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“Enhancing User Experience: Truecaller’s Latest AI Update Identifies and Stops Increased Spam Call Activity”

Truecaller Max Spam Blocking
Caller ID app Truecaller today blocks between 38 and 40 billion spam calls annually for its 374 million+ users. The update is Android-only: Apple does not allow Truecaller (or other caller ID services) to check callers’ spammer status to block calls automatically on iOS. But to get the best out of the app, users have to engage and tweak their own lists. This isn’t the first AI feature at Truecaller: it provides an AI assistant that screens calls to identify why the caller has dialled the user. After updating the Truecaller app to v13.58 or later, users can find the new spam-blocking feature by going through Settings > Block.
Read More“Enhancing User Experience: Truecaller’s Latest AI Update Identifies and Stops Increased Spam Call Activity”

Unexpected Revelations at Nvidia’s GTC Keynote

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Nvidia chips give graphics-hungry gamers the tools they needed to play games in higher resolution, with higher quality and higher frame rates. Anyone who had come to the keynote expecting him to pull a Tim Cook, with a slick, audience-focused keynote, was bound to be disappointed. The company also introduced Nvidia NIM, a software platform aimed at simplifying the deployment of AI models. NIM leverages Nvidia’s hardware as a foundation and aims to accelerate companies’ AI initiatives by providing an ecosystem of AI-ready containers. “Anything you can digitize: So long as there is some structure where we can apply some patterns, means we can learn the patterns,” Huang said.
Read MoreUnexpected Revelations at Nvidia’s GTC Keynote

LACERA Slashes Venture Capital Allocation Range Due to Market Conditions

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LACERA decreases venture capital allocation range, but experts say it doesn’t signal a trend Analysts say this is likely more of a one-off than a sign that LP interest in venture is waning. The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital at a March 13 meeting. The board of investments voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital and growth equity from between 15% and 30% of the pension system’s private equity portfolio, to between 5% and 25%. LACERA’s venture portfolio is currently 10.8% of the PE portfolio. “They aren’t going to cut their venture allocation.
Read MoreLACERA Slashes Venture Capital Allocation Range Due to Market Conditions

GitHub Token Breach: Mintlify Announces Customer Data Compromise

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Documentation startup Mintlify says dozens of customers had GitHub tokens exposed in a data breach at the start of the month and publicly disclosed last week. Mintlify helps developers create documentation for their software and source code by requesting access and tapping directly into the customer’s GitHub source code repositories. These private tokens allow GitHub users to share their account access with third parties apps, including companies like Mintlify. “The targets of this attack were GitHub tokens of our users,” Wang told TechCrunch by email. We are currently working with GitHub and our customers to uncover if any of the other tokens were used by the attacker,” Wang said.
Read MoreGitHub Token Breach: Mintlify Announces Customer Data Compromise

Spacelytics: The Explosive Success of $paceX

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Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. You also can send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at tips@techcrunch.com. I was finally able to catch up on this February 2024 space stock review from Case Taylor, an investor at Thomas Tull’s U.S. He provides a lot of sharp commentary on the public space companies, and as someone without a finance background, I feel like I learn a lot. This week in space historyOn March 21, 2007, a small but mighty company called SpaceX launched its Falcon 1 rocket for the second time.
Read MoreSpacelytics: The Explosive Success of $paceX

“GR00T: Nvidia Collaborates with Top Humanoid Robotics Experts to Launch Revolutionary AI Platform”

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Naturally, Nvidia wants a piece. Keeping things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Jetson Thor, a new computer designed specifically for running simulation workflows, generative AI models and more for the humanoid form factor. Nvidia notes of the new silicon:The SoC includes a next-generation GPU based on NVIDIA Blackwell architecture with a transformer engine delivering 800 teraflops of 8-bit floating point AI performance to run multimodal generative AI models like GR00T. Naturally, Nvidia wants a piece of the action. The next several years will present a fascinating race for market share between humanoids and mobile manipulators, and Nvidia wants a piece of all of that action.
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“Nvidia Debuts Suite of Microservices for Enhanced Inferencing Capabilities”

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At its GTC conference, Nvidia today announced Nvidia NIM, a new software platform designed to streamline the deployment of custom and pre-trained AI models into production environments. NIM takes the software work Nvidia has done around inferencing and optimizing models and makes it easily accessible by combining a given model with an optimized inferencing engine and then packing this into a container, making that accessible as a microservice. Nvidia is already working with Amazon, Google and Microsoft to make these NIM microservices available on SageMaker, Kubernetes Engine and Azure AI, respectively. Some of the Nvidia microservices available through NIM will include Riva for customizing speech and translation models, cuOpt for routing optimizations and the Earth-2 model for weather and climate simulations. “Created with our partner ecosystem, these containerized AI microservices are the building blocks for enterprises in every industry to become AI companies.”
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“Telegram Secures $330M in New Capital via Bonds Offerings”

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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel today that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week. “This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with impeccable reputations as participants. The maturity for the bonds is either 2026 or when Telegram goes public, whichever is earlier. The chat app, which has more than 900 million users, issued bonds worth $210 million last year. Earlier this month, the company announced that personal users can convert their accounts to business accounts by paying a subscription fee.
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The Significance of Elon Musk’s Open-Source AI Company, Grok: A Critical Analysis

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Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend. But does releasing the code for something like Grok actually contribute to the AI development community? This isn’t the first time the terms “open” and “open source” have been questioned or abused in the AI world. So where does xAI’s Grok release fall on this spectrum? Is his nascent AI company really dedicated to open source development?
Read MoreThe Significance of Elon Musk’s Open-Source AI Company, Grok: A Critical Analysis

Onyx Private, the YC-backed digital bank, announces the closure of customer accounts.

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Miami-based Onyx Private, a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that provided banking and investment services for high-earning Millennials and Gen Zers, is terminating its bank operations. Y Combinator has listed the company as “inactive” on its on its website, something Santos could not explain. Santos claimed that Onyx had been exploring the idea over the past year and had made developments with some partners. Santos today declined to disclose how many banking customers Onyx had. Although a source told TechCrunch that regulatory issues may have played a part in this decision, Santos dismissed that, telling us that no regulatory issues caused the startup to shut down its direct-to-consumer banking operations.
Read MoreOnyx Private, the YC-backed digital bank, announces the closure of customer accounts.