Author: GT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — One program distributes laptops in rural Iowa. Another helped people get back online after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones in western North Carolina. Programs in Oregon and rural Alabama teach older people, including some who have never touched a computer, how to navigate in an increasingly digital world.It all came crashing down this month when President Donald Trump — on his own digital platform, Truth Social — announced his intention to end the Digital Equity Act, a federal grant program meant to help bridge the digital divide. He branded it as “RACIST and ILLEGAL”…

Nuclear power is poised to grow significantly as investment picks up around the world after a long period of stagnation, according to Goldman Sachs. The nuclear industry suffered from years underinvestment in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011. But the sector is now at an inflection point as governments around the world agree that nuclear will play a key role in the transition to energy that emits less carbon, according to Goldman. Global investment in nuclear power has increased rapidly over the past four years, with a compound growth rate of 14% compared to about…

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A group of friends gather to play cards in their host’s cozy home when the power cuts. Cellphones die. An eerie snow falls all over the city, killing everyone it touches. The friends struggle to survive, their panic replaced by a growing awareness that humanity itself is at stake.This is the premise of “The Eternaut,” a chilling dystopian drama out of Argentina that premiered its first season on Netflix on April 30. The six-episode, Spanish-language series with its mix of sci-fi elements and focus on humanity’s resilience, has struck a universal nerve, rocketing to No.…

Welcome back to Week in Review! Tons of news from this week for you, including a hacking group that’s linked to the Spanish government; CEOs using AI avatars to deliver company earnings; Pocket shutting down — or is it?; and much more. Let’s get to it!  More than 10 years in the making: Kaspersky first revealed the existence of Careto in 2014, and at the time, its researchers called the group “one of the most advanced threats at the moment.” Kaspersky never publicly linked the hacking group to a specific government. But we’ve now learned that the researchers who first…

Privacy and digital rights advocates are raising alarms over a law that many would expect them to cheer: a federal crackdown on revenge porn and AI-generated deepfakes.  The newly signed Take It Down Act makes it illegal to publish nonconsensual explicit images — real or AI-generated — and gives platforms just 48 hours to comply with a victim’s takedown request or face liability. While widely praised as a long-overdue win for victims, experts have also warned its vague language, lax standards for verifying claims, and tight compliance window could pave the way for overreach, censorship of legitimate content, and even…

One of Microsoft’s latest AI models can accurately predict air quality, hurricanes, typhoons, and other weather-related phenomena, the company claims. In a paper published in the journal Nature and an accompanying blog post this week, Microsoft detailed Aurora, which the tech giant says can forecast atmospheric events with greater precision and speed than traditional meteorological approaches. Aurora, which has been trained on more than a million hours of data from satellites, radar and weather stations, simulations, and forecasts, can be fine-tuned with additional data to make predictions for particular weather events. AI weather models are nothing new. Google DeepMind has…

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Despite Google I/O capturing as much attention as anticipated, some startups still took their chances and shared announcements this week, while others simply had to go with the flow when their news made headlines. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:OpenAI This week’s most interesting startup stories came from current and former IPO hopefuls, some of which also provided exits to earlier-stage ventures. Billion-dollar hire? Jony Ive and his firm…

OpenAI is updating the AI model powering Operator, its AI agent that can autonomously browse the web and use certain software within a cloud-hosted virtual machine to fulfill users’ requests. Soon, Operator will use a model based on o3, one of the latest in OpenAI’s o series of “reasoning” models. Previously, Operator relied on a custom version of GPT-4o. By many benchmarks, o3 is a far more advanced model, particularly on tasks involving math and reasoning. “We are replacing the existing GPT‑4o-based model for Operator with a version based on OpenAI o3,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “The API version…

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! For those U.S.-based readers out there, enjoy the long Memorial Day weekend, and if you’re on the road, expect it to be crowded. AAA projects 45.1 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home over the Memorial Day holiday period, from Thursday to Monday. About 39.4 million of those folks will use a car. Let’s get to it! This edition has news on loads of companies, including Aurora, Uber, Tesla,…

Last week, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok experienced a “bug” that made it tell users about the “white genocide” conspiracy theory in South Africa, even when prompted with questions that had nothing to do with the topic … and soon after, Grok expressed skepticism over the Holocaust death toll, which it chalked up to a “programming error.” But with a degree of mental gymnastics that could put Simone Biles to shame, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has decided that Elon Musk’s robot baby Grok is too far left. Image Credits:Twitter/X (screenshot) “Grok is left leaning and continues to spread fake news…