The great nightly Waymo honk-a-thon — in which the company’s robotaxis erupted into a chorus of honking as they settled into their respective spaces in a parking lot in San Francisco — was resolved. And then, well, it wasn’t. But now it is again. The quick backstory: Software engineer Sophia Tung set up a livestream of a parking […]
The Waymo robotaxi honking problem has been resolved for real this time Read More »
Zoom on Monday announced a new single-user webinar feature that caps out at 1 million attendees. The addition comes less than a month after the #WinWithBlackWomen fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris peaked at 44,000 users before crashing. More recently, an X interview between owner Elon Musk and Harris’ challenger, Donald Trump, crashed prior to
Now a million people can watch you fumble Zoom’s screen-share settings at once Read More »
Data analytics company Palantir has faced criticism and even protests over its work with the military, police, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, but co-founder and CEO Alex Karp isn’t interested in “the apology show.” In a lengthy New York Times profile, Karp told writer Maureen Dowd that the company has “a consistently pro-Western view”
Palantir CEO Alex Karp is ‘not going to apologize’ for military work Read More »
While the ethics of AI-generated porn are still under debate, using the technology to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of people is, I think we can all agree, reprehensible. One such method is “undressing” sites, which take a normal, clothed photo of a person and generate a fake nude version from it. As you might imagine,
A hellish new AI threat: ‘Undressing’ sites targeted by SF authorities Read More »
HighPost Capital, a private equity firm run by Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos’ younger brother, and PE veteran David Moross, has launched a new venture capital arm called HIPstr. And with it, fresh capital to invest in startups. The new entity just announced its first VC fund of $100 million. HighPost Capital focuses on consumer companies and
Jeff Bezos’ brother’s firm has launched a debut $100M VC fund called HIPstr Read More »
Benchmarking stalwarts Primate Labs on Thursday released Geekbench AI 1.0. The app, which is currently available for Android, Linux, MacOS and Windows, applies Geekbench’s principles to machine learning, deep learning and other AI workloads, in a bid to standardize performance ratings across platforms. It’s a successor to Geekbench ML (machine learning), which was announced in
Geekbench releases AI benchmarking app Read More »
Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks is getting a lot of grief for a recent trade show event in which two women posed with lampshades on their heads. The debacle — which unflatteringly recalls the CES booth babes of the early ’90s and 2000s — reportedly happened at a happy hour hosted by CyberRisk Collaborative and
Analytics and AI giant Databricks reportedly paid nearly $2 billion when it acquired Tabular in June, a startup that was only doing $1 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Bloomberg. That’s a pretty outrageous exit multiple, and it was purportedly fueled by a battle between Databricks and Snowflake. Tabular had over $30 million in
Databricks reportedly paid $2 billion in Tabular acquisition Read More »
Texas-based carbon black company Orion informed investors that it lost $60 million after falling victim to a criminal scheme that resulted in “multiple fraudulently induced outbound wire transfers to accounts controlled by unknown third parties.” No further specifics were given, but these schemes typically involve fraudsters tricking employees at a company — often in finance
Texas firm says it lost $60M in a bank wire transfer scam Read More »
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have acquired a screenplay called “Killing Gawker,” which presumably delves into billionaire VC Peter Thiel’s campaign to bury the media outfit for posting excerpts from a Hulk Hogan sex tape. The film is based on a book that details the 2016 court case in which Hogan won a $140 million
Thiel’s Gawker takedown could be coming to a theater near you Read More »
