Technology

The Download: paradigm-shifting supershoes, and AI-powered NPCs

June 25, 2024
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. Supershoes are reshaping distance running Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-­shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore faster), the elite running world has muddled through a period…

Uber Freight and self driving trucks startup Aurora partner for the long haul

June 25, 2024

Uber Freight and Aurora Innovation have announced a multi-year collaboration that will see Aurora’s autonomous driving technology offered on the Uber Freight network through 2030.  The deal gives Aurora access to shipping customers as it prepares to launch its fully driverless commercial service later this year. It also helps Aurora also secure longer-term customers through […]

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Supershoes are reshaping distance running

June 25, 2024
The track at Moi University’s Eldoret Town Campus doesn’t look like a facility designed for champions. Its surface is a modest mix of clay and gravel, and it’s 10 meters longer than the standard 400. Runners use a classroom chair to mark the start and finish. Yet it’s as good a place as any to…

Lego bricks are making science more accessible

June 25, 2024
Etienne Boulter walked into his lab at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, one morning with a Lego Technic excavator set tucked under his arm. His plan was simple yet ambitious: to use the pieces of the set to build a mechanical cell stretcher.  Boulter and his colleagues study mechanobiology—the way mechanical forces, such…

My colleagues turned me into an AI-powered NPC. I hate him.

June 25, 2024
It feels weird, talking to yourself online.  Especially when you’re pretty much the most unpleasant character you’ve ever met. The “me” I’ve been chatting to this week, called King Fiall of Nirth, is a creation in technology from Inworld AI, a US-based firm that hopes to revolutionize how we interact with characters in games. Specifically,…

Connect Money scores $8M to enable non-bank businesses to offer embedded finance services

June 25, 2024

Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms continue to be at the heart of driving access to digital financial services through their technology that offers fintech capabilities to non-bank businesses. Businesses are tapping these platforms to get past difficulties and time-consuming processes, such as building tech infrastructure and acquiring requisite regulatory approvals, to offer financial services such as cards, […]

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Roundtables: The Future of AI Games

June 24, 2024
Recorded on June 24, 2024 The Future of AI Games Speakers: Niall Firth, executive editor, and Allison Arieff, editorial director Generative AI is coming for games and redefining what it means to play. AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. This technology could bring an unprecedented expansiveness to video…

Matt Rogers, Nest and Mill co-founder, talks mastering consumer tech at Disrupt 2024

June 24, 2024

Consumer technology is hard, but few people have mastered it as well as Matt Rogers, co-founder of Nest and now Mill, his new startup that promises to turn your table scraps into planet-saving treasure. Mill burst out of the gate last year after spending some time in stealth refining its waste bin, an easy to […]

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Google is bringing Gemini access to teens using their school accounts

June 24, 2024

Google announced on Monday that it’s bringing its AI technology Gemini to teen students using their school accounts, after having already offered Gemini to teens using their personal accounts. The company is also giving educators access to new tools alongside this release. Google says that giving teens access to Gemini, can help prepare them with the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Download: hyperrealistic deepfakes, and using math to shape wood

June 24, 2024
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. Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that…