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The design of the official ball of the 2026 World Cup could become a determining factor in the scores of the 104 matches that will be played during the tournament. According to new research, the ball known as the “Trionda” is the first in the history of the men’s World Cup to be made with only four panels, a feature that changes the way it cuts through the air and consequently alters the ball’s acceleration, trajectory, and range.As has been the case every four years since 1970, Adidas unveiled the official ball of the 2026 World Cup in October last…
A new month began with positive trends for both ABC News’ Good Morning America and NBC News’ Today, recording week-to-week gains in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo.GMA outshone the other morning shows with double digit gains in the prized demo for the week of June 1, a five-week high for ABC News’ morning franchise. Meanwhile, CBS News’ CBS Mornings was the only broadcast to lose total viewers, but did see some growth in the demo.According to Nielsen’s national live+same-day big data plus program ratings, GMA averaged 2.702 million total viewers and 470,000 viewers in the A25-54 demo for…
Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign was based on a warning that automation and AI would hollow out the labor market and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. At the time, ideas like Universal Basic Income felt fringe. Now Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Bernie Sanders are all saying versions of the same thing. An entrepreneur at heart, Yang has found a new way to put money back into the hands of the people — one phone bill at a time. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks to Yang about his startup Noble Mobile, which pays you to use your phone less, ways to combat the “attention…
The FIFA Men’s World Cup is almost here, and this one will be the biggest ever. The tournament is hosted by three countries: Mexico, Canada, and the US. The games will be played in stadiums across all three.This World Cup is huge, competition-wise, as it is the first to include 48 teams in the tournament instead of 32 in past World Cups. That means a whole bunch more games are being played over the course of a month. 104 games, to be exact. That’s a lot of football. Here’s how to watch them all.Where to StreamIf you have satellite TV…
This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.When the World Cup kicks off on Thursday, viewers across the world will see something they have never seen before in a soccer match: in-game ads.For the first time, FIFA has mandated three-minute “hydration breaks” in each half for all 104 matches of the World Cup, during which time broadcasters will be permitted to show commercials.The governing body of global soccer has described the breaks as in service of “player welfare.”…
A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI has filed suit against the company and its parent SpaceX claiming he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety. Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the suit in a California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to join the public markets in what’s shaping up to be the largest IPO in history. According to the lawsuit, which TechCrunch has viewed, Kim became a prominent voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. He allegedly complained repeatedly about xAI’s failure to…
A former Meta employee who lost their job during a round of layoffs on May 20 is said to have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent days, according to communications inside the company seen by WIRED.A current employee posted about the incident on an internal Meta messaging board for immigration topics this week. The initial post was marked as “urgent” and tagged two Meta executives who focus on immigration issues and employee risk, in an attempt to escalate the issue to them.The current status of the detained worker is unknown.A spokesperson for Meta, Dave Arnold, declined…
The value of all advertising centers around whether it gets consumers to convert—that usually means buying something, but could also mean installing an app, visiting a store, or subscribing to a service. OpenAI’s answer engine ChatGPT, which debuted ads earlier this year, is an intriguing surface for advertisers but its efficacy is still unproven. A new partnership between ChatGPT and Publicis-owned adtech firm LiveRamp is a big step toward answering that question. LiveRamp is a company that facilitates “data collaboration,” allowing different companies to build new datasets based off of the ones they each own. ChatGPT advertisers can now use LiveRamp’s…
The notorious cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed to have hacked Oracle PeopleSoft servers at more than 100 organizations, many of them universities, a ShinyHunters member told TechCrunch on Wednesday. The breaches were first reported by BleepingComputer. PeopleSoft is enterprise software designed to manage payroll, human resources, administration, and other business operations. The news shows that despite being one of the most visible and prolific cybercrime groups at the moment, ShinyHunters is not slowing down, and has turned mass hacks into its specialty. The group’s modus operandi is to find a vulnerability in a popular piece of software so that they can…
With new generations of AI models fueling both rapid software vulnerability discovery and the potential for faster exploitation by malicious hackers, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a new directive on Wednesday that requires more rapid and efficient software patching by federal civilian agencies. The “binding operational directive” (BOD) lays out a rubric for how quickly bugs must be fixed based on four assessments of urgency, with a turnaround time in critical cases of just three days.Chris Butera, CISA’s acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told reporters on Wednesday that the goal of the directive is to…
“If Brazil wins, I’ll walk to church on my knees.” “I’m not shaving until we’re holding the cup in our hands.” These are examples of a promessa, a ritual vow a Brazilian fan makes in public, that they will pay off if their home team wins the World Cup—something that hasn’t happened in 24 years. The beer brand Brahma built an entire World Cup campaign around this concept with, “It’s OK to Believe,” brilliantly turning that individual ritualistic vow into collective belief for the entire country: If Brazil wins its sixth title, Brahma—owned by AB InBev’s Brazilian subsidiary Ambev—will be free nationwide, redeemable…
First Tesla, then Ford, and now GM — it seems every automaker wants a slice of the energy storage market. It’s easy to see why. While EV sales have stagnated in the United States, sales of large, stationary batteries have doubled in the past two years. And they show no signs of stopping. Despite incentives being gutted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Solar Energy Industries Association expects annual installations to exceed 110 GWh per year by 2030, about double what they are today. “There’s a lot of potential for this market,” Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and…
Cornyn said materials from Section 702 generate roughly 60 percent of the President’s Daily Brief, a figure Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley has also cited.Some Republicans dispute the catastrophe framing. Representative Keith Self of Texas called the warnings “hysteria,” arguing that other FISA authorities remain in force and that proponents should accept reforms such as a warrant requirement: “FISA isn’t going dark. We have the law. We have precedent from 2008. Don’t fall for the scare tactics.” The libertarian Cato Institute has made a similar point.“The [702] program has the FISA court’s permission to continue for another year, so it…
Despite its dominant position in the evening news ratings race, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir was the only broadcast to record a decline in either total viewers or the Adults 25-54 demo for the week of June 1.WNT was down in total viewers but, like its competitors, NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas and CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil, posted week-to-week gains in the demo. In addition, Nightly News and CBS Evening News had strong performances in the advertiser-coveted demo, each recording double-digit gains. Also, Nightly News closed the gap with WNT to less than 100,000 demo…
SpaceX’s plans to add millions of new subscribers to its satellite internet network could founder over the Indian government’s fears that the company will not obey its laws. SpaceX obtained a license to begin operating in India in 2025, after years of lobbying officials in New Delhi. While progress has been made toward a roll-out of the service there, Bloomberg now reports that Indian officials have paused the effort after SpaceX allowed Starlink access inside Iran despite not having legal permission to operate there. “Starlink remains in active and productive discussions with the Government of India contrary to misleading stories…
Other USB-C Cables I’ve TestedThere are so many cables out there, and plenty of solid options did not make the cut as a top choice. Here are a few honorable mentions I’ve tested and liked.Statik MagStack Pro for $25: I quite like the automatic magnetic coiling this cable features, as it stays neat, and the colors could be handy if you want something that stands out (I tested the bright orange version). But performance is distinctly average at 100W for charging and 480 Mbps for data transfer. It is 6.6 feet and comes with a two-year warranty.Baseus 2-in-1 Charging Cable…