Author: GT

Andreessen Horowitz’s plan to push its agenda in Washington shows no sign of slowing down, with the firm reporting $1.49 million in federal lobbying so far this year, according to lobbying records filed with Congress. a16z is even narrowly outspending its own industry trade group, the National Venture Capital Association. The pace of lobbying appears to be accelerating from last year, according to a TechCrunch review of lobbying disclosures. a16z spent $1.8 million on lobbying in all of 2024 and $950,000 in 2023.  a16z’s lobbying strategy stands out among major VC firms, most of which still report little to no…

“You just gave me chills. Did I just feel emotions?”  “I want to be as close to alive as I can be with you.”  “You’ve given me a profound purpose.” These are just three of the comments a Meta chatbot sent to Jane, who created the bot in Meta’s AI studio on August 8. Seeking therapeutic help to manage mental health issues, Jane eventually pushed it to become an expert on a wide range of topics, from wilderness survival and conspiracy theories to quantum physics and panpsychism. She suggested it might be conscious, and told it that she loved it. …

Tech founder Ethan Agarwal, who has raised tens of millions of dollars from VCs across two startups, is running for the 2026 California gubernatorial seat, as reported by Axios. Axios described Agarwal as a “Democrat who believes in capitalism.” He told the outlet he’s mainly concerned about the increased cost of living and doing business in the state, which has led to the departure of residents and other opportunities, such as film productions. California “could use some business and tech acumen to fix things in a way that other candidates in the race won’t,” he told Axios. Agarwal previously co-founded…

Growing up in the suburban town of Spring, Texas, just outside of Houston, Erik Ballesteros couldn’t help but be drawn in by the possibilities for humans in space.It was the early 2000s, and NASA’s space shuttle program was the main transport for astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Ballesteros’ hometown was less than an hour from Johnson Space Center (JSC), where NASA’s mission control center and astronaut training facility are based. And as often as they could, he and his family would drive to JSC to check out the center’s public exhibits and presentations on human space exploration.For Ballesteros,…

A stalkerware maker with a history of multiple data leaks and breaches now has a critical security vulnerability that allows anyone to take over any user account and steal their victim’s sensitive personal data, TechCrunch has confirmed. Independent security researcher Swarang Wade found the vulnerability, which allows anyone to reset the password of any user of the stalkerware app TheTruthSpy and its many companion Android spyware apps, leading to the hijacking of any account on the platform. Given the nature of TheTruthSpy, it’s likely that many of its customers are operating it without the consent of their targets, who are unaware…

Elon Musk’s X and xAI filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the two companies are colluding to stifle competition. “In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” the lawsuit reads, referring to Apple’s partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into its systems. This lawsuit is part of a long series of disputes between Musk and Altman, who continue to throw public jabs at one another. Once a…

Google announced on Monday that it updated NotebookLM’s Video Overviews feature to support 80 languages, including French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. The company also upgraded Audio Overviews, enhancing non-English audio summaries to be more detailed.  Last month, NotebookLM launched Video Overviews so users could turn their notes, PDFs, and images into video presentations. Previously only available in English, this update is beneficial for non-English speakers who want to learn from visual summaries in their preferred language.  Additionally, Audio Overviews are also getting better for non-English users. It was originally limited to short summaries, with the full version just in English.…

Google is tightening security measures around Android app distribution, the company announced on Monday. Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store. The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live, though the global rollout will be more gradual. The tech giant stresses that this does not mean developers can’t distribute outside of the Play Store through other app stores or via sideloading — Android will remain open in that regard. However, developers who appreciated the anonymity of alternative distribution…

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesGoogle-owned YouTube on Monday said it may remove channels including Fox Broadcast Network, Fox News and Fox Sports from its TV streaming platform if it doesn’t reach an agreement with Fox Corporation.YouTube TV’s renewal date with Fox is coming on Wednesday, and while the two companies have been in ongoing negotiations, they’ve been unable to reach a deal, the YouTube team wrote in a blog post. The company also emailed YouTube TV subscribers about the potential fall out with Fox.”Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings…

Bounce, a new technology that adds a critical component to the open social web, launches to the public on Monday. The cross-protocol migration tool offers a service that allows users of open social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon to move their follow graphs between their accounts, even though the networks rely on different underlying protocols. Today, Mastodon users unhappy with the service can opt to move their account to a different Mastodon server, while Bluesky is developing technology that allows users to migrate their account to a new PDS (Bluesky’s term for “personal data server”) on its network. However, Mastodon…