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ComfyUI, a startup that helps creators control image, video, and audio outputs from diffusion models with a node-based workflow, has raised a $30 million funding round at a $500 million valuation. The round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from other investors including Pace Capital, Chemistry, and TruArrow. ComfyUI was started as an open-source project in 2023 shortly after the introduction of diffusion models. At that time, models like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E were barely functional, frequently making major mistakes, such as adding extra fingers to hands. To address these limitations, the project founders developed a modular framework that…
It’s about that time of year. National Pool Opening Day is tomorrow, April 25, and summer is almost here, which means pool owners everywhere are getting ready to unveil the horrors of whatever happened during the off-season. Most of the Beatbot lineup is on sale at Amazon and Beatbot’s own storefront, with prices starting at $499. Beatbot makes many of the best pool-cleaning robots we’ve tested, and we’ve highlighted our top picks below. Note that the discounts are scheduled to end on April 26, though items may sell out sooner. Happy pool party season! (Drop me an invite!)Beatbot AquaSense 2…
CBS News was the recipient of good news, with CBS Mornings becoming the only morning show to finish with viewership growth in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo for the week of April 13.Today remained the most-watched morning show in both measured categories. This was the week that saw the Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie duo reunite, as Kotb filled in for Craig Melvin for the entire week. The reunion was enough to keep Today above the 3 million total viewers mark.According to Nielsen’s national live+same-day big data plus program ratings, GMA averaged 2.885 million total viewers and 483,000…
Google plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic and support the AI firm’s growing computing needs, Bloomberg reports. The Alphabet subsidiary is committing to invest $10 billion now, at a $350 billion valuation for Anthropic, with another $30 billion to follow if Anthropic hits certain performance targets, according to Anthropic. The promise of investment comes after Anthropic released its latest model, Mythos, to a limited group of partners this month. Anthropic says that Mythos is the company’s most powerful model to date and has significant cybersecurity applications. Due to potential misuse, Anthropic has restricted broader access while it…
The Ember Smart Mug 2 is niche, but it has a loyal following. Even though we think there are better mug warmers on the market, Ember is like Apple AirPods or Kleenex. People want what they want. Right now, for Mother’s Day, the Ember Smart Mug 2 is on sale for just under $100, a 30 percent discount and a match of the very best price we’ve tracked. You can save at Amazon, Best Buy, and the manufacturer’s website.This smart mug is probably overkill. It has a smartphone app that notifies you when your coffee reaches the ideal temperature, and…
Last summer, Hewlett Packard rolled out an ad network called HP Media Network that sells ad placements on the company’s personal computers.In a pitch deck, HP teased that it was working on a free ad-supported TV service (or FAST) that would allow advertisers to reach people watching video content on their laptops. In March, HP quietly launched HP TV+, a service that allows U.S. laptop users to stream content from publishers like USA Today, PBS, and Tennis Channel. According to HP, 43% of laptop users stream video. HP TV+ is available on HP devices as well as through Microsoft’s App…
Surprise! StrictlyVC San Francisco, which will kick off this year’s events lineup for TechCrunch on April 30 at the Sentro Filipino Cultural Center, is getting a new addition to its increasingly stacked roster of speakers. Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga will join us to discuss, you guessed it, operating at scale in the age of AI. You’ll need to act swiftly to grab a ticket, though, for what’s becoming the go-to event within the SF startup scene next week. It’s an ideal one-stop shop for any founder or investor looking to widen their networks, deepen community ties, and learn from…
Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold has already revolutionized scientists’ understanding of proteins. Now, the ability of the platform to design safe and effective drugs is about to be put to the test.Isomorphic Labs, the UK-based biotech spinoff of Google DeepMind, will soon begin human trials of drugs designed by its Nobel Prize–winning AI technology. “We’re gearing up to go into the clinic,” Isomorphic Labs president Max Jaderberg said on April 16 at WIRED Health in London. “It’s going to be a very exciting moment as we go into clinical trials and start seeing the efficacy of these molecules.”Jaderberg did not elaborate on…
Fox News Sunday has made its mark on TV.“It existed before the Fox News Channel existed,” said Shannon Bream, moderator of Fox News Sunday, during a recent TVNewser interview. Hitting the air months before Fox News’ October 1996 debut and serving as the foundation for the network, Fox News Sunday marks its 30th anniversary this Sunday.The first woman to lead Fox News Sunday, Bream is the third moderator of the long-running program, following Tony Snow and Chris Wallace. Over the years, Fox News Sunday has been a successful part of the Sunday news cycle, generating headlines with its interviews.
