TikTok owner ByteDance is facing fresh questions about its compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), an online governance and content moderation framework that puts a legal obligation on larger platforms to mitigate systemic risks in areas like youth mental health. The EU’s latest concerns about TikTok’s DSA compliance center on the launch…
Last month, a hacker wreaked havoc during an esports tournament of the popular shooter game Apex Legends, hacking two well-known streamers mid-game to make it look like they were using cheats. A month later, it seems like the hacking saga may have come to a close with the game developers patching the bug exploited by…
Paris-based Dark is taking on the dual problems of debris and conflict in orbit with their mobile platform designed to launch, attach to, and ultimately de-orbit uncooperative objects in space. Dark CEO Clyde Laheyne said the company is aiming to become the “S.W.A.T. team of space.” The three-year-old startup is developing Interceptor, a spacecraft that…
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in an order on Tuesday that BloomTech, the for-profit coding bootcamp previously known as the Lambda School, deceived students about the cost of loans, made false claims about graduates’ hiring rates and engaged in illegal lending masked as “income sharing” agreements with high fees. The order marks…
Spend management startup Ramp has raised another $150 million at a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. New investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Founders Fund co-led the raise, which also included participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock and 8VC. Other existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Sands Capital,…
Inversion Space is aptly named. The three-year-old startup’s primary concern is not getting things to space, but bringing them back — transforming the ultimate high ground into “a transportation layer for Earth.” The company’s plan — ultra-fast, on-demand deliveries to anywhere on Earth — sounds like pie in the sky, but it’s the sort of…
Meta-owned social network Threads is finally testing a “Recent” filter to sort search results based on the most recent posts. Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted on Monday that the rollout is part of a “limited test,” and the feature has been made available to only a few users. “We’re starting to test this with a…
Ghost, the open source alternative to Substack’s newsletter platform, is considering joining the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering…
When prolific venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lerer Hippeau announced in early 2024 they were pivoting away from consumer tech, it sparked a social media debate about whether there are still opportunities. Maven Ventures’ Jim Scheinman and Sara Deshpande say “yes.” And to prove it, they raised $60 million in capital commitments for a…
This week Boston Dynamics retired its well-known Atlas robot that was powered by hydraulics. Then today it unveiled its new Atlas robot, which is powered by electricity. The change might not seem like much, but TechCrunch’s Brian Heater told the TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulics system was out of date. It’s not hard to…
