Author: GT

Design platform Figma is partnering with Google to add more AI features, the company announced on Thursday. While Figma had previously introduced AI app-building tools of its own, the new integration with Google will bring several Gemini models to the design software to address what Figma says are the “evolving needs” of product designers and their teams. With the partnership, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 2.0, and Imagen 4 will be added to Figma’s toolset, while the company maintains its relationship with Google Cloud. Gemini 2.5 Flash will be integrated into the process for editing images and Figma’s image generation capabilities,…

Starting this week, Netflix subscribers can play games on their smart TV — a feature that has been in the works for some time. Reports about Netflix’s efforts to bring its mobile games to televisions began in early 2023. Later that year, the company launched a game controller app for iOS devices. However, there hadn’t been much word about gaming on the big screen until now, but it looks like the wait is finally over. To use the new feature, go to the Games tab on the Netflix TV app, then pick a game and use your phone as the…

YouTube announced on Thursday that creators whose channels were previously terminated will be able to request new accounts. “We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance – YouTube has evolved and changed over the past 20 years, and we’ve had our share of second chances to get things right with our community too,” YouTube wrote in the blog post. This change in policy, which YouTube is calling a “pilot,” didn’t come out of nowhere. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) had subpoenaed YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, to investigate if the Biden-Harris administration had “coerced or colluded” platforms into censoring speech. Last…

Security researchers at Google say hackers targeting corporate executives with extortion emails have stolen data from “dozens of organizations,” one of the first signs that the hacking campaign may be far-reaching. The tech giant said Thursday in a statement shared with TechCrunch that the Clop extortion gang exploited multiple security vulnerabilities in Oracle’s E-Business Suite software to steal significant amounts of data from affected organizations. Oracle’s E-Business software allows companies to run their operations, such as storing their customer data and their employees’ human resources files.  Google said in a corresponding blog post that the hacking campaign targeting Oracle customers…

A prominent Italian businessman was targeted with Paragon spyware, according to local news reports. On Thursday, Italian online investigative website IrpiMedia and newspaper La Stampa reported that Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone was among around 90 people who received a notification from WhatsApp in January, alerting him that he had been targeted with spyware made by Paragon Solutions.  It’s not immediately clear for what reason Caltagirone was targeted, and a spokesperson for his holding company, Caltagirone SpA, did not respond to a request for comment. Caltagirone’s namesake holding company owns several firms across different industries, including construction, real estate, finance, and publishing,…

Commander Jared Isaacman of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, speaks at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. August 19, 2024. Joe Skipper | ReutersPresident Donald Trump has met with Jared Isaacman to discuss another nomination to lead NASA, a source familiar with the talks confirmed to CNBC’s Morgan Brennan.Isaacman, who has close ties with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was at the White House in September for Trump’s dinner for tech power players. Musk did not attend.After a fiery back-and-forth between Musk and Trump over government spending, the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination for…

Six months after Lip-Bu Tan began his quest to turn around struggling Intel, the semiconductor giant has announced a major hardware upgrade. On Thursday, Intel unveiled a new processor, codenamed Panther Lake. This marks the next generation of the company’s Intel Core Ultra processor family and is the first chip built using Intel’s 18A semiconductor process. The processors are expected to begin shipping later this year and are being produced at Intel’s Chandler, Arizona, Fab 52 facility, which came online in 2024. “We are entering an exciting new era of computing, made possible by great leaps forward in semiconductor technology…

Stoke Space announced a massive capital raise on Wednesday that might seem, at first glance, like just another bet on the commercial launch market. The details tell a different story. Led by billionaire Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology, a fund that explicitly invests in technologies tied to national security, the $510 million Series D round underscores a larger shift in the launch industry. The old assumption was the winners of launch would be the companies that capture the lion’s share of commercial payloads. While there is still demand on the commercial side from private constellation developers and for emerging use…

People walk past a billboard advertisement for YouTube in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 27, 2019.Sean Gallup | Getty ImagesYouTube is offering creators who were banned from the platform a second chance.On Thursday, the Google-owned platform announced it is rolling out a feature for previously terminated creators to apply to create a new channel. Previous rules led to a lifetime ban.”We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance,” wrote the YouTube Team in a blog post. “We’re looking forward to providing an opportunity for creators to start fresh and bring their voice back to the platform.”Tech companies have faced months…

Google is bringing its AI-powered conversational search feature, Search Live, to India — launching in English and Hindi — and expanding AI Mode to seven new Indian languages, as the company strengthens its presence in one of its fastest-growing markets. Introduced in the U.S. in July, Search Live builds on Google’s Project Astra technology and is available through the company’s AI Mode. The feature lets users point their phone camera at objects to get real-time assistance, supporting back-and-forth conversations that draw on the visual context from the camera feed. With this launch, India becomes the second market after the U.S.…