In a carefully worded announcement on Monday, Apple said John Giannandrea, who has been the company’s AI chief since 2018, is “stepping down” to, well, not work at Apple anymore. He’ll stick around through spring as an advisor. His replacement is Amar Subramanya, a highly regarded Microsoft executive who spent 16 years at Google, most … Read more
The AI boom is proving to be a windfall for construction workers building the massive data centers that power it all. According to The WSJ, workers moving into data-center construction are seeing pay jumps of 25% to 30% compared to their previous jobs — and in some cases, much more. Among them is DeMond Chambliss, … Read more
South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang over the weekend said nearly 34 million Korean customers’ personal information had been leaked in a data breach that had been ongoing for more than five months. The company said it first detected the unauthorized exposure of 4,500 user accounts on November 18, but a subsequent investigation revealed that the … Read more
When Will Bruey talks about the future, the timelines are shorter than most might imagine. The Varda Space Industries CEO predicts that within 10 years, someone could stand at a landing site and watch multiple specialized spacecraft per night zooming toward Earth like shooting stars, each carrying pharmaceuticals manufactured in space. Within 15 to 20 … Read more
James Cameron’s movies are often at the cutting edge of visual effects technology — especially the “Avatar” films, with their heroic blue Na’vi characters brought to life through performance capture. But that doesn’t make Cameron a fan of generative AI. In a CBS Sunday Morning interview tied to the upcoming release of “Avatar: Fire and … Read more
Finland’s weather is notoriously unfriendly; but even so, your food order might be delivered by a drone. On a rainy day after Helsinki’s annual Slush conference, Finnish entrepreneur Ville Leppälä took TechCrunch behind the scenes of a three-party partnership between Irish drone delivery company Manna, DoorDash-owned food delivery platform Wolt, and his own startup, Huuva. … Read more
In early November, a developer nicknamed Cookie entered a routine conversation with Perplexity. She often tasks it with reading her developer work in quantum algorithms and writing readme files and other documents for GitHub. She’s a Pro subscriber and uses the service in “best” mode, meaning it chooses which underlying model to tap from among … Read more
American consumers spent $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics, which says it tracks more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites. That’s a new record, and up from $10.8 billion spent on Black Friday last year, Adobe says. Between 10am and 2pm, online shoppers were supposedly spending $12.5 … Read more
Flights were delayed and cancelled globally after Airbus ordered fixes to 6,000 of its A320 series planes, according to The Guardian. The company said it’s taking action because “analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” Citing … Read more
New York’s latest state budget includes new disclosure requirements for businesses that use personal data to set different prices for different shoppers — for example, charging you more if you have a history of splurging. Businesses that use personalized pricing are now required to tell customers, “This price was set by an algorithm using your … Read more
