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On Saturday, designer Kate Barton will unveil her latest collection at New York Fashion Week — with a twist, of course. Barton teamed up with Fiducia AI to create a multilingual AI agent (built with IBM Watsonx on IBM Cloud) to help guests identify pieces of the collection and try them on virtually. TechCrunch caught up with Barton and Ganesh Harinath, the founder and CEO of Fiducia AI, before the show to learn more about the presentation. For one, Barton said technology is baked into how she thinks. She likes playing with the real and the unreal, and found the…
Samsung will unveil its next flagship smartphone lineup on February 25 at its Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco. The company sent out invites earlier this week. The event will begin at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern), and it’ll be livestreamed here.Rumors abound that suggest the Galaxy S26 series—which will include the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra—won’t have any major changes from their predecessors. They’ll likely be powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with some minor charging speed improvements and minor upgrades to the camera hardware.Courtesy of SamsungArtificial intelligence features will likely…
India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors, doubling down on its effort to finance high-risk areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and other sectors broadly referred to by the industry as deep tech. First outlined in the January 2025 budget speech by India’s finance minister, the ₹100 billion fund won cabinet approval this week (more than a year after the speech), allowing the government to move ahead with deployment. A previous iteration of the program, launched in 2016, committed ₹100 billion to 145 private funds that…
Throughout, there’s a Virtual Assistant chatbot if you need to ask questions or get help, which gives me extra peace of mind. Plus, it’s included with the DIY service, which saves me a bunch of money, rather than going with one of the options that includes a real tax expert to look over things.H&R Block’s service asks lots of questions related to potential tax breaks, looking for savings that can come, for example, from cash and noncash charitable donations, and H&R Block was able to find more tax breaks to maximize my refund.Health-y QuestionsThe biggest difference I noticed was in…
Two years ago, Luke Bailey had what became a controversial app idea — a dating app called Score for people with good to excellent credit. Launched just days before Valentine’s Day, the app required users to have a credit score of at least 675 to register. At the time, Bailey said he created the app to encourage partners to talk more about personal finance since doing so is often uncomfortable for many people. “Fifty-four percent of people say a partner’s debt is a reason to consider divorce,” Bailey told TechCrunch. “Financial compatibility is quietly one of the most important relationship…
The widespread protests in Iran have exposed both Tehran’s brutal tactics in the streets, where state authorities have killed thousands of demonstrators since early January, and extreme measures to block access to the global internet.As it has done repeatedly in the past, the Iranian regime cut off the country’s residents from the global internet during the latest anti-government uprising. But it also shut down access to the country’s intranet, known as the National Information Network, which new research found is becoming a mechanism of constant and pervasive surveillance that may ultimately be the only way Iranians can get online.The last…
Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses as soon as this year, according to a new report from The New York Times. The feature, internally known as “Name Tag,” would allow smart glasses wearers to identify people and get information about them through Meta’s AI assistant. Meta’s plans could change, the report notes. The tech giant has been deliberating since early last year on how to release a feature that carries “safety and privacy risks.” According to an internal memo, the company had originally planned to release Name Tag to attendees of a conference for the visually…
New Fitness FeaturesCourtesy of AppleThere are many reasons to wear an Apple Watch besides the health features. Maybe you just want quick access to your text, calendars, or Siri. Maybe you want to keep track of your kid or make sure your elderly mom doesn’t fall down.Still, I have been following the Apple Watch’s development for years, from a fairly standard wearable accessory to a fully featured fitness tracker that now compares favorably against the high-end Garmins and Suuntos of the world. Since its inception, Apple has gone all in on the watch as a personal health device, with CEO…
Ring, the Amazon-owned home security company, announced on Thursday that it will no longer partner with Flock Safety, a maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras that share footage with law enforcement. The two companies announced a deal in October that would have allowed Ring doorbell users to share footage with Flock and its network of public safety agencies to assist with “evidence collection and investigative work.” As reported by 404 Media, Flock’s footage has been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Secret Service, and the Navy, which all have had access to Flock’s tens of thousands of AI-enabled cameras.…
Gaming laptops used to be straightforward. They were powerful but thick and unwieldy. These days, you have options. There are gaming laptops that prioritize performance at all costs and others that home in on thinness, cost, or design. Heck, there are even gaming tablets and 2-in-1s.That breadth of choice means choosing a gaming laptop in 2026 isn’t simple. While picking any option from our Best Gaming Laptops, Best Cheap Gaming Laptops, and Best Laptops guides is a good place to start, you still might not end up with a gaming laptop perfectly suited for your needs. Having tested many gaming…
Elon Musk is addressing a wave of departures from xAI, including two more co-founders who left this week, bringing the total to six out of the original 12. At an all-hands meeting Tuesday night, Musk suggested the exits were about fit, not performance. “Because we’ve reached a certain scale, we’re organizing the company to be more effective at this scale,” he said, according to The New York Times. “And actually, when this happens, there’s some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages.” Wednesday afternoon on X, he went…
Want Google out of your life? It’s pretty easy to find alternative search, email, and photo storage providers, but it’s much harder to come up with a mobile operating system that’s free of Google. The obvious answer is an iPhone, but if you want Google out of your life, you probably don’t want to immediately replace it with Apple. While a little better from a privacy standpoint, Apple is still not great.Fear not, privacy-conscious WIRED reader, there are alternatives to Android. Technically speaking, most alternative mobile operating systems are based on Android, not alternatives to it, but these various projects…
As Valentine’s Day approaches at Stanford, some students may be gearing up for first dates — not with people they met on Tinder or Hinge, but with matches from a service called Date Drop, designed by Stanford graduate student Henry Weng. Date Drop pairs students with potential dates once per week based on their responses to a questionnaire. A Stanford whiz kid is trying to disrupt an established industry from his Palo Alto dorm? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before! But young adults are deeply disillusioned with the frustrating, demoralizing state of online dating. Why not try something…
Authorities in Mexico’s Guadalupe, Nuevo León, this week unveiled four robot dogs that will be part of the security devices at BBVA Stadium, one of the three Mexican venues of the 2026 World Cup.The “K9-X” unit functions as a kind of first responder only. The robot dogs are not armed, but each unit incorporates video cameras, night vision, and communication systems that are used to issue warnings or instructions. Its function is to deter illegal activity, detect unusual behavior, identify suspicious objects, control crowds, and immediately alert law enforcement when the system deems necessary.Robot dogs operate semi-autonomously: They do not…
Roku shared its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025 this week, as well as some exciting plans in the pipeline. The company is rolling out new streaming bundles, expanding its $3 subscription service, Howdy, to more platforms, and partnering with more premium streaming services following the successful addition of HBO Max. Launching bundles in 2026 is a smart move, as it could attract more viewers looking for enticing deals amid rising subscription prices. Many streaming platforms have been increasing their rates recently, and Roku aims to appeal to cost-conscious consumers. The positive impact of HBO Max on Roku’s premium subscriptions has encouraged…
If you’re the type of person who cares about Valentine’s Day, not having someone to spend it with can be a bummer.While dating apps have been yielding diminishing returns for singles for years now, more people are finding companionship with AI partners.But where do you take your AI lover for a night on the town?Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to try out an experiment. The app, where users can text or live video call (a new feature) with AI dates, set up a pop-up café at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan. Over February 11 and 12, EVA…