Thursday, August 29, 2024

Welcome to TC PM! Today we are looking into some suspicious behavior by X related to an alleged censorship of an NPR article; we've got a fun firsthand account on traveling through an airport that's in the middle of a cyberattack; and we look at a big-ticket funding round for an AI startup. It's go time.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

😏 Sus behavior: This morning, X users discovered that the platform was flagging a link to an NPR story about Donald Trump as potentially unsafe, a warning generally given to posts that link to sites with malware or spam. People are, of course, speculating on the many reasons why this happened. Read more

✈️ Offline airport: What is it like to travel through an airport that's dealing with a potential cyberattack? Devin Coldewey found out while traveling through Seattle's airport on Sunday. He walks through what was and wasn't working and notes that this situation should be a cautionary tale about taking cybersecurity more seriously. Read more

🪄 Magic money: Magic, an AI startup that creates models that automate software development tasks, was rumored in July to be raising $200 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The startup announced its round today, and it's, um, quite a lot bigger than that. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Landian

🖥️ A whole new world: Meta announced that it's opening up its Horizon Worlds virtual reality platform to preteens. Parents approve which worlds preteens can access, and Meta is rolling out features to help them decide ones that are kid friendly. Read more

☁️ Chip away: Intel has landed a large customer for its Gaudi 3 accelerator chip: IBM Cloud. Intel announced its Gaudi 3 chip last year and has a long way to go to catch up to rivals like Nvidia and AMD, which both had a big head start in this area. Read more

🏡 Cutting commission: In 2019, Josh Sitzer sued the National Association of Realtors because he didn't think he should be forced to pay a 3% commission to a buyer's agent. He won. Now he's launched a startup targeting a similar area. Read more

🤪 Vybe check: More memes, please. Two Oxford PhD graduates built a platform called Vybe to make it easier for people to upload photos into meme templates. The startup recently raised $4.75 million and is building a social network for its users. Read more

📱 Apple event: Apple's iPhone 16 event is less than two weeks away. We've got an update for you on how to watch, as well as what we expect to be announced. Read more

🔊 Turn it up: For some reason, Apple recently decided that iOS users should no longer be able to control the volume on Spotify using an iPhone's volume buttons. Spotify claims that this goes against the Digital Markets Act. Read more

🏈 Apple Sports: In our last piece of Apple news for the day, the company announced new features for Apple Sports, its free sports-focused app, ahead of the upcoming NFL and college football seasons. The app originally launched in February. Read more

📧 Email questions, answered: Have you ever wanted to talk to someone about your inbox? Now you can. Today Google announced that it's rolling out Gmail Q&A, a new feature that allows Android users to chat with Google's Gemini about their inbox. They should've fixed Gmail search first, though, I think. Read more

Around the web

🎶 Algorithm hell: Spotify has been facing a lot of warranted scrutiny over the fact that its algorithms have made it harder lately for people to find new music. The Washington Post dives into some alternative apps people can use to discover tunes. Read more

🥰 Very demure: If you haven't been living in a cave, you are probably aware of the recent trends of calling things "very mindful, very demure." The Verge wrote a great piece today about the very dramatic battle to trademark the phrase. Read more