Apple has temporarily paused the rollout of iPadOS 18 for M4 iPad Pro models, some of the most expensive iPads that the company sells, after some users complained that the update bricked their devices. Apple acknowledged the issue in a statement to Engadget, saying, “We have temporarily removed the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pro models as we work to resolve an issue that is impacting a small number of devices.”The issue first came to light through Reddit, where a growing number of M4 iPad Pro users described how their iPads became unusable after they tried installing the latest version of...

Discord is rolling out new end-to-end encryption for both audio and video calls on its platform. The tech will be applied to calls from DMs, group DMs, voice channels and Go Live streams. Discord detailed the tech and its goals for the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in a blog post. Desktop and mobile clients already support the new upgrade, and the rest of the clients should be getting the feature next year.The company has focused on transparency with its E2EE protocols, and has made plenty of information about it publicly available. Discord is also promising that there should be no sacrifices to...

On Tuesday, Netflix dropped a clip from The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep at the company’s Geeked Week 2024 event. The clip for the upcoming animated film leans on the familiar dulcet growls of Doug Cockle, who voiced Geralt of Rivia in the games.Cockle introduces the clip with an enthusiastic tease of the merpeople Geralt will battle in the film. “That’s right — he’s gonna cross swords with merpeople of all things!” Cockle exclaims in the clip. “Amazing stuff, it’s gonna be so cool.” Hey, can’t blame a voice actor for hyping their project.The scene shows Geralt and Jaskier (...

Ms. Ellison, Sam Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and a top executive in his empire, is set to be sentenced on Sept. 24 for her role in the collapse of the crypto exchange.

Amazon is facing a class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of misleading pricing practices. The suit alleges that Amazon deceived shoppers by showing inflated list prices for Fire TVs, thus making discounts seem more significant than they actually were.The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington and claims that the company regularly adopted this practice, calling it a "persistent and uniform scheme." The suit alleges that Amazon created "fake list prices" for its own Fire TVs, making the apparent "discounts" deceptive.It goes on to accuse the...

Al Gore has enjoyed a very successful career, including as a U.S. senator, U.S. Vice President, U.S. presidential nominee, and even Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007 for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.” This past May, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifetime of service. What […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

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On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed some of America’s toughest laws yet regulating the artificial intelligence sector. Three of these laws crack down on AI deepfakes that could influence elections, while two others prohibit Hollywood studios from creating an AI clone of an actor’s body or voice without their consent. “Home to the majority […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge iOS 18 has a new feature that lets you wirelessly restore an iPhone 16 using another iPhone or an iPad, 9to5Mac reports. 9to5Mac says it was able to simulate the new recovery method. “Essentially, when the iPhone 16 enters Recovery Mode for some reason, users can simply place it next to another iPhone or iPad to start the firmware recovery,” according to 9to5Mac. “The other device will download a new iOS firmware and transfer it to the bricked device.”Apparently, any device on iOS 18 can do the restoration, but only the iPhone 16 lineup of phones can...

NASA wants to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but right now, astronauts have to be in direct line of sight with Earth to phone home.  The space agency is looking to change that with its developing Near Space Network, and it’s willing to pay potentially huge sums to private companies to help […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

JPMorgan Chase is in talks to take over the Apple Card business from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street Journal reports. Goldman has issued credit for the Apple Card since its launch in 2019, but the Wall Street and Silicon Valley giants have been trying to untie their partnership since last year. In 2023, Goldman decided […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Late last week, United Airlines announced that it signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring its Starlink internet service to its entire fleet and — for the first time — offer free WiFi to all passengers. To dig a bit deeper into why United went with Starlink, what that rollout will look like […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images California governor Gavin Newsom has signed two bills that will protect performers from having their likeness simulated by AI digital replicas.The two SAG-AFTRA supported bills, AB 2602 and AB 1836, were passed by the California legislature in August and are part of a slate of state-level AI regulations. AB 2602 bars contract provisions that would let companies use a digital version of a performer in a project instead of the real human actor, unless the performer knows exactly how their digital stand-in will be used and has a lawyer or union representative...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google is taking away a Pixel Buds Pro feature that lets users touch and hold an earbud to hear unread notifications. In an update on Tuesday, Google confirmed that Assistant “will no longer read unread notifications when using the press Assistant feature.” Additionally, Google says Assistant will stop automatically alerting you to unread notifications on the Pixel Buds, nor will it let you reply. Instead, Google says you can hear notifications by activating Assistant and saying “Read my notifications.”The “touch and hold” gesture on the Pixel Buds...

Every month, 400,000 free members upgrade to paid memberships, the company says. According to Patreon, Autopilot improved the rate of free-to-paid membership upgrades by an average of 19% in testing.© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Investment powerhouse BlackRock is set to launch a massive AI-focused investment fund, exceeding $30 billion, in collaboration with Microsoft and the Abu Dhabi-backed investment outfit MGX, the FT reported today. According to the outlet, the fund — among Wall Street’s largest — will focus on creating data centers and funding energy infrastructure to support AI. […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-owned brain-computer interface company, has received “breakthrough device” clearance from the FDA. But this does not mean they have developed a cure for blindness, whatever Musk might say. The breakthrough devices program at the FDA is a voluntary program that developers can apply to that, if granted, “offers manufacturers an opportunity to […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images In the weeks leading up to the release of OpenAI’s newest “reasoning” model, o1, independent AI safety research firm Apollo found a notable issue. Apollo realized the model produced incorrect outputs in a new way. Or, to put things more colloquially, it lied.Sometimes the deceptions seemed innocuous. In one example, OpenAI researchers asked o1-preview to provide a brownie recipe with online references. The model’s chain of thought — a feature that’s supposed to mimic how humans break down complex ideas — internally...

Discord will now offer audio and video calls that even the company won't be able to listen in on.© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Image: EA EA’s sports games are huge franchises, and soon, the company is launching a mobile app to add even more of EA Sports into your life. As part of an investor presentation today, the company officially announced the EA Sports app, which will soft launch for iOS and Android in Spain this fall.In a press release, EA says the app will be a “socially-driven app” with features like a discovery feed to keep up to date on news and highlights from their favorite teams, interactive challenges you can play during and after live games, and community “arenas.” With the soft launch in Spain...

Image: MysteryLupin (Twitter) The next flagship soundbar from Sonos will be called the Arc Ultra, and marketing images of the product have been posted on X today. They line up with the photos I published back in July and offer yet more confirmation that the Arc Ultra will support Bluetooth audio playback. Sonos itself has managed to leak details about the Arc Ultra in recent days; the company’s online store briefly featured a few tidbits about the Arc Ultra and mentioned the inclusion of “Sound Motion technology.” This is presumably the branding that Sonos has chosen for the technology...

Users will be able to download their data or migrate their account to another Mastodon instance, if they choose.© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Mistral AI launched a new free tier to let developers fine tune and build test apps with the startup’s AI models, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The startup also slashed prices for developers to access its AI models through API endpoints, and added image processing to its free consumer AI chatbot, Le […]© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Image: Netflix We’re still waiting on the biggest news in the Witcher universe — just what Liam Hemsworth will sound like as Geralt — but in the meantime, Netflix has announced when fans can expect the next animated spinoff. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep will start streaming on February 11th, 2025. And Doug Cockle, the iconic voice of Geralt in the games, will be reprising his role.Here’s the premise of the film:Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, is hired to investigate a series of attacks in a seaside village and finds himself drawn into a centuries-old conflict between...

Ursa Major, a startup that produces rocket motors through 3D printing, received a $12.5 million grant to develop new solid fuel rocket engines© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.