June 23, 2025

See stunning first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The first spectacular images taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have been released for the world to peruse: a panoply of iridescent galaxies and shimmering nebulas. “This is the dawn of the Rubin Observatory,” says Meg Schwamb, a planetary scientist and astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Much has been written about…

Medium embraces Twitter alternative Mastodon with launch of its own community

January 12, 2023

Online publishing platform Medium, originally created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, announced today it’s embracing the open-source Mastodon platform by creating its own instance to support its authors and their publications. The company said it’s launching me.dm, a Mastodon community that will offer reliable infrastructure, moderation, and a short domain name to make it easier […]

Medium embraces Twitter alternative Mastodon with launch of its own community by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Keychron gets it right with its Q10 Alice-style keyboard

January 12, 2023

Are you thinking about getting a mechanical keyboard and asked a friend which one to get? Chances are, they said: get a Keychron. It’s basically a meme at this point. After making its name with affordable mechanical keyboards (with a bit of a focus for Mac users) — the company now has something on offer […]

Keychron gets it right with its Q10 Alice-style keyboard by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter rival ‘T2’ raises its first outside funding, $1.1M from a group of high profile angels

January 12, 2023

It hasn’t decided on a name, it’s still on the hunt to fill some important roles, and its early alpha has less than 100 users as of today. But, riding the wave of interest in the current state of Twitter, a startup hoping to disrupt it has raised $1.1 million in funding. T2, the project […]

Twitter rival ‘T2’ raises its first outside funding, $1.1M from a group of high profile angels by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Robot or fauxbot?

January 12, 2023

This is my week of debriefs. CES has a way of hurling you into the new year, kicking and screaming, and it can be hard to find your bearings as you emerge on the other side. As the dust has cleared, one thing remains very clear: No two people have the same notion of what […]

Robot or fauxbot? by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

VALL-E’s quickie voice deepfakes should worry you, if you weren’t worried already

January 12, 2023

The emergence in the last week of a particularly effective voice synthesis machine learning model called VALL-E has prompted a new wave of concern over the possibility of deepfake voices made quick and easy — quickfakes, if you will. But VALL-E is more iterative than breakthrough, and the capabilities aren’t so new as you might […]

VALL-E’s quickie voice deepfakes should worry you, if you weren’t worried already by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

FPGA startup Rapid Silicon lands $15M to bring its first chip to market

January 12, 2023

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), or integrated circuits sold off-the-shelf, are a hot topic in tech. Because they’re relatively affordable and can be programmed for a range of use cases, they’ve caught on particularly in the AI and machine learning space, where they’ve been used to accelerate the training of AI systems. The global FPGA […]

FPGA startup Rapid Silicon lands $15M to bring its first chip to market by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok fined in France for manipulative cookie consent flow

January 12, 2023

TikTok is the latest tech giant to be schooled by France’s data protection watchdog for breaking rules on cookie consent. The €5 million penalty announced today by the CNIL relates to a cookie consent flow TikTok had used on its website (tiktok.com) until early last year — in which the regulator found it was not […]

TikTok fined in France for manipulative cookie consent flow by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch