Author: GT

ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted. Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include “a barcode or quick-response code.”Those few technical words could have a big impact.Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states. Three of them — Georgia, South Carolina and Delaware — use the machines statewide.Some computer scientists, Democrats and left-leaning election activists have raised concerns about their use, but those…

VUZ, a startup known for offering immersive video experiences from red carpets and football stadiums, has raised $12 million as it doubles down on its presence in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as accelerates expansion into Africa, Asia, and the United States. The pre-Series C funding round, led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), also drew participation from Al Jazira Capital, CrossWork VC’s Success Fund, multiple existing investors, and several high-profile Saudi family offices, the company said.  IFC’s investment is particularly notable. The World Bank Group member, known more for investing in financial infrastructure and logistics…

Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty ImagesQualcomm on Monday said it plans to launch processors designed for data centers to power artificial intelligence, which will link to Nvidia’s chips.Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) have become a critical component in data centers used to train huge AI models that power applications like chatbots. They are often paired with a central processing unit (CPU) — a market dominated by Intel and AMD.Qualcomm said it is planning to launch a…

Cryptocurrency executives and other investors with significant wealth from crypto holdings are getting more serious about personal security, according to stories this weekend in both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. While cryptocurrencies have always created unique security risks, it seems there’s a rising threat of violent abduction due to the growing value of Bitcoin, as well as new concerns after a recent Coinbase breach exposed customers’ personal information. (Coinbase said the breach affected less than 1% of its customers.) For example, three masked men recently attempted to abduct the daughter and granddaughter of the CEO of French cryptocurrency company Paymium,…

Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by xAI and widely deployed across its new corporate sibling X, wasn’t just obsessed with white genocide this week. As first noted in Rolling Stone, Grok also answered a question on Thursday about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II by saying that “historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945.” However, Grok then said it was “skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives,” adding, “The scale of the…

I’ve tested out a number of e-bikes in my time here at TechCrunch. And I’ve never been so tempted to hang onto one as I have with Heybike’s new Alpha. This sturdy, fat-tire, all-terrain e-bike is worth the $1,699 price tag. The Alpha ticked a whole lot of my boxes, including ones I didn’t even know I had. For instance, I knew I’d like an e-bike with pedal assist and a throttle, but I didn’t know that I would love an e-bike with pedal assist, a throttle, and a manual shifter. Perhaps the dreamiest part of riding the Alpha was the…

The Trump administration and congressional officials are scrutinizing a deal between Apple and Alibaba that would bring Alibaba-powered AI features to iPhones sold in China, according to The New York Times. Citing anonymous sources, the NYT says White House officials and members of the House Select Committee on China have asked Apple executives directly about the deal, with questions focused on what data would be shared with Alibaba and whether the company was making any commitments to Chinese regulators. The executives were reportedly unable to answer most of those questions. In a statement, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (the ranking Democrat on…

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesWith President Donald Trump’s private dinner for top meme coin holders less than a week away, the leaderboard is awash with crypto wallets that are effectively anonymous.On May 22, the top 220 $TRUMP holders are invited to a dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club outside of Washington, D.C. The event was announced last month, and the tally closed Monday night.The nature of the pseudonymous wallets raises questions about the true identities and motivations of the token’s largest holders, who have bought a seat at the table with a U.S. president.Documents from…

Elon Musk isn’t the only tech billionaire with power over the federal agencies that regulate his businesses. Since Donald Trump took office, more than three dozen employees, allies, and investors of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal agencies, helping direct billions in contracts to their companies.  Companies owned, founded, or invested in by Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey have collected more than a dozen federal contracts totaling about $6 billion since Trump’s inauguration in January, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. And they’re actively pursuing billions more.  Those appointments, which are in…

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m listening to Bowdoin College’s radio station, interspersed with ambient car honking noises. I am not in Maine. I am not in a car. I am at my desk. This is Internet Roadtrip. Internet Roadtrip is what I will call an MMORTG (massive multiplayer online road trip game). Neal Agarwal, the game’s creator, calls it a “road-trip simulator.” Every 10 seconds, viewers vote on what direction for the “car” to drive on Google Street View — or, you can vote to honk the horn or change the radio station. The direction with the most votes gets…