The United States Department of Energy is dedicating $15.5 billion to support the transition to electric vehicles. As part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, most of the money will go to automakers and suppliers to retool their plants to produce electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, the agency said Thursday. […]
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Thursday, 31 August 2023
Robotics sales decline for second straight quarter amid economic woes
Sooner or later, the numbers were going to contract. Broadly speaking, the pandemic has been a gamechanger for automation broadly and robotics specifically. But not even those categories are immune from macro trends. Per new numbers from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) — whose job it is to track such things — North American […]
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Texas cannot yet enforce ID checks on porn sites
A Texas judge issued an injunction today to stall the enforcement of an online age verification bill. The Free Speech Coalition, along with adult video sites like Pornhub, led the legal challenge against Texas’ HB 1181, arguing that the bill violates the First Amendment and infringes on rights guaranteed by Section 230. “The Court agrees […]
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Letitia James Wants To Take Trump Down Without Even Going To Court
New York Attorney General Letitia James has investigated former President Donald Trump for a while. She knew about his dubious financial dealings, so she devised an idea. Without a trial, James asked a judge to find that the twice-impeached former President had fraudulently overvalued his assets. James feels that her evidence is so compelling that she thinks she'll get a guilty verdict without even a trial.
James sued Trump before he was indicted four times, saying that for years the former President, his business, and members of his family had fraudulently overvalued their assets by billions of dollars. I'm sure you've heard about Trump's dubious practices in overvaluing his properties.
The New York Times reports:
Before any of those criminal trials will take place, Mr. Trump is scheduled for a civil trial in New York in October. During the trial, the attorney general, Letitia James, will seek to bar him and three of his children from leading their family business, the Trump Organization, and to require him to pay a fine of around $250 million.
On Wednesday, Ms. James fired an opening salvo, arguing that a trial is not necessary to find that Mr. Trump and the other defendants inflated the value of their assets in annual financial statements, fraudulently obtaining favorable loans and insurance arrangements.
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Lowering costs nets Salesforce a profitable quarter, but can it keep it up?
Salesforce had a better quarter than expected, but it's reporting and forecasting those results based on prior work, to a real degree.
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Wednesday, 30 August 2023
Substack introduces new AI-powered audio transcription tools
Substack is introducing new AI-powered tools that are designed to make podcasting on the platform easier, the company announced on Wednesday. With these new tools, users can easily generate transcripts and audiograms. Users can now use an AI tool to create a transcript of their podcast episode or narration in about a minute. Once you […]
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Savor the complete SaaS Stage agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023
Software as a service (SaaS) is an ever-evolving industry, especially now with AI changing the software landscape yet again. It’s why we dedicated a day and a stage to the topic at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. We teased some of the programming a few weeks back, and today we’re excited to announce that the SaaS Stage […]
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Alabama State Rep Arrested On Voter Fraud Charges
Shades of Trump crony Mark Meadows...
Source: Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama legislator was arrested Tuesday on felony voter fraud charges accusing him of voting in a district where he did not live.
Republican Rep. David Cole of Huntsville was arrested on charges of voting in an unauthorized location, according to Madison County Jail records.
The details of the charge were not immediately available in court records, but the arrest comes after accusations that Cole did not live in the district in which he was elected.
Cole, a doctor and Army veteran, was elected to the House of Representatives last year.
Voter fraud is a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
David Cole, a reporter with ALReporter with some of the more ludicrous details of the story he broke months ago.
According to all information, Cole and his family still lived at the home in District 4. Or, at least, they still claimed that address as their primary residence on tax documents.
Not only that, but the address Cole had listed on his qualifying papers was owned by a different person. And neither home had been sold or leased within the last 12 months, according to real estate records.
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Tuesday, 29 August 2023
With Losses, Russia Turns To Horses To Send Troops Into Battle
I guess.
Probably ok for moving soldiers around and carrying loads. Not so great against tanks though I imagine.
Source: Defence Blog
The Russian army still sends troops into battle on the backs of four-legged creatures.
Local media reported that Russians now use their horses to transport weapons and equipment to hard-to-reach places.
The horses were brought to Ukraine from Russia’s autonomous republic of Bashkiria.
The horses were brought to Ukraine at the request of the regiment commander with the call sign “Bashkir,” in which the mobilized from the republic serve.
“We can use shishigas [GAZ-66 trucks] and quad bikes. But with them, there is a risk of being detected. But in the morning dawn on horses, we can silently and discreetly deliver everything we need to the combat positions. On two horses, it’s about 200 kilograms. You can make two trips in the morning,” Bashkir said.
Starfish Space pulls Otter Pup servicing vehicle back from “the brink of death”
Against all odds, Starfish Space has managed to pull its first orbital mission back from the brink of catastrophe, with the startup saying Tuesday that it has re-gained control over the Otter Pup spacecraft that had been rapidly tumbling through space. The Kent, Washington-based startup said it will now move ahead with an “extensive checkout” […]
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Meta avatars are finally getting legs (in beta)
It’s time to beta test Meta’s greatest technological innovation since the News Feed: legs. Now on Meta Quest headsets, you can download an update that lets you walk on two feet, just like our ancient ancestor, the Ardipithecus ramidus, an early hominid that achieved bipedality 4.4 million years ago. Now, it comes full circle. When […]
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Newsmax Hella Mad At Oliver Anthony For Not Being MAGA
Oliver Anthony's devoted base over his out-of-the-blue song 'Rich Men North of Richmond' is suddenly not so loyal. I became a fan of his music, and like others, I suspected that he was a right winger, but you don't have to do the politics thing with good music. His song reminded me of my old protest days during Occupy Wall Street. I suspect that everyone had a time that they could relate the song to.
And much to Anthony's surprise, his song was used during the Republican Primary Presidential debate. He found that funny because the song was about the individuals on stage.
"Well, it was funny seeing my song in the presidential debate, like I wrote that song about those people, so for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up," he said, adding that the song had nothing to do with Joe Biden.
Newsmax is not happy about that.
"Oh, well, of course, they're (the left) excited about this because he's not overtly coming out as partisan," the Newsmax contributor said. "But when I initially saw this headline, I was like, are you kidding me?"
Then she suggested that Oliver Anthony owes MAGA something.
"Like, this is a group of people that made your song wildly famous, and you can't write a song that's only about politics," she continued. "He's not talking about rainbows and butterflies, okay? He's talking about politics and then wondering why the political zeitgeist picks this up."
