President Donald Trump announced that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is increasing its investment in the United States to $100 billion. This move expands on the company’s existing commitment, pushing its total investment in the country to $165 billion. The […]

The post TSMC unveils $100 billion investment to boost chip manufacturing in the US first appeared on Tech Startups.

Behold the 'Cheetozard,' a Charizard-shaped Cheeto that just sold for $87,840.

Monday's test flight will attempt to deploy four Starlink simulators from the megarocket.

What started as an Apple Intelligence feature exclusive to the Camera Control-endowed iPhone 16 line is coming to older iPhones, and soon. We already knew that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max would get Visual Intelligence at some point in the future, and thanks to 9to5Mac, we now know it's one of several options you can assign to the Action Button in the second iOS 18.4 beta. That likely means the feature could end up in the final release of the update.

Visual Intelligence lets you draw on AI models from Google and OpenAI to find information (and websites) about anything you point your iPhone's camera at. You can also use the feature to add information from a flyer to your calendar and oddly, identify dog breeds. Until recently, the feature had to be summoned with a long-press of Camera Control on an iPhone 16, but as of the release of the iPhone 16e, Apple made it possible to use an Action Button to pull it up, too. Considering the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip offers enough RAM to enable other Apple Intelligence features, it makes sense that its ACtion Button shouldn't be left out of the fun.

iOS 18.4 is currently in beta and is expected to launch in early April. Alongside expanding the number of phones that can run Visual Intelligence, Apple is also using the update to launch a new recipe section in Apple News called Apple News+ Food. Previously, Bloomberg reported that iOS 18.4 was supposed to also mark the launch of Apple's upgraded Siri, which is supposed to have the ability to see and take action inside of apps, but that feature is now coming later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-iphone-15-pro-will-get-visual-intelligence-with-ios-184-204658321.html?src=rss

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© Apple

A man who called Dothan, Alabama ABC affiliate WHDN looking for help in finding his missing wife is now accused of her murder. Stephen Craig Miller, Sr., 64, has been charged with murder after the body of his wife Gloria was found in a dry creek bed. In a release, Dothan Police said Miller, Sr....

The Android team this week is putting a “Spotlight” for developers on widgets, especially “high-quality” ones. Meanwhile, Android users will benefit from a new Play Store “Widgets” filter.

more…

Based on the beloved animated series, the toy release will hit retailers in June.

The policy about-face seems to have left lawmakers confused and outraged.

Google and a number of automakers are spearheading the movement to get automated vehicles on America’s roads. Self-driving cars are street legal in three states, and Google’s fleet has collectively logged over 300,000 miles of time on the road. However, there are several obstacles in the path of widespread adoption, with legal and moral opposition to the concept coming from all corners. Follow this StoryStream to track the technology’s progress as it transitions from experimental testing to consumer reality that could save thousands of lives.

