Author: TechBrunch

If decisions made by a company's board can indicate where the company wants to focus its efforts, Amazon's board has made an interesting move. The company announced Thursday that Andrew Ng, known for developing AI at major technology companies, will join its board of directors. The company also announced that Judy McGrath, a longtime TV executive known for running MTV and helping build Viacom into a media powerhouse, will resign from its board. Taken together, these two moves create an interesting picture of the tech giant's intentions. After years of working hard to build an entertainment empire (Amazon spent about…

Apple on Wednesday sent a threat notification to iPhone users in 92 countries, warning them they may be the target of a spyware attack by mercenaries. The company sent an alert to individuals in 92 countries at 12pm Pacific Time on Wednesday. The iPhone maker sends these notifications multiple times a year, and has notified users in more than 150 countries since 2021, it wrote on an updated support page. Apple previously described the attacker as “state-sponsored,” but replaced all such references with “mercenary spyware attack.” “Mercenary spyware attacks are extremely well-funded and evolve over time,” the company wrote on…

A major digital market regulation in the European Union appears to be shaking up competition in the mobile browser market. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been in force for just over a month, but there are early signs that the law is having an impact by requiring mobile phone manufacturers to show users a browser selection screen. there is. On Wednesday, Reuters reported on growth data shared by Cyprus-based web browser Aloha and others, suggesting the new law will stir up competitiveness and allow smaller browser makers to gain market share, or at least receive more attention than before.…

Google's Cloud Next 2024 event runs through Thursday in Las Vegas. That means a lot of new cloud-focused news from Google's AI-powered chatbot, Gemini, on everything from AI to his DevOps and security. Last year's event was the first in-person Cloud Next since 2019, and Google took to the stage to share its continuation in AI, including Duet AI for Gmail and many other debuts, as well as the expansion of generative AI into its security product line. demonstrated their efforts. From other enterprise updates and debuts. Don't have time to see the full archive of Google's keynote event? That's…

The tech-wide reckoning that began in 2022 and ran throughout into 2023 has continued into this year. And while 2024’s losses are not at that scale, they’re still significant, driven by big names like Pixar, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and TikTok. It remains to be seen if this year’s layoff trends follow last year’s, in which layoffs slowed down in the summer, before cuts began ramping up yet again toward the winter. Momentum for a tech sector rebound remains slow to build, outside of bright spots within artificial intelligence and adjacent companies, resulting in tech companies continuing to cut back on their…

YouTube's comments section has historically had a bad reputation, but changes introduced could prevent kids from getting into the comment pool. In an email to parents who manage their children's accounts, the company announced that it is introducing a “read-only” comment option to children's supervised experiences on YouTube. YouTube says the feature will be rolled out in the “coming weeks.” The change is one of the biggest tweaks to YouTube's parental control features since stronger protections for minors were introduced in 2021 following increased pressure from lawmakers. Image credit: YouTube This new addition applies to two of the three content…

Checker, a 10-year-old startup that provides background checks for employees, was valued at $5 billion as of April 2022, but has lost 382 employees as companies hire significantly less. I was fired. TechCrunch has exclusively learned that Checkr implemented layoffs across all departments and at various levels on Tuesday. The San Francisco-based startup confirmed the layoffs in an email. “In response to economic conditions impacting corporate employment, we have made the difficult and difficult decision to reduce the size of our team. to ensure the long-term health of their businesses,” a Checkr spokesperson said in a statement. The layoffs, which…

Brazilian startup Salvy, an enterprise mobile carrier, is the only Latin American-based company included in Y Combinator's latest batch, the accelerator confirmed to TechCrunch. This is a significant decrease compared to cohorts that took advantage of the accelerator during COVID-19, which were remote, but is also similar for more recent classes. Y Combinator's winter 2022 batch included 33 Latin American companies, followed by 16 in summer 2022 and 10 in winter 2023. One caveat to the Winter 2024 tough group data points is that the directory is not exhaustive. Some companies prefer to remain in stealth mode. But that also…

Is it possible that AI will take away the jobs of developers who are busy building AI models? The short answer is no, but the long answer is still undecided. This week's news that Google has created a new AI-powered coding tool for developers comes as big tech companies build the best service to help programmers write more code, faster. This means that competitive pressures continue to intensify. Microsoft's GitHub Copilot service, which has a similar outline, is also steadily moving towards enterprise adoption. Ultimately, the companies hope to build developer assistance technology that can understand a company's codebase and…

Google Photos is getting an AI upgrade. The tech giant announced Wednesday that several enhanced editing features (including the AI-powered Magic Editor) that were previously limited to Pixel devices and paid members will now be available for free to all Google Photos users. . The extension also includes Google's Magic Eraser, which removes unwanted items from your photos. Photo Unblur uses machine learning to sharpen blurry photos. Portrait light, etc. that allows you to change the light source of a photo after the fact. Editing tools have long been a selling point for Google's high-end Pixel smartphones, as well as…