Author: TechBrunch

PayPal today announced that it is launching “Tap to Pay” in the U.S. for merchants with iPhones through the Venmo and Zettle apps. PayPal, which owns both Venmo and Zettle, said the feature allows businesses to accept contactless card and digital wallet payments directly on the iPhone without any additional cost or hardware. This release comes eight months after PayPal introduced this feature for merchants using his Android smartphone. With Tap to Pay, you can not only accept payments from cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, but also add taxes, take tips, and write receipts without…

People worry that advances in AI will lead to job losses, but company CEOs rarely admit publicly that AI can help reduce headcount. His plagiarism detection company Turnitin, which CEO Chris Caren warned last year that his AI would allow the company to reduce its headcount by 20% within 18 months, announced today that Confirmed large-scale personnel reductions. TechCrunch has learned that Turnitin laid off about 15 people earlier this year as part of a broader organizational shakeup. While this is far from the 20% reduction that Caren expected (Turnitin has more than 900 employees, according to LinkedIn and Pitchbook…

This week, Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Google, Amazon and a who’s who of VCs and angel investors, released a family of models — Claude 3 — that it claims bests OpenAI’s GPT-4 on a range of benchmarks. There’s no reason to doubt Anthropic’s claims. But we at TechCrunch would argue that the results Anthropic cites — results from highly technical and academic benchmarks — are a poor corollary to the average user’s experience. That’s why we designed our own test — a list of questions on subjects that the average person might ask about, ranging from politics to…

Anonymous social apps are being evaluated. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System Chancellor Peter Hance announced plans to block popular anonymous social apps such as Yik Yak, Fizz, Whisper and Sidechat from being used on campus. The ban would affect 16 universities, including UNC-Chapel Hill, NCSU and UNC Charlotte, as well as one public boarding high school that makes up the UNC system. In a letter to the UNC Board of Governors, Hans explained the reason for the ban, saying that these small, hyperlocal platforms “show a reckless disregard for the well-being of young people and…

Cybersecurity budgets are under strain due to economic uncertainty. More than a third of chief information security officers (CISOs) have either kept their security spending the same or slightly reduced it in 2023, according to a 2023 survey conducted by IANS and recruitment firm Artico Search. Another report from PwC found that one in five organizations will see their cybersecurity budgets stagnate or even shrink this year. So what's a CISO to do? Well, ask Garrett Hamilton to give Reach Security a thought. Reach is the brainchild of Hamilton, a startup he co-founded with Colt Blackmore in 2021. Although it…

Instagram has quietly added a secret emoji game that you can access in your DMs. The goal of the game is simple. Use your finger to move the paddle at the bottom of the screen to keep the emoji floating and bouncing continuously. If you delete the emoji, the game is over. This game reminds me of classic games like Breakout and Pong that came pre-installed on cell phones back in the day. To access a hidden game, simply open a DM chat, send an emoji, and click on it. You will then be taken to a yellow screen with…

The Digital Markets Act (DMA), an ex ante European Union reform of digital competition rules, will be in force today, by midnight Brussels’ time, on six tech giants — applying a new set of legal requirements on more than 20 of their “core platform services” (CPS). Online empires that scaled in an era of minimal interventions from regulators, shaping the commercial web as we know it, are now facing a prescriptive set of rules on how they can operate and do business in the EU, including hard limits on their use of data; interoperability mandates; and bans on self-preferencing. The…

Before proceeding, I have the following questions: What makes a computer an AI computer? Is it simply the ability to perform AI-powered tasks? How can I run LLM locally? Is it something deeper? Is a computer capable of performing any form of artificial intelligence/machine learning essentially an AI computer? At first glance it's a simple question. But in reality, we will probably never get a satisfactory answer. Still, it's important to prepare for the year when everything is “AI.” If you were playing along at home, you probably weren't too surprised when Apple humbly hailed its new M3 MacBook Air…

Adobe today announced that it is releasing the latest version of its Adobe Express app in beta, making it easier for users to create and publish social content on mobile. With this update, Adobe brings his Firefly AI model directly into the app, allowing users to quickly create and edit social content using generative AI tools. The latest version of the app will allow Adobe to further compete with Canva, which introduced a suite of AI tools last year. Adobe Express users now have access to a new “Text to Image” generator to quickly create new looks for their projects…

Build what people want. It's a simple concept, and one that Y Combinator likes to repeat, but it can be difficult to get right when building a startup. The degree to which a technology product or service resonates with potential customers is often referred to as “product market fit” (PMF). The higher the product-market fit, the easier it is to sell a startup's product, and the less often customers will typically defect. Therefore, PMF is an important topic for startups, even if it is difficult to define precisely. One definition that always resonates with your humble servant is that product-market…