Category: tech
Technology news, AI, gadgets, apps
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Microsoft's AI chatbot Copilot leaves WhatsApp on January 15 | TechCrunch
Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot will no longer be available on WhatsApp after January 15, the company has shared. After that date, users on WhatsApp won’t be able to chat with the AI unless they switch to Microsoft’s own Copilot mobile apps or use the chatbot via the web. The company explained it’s removing Copilot from read more
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China's Pony AI plans to triple global robotaxi fleet by the end of 2026 | TechCrunch
Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company Pony.ai said Tuesday it plans to triple the size of its robotaxi fleet by the end of next year as its pace of growth — and aspirations — accelerates. The company, which has about 961 robotaxis in the fleet today, announced the goal during its third-quarter earnings. Pony.ai is targeting read more
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Speechify adds voice typing and voice assistant to its Chrome extension | TechCrunch
Speechify has largely been a tool that helps you listen to articles, PDFs, and documents. The company is now adding voice detection features to its Chrome extension, including voice typing and a voice assistant that answers your questions. In the last 12 months, there has been a proliferation of voice detection tools, thanks to overall read more
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This 6K Monitor Has More to Offer Than Just More Pixels
The UltraFine 6K is also a Nano IPS Black display, which is something the Asus model is not. Nano IPS Black is actually a combination of two technologies that improve the image quality of IPS in different ways. Nano IPS enhances color coverage, while IPS Black cranks up the contrast. The combination of the two read more
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Brace for Cold Nights With the Best Down Comforters We’ve Tried
Compare Our Top 11 Down Comforters More Comforters We’ve Tested If you want a warm blanket but you don’t want traditional down, consider a down alternative, or a comforter made with eucalyptus or bamboo. Buffy Breeze Comforter Courtesy of Buffy Buffy Breeze Comforter: The Buffy Breeze Comforter has been on my bed for years. It’s read more
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India's gig workers win legal status, but access to social security remains elusive | TechCrunch
India has granted legal status to millions of gig and platform workers under its newly implemented labor laws, marking a milestone for the country’s delivery, ride-hailing and e-commerce workforce — yet with benefits still unclear and platforms beginning to assess their obligations, access to social security remains out of reach. The recognition stems from the read more
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GitHub – DotFox/edn.c: A fast, zero-copy EDN (Extensible Data Notation) reader written in C11 with SIMD acceleration.
A fast, zero-copy EDN (Extensible Data Notation) reader written in C11 with SIMD acceleration. EDN (Extensible Data Notation) is a data format similar to JSON, but richer and more extensible. Think of it as “JSON with superpowers”: JSON-like foundation: Maps {:key value}, vectors [1 2 3], strings, numbers, booleans, null (nil) Additional built-in types: Sets read more
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Google teams up with Accel to hunt for India's next AI breakouts | TechCrunch
Google has partnered with Accel to find and fund India’s earliest-stage AI startups in a first-of-its-kind collaboration for the Google AI Futures Fund, launched earlier this year. On Tuesday, Accel and Google announced a partnership to jointly invest up to $2 million in each startup through Accel’s Atoms program, with both firms contributing up to read more
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The Analogue3D Is a Retro Gamer’s Dream
Boot it up and you’re met with its custom operating system, 3Dos. Like the console itself, it takes a strikingly minimalist approach, all precise white pixel text on a stark black background. The OS as a whole is still cooking—more on that later—but it’s already showing signs of being a game archivist’s dream. It builds read more
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Rad Power Bikes' batteries receive major fire risk warning | TechCrunch
The batteries that power Rad Power Bikes’ e-bikes “pose a risk of serious injury and death” and owners should stop using them, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The warning, issued Monday by the CSPC, is due to a risk that the batteries can ignite or explode. The CPSC has linked the read more
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Tesla FSD software may not be approved by EU regulator after all | TechCrunch
Tesla may have celebrated a regulatory win in Europe a bit too soon. Tesla claimed in a weekend social media post that Dutch regulator RDW was set to approve the use of its driver assistance system, known as Full Self-Driving, or FSD, in February 2026. The organization handles the licensing and registration of vehicles in read more
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AWS is spending $50B to build AI infrastructure for the US government | TechCrunch
Amazon Web Services is making a sizable new investment in infrastructure designed to boost AI capabilities for U.S. government organizations. AWS announced Monday it is investing $50 billion to build AI “high-performance computing infrastructure” purposefully built for the U.S. government. The buildout is meant to expand federal government agencies’ access to AWS AI services. The read more
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Anthropic releases Opus 4.5 with new Chrome and Excel integrations | TechCrunch
On Monday, Anthropic announced Opus 4.5, the latest version of its flagship model. It’s the last of Anthropic’s 4.5 series of models to be released, following the launch of Sonnet 4.5 in September and Haiku 4.5 in October. As expected, the new version of Opus has state-of-the-art performance on a range of benchmarks, including coding read more
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X-energy rides nuclear wave, raises $700M Series D | TechCrunch
Nuclear startup X-energy raised $700 million in a Series D round, the company told TechCrunch. The new fundraise comes less than a year after it expanded its Series C from $500 million to $700 million, bringing the total raised in the last year or so to $1.4 billion, a sizable amount even in the heady read more
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Pocket Casts now lets you create a playlist of your favorite podcast episodes | TechCrunch
Pocket Casts, the podcast app owned by Tumblr’s parent company Automattic, launched a new feature that lets you create podcast playlists, allowing you to organize your favorite episodes in just the order you like. You can either create a playlist manually, or Pocket Casts can automatically create one for you. Playlists are designed to better read more
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Altman describes OpenAI's forthcoming AI device as more peaceful and calm than the iPhone | TechCrunch
“When people see it, they say, ‘that’s it?… It’s so simple.” That’s how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman describes how he thinks people will respond to seeing the company’s forthcoming AI hardware device for the first time. The device is the result of the collaboration between OpenAI and Apple’s former chief designer Jony Ive. Not much read more
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A new AI benchmark tests whether chatbots protect human well-being | TechCrunch
AI chatbots have been linked to serious mental health harms in heavy users, but there have been few standards for measuring whether they safeguard human well-being or just maximize for engagement.A new benchmark dubbed HumaneBench seeks to fill that gap by evaluating whether chatbots prioritize user well-being and how easily those protections fail under pressure. read more
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How this founder’s unlikely path to Silicon Valley could become an edge in industrial tech | TechCrunch
Thomas Lee Young doesn’t sound like your typical Silicon Valley founder. The 24-year-old CEO of Interface, a San Francisco startup using AI to prevent industrial accidents, is a white guy with a Caribbean accent and a Chinese last name, a combination he finds amusing enough to mention when he’s first introduced to business contacts. Born read more
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OpenAI learned the hard way that Cameo trademarked the word 'cameo' | TechCrunch
OpenAI’s social app Sora launched with a controversial feature called Cameo, allowing users to deepfake themselves or others (with permission). The feature had a tenuous rollout — Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate had to get involved, to give you an idea of what went on — but now it faces a new challenge. Apparently, Cameo read more
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DOGE “cut muscle, not fat”; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts
During the first six months of Trump’s term, 154,000 federal employees signed up for the deferred resignation program, Reuters reported, while more than 70,000 retired. Both numbers were clear increases (tens of thousands) over exits from government in prior years, Kamarck’s report noted. “A lot of people said, ‘the hell with this’ and left,” Kamarck read more
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