Substack is adding new capabilities to its Twitter-like Notes feature that bring it more in-line with the social network now known as X.
The company announced on Tuesday that users can now post videos directly to Notes in the Substack app and on the web.
Notes let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas in a Tweet-like format, The short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.
Starting today, users can post videos directly to Notes by recording a video or selecting one from their phone’s camera roll or their desktop.
In its blog post, Substack explains that Notes is especially valuable for users who don’t have large pre-existing audiences.
Amazon is trying to keep live shopping relevant with the launch of an “Amazon Live” FAST (free ad-supported TV) channel on Prime Video and Freevee.
Previously only available as a feature on desktop, mobile, and Fire TV, the new live channel will give customers in the U.S. more ways to engage with interactive, shoppable content.
Viewers can browse and buy the items influencers show off by using the Amazon Shopping app on their mobile device.
Amazon Live launched in 2019 as a QVC-like shopping experience to help brands get their products discovered and for talent to interact with fans.
According to the company, more than 1 billion customers in the U.S. and India streamed Amazon Live’s shoppable videos in 2023 alone.
Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say 'I lost 20% of my team, some really good players too'Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
High performers also cutMany of the laid-off employees were high performers, according to two sources who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity.
Some departments saw layoffs beyond the 10% outlined in the companywide email, according to sources.
In 2022, he told employees that he wanted a “clean robotaxi” with no steering wheel or pedals.
Patel told TechCrunch he decided Sunday evening to leave Tesla because of “[b]ig overall changes” at the company.
Design firm Zypsy will do $100,000 worth of work for 1% equity for early-stage startupsZypsy, a design firm with a track record of helping early-stage startups, has launched a new and somewhat unique venture investment program.
Instead startups will pay by issuing Zypsy 1% equity of their companies via a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity).
Zypsy has already added five startups to the first cohort of the design capital program (alphabetical order):Pilot projects with over 25 startups for three yearsThe six-year-old design company has worked with more than 25 startups.
“They are ‘cash-based clients, not an ‘equity-based portfolios’ like five companies we mentioned in the first design capital program,” he said.
In 2023, Zypsy raised $3 million to establish Design Capital.
After considering a few ideas, they decided to go after what they saw as a largely unaddressed market: Tools to help small businesses secure U.S. government contracts.
“The federal contracting community has seen a shrinking of the small business industrial base for much of the past decade,” Doherty told TechCrunch.
It’s also expensive for them to bid on contracts — if they don’t win, they may run out of cash.”As a result of labyrinthine systems and mountains of paperwork, finding and bidding for U.S. federal contracts is a laborious process.
To attempt to give these small businesses a boost, Goltser, Mason and Doherty founded GovDash, a platform that provides workflows to support government contract capture, proposal, development and management processes.
New York-based, six-employee GovDash currently works with around 30 federal contractors across the U.S., Doherty said, and is “nearly” cash-flow positive.
A few months after its launch, how is Apple’s Vision Pro faring?
I am a long-term bull on augmented reality, virtual reality, and face-computers in general.
So it is to my partial chagrin that the hype around the Apple Vision Pro has faded more rapidly than I anticipated.
But I anticipated the Apple brand to keep the hardware in the news — and atop our collective minds — longer than it managed after its launch.
I find it archaic that my monitors are akin to digital chalkboards when they should be built into my glasses.
Vana plans to let users rent out their Reddit data to train AI A startup, Vana, says it wants users to get paid for training dataIn the generative AI boom, data is the new oil.
“It does this by allowing users to aggregate their personal data in a non-custodial way … Vana allows users to own AI models and use their data across AI applications.”Here’s how Vana pitches its platform and API to developers:The Vana API connects a user’s cross-platform personal data … to allow you to personalize your application.
This month, Vana launched what it’s calling the Reddit Data DAO (Digital Autonomous Organization), a program that pools multiple users’ Reddit data (including their karma and post history) and lets them to decide together how that combined data is used.
We have crunched the numbers and r/datadao is now largest data DAO in history: Phase 1 welcomed 141,000 reddit users with 21,000 full data uploads.
“Reddit does not share non-public, personal data with commercial enterprises, and when Redditors request an export of their data from us, they receive non-public personal data back from us in accordance with applicable laws.
Government spyware is another reason to use an ad blockerAd blockers might seem like an unlikely defense in the fight against spyware, but new reporting casts fresh light on how spyware makers are weaponizing online ads to allow governments to conduct surveillance.
Spyware makers are reportedly capable of locating and stealthily infecting specific targets with spyware using banner ads.
One of the startups that worked on an ad-based spyware infection system is Intellexa, a European company that develops the Predator spyware.
Ad blockers don’t just hide the ads, but rather block the underlying website from loading the ads to begin with.
In 2022, the FBI said in a public service announcement to use an ad blocker as an online safety precaution.
Noname Security, a cybersecurity startup that protects APIs, is in advanced talks with Akamai Technologies to sell itself for $500 million, according to a person familiar with the deal.
Noname was co-founded in 2020 by Oz Galan and Shay Levi and is headquartered in Palo Alto but has Israeli roots.
The startup raised $220 million from venture investors and was last valued at $1 billion in December 2021 when it raised $135 million in a Series C led by Georgian and Lightspeed.
While the sale price is a significant discount from that valuation, the deal as it currently stands would be for cash, the person said.
In February, Israeli news outlet Calcalist reported that Noname was in negotiations with several potential buyers, including Akamai.
Tesla has slashed the price of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software subscription to $99 per month, down from $199 per month, as the electric vehicle maker aims to boost adoption of its advanced driver assistance system ahead of first-quarter earnings.
The price cut comes a couple of weeks after Tesla launched a free one-month trial of FSD for every customer in the U.S. with a compatible Tesla.
The FSD price cut comes the same week that Tesla released more tweaks to its latest V12 version of the software to certain users.
More drivers with FSD doesn’t only mean more money for Tesla.
Tesla might also be angling for more training data so it can meet CEO Elon Musk’s promise to unveil a Tesla robotaxi in August.
