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India’s labor ministry is pushing the country’s booming quick-commerce sector to prioritize the wellness and safety of its gig workers. The country’s minister of labor and employment, Mansukh Mandaviya, met with executives from Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, and Zepto to ask them to drop their marketing language, which promises deliveries within 10 minutes, and discuss ways to improve safety and working conditions for delivery personnel, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. While the instant delivery model has faltered elsewhere, it’s taken off in India at an unprecedented rate in the past few years as consumers in urban cities have come to…
Target has set itself apart from big box retailers like Walmart by having trendy clothes, homegoods branded by reality TV stars and, of course, in-store Starbucks. With malls and traditional department stores in decline, Target has even become the go-to destination for stay-at-home parents who need to get out of the house (and maybe get a Frappuccino). In recent years, the store has cemented themselves as a notch above similar retailers with exclusive products with a more high-end feel, while still being inexpensive and regularly holding sales for even more savings. Carrying everything from outdoor gear to clothes to tech…
Google on Tuesday updated its Veo 3.1 AI video-generation model with the ability to create native vertical videos for social platforms using reference images. The changes will also make the videos generated from reference images more expressive and dynamic. When producing AI-generated videos for YouTube Shorts or other platforms like Instagram or TikTok, Veo users can now natively choose the 9:16 vertical format to avoid any cropping. Google is also adding the feature directly to the YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app. Google first released Veo 3.1 in October 2025 with improved audio output and more granular editing controls…
Photograph: Chris HaslamPlugged into my father’s 20-year-old Arcam amplifier, powering a pair of equally vintage Mordaunt Short floorstanding speakers, the Streamplayer works smoothly. It did require a 3.5mm to RCA cable (more in this below) but dad’s box of old cables is a tech treasure trove. On first listen I was impressed by the ease of it all, and switching between Qobuz and Spotify Lossless certainly didn’t offend. But when playing the same song side-by-side using a mid-range Cambridge Audio CD player, the difference was obvious.Playing the album “Music from Big Pink” by The Band, and the power and scale…
Dr. Sina Bari, a practicing surgeon and AI healthcare leader at data company iMerit, has seen firsthand how ChatGPT can lead patients astray with faulty medical advice. “I recently had a patient come in, and when I recommended a medication, they had a dialogue printed out from ChatGPT that said this medication has a 45% chance of pulmonary embolism,” Dr. Bari told TechCrunch. When Dr. Bari investigated further, he found that the statistic was from a paper about the impact of that medication in a niche subgroup of people with tuberculosis, which didn’t apply to his patient. And yet, when…
Reid Hoffman doesn’t do much in half measures. He cofounded LinkedIn, of course, and helped bankroll companies including Meta and Airbnb in their startup days. He has also fashioned himself, via books, podcasts, and other public appearances, as something of a public intellectual—a pro-capitalist philosopher who still insists that tech can be a force for good.Most recently, Hoffman has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent defenders of artificial intelligence. His newest book, 2025’s Superagency, makes the case that AI won’t diminish human capacity but will instead amplify it. In our conversation for this week’s episode of The Big…
The Golden Globes’ latest bets didn’t pay off in ratings. According to Nielsen’s panel + big data numbers, Sunday’s 83rd Golden Globes dropped to 8.66 million viewers. It was down from last year’s ceremony, which Nielsen said averaged around 9.3 million viewers. Meanwhile, VideoAmp data noted that last year’s Globes had 10.1 million viewers.Despite the dip in viewership, CBS reports that the Globes had its most social show ever, with 42 million interactions, which is up 5% from last year.Though the numbers are down, the Globes also went up against an NFL playoff game, with the New England Patriots topping…
What does it take to bring a burned-out founder back to the company he sold to Amazon? For Jamie Siminoff of the video doorbell maker Ring, it was the potential of AI — and the Palisades fires that destroyed his garage, the birthplace of Ring itself. Siminoff’s vision: turn Ring from a video doorbell company into an AI-powered “intelligent assistant” for the entire home and beyond. A handful of new features that advance that goal shipped just ahead of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including fire alerts, alerts about “unusual events,” conversational AI, facial recognition features,…
