Author: GT

A data spill from an unsecured cloud server has exposed hundreds of thousands of sensitive bank transfer documents in India, revealing account numbers, transaction figures, and individuals’ contact details. Researchers at cybersecurity firm UpGuard discovered in late August a publicly accessible Amazon-hosted storage server containing 273,000 PDF documents relating to bank transfers of Indian customers.  The exposed files contained completed transaction forms intended for processing via the National Automated Clearing House, or NACH, a centralized system used by banks in India to facilitate high-volume recurring transactions, such as salaries, loan repayments, and utility payments. The data was linked to at…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Private investment firms that are helping finance America’s artificial intelligence race and the huge buildout of energy-hungry data centers are getting interested in the local utilities that deliver electricity to regular customers — and the servers that power AI.Billions of dollars from such firms are now flowing toward electric utilities in places including New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota that deliver power to more than 150 million customers across millions of miles of power lines.“The reason is very simple: because there’s a lot of money to be made,” said Greg Brown, a University of North Carolina…

For years, “know your customer” checks have become commonplace on the internet, often by way of sharing a copy of your government-issued ID and a selfie to confirm that it’s really you, to access a website or app, or to purchase certain goods.   Nowadays, age-verification laws taking effect across the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and beyond are also giving rise to an entire industry of ID-checking companies charged with granting you access to the “adult” web.  But uploading your identity details and selfie to a company’s servers has long had privacy advocates spooked and fearful that this sensitive…

A wider leadership shake-up at Hyundai’s electric air taxi startup Supernal is underway just a few weeks after it paused work on its vehicle program and its CEO and CTO left, TechCrunch has learned. Supernal’s chief strategy officer, Jaeyong Song, and chief safety officer, Tracy Lamb, are no longer with the company, the startup confirmed Friday. Lina Yang, the chief of staff to Supernal’s recently departed CEO, Jaiwon Shin, is also out. (Yang had previously served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” until April 2025.) “As we transition to new leadership, we have taken the opportunity to strategically review our…

In recent years, people have been increasingly looking for new ways to form platonic connections, as loneliness and social isolation have become more prevalent. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General went so far as to label this issue a public health crisis. Remote workers, who miss the everyday interactions found in an office, and younger individuals eager to create their adult social circles based on shared interests and hobbies, are among those seeking meaningful friendships. Thanks to online dating apps, the stigma associated with finding connections online has largely faded away. This has welcomed a new wave of apps focused…

YouTube Music is testing AI music hosts that provide relevant stories, fan trivia, and commentary about what you’re listening to, the company announced on Friday. The move comes two years after Spotify launched an AI DJ that delivers a curated selection of music alongside AI-powered spoken commentary about the tracks and artists you like. YouTube Music’s new feature builds on its ongoing experiments with conversational AI. In July, the service rolled out an AI conversational radio feature that lets users create a custom radio station by describing what they want to hear. YouTube Music’s new AI hosts are currently being…

Fifteen years after “The Social Network,” Aaron Sorkin will write and direct a sequel film called “The Social Reckoning,” set for release on October 9, 2026. Jesse Eisenberg will not reprise his breakout role as Mark Zuckerberg, but instead will be replaced with the more sallow, serious Jeremy Strong. Best known for playing Kendall Roy in “Succession,” Strong is known for his method acting, a technique in which the actor tries to immerse themselves in the mental and emotional state of the character… so if Strong suddenly takes up MMA fighting and gets really excited about a social metaverse that…

Fintech Checkout.com announced on Friday that it reached a $12 billion valuation as part of an employee stock buyback program.  On the one hand, very few startups ever achieve decacorn status, so $12 billion is nothing to sneeze at. It’s a valuable enough company to have landed its founder and CEO Guillaume Pousaz on Forbes’ billionaire list. On the other, there was a short period of time when Checkout.com was valued at a whopping $40 billion, as part of its $1 billion Series D round closed in 2022. By the end of that year, with the venture world crashing into…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is moving forward with a deal that would allow the U.S. government to take a small equity stake in a Canadian company that is developing one of the world’s largest lithium mines in northern Nevada, an official said.The Department of Energy and Lithium Americas, developer of the proposed Thacker Pass lithium mine and processing plant about 200 miles north of Reno, have agreed on changes to a $2.3 billion federal loan that could allow the project to move forward to extract the silver-white metal used in electric vehicle batteries. General Motors has pledged more…

Silicon Valley flooded the news this week with headlines about wild AI infrastructure investments. Nvidia said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI. Then OpenAI said it would build out five more Stargate AI data centers with Oracle and Softbank, adding gigawatts of new capacity online in the coming years. And it was later revealed that Oracle sold $18 billion in bonds to pay for these data centers. On their own, each deal is dizzying in scale. But in aggregate, we see how Silicon Valley is moving heaven and Earth to give OpenAI enough power to train and…