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Announcing the complete AI Stage agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023
AI — the tech that’s everywhere and touching everything — keeps evolving at a pace that’s surprising even in an industry where change is just about the only constant. It’s complicated, unregulated, thrilling and unnerving all at once. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, we’re dedicating a day and a stage to this galloping industry — and […]
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Monday, 28 August 2023
Cruise is bringing its robotaxis to Seattle and Washington, DC
Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, said Monday it has begun manual data collection in Seattle and Washington, DC, the first step toward launching commercial services in the cities. Data collection involves manually driving a robotaxi around to grab information on the local driving environment and climate. The next step will be mapping the […]
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A new creator’s guild aims to protect online content creators
Content creation is work, but in such a rapidly shifting social media landscape, creators face an uphill battle fighting for fair pay and ownership of their content — typically without any institutional support. The Creators Guild of America (CGA) wants to change that. The CGA, which launched last week, describes itself as a “professional service […]
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Survey finds relatively few Americans actually use (or fear) ChatGPT
From its prominence in the tech world, you might think that everyone on the planet is using ChatGPT or some other AI tool for everything from automating their job to planning their garden. But recent Pew polling suggests the language model isn’t quite as popular or threatening as some would have you think. Ongoing polling […]
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Connections is The New York Times’ most played game after Wordle
The gamers behind the Gray Lady have a new game to add into our morning rotations: Connections, which invites the player to categorize 16 words or phrases into four distinct groups of four.
The daily puzzle game debuted in beta on June 12, and according to The New York Times, it’s now the paper’s second most popular game — of course, Wordle holds the top spot. This is an impressive feat for the game, since until today, it was only playable on web browsers. But now, the game will be integrated into The New York Times and New York Times Games apps on iOS and Android, bringing in even more players.
“Each day reveals a clever, thoughtful, relevant, human-made puzzle that tries to trick you, and makes the challenge of solving it extremely rewarding,” said New York Times head of games Jonathan Knight (isn’t it wild that he has to clarify the game is made by humans?).
The Times also said that about nine out of 10 people who play the game will see it through until the end, whether they win or lose; per Knight’s prepared statements, the game has “millions” of players, and is the most popular in-house game launch since the Mini, a bite-sized crossword.
Earlier this month, the Times sunsetted its math game Digits, which was also in beta. With the integration into The New York Times’ apps, Connections fans can rest easy knowing that the game is here to stay.
The New York Times’ gaming section has been booming since its acquisition of Wordle last year. Just a few months after buying Wordle, The New York Times said that the game had brought in tens of millions of new users.
Connections isn’t quite the once-in-a-blue-moon viral phenomenon that was Wordle, but if you like wordplay, it’s pretty darn fun.
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Angry Miao’s AM AFA R2 is part sculpture, part keyboard
Whether you love their keyboards or not, there can be no doubt that Angry Miao doesn’t do things halfway. The AM 65 Less is an exercise in building a high-quality 65% keyboard that replaced the cursor keys with a touch panel. The AM Hatsu looks like it was imported from the future, while the Cyberboard would almost be a conventional keyboard if it wasn’t for its massive LED panel. With the AM AFA, the company introduced its version of an Alice-style ergonomic layout last year and now it’s back with a second run of this anime-inspired mechanical keyboard.
As always, it’s almost impossible to find fault with Angry Miao’s build quality. This is a solid board, weighing in at just under five pounds (or 2.26 kilos) and like the AM Hatsu, it’ll ship in Angry Miao’s signature suitcase-style case. The design, with the wide-open pattern at the front and back, makes it seem almost weightless and like it floats on your desktop, though — especially as you sit in front of it. It’s a smart design trick and exactly what you would expect from Angry Miao.
In addition to the sculpture-like metal frame, the actual keyboard actually consists of three interconnected parts that help to create this illusion. The two halves of the keyboard are actually separate pieces of hardware, with the control module (which now features a cover made from real glass compared to the plastic cover of the first version) in the middle. They are connected through very thin ribbon cables that you never really see in day-to-day use, making the design feel even more open.
The company says it takes roughly 10 hours of CNC processing and manual polishing to create the metal structure.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Let’s just get the prices out of the way, because this is not a budget keyboard: The base kit without switches and keycaps will retail for $680 and the full bundle goes for $795. That’s a lot, but not out of the ordinary for a high-end mechanical keyboard (and the AM Hatsu cost is closer to $1,600). In the U.S., it’ll be available as a group buy through Space Cables, starting at 8 pm PT on August 31.
Image Credits: Angry Miao
For the most part, the AM AFA is a standard hot-swap Alice-style board, with the usual slightly curved and angled split layout and 68 keys. But this is Angry Miao, so you’ll quickly find some quirks as well. The distance between the two halves is significantly larger than that on a standard Alice layout, at 64.5 millimeters. To me, that makes for a more comfortable typing position.
The company also decided to put the right shift button to the right of the up arrow, for example. If you often use right shift, that’s going to take some getting used to. It made me realize I’m 100% a left shift user, so it never bothered me, but your mileage may vary. Another twist here is that the team put the page up, down and delete keys on the left side of the keyboard, inverting what most users would expect. Because that doesn’t affect any of my day-to-day typing, I didn’t mind that change and got used to it fairly quickly.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
With this second run of the keyboard, the company is introducing five new designs. The version the company sent me was the gold and green “Magic Forest” edition, inspired by Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. There’s also a slightly tuned version of the first version of the AM AFA, the Macross-inspired VF-19, Pink Slayer, Cyber Cop and Unit-01. The Magic Forest colors are definitely striking, even as I admit that I personally wouldn’t necessarily have chosen it.
If you don’t quite like the choice of top plate, there’s another nice feature here: Those top plates are magnetic and very easy to replace. Angry Miao will include four alternative plates with the retail version.
Image Credits: Angry Miao
Like with the first version, Angry Miao uses its three-stage adjustable leaf spring mount to allow users to adjust the bounce of the keyboard. With the first edition, changing those springs was rather arduous. You had to remove a total of 24 screws and pretty much completely disassemble the entire keyboard. That didn’t exactly invite a lot of experimentation. With this new version, you only have to remove the magnetic top plate, remove eight screws and remove the ribbon cables from both sides and you have full access to the springs. That’s because now the PCB assembly sits inside what’s essentially a tray, making it very easy to take apart. Out of the box — or in this case, the suitcase — you get all of the tools you need to make these changes.
I think the spring leaves are one of Angry Miao’s best innovations. I prefer a slightly bouncy keyboard and the default option works quite well for me. Now that it’s easy enough to change them, though, I think most buyers will experiment with different options, and adding and removing springs (there are stainless steel and copper ones) actually makes an appreciable difference to how the board feels. Also included in the box are bottom and adjustment pads that slightly change the sound of the board but don’t make too much of a difference for the actual typing feel.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Talking about typing feel, the AM AFA bundle comes with Angry Miao’s linear Icy Silver switches. I’ve never had any complaints about those in the company’s other keyboards and they remain a solid option. There’s no scratch and very little wobble. With an initial force of 45g, they sit right in my personal sweet spot. Since this is a hot-swap board, though, you can easily change them out for another type of switch — even a clicky one. I won’t judge you.
