April 2025

A new kids’ show will come with a crypto wallet when it debuts this fall

April 18, 2025
A new animated kids’ series expected to premiere this year won’t be headed for a TV network. Or a streaming service. Instead, the founders of production studio We Ghosted Media plan to launch on a decentralized web platform that uses blockchain technology. And yes, a crypto wallet will be involved.  We Ghosted Media — founded by […]

Techstars increases startup funding to $220,000, mirroring YC structure

April 18, 2025
Techstars, a nearly 20-year-old startup accelerator, announced new terms for startups that enter its three-month program. The organization will now invest $220,000, which is $100,000 more than it offered previously, in companies starting with its fall 2025 batch. The capital will be divided into two components. The group is offering companies $20,000 in exchange for […]

OpenAI’s new reasoning AI models hallucinate more

April 18, 2025
OpenAI’s recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects. However, the new models still hallucinate, or make things up — in fact, they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI’s older models. Hallucinations have proven to be one of the biggest and most difficult problems to solve in AI, impacting even today’s […]

Bluesky may soon add blue check verification

April 18, 2025
Bluesky may soon get a new blue checkmark verification system, according to changes to the app’s public GitHub repository spotted Friday by reverse engineer alice.mosphere.at. The blue checks may have a similar look to the system pioneered by Twitter, now X, but Bluesky’s version seems like it will work quite differently. Bluesky’s blue check system […]

White House replaces covid.gov website with ‘lab leak’ theory

April 18, 2025
The government-run website covid.gov used to host information about COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment. Now, under President Trump’s purview, the page redirects to a White House website espousing the unproven theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. The theory, which has been opposed by many virologists, was espoused in a report by House Republicans […]

ChatGPT is referring to users by their names unprompted, and some find it ‘creepy’

April 18, 2025
Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI […]