Sunday, August 11, 2024

Image Credits: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch

Less than three weeks after a CrowdStrike software update caused chaos around the world, the company was marketing itself in one of the biggest booths at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai was on the scene as booth staffers gave out T-shirts and action figures designed to represent some of the national states and cybercriminals CrowdStrike tracks.

Were freebies enough to win over cybersecurity professionals left scrambling after the company's global outage? Among more than a dozen attendees interviewed by TechCrunch, the majority said they hadn't lost faith in CrowdStrike.

Read on to see what else we've been covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Will generative AI take Alexa to the next level? As Alexa turns 10, Brian Heater looks at the Amazon voice assistant's future. Google and Apple have announced plans to use AI to upgrade Assistant and Siri, respectively, so Amazon is almost certainly working on something similar. Read more

Check out these open source tools: Paul Sawers and Ivan Mehta round up open source options for anyone hoping to break free of software from the Big Tech companies, with options ranging from Penpot for design and prototyping to Jitsi for video publishing. Read more

Was it a good idea to spend $1.8 million on friend.com? After AI companion startup Friend announced that it wrote a huge check to purchase the friend.com domain, Rebecca Szkutak spoke to CEO Avi Schiffmann about the deal. Schiffmann said the purchase had already paid for itself. Read more

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What else we're reading 📖

The New York Times reports on the latest developments in Elon Musk and X's legal battle against a supposed advertiser boycott, with the nonprofit Global Alliance for Responsible Media saying it would shut down because it does not have the financial resources to continue operating while fighting Musk in court. Read more

Meanwhile, 404 Media takes a deep dive into the AI-generated "slop" on Facebook, looking at who's creating it and why the social network doesn't seem bothered. Read more