I don’t love the transparent Glacier Dark keycaps quite as much. They are frosted inside, which makes for a really nice light show from the PCB board’s LEDs, but they are a bit too glossy and smooth for my liking. Unlike many of the cheaper transparent keycaps you can find on Amazon and elsewhere, they do feel rather premium, though — and also enhance the keyboard’s overall sound. I would’ve preferred the excellent triple-shot keycaps Angry Miao used for the AM 65 Less, but that’s purely a personal preference.
Image Credits: Angry Miao
Personally, I really like the overall sound profile of the AM AFA. It’s not too loud, but you’ll know when you press a key. The sound resembles that of two pool balls colliding, which is close to my personal ideal. Using a different bottom foam and changing out the switches and keycaps allows you to tune this to your heart’s desire. Unlike with most keyboards, I was perfectly happy with the default here, though.
Also included in the bundle, by the way, are Angry Miao’s Hover wrist rests. I found the keyboard low enough to type on it without a wrist wrest, but the twist here is that we’re talking about two individual round wrist rests. In good Angry Miao tradition, they can flexibly take on any angle, with opposing magnets in the middle providing some additional cushioning and support. It’s a nifty trick, though I don’t think it’s a must-have. I found myself using a cheap wooden wrist rest I bought for a Keychron Q8 and while it wasn’t a perfect fit, it was a better solution for my typing style.
I always wish Angry Miao would support QMK/VIA for customizing its keyboards’ layout and lighting setup. The company’s own software is passable, though I always feel like it’s a bit of an afterthought. I don’t spend a lot of time modifying my layout, so it’s not a dealbreaker for me, but you’d be right to expect a bit more.
As with all of these high-end keyboards, whether they are worth their price for you is a personal decision. If I were in the market for a $750 board, though, I think the AM AFA is definitely worth a look. For most people, a Keychron Q8 or Q10 (either in their Pro or standard versions) are perfectly good Alice-style boards for far less (at $210 for a Q8 Pro, for example). The AM AFA is unabashedly a luxury board but it has the build quality and design to back that up.
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Reliance’s 5G hotspot Jio AirFiber to hit stores next month in broadband push
Jio Platforms on Monday launched the AirFiber, a wireless plug-and-play 5G hotspot, as the top Indian top telecom operator races to make a dent to the broadband market.
With the Jio AirFiber, first showcased last year, Reliance plans to expand its 5G user base and replace wired broadband connections. The device will be available from September 19. Details on the pricing are yet to be announced.
“We can currently connect around 15,000 premises daily, but with Jio AirFiber, we can supercharge this expansion with up to 150,000 connections per day. This is a 10-fold increase, expanding our addressable market over the next three years to over 200 million high-paying homes and premises,” said Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani at the company’s annual general meeting Monday.
The device works with the Jio Home app to let users manage, grant and restrict Wi-Fi access. Reliance also provides an AI-driven Proactive Quality Monitoring feature, touted to automatically optimize the Wi-Fi network based on usage patterns and prevent “most issues even before they occur.”
Earlier this month, Jio arch-rival Bharti Airtel launched the Xstream AirFiber to answer the Jio offering. The Xstream AirFiber comes with a 100 Mbps monthly plan that costs around $10 per month with a six-month commitment and a refundable security deposit of over $30.
Jio launched its 5G services in India last year, which have now reached over 50 million subscribers, covering more than 96% of the census towns in the country.
The operator aims to provide its advanced cellular network to “every town” in India by the end of 2023. Jio has more than 450 million subscribers in the country, with the average user consuming 25GB of data per month, the Indian conglomerate said at its annual meeting.
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Reliance appoints Ambani’s children to board, wife resigns
Reliance Industries said Monday it has appointed the three children of billionaire Mukesh Ambani — Isha Ambani, Akash Ambani and Anant Ambani — to its board, the latest in the succession plan at the country’s largest company, which operates the nation’s largest telecom operator and retail chain.
Nita, Ambani’s wife, has resigned from the board, said the $202 billion oil-to-retail giant in a statement, published on the local stock exchange.
The early signs of the succession planning has been apparent in recent years with 66-year-old Ambani promoting his children to lead many of the empire’s businesses. Akash leads the digital business, Jio Platforms, whereas his twin sister Isha helms Reliance Retail. Anant leads the new energy business.
“Isha Ambani, Akash Ambani and Anant Ambani have been closely involved with and are leading and managing key businesses of RIL over the last few years including retail, digital services and energy and materials businesses,” the company said in a statement.
“They also serve on the boards of the key subsidiaries of RIL. Their appointment to the Board of RIL will enable RIL to gain from their insights and infuse new ideas, the Board opined.”
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Sunday, 27 August 2023
After Threads, Bluesky also adds a way to see your own likes
Bluesky introduced a bunch of updates on Friday to its mobile apps and website including a new tab to see your own likes, notification support for apps, and an emoji picker for the web composer.
Earlier this month, Bluesky’s rival Threads added a new tab in settings, called “Your Likes,” to let users look at their own liked posts. In contrast, Bluesky has added a “Likes” tab to users’ profiles. The placement of the tab is similar to X (formerly Twitter), but unlike the Elon Musk-owned social network, Bluesky doesn’t let you see liked posts of other people.
Bluesky has added a new likes tab
The platform specified in a post that the likes of a user can be accessed through the API as they are public. While the native client doesn’t show them, other apps can choose to include functionality to display the likes of other users.
Additionally, the social network has also added the ability to suggest people to mention when someone types an “@” in the composer. This update is available across platforms. In another composer-related enhancement, Bluesky has added an emoji picker on the web. In its latest update, Bluesky is also adding notifications to its mobile apps.
Earlier this week, Bluesky added rate limits to actions like resetting passwords or updating the user handle to stabilize network traffic. The social media company took this action, as last week after Musk announced that X would be removing the “block” feature, Bluesky briefly failed to handle the load of the new traffic on the site.
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Dear MAGAs, No, You're Not Patriots
Leigh McGowan is raining righteous hellfire again. But instead of taking on Trump again, she's calling out all his little MAGAts, who falsely call themselves "patriots," despite the fact that they are trying to deny justice, sow further disharmony in the country and threaten violence in defense of the biggest crime boss in this country's history. She lays out all the facts - that TFG has been impeached twice, indicted four times in three different states and hit with 91 charges. She goes on to correctly point out that the bullshit about it being a witch hunt or political hackery or even political retaliation is just that - bullshit. All the witnesses against him are his own people. He was indicted by juries of his peers. There was nothing political about it. But if you can stare at the growing mountains of evidence and still claim that TFG is somehow innocent, or even more laughably, a victim, so be it. But don't you dare call yourself a patriot. You're nothing more than Trump's parrot.
Open thread below...
