Author: GT

In this photo illustration, the Facebook logo is displayed on the screen of an iPhone in front of a Meta logo on October 28, 2021 in Paris, France.Chesnot | Getty ImagesMeta on Thursday debuted the Facebook Friends tab, a new feature that’s part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pitch to revive the original spirit of his social networking app, or “OG Facebook” as he called it.”The new Friends tab is a throwback to OG Facebook when you only saw friends’ status updates,”  Zuckerberg said in a post about the feature. “More OG Facebook coming soon “The Facebook Friends tab is designed…

Google said it has fixed a vulnerability in its Chrome browser for Windows that malicious hackers have used to break into victims’ computers. In a brief note on Tuesday, Google said that it fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-2783, that was discovered by researchers at security firm Kaspersky earlier this month.  Google said it was aware of reports that an exploit for the bug “exists in the wild.” The bug is referred to as a zero-day because the vendor — in this case, Google — was given no time to fix the bug before it was exploited. According to Kaspersky,…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said this week it will retest 4,000 DNA samples and open an internal investigation after learning that it used potentially flawed test kits for eight months.Sheriff’s officials said Wednesday that a test kit manufacturer sent a letter in August warning the department to stop using certain kits that were prone to giving incomplete results. However, the letter was received by a civilian employee who didn’t discard the kits or send them back, according to a department statement. The department used the flawed kits from July through February, testing thousands of…

BlackRock’s (NYSE: BLK) Global Allocation Fund has reported owning its 821,664 Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) shares worth $47.4 million as of Jan. 31, 2025, as per the Wall Street giant’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). BlackRock’s Global Allocation Fund invests in domestic and global equity, debt, and money market securities. The fund added 390,894 iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shares to its portfolio between November 2024 and January 2025. The figure reflects a 91% increase in share ownership from 430,770 IBIT shares as of Oct. 31, 2024. A spot Bitcoin ETF is an investment fund that tracks…

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting that by rolling out a large enough portfolio of digital investment products, more consumers will be willing to pay a monthly subscription for its product suite.Subscribers to Robinhood Gold pay $5 a month or $50 a year for perks like 4% interest on uninvested cash, access to professional research, and no interest on the first $1,000 of margin borrowed.Now the company is adding wealth management features called Robinhood Strategies, which offers curated access to exchange-traded fund portfolios and mixes of handpicked stocks. The service, available to Gold Subscribers, carries a 0.25% annual management fee,…

The clock is ticking — less than a week left until TechCrunch All Stage ticket prices go up! Save over $300 on founder and investor passes before March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Founders, accelerate your path. Investors, empower their rise. On July 15, join 1,200 founders and VCs at SoWa Power Station in Boston, Massachusetts, for TC All Stage, the ultimate founder summit by TechCrunch, designed for scaling from seed to IPO. This is where growth goes big. Secure the best price and take your startup to the next level — offer ends March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT!…

The first quarter of 2025 was the worst quarter ever in the history of crypto hacks. We saw crypto assets worth $1.64 billion stolen by bad actors during Q1 2025. Security platform Immunefi shared these insights in a report on March 27. The Bybit hack worth $1.46 billion — the largest crypto hacking incident ever — and the Phemex hack worth $69.1 million alone accounted for $1.52 billion in stolen crypto assets. These two incidents made up 94% of all the stolen assets during this quarter. Due to the Bybit hack, February turned out to be the worst month of the…

Amazon continues to infuse AI into its shopping tools to encourage customers to make more purchases. The company announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Interests,” aimed at creating a more personalized and conversational search experience.  With the new feature, customers can enter tailored prompts in the search bar, reflecting their interests, preferences, and even their budget. For example, users might ask for “model building kits and accessories for hobbyist engineers” or “brewing tools and gadgets for coffee lovers.”  Interests leverages large language models (LLMs) to convert everyday language into queries that traditional search engines can understand, resulting in more…

BOSTON (AP) — Ashley Wagner and Ben Agosto know what it’s like to step off the ice at the figure skating world championships and feel as though they’ve conquered the sport. And what it feels like when the notoriously fickle sport bites back.So when the International Skating Union put in motion its ambitious “Vision 2030” plan, which is designed to grow and expand the sport through improved fan engagement, it made sense that they would call Wagner, a three-time U.S. champion and former world silver medalist, and Agosto, who won an Olympic silver medal with ice dance partner Tanith Belbin.If…

Americans’ support for a TikTok ban is declining, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. This survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults found that just 34% of respondents supported banning the short form video app. When Pew ran a similar study in 2023, 50% of adults supported the TikTok ban. Over the same time span, the study also shows more Americans growing opposed to the ban. While 22% of respondents opposed it in 2023, that population rose to 32% in the recent study. These trends were consistent across party lines, with support for the ban among Republican…