Overpriced Mac minis are flooding eBay amid shortages of the sold-out machines, which have become a favored tool for running on-device AI models like OpenClaw. This week, reports indicated that the $599 M4 Mac mini base model with 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage is sold out on Apple’s retail website, with no options for delivery or in-store pickup. The shortages have since extended to other configurations of the base model, regardless of the amount of memory selected. This is the first time the base model has been sold out, some outlets noted. Meanwhile, models with higher storage (512GB and…
Sometime in the next year or two, Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, will step onto a stage and tell the world that his company has a revolutionary product. This product, he’ll say, will put the full and awesome power of AI into everyone’s hands. It probably won’t represent a breakthrough in AI research, and it might not let people automate work or perform tasks any better than a lot of technically minded people are doing today. It may or may not involve a new device, though if it doesn’t, one should be in development. But if it all works out,…
Nuclear startup X-energy raised $1 billion in its initial public offering yesterday, selling 44.3 million shares for $23 each, a hefty premium above the $16 to $19 per share it was seeking. Initially, the company had hoped to raise around $800 million. The stock is expected to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq Exchange under the ticker XE. X-energy is building small modular reactors capable of generating electricity or delivering heat to industrial processes. The company has a deal with Dow to provide heat and power to a chemical plant in Texas and another with Amazon to sell as…
A senior Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations referred to the section as a “legislative scam,” telling WIRED: “There are many members who don’t quite understand the ins and outs of this law. Tossing the phrase ‘Fourth Amendment requirement’ into the bill is the speaker and the intelligence community working to dupe them into supporting a bill that has no meaningful constitutional safeguards.”Section 5 directs the US attorney general to revoke existing rules on congressional access to the secret court that oversees the 702 program and issue new ones within 60 days. The provision is not self-executing: The access it…
Yet another government spyware maker has been caught after its customers used fake Android apps to install its surveillance software on targets, according to a new report. On Thursday, Osservatorio Nessuno, an Italian digital rights organization that researches spyware, published a report on a new malware it calls Morpheus. The spyware, which masquerades as a phone updating app, is capable of stealing a broad range of data from an intended target’s device. The researchers’ findings show that the demand for spyware by law enforcement and intelligence agencies is so high that there are a large number of companies providing this…
We are talking about $80 (or more) T-shirts here, so this is valid question. I think merino T-shirts are worth the investment. They offer considerable benefits over cotton and other natural fibers, as well as synthetics. Merino offers great temperature regulation, excellent moisture wicking, and they don’t smell, which means you can wear them more and don’t need as many of them. Three merino T-shirts in your wardrobe will last you as many days as 10 cotton shirts, so from a financial angle it’s a wash.Here’s a quick rundown of some of the benefits of merino wool:Odor-resistant: One of merino…
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has launched two preview versions of its newest large language model, DeepSeek V4, a much-awaited update to last year’s V3.2 model and the accompanying R1 reasoning model that took the AI world by storm. The company says both DeepSeek V4 Flash and V4 Pro are mixture-of-experts models with context windows of 1 million tokens each — enough to allow large codebases or documents to be used in prompts. The mixture-of-experts approach involves activating only a certain number of parameters per task to lower inference costs. The Pro model has a total of 1.6 trillion parameters (49…