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Tesla’s China rival Xpeng buys ride hailing giant Didi’s EV unit
Chinese electric vehicle upstart Xpeng is acquiring the smart EV unit of Didi, China’s ride hailing giant, marking another significant alliance that the Tesla challenge has struck in recent months.
In an announcement on Monday, Didi said the duo is forming a strategic partnership to “promote the global application of smart electric vehicles and technologies.” The amount of the deal wasn’t disclosed.
Notably, the Didi assets will become a new sub-brand called “Mona” under Xpeng, which is scheduled to launch in 2024. The partnership also extends to areas including marketing, financial insurance services, charging and international expansion.
The news followed on the heels of Volkswagen’s $700 million investment in Xpeng which would see the production of two new models under the Volkswagen brand utilizing XPeng’s key ADAS technologies.
More to come — this is a developing story…
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Most Important 2024 House Candidate Who National Progressive Movement Is Ignoring: Maebe A Girl
When Blue America endorsed AOC against Joe "the next speaker" Crowley, everyone accused us of being crazy and wasting our contributors' money. When she won, people were gobsmacked. But sometimes the good guys win. Not all the time; sometimes.
This morning I spoke with Maebe A Girl, the only outstanding and potentially history-making candidate running in L.A. this cycle. "Having come in 2nd place out of 9 candidates in 2022," she told me, "our campaign is confident that we can win the open CA-30 House seat in the 2024 General Election. Our platform of economic equity, human rights, and environmental justice is widely appealing to this progressive district. While other candidates have raised more corporate dollars, our progressive, people-powered support can take us all the way to Washington."
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'No One Wants This!' Jen Psaki Smacks Down GOP Abortion Lie
During the Republican debate last week, debate moderator Martha MacCallum framed a question about Democrats' position on abortion as being supportive of abortions "until the date of birth," which is a blatant lie and effort to inflame the base.
Jen Psaki sent out a one-line tweet, which lit up wingers so hard on the platform formerly known as Twitter that you might have been blinded by their hot fury.
Here's her tweet:
I posted something similar over on Mastodon, but was less polite about it. In fact, I'd say I was downright rude.
That tweet of Psaki's has had over 27,000 replies, most of them hateful. So today, she took a few minutes of her show to explain why Republicans are doing what they're doing and why they're okay lying about it in order to hijack facts for feelings.
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'Natural Step Forward': Kevin McCarthy Tries To Sell Impeachment Inquiry
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Sunday said that an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden was a "natural step forward."
During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo urged McCarthy to pursue an impeachment inquiry.
"Well, Maria, first, you've got to understand only because Republicans took the majority have we found out what President Biden told us when he was running for office is not true," McCarthy replied. "We now found out as he was a sitting vice president, the family created 20 shell companies. They received 16 of 17 payments from Romania while he was vice president. We now found that the money would flow to nine family members."
"So if you look at all the information we've been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry," he added.
McCarthy accused the Biden administration of a "culture of corruption."
"You've got to get to be able to answer that to the American public," he remarked. "The American public deserves an answer."
The Speaker has not been able to point to any payments to Biden.
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The battery business is booming and Zeekr kicks off it IPO roadshow
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.
Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.
We have a lot to cover so let’s jump in. But wait! One note to share: These days, I’m a semi-regular guest on TechCrunch’s Equity Podcast, including an episode that aired Friday that covers robotaxis, Nvidia’s earning, plus Better.com and startups that are full of shit (you’ll get the joke if you listen).
Vamos.
Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com.
Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.
Deal of the week
The battery business keeps attracting capital.
Just take a look at Swedish lithium-ion battery producer Northvolt. The company raised around $1.2 billion in a convertible notes from BlackRock and various Canadian pension plans. Participants in the round included Goldman Sachs, Volkswagen, Baillie Gifford, Swedbank Robur, Singapore’s GIC and Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises.
That cash will be used to build new factories in North America and Europe.
Northvolt has been on a bit of tear the past few years — even before the big battery boom really took off. The company has raised $9 billion in debt and equity since 2017, including $1.1 billion in convertible notes last year. The company has also secured more than $55 billion in orders from customers like BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volvo and Volkswagen.
The Northvolt deal gives me another chance to plug a collection of articles we put together earlier this month on the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, including a look at how startups have benefited and a map that tracks all the battery factories in North America. Once Northvolt picks a location for this next factory, we’ll update the map.
Other deals that caught my attention …
Accure, a startup that uses AI to predict lithium-ion battery failures, raised $7.8 million in a Series A2 round led by Blue Bear Capital and HSBC Asset Management with participation from Riverstone Holdings and Capnamic Ventures.
Channel19, a startup that developed software for refrigerated trucking companies, raised $2.7 million in pre-seed and seed funding round led by Augment Ventures with participation by Accion Venture Lab, TMV, Overton Venture Capital and Refashiond Ventures. Several Silicon Valley and freight tech industry angels also participated, according to the company.
Electric Era, a startup founded by former SpaceX engineers that developed software and hardware to make EV charging stations faster and more reliable, raised $11.5 million in a Series A round led by HSBC’s asset management arm. Climate-tech fund Blackhorn, lithium-mining giant SQM and mobility-focused investor Proeza also participated.
NaaS Technology Inc., an EV charging service company in China, said it plans to acquire Charge Amps AB in a deal valued at $66.4 million.
Nickelytics, an advertising tech startup focused on rideshare, has been acquired by Texas-based venture capital group T72 Club Inc. Terms were not disclosed.
Zeekr, the Chinese EV maker under Geely Holdings, is kicking off its roadshow with investors ahead of its initial public offering, Reuters reported citing unnamed sources. Zeekr’s aim is a share sale that will push its valuation over $13 billion. Zeekr filed confidentially for an IPO back in December and raised $750 million in February. If Zeekr is successful and actually lists, this could be one of the largest Chinese IPOs in the past two years.
Chinese companies listing on U.S. exchanges haven’t had the smoothest of rides. Didi, which raised $4.4 billion in its June 2021 IPO, ran up against Chinese regulators. The company delisted later that year. A few other Chinese companies, including Hesai are dipping their toes back in the U.S. IPO waters now that there is more regulatory clarity in both countries. Last year, the U.S. and China struck a deal that allows American officials to review audit documents of Chinese businesses that trade in the United States, an agreement expected to lower the likelihood of Chinese companies on U.S. exchanges delisting.
Notable reads and other tidbits
ADAS
Polestar plans to make Mobileye’s hands-off, eyes-off automated driving technology (called Chauffeur) available to owners of the upcoming Polestar 4 electric SUV coupe. The vehicle, which launched in China and will hit global markets in 2024, comes standard with Mobileye’s SuperVision advanced driver assistance system. Polestar plans to add Chauffeur at a later date, but did not specify when.
Tesla shareholders who sued the company for financial losses stemming from Elon Musk’s “funding secured” tweet in 2018 are set to receive compensation now that the case has been settled. The SEC said 3,350 eligible claimants will share in the $42.3 million payout.
