The grass always needs to be mowed, and let’s face it, humans love the stuff, so a lawn-mowing business isn’t a bad idea for a startup! But how can you ensure it’s a profitable business? Starting a lawn care business need not be just about pushing a mower; it’s a chance to build something profitable … Read more
Some users on Elon Musk’s X are turning to Musk’s AI bot Grok for fact-checking, raising concerns among human fact-checkers that this could fuel misinformation. Earlier this month, X enabled users to call out xAI’s Grok and ask questions on different things. The move was similar to Perplexity, which has been running an automated account … Read more
Tesla received a permit Tuesday from the California Public Utilities Commission to operate a transportation service in the state, the beginning of a long regulatory road that could eventually lead to the company getting the OK to operate a robotaxi service there. The permit, which Tesla applied for in November 2024, doesn’t cover autonomous vehicle … Read more
Chinese search engine Baidu has launched two new AI models — Ernie 4.5, the latest version of the company’s foundational model first released two years ago, as well as a new reasoning model, Ernie X1. According to Reuters, Baidu claims that Ernie X1’s performance is “on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,”, … Read more
GTC, Nvidia’s biggest conference of the year, will return this week, with the biggest announcements probably coming Tuesday. If you can’t make it in person, don’t sweat it. TechCrunch will be on the ground covering the major developments. Many of the biggest presentations, talks, and panels will be livestreamed as well. The conference starts Monday, … Read more
Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician turned whistleblower who exposed mass surveillance by the U.S. government, has died at age 79. Klein went public in 2006 with documents revealing that the NSA was using a secret room in an AT&T hub in San Francisco to tap into the backbone of the internet. Behind the door … Read more
Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist, nonprofit founder, and former director of Twitter’s machine ethics team, had strong words for Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during an SXSW panel on Thursday. “When your funding is frozen and you don’t know if you’re gonna be fired, and there’s this, like, absolutely unhinged person … Read more
A U.K. competition authority investigation of Apple and Google’s mobile browsers has concluded that the mobile duopoly’s policies are “holding back innovation” and could also be limiting economic growth. “Mobile browsers are apps which provide the primary gateway for consumers to access the web on their mobile devices, and hence for businesses to reach them … Read more
Pocket Casts, the podcast app acquired by Automattic in 2021, is now making its web player free. The company says the move offers an alternative to the big platforms’ closed ecosystems, where algorithmic-driven content is prioritized and podcasts are kept behind paywalls. Podcasts were built on open technology — the open, decentralized standard RSS, which … Read more
Cheaper, lighter, and denser: the trifecta defines an ideal battery. No one has devised a perfect cell quite yet, but one stealthy startup thinks it has found a new material that solves at least two of those challenges. Daqus Energy has been quietly operating for the past four months, refining a compound known as TAQ … Read more