The cost of building the perfect wave

June 17, 2024
For nearly as long as surfing has existed, surfers have been obsessed with the search for the perfect wave. It’s not just a question of size, but also of shape, surface conditions, and duration—ideally in a beautiful natural environment.  While this hunt has taken surfers from tropical coastlines reachable only by boat to swells breaking off…

What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines

June 17, 2024
AI is good at lots of things: spotting patterns in data, creating fantastical images, and condensing thousands of words into just a few paragraphs. But can it be a useful tool for writing comedy?   New research suggests that it can, but only to a very limited extent. It’s an intriguing finding that hints at the…

India’s Oyo, once valued at $10B, finalizes new funding at $2.5B valuation

June 17, 2024

Oyo, the Indian budget-hotel chain startup, is finalizing a fresh fundraise of about $100 million to $125 million that slashes its valuation to $2.5 billion, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.  That’s a steep decline in the Gurgaon-headquartered startup’s value, which was worth $10 billion in 2019. The startup, struggling to raise from […]

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Startup Battlefield 200 applications close tomorrow

June 16, 2024

Holy procrastination, startup founders! Tomorrow’s your last chance to apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Your last chance for a shot to stand on the Disrupt stage and pitch to a huge audience packed with global tier-1 investors, hundreds of media outlets and plenty of other influential movers and shakers. Cut […]

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YouTube is testing another way to combat ad blockers

June 16, 2024

YouTube continues its efforts to circumvent ad blockers. Earlier this week, ad blocker SponsorBlock posted that the Google-owned video service is testing out server-side ad injection with a limited number of users. Essentially, this means that both the ad is injected into the video before it arrives on your device (in contrast to client-side ad […]

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Subscription vitamin company Care/of is shutting down

June 15, 2024

Care/of, a company offering personalized subscription vitamin packs, says it will be canceling all subscriptions as of Monday, June 17 and will no longer be accepting new orders. The news doesn’t come completely out of the blue, as Care/of had previously disclosed in a New York Department of Labor filing that it planned to lay […]

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