Author: GT

Apple is nursing a fresh wound this week after losing one of its most crucial AI leaders to Meta. Ruoming Pang, the executive who oversaw Apple Intelligence, has jumped ship to join Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs.Pang wasn’t just any Apple employee. He led a 100-strong army of engineers crafting the language models that make your iPhone summarise texts, generate those Genmoji, and prioritise your notifications. Now he’s traded the Apple Park spaceship for Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters, becoming the latest big name to answer Mark Zuckerberg’s call.The leading exec’s departure is a gut punch to a company that’s been scrambling…

Dilara Irem Sancar | Anadolu | Getty ImagesIran’s oil minister on Wednesday criticized the effects of war-led disruptions to oil markets, weeks after Tehran’s 12-day hostilities with Israel sent crude price soaring.In remarks via videoconference for the OPEC seminar in Vienna, Mohsen Paknejad said, “Whatever the cause, an aggression of war that leads to the disruption of the supply of oil and gas resources to the international market imposes … complications on energy producers, and subjects national economies to hardships.””I believe we all need to take a principled stand against the resort to, and use of war, as a tool…

The independent online bookseller Bookshop.org took a swipe at Amazon to celebrate the start of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sale (which, despite its name, is actually four days this year). Like many other retailers, Bookshop.org holds a sale to coincide with Amazon’s big event — it’s a way to lure away consumers who may be tempted by Amazon’s deals but could be convinced to spend a few extra dollars to support an independent business. These anti-Prime sales probably don’t make a huge dent in Amazon’s bottom line (sigh), but Bookshop.org twisted the knife where it hurts: the graphic design of…

A “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, has been blocked by a federal appeals court just days before it was set to go into effect.The Federal Trad Commission’s proposed changes, adopted in October, required businesses to obtain a customer’s consent before charging for memberships, auto-renewals and programs linked to free trial offers.The FTC said at the time that businesses must also disclose when free trials or other promotional offers will end and let customers cancel recurring subscriptions as easily as they started them.The rule was set to…

Waymo has started offering teen accounts for families in Phoenix as it works to expand its user base and entrench young riders in the autonomous life.  Waymo’s teen accounts will be similar to those offered by Uber, which also allows parents to make teen accounts in Phoenix and other cities across the country. Parents in Metro Phoenix can link a profile to their Waymo One accounts for teenagers aged 14 to 17. The teens will then be able to order their own rides and share trip status with parents.  Opening up autonomous vehicles to ferry kids could bring peace of…

Replit on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership deal with Microsoft that should be good for business for both of them.  Replit will become available through Microsoft’s enterprise cloud app store, Azure Marketplace, meaning Microsoft shops will be able to purchase Replit subscriptions there. Replit is also integrating its tech with a number of Microsoft cloud services like containers, virtual machines, and Microsoft’s version of Postgres — the database that Replit supports — called Neon Serverless Postgres. That means that Azure should generate its share of revenue from Replit apps that are used in production. Microsoft famously offers its own hugely popular vibe…

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it’s taking down “inappropriate posts” made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler. Grok was developed by Musk’s xAI and pitched as alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk said Friday that Grok has been improved significantly, and users “should notice a difference.” Since then, Grok has shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism. “Labeling truths as hate speech stifles discussion,” Grok…

The typical online checkout experience has become bloated with friction. And while more companies are building solutions around online checkout, few are rethinking it from scratch. One such company is OneText, which is building what it calls a “text-to-buy network” that lets shoppers complete purchases via text message. The company, founded by former PayPal employees, just closed a $4.5 million seed round backed by Khosla Ventures, Coatue, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Friends (the fund created by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds, and Harry’s), and Matt Bellamy, the frontman of Muse. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Fudem came up with…

Google announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a new Gmail feature that is designed to help users easily manage their subscriptions and declutter their inboxes. The new “Manage subscriptions” tool is rolling out on the web, Android, and iOS in select countries. With the new feature, users can view and manage their subscription emails in one place and quickly unsubscribe from the ones they no longer want to receive. Users can view their active subscriptions, organized by the most frequent senders, alongside the number of emails they’ve sent in the past few weeks. Clicking on a sender provides a direct…

Games giant Activision took down Call of Duty: WWII due to hackers exploiting a flaw in a specific PC version of the game, which led to several players getting their computers hacked, TechCrunch has learned.  Last week, Activision announced that it brought offline the Microsoft Store version of Call of Duty: WWII, a 2017 first-person shooter, as the company was investigating “reports of an issue,” without specifying what the issue was. The company had just launched that version of the game, also available on Game Pass, a subscription service that provides access to several games for a monthly fee.  A…