Privacy-focused consumer tech company DuckDuckGo launched a subscription plan last year that bundled a VPN service, personal information removal, and identity theft restoration. The company said Thursday that the subscription now gives users access to the latest AI models through Duck.ai without paying extra. The Duck.ai chatbot is free to use, and users get access…
During a press conference on Monday, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, showed off a Huawei smartphone that China’s President Xi Jinping gifted him, calling it “the best phone in the world,” and making a bold claim. “The Americans can’t hack it, neither their spy planes, nor their satellites,” Maduro said. The phone looked like a Mate…
Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry and hitting, as he put it, a “crisis,” he made an undeniably optimistic bet: he started a space company. “You ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’” he said in a recent interview. “I got offered some interesting opportunities, but…
After years of people constantly nudging Instagram about releasing an iPad app, the social network is finally launching one today. This means users will no longer need to use the iPhone app, which is not optimized for larger screens, or Instagram for web on the iPad. The new app defaults to the Reels screen, allowing…
Amid lawsuits alleging child safety concerns, online gaming service Roblox announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its age-estimation technology to all users and partnering with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to provide age and content ratings for the games and apps on its platform. The company said that by year’s end, the age-estimation system…
Google’s AI note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM now lets users customize the tone of their Audio Overviews, which are podcasts with AI virtual hosts that summarize and discuss documents shared with NotebookLM, such as course readings or legal briefs. When generating an Audio Overview, users can now choose whether they want their AI podcasts to…
Inspired by his grandparents, who were apple farmers in China, Charlie Wu got the idea to apply technology to agriculture while studying computer science at Cornell University, a top agriculture school. “I got to meet fruit professors who are the best in the world at what they do,” Wu told TechCrunch. “Through talking to them,…
Google announced on Wednesday that it’s bringing a slew of new features to the Android ecosystem and Pixel devices. The tech giant is introducing Material 3 Expressive to Pixel phones, Adaptive Audio for the Pixel Buds Pro 2, on-wrist navigation for the Pixel Watch, new AI writing tools in Gboard, enhanced audio sharing capabilities, the…
The world’s most-flown rocket may start flying even more. U.S. regulators have completed a key environmental review that paves the way for SpaceX to more than double the number of Falcon 9 launches from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In addition to the annual launch increase from 50 launches to up to 120, the…
While quick commerce in India has become synonymous with 10-minute deliveries — and the hottest play for startups and investors — FirstClub is taking a slower, more curated route. Yet just three months after launching its app, the 8-month-old startup has tripled its valuation. At a post-money valuation of $120 million, the Bengaluru-based startup has…
