Category: Apps
-
DuckDuckGo calls for EU to widen its Digital Markets Act probe of Google
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has urged the European Union to widen its Digital Markets Act (DMA) investigation into Google, claiming the search giant is in breach of several areas where the bloc has yet to formally probe the company’s compliance. The EU’s flagship market contestability rulebook has been in force on a handful of tech…
-
Messenger gets HD video calls, AI backgrounds, and more
Meta is introducing new features for Messenger, its messaging app, including AI-powered noise suppression. Messenger is getting HD video calls and voice isolation, both of which can be enabled via the call settings menu. HD calls are now the default for calls placed over Wi-Fi, Meta says, and an option for calls over cellular. Messenger…
-
Led by Anduril, defense tech funding sets a new record this year
Defense tech startups have raised almost $3 billion so far in 2024, surpassing the previous record from 2022 of $2.6 billion. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Defense tech startups have raised almost $3 billion so far in 2024, surpassing the previous record from 2022 of $2.6 billion. © 2024…
-
As Bluesky soars, Threads rolls out custom feeds globally
As X competitor Bluesky takes off, topping 20 million users, Meta’s own Twitter-like app, Instagram Threads, has begun rolling out a new feature called custom feeds, to its global audience. Hoping to capitalize on user demand for more personalization, custom feeds are meant to allow Threads users to easily build feeds around specific topics or…
-
H, the AI startup that raised $220M, launches its first product: Runner H for ‘agentic’ applications
H, the Paris startup founded by Google alums, made a big splash last summer when, out of the blue, it announced a seed round of $220 million, before releasing a single product. Three months later, still without a product, that splash started to look like a catastrophic flood when three of the company’s five co-founders…
-
Amazon debuts its largest Echo Show yet
Amazon on Wednesday introduced the Echo Show 21, its largest Echo Show yet. The smart display comes with double the viewing area of the existing Echo Show 15, which is also getting an upgrade. The two new devices have better audio quality than the original Echo Show 15, as they come with double the bass…
-
Chinese AV startup Pony AI boosts its IPO goal to $260M
Pony AI, the Chinese autonomous vehicle startup that’s looking to go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange, now wants to raise around $260 million, according to a new regulatory filing. That’s up from its previous target of around $224 million. To meet the goal, Pony will sell as many as 20 million American depository shares.…
-
Comcast spins off its cable channels into separate company as it looks for growth
Cable television has long been viewed as a stagnant business, showing little promise for growth over the years. However, Comcast believes it has found a new growth opportunity. On Wednesday, the company announced that it’s spinning off NBCUniversal’s cable television networks — such as CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Oxygen, SYFY, and USA Network —…
-
TV Time points to Apple’s ‘significant power’ over developers after being removed from App Store
TV Time, a popular TV and movie tracking and recommendations app with more than 30 million registered users, disappeared from Apple’s App Store for several weeks, leading to questions about its future from the app’s avid fan base. Considering that 2.5 million users use the app every month to track what they’re watching and to…
-
A Chinese lab has released a ‘reasoning’ AI model to rival OpenAI’s o1
A Chinese lab has unveiled what appears to be one of the first “reasoning” AI models to rival OpenAI’s o1. On Wednesday, DeepSeek, an AI research company funded by quantitative traders, released a preview of DeepSeek-R1, which the firm claims is a reasoning model competitive with o1. Unlike most models, reasoning models effectively fact-check themselves…