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.
This week Boston Dynamics retired its well-known Atlas robot that was powered by hydraulics.
Then today it unveiled its new Atlas robot, which is powered by electricity.
Its new Atlas robot is leaner, and appears to have improved range-of-motion.
Size and ability to contort and maneuver are not cosmetic elements to a humanoid robot — they can unlock new use cases and possible work environments.
Happily for those of us who want a domestic robot to handle household chores and hold our hands whilst we cry, there are other startups working on the humanoid robot project.
Tesla’s layoffs and executive departures took a bite out its share price this week.
The well-known electric vehicle company shed around 10% of its staff, impacting an estimated 14,000 staff or more.
It missed delivery estimates for the first quarter, has reportedly reduced hours for the production-line of its Cybertruck, and is seeing rivals in China stack market share with low-priced EVs.
Tesla, in other words, helped foster the global electric vehicle market, but is losing some of its primacy in that same market.
In human terms, for every dollar of car that Tesla sells, it generates far more company worth than its rivals.
Apple’s stance on the right to repair has now become more accommodative, with the company now supporting used parts for iPhone 15 repairs that can include the camera, display, and battery.
While Apple’s move is welcome to many, it does answer a series of questions: If your iPhone breaks, should you have the right to fix it?
If you want to fix your iPhone, should you be able to do that yourself, or be forced to go to the manufacturer?
And if you are going to fix your iPhone yourself — or pay a third-party to help — should you be able to use whatever parts will work?
Apple pushed back vocally against criticism of parts pairing, and has recently backed laws in several states that enshrine consumer repair options.
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.
Spotify is building on its AI DJ feature, adding a new AI-powered playlist feature.
Spotify’s AI work nests into its other efforts to differentiate its service from rivals like Apple Music and offerings from Amazon.
Starting in just a few countries, the new AI playlist feature will roll out to more markets over time.
Some Spotify users have complained that the rollout of new products can take longer than they want to reach their home market, it’s worth noting.
But for those of us who aren’t mega-ChatGPT users, AI can seem ever so slightly remote from our regular existence.
It’s time for Google’s annual look up to the cloud, this time with a big dose of AI.
At 9 a.m. PT, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian will kick off the opening keynote for this year’s Google Cloud Next event, and you can watch it live right here.
After this week we’ll know more about Google’s attempts to help the enterprise enter the age of AI.
From a deeper dive into Gemini, the company’s AI-powered chatbot, to securing AI products and implementing generative AI into cloud applications, Google plans to cover it all.
Such is the case with Anthropic and its latest research which demonstrates an interesting vulnerability in current LLM technology.
Of course given progress in open-source AI technology, you can spin up your own LLM locally and just ask it whatever you want, but for more consumer-grade stuff this is an issue worth pondering.
But the closer we get to more generalized AI intelligence, the more it should resemble a thinking entity, and not a computer that we can program, right?
If so, we might have a harder time nailing down edge cases to the point when that work becomes unfeasible?
Anyway, let’s talk about what Anthropic recently shared.
Facebook is introducing a new, full-screen video player on Wednesday, which offers a more consistent design and experience for all types of video lengths, including short-form Reels, long-form videos, and even Live content.
These improved recommendations will also appear outside the player, on the Facebook Feed and Video tab.
Facebook says its upgraded player will also offer new controls like a full-screen mode for horizontal videos and a slider to skip around in longer videos.
TikTok, by comparison, has also tested horizontal videos and long-form content of 30 minutes as it looks to compete with YouTube and other sites.
The timing of the video player change also comes at a time when U.S. lawmakers are weighing a possible TikTok ban, which, if enacted, could increase video consumption on other social platforms.
Death, taxes, and regular, terrifying cybersecurity leaks.
Those are the facts of life, as the latest AT&T data breach is teaching us yet again.
A TechCrunch investigation into leaked customer data from the American telco giant has led to AT&T resetting certain customer account passcodes to prevent them from being at risk.
The root of the security weakness is a massive, and AT&T’s data breach included a leaked dataset concerning more than seventy million former and current AT&T account holders.
Only a fraction are still current, but the scale of the leaked dataset that TechCrunch dug into makes it plain that despite huge amounts of work and investment, there are still regular, exploitable, and dangerous for consumers.