Speaking of Tesla, CEO Elon Musk livestreamed a test drive of FSD Beta v12 — a yet-to-be-released version of its automated driving software (the video has since been posted on YouTube by a number of people). To be clear, this is not a self-driving car; it is ADAS that requires a human to be ready to intervene at any time. The 40-minute video showed the vehicle handling roundabouts and intersections and even some construction. At about the 19-minute mark Musk had to intervene and take control of the vehicle when it misread the traffic signal and tried to go through a busy intersection at the wrong time.
Autonomous vehicles
Baidu expanded its Apollo Go driverless ride-hailing service to cover trips to and from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. The company now operates Apollo Go robotaxis in five cities in China.
Beep has partnered with self-driving software company Oxa (previously known as Oxbotica) to deploy autonomous vehicles in the United States.
Electric vehicles, charging & batteries
Jaguar Land Rover has found a use for its second-life Jaguar I-Pace batteries.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether Ford‘s 2022 recall of nearly 49,000 Mustang Mach-E electric vehicles sufficiently addressed issues and whether more vehicles should be included in the recall.
Gig economy
Uber is blaming high insurance rates for its decision to raise the minimum age requirement for new drivers in California to 25 years old. There are some caveats though.
People
General Motors’ Ultium Cells, the joint venture with LG Energy Solutions, reached an agreement with the United Auto Workers to increase pay for workers at its Ohio battery factory by an average of 25%.
Wu Xinzhou, the former vice president of autonomous driving at Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng, posted on social media site Weibo that he’s taken a job at Nvidia.
Disrupt!
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The Dye Is Cast
Good morning! This is your cartoon in lieu of the usual Bobblehead thread. It's been a crazy week, but nothing could be more satisfying than Rudy, Trump and the whole motley crew taking mugshots and getting booked at the Georgia jail. What a lovely and perfect ending to a long week.
The Republican debate was ridiculous and a waste of time. But hey -- give Vivek credit for being the Trumpiest idiot on the stage. Ron DeSantis just looked insane, and the thought of any of these clowns taking high office should give us all cause to repatriate somewhere other than here.
What's catching your eye this morning?
- Karoli
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Saturday, 26 August 2023
Late Night Music Club: Stop Draggin' My Heart Around - Stevie Nicks
Tonight's selection, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, was totally unintentional. As I was considering different artists and songs, nothing really struck me. Either the sound was off, or the video quality was really poor, or it just didn't feel right. Then as I was bouncing from one idea to another, I stumbled across this classic. I've always liked Stevie Nicks. Heck, who doesn't? But when I saw that it was her collaboration with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I was sold.
Nicks and Petty shared a special friendship where they were more like brother and sister than anything else. You can see that in this video, with the sly looks they give each other, which makes it all the more special.
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Wagner Group Cemetery Levelled, Will Be Paved Over With Concrete
Now that Prigozhin and the rest of the Wagner Group leadership have gone kaput, it's time to erase their memory from the historical record. With that in mind, a cemetery in Nikolayevka, Samara Oblast (about 500km east of Moscow) has been levelled and will be paved over with concrete. Supposedly, monuments to the fallen will appear someday. And if you believe that nonsense...
The Wagnerite in the video above is not happy.
Source: Yahoo News
Graves at a cemetery for Wagner Group mercenaries in the village of Nikolayevka, Samara Oblast, have had their crosses removed and been bulldozed to the ground.
Local residents said that the crosses and wreaths had been piled up like rubbish, and the graves themselves had been levelled to the ground with heavy machinery.
Following publicity on social media, local media outlets reported that the avenue where the Wagnerites were buried would become a flat area of ground. It will be paved with concrete, and a black pyramid will supposedly appear on the site of each grave.
The Wagner mercenaries’ cemetery appeared in Samara Oblast several months ago. Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, unveiled a memorial stele at the cemetery in April which, judging by the photographs, has not been demolished.
Not yet anyway, but it will be.
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A Brazilian phone spyware was hacked and victims’ devices ‘deleted’ from server
A Portuguese-language spyware called WebDetetive has been used to compromise more than 76,000 Android phones in recent years across South America, largely in Brazil. WebDetetive is also the latest phone spyware company in recent months to have been hacked.
In an undated note seen by TechCrunch, the unnamed hackers described how they found and exploited several security vulnerabilities that allowed them to compromise WebDetetive’s servers and access to its user databases. By exploiting other flaws in the spyware maker’s web dashboard — used by abusers to access the stolen phone data of their victims — the hackers said they enumerated and downloaded every dashboard record, including every customer’s email address.
The hackers said that dashboard access also allowed them to delete victim devices from the spyware network altogether, effectively severing the connection at the server level to prevent the device from uploading new data. “Which we definitely did. Because we could. Because #fuckstalkerware,” the hackers wrote in the note.
The note was included in a cache containing more than 1.5 gigabytes of data scraped from the spyware’s web dashboard. That data included information about each customer, such as the IP address they logged in from, and purchase history. The data also listed every device that each customer had compromised, which version of the spyware the phone was running, and the types of data that the spyware was collecting from the victim’s phone.
The cache did not include the stolen contents from victims’ phones.
DDoSecrets, a nonprofit transparency collective that indexes leaked and exposed datasets in the public interest, received the WebDetetive data and shared it with TechCrunch for analysis.
In total, the data showed that WebDetetive had compromised 76,794 devices to date at the time of the breach. The data also contained 74,336 unique customer email addresses, though WebDetetive does not verify a customer’s email addresses when signing up, preventing any meaningful analysis of the spyware’s customers.
It’s not known who is behind the WebDetetive breach and the hackers did not provide contact information. TechCrunch could not independently confirm the hackers’ claim that it deleted victims’ devices from the network, though TechCrunch did verify the authenticity of the stolen data by matching a selection of device identifiers in the cache against a publicly accessible endpoint on WebDetetive’s server.
WebDetetive is a type of phone monitoring app that is planted on a person’s phone without their consent, often by someone with knowledge of the phone’s passcode.
Once planted, the app changes its icon on the phone’s home screen, making the spyware difficult to detect and remove. WebDetetive then immediately begins stealthily uploading the contents of a person’s phone to its servers, including their messages, call logs, phone call recordings, photos, ambient recordings from the phone’s microphone, social media apps, and real-time precise location data.
Despite the broad access that these so-called “stalkerware” (or spouseware) apps have to a victim’s personal and sensitive phone data, spyware is notoriously buggy and known for their shoddy coding, which puts victims’ already-stolen data at risk of further compromise.
WebDetetive, meet OwnSpy
Little is known about WebDetetive beyond its surveillance capabilities. It’s not uncommon for spyware makers to conceal or obfuscate their real-world identities, given the reputational and legal risks that come with producing spyware and facilitating the illegal surveillance of others. WebDetetive is no different. Its website does not list who owns or operates WebDetetive.
