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TechCrunch Industry News

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Episodes

Another bid to block state AI regulation has failed…for now; plus, Autolane is building ‘air traffic control’ for AVs

The latest bid to squeeze a ban on states regulating AI into an annual defense bill has reportedly been rejected after facing bipartisan pushback. Also, backed by VC firms like Draper Associates and Hyperplane, Autolane said it will start by coordinating pickup and drop-off points for companies that want to let robotaxis come onto their private property. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...

Dec 03, 20257 min

Amazon releases an impressive new AI chip and teases a Nvidia-friendly roadmap; also, India plans to verify and record every smartphone in circulation

Amazon Web Services, which has been building its own AI training chips for years now, just introduced a new version known as Trainium three that comes with some impressive specs. he Indian government is widening the scope of its anti-theft and cybersecurity initiative to cover both new and used smartphones, an effort aimed at curbing device theft and online fraud but a move that is also raising fresh privacy concerns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...

Dec 02, 202511 min

Construction workers are cashing in on the AI boom; also, Data center energy demand forecasted to soar nearly 300% through 2035

The AI boom is proving to be a windfall for construction workers building the massive data centers that power it all. According to The Wall Street Journal, workers moving into data-center construction are seeing pay jumps of 25 to 30 percent compared to their previous jobs . Alos, new planned data centers promise to consume even more energy than expected. Meanwhile, a grid monitor is blaming such growth for high electricity prices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

Dec 02, 20256 min

Amazon’s AI chatbot Rufus drove sales on Black Friday; plus, James Cameron says generative AI is ‘horrifying’

On Black Friday, Amazon sessions that resulted in a sale were up 100% in the U.S. when the AI chatbot Rufus was used. They only increased by 20% when Rufus wasn't used. Also, James Cameron’s movies are often at the cutting edge of visual effects technology, but that doesn't make him a fan of generative AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dec 01, 20256 min

Uber and WeRide’s robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi is officially driverless; plus, a bug in jury systems used by several US states exposed sensitive personal data

The commercial robotaxi service launched last year. Now, the human safety operator is gone. Also, an easy-to-exploit vulnerability in a jury system made by Tyler Technologies exposed the personally identifiable data of jurors, including names, home addresses, emails, and phone numbers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nov 26, 20258 min

Roblox CEO interview gets heated over child safety; X’s new About This Account feature is going great; and AI is too risky to insure

-Roblox CEO Dave Baszuki joined the Hard Fork podcast to discuss the gaming platform’s new age verification feature — but he seemed to get frustrated at the number of questions focused on child safety. -A new feature seemingly revealed many right-wing “America First” accounts are actually based outside the United States. But the data seems questionable. -Major insurers including AIG, Great American, and WR Berkley are asking U.S. regulators for permission to exclude AI-related liabilities from c...

Nov 25, 20255 min

Trump administration might not fight state AI regulations after all; plus Waymo expanding across Bay Area and SoCal; and Meta wants to get into the electricity trading business

Reuters reports that the executive order has been put on hold. If signed, the order would probably face significant opposition, including from Republicans who previously criticized the proposed moratorium on state regulation. Waymo continues to expand its reach, with the robotaxi company posting Friday that it’s now “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.” Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles, as well as outside of C...

Nov 24, 20255 min

CrowdStrike fires ‘suspicious insider,’ X rolling out the ‘About this account’ feature, and Trump’s FCC votes to scrap cybersecurity rules

-Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike denied it had been hacked following claims from a hacker group, which leaked screenshots from inside CrowdStrike's network. -X's new feature will show where users are based, how they're connected to X, and how many times they've changed their username. -Two Trump-appointed FCC officials voted to undo the telecom industry's cybersecurity rules. One Democratic commissioner dissented, saying the decision leaves the United States "less safe" at a time when threats ar...

Nov 21, 20259 min

Google releases Nano Banana Pro, its latest image generation model; and another fire broke out at aluminum plant that supplies Ford

Google is upgrading its image generation model with new editing chops, higher resolutions, more accurate text rendering, and the ability to search the web. Also, the fire that broke out at the Oswego, NY Is the second major fire -- and the third overall -- in the last few months at the Novelis plant, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nov 20, 20255 min

The Epstein files have claimed their first OpenAI victim; plus Target joins OpenAI’s growing list of retail apps

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI’s board days after Congress released an extensive cache of emails with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which included details of intimate affairs. OpenAI is pushing deeper into retail, with Target set to debut a new ChatGPT-powered app for shoppers in coming weeks. The news follows OpenAI’s move last month to start adding dedicated retail apps to ChatGPT, including Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow. It al...

