Author: GT

NEW YORK (AP) — YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect, its parent company Alphabet said Tuesday.In a letter submitted in response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, attorneys for Alphabet said the decision to bring back banned accounts reflected the company’s commitment to free speech. It said the company values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes their reach and important role in civic discourse.“No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on…

For Julien Emery, the problem has always been personal.  He’s the CEO and co-founder of Superpanel, a platform that helps law firms seamlessly onboard new clients.  He listed emotional encounters with the law: As a Canadian, he found access to legal help hard and expensive; he also recalls his mother in a car accident, and how the legal payout helped keep his family afloat for years. He found the legal intake — the process of a firm evaluating a new client or request — tedious.  “For consumers, it’s a maze of forms, phone calls, and dropped leads that cause most…

A Lithium Americas worker processes lithium at the company’s Reno, Nevada R&D lab.Lithium Americas stock soared Wednesday as the Trump administration is seeking an equity stake in the mining company, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia.The White House is seeking an equity stake as Lithium Americas renegotiates the terms of a $2.2 billion loan from the Department of Energy for its Thacker Pass mine, a Trump administration official told CNBC. Reuters first reported the equity stake proposal.Lithium Americas’ shares surged nearly 80% in morning trading.It is the latest move by the White House to take direct ownership in the…

Meta has raised the stakes in Big Tech’s fight against AI regulation. The Facebook-maker is investing “tens of millions” of dollars into a new super PAC to fight state-level tech policy proposals that could stifle AI advancement, reports Axios. Meta’s pro-AI PAC, called the American Technology Excellence Project, is the company’s latest effort to combat policies it sees as harmful to the development of AI. Last month, Meta launched a California-focused PAC to back tech-friendly candidates in state races. Axios reports that Meta’s new super PAC will be run by Republican veteran Brian Baker and Democratic consulting firm Hilltop Public…

Robotics companies often have to deal with a simple but confounding problem: Robots produce a lot of data. Even a simple robot can easily produce up to a terabyte of data per day, since they continuously capture data from cameras and sensors. Sydney, Australia-based Alloy thinks it can help with that issue: The startup is building data infrastructure for robotics companies to help them process and organize all the data their robots collect from various sources, including sensors and cameras.   At its core, Alloy encodes and labels the data it collects, and allows users to search through their data using natural language to find bugs and errors. Users can also set up rules to catch and flag issues in the future,…

NEW YORK (AP) — Soon people will be able to use satellite technology and artificial intelligence to track dangerous soot pollution in their neighborhoods — and where it comes from — in a way not so different from monitoring approaching storms under plans by a nonprofit coalition led by former Vice President Al Gore.Gore, who started Climate TRACE, which uses satellites to monitor the location of heat-trapping methane sources, on Wednesday expanded his system to track the source and plume of pollution from tiny particles, often referred to as soot, on a neighborhood basis for 2,500 cities across the world.…

Tim Chen, solo VC at his firm Essence VC, said he just closed his fourth fund, a fresh $41 million, without even trying. Limited partner investors were so eager to invest, they preempted it, he told TechCrunch. He didn’t even have time to generate a pitch deck.  A $41 million raise might not sound like much in this age of multibillion-dollar venture firms and solo VCs like Jack Altman (who just raised his second giant fund, at $275 million). But that’s mainly because Chen didn’t want to take on more. It’s an upsize from Chen’s 2022 third fund of $27 million…

Author: Rodrigo Coutinho, Co-Founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystemsAI has moved beyond pilot projects and future promises. Today, it’s embedded in industries, with more than three-quarters of organisations (78%) now using AI in at least one business function. The next leap, however, is agentic AI: systems that don’t just provide insights or automate narrow tasks but operate as autonomous agents, capable of adapting to changing inputs, connecting with other systems, and influencing business-critical decisions. Although these agents will deliver greater value, agentic AI also poses challenges.Imagine agents that proactively resolve customer issues in real-time or adapt applications dynamically to…

Few investors speak as bluntly — or think as big — as Vinod Khosla. The Khosla Ventures’ founder has never shied away from calling out hype, doubling down on ambitious bets, and pushing founders to look beyond incremental progress. This October at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, Khosla will return to the Disrupt Stage for a fireside chat that promises insight, provocation, and inspiration. In a session overflowing with experience and hard-won lessons, he will share his unvarnished take on the world 15 years from now — a future he believes will be defined…

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian judge fined telecommunications giant Optus 100 million Australian dollars ($66 million) Wednesday for unconscionable conduct selling services to hundreds of vulnerable customers including in Indigenous communities outside the range of its coverage.The subsidiary of Singapore government-owned Singtel is separately facing multimillion-dollar fines over its failure last week to connect hundreds of emergency calls due to an outage that’s been linked to four deaths.Federal Court Justice Patrick O’Sullivan approved a plea agreement struck between Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecom, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over unconscionable conduct and inappropriate sales practices spanning four years…