November 7, 2024

Trump’s win is a tragic loss for climate progress

Donald Trump’s decisive victory is a stunning setback for climate change. The Republican President-elect’s return to the White House means the country is going to squander precious momentum, unraveling hard-won policy progress that was just beginning to pay off, all for the second time in less than a decade.  It comes at a moment when…

Halo Car’s teleoperated car-sharing service to roll out this year with no one behind the wheel

October 6, 2022

Halo Car, a Las Vegas-based startup that combines teleoperations and car sharing, said it will remove the human safety operator from behind the wheel later this year — the last hurdle before its commercial launch. The milestone would mean Halo Car will use humans to remotely control vehicles through public streets and deliver them to […]

Halo Car’s teleoperated car-sharing service to roll out this year with no one behind the wheel by Jaclyn Trop originally published on TechCrunch

SpaceX notches eighth human spaceflight mission with Crew-5

October 5, 2022

SpaceX successfully launched another batch of astronauts to the International Space Station Wednesday, part of an ongoing astronaut transportation contract with NASA. Like the company’s seven other human spaceflight missions, it was completely routine — and that’s what made it so remarkable. The Crew-5 mission (so named because it’s SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission with NASA’s […]

SpaceX notches eighth human spaceflight mission with Crew-5 by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China

October 5, 2022

Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country’s quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries’ politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China […]

Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Inside a battery recycling facility

October 5, 2022
Hello and welcome to the first-ever edition of The Spark! Thanks so much for joining me for this weekly climate newsletter, where we’ll explore tech that could help combat the climate crisis. I’m so glad you’re here! This week, we’re kicking things off with a special travel edition of the newsletter. So buckle up, because…

Space billboards could cost $65M and still turn a profit

October 5, 2022

Space-based advertising has been on the minds of every marketer on the planet since the Apollo era, yet no one has made it happen. A new study suggests that a billboard-like constellation of about 50 satellites, costing $65 million all in, could shine ads to every corner of the Earth for months — and potentially […]

Space billboards could cost $65M and still turn a profit by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

The porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views

October 5, 2022
Despite what you may have heard, the teens are not stealing their family’s fine dinnerware, tossing it in a blender, and snorting the resulting dust for the “porcelain challenge.” That’s just what Sebastian Durfee, a 23-year-old actor and TikTok creator, hoped you might believe when he spread the word on social media of the latest…

Google answers Meta’s video-generating AI with its own, dubbed Imagen Video

October 5, 2022

Not to be outdone by Meta’s Make-A-Video, Google today detailed its work on Imagen Video, an AI system that can generate video clips given a text prompt (e.g., “a teddy bear washing dishes”). While the results aren’t perfect — the looping clips the system generates tend to have artifacts and noise — Google claims that […]

Google answers Meta’s video-generating AI with its own, dubbed Imagen Video by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch