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This week’s best ads span the personal and the political, the comic and the sincere.Pamela Anderson championed AI-free authenticity for Aerie, Cardi B tackled inbox anxiety for Yahoo Mail, and Bruce Springsteen gave his voice to one of the most consequential legal battles in recent memory.Plus, KFC dared fans to prove their devotion to chicken, and Peroni reminded people it’s been an Italian masterpiece all along.Our Most Effective Ad of the Week, in partnership with EDO, is just in time for spring.Aerie | “100% Aerie Real” by Shadow Creative Marketing & CommunicationsAerie partnered with Pamela Anderson to double down on…
The surveillance tech industry today is in the spotlight, but not for the best reasons. With controversy around the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tapping into Flock’s camera network to surveil people, and home camera maker Ring drawing criticism for building new features that would enable law enforcement to ask homeowners for footage of their neighborhoods, there’s currently a broad debate around safety, privacy, and who gets to watch whom. But controversy doesn’t erase markets, and the continued improvement of vision-language models has only blown more wind in the sails of companies building new ways to help companies monitor what…
In early December, Ahmed recalls, “we heard tanks advancing from the edge of the yellow line.” Soon, a 14-year-old girl was rushed into the ICU with a shrapnel wound to the abdomen. The girl needed 250 milliliters of blood, “a precious resource” at Al-Shifa, and a splenectomy. Even with minimal supplies, even amid an attack that was not supposed to happen, the doctors at Al-Shifa saved her life.By the time Ahmed left, the girl was discharged, “smiling.” Her wounds were so severe that the doctors used some of their gauze allotment on her. But the girl had no choice but…
When you’re building at breakneck speed, hiring a trusted team is crucial for an early-stage startup. In this episode of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Isaiah Granet, the CEO and co-founder of Bland, a voice AI company that has grown from pre-seed to Series B in just 10 months. Their team has ballooned to 75 people and Granet has tactical advice on how the company managed to find hidden talent in unlikely places. With a founding team fresh out of college, Bland’s early hires were selected for their passion, rather than pedigrees. “We were searching for a really…
The maps on the inReach were largely useless. The offline maps on the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro and the Garmin Forerunner 970 have more detail. There’s also no upcoming turn notifications, like you get on the Fenix, just an alert if you go 50 meters off course. After a while, I stopped following my route on the inReach Mini 3 Plus.Beyond the live tracking and SOS emergency tools, satellite messaging is by far the inReach’s most useful tool. The addition of voice is a big step forward. Typing messages on the touchscreen is beyond fiddly. So for anything other than…
OpenAI may be dialing back its efforts in the video generation market with the shutdown of its Sora app, but ByteDance on Thursday confirmed that its new audio and video model, Dreamina Seedance 2.0, is now rolling out in its editing platform, CapCut. ByteDance says the model allows creators to draft, edit, and sync video and audio content by using prompts, images, or reference videos. The phased rollout will begin with CapCut users in Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, with more markets added over time. The news of the launch in CapCut follows a recent report…
The common assumption among iPhone security experts has been that finding vulnerabilities and developing exploits for iOS was difficult, requiring a lot of time, resources, and teams of skilled researchers to break through its layers of security defenses. That meant iPhone spyware and zero-day vulnerabilities, which aren’t known to the software vendor before they are exploited, were rare and only used in limited and targeted attacks, as Apple itself says. But in the last month, cybersecurity researchers at Google, iVerify, and Lookout have documented several broad-scale hacking campaigns using tools, known as Coruna and DarkSword, which have been near-indiscriminately targeting…
Two U.S. senators on Thursday fired the latest salvo in an increasingly active front against data centers and their energy use. Senators Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) asking it to collect details on energy use from data centers — and how that use is affecting the grid. The senators urged the EIA “to establish a mandatory annual reporting requirement for data centers and other large loads,” they wrote in the letter, which TechCrunch has viewed. “As electricity demand growth continues to accelerate after years of relative stagnation, the lack of reliable,…
Layla mattresses let you flip between a softer or firmer side, depending on your needs. I’ve been testing iterations they’ve come up with for years. We’re testing Layla’s bamboo sheets at the moment, and I can report that they’re ridiculously silky and breathable. If you’re looking to score the whole nine yards—mattress, sheets, bedding, and pillows—you’ve come to the right place because we’ve got Layla coupon code options below.Save up to $200 on Mattresses at the Layla Sleep Spring SaleWith this Layla mattress promo code, you get $200 off on the Layla Hybrid mattress as part of the Layla Spring…
OpenAI has put the kibosh on yet another project — at least for the time being. On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that the AI company would be “indefinitely” pausing plans to develop an “erotic” mode for ChatGPT. The proposed “adult mode,” which CEO Sam Altman first floated in October, had inspired considerable controversy from tech watchdog groups as well as from OpenAI’s own staff. In January, a meeting between company executives and its council of advisers got heated, with one of the advisers cautioning that OpenAI could be in the process of developing a “sexy suicide coach,” The Wall…
Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now generate any X-rated scenario of her on your computer.Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal.But last year she had a change of heart. Ann, who considers herself an AI fanatic, signed a contract with OhChat, a London-based AI companion company, to license her likeness on its platform, essentially creating an AI version of her in every way that can be used to make sex scenes for paying…
WPP has appointed Guillaume Epstein as global head of commercial, a newly created role tied to the company’s broader push to simplify how it works with clients.According to a note obtained by ADWEEK, leadership said the hire is meant to simplify how the company handles pricing, contracts, and client negotiations across its global network.Epstein joins from Valtech. Prior to that he was at Publicis Groupe, where he spent more than a decade in senior finance and commercial roles spanning Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Most recently, he served as SVP, global commercial finance director. Prior to that, he was chief…
Netflix has quietly hiked its prices once again. The streaming giant’s most affordable, ad-supported tier now costs $8.99 per month, up from the previous $7.99 monthly subscription fee, Netflix confirmed to TechCrunch in an email. The standard plan without ads also now costs $19.99 per month, a $2 increase from the previous $17.99 subscription fee, while the premium plan is also going up by $2 and will now cost $26.99 per month. It’s also getting more expensive to add extra viewers outside of your household. To add a user to an ad-supported plan, it now costs $6.99 instead of $7.99.…
We all love shiny new electronics. But every new smartphone or laptop comes with baggage. Weighing climate dread, terrible working conditions, energy usage, and worries over hellish e-waste graveyards can quickly kill your excitement about shopping for a new gadget. None of us wants to be complicit, but what can we do if these issues concern us?Sadly, there’s no easy way to find ethically manufactured and eco-friendly electronics. But there are things you can do to reduce any negative impact your purchases may have. Here are a few ideas we’ve compiled, with the help of Alex Crumbie, writer and researcher…
Meta arrived at this week’s IAB NewFronts with a familiar pitch: its platforms are where culture happens, AI is making advertising smarter, and creators are the new prime time. But the presentation landed against a backdrop of turbulence that has complicated its upbeat messaging.On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that Instagram and YouTube were negligently designed in ways that harmed a young user’s mental health. The bellwether verdict, which holds Meta responsible for 70% of $3 million in damages, could shape the outcome of roughly 2,000 similar…
A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in its twisty legal battle with the Trump administration, awarding the tech company an injunction against the government’s recent order that labeled it a “supply chain risk,” the Wall Street Journal reports. On Thursday, Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the Trump administration to rescind its recent designation of Anthropic as a security risk, as well as to back off its order that federal agencies cut ties with the company. “It looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic,” Lin reportedly said during the court proceedings. Lin ultimately argued…