Author: TechBrunch
Security researchers have discovered a hidden, undisclosed feature in the Waymo app that allows you to display any text of your choice on the robotaxi's top display. Jane Manchun Wong, a prominent security researcher, posted an image to X on Saturday that included her X handle and other text on the top display of a Waymo car (officially known as a “dome”). did. “We hacked Waymo to display weird text like empty strings, ‘Won Jane’, and emojis as car IDs. Please don’t ban me or patch me, @waymo ( lol),” she wrote. Wong, who lives in San Francisco, told TechCrunch…
Epic Games is adding third-party games to the mobile app store and helping developers cover the associated iOS fees. The company is launching a free games program and will cover the cost of all titles from developers who participate in the program on iOS or iPadOS devices. With this program, Epic brings new free games to the store every month. The game will be available worldwide on Android and on iOS in the European Union. The company's mobile store launched in August and featured first-party titles such as Fortnite and Rocket League. With this expansion, Epic Games adds the first…
After releasing two developer beta versions last year, Google introduced the first public beta of Android 16 on Thursday. New features include live updates on the lock screen (such as live activity on iOS), an advanced professional video (APV) codec for high-quality video recording, and the ability for developers to adapt apps to different screen sizes and aspect ratios. Contains a framework for doing so. For consumers, support for live updates will be the most visible change. Apple introduced Live Activity in iOS 16 in 2022 to show ever-changing updates on delivery status, workouts, sports scores, and more. Android now…
Despite a decline in active users, social network X has grown in-app revenue over the past year, according to new data. Global consumer spending on X mobile apps on both iOS and Android increased 76.3% year over year when comparing two similar periods in January, according to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. But other data shows that X's daily active users are declining as usage of rivals like Bluesky and Threads increases. According to an analysis conducted by Appfigures, global consumer spending on iOS and Android at Company X reached $7.6 million from January 1 to 20, 2024. During…
Kirva Perumalsamy co-founded Rollfi in 2021, during the heyday of cryptocurrencies, to help businesses process their crypto payroll. When cryptocurrencies crashed, Rollfi pivoted to being an embedded payroll company, partnering with financial services companies to provide payroll and benefits services to their customers. The pivot was successful enough to acquire Rollfi for an undisclosed amount. Priority Tech Ventures is a division of Priority Technology Holdings, a publicly traded payments and banking technology provider. Rollfi had raised $3.25 million before exiting. Speaking to TechCrunch, Perumalsamy said the company was in the midst of raising capital when the opportunity to sell arose.…
Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, has launched a type of “agent” called Perplexity Assistant. Perplexity says the assistant uses reasoning, search, and apps to help with daily tasks. Perplexity Assistant will be available in the Perplexity app on Android devices starting Thursday, and the company says it can perform “multi-app actions” such as hailing a ride or searching for a song. Perplexity's search engine is functional, allowing Perplexity Assistant to access the web. Perplexity says this allows the assistant to do things like find the right date and time or create a calendar entry to remind you of an event.…
The tech layoff wave continued through 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, 2024 saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 542 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Large companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Microsoft conducted sizable layoffs in 2024, while smaller-sized startups also experienced cuts, and in some cases, shut down operations altogether. We’re continuing to track the industry’s layoffs into 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks. Later this year, we will break out our 2024 and 2025 lists in order to make the trends easier to parse. By…
Brave Search announced Thursday that it is adding a new feature called “Rerank,” which allows users to adjust search results by upvoting or downvoting specific websites. This feature is available to all users and appears at the top right of the search results page. When a user opens the panel, they can “pull” or “drop” a domain by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down sign. Brave then fine-tunes your search by prioritizing results from sites you've upvoted and ignoring results from sites you've downvoted. Brave says its AI-powered answers feature will also record changes you make and provide some…
Password managers are common these days. However, businesses often have different needs than consumers. After all, teams often need to share credentials to access resources, but IT and security teams need a way to control who has access to them. Passbolt, which announced an $8 million seed round on Thursday, aims to become the de facto password manager for small and medium-sized businesses, with long-term ambitions to serve enterprise customers. The Passvolt team, led by French-born CEO Kevin Muller, argues that most organizations are not working well with tools that are more consumer-oriented, like Bitwarden and 1Password. “If you look…
What do AI voice agents and self-driving cars have in common? Brooke Hopkins, former head of technology at Waymo, argues that their performance can be evaluated similarly. Coval, a new Hopkins startup, is trying to do just that. “When I left Waymo, I realized that many of the problems we were having at Waymo were exactly what the rest of the AI industry was facing,” Hopkins (pictured above, center) told TechCrunch. . “But everyone was saying this is a new paradigm and we have to come up with testing methods from first principles and basically everyone has to re-write everything.…