Author: TechBrunch

The federal agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is warning thousands of applicants whose private addresses were exposed in the second data breach in recent years. In an email to affected trademark applicants this week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said that between August 23, 2023 and April 19, 2024, their private address (home (which may include addresses) have been entered into public records. To prevent fraudulent trademark applications, U.S. trademark law requires applicants to include their personal address when filing documents with authorities. The USPTO said that although the address did not come up in a…

According to court documents obtained by TechCrunch, as part of an investigation into people involved in Catalonia's independence movement, Spanish police obtained information from encryption services Wire and Proton to help authorities identify activists using false names. It was said to be useful. Earlier this year, the Spanish police Guardia Civil, through Swiss police, sent legal requests to Swiss-based companies Wire and Proton. Guardia Civil requested identifying information related to both companies' accounts on their respective platforms. Wire responded by providing the email address (Protonmail address) used to register the Wire account. According to the document, Proton responded by providing…

Match Group, which owns multiple dating apps including Tinder and Hinge, released its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, showing that Tinder's paid user base has declined for the sixth straight quarter. Meanwhile, Hinge is seeing more members willing to pay for the app. His Tinder had 10 million paid users in the first quarter of 2024, which is a 9% decrease from the previous year. Meanwhile, Hinge now has 1.4 million paying users, an increase of 31% year over year. Tinder's decline was foreseeable due to changes in dating app culture that have occurred in recent years. Younger users are…

Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup aiming to change social media in a more positive direction, has launched a personal reflection journal focused on wellness, including support for families who want to stay in touch even when physically separated. and is expanding. The startup's name reflects its core gratitude journal service, but in some ways it's reminiscent of Path, which was founded a few years ago. Path briefly emerged as a challenger to Facebook by creating a space where small groups of people could interact with each other. The app differentiated itself by limiting users…

In major markets such as the United States, the total amount of venture companies is decreasing year by year, and there are concerns that venture companies themselves may be struggling to raise further funds, and founders may be feeling anxious. . After all, if private market investment does not pick up in the coming quarters, total startup investment in 2024 may trend further down. Some startups are working to combat the economic slowdown, including this week Intently, which is rolling out a new service called Founder AI. The premise of this service is simple. Look through your personal data, understand…

Google has found a way to give iPhone users a variation of the clever “Circle to Search” gesture. New interactions launched in January allow Android users to search by circling, highlighting, doodle, or tapping from anywhere on their device, giving them the power to search Google from any screen. It will be easily available. Of course, similar options weren't available to iPhone users because Google doesn't control the iOS operating system like he does with Android. To get around this problem, Google is currently using Apple's Action Button on iPhone 15 Pro devices, allowing a quick way to visually search…

Autonomous AI-based players come to a gaming experience near you. And a new startup, Altera, is joining the fight to build this new guard of AI agents. The company said Wednesday it has raised $9 million in an oversubscribed seed round co-led by First Spark Ventures (Eric Schmidt's deep tech fund) and Patron (a seed stage fund co-founded by Riot Games alumni). Announced. This funding follows Altera's pre-seed $2 million raise from Andreessen Horowitz and others in January. Altera now hopes to use the new capital to hire more scientists, engineers and team members to help develop and grow its…

Good news, cryptocurrency founders! Venture capital activity is increasing in this space, recovering from a multi-year low in investment in late 2023. To put it another way, venture capitalists appear to be more bullish on Web3 than they were a while ago. But that wasn't the only news item we had to dig into on stocks this morning. Akamai is spending $450 million to acquire her API security company Noname, a deal that TechCrunch previously reported would be worth about $500 million. Still, $450 million is a lot of money, and considering No Name was worth more than $1 billion…

Google Deepmind has launched a new version of AlphaFold, an innovative machine learning model that predicts the shape and behavior of proteins. AlphaFold 3 is not only more accurate, but also predicts interactions with other biomolecules, making it a much more versatile research tool. And the company is making a limited version of this model available online for free. Since the first AlphaFold debuted in 2018, this model has remained the leading method for predicting protein structure from the sequence of the amino acids that make up the protein. This sounds like a rather narrow challenge, but understanding at the…

Good news, crypto founders! Venture capital activity is picking up in the space, recovering from multi-year lows that fell in late 2023. In other words, the VC crowd seems more bullish on Web3 than they were in the recent past. But that's not the only news we're digging into in Equity this morning: Akamai is acquiring API security company Noname for $450 million. TechCrunch previously reported that the deal would be worth around $500 million. Still, $450 million is a lot of money, and considering Noname was valued at over $1 billion in 2021, the deal is worth considering. Speaking…