FTC upholds ban on stalkerware founder Scott Zuckerman
Zuckerman, who used to run the stalkerware apps SpyFone and SpyTrac, claimed the ban is hurting his unrelated business.
The Download: failed social media bans, and extending pets’ lives
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. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined…
SoftBank and Nvidia reportedly in talks to fund SkildAI at $14B, nearly tripling its value
Skild AI is developing a hardware-agnostic foundation model for robots that can be customized for various uses.
Investor letter reveals skyrocketing growth of Waymo’s robotaxi rides
Six months ago, Waymo disclosed it was providing 250,000 robotaxi rides. But it’s grown significantly since, a leaked letter says.
Department of Commerce may approve Nvidia H200 chip exports to China
This news comes as a bill was introduced in Congree last week to prevent these exact kinds of chip exports.
Google’s AI try-on app Doppl adds a shoppable discovery feed
The tech giant says the idea behind the new feed is to display recommendations so users can discover and virtually try on items. Nearly everything in the feed is shoppable, with direct links to merchants.
Lucid Motors’ former chief engineer sues for wrongful termination and discrimination
Eric Bach, who was fired in November, claims a top HR executive at the automaker called him a “German Nazi.”
How to Turn Your Franchise Conference Into a Year-Round Growth Engine
How to turn a three-day event into twelve months of storytelling, culture-building and brand momentum.
Tiger Global plans cautious venture future with a new $2.2B fund
Tiger’s last fund did well with investmetments in OpenAI, Waymo and Databricks. But it warns investors that AI valuations are already ‘elevated.’
Environmental groups call for halt to new data center construction
More than 230 organizations signed a public letter urging members of Congress to take action.
Claude Code is coming to Slack, and that’s a bigger deal than it sounds
Anthropic launches Claude Code in Slack, letting developers delegate coding tasks from chat threads. It’s part of a shift toward AI-embedded collaboration that could reshape software workflows.