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State Farm is back in the Big Game for 2026. The insurance company announced its return with three teasers starring Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key. The two actors aren’t repping State Farm, though—they’re fronting a fictional insurance company called Halfway There, complete with its own website.“When it comes to… helping customers,” Key begins, seemingly forgetting his line midway through a 30-second teaser.“We will give it a shot,” McBride finishes. In two other 15-second teasers, the bumbling insurance company owners are missing office calls and attempting to put a sign on the door. The spots will debut during the NFC and…
Information from the conservative-leaning, AI-generated encyclopedia developed by Elon Musk’s xAI is beginning to appear in answers from ChatGPT. xAI launched Grokipedia in October, after Musk had been complaining that Wikipedia was biased against conservatives. Reporters soon noted that while many articles seemed to be copied directly from Wikipedia, Grokipedia also claimed that pornography contributed to the AIDS crisis, offered “ideological justifications” for slavery, and used denigrating terms for transgender people. All that might be expected for an encyclopedia associated with a chatbot that described itself as “Mecha Hitler” and was used to flood X with sexualized deepfakes. However, its…
It’s such a known issue that a lot of users print an aptly named “poop chute,” which collects and redirects the waste to the side where it’s easier to empty. I went with the simpler solution of putting an empty filament box behind the printer to catch it.Before printing, the Bambu also sweeps and levels the bed in a grid, and warns you if it hits any obstructions like leftover supports or an errant bed scraper. I’ve checked out several printers with an auto-level before, but they were slower, and usually required a second check by hand before actually hitting…
We’re about to get our first real look at the results of the recently announced AI partnership between Apple and Google, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman reports that Apple is planning to announce a new version of Siri in the second half of February. Using Google’s Gemini AI models, this Siri update will reportedly be the first to live up to the promises Apple made in June 2024, with the ability to complete tasks by accessing user’s personal data and on-screen content. And that’s ahead of an even bigger upgrade that Apple plans to announce in June, at its…
With the marshals under attack, Kennedy deployed first the Mississippi National Guard and then thousands of federal troops as well. (That military operation, codenamed RAPID ROAD, was actually the first and only time during the Cold War that the military activated and used plans it had developed to quell civil disturbances in the wake of a nuclear attack.)Then, in 1963, Kennedy again relied on the National Guard to help with the integration of the University of Alabama, and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, used marshals and the National Guard to protect civil rights marchers in Selma after Alabama state troopers infamously…
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! A quick bit of breaking news that hit just as we were about to send this newsletter out. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into Waymo after its robotaxis have been spotted illegally passing stopped school buses numerous times in at least two states. Read the full story here. Now onto our regular programming … Tesla made a couple of moves this week…
Depending on your disposition, a minute in an ice bath can feel like agony or ecstasy. Perhaps you wince at the thought of stepping foot in an ice bath, or maybe you’re an experienced cold plunger who can’t get enough of the endorphin-releasing sensation. Either way, sitting in an ice bath isn’t simply an endurance game. How long you cold plunge for matters.There are many ways to access cold water therapy from having a cold shower, to submerging your body in a dedicated cold plunge pool. Perhaps you’re a seasoned pro and have invested in one of the latest cold…
Twelve-year-old Milan-based tech conglomerate Bending Spoons has quietly become one of the tech industry’s most prolific buyers, now owning Meetup, WeTransfer and many others, but it remains largely unknown to the general public. So what exactly is Bending Spoons? Despite its catchy name, the company has stayed remarkably under the radar, and it typically makes headlines only when it adds another recognizable brand to its portfolio — the latest in date being Eventbrite, which it agreed to buy for $500 million last December. But Bending Spoons isn’t a traditional private equity firm or a pure financial investment vehicle. Its focus…
They intuited that molecules near the surface behave differently from those deep within the ice. Ice is a crystal, which means each water molecule is locked into a periodic lattice. However, at the surface, the water molecules have fewer neighbors to bond with and therefore have more freedom of movement than in solid ice. In that so-called premelted layer, molecules are easily displaced by a skate, a ski or a shoe.Today, scientists generally agree that the premelted layer exists, at least close to the melting point, but they disagree on its role in ice’s slipperiness.A few years ago, Luis MacDowell,…
If you’re comparing the photos of the Audeo Infinio Ultra Sphere—Phonak’s most powerful hearing aid to date—to the product’s name, you’re not crazy: It’s not the slightest bit round. Rather, it’s a traditional, teardrop-shaped, behind-the-ear hearing aid that takes its name from Phonak’s new Spheric Speech Clarity 2.0 system, designed to enhance the understandability of conversations in noisy conditions, no matter what direction the voices are coming from.Yes, Phonak Audeo Infinio Ultra Sphere is indeed a mouthful. For this review, I’ll call it the Ultra Sphere. The other new hearing aid system in the Infinio Ultra line, called the R,…
I first learned about Pura from a friend whose house always smelled like a high-end boutique under every circumstance. Cooking project, water leak … no matter what was going on in her house at the time, I only ever smelled berries. I have two cats and a multi-sports-playing teen—I knew I needed this. Now, after having owned multiple Puras for over two years, I have some thoughts.While my Pura journey began with the now-discontinued Pura 3, I have also since tested the Pura 4 and large-room Pura Plus, both of which have dual bays for two of Pura’s proprietary oil…
Microsoft provided the FBI with the recovery keys to unlock encrypted data on the hard drives of three laptops as part of a federal investigation, Forbes reported on Friday. Many modern Windows computers rely on full-disk encryption, called BitLocker, which is enabled by default. This type of technology should prevent anyone except the device owner from accessing the data if the computer is locked and powered off. But, by default, BitLocker recovery keys are uploaded to Microsoft’s cloud, allowing the tech giant — and by extension law enforcement — to access them and use them to decrypt drives encrypted with…
Miniaturization has long been a challenge in the history of robotics.While engineers have made great strides in the miniaturization of electronics in the past few decades, builders of miniature autonomous robots have not been able to meet the goal of getting them under 1 millimeter in size. This is because small arms and legs are fragile and difficult to manufacture. Above all, the circumstances of the laws of physics change in the microscopic world. Instead of gravity and inertia, drag and viscosity become dominant.Against this backdrop, researchers in the US have announced the results of a study that accomplishes a…
Ryan Mitchell, the founder of a startup called Space Beyond, remembers looking at the night sky while camping at a state park and wondering what he should do next. A manufacturing engineer who worked on NASA’s space shuttle program before spending nearly a decade at Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, Mitchell was considering his options. In those jobs, he had seen the cost to access space come down dramatically, thanks in large part to Blue Origin’s rival SpaceX. Those stars in the sky, he thought, seemed closer than ever. Mitchell told TechCrunch that an idea finally clicked when he…
The 44-mm Big Bang Tourbillon GOAT Edition’s case is a special Hublot-developed composite made from Lacoste polos and Head tennis racquets (yes, really), reinforced by a mid-case of Titaplast (the world’s strongest polymer). Then there’s a three-dimensional main plate that looks like racquet strings, as well as a tennis-ball-shaped power reserve barrel. We’re not done yet! The white leather strap is supposed to mimic a racquet grip, and finally the watch comes in three colors—blue, orange, and green—to call out grass, clay and hard court surfaces. Ace. $121,000 at Hublot.Tiffany & Co Tiffany TimerCourtesy of Clement Rousset/Tiffany & CoThe original…
We’re in a unique moment for AI companies building their own foundation model. First, there is a whole generation of industry veterans who made their name at major tech companies and are now going solo. You also have legendary researchers with immense experience but ambiguous commercial aspirations. There’s a clear chance that at least some of these new labs will become OpenAI-sized behemoths, but there’s also room for them to putter around doing interesting research without worrying too much about commercialization. The end result? It’s getting hard to tell who is actually trying to make money. To make things simpler, I’m proposing a kind of sliding scale for any company making…