MoviePass 2.0 is opening up the invite waitlist again before its public launch this summer

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge MoviePass is back in control of its founder, Stacy Spikes, and is beta testing a new points-based setup for subscription moviegoing. The company announced everyone who signed up for its relaunch waitlist has been accepted and said it’s reopening the waitlist for other interested subscribers to join but … Read more

Warner Bros. swiped our Harry Potter wand IP, says Kano

Kano, the venture-backed U.K startup known for its build-your-own computer kits and software for teaching coding and associated STEM skills, has accused Warner Bros. of copying one of its products and infringing on its intellectual property (IP). The product in question is the Harry Potter: Magic Caster Wand that Warner Bros. announced back in October, and which … Read more

Hear the right way to acquire customers with Cube and Mayfield on TechCrunch Live

Finance people live and breathe spreadsheets, Mayfield’s Rajeev Batra was telling me. We were talking about our upcoming TechCrunch Live event featuring him and Cube’s Christina Ross, and Rajeev was explaining how he sees Cube’s position in the marketplace. Christina Ross co-founded the company in 2018 in a bid to provide a solution to CFOs … Read more

You could be Wasted and not even know it

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha Mascarenhas, Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak took the mic to talk through breaking news, retrospective features and all the blogosphere content that fits in between. Shout-out to Theresa and Andrew for putting together … Read more

TechCrunch+ roundup: No-code MVP strategy, hiring under scrutiny, A/B growth testing

Americans spent nearly $20 billion on pizza deliveries in 2021. Most of us could probably bake one at home, but speed and convenience are powerful incentives at dinnertime. The potential of AI tools like ChatGPT creates a similar dilemma — should companies license large language models without modifications, or customize them and pay much higher … Read more

Google created an AI that can generate music from text descriptions, but won’t release it

An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it. Called MusicLM, Google’s certainly isn’t the first generative AI system for song. There’s been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by visualizing … Read more

Meet the black bear that took 400 selfies

Image: City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Brace yourselves, bear lovers. We have a new star. One special black bear recently discovered a wildlife camera set up by City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), managing to take hundreds of selfies with it. “Of the 580 photos captured [on the … Read more