 33 million phone numbers from US messaging giant Twilio. On Tuesday, Twilio confirmed to TechCrunch that “threat actors” had also managed to identify phone numbers belonging to users of Authy, a popular two-factor authentication app owned by Twilio. In a post on a popular hacking forum, the hackers known as ShinyHunters wrote that they had hacked Twilio to obtain the mobile phone numbers of 33 million users. “We detected that an unauthenticated endpoint enabled threat actors to identify data associated with Authy accounts, including phone numbers. We have taken steps to secure this…
Are you planning to attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with your team? Bring your team and maximize your team-building time and your company's impact throughout the conference. Groups of 4-9 people receive 15% off passes, and groups of 10 or more receive 30% off. Here are some of the great content you and your team can enjoy: What you need to raise a Series A today: Top tips and strategies for securing your next funding round. How to Find and Maintain Product-Market Fit: Learn the secrets to identifying and maintaining the right product-market fit. Family offices want exposure for their startups,…
As more music streaming apps and creation tools emerge, vying for users' attention, social music sharing app Popster is introducing two new features to expand its user base: an AI image generator for cover art and a collaboration feature that lets artists remix other users' songs. Popster, which was first released last year as a song-making tool and music video platform, allows artists to connect with other musicians, create original songs and music videos, and share them on social media. Users can record video and audio directly within the app, and add stickers and colored backgrounds. The app also offers…