DMR News

Advancing Digital Conversations

Pebble Time 2 Returns With E-Paper Display, 21-Day Battery Life, and Thousands of Community Apps

The $225 Pebble Time 2 brings the smartwatch brand back with a color e-paper display, physical buttons, up to 21 days of battery life, and a software ecosystem shaped heavily…

Nvidia Research Shows AI Agent Harnesses Can Matter More Than Model Choice

Nvidia has published research showing that the software surrounding an AI model can dramatically change how well it performs on long-running autonomous tasks. Using its Agentic Variation Operators, or AVO,…

Tesla Removes Solar Roof From Its Website as Product Appears Discontinued

Tesla appears to have discontinued its Solar Roof product nearly a decade after introducing the integrated solar tiles. Public references to Solar Roof have been removed from Tesla’s website, while…

Waymo Submits Responses to NHTSA in Probe of Robotaxi Crash Involving Child

Waymo has submitted responses to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as the agency investigates a January crash in Santa Monica, California, in which one of the company’s robotaxis struck…

Walmart to Add Apple Pay and Google Pay Across U.S. Stores

Walmart will begin accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay at Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., ending years of resistance to third-party tap-to-pay services. The rollout starts August…

Starcloud Adds $250 Million to Series A as It Plans Larger Orbital Data Centers

Starcloud