Nov 19, 20254 min

DOE gives Microsoft partner $1B loan to restart Three Mile Island reactor; plus, Hugging Face CEO says we’re in an ‘LLM bubble,’ not an AI bubble

Constellation Energy will use the loan to refurbish a reactor it idled in 2019. Microsoft has agreed to buy the power once the facility reopens in 2028. Also, Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clem Delangue says all the attention is on LLMs, but smaller, specialized models will make sense in many use cases going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nov 19, 20257 min

Zap Energy ramps up the pressure in its latest fusion device; plus, Stack Overflow is remaking itself into an AI data provider

Zap’s Fuze-3 device has been firing pulses of plasma at the company’s headquarters in Seattle, and the results of those experiments will ultimately inform the design of the company’s future demonstration plants. The Fuze-3 device was able to compress a soup of charged particles to more than two hundred thirty two thousand PSI and heat it to more than 21 million degrees Fahrenheit. Also, Stack Overflow wants to remake its classic problem-solving forum into a tool for translating human expertise i...

Nov 18, 20256 min

Amazon satellite network gets a rebrand and drops its affordability pitch; plus, a jury says Apple owes Masimo $634M

The company has been quietly changing how it talks about who its internet customers will be before it announced a big name change last week. Also, a federal jury in California ruled Friday that Apple must pay medical device maker Masimo $634 million for infringing a patent on blood oxygen monitoring technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nov 17, 20256 min

ChatGPT launched pilot group chats across Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan; plus, newsletter platform beehiiv adds AI website building, creator tools in major expansion

The group chat is available to Free, Plus, and Team users on both mobile and web platforms. OpenAI says the pilot is designed to explore how people use group conversations in ChatGPT. Also, in a video announcing the release of beehiiv, Tyler Denk, the co-founder and CEO of beehive, said that what makes newsletter platforms powerful is ownership. “Owning your audience, distribution, brand, and even your revenue potential. In the age of AI and algorithms. Ownership isn’t just nice to have, it’s es...

Nov 14, 20257 min

‘Chad: The Brainrot IDE’ is a new Y Combinator-backed product so wild, people thought it was fake ; plus, after 5 months, the $1,200 bottles of Besties All-In tequila are finally starting to ship

Chad: the Brainrot IDE is an actual product that pairs vibe coding with brainrot activities like gambling, Tinder and games. Also, orders of the Besties Tequila were supposed to be fulfilled by end of summer but were delayed again and again due to the bottle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nov 14, 20256 min

The global race for the AI app layer is still on; plus Australian spy chief warns Chinese hackers are ‘probing’ critical networks for espionage and sabotage

The U.S. is far ahead of Europe in the race for large AI models, at least in funding. But the picture is different for the application layer, global VC firm Accel highlighted in its 2025 Globalscape report. Also, Australia's intelligence chief warned that Chinese hackers are trying to break into its networks, sometimes successfully, to "pre-position" for sabotage ahead of an anticipated invasion of Taiwan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...

Nov 12, 20257 min

Why a lot of people are getting hacked with government spyware, plus a better way of thinking about the AI bubble

Government surveillance vendors want us to believe their spyware products are only used in limited and targeted operations against terrorists and serious criminals. That claim is increasingly difficult to justify, given the broad range of victims — journalists, activists, and now political consultants — that have come forward. AI isn't all or nothing, and even good bets can turn sour if you aren't careful about how you make them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

Nov 11, 20259 min

Elon Musk uses Grok to imagine the possibility of love, plus, ‘Pluribus’ was emphatically ‘made by humans,’ not AI

After Tesla shareholders approved a new compensation package that could be worth $1 trillion, CEO Elon Musk appears to be celebrating with a normal weekend on his social media platform X. Also, if you watched all the way to the end of the new Apple TV show “Pluribus,” you may have noticed an unusual disclaimer in the credits: “This show was made by humans.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...

Nov 10, 20254 min
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