Author: TechBrunch
Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms have an environmental cost, as wind turbines can wreak havoc on bird populations. Meet Spoor, a startup that uses AI to help wind farms reduce risk. Spoor is software that uses machine learning to detect birds on videos, while also recording their movements and predicting their flight patterns. Ask Helseth, co-founder and CEO of Spoor, told TechCrunch that government regulations in some countries limit the impact wind farms have on birds, especially in areas with endangered species. He…
The key to competing with legacy players in the financial technology industry may be to expand into areas they have never gone before. That's what Chicago-based Aeropay is doing. The provider of enterprise banking payment solutions started by helping cannabis retailers and gaming companies with payments, and now it's moving into the Visa and Mastercard space by innovating its payment network. Co-founder and CEO Dan Muller has a background as head of product for companies that built digital solutions for brands and retailers. At the time, mobile was coming online, and he ended up building native mobile apps for brands…
Spencer Gore is battery powered. But, at least for now, he doesn't want his batteries to be installed in electric cars. “There are a lot of interesting down-market segments in automotive that are underserved today that you can get into faster than, say, traction batteries in EVs,” he told TechCrunch. Consider a conventional 12 volt lead acid battery. It's now under the hood of every fossil fuel vehicle on the road. Although it was surpassed in production capacity by lithium-ion only a few years ago, it remains a huge market. “So we're still relying on 150-year-old technology,” Gore said. By…
Private equity giant Thoma Bravo has announced that its security information and event management (SIEM) company Logrhythm will merge with rival cybersecurity firm Exabeam, which is backed by Cisco, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others. SIEM is a business that uses real-time data collected from servers, network devices, and applications to flag anomalous activity and stop potential security threats before they spread. Integration within spaces is rampant. News of the LogRhythm and Exabeam merger comes on the same day that Palo Alto Networks confirmed it would acquire the assets of IBM's SIEM business QRadar, which IBM itself acquired in 2011. This…
A long-running Senate task force has released policy recommendations on federal funding for AI. That's $32 billion a year, covering everything from infrastructure to grand challenges to national security risk assessments. Although this “roadmap” is not a bill or detailed policy proposal, it nevertheless gives a sense of the scale that legislators and “stakeholders” are always looking at as they grapple with the actual content. However, that is unlikely to happen in an election year. Small enough to disappear. In a final report released by the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a bipartisan task force identified the most important…
TL;DR: Rumble Inc. (RUM) is a prime candidate for a short squeeze due to high short interest and potential catalysts, including rumors of acquiring TikTok. Positive market trends, retail investor interest, and strong financial performance could drive the stock price up, forcing short sellers to cover their positions. The stock market has seen its fair share of excitement, particularly with the phenomenon of short squeezes. A short squeeze occurs when a heavily shorted stock’s price rises sharply, forcing short sellers to cover their positions by buying the stock, which in turn drives the price even higher. Rumble Inc. (RUM), a…
The FBI, along with an international coalition of law enforcement agencies, seized the notorious cybercrime forum BreachForums on Wednesday. BreachForums has long been a popular English forum for hackers and cybercriminals who want to advertise, sell, and trade stolen data. Just recently, an attacker advertised that Dell customers' personal information and data had been stolen from Europol's portal. BreachForums has proven to be resilient. Last year, authorities seized an earlier version of the site three months after arresting its administrator, Connor Brian Fitzpatrick, also known as Pom Pom Purin. The FBI said someone using the online handle “Baphomet” then took…
Back in February, Google suspended its AI-powered chatbot Gemini's ability to generate images of people after users complained of historical inaccuracies. For example, a Gemini asked to draw a “Roman legion” ends up drawing an anachronistically diverse group of soldiers, while drawing the “Zulu warriors” as uniformly black. Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized, and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google's AI research arm DeepMind, said a fix should arrive “very soon.” But already in May, the promised fix has yet to be delivered. appear. Google touted many other features of Gemini at its annual I/O developer conference this week, from custom…
The feature Google demonstrated at yesterday's I/O Conference Fab uses generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real time to detect conversation patterns associated with financial fraud, and identify warning signs. A shiver ran down the spines of Ivasi and security experts alike. The feature represents the thin end of the wedge. They warn that once client-side scanning is built into mobile infrastructure, we could usher in an era of centralized censorship. Google's demonstration of phone fraud detection features, which the company announced will be built into future versions of its Android OS (estimated to run on about three-quarters…
Google is committed to AI, and we want you to know that. In Tuesday's I/O Developer Conference keynote, Google mentioned “AI” more than 120 times. That's a lot! But not all of Google's AI announcements were significant in and of themselves. Some were done in stages. Others have been rehashed. So to help you sort the wheat from the chaff, we've rounded up the top new AI products and features announced at Google I/O 2024. Generative AI in search Google plans to use generative AI to organize the entire Google search results page. What would an AI-composed page look like?…