Technology

Pocket Casts, the podcast app acquired by Automattic in 2021, is now making its web player free. The company says the move offers an alternative to the big platforms’ closed ecosystems, where algorithmic-driven content is prioritized and podcasts are kept behind paywalls. Podcasts were built on open technology — the open, decentralized standard RSS, which […]

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Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on how AI technology can help small businesses outperform their competition. In short, he told the crowd that AI was not the answer, in and of itself, but is meant to serve as an aid that can help […]

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Canadian robotruck startup Waabi says its super-realistic virtual simulation is now accurate enough to prove the safety of its driverless big rigs without having to run them for miles on real roads.  The company uses a digital twin of its real-world robotrucks, loaded up with real sensor data, and measures how the twin’s performance compares…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The concept of artificial general intelligence—an ultra-powerful AI system we don’t have yet—can be thought of as a balloon, repeatedly inflated with hype during peaks of optimism (or fear) about its potential…

A new pair of AI benchmarks could help developers reduce bias in AI models, potentially making them fairer and less likely to cause harm. The research, from a team based at Stanford, was posted to the arXiv preprint server in early February. The researchers were inspired to look into the problem of bias after witnessing…

From October 27-29, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 will bring together over 10,000 startup pioneers, VC leaders, and tech enthusiasts at Moscone West in San Francisco—the epicenter of innovation set to reshape the future of technology. What’s in it for your startup? A golden opportunity to put your innovation in front of an eager audience for all […]

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This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The cheapest way to supercharge America’s power grid —Brian Deese is an innovation fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021…

US electricity consumption is rising faster than it has in decades, thanks in part to the boom in data center development, the resurgence in manufacturing, and the increasing popularity of electric vehicles.  Accommodating that growth will require building wind turbines, solar farms, and other power plants faster than we ever have before—and expanding the network…