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Activision took down Call of Duty game after PC players hacked, says source

Games giant Activision took down “Call of Duty: WWII” due to hackers exploiting a flaw in a specific PC version of the game, which led to several players getting their computers hacked, TechCrunch has learned.  Last week, Activision announced that it brought offline the Microsoft Store version of “Call of Duty: WWII,” a 2017 first-person

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Tulum Energy rediscovered a forgotten hydrogen tech and used it to raise $27M

It was a mistake that was ahead of its time. Between 2002 and 2005, engineers with the Techint Group were trying to dial in a new electric arc furnace for a steelmaker when they noticed something odd. The carbon electrodes, rather than breaking down, were growing larger.  The team had inadvertently created what’s known as

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Slate Auto drops “under $20,000” pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit

Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has stopped promoting that its upcoming pickup truck will start “under $20,000” following passage of President Trump’s tax cut bill. The bill, which is expected to be signed into law by Trump on July 4, will cause the federal EV tax credit to end in September — a $7,500

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Castelion is raising a $350M Series B to scale hypersonic missile business

Hypersonic weapons startup Castelion is raising a $350 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Altimeter Capital, according to sources and documents viewed by TechCrunch. The round, which values the company in the billions, is anticipated to close in a matter of weeks. A term sheet has been signed. The new round comes

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Israeli quantum startup Qedma just raised $26 million, with IBM joining in

Despite their imposing presence, quantum computers are delicate beasts, and their errors are among the main bottlenecks that the quantum computing community is actively working to address. Failing this, promising applications in finance, drug discovery, and materials science may never become real. That’s the reason why Google touted the error correction capacities of its latest

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Data breach reveals Catwatchful ‘stalkerware’ is spying on thousands of phones

A security vulnerability in a stealthy Android spyware operation called Catwatchful has exposed thousands of its customers, including its administrator.  The bug, which was discovered by security researcher Eric Daigle, spilled the spyware app’s full database of email addresses and plaintext passwords that Catwatchful customers use to access the data stolen from the phones of

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Rivian cuts dozens on manufacturing team ahead of R2 launch

Rivian has laid off around 140 employees, or roughly 1% of its workforce, as it prepares for the launch of its more affordable R2 SUV in 2026, TechCrunch has learned. The cuts were mostly made to Rivian’s manufacturing team and have been ongoing since Wednesday, according to multiple former employees who were granted anonymity to

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Nascent Materials emerges from stealth to make LFP batteries better and cheaper

Lithium-ion batteries have dropped in cost by 75% over the past decade, a marvel of research and development that isn’t the result of a singular breakthrough but of myriad incremental improvements. Few know that better than Chaitanya Sharma, founder of the stealthy Nascent Materials. Sharma spent a little over two years working at Tesla’s Gigafactory

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