Author: GT

An attendant holds 1-kilogram gold bars on Feb. 17, 2025.Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesGold prices crossed $3,000 an ounce for the first time, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs against major trading partners roil financial markets and push investors to safe-haven assets to protect against elevated inflation and a possible recession.Gold futures closed Friday at a new record of $3,001.1 an ounce, having gained 13.6% so far this year. The latest move has come as the U.S. stock market lost $5 trillion in three weeks as Trump’s trade war stirs turmoil, confusion and uncertainty.Some 52% of global fund managers told Bank of…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMeta’s upcoming Community Notes feature for monitoring misinformation through crowdsourcing will use some technology developed by Elon Musk’s X for its similar service.On Thursday, Meta revealed in a blog post more details of its new content moderation tool, and said it incorporates the same open-source algorithm that powers X’s Community Notes. Meta said that over time it plans to modify the algorithm to better serve its Facebook, Instagram and Threads apps.”As X’s algorithm and program information…

Welcome back to Week in Review! I’m Karyne Levy, TechCrunch’s deputy managing editor, and I’ll be writing this newsletter from here on out. Thrilled to be here! This week we’re checking out everything at SXSW; Waymo’s expansion into Silicon Valley; Intel’s new CEO; TikTok’s new suitor; and why DeepSeek isn’t taking VC money. Let’s get to it! Environmental impact: The FBI, the EPA, the EPA inspector general, and the Treasury Department requested that Citibank freeze accounts of several nonprofits and state government agencies. The accounts were frozen in February, but the new documents make public details that had previously been…

In a significant cybersecurity breach discovered in mid-2024, a sophisticated threat actor deployed custom backdoors on Juniper Networks’ Junos OS routers. The intrusion represents an alarming development in the targeting of critical network infrastructure by nation-state actors, with potential implications for telecommunications and national security worldwide. The affected Juniper MX routers were running end-of-life hardware and software, making them particularly vulnerable to such sophisticated attacks. Analysts at Google’s Mandiant identified several TINYSHELL-based backdoors operating on the compromised routers and attributed these attacks to a China-nexus espionage group designated as UNC3886. The group is known for its advanced capabilities and focus…

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Commuters in downtown Barcelona have been able to ride the bus for free this week. There’s just one catch: this mini-bus has no one at the wheel.The bus pulls away from the stop with its passengers on its own, brakes before changing lanes and eases down one of Barcelona’s most fashionable boulevards.Renault is testing a new driverless mini-bus in Barcelona this week. The autonomous vehicle is running on a 2.2-km (1.3-mile) circular route with four stops in the center of the Spanish city. Adventurous commuters can jump on free of charge. The French carmaker has teamed…

Three MIT payloads will soon hitch a ride to the moon in a step toward establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface.In the coming days, weather permitting, MIT engineers and scientists will send three payloads into space, on a course set for the moon’s south polar region. Scientists believe this area, with its permanently shadowed regions, could host hidden reservoirs of frozen water, which could serve to sustain future lunar settlements and fuel missions beyond the moon.NASA plans to send astronauts to the moon’s south pole in 2027 as part of the Artemis III mission, which will be the…

Gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have overtaken bitcoin ETFs in assets under management as investors shift toward the traditional safe-haven asset as BTC price tumbled more than 19% over the past three months, while the precious metal climbed 12.5%. Bitcoin ETFs, which saw significant inflows following their U.S. launch in January last year, have experienced major outflows, losing about $3.8 billion since Feb. 24 of this year, according to Farside Investors data. Meanwhile, gold ETFs recorded their highest monthly inflows since March 2022 last month, according to the World Gold Council. These flows have meant that gold ETFs have now “reclaimed…

U.S. President Donald Trump sits next to Crypto czar David Sacks at the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein | ReutersDavid Sacks, the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar, sold over $200 million worth of digital asset-related investments personally and through his firm, Craft Ventures, before starting the job, according to a memo from the White House.Of the the assets sold, the documents said that at least $85 million “is directly attributable to Sacks.” The memo, from White House counsel David Warrington, added that Craft remains an investor in some…

Betul Abali | Anadolu | Getty ImagesGoogle is allowing users to personalize its Gemini chatbot with new features, which the company rolled out Thursday in experimental mode.Gemini can now reference users’ Google Search histories to understand them better and give more relevant recommendations, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. It’s an opt-in feature that allows the company to use search history data within its conversational AI.The company also said users can now connect their respective apps to Gemini, including Calendar, Notes, Tasks and Photos.Google will also make Gems, its custom AI helper for tasks, more broadly available to all…

Social network Bluesky recently published a proposal on GitHub outlining new options it could give users to indicate whether they want their posts and data to be scraped for things like generative AI training and public archiving. CEO Jay Graber discussed the proposal earlier this week, while on-stage at South by Southwest, but it attracted fresh attention on Friday night, after she posted about it on Bluesky. Some users reacted with alarm to the company’s plans, which they saw as a reversal of Bluesky’s previous insistence that it won’t sell user data to advertisers and won’t train AI on user…