Reliability firstApple makes some of the most popular devices on the planet, and its AI features should serve to make them more useful.
A lot of AI-powered features rely on going back to the cloud to get answers or inputs back.
Rumors on the street are that Apple will announce a deal with OpenAI to power AI features across its operating systems.
Given AI’s hallucination problems, Apple might not want to be directly involved in content-related AI features just yet.
Companies like Google and OpenAI have had to walk back on AI features because of errors or copyright issues.
NASA’s decision to scrap its $11 billion, 15-year mission to Mars to bring back samples could create a startup feeding frenzy, TechCrunch reports.
Describing its plans as too slow, and too expensive, NASA is going back to the drawing board, with an eye on getting the space industry to help.
But space startups are not worried about it.
So, the NASA money might have a bunch of startup-sized buckets to drip into, and I am here for it.
To that end, if any startup that works with NASA on the Mars rock mission needs a human to send up there to check on the dials and such, I’m your guy.
The AI world needs more data transparency and web3 startup Space and Time says it can helpAs AI proliferates and things on the internet are easier to manipulate, there’s a need more than ever to make sure data and brands are verifiable, said Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time, on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast.
Dykstra thinks the answer is through verification of data and zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs), which are cryptographic actions used to prove something about a piece of information — without revealing the origin data itself.
“It has a lot to do with whether there’s an incentive for bad actors to want to manipulate things,” Dykstra said.
Anytime there’s a higher incentive, where people would want to manipulate data, prices, the books, finances or more, ZK proofs can be used to verify and retrieve the data.
Dykstra’s most recent concern is that AI data isn’t really verifiable.
Fisker is laying off 15% of staff and says it needs more cash ahead of a “difficult year”Electric vehicle startup Fisker is planning to lay off 15% of its workforce and says it likely does not have enough cash on hand to survive the next 12 months.
“[W]e have put a plan in place to streamline the company as we prepare for another difficult year,” founder and CEO Henrik Fisker said in a statement.
Fisker said Thursday that it finished 2023 with $396 million in cash, though $70 million of that is restricted.
The company says it is talking with one of its lenders about making “an additional investment” in the company.
Fisker has also been dealing with a number of problems with its Ocean SUV, its only model so far, as TechCrunch reported earlier this month.
Apple’s Vision Pro launch resembles its Apple Watch debut in more ways than one, but to me the most telling similarity is in the marketing approach.
The company took the same approach with the Apple Watch, which like its face computer cousin, was more or less a solution in search of a problem when it originally debuted.
But the iPhone debuted with a much more focused, and much more accurate idea of what it would become for users than the Apple Watch did.
The Vision Pro, I’d argue, is even more adrift from how and why people will come to appreciate it.
It’s terrible at a lot of other things – chief among them being the next big thing in the vein of personal computing or mobile.
Just how backed up are the venture capital markets today?
That’s what a recent data analysis indicates is happening today in one critical venture capital market.
The value of the most mature startups in the United States that need to find an exit neared the $1 trillion mark through Q3 2023, according to a recent PitchBook analysis.
The figure underscores how weak the exit climate has been over the last two years and highlights the sheer mass of illiquid equity investments made into startups that call the United States home.
Still, the United States’ venture capital market is worth about half of the global whole, so when we discuss Yankee territory, we’re nevertheless talking about a huge portion of the startup market.
Siri needs to get a lot smarter, and quickly Apple's voice assistant is being left in the dust by its competitorsHello from CES in Las Vegas!
During that trip, I used Siri more than I have in a long time — and it was an absolutely dreadful experience.
It’s mostly okay, but this journey drove it home for me: Apple is falling significantly behind in the voice assistant race.
Siri was one of the first voice assistants to be available on smartphones.
Google’s voice assistant has its stuff buttoned up tight, too.
Parallel Learning is solving that problem with a teletherapy platform that partners with school districts to create individualized plans for each student.
Parallel’s providers work with a school’s special education program (SPED) to develop a Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legal document in the United States that outlines the personalized education plan for a student with special needs.
Then when the pandemic hit and schools began struggling to serve their students, Heldfond knew it was time to bring her idea to fruition.
One of the main problems Parallel addresses is the shortage of behavioral and special education providers that work with children.
The company partners with K-12 public school districts, reaching out to special education directors, superintendents and others.
Beeper, the app that brings iMessage to Android users, is implementing a fix that it says will allow users to once again access the service after Apple blocked it.
However, the fix requires you to have access to a Mac computer, or have a friend on Beeper with a Mac.
“This 1:1 mapping of registration data to individual user—in our testing—makes the connection very reliable,” the post reads.
“If you use Beeper Mini, you can use your Mac registration data with it as well, and Beeper Mini will start to work again.
Beeper says that in its testing, it found that 10-20 iMessage users can safely use the same registration data.
What X needs most now is for Snap to post a solid Q4Not a day goes by without some drama involving Twitter X.
According to a recent report by Bloomberg, X’s ad revenue is expected to fall to $2.5 billion in 2023, and X is disputing the news, calling it incomplete.
Still, the report’s numbers line up neatly with what X’s owner said earlier this summer.
We’ll also revisit our previous look at Snap, another social network that is close-ish to X in scale and worth, to compare the two companies.
The question today is whether or not X’s revenues and valuation square up, so let’s dive in!
