Month: August 2024

Polestar is getting a new CEO amid EV sales slump

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Just weeks ago, during an interview with TechCrunch, Thomas Ingenlath laid out his plan to turn Polestar into a self-sustaining company. Now, he’s out.  Polestar said Tuesday Ingenlath has resigned as CEO, a position he has held since the EV startup spun out of Volvo in 2017. He will be replaced by Michael Lohscheller, who was … Read more

The rise and fall of OpenSea

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The rise and fall of NFTs made and unmade OpenSea — the largest marketplace for the crypto asset. But insider accounts of the company reveal a chaotic work environment, ever-shifting priorities, and troubles with the SEC. Continue reading…

Midjourney says it’s ‘getting into hardware’

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Midjourney, the AI image-generating platform that’s reportedly raking in more than $200 million in revenue without a single dime of VC investment, is officially getting into hardware. The company made the announcement in a post on X on Wednesday. Midjourney’s new hardware team will be based in San Francisco, it revealed. Exactly what sort of … Read more

This Week in AI: AI is rapidly being commoditized

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Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. If you want this in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Say what you will about generative AI. But it’s commoditizing — or, at least, it appears to be. In early August, both Google and OpenAI slashed prices on their budget-friendliest text-generating models. Google reduced the … Read more

AccentFold: Enhancing Accent Recognition – What Information Does AccentFold capture?

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:::info Authors: (1) Abraham Owodunni, Intron Health, Masakhane, and this author contributed equally; (2) Aditya Yadavalli, Karya, Masakhane, and this author contributed equally; (3) Chris Emezuem, Mila Quebec AI Institute, Lanfrica, Masakhane, and this author contributed equally; (4) Tobi Olatunji, Intron Health and Masakhane, and this author contributed equally; (5) Clinton Mbataku, AI Saturdays Lagos. … Read more

Brilliant is back from the brink

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Brilliant, maker of smart switches and smart control panels, is back in business. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Brilliant is back in business. Three months after laying off its staff, shutting down its support center, and ceasing sales, the maker of smart home control panels has reemerged with a new name, … Read more

SEC takes aim at NFT marketplace OpenSea

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OpenSea, which calls itself the “world’s largest” nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, received a Wells notice from the SEC, the company said in a blog post Wednesday, indicating the regulator may soon bring a lawsuit against the company. In a tweet, CEO Devin Finzer says the SEC is claiming NFTs on OpenSea’s platform are unregistered securities. … Read more

Amazon and Bandai shutter anime MMO Blue Protocol

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Image: Bandai Namco Blue Protocol, an anime-inspired MMO developed by Bandai Namco, will shut down its Japanese servers on January 18th, 2025. The game was in the process of being released in the west, with publishing handled by Amazon Games. Because of the game’s pending shuttering, its western release has been summarily cancelled. Blue Protocol’s … Read more

Poor Randomness: Securing Random Number Generation in Spring Applications

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Welcome to my three-part deep dive into the world of Java cryptography! In this series, we’ll explore common pitfalls that can compromise the security of your Spring applications, and provide practical, code-centric solutions to address them. With that said, We kick off with a critical look at random number generation, a fundamental aspect of many … Read more