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Showing posts from November, 2022

Stability AI doubles down on AWS

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via https://ift.tt/NOcxAWk Microsoft may have long had OpenAI as its trusty partner (after its sizable investment ), but AWS today announced that Stability AI , one of the hottest new upstarts in the generative AI space and the company behind Stable Diffusion , is doubling down on its cloud, making it its “preferred cloud provider to build and scale its AI models for image, language, audio, video, and 3D content generation.” In addition, Stability AI will also work with AWS to make its open-source tools and model available to more students, researchers, startups and enterprises (which sounds quite a bit like what Microsoft and OpenAI said when they announced their partnership). Stability AI, which recently announced a $101 million funding round at a valuation of over $1 billion, was already using thousands of Nvidia GPUs in the AWS cloud to train its models. Now, the two companies are formalizing this relationship, with Stability AI planning to use AWS’ SageMaker ML platform, on t...

Musk at Twitter has ‘huge work’ ahead to comply with EU rules, warns bloc

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via https://ift.tt/AhY3Nqg European Union regulators have fired another warning shot at Elon Musk over his erratic piloting of Twitter since his takeover last month — saying he has “huge work” ahead if the social media site is to avoid falling foul of major new governance rules for digital services which entered into force earlier this month . Reminder: Breaches of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) can attract penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover. Since getting his hands on the bird, Musk has fired the top team and made slashing Twitter’s headcount a priority — with reports of 50% cuts early this month, and further sackings since (including of a large number of contractors). He’s also reversed the prior leadership’s ban on former US president Donald Trump’s Twitter account and suggested he’ll implement a general amnesty for accounts previously suspended for violating its policies — all the while engaging in public boosterism with a small group of mostly far right T...

T-minus 72 hours left to save on passes to TC Sessions: Space

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via https://ift.tt/P814JHY We’re getting ready to launch a price hike, but you still have time — 72 hours to be precise — to attend TC Sessions: Space 2022 on December 6 in Los Angeles for $199. Will you be in the room? Click, register and save: Space tech may come with a jaw-dropping price tag, but this space conference doesn’t. Buy your pass before December 2 at 11:59 p.m. PST — prices go up to $495 at midnight. Why pay more if you don’t have to? Let’s take a gander at just some programming we have lined up for the day. Check out the event agenda for specifics on all the speakers, topics and times. TechCrunch Space Pitch-off : You can improve your own pitch by watching how the VC judges react and by the questions they ask. It’s a window into what might make them decide to schedule a meeting with you. We’ll announce the competitors soon, and they’ll have to deliver their very best to impress our panel of expert judges: Jory Bell (Playground Global), Mark Boggett (Seraphim S...

Apple’s iOS 16.1.2 update just dropped with security fixes and crash detection improvements

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via https://ift.tt/gmbrQK2 Apple rolled out iOS 16.1.2 on Wednesday, citing updates involving user security. Apple hasn’t yet detailed the nature of the security updates , as the company doesn’t disclose security issues until after they’ve been investigated or patched. The update also includes improved compatibility with wireless carriers, as well as crash detection optimizations for iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models. Crash detection , which was announced at Apple’s September event , is a new feature that triggers Emergency SOS if it suspects you’ve been in a crash. While this feature could be life-saving in certain situations, users have reported issues in which crash detection is falsely triggered while riding roller coasters . Apple doesn’t outright name the roller coaster issue in its patch notes, but it’s a bug that’s been on adrenaline-seeking customers’ minds. To update to the latest version of iOS, navigate to your iPhone’s settings. Then, click “general.” At the top of yo...

Antaris predicts the future of the space economy at TC Sessions: Space

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via https://ift.tt/MT384EB We’re just about one week away from achieving liftoff for TC Sessions: Space — a full day jam-packed with the latest space science, tech and trends. Join us on December 6 in Los Angeles to hear from and connect with the startups, researchers, investors and technologists forging the future of space. A word (or two or three) about our partner companies. They play a vital role at TechCrunch events. As subject-matter experts, they show up and present sessions with relevant content designed to help early-stage founders succeed. And yes, we’re about to showcase one of them. Beat the price hike: The moon is not made of cheese, but if you act quickly enough, you’ll save a chunk of cheddar. Buy a $199 pass before December 2 at 11:59 pm (PST) . The price goes up to $495 at midnight, December 2. Today, we’re excited to highlight Antaris, a cloud-based satellite software platform dedicated to simplifying satellite design and deployment while reducing cost and ti...

Daily Crunch: Apple announces its 2022 App Store Award winners

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via https://ift.tt/7VlvFRD To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Oh hey! While we have you here, grab your calendar — we’ve got some things for you to add. For the stargazers among us, we’ll be in Los Angeles doing TC Sessions: Space on December 6. And on April 20, 2023, we’re heading to Boston for our TC Early Stage festival . Come to either. Come to both. Come to neither. We love you all just the same. But we’d prefer to see your faces in person if we can! Oh, and did you know it’s “Giving Tuesday”? That means it’s time to think about which of your favorite causes deserve some of your time or dollars, if you have some of either to spare. — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 And the winner is… : Okay, all you fans of taking photos of yourself “in the now,” no matter where you are. Ivan writes that BeReal won “app of the year” for 2022 in Apple’s annual App Store Awards. Orde...

