There have been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be extraordinarily slow. That’s because, in addition to all the usual challenges attendant with open…
Few joys in this cold world can match cracking open a new comic on a lazy Sunday morning. Nothing to do, nowhere to be — just you, a mug of coffee and some sequential art. Not much has fundamentally changed about the American comic book since publishers began collecting newspaper strips as bound volumes in…
I’ve long argued that VCs getting excited about climate change is scary and that the goal of a startup is to stop existing. But I haven’t been particularly successful at outlining what startup founders can actually do to build a more sustainable company in a world hurtling toward a climate crisis. Enter Amit Paul and…
Meta is in hot water after announcing plans to remove politics from its recommendations across Instagram and Threads, its new Twitter-like app for text-based posts. That leaves a window of opportunity for the startup Bluesky, whose CEO Jay Graber recently explained that Meta’s decision is emblematic of the types of problems that could emerge when…
Varda Space Industries has received long-awaited approval from regulators to return its first spacecraft to Earth — and with it, a batch of pharmaceutical crystals manufactured on orbit. Varda’s Winnebago capsule has been stuck in limbo for months. The company launched the spacecraft on a SpaceX Transporter mission eight months ago, with the plan to…
Researchers at Amazon have trained the largest ever text-to-speech model yet, which they claim exhibits “emergent” qualities improving its ability to speak even complex sentences naturally. The breakthrough could be what the technology needs to escape the uncanny valley. These models were always going to grow and improve, but the researchers specifically hoped to see…
Software testing is hard. Even with the right talent in place, it doesn’t always go as planned — particularly when executed at scale. In a 2020 survey from Electric Cloud, 58% of developers blamed software bugs on test infrastructure and process issues — not design defects. The market for software testing solutions is quite massive,…
Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall. Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña described the crashes as “minor” in a blog post, and said neither vehicle was carrying passengers at the…
In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm launched by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn’t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level overview of Airbnb’s larger plans…
The price of bitcoin hit $50,000 today, a month after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 applications for spot bitcoin ETFs. The issuers of those ETFs have seen demand skyrocket beyond initial predictions of a few billion. Assets under management at these issuers total around $28.35 billion, making for a market cap of…
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