But while the breached data itself reveals few clues about WebDetetive’s administrators, much of its roots can be traced back to OwnSpy, another widely used phone spying app.
TechCrunch downloaded the WebDetetive Android app from its website (since both Apple and Google ban stalkerware apps from their app stores), and planted the app onto a virtual device, allowing us to analyze the app in an isolated sandbox without giving it any real data, such as our location. We ran a network traffic analysis to understand what data was flowing in and out of the WebDetetive app, which found it was a largely repackaged copy of OwnSpy’s spyware. WebDetetive’s user agent, which it sends to the server to identify itself, was still referring to itself as OwnSpy, even though it was uploading our virtual device’s dummy data to WebDetetive’s servers.
A side-by-side photo comparison of WebDetetive (left) and OwnSpy (right) running on Android. Image Credits: TechCrunch
OwnSpy is developed in Spain by Mobile Innovations, a Madrid-based company run by Antonio Calatrava. OwnSpy has operated since at least 2010, according to its website, and claims to have 50,000 customers, though it’s not known how many devices OwnSpy has compromised to date.
OwnSpy also operates an affiliate model, allowing others to make a commission by promoting the app or offering “a new product to your clients” in return for OwnSpy taking a cut of the profits, according to an archived copy of its affiliates website. It’s not clear what other operational links, if any, exist between OwnSpy and WebDetetive. Calatrava did not return a request for comment or provide contact information for WebDetetive’s administrators.
A short time after we emailed Calatrava, portions of OwnSpy’s known infrastructure dropped offline. A separate network traffic analysis of OwnSpy’s app by TechCrunch found that OwnSpy’s spyware app was no longer functioning. WebDetetive’s app continues to function.
Destructive attack?
WebDetetive is the second spyware maker to be targeted by a data-destructive hack in recent months. LetMeSpy, a spyware app developed by Polish developer Rafal Lidwin, shut down following a hack that exposed and deleted victims’ stolen phone data from LetMeSpy’s servers. Lidwin declined to answer questions about the incident.
By TechCrunch’s count, at least a dozen spyware companies in recent years have exposed, spilled, or otherwise put victims’ stolen phone data at risk of further compromise because of shoddy coding and easily exploitable security vulnerabilities.
TechCrunch was unable to reach the WebDetetive administrators for comment. An email sent to WebDetetive’s support email address about the data breach — including whether the spyware maker has backups — went unreturned. It’s not clear if the spyware maker will notify customers or victims of the data breach, or if it still has the data or records to do so.
Destructive attacks, although infrequent, could have unintended and dangerous consequences for victims of spyware. Spyware typically alerts the abuser if the spyware app stops working or is removed from a victim’s phone, and severing a connection without a safety plan in place could put spyware victims in an unsafe situation. The Coalition Against Stalkerware, which works to support victims and survivors of stalkerware, has resources on its website for those who suspect their phone is compromised.
How to find and remove WebDetetive
Unlike most phone monitoring apps, WebDetetive and OwnSpy do not hide their app on an Android home screen, but instead disguise themselves as an Android system-presenting Wi-Fi app.
WebDetetive is relatively easy to detect. The app appears named as “WiFi” and features a white wireless icon in a blue circle on a white background.
A screenshot showing the “WiFi” app, which presents as a system Wi-Fi app. However, this app is spyware in disguise. Image Credits: TechCrunch
When tapped and held, and the app info is viewed, the app is actually called “Sistema.”
This “WiFi” app icon, when tapped, will actually show as an app called “Sistema,” designed to look like an Android system app, but is actually WebDetetive spyware. Image Credits: TechCrunch
We have a general guide that can help you remove Android spyware from your phone, if it is safe to do so. You should ensure that Google Play Protect is switched on as this on-device security feature can defend against malicious Android apps. You can check its status from the settings menu in Google Play.
If you or someone you know needs help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) provides 24/7 free, confidential support to victims of domestic abuse and violence. If you are in an emergency situation, call 911. The Coalition Against Stalkerware also has resources if you think your phone has been compromised by spyware.
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Friday, 25 August 2023
Don Jr Talks About 'Fluffing.' Ew
So my understanding of the term, "fluffing," concurs with the definition provided by Urban Dictionary:
Fluffing (v) - A technique used in most pornographic films today. When the male star has to get "aroused" for the camera, he is fluffed beforehand.
A stagehand, someone usually chosen just for this job, either gives the star a hand or blow job.
And Don Jr., squished next to his totally never-fluffed or fluffing fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle, uses the term to discuss Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, and their "puppet" Ron DeSantis. Ew.
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Nancy Mace: Biden More Corrupt Than Inmate #P01135809
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace has been known to exaggerate (lie) before. Like the time she claimed that Antifa vandalized her home, but it was in her handwriting. She gave a heartfelt speech about the importance of reproductive rights for women, then voted for the anti-abortion legislation. Yup, she's that kind of attention-seeking politician.
Her latest hypocrisy came during her interview on Fox Business.
"One thing you did tell me, and this is what you said last time you were here with me," the host said. "You said that it's, you know, forget 20 million, it's 50 million, and this is based on documents that you've seen that we have not seen yet. So can you, is it still 50 million is it more now?"
"It's staggeringly high," Mace said without offering any evidence to back up her claim. "It's definitely more than 50 million. It's staggeringly high."
"I'm not allowed to share the confidential information in the suspicious activity reports sitting at the Treasury right now, but the amount of money we were talking about is staggering, and the fact that mainstream media has just ignored this swept this under the rug and said all of this is normal," she continued.
"This is probably the most corrupt president in US history, and I don't say that lightly," she said the day after former President Donald Trump was arrested for the fourth time.
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Shorter Nikki Haley: Work 'Til You Die, America!
If you needed proof that the only primary going on right now in the GOP is the primary to gain access to the wallets of the donor class?
Exhibit A: Nikki Haley.
Speaking on Bloomberg News, where she's SURE no actual voters can hear her, Nikki Haley goes off on how life expectancy means the Social Security retirement age should be increased.
Any candidate that says they’re not going to touch entitlements, means that they’re basically going to go into office and leave America bankrupt… We change the retirement age to reflect life expectancy.”
Uh, Nikki? Thanks to Covid and guns, and YOUR PARTY'S complicit aggravation of both of those, the life expectancy thing in the US isn't going up.
The CDC: "That decline – 77.0 to 76.1 years – took U.S. life expectancy at birth to its lowest level since 1996. The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923."
So let's remove the Social Security tax cap for rich people like Nikki, LOWER the Social Security age back to 65 and take it from there, mmkay?
Oh wait, she's saying now what the donor class (who knows to the day in January when they stop paying Social Security taxes!) wants to hear.