• The end of Cruise is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles
• Cruise’s robotaxi service will shut down as GM pulls its funding
• Waymo released a software update to solve its San Francisco “honkfest.”
• A nightly Waymo robotaxi parking lot honkfest is waking San Francisco neighbors
• Amazon will begin testing robotaxis in Austin and Miami too.
• Waymo’s robotaxis are under investigation for crashes and traffic law violations
• In the first Autonomous Racing League race, the struggle was real
• Orange cones are robot kryptonite.
• People are afraid of self-driving cars — can the industry change that?
• Uber Eats is now delivering burritos via Waymo in Phoenix.
• The Zoox come out at night.
• Waymo opens up in LA.
• Cruise finally has a chief safety officer.
• Cruise wasn’t hiding the pedestrian-dragging video from regulators — it just had bad internet
• GM’s big bet on driverless cars turns sour
• TFW your Uber driver is an empty seat.
• How will driverless cars ‘talk’ to pedestrians? Waymo has a few ideas
• Robotaxis in the Bayou City.
• What about driver’s ed for driverless cars?
• Waymo’s robotaxis are now available to tens of thousands of people across all of San Francisco
• California governor vetoes a bill requiring humans in autonomous big rigs
• Cruise unveils a wheelchair-accessible robotaxi, with plans to launch in 2024
• Driverless buses are tooling around San Francisco’s Treasure Island in a test for the next few months.
• We knew Tesla didn’t fix a flaw in Autopilot, and now we have their engineers on record admitting it.
• Robotaxis are driving on thin ice
• Waymo says Austin, Texas, will be its next robotaxi city
• Driverless car legislation is still stuck in neutral in the US
• On the cusp of 24/7 service, robotaxis face pleas and protest in San Francisco
• San Francisco residents are disabling robotaxis with traffic cones.
• VW will test its autonomous ID Buzz in the US starting this month
• Uber teams up with Waymo to add robotaxis to its app
• Waymo barreling ahead with bigger robotaxi coverage in San Francisco and Phoenix
• Amazon’s weird toaster-shaped robotaxi hits the road in a ‘first’ for the company
• Despite mounting opposition, the Bay Area’s robotaxis keep racking up the miles
• San Francisco wants to slow robotaxi rollout over blocked traffic and false 911 calls
• Waymo’s driverless robotaxis are now doing airport trips in Phoenix
• Robotaxis are now available to hail on the Uber app in Las Vegas
• Waymo’s new robotaxi is an all-electric people mover with no steering wheel
• Waymo’s fully driverless minivans are already putting people to sleep
• Intel is working with Waymo to build fully self-driving cars
• Lyft teams up with NuTonomy to put ‘thousands’ of self-driving cars on the road
• Google’s self-driving cars just got way better at driving themselves
• Uber teams up with Mercedes-Benz’s parent company on self-driving cars
• Watch GM’s self-driving car navigate the streets of San Francisco
• Uber’s self-driving truck company just completed its first shipment: 50,000 cans of Budweiser
• Self-driving cars hit the road for first public test in the UK
• Digital mapping firm Here wants to transform Iowa highway into a self-driving utopia
• Images of Google’s first self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans surface
• Didi, the ride-hail company that beat Uber in China, is working on self-driving cars
• Self-driving cars will have to pry the steering wheel from our cold, dead hands, poll says
• Google’s ‘worst’ self-driving accident was still a human’s fault
• Singapore’s self-driving cars can now be hailed with a smartphone
• Self-driving car makers don’t sound super excited to share data with the federal government
• New rules of the road for self-driving cars have just been released
• Lyft’s president says ‘majority’ of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021
• I rode this cute self-driving bus that’s coming to Japan next month
• Meet the self-driving car industry’s most important lobbyist
• Google, Ford, and Uber just created a giant lobbying group for self-driving cars
• Voices clash at first public hearing on self-driving cars
• Volvo is sending 100 self-driving cars to China for testing
• Amazon and Microsoft are very close to investing in mapping tech for self-driving cars
• Amazon and Microsoft will reportedly invest in Here, the self-driving car mapping unit
• Google is testing self-driving cars in a third city: Kirkland, WA
• Samsung and Baidu are getting into self-driving cars
• Google’s self-driving car is hitting public roads this summer
• Elon Musk: cars you can drive will eventually be outlawed
• Volvo will run a public test of self-driving cars with 100 real people in 2017
• Uber just announced its own self-driving car project
• Elon Musk says self-driving car technology still has another 5 to 6 years to go
• GM plans to sell cars with ‘highly automated driving technology’ in two years’ time
• For $10,000, your car can drive itself
• Toyota is investigating cars that hover above the road
• Google’s self-driving car isn’t a car, it’s the future
• Google made a self-driving car, and it doesn’t have a steering wheel
• California DMV adopts new rules for self-driving car tests
• I took a ride in Google’s self-driving car
• Behind the wheel: a look inside Google’s self-driving cars
• US military, Lockheed deem driverless convoy test a success
• Volvo speeds ahead with autonomous cars on Swedish roads by 2017
• The long road to Google’s self-driving car
• Elon Musk says Tesla’s self-driving cars will still require a human driver
• Tesla is looking for engineers to develop self-driving cars
• Congressman hitches a ride in a stealthy self-driving Cadillac
• Self-driving cars and ocean colonies: revisit Isaac Asimov’s vision of 2014
• Nissan says it will bring multiple self-driving cars to market by 2020
• Google is reportedly designing its own self-driving car
• UK to test self-driving cars on public roads this year
• NHTSA calls on states to legalize self-driving car testing
• Elon Musk in talks with Google to bring driverless tech to Tesla cars (update)
• Michigan governor urges ‘automotive capital of the world’ to welcome self-driving cars
• Hitachi’s ROPITS is the self-driving go-kart of the future
• Nissan shifts self-driving car R&D to Silicon Valley
• Inexpensive alternative to Google’s self-driving cars uses lasers and cameras to navigate
• Google expects its self-driving cars to be ready in three to five years
• At CES, self-driving cars dance with believers, skeptics, and governments
• The Batmobile is real: Audi’s self-driving car picks you up on command
• Audi working on making self-driving cars look like normal cars
• Toyota and Lexus show off autonomous — but not self-driving — car at CES
• Lexus’s ‘advanced active safety research vehicle’ can drive itself, but don’t call it a self-driving car
• Toyota to show off self-driving car at CES
• German auto supplier receives automated car license from Nevada, following Google
• Self-driving cars can navigate the road, but can they navigate the law?
• Auto designers imagine the self-driving cars and drones of future police work
• Google hires NHTSA deputy director to oversee safety of self-driving cars
• Self-driving cars hold ‘great promise’ for saving thousands of lives, says US government official
• Re-thinking car design in the age of self-driving vehicles
• Self-driving cars allowed on California roads under new law
• California Assembly and Senate pass safety regulations for self-driving cars
• Florida political attack ad takes issue with self-driving vehicles
• Google’s self-driving cars have logged more than 300,000 miles on the road
• Japan aims for autonomous cars in the next 10 years
• Autonomous three-car caravan completes 125-mile public road test
• California Senate passes safety requirements for self-driving cars
• Nevada DMV grants first self-driving car testing license to Google
• Easier-to-understand technology could keep elderly drivers on the road longer
• One in five drivers would spend $3,000 to add self-driving to their next car
• Google discusses partnerships with carmakers for self driving system
• Google puts a blind man behind the wheel of its self-driving car (video)
• Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars
• Building tomorrow’s car today: the self-driving vehicle nears the mainstream

