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Waymo Announces Second Recall Following Robotaxi Collision With Telephone Pole

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Waymo has voluntarily issued a software recall to all 672 of its Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis after one of them collided with a telephone pole. This is Waymo’s second recall. NHTSA confirmed to TechCrunch that it has received Waymo’s recall documents and is processing them for publication on its website. The accident that prompted Waymo’s second recall happened on May 21 when a Waymo vehicle in Phoenix, driving without a human safety operator, collided with a telephone pole in an alley during a low speed pullover maneuver. The Waymo vehicle slowed down to pull over and struck a pole at a speed of 8 miles per hour.

Top-Performing Employees at Tesla Affected by Layoffs, Multiple Departments Cut, Sources Reveal

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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.

“Sources Report Widespread Job Cuts and Department Reductions for Top Talent at Tesla”

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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. Its margins, however, took a hit after Tesla repeatedly slashed prices in a bid to drum up sales and undercut the competition. High performers also cutMany of the laid-off employees were high performers, according to two sources who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity. 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.

Cyberattack targets US think tank Heritage Foundation

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Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation said on Friday that it experienced a cyberattack earlier this week. A person with knowledge of the cyberattack told TechCrunch that efforts at Heritage were underway to remediate the cyberattack, but said that it wasn’t immediately known what, if any, data was taken. Politico, which first reported the news of the cyberattack on Friday, cited a Heritage official as saying the organization “shut down its network to prevent any further malicious activity while we investigate the incident.”The news outlet quoted the Heritage official as saying that the cyberattack likely came from nation-state hackers, but did not provide evidence of the claim. Founded in 1973, Heritage is based in Washington DC, and supports and lobbies on conservative issues. Heritage was hit by a cyberattack in 2015 in which hackers stole internal emails and the personal information of its donors.

SBF Convicted, Worldcoin Faces Yet Another Ban, and Web3 Pre-Seed Funding Sees a Revival

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SBF sentenced, Worldcoin hit with another ban order and big web3 pre-seed rounds are backWelcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. This week in web3Crunching numbersThis week the crypto market prices were a bit more chipper, with the top cryptocurrencies being green on the week. The second-largest crypto, ether, increased 2.6% on the week to $3,550, according to CoinMarketCap data. Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic action used to prove something about a piece of data, without revealing the origin data itself. Scott and I discuss Space and Time’s origin story, how data warehouses work in Web 2.0 versus web3 and the importance of data transparency.

Europe imposes new ban on Worldcoin over concerns for child safety

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Controversial crypto biometrics venture Worldcoin has been almost entirely booted out of Europe after being hit with another temporary ban — this time in Portugal. The order from the country’s data protection authority comes hard on the heels of the same type of three-month stop-processing order from Spain’s DPA earlier this month. Portugal’s data protection authority said it issued the three-month ban on Worldcoin’s local ops Tuesday after receiving complaints Worldcoin had scanned children’s eyeballs. By contrast, EU data protection law gives people in the region a suite of rights over their personal data, including the ability to have data about them corrected, amended or deleted. As Tools for Humanity’s lead DPA, under the one-stop-shop (OSS) mechanism in bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is responsible for investigating privacy and data protection complaints about the company.

Google Fined $270M in France for Unlawful Use of News Publishers’ Data for Gemini

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Google hit with $270M fine in France as authority finds news publishers’ data was used for GeminiIn a never-ending saga between Google and France’s competition authority over copyright protections for news snippets, the Autorité de la Concurrence announced a €250 million fine against the tech giant Wednesday (around $270 million at today’s exchange rate). The competition authority has found fault with Google for failing to notify news publishers of this GenAI use of their copyrighted content. But the competition authority quickly stepped in – finding its unilateral action an abuse of a dominant market position that risked harm to publishers. But in 2021, Google was hit with a $592M fine after the competition authority found major breaches in its negotiations with local publishers and agencies. Google has signed copyright agreements with hundreds of publishers in France – which fall under the remit of its agreement with the Autorité.

“Spain Implements Temporary Ban on Worldcoin Due to Privacy Worries”

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Spain’s data protection authority has ordered Worldcoin to temporarily stop collecting and processing personal data from the market. Data protection authorities can also demand unlawful processing to stop, including temporarily if they are concerned people’s rights are at serious risk, as is happening here. An investigation was opened by France’s data protection authority last year. It also said then that it would be seeking to ascertain whether Worldcoin had carried out a data protection impact assessment. In another set-back last year, Kenya’s data protection authority issued a ban on Worldcoin’s local processing.

NSA Reports Ivanti Cyberattacks Detected Targeting US Defense Industry

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The U.S. National Security Agency has confirmed that hackers exploiting flaws in Ivanti’s widely used enterprise VPN appliance have targeted organizations across the U.S. defense sector. Confirmation that the NSA is tracking these cyberattacks comes days after Mandiant reported that suspected Chinese espionage hackers have made “mass attempts” to exploit multiple vulnerabilities impacting Ivanti Connect Secure, the popular remote access VPN software used by thousands of corporations and large organizations worldwide. Mandiant said earlier this week that the China-backed hackers tracked as a threat group it calls UNC5325 had targeted organizations across a variety of industries. This includes the U.S. defense industrial base sector, a worldwide network of thousands of private sector organizations that provide equipment and services to the U.S. military, Mandiant said, citing earlier findings from security firm Volexity. Akamai said in an analysis published last week that hackers are launching approximately 250,000 exploitation attempts each day and have targeted more than 1,000 customers.

Cyberattack Strikes US Health Tech Leader Change Healthcare

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U.S. healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems. Most of the login pages for Change Healthcare are inaccessible or offline when TechCrunch checked at the time of writing. Michigan local newspaper the Huron Daily Tribune is reporting that local pharmacies are experiencing outages due to the Change Healthcare cyberattack. Change Healthcare is one of the largest healthcare technology companies in the United States. Both Optum and Change Healthcare are owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group.