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McEnany Fumes Over Biden Working Out: Remember This At The Polls
Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on 'Outnumbered' expressed outrage over President Joe Biden working out and said, "Think about this as you go to the polls next November."
"I cannot," McEnany said. "I mean, you saw the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley last night talk about the evils and the atrocities of Russia in a very powerful, smart way."
"And then you flip over to our Commander In Chief, leaving spin class and Pilates with a drink in his hand, asked about the Wagner group and potentially their leader going down in this plane crash," she continued. "And he says I don't know."
"He says to quote him; I don't know for a fact what happened," she said. "I've been working out for the last hour and a half. We didn't elect a Pilates instructor. We elected a guy to go toe to toe with Russia."
"And not only that, the New York Post said the White House said as cable news outlets focused almost entirely on the latest developments in Russia, quote, the White House said the president, First Lady, and members of their family are taking a Pilates class followed by a spin class," she said.
"Think about this as you go to the polls next November," she added.
I'm not gonna lie. I spit out Gatorade through my nose when she said that last part. I'm pretty impressed that an 80-year-old man works out for an hour and a half.
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Rudy Giuliani Attacks Fani Willis As 'Not An American'
Rudy Giuliani lashed out at President Joe Biden and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over his prosecution for alleged election interference in Georgia.
During an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room program on Thursday, Giuliani accused Biden of "100 incidents of violations of people's constitutional rights."
He argued that the U.S. justice system was the envy of the world until it was "trashed by this, in this particular situation, dictator and his regime."
"And this one [Fulton County case], it maybe is the worst because it's the most absurd," the longtime attorney said.
Giuliani insisted he shouldn't be charged in the election conspiracy because he had a "right to exaggerate" on behalf of Donald Trump.
The former New York mayor then took a shot at Willis.
"For a lawyer to bring an indictment like that indicates, number one, you don't understand the law and number two, you're not an American," he said. "You're something else."
Giuliani then veered into a rant about former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Now we know these people are heavily influenced by communism," he said. "We know Obama was trained by communists. Hillary was trained by communists."
"[Willis'] father was a member of the Black Panthers, a police killer, police murderer, who are now the chief of the Black Lives Matter," he added.
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The mugshot that launched a thousand memes
Memes can happen in the blink of an eye, like a Jeopardy! contestant who accidentally makes a sexual innuendo under the pressure of stage lights, or a kid who randomly gets interviewed on a playground and professes his undying love for America’s most plentiful crop, corn.
But as soon as we knew former President Donald Trump would be processed at Fulton County Jail for his fourth indictment, we knew that the resulting mugshot would be all over the place for years to come, from novelty t-shirt stands to our hypothetical future childrens’ history textbooks. We waited for it, knowing that as soon as the image was released to the public, it would become unavoidable.
“This will break Etsy,” Jesse Case wrote in a now-viral tweet (or X post, whatever). And sure enough, less than 24 four hours after Trump’s mugshot was released, Etsy already turns up 5,290 results to the search “trump mugshot.”
Even the former president himself has already set up an extensive merch store with t-shirts, posters, mugs and stickers featuring the photo, which is accompanied by text declaring “NEVER SURRENDER!” It’s unclear if Trump chose this wording since he literally surrendered to Fulton County Jail, or if this somehow went over his team’s head. But nonetheless, Trump supporters can now buy their very own mugshot beer koozie, and yes, this sentence took a year off of my life to type.
Naturally, fake mugshots circulated social media before the real thing was even released — and perhaps due to their less rigorous fact-checking standards, pop culture news accounts like Pop Base beat legacy news outlets to the punch, circulating the now ubiquitous mugshot.
It didn’t matter what Trump’s mugshot would look like. No matter what, this image was going to be both a viral meme and an historically monumental artifact. But even without any editing, Trump looks yassified: his bright blonde hair shows no trace of gray, draped in a swoop across his forehead. Prison lighting is unforgiving, but combined with the over exposure of the flash, Trump almost looks younger, as the shadows smooth out the wrinkles on his left cheek. The wave of his hair is perfectly positioned in the center of his forehead, accentuating his angry countenance. At first glance, it looks as though his eyebrows and hair are one, making his scowl even more sinister, more jarring.
Image Credits: Anonymous internet user, with permission to TechCrunch
As TikToker Kirby Alice pointed out, there’s an irony to these historic mugshots, which aren’t very high-quality images, since, well, they’re mugshots from a county jail.
“I can pretty well guarantee that whatever camera they have to take mugshots was probably purchased at like, a Radio Shack circa 2007,” she said, days before Trump turned himself in. “It might be in the back of a closet suffering heat damage in Georgia right now, and it is about to take one of the most important images in American history.”
I’m reminded of a recent episode of “The Kardashians,” when Kim brought an entire hair and makeup team with her to the DMV to get her license renewed, cheating us out of the idea that awkward driver license photos are the one great equalizer of mankind. While Trump’s team surely thought long and hard about everything from his tie color to his facial expression, he wasn’t going to get any special treatment while getting processed in jail, even as some probably underpaid municipal employee pressed the shutter button to take an undoubtedly iconic photo of our lifetime.
“LizaMinnelliOutlives was how I saw Trump’s mugshot,” a friend wrote to me on Discord. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we found out that the Queen of England died due to the pronouncement that Liza Minnelli had outlived Queen Elizabeth II.
After Trump’s presidency, the American right and left are so far divided that perhaps only the Donald himself could unite us once more: Everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, is making memes of Trump’s mugshot. It is, quite literally, memetic, as used in the Richard Dawkins sense. It will be circulated, remixed, repurposed and mutated until it perhaps outlives even the LizaMinnelliOutlives meme, surviving the brutal natural selection that is the attention span of digitally-addled brains.
In liberal internet circles, the mugshot is a cause for celebration, an “I told you so” to relatives who were naively lured by Trump’s emboldening rhetoric almost eight years ago. And yet on Truth Social, the somewhat dormant social app that Trump himself founded, the image is a rallying cry — it’s literally being used to solicit campaign donations — yet Trump supporters still find the image funny.
One Truth Social meme account edited Trump’s mugshot to replace the Mona Lisa, as crowds swarm to get a closer look. Another user advertised t-shirts with the mugshot that declare “my pronouns are Trump/won,” which also conveys a serious misunderstanding of how grammar works.
You would think that nothing could be more political than a mugshot of a former president who is indicted for interfering with the democratic process. But some memes just aren’t political at all, reminding us of the absurdity of the moment.
“who cares,” wrote @roastmalone_ on X (Twitter). “trump isn’t even the first actor from home alone 2 to have his mugshot released.”
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How founders raised money so far in 2023
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
This week, DocSend dropped a big load of statistics about the VC activity over the past half year or so. For TC+, I did a deep dive into the trends that are starting to show up. Subscribe for the full story, but since you’re a trusty reader of this fair newsletter, I’ll give you the TL;DR:
- “Why now?” is becoming more and more important to investors — why should they part with their cash to invest in you in this exact moment? I’ve written more about “why now” in the context of pitching elsewhere, but it’s interesting to see that surface.
