People are Rethinking Their Microsoft 365 Subscriptions for This One-Time Purchase
Instead of $10 monthly payments, own your favorite Office apps for $50.
Authors call on publishers to limit their use of AI
An open letter from authors including Lauren Groff, Lev Grossman, R.F. Kuang, Dennis Lehane, and Geoffrey Maguire calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators.
Others
Netflix is revamping search with AI to improve discovery
Netflix is building a new search experience aimed at improving the discovery experience, and it’s going to use AI to do it, the company’s CEO Greg Peters said during its first-quarter results conference call. Peters said Netflix is working on “interactive search that’s based on generative technologies” to help people find different titles. Answering an […]
This spa’s water is heated by bitcoin mining
At first glance, the Bathhouse spa in Brooklyn looks not so different from other high-end spas. What sets it apart is out of sight: a closet full of cryptocurrency-mining computers that not only generate bitcoins but also heat the spa’s pools, marble hammams, and showers. When cofounder Jason Goodman opened Bathhouse’s first location in Williamsburg…
The world’s biggest space-based radar will measure Earth’s forests from orbit
Forests are the second-largest carbon sink on the planet, after the oceans. To understand exactly how much carbon they trap, the European Space Agency and Airbus have built a satellite called Biomass that will use a long-prohibited band of the radio spectrum to see below the treetops around the world. It will lift off from…
OpenAI pursued Cursor maker before entering into talks to buy Windsurf for $3B
When news broke that OpenAI was in talks to acquire AI coding company Windsurf for $3 billion, one of the first questions on the mind of anyone following the space was likely: “Why not buy Cursor creator Anysphere instead?” After all, OpenAI Startup Fund has been an investor in Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, since the […]
Defense tech Theseus landed Y Combinator, the US Special Forces and $4.3M from a tweet
On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he’d just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Lévy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech […]
These Are the U.S. Cities With the ‘Most Affordable’ Rent, According to a New Report
From Bismarck, North Dakota, to Miami, Florida, here are the cities where renting is the most and least affordable.
Ramp is trying to get the US government as a customer after seeing a tweet from DOGE
Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being […]
OpenAI launches Flex processing for cheaper, slower AI tasks
In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API option that provides lower AI model usage prices in exchange for slower response times and “occasional resource unavailability.” Flex processing, which is available in beta for OpenAI’s recently released o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, is […]
Carbon removal startup Holocene bought by oil and gas giant Occidental
The deal was executed through Oxy Low Carbon Ventures for an undisclosed amount.