Author: GT

NEW YORK (AP) — A “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have made it easier for consumers to end unwanted subscriptions, has been blocked by a federal appeals court days before it was set to go into effect. But there are ways to end those subscriptions and memberships, even if they take some work. The rule would also have required companies to disclose when free trials and promotional offers would end and let customers cancel recurring subscriptions as easily as they started them. But even without the new federal guidance, here are some ways to stay on top of subscription and membership…

When ChatGPT or Gemini give what seems to be an expert response to your burning questions, you may not realize how much information it relies on to give that reply. Like other popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, these chatbots rely on backbone systems called foundation models that train on billions, or even trillions, of data points.In a similar vein, engineers are hoping to build foundation models that train a range of robots on new skills like picking up, moving, and putting down objects in places like homes and factories. The problem is that it’s difficult to collect and transfer…

Time’s running out. In just four days, TechCrunch All Stage 2025 touches down at Boston’s SoWa Power Station on July 15 — and your chance to lock in savings of up to $475 disappears. This one-day summit isn’t built for spectators. It’s designed for the doers — the founders, builders, and backers who are shaping what’s next. Whether you’re raising your first round, preparing for a growth-stage leap, or scaling your team, this event is packed with insight you can act on now. Founder Passes are just $100, and Investor Passes are $200 — but not for long. Prices jump…

When OpenAI was having its ChatGPT moment in 2022, Joe Scheidler, co-founder and CEO of Helios, was tackling a different kind of challenge: Helping build the White House’s newly authorized cybersecurity office and navigating the complexities of public-private coordination on cyber policies. His current co-founder, Joseph Farsakh, was also at the State Department, working on Yemen Houthi peace negotiations. The two overlapped in national security discussions and started trading notes on how large language models might transform public policy on a day-to-day level.  On the level the White House operates, critical decisions are often made using a patchwork of tools,…

PARIS (AP) — French prosecutors have launched a police investigation into alleged data tampering and fraud involving X, Elon Musk’s social media platform.The Paris prosecutor’s office, in a statement Friday, announced the opening of the investigation, and said that a branch of the French gendarmerie is conducting the inquiry.The investigation is looking into two alleged offenses “in particular” — organized tampering with the functioning of an automated data processing system, and organized fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system, the statement said.It didn’t give details of the alleged wrongdoing. It said that the investigation is targeting both…

Apolink, a Y Combinator-backed space-tech startup founded by a 19-year-old Indian-origin entrepreneur, has raised $4.3 million in an “oversubscribed” seed round at a $45 million post-money valuation to build a real-time connectivity network for satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). The startup is tackling a persistent problem in space communications. Satellites frequently go offline during parts of their orbit due to dead zones — periods when they are not in the line of sight of a ground station. While relay satellites and global ground station networks help reduce this downtime, they only provide partial solutions. That gap has become critical…

NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP) — The maker of a massive wind turbine blade that broke apart off Nantucket Island and washed up on beaches for months has agreed to a $10.5 million settlement to pay local businesses for their economic losses, officials said Friday.Fiberglass fragments of the blade began washing ashore last summer during the peak of tourist season after pieces of the wind turbine at the Vineyard Wind project began falling into the Atlantic Ocean in July 2024. GE Vernova, which agreed to the settlement, blamed a manufacturing problem at one of its factories in Canada and said there was…

IBM’s Power11 enterprise servers address a persistent challenge in enterprise computing: how to deploy AI workloads without compromising the rock-solid reliability that mission-critical applications demand. Announced on July 8, 2025, the Power11 reflects IBM’s bet that enterprises will prioritise integrated solutions over the current patchwork of specialised AI hardware and traditional servers that many organisations currently manage.Understanding the core innovationPower11 enterprise servers are designed around the premise that businesses cannot afford downtime. The system promises “99.9999% uptime” – a figure that translates to less than 32 seconds of unplanned downtime per year.This represents what IBM calls “the most resilient server…

Former NBCU ad exec Linda Yaccarino’s tenure at X may have been fairly short — just two years from start to finish — but she did manage to make an impact on the social network’s ad business, new data from ad intelligence firm Guideline shows. Yaccarino will be leaving X in a better position with its advertisers than she found it, it says. In the U.S., ad spending was up 62% year-over-year in the first half of 2025, Guideline notes. In addition, Yaccarino previously claimed that 96% of X’s advertisers returned to X as of May 2025. However, it took…

Though he officially left the U.S. government in May, Steve Davis — Elon Musk’s low-flying former top lieutenant at the Department of Government Efficiency — continues to wield influence at DOGE, according to the WSJ. The outlet says Davis, a longtime Musk ally, regularly gives directions to current DOGE officials and has privately dismissed his departure as “fake news.” TechCrunch reached out earlier Wednesday to The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling company where Davis has held the president role, for comment. This behind-the-scenes involvement suggests that Davis — who is reportedly so frugal that he has sometimes signed off on costs…