- Decks are getting shorter; last year, the average successful deck had 19 slides. Now the average is 16. Do more with less, get to the point.
- Financially, the world is a little bit wobbly right now, so investors want to see decks that show that founders know how to optimize for break-even, then profitability. You can always spend more money if you want to grow faster, but the business basics are getting more important.
- Financials overall are getting more scrutiny. There’s a stark change: Investors are spending 60% more time on the financials section of a pitch deck compared to a year ago. Get it right.
- Investors are getting weary about AI . . . If you’re going to slap AI/ML on a deck, it had better be because leaning on new technologies gives you a real, measurable advantage for your startup, not because it is the newest, hottest thing.
Okay. Lemme put my little soapbox away and look at what else has been alive in the land of startups this week!
Move slow and please don’t break things
Image Credits: Cruise
“Move fast and break things” has been the mantra at Facebook/Meta for a long time. The idea is to not get shy about taking risks. That might work if the worst thing that can happen is that your aunt can’t see the picture of their niece for a few hours, but in the world of self-driving cars, that doesn’t work. This week, regulators laid down the law, telling Cruise to reduce its robotaxi fleet 50% following a crash (with a fire truck, no less. You know, those small, quiet, and subtle vehicles that are so easy to miss). Personally, I keep doing double takes when I see the little Chevy Bolt EVs cruising around in San Francisco without anyone in the driver’s seat, but maybe that’s just me.
One cool nugget of news is that CATL, who, among other things, supplies batteries to Tesla, showed off a battery that can charge 400 km in 10 minutes. Super cool. Apropos Tesla, our transportation team has been kept hella busy with the EV manufacturer this week. It said that the data breach impacting 75,000 employees was an insider job (whoops), and the company launched cheaper Model X and Model S options with less range and tried to reassure Chinese users on data security amid spying concerns. A grieving widow also sued the company over a deadly Model 3 crash and explosion. We would say that Musk has his hands full with his pet car company, but it seems his attention is mostly on making sure you won’t be able to “block” people anymore on the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter. That sounds like an idea. Not a good idea by any measure, but an idea nonetheless.
One aspect of EVs that’s worth keeping an eye on from a startup perspective is their insatiable need for batteries. That plays out in lots of different ways in different markets, but worth noting this week is Swedish EV battery maker Northvolt raising $1.2 billion to expand to North America and GM partnering with startup Mitra Chem to develop affordable EV batteries. And Rebecca took a closer look at the EV battery factory construction boom across North America.
Free falling: It’s rough out there in the stock markets. For example, EV maker VinFast is still worth more than Ford and GM even after its stock took a 19% nosedive.
Toot toot, pew pew: Harri and I had a ton of fun driving around in Las Vegas on an Arcimoto at CES this year. It strikes me as a bit of a head scratcher to hear that the startup hooked up with a defense contractor. The bombs and rockets industry isn’t known for its green cred, and the vehicles don’t seem rugged enough for even the lightest of off-roading, but it’s one to keep an eye on for sure.
Anywhere here is fine, driver: It seems like reports that people are getting hot and heavy in the back of robotaxis and the aforementioned crashes are a reminder that all press is good press: Cruise and Waymo are seeing a surge in robotaxi app downloads.
There’s a lot of crap out there
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin
As we were dredging through the thousands of TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield 200 companies, we kept noticing that the trend we spotted at CES earlier this year continues: We are seeing a huge amount of waste recycling, poop and urine startups.
This past week, we saw two global payments companies release earnings with wildly different results. Uruguayan fintech company dLocal saw its stock surge by over 30% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, shares of Dutch payments processor Adyen sank “to their lowest level in more than three years” on Friday, as reported by Reuters and others. Christine and Mary Ann compare and contrast what’s going on in our sibling newsletter, The Interchange. Which, incidentally, is well worth subscribing to.
Apropos crap — after I went out of my way to buy a guest article on TechCrunch (spoiler alert: I failed, but I learned some things along the way), we rebooted our program for non-crap guest posts.
Okay, fine, it’s not all crap news this week, although there’s def some highs and lows:
That’s a heavy haircut: Fintech startup Ramp raises $300 million at a $ 5.5 billion valuation. That sounds pretty good, until you remember that the company last raised in March last year at a $8.1 billion valuation. I wouldn’t like to be the CEO in the boardroom when they admit to having to take a 28% valuation cut. . . .
Hope springs infernal: Alex is one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for tech IPOs that I know, and he’s bouncing around like an overcaffeinated toddler at the idea that everyone’s talking about tech IPOs again. Read about it over on TC+.
There’s no stopping the AI train
Image Credits: Carol Yepes / Getty Images
Every time I do another Startups Weekly, I think, Maybe this time I won’t have a section on AI. And then I look at what is performing well on the site, before sighing and muttering, “Here we go again.” Artificial Intelligence continues to be hot, hot, hot.
This week, the tool that caught my eye was Moemate, an assistant that analyzes what is actually happening on your screen to offer context-aware advice and support. To me, it sounds like a bit of a privacy nightmare, but the idea is fascinating. Kyle reports spotty but curious results.
OpenAI goes shopping: As far as we know, OpenAI acquiring AI design studio Global Illumination is the first acquisition the company has made since it was founded seven years ago.
Content is king: Large language models are awesome and all, but the datasets contained within them are often kept a secret. That has some interesting issues. The Allen Institute for AI is taking a different tack and just dropped the biggest open dataset yet for training language models.
A network you can swim in: The lingo comes fast and hard in the land of artificial intelligence, and my favorite deep dive this week (pun intended) was Brian’s article on liquid neural networks — ones that can continue to adapt even after the model is trained.
Top reads on TechCrunch this week
Moar? You want moar?
Fiiiiine.
Here’s another handful of the most-read startup stories on Ye Olde Teche Crunche:
- People really love the ability to block weirdos: When Musk announced that Twitter/X might turn off the ability to block people, it seems like folks rage-quit the platform in droves. It got so intense, that Bluesky had to impose rate limits to improve network stability, because they got that much traffic.
- Sorry, superconductors: We kinda already knew, but Tim confirmed it for us: LK-99 isn’t a room-temperature superconductor.
- It would be a shame if people found out that cops are using phone hacking tech: LOL. So, of course, Lorenzo reported on Cellebrite asking police to keep its phone hacking tech “hush hush.”
- Hush, little baby: I always thought that Sleepbuds were genius. Basically, noise-canceling headphones that just cancel noise and fit in your ears so you can sleep. Bose killed ’em off, but Brian reports that former Bose employees bought the IP from Bose and are resurrecting the product, with additional features added. Neat!
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