Author: TechBrunch
IndieBio's Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th group of biotech startups. We specifically focused on a few companies that were making serious claims that bordered on the ridiculous, with the potential for big profits. Biotechnology has begun to influence adjacent industries in recent years, showing how companies rely on outdated processes and even organisms to get things done. So while it may come as no surprise that the latest batch includes a microbiome company, you might be surprised to hear that it's a copper ore microbiome. I spoke with Wes Dang, chief scientific officer at IndieBio, about…
YouTube TV has announced that its “Multi-View” feature, which lets you watch four streams simultaneously, is now available on Android smartphones and tablets. The Android release comes two months after YouTube TV rolled out the feature to iPhone and iPad. First introduced in March 2023, the feature is aimed at sports viewers who want to follow multiple live matches at once without having to change channels frequently. If you want to start multi-view streams on your Android smartphone or tablet, you'll need to make sure you've updated the YouTube TV app to the latest version. From there, you should see…
Two college students discovered a security flaw earlier this year that could allow anyone to avoid paying for laundry, which is served on more than 1 million internet-connected washing machines in homes and university campuses around the world. and reported it. Months later, the vulnerability remains unresolved after the vendor, CSC ServiceWorks, repeatedly ignored requests to fix the flaw. University of California, Santa Cruz students Alexander Sherbrooke and Yakov Taranenko told TechCrunch that the vulnerability they discovered allows anyone to remotely send commands to CSC-operated washing machines and get free laundry. He said he would be able to manipulate the…
OpenAI's Superalignment team is responsible for developing ways to manage and operate “super-intelligent” AI systems, and is committed to providing 20% of the company's computing resources, according to team officials. It is said that there is But requests for some of that compute were often denied, hampering the team's work. The issue, among others, led to the resignation of several team members this week, including co-leader Jan Reich. He is a former DeepMind researcher who worked on ChatGPT, GPT-4, and ChatGPT's predecessor, InstructGPT, during the OpenAI era. Reich announced the reasons for his resignation Friday morning. “I disagreed with OpenAI's…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the excitement is palpable. But what if we told you that you don't just have a chance to attend one of the most anticipated tech gatherings of the year, you have a chance to take center stage for your brand with your own event? Yes, that's right. You will have the opportunity to host a side event at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Why host a side event? Imagine this. You take command of your own event and have access to over 10,000 of the brightest people in tech, all eager to participate,…
Carbon credits (and their trading) are big business, but their solutions can be unnecessarily complex. Goodcarbon has just raised 5.25 million euros (approximately $5.5 million) in funding to shake up that market. Let's take a look at the deck the company used to bring home that bag of cash. We are looking for more unique proposal decks. Here's how to participate: Read all 90+ suggestion deck breakdowns here. This deck slide Goodcarbon has 18 slides and includes a lot of repetition. More than half of a company's pitch deck is a problem and solution section. Astute observers will have noticed…
How the Salesforce-owned chat platform is furthering its AI vision, following ongoing concerns about how big tech companies are repurposing personal and corporate data to train their AI services. , sparking a storm of anger among Slack users. The company, like many other companies, is using its own user data to train some of its new AI services. But it turns out that if you don't want Slack to use your data, you have to opt out by emailing the company. And the terms and conditions were hidden in an outdated and confusing privacy policy that no one paid attention…
A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefits plans has disclosed a data breach that affected approximately 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security numbers stolen. In a data breach notification issued earlier this month, WebTPA said that the company detected “evidence of suspicious activity” on December 28, 2023, and that the company was “taking steps to mitigate the threat and further secure our network.” '' He said he had started an investigation. The company said its investigation concluded that the fraudster “may have obtained personal information between April 18 and April 23, 2023,” approximately eight…
Microsoft will not face antitrust scrutiny in the UK over its recent investment in French AI startup Mistral AI, but the country's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Friday that the partnership was The company concluded that the company is not subject to an investigation based on the merger provisions. Enterprises Act 2002”. The decision follows the CMA's review of Amazon and Microsoft's various AI investments and partnerships, including the Redmond-based company's $16 million investment in Mistral AI, an OpenAI rival that develops large-scale language models. It comes three weeks after revealing three early-stage investigations. Shortly after, Microsoft hired…
A few years ago, whenever I went to a fintech meetup, the conversation always ended around embedded finance. In 2020, we even wrote that embedded finance could represent the future of fintech. This distribution strategy allows fintech companies to integrate their services with other products and services, allowing users to access new features without having to sign up for new services. This has proven to be a particularly attractive approach for fintech companies, as it provides them with a new product tier to offer to large banks and financial service providers. Ember, a British startup working on embedded tax services,…