An indie app with only one function is currently all the rage in China. It’s called si le ma (死了吗), which translates literally to “Are You Dead Yet.” The app asks users to tap a button once every day, and if they fail to do so for two consecutive days, it automatically sends an email to a designated emergency contact, urging them to check on the user in person.Guo, one of the three Gen-Z developers behind Are You Dead Yet, says he has been building social and entertainment apps for a few years. But he wanted to pivot to something…
Ammonia might be the world’s most underappreciated chemical. Without it, crops would go unfertilized and billions of people would starve. Humans started making ammonia in large amounts just over a century ago, and since then the process used to make it, known as Haber-Bosch, hasn’t changed much. A new startup, Ammobia, says that it has tweaked the Haber-Bosch process to lower the cost by up to 40%. To prove the technology works on a larger scale, Ammobia has raised a $7.5 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Investors include Air Liquide’s venture arm ALIAD, Chevron Technology Ventures, Chiyoda…
While Netflix seemingly led the way for other streaming networks to create compelling original programming, Hulu actually beat them all to the punch. In 2011, a year before Netflix’s Lilyhammer and two years before the arrival of House of Cards, the burgeoning streamer premiered The Morning After, a pop-culture-focused news show that ran for 800 episodes over three years.Hulu has continued to make TV history in the years since, most notably in 2017 when it became the first streamer to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series with The Handmaid’s Tale (which recently dropped its long-awaited final season). In…
Although public backlash against data centers has been intense over the past 12 months, all of the tech industry’s biggest companies have promised additional buildouts of AI infrastructure in the coming year. That includes OpenAI partner Microsoft, which, on Tuesday, announced what it calls a “community-first” approach to AI Infrastructure. Microsoft’s announcement, which comes only a day after Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta would launch its own AI infrastructure program, isn’t unexpected. Last year, the company announced that it planned to spend billions to expand its AI capacity. What is a little unusual are the promises the company has now…
Every time you get behind the wheel, your car is collecting data about you. Where you go, how fast you’re driving, how hard you brake, and even how much you weigh.All of that data is not typically available to the vehicle owner. Instead, it’s gated behind secure restrictions that prevent anyone other than the manufacturer or authorized technicians from accessing the information. Automakers can use the same digital gates to lock owners out of making repairs or modifications, like replacing their own brake pads, without paying a premium for manufacturer service.The Repair Act, a piece of pending legislation discussed in…
The holiday season, typically a slow news period, led to month-to-month declines for all three networks in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo across primetime and total day. Fox News ended the final month of the year in its usual first-place position.CNN saw the steepest declines of the three networks, falling by double digits with total viewers during primetime. There was some good news for MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), as it recorded an uptick in viewers across the board compared to December 2024. Fox NewsAccording to Nielsen big data + panel, Fox News in December had 1.847 million total viewers…
New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce legislation that would effectively legalize robotaxis in the state — except for its most populous metropolis: New York City. Hochul, who made the comments Tuesday during her State of the State address, said the legislation would advance the next phase of the state’s autonomous vehicle pilot program. Details on the proposed legislation and when it might be released are thin. However, there are some hints contained within a document that outlines an array of proposals and promises Hochul made in her State of the State address. Among them is language to expand…
If you’re an aspiring (or successful) streamer looking to upgrade your production value, the Elgato Stream Deck family is an excellent way to put your most important controls at your fingertips. Right now you can score the upgraded Elgato Stream Deck +, with eight buttons, an LCD screen, and four knobs, for just $160, a $40 markdown from its usual price.As a former (unsuccessful) Twitch streamer, I can attest firsthand to how useful the Stream Deck was for managing my broadcasts while also gaming and dealing with chat. The main draw here is close integration with streaming platforms like OBS,…