Google is making some changes to Google Play on Android devices to better highlight apps that include widgets, according to a blog post. The changes include a new search filter for widgets, widget badges on app detail pages, and a curated editorial page dedicated to widgets.

“Historically, one of the challenges with investing in widget development has been discoverability and user understanding,” product manager Yinka Taiwo-Peters says in the post. “You’ve asked for better ways for users to find and utilize your widgets, and we’re delivering.” Yinka Taiwo-Peters also acknowledges that “we understand that the effort required to build and maintain widgets needs to be justified by user adoption.”

With the search filter, users will be able to more easily search for apps with widgets. The badge “eliminates guesswork for users and highlights your widget offerings, encouraging them to explore and utilize this capability,” Taiwo-Peters says. And the curated editorial page will show off “collections of excellent widgets.”

The updated widget discoverability tools will be “coming soon,” Taiwo-Peters says.

If you’re looking for a top-notch gaming mouse you can use for both work and play, Logitech’s G Pro X Superlight 2 is a great option that’s currently on sale for its best price to date. Right now, you can buy it at Walmart in select colors starting at $113.99 ($45 off) or at Best Buy starting at $114.99 ($44 off); it’s also on sale at Amazon starting at $119.99 (about $39 off).

The wireless gaming mouse is Logitech’s fastest, with a Hero 2 sensor that tracks at 500 inches per second (and up to 32,000 DPI) and a 4kHz polling rate. At just 60 grams (2.1 ounces), it’s also Logitech’s lightest, making it easy to move quickly and accurately. It also boasts an attractive matte plastic design, meaning it won’t look out of place at the office, even if it is perfectly suitable for tournament-level play. 

Despite the lightweight build, the Superlight 2 features clicky hybrid optical / mechanical switches and five programmable buttons, which can be customized via Logitech’s companion software. The mouse also offers up to 95 hours of battery life, boasts USB-C charging, and supports both the original Logitech Powerplay mousepad and the upcoming Powerplay 2, which can keep your mouse continuously charged at $20 less than the original pad.

Read our hands-on impressions.

Some more ways to save

• Now until March 9th, Anker’s 2-in-1 USB-C to USB-C Cable is on sale for $17.99 ($8 off) at Amazon and directly from Anker (with promo code WS7DV2FVJTOY).  The four-foot cable comes with a pair of USB-C attachments, allowing you to charge two devices simultaneously. It also offers 140W of total output but can intelligently share power, automatically adjusting power distribution based on the connected gadget.
• Apple will likely introduce a new iPad this week, but if you’re looking for something smaller, the latest iPad Mini is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $399 ($100 off), matching its best price to date. The 8.3-inch Mini is the smallest tablet in Apple’s lineup, rendering it the ideal form factor if you use your tablet to read a lot. Its A17 Pro chip isn’t as powerful as the processors in the M4-powered iPad Pro or M2-powered Air, but it’s faster than that of the base iPad; it also supports Apple Intelligence, unlike the entry-level tablet. Read our review.
• Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo are selling Amazon’s latest Fire TV Cube for $109.99 ($30 off), which is one of its better prices to date. The third-gen Cube is Amazon’s highest-end streaming device, one that comes with Wi-Fi 6E support and an HDMI input for connecting both cable boxes and gaming consoles. It also offers support for 4K streaming in multiple HDR formats — including Dolby Vision — while continuing to double as an Alexa-powered smart speaker you can use to play music, control smart home devices, and carry out other tasks. Read our review.

The author of California’s SB 1047, the nation’s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024, is back with a new AI bill that could shake up Silicon Valley. California state Senator Scott Wiener introduced a new bill on Friday that would protect employees at leading AI labs, allowing them to speak out if they think […]

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Google announced Monday a series of changes to its widgets system on Android that will make it easier for app developers to reach their users. Widgets, which offer at-a-glance views of an app’s most important information — like the day’s weather or upcoming meetings on your calendar — are a key aspect of Android home […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fintech startup Ramp has crossed $700 million in annualized revenue as of January of this year, according to a source familiar with the company’s internal operations. The company had crossed $100 million in annualized revenue before its third birthday in March 2022, passed $300 million by August 2023, and now effectively more than doubled that […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It takes a village to make an Oscars ceremony happen. That's not only true of the hundreds of behind-the-scenes crew members who keep the mammoth show on its feet--it's also the case for the brands that sponsor Hollywood's premiere awards event each year. Audiences at home saw those companies' presence during the commercial breaks, which...

San Francisco, California, 3rd March 2025, CyberNewsWire

The post Bubba AI, Inc. is launching Comp AI to help 100,000 startups get SOC 2 compliant by 2032. first appeared on Tech Startups.

Today’s iOS 18.4 beta 2 offers the first major hints in Apple’s software of the upcoming big Siri upgrades. Apple has added a bunch of new Shortcuts app actions for Apple apps, with super fine-grained controls available for building shortcuts that change apps’ settings in various ways.

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Apple Maps EV routing is one of the most compelling CarPlay features, giving drivers a way to plan a route that automatically includes charging stops.

Now, it looks like iOS 18.4 will address one of the biggest limitations of Apple Maps EV routing…

more…

A sixth and final season of the main Hulu series drops in April—but Margaret Atwood's dystopian world will continue on.

At least a dozen probationary staffers at the Federal Trade Commission were terminated last week, The Verge has learned.

The terminations took place across the agency, according to two sources familiar with the matter, one of whom said that included both the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition. The sources did not definitively link the terminations to actions by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the move followed a familiar DOGE playbook: apparently indiscriminate cuts targeting probationary employees, who may be new to the agency or a specific role. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This appears to be one of the first times during the current Trump administration that the FTC has been impacted by staffing cuts of this scope, even as DOGE has driven mass firings across the federal government. Republican FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has largely aligned himself with Trump, but the cuts indicate that the agency still may not be safe from broader changes to government staffing — though it’s still unclear how far it will go.

In an email obtained by The Verge, the FTC chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union acknowledged to members last week that it was aware of terminations at the agency, but did not yet know their scope. The email also included information about ongoing legal efforts by the national organization, including the filing of claims at the Office of Special Counsel of the Merit Systems Protection Board, as well as institutional grievances at each agency where probationary employees have been terminated. The FTC union website now hosts a similar notice, with next steps for terminated employees.

The Washington Post reported last week that the FTC’s internal equal opportunity office had been cut from six to three staffers. Last month, Ferguson had declared that “DEI is Over at the FTC,” and said he had “Terminated the Diversity Council” at the agency. The scope of the recent probationary terminations, however, appear distinct from these directives.

Also last week, FTC staff in Washington were told by DOGE that they’d soon be moving into the building being vacated by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), according to Bloomberg, which DOGE had effectively dismantled.