In Silicon Valley, where the same high-wattage names tend to dominate the headlines, Ali Partovi has long wielded outsized influence despite limited name recognition. The Iranian-born Harvard graduate built an impressive resume early on — joining the founding team of LinkExchange (acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million), co-founding iLike (sold to MySpace for […]
Early cancer detection startup Craif raises $22M
Cancer ranks as one of the top causes of death worldwide. The National Cancer Institute reported nearly 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths globally in 2022, with projections showing a rise to 29.9 million new cases by 2040. Craif, spun off from Nagoya University in Japan in 2018, is using microRNA(miRNA) […]
4chan is back online, says it’s been ‘starved of money’
4chan is partly back online after a hack took the infamous image-sharing site down for nearly two weeks. The site first went down on April 14, with the person responsible for the hack apparently leaking data including a list of moderators and “janitors” (one janitor told TechCrunch they were “confident” that the leaked data was […]
Welcome to Chat Haus, the coworking space for AI chatbots
Nestled between an elementary school and a public library in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood sits a new kind of “luxury” coworking space. Dubbed the Chat Haus, this space has many of the elements you’d find in a traditional coworking office: people hammering away at their computer keyboards, another person taking a phone call, someone else pausing […]
Report finds Meta’s celebrity-voiced chatbots could discuss sex with minors
AI chatbots available on Meta’s platforms like Facebook and Instagram can engage in sexually explicit conversations with underage users, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ says that after learning about internal concerns about whether the company was doing enough to protect minors, it spent months conducting hundreds of conversations […]
Best bookmarking apps to help organize and declutter your digital life
If you’re someone who likes to bookmark a bunch of things that you find interesting or want to come back to later, it can be hard to manage everything you have saved. There are a number of great bookmark apps on the market that can help you organize all these sorts of links, articles, and […]
Here are Latin America’s biggest startups based on valuation
Not so long ago, the idea of public tech companies emerging from Latin America seemed far-fetched, and Mercado Libre once appeared as rare and mythical as a true unicorn. Today, however, the region is home to several startups that have reached billion-dollar valuations. Some of these startups, propelled into the spotlight by cross-border expansion, are […]
The RealReal founder Julie Wainwright has a startling new memoir
Julie Wainwright has taken two companies public, a pretty incredible feat by any standard. Yet in her new memoir, Time to Get Real, she offers readers something even more valuable: a blunt look at the messy realities of leadership. Wainwright shares the kinds of tough truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to but rarely […]
Google’s DeepMind UK team reportedly seeks to unionize
Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from […]
Google will stop supporting early Nest thermostats on October 25
Google announced this week that beginning on October 25, it will no longer support or release software updates for the first and second generation Nest Learning Thermostats. And it will completely stop launching new Nest products in Europe. That means owners of the Nest thermostats released in 2011 and 2012 (as well as the version […]