TikTok is working towards launching a new app called TikTok Notes that will allow users to post images in an apparent bid to rival Instagram, a service best known for its static-photo sharing feature.
Instagram, of course, has expanded into video and stories itself, taking pieces of other services and incorporating them into its own product.
As is nearly every social service you can imagine.
If it works for one social media service, expect the rest to follow in some manner at some point — probably sooner rather than later.
Expanding a feature set can bolster engaged time, and therefore how much revenue a social media service can earn.
Privacy-focused consumer tech company DuckDuckGo launched a new Privacy Pro subscription on Thursday that bundles a VPN service, personal information removal, and identity theft restoration.
This is the company’s first move towards a subscription service built into the DuckDuckGo browser.
With personal information removal service, DuckDuckGo scans dozens of data broker sites to find details like your name and address.
(At that time, Removaly’s founder, Kyle Krzeski, posted on X that a privacy company acquired the startup without naming it.)
The third feature of DuckDuckGo’s privacy pro plan is identity theft restoration, where an advisor would help you recover your identity-related loss around the clock.
Switzerland-based Proton, the privacy-focused firm behind end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) webmail ProtonMail and other apps, has acquired Standard Notes, a note-taking app founded back in 2017.
By adding Standard Notes to its portfolio of apps, Proton will deepen its reach with an engaged community of pro-privacy users, layering on additional cross-selling opportunities as well as boosting the utility of its app ecosystem.
And while there is some usage overlap, a Proton spokesperson said that less than a quarter of Standard Notes users are already Proton users.
Proton said the Standard Notes app, which is available for both mobile and desktop, will remain “open source, freely available and fully supported”.
Commenting in a statement, Mo Bitar, founder and CEO of Standard Notes, talked up the sense of shared mission.
Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post.
Cruise will resume manual driving of its autonomous vehicles to create maps and gather road information in certain cities, starting with Phoenix, the company said Tuesday.
Cruise has not announced when or where it will resume driverless operations.
The company’s main operations were historically based in San Francisco, but Cruise lost its permits to operate there following the accident.
Cruise began expanding its paid service area in the Phoenix area in August 2023.
Using Deadline Cloud, customers in media and entertainment as well as architecture and engineering can leverage AWS compute to render content for TV shows, movies, ads, video games and digital blueprints, said AWS GM of creative tools Antony Passemard.
Deadline Cloud then provisions Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances and manages the network and compute infrastructure.
And — for customers with on-premises compute — Deadline Cloud integrates with this compute and uses it to execute rendering jobs.
With Deadline Cloud, customers can link their own third-party software licenses with the service or leverage usage-based licensing for rendering with existing rendering tools (e.g.
As Passemard alluded to, the rise of generative AI has fueled the demand for rendering hardware, too, and led to the creation of entirely new cloud-based, GPU-accelerated providers.
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The feature, spotted first by the TGInfoEn Telegram channel (via reverse engineer AssembleDebug), is rolling out in select countries for Telegram for Android users.
If you agree to let Telegram use your number as an OTP relay, the company will send you a transferable code for Telegram Premium.
The terms of service for this peer-to-peer login program notes that the company will send a maximum of 150 OTP messages per month.
From a monetary perspective, you might end up paying more through your phone bill than the value of Telegram’s premium membership.
However, users opting into the peer-to-peer login system have to think if giving out their phone number to strangers to save a few bucks is worth the hassle.
So, your partner could very well have an STI, but Calmara would tell you he’s in the clear.
That’s why actual STI tests use blood and urine samples to detect infection, as opposed to a visual exam.
It does not involve any medical conditions or discussions within its framework, and no medical doctors are involved with the current Calmara experience.
“The clear idea is to initiate a conversation regarding STI status and testing.”Calmara is part of HeHealth, which was founded in 2019.
Calmara and HeHealth use the same AI, which it says is 65-90% accurate.
One Bay Area startup called Amber thinks it can help them navigate that minefield, starting with Tesla owners.
When owners file a claim, Amber works with qualified repair shops to find the right parts and fix what’s wrong, and will transport the vehicle.
AmberCare is the latest addition to a growing economy built around used EVs.
One group is anyone who is looking to buy a used EV but is scared away by the thought of expensive, time-consuming repairs.
There are other unexpected things to consider in the process of repairing an EV that Pak thinks AmberCare can help with, like transportation.
Autonomous vehicle technology startup Motional has secured a bridge loan that provides a temporary financial reprieve as the company searches for a longer-term source of funding, TechCrunch has learned.
Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma told staff in a companywide email viewed by TechCrunch that the company’s board of directors approved the bridge financing.
After a wave of consolidation and shutdowns in the nascent autonomous vehicle industry, Motional is one of the few companies left that’s still pursuing a commercial robotaxi service.
The company operates an autonomous vehicle taxi service in Las Vegas (still with human safety operators behind the wheel) on Uber, Lyft and Via platforms.
The autonomous vehicle company last had layoffs in December 2022, when it cut about 10% of its workforce.