Magic creator Richard Garfield on why he put a paper game on the blockchain

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via https://ift.tt/YovjxPk Richard Garfield is a name familiar to many in the tabletop gaming world, most notably as one of the creators of Magic: The Gathering, the most prominent trading card game out there. But Garfield is dipping his toes into the world of digital and in particular blockchain-adjacent games, and TechCrunch took the opportunity to quiz the veteran gamemaker on the pros and cons of this and other new approaches to gaming. It should be noted at the outset that unlike the dubious profit-focused gameplay of your Axie Infinity and suchlike, Garfield’s new game, technically a “mode” of Blockchain Brawlers , is not focused on speculation but more of an experiment in distribution of a complete card-based game outside traditional publishing methods. It should probably also be noted that the game platform is full of the usual NFT and monetization chatter, but the core game itself, a 1v1 bluffing style match, is capable of being played with ordinary playing cards or for t...

AWS adds automated agent monitoring to Amazon Contact Center

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via https://ift.tt/BD2Mtca AWS introduced Contact Center, its customer service oriented product some years ago, putting it smack dab in the middle of enterprise applications. It also places the company in the position of competing directly with the likes of Salesforce and other established enterprise SaaS vendors. When you are competing in that space, you need some powerful features, and today at AWS re:invent in Las Vegas, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky introduced three features to help bring more automation to managing Amazon Contact Centers running on AWS. For starters, the company is introducing new performance management capabilities under Contact Lens for Amazon Connect designed to help managers identify CSAs who are having issues. The solution uses a combination of performance review forms and machine learning-driven voice analytics to review job performance. In reality, it’s supposed to help identify agents who might need additional training or coaching. “These reduce the time t...

AWS gets data clean rooms for analytics data

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via https://ift.tt/6rv8IAt AWS today launched a new service that will help users inside an advertising or marketing organization share data with other employees inside their company or with outside partners, all without running the risk of inadvertently sharing personal data. This new service is part of Amazon’s new AWS for Advertising & Marketing initiative , which aims to leverage existing AWS services — and those from its partners — to provide purpose-built services for them. Clean Rooms is the first major new product of this initiative. “Data clean rooms are protected environments where multiple parties can analyze combined data without ever exposing the raw data have emerged as a solution,” AWS CEO Adam Selipsky explained in today’s keynotes. “The clean rooms are hard to build. Their complex requirements take months to develop and once you’ve built a clean room you have to continuously update the data all the while meeting requests for new collaborators and data types.” ...

Twitter says it’s no longer enforcing COVID-19 misleading information policy

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via https://ift.tt/XBqceVn Twitter is no longer enforcing its policy against misleading information about COVID-19, per an update posted to an official company blog page . Reuters spotted the change earlier — which said the change was effective as of last Wednesday. “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the social media company writes in a brief grey-on-grey note on a company webpage that’s still emblazoned with the title: “Coronavirus: Staying safe and informed on Twitter”. No explanation was given by Twitter for the policy change. Under its prior COVID-19 misinformation policy the company had said it would remove “demonstrably false or potentially misleading content that has the highest risk of causing harm”. Grey on grey update freezing enforcement of Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy (Screengrab: Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch) Since billionaire Tesla owner, Elon Musk, took over the company last ...

Flickr weighs support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Twitter alternative Mastodon

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via https://ift.tt/MfVgXAK On the heels of Tumblr’s decision to integrate with ActivityPub — the social protocol powering the open-source Twitter alternative Mastodon and others — it appears that photo-sharing site Flickr is now considering doing the same. Flickr CEO Don MacAskill today began to actively poll users about whether or not they’d like to see Flickr support the protocol, too. If it moved forward with this plan, Flickr would be the latest larger company to commit to joining the “ fediverse ” — the interconnected group of independent servers across the globe running free, open-source software that allows their users to communicate and connect with one another. The concept presents a challenge to modern-day social networks controlled by corporations — or billionaires like Elon Musk. ActivityPub is a key component to the fediverse, powering not only Mastodon, whose popularity has grown in the wake of Musk’s Twitter acquisition , but also other alternative social platfor...

Move over, operators — consultants are the new nontraditional VC

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via https://ift.tt/hcQMkWl Operating experience has become a buzzword over the last few years as venture capitalists pump up their resumes in a quest to set themselves apart from other sources of startup capital. Now, it seems that we are seeing the next evolution of that trend. This year has seen a wave of startup consultant firms looking to raise venture funds of their own to take stakes in companies they are already working with or that align with their practice. In theory, this makes total sense because both consultants and venture capitalists have the same goal at the end of the day: helping companies grow. “Most come on board because we provide the capital, plus. What is that plus? The plus with us is storytelling.” FNDR CEO James Vincent But why are so many consultant-led venture capital funds launching now? It’s a particularly rough time in the broader venture market, and economy in general, in addition to being one of the toughest periods for emerging managers and first-...