A government watchdog has found that the Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit repeatedly failed to obtain the correct legal paperwork when carrying out invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings were published last week by Homeland Security’s inspector general, tasked with oversight of the U.S. federal department and its many law enforcement units, which said … [Read more...]

Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president for Adobe’s Creative Cloud, believes there’s a big difference between the hype cycle around web3 last year, and what we’re seeing this year with ChatGPT and other generative AI models. Belsky, who was interviewed by Forbes reporter Alex Konrad at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles today, says web3 did not promise to reduce the time it … [Read more...]

According to a recent report, 92.4% of consumers use reviews when deciding to purchase products. It’s understandable. They want confidence in their purchase choice before buying a product online.   A Seoul-based startup called Indent wants to help these shoppers through access to video reviews and product ratings, while also helping to drive sales for e-commerce merchants by … [Read more...]

Developing cutting-edge AI systems like ChatGPT requires massive technical resources, in part because they’re costly to develop and run. While several open source efforts have attempted to reverse-engineer proprietary, closed-source systems created by commercial labs such as Alphabet’s DeepMind and OpenAI, they’ve often run into roadblocks — mainly due to a lack of capital and domain … [Read more...]

I want to talk about weird tech for a minute. A lot of strange and wonderful pieces of technology have come across our desks over the years. More often that not, they’re the purview of the startup. Small companies are more nimble and willing to take risks. That’s a big part of the reason the entire smartphone industry converged on the smartphone factor. It’s also why a lot of laptops seem to look … [Read more...]

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome back to Chain Reaction. PSA: I’ll be at ETH Denver this week, so if you see me, say hi! I’ll have a few Chain Reaction pins on me and the first few people to find me will get one. Think of it like a free NFT, but instead of it going in your crypto … [Read more...]

Climate change is a problem important and pressing enough that investors have begun to grasp the opportunities that arise when trying to solve it. Now, they’ve started to cast their nets wider for other, adjacent opportunities. Tech that serves to conserve the oceans while using it to replace older, more harmful means of generating energy and food seems to be one such opportunity. In fact, when we … [Read more...]

I’ve yet to walk the entire floor at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year (that’s the goal for this afternoon), but my sense is the majority of the robots present fit into one of two categories: robot vacuums or greeter robots. With Pepper out of commission, maybe there’s a wide-open market there. Who knows? The two Xiaomi robots — CyberOne and CyberDog — may well have been the most … [Read more...]

Hackers breached a website that allows people to buy and sell guns, exposing the identities of its users, TechCrunch has learned. The breach exposed realms of sensitive personal data for more than 550,000 users, including customers’ full names, home addresses, email addresses, plaintext passwords, and telephone numbers. Also, the stolen data allegedly makes it possible to link a particular person … [Read more...]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is requiring online therapy company BetterHelp to pay $7.8 million to consumers in a settlement over alleged data mishandling between 2017 and 2020. This marks the first proposed FTC order that would compensate consumers whose health data was compromised. According to the FTC, BetterHelp assured customers that it would not share their health data except for the … [Read more...]

Neuralink’s ambition to provide a brain-computer interface orders of magnitude better than what’s out there now has hit headwinds with the FDA, Reuters reports. The agency reportedly rejected the company’s application to begin human testing last year, a somewhat expected obstacle that seems nevertheless to have frustrated backer Elon Musk. The well-sourced report explains that the company made its … [Read more...]

Meta announced today that it has started testing its age verification tools on Instagram in more countries. Last June, the social media app began testing new options for users to verify their age using one of three options: uploading their ID, recording a video selfie or asking mutual friends to verify their age. If a user attempted to edit their date of birth on Instagram from under the age of 18 … [Read more...]

Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to halt Meta’s plans to open Horizon Worlds to teens. Per a leaked memo, Meta may open access to its social VR platform for users aged 13 to 17 as early as this month. “Any strategy to invite young users into a digital space rife with potential harms should not be driven by a goal to … [Read more...]

Pinterest has begun alpha testing a new advertising product that allows brands to reach consumers from a more prominent position within the company’s mobile app. With the “Premiere Spotlight” ad, as the new format is currently being called, advertisers will gain access to a premium placement for 24 hours on the Pinterest app’s search page. This allows them to reach Pinterest users as they use one … [Read more...]

Hatch Bank, a digital-first bank that provides infrastructure for fintech companies offering their own brand credit cards, confirmed hackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the company’s internal file transfer software that allowed access to thousands of customer Social Security numbers. The vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere file-transfer software came to light on February 2 after … [Read more...]

Ford today provided a statement to TechCrunch detailing its plan to restart F-150 Lightning production. The manufacturing lines will start rolling again on March 13. The automaker says that will allow for the EV’s battery pack to be reworked to include SK On’s battery cells. Ford also says it will continue to hold already-produced vehicles as it works “through engineering and parts updates.” This … [Read more...]

The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered today, and it appears the series is ending with an epic mic drop. Season 4 makes its debut on March 26, giving fans ten more episodes before we bid farewell to the Roy family. The new trailer gives viewers a closer look at the feud between the Roy kids’ and their father, Logan (Brian Cox), who put Waystar Royco up for sale without … [Read more...]

Ford has launched a wholly owned subsidiary — staffed by hundreds of former employees of Argo AI — that will initially focus on commercializing a hands-free, eyes-off driver assistance system. The new 550-person company, called Latitude AI, will be dedicated to improving Ford’s existing advanced driver assistance system known as Blue Cruise and developing new automated driving technology for its … [Read more...]

Drone developer Brinc today showed off its newest drone, designed to help cops and others who care about public safety do their jobs from a safe distance. The new quadcopter is called Lemur 2 and is tooled up and ready to go into areas that otherwise would be too dangerous for humans. The new drone builds on the learnings from the previous version and adds a stack of new features. The new drone … [Read more...]

The best-known unicorns in the world are getting fit, showing that it is possible to trim losses while still posting growth. They are living experiments when it comes to corporations looking to get lean without cutting muscle. European fintech giant Klarna is working through a valuation reset and a change in investor priority ahead of an eventual public offering. It’s not the only private tech … [Read more...]