Timef 04/19/2025

You finally caved and bought an Apple Watch. These are our favorite straps, screen protectors, chargers, and cases to go with it.

Worx’s petite cube vacuum appeals to my desire for cleanliness, control, and cute things in my life.

The first week of the Meta antitrust trial brought new revelations about how the company formerly known as Facebook approached the competitive threat posed by Instagram in the early 2010s. The U.S. government is accusing Meta of violating competition laws by acquiring companies like Instagram and WhatsApp that threatened the Facebook monopoly. If lawyers for […]

New subscription service notwithstanding, Garmin’s latest entry-level tracker is still reliable and attractive and works great.

AeroPress now comes in many sizes and designs. Here are the best AeroPress coffee makers and accessories, for the best coffee.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Plus: Apple will employ user data to improve Apple Intelligence, Comcast has a 5-year price lock, and a new laser skin-care tool arrives in the US.

Some $380 million is now in limbo after reductions in the federal workforce affected staff that run a program helping low-income people pay their energy bills.

Recycling robots are using artificial intelligence to learn how to sort recyclables by recognizing patterns in colors, textures, shapes and logos.

Plus: A US judge rules against police cell phone “tower dumps,” China names alleged NSA agents it says were involved in cyberattacks, and Customs and Border Protection reveals its social media spying tools.

A new experiment suggests that the thalamus plays a key role in humans becoming consciously aware of stimuli their brain receives.

Our top picks keep everything in place, even if your workout is just a walk to the fridge.

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.

DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

A new animated kids’ series expected to premiere this year won’t be headed for a TV network. Or a streaming service. Instead, the founders of production studio We Ghosted Media plan to launch on a decentralized web platform that uses blockchain technology. And yes, a crypto wallet will be involved.  We Ghosted Media — founded by […]

Techstars, a nearly 20-year-old startup accelerator, announced new terms for startups that enter its three-month program. The organization will now invest $220,000, which is $100,000 more than it offered previously, in companies starting with its fall 2025 batch. The capital will be divided into two components. The group is offering companies $20,000 in exchange for […]

OpenAI’s recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects. However, the new models still hallucinate, or make things up — in fact, they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI’s older models. Hallucinations have proven to be one of the biggest and most difficult problems to solve in AI, impacting even today’s […]

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […]

Bluesky may soon get a new blue checkmark verification system, according to changes to the app’s public GitHub repository spotted Friday by reverse engineer alice.mosphere.at. The blue checks may have a similar look to the system pioneered by Twitter, now X, but Bluesky’s version seems like it will work quite differently. Bluesky’s blue check system […]

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Enough with my typical small talk. Let’s jump into the news right away this week. And there’s plenty of it, including Lyft’s entry into Europe, AV startup […]

The government-run website covid.gov used to host information about COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment. Now, under President Trump’s purview, the page redirects to a White House website espousing the unproven theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. The theory, which has been opposed by many virologists, was espoused in a report by House Republicans […]

Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI […]

The Trump administration and DOGE tried to cut more than 1,400 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. An employee union and other groups are fighting to keep the regulator intact.

New restrictions on semiconductor exports to China are scrambling sales and fueling concerns that the Chinese tech giant will become a chip-making powerhouse.

DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week brought us mixed messages. A fresh IPO filing, but a bleak outlook for exits overall. New funding rounds, but founders frustrated over lack of capital. […]

TikTok content creator Kelley Heyer sued the video game Roblox for using her dance to Charli XCX’s “Apple” without permission. Heyer posted the viral dance in June 2024, which fed off of the hype of Charli XCX’s hit summer album Brat. The dance became so popular that Charli XCX incorporated it into her live show […]

OpenAI is upgrading ChatGPT’s “memory” again. In a changelog and support pages on OpenAI’s website Thursday, the company quietly announced “Memory with Search,” a feature that lets ChatGPT draw on memories — details from past conversations, such as your favorite foods — to inform queries when the bot searches the web. ChatGPT release notes were […]