Technically, the poke never really left Facebook. The classic feature from Facebook’s early days lets users get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge of sorts. While the poke fell out of use ages ago, the company has more recently seen an uptick in its use among younger users, which …
Read More »TED leader’s $300M ‘valley of death’ fund might be just what later-stage climate tech needs
Like many startups, climate tech companies often face a “valley of death” that lies between early stage funding and growth capital that helps proven technologies reach commercial scale. But because climate tech startups are often hardware focused — physical problems tend to require physical solutions, after all — this valley of death …
Read More »Stripe enlists a who’s who, including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Paradigm, to build a new blockchain
Stripe is funding a new blockchain company called Tempo, co-founder CEO Patrick Collison announced on Thursday. Tempo is aimed at high-volume processing of stablecoins — coins that help reduce crypto’s notorious volatility because they are pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar. That’s not surprising given that Stripe …
Read More »Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since …
Read More »Threads challenges X by offering free support for up to 10K characters, plus prominent links
After recently being spotted testing a way to share longer text, Threads, Meta’s X competitor, is now officially rolling out the feature that allows users to attach up to 10,000 characters of text to their post. The addition has been designed with the needs of creators in mind, as it …
Read More »AI logistics startup Augment, from Deliverr’s founder, raises massive $85M Series A
Having built and sold e-commerce shipping startup Deliverr to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022, co-founder and CEO Harish Abbott knows the logistics industry well. Abbott felt that many manual tasks in logistics could be automated using AI. That’s why last year he launched Augment which offers an AI assistant …
Read More »Fashion retailers partner to offer personalized AI styling tool ‘Ella’
The luxury membership platform Vivrelle, which allows customers to rent high-end goods, announced Thursday the launch of an AI personal styling tool called Ella as part of its partnership with fashion retailers Revolve and FWRD. The launch is an example of how the fashion industry is leveraging AI technology to …
Read More »X’s encrypted DM feature, XChat, is rolling out more broadly
X’s long-awaited encrypted DMs feature, XChat, is becoming more widely available. Though the feature shipped in beta in May, XChat is now accessible for more users, including those who do not subscribe to X Premium. Separate from the existing DM inbox, XChat is end-to-end encrypted. The chat system supports media …
Read More »OpenAI announces AI-powered hiring platform to take on LinkedIn
OpenAI says it’s developing an AI-powered hiring platform to connect businesses and employees, a service that would put the outfit in close competition with LinkedIn. The product is called the OpenAI Jobs Platform, and the company expects to launch the service by mid-2026, an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. OpenAI CEO …
Read More »Nepal blocks Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X over rule breach, amid censorship concerns
Nepal has ordered internet service providers to block access to major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X, after the companies failed to comply with local registration rules — drawing criticism from media rights groups and raising concerns over censorship and free expression. On Thursday, Nepal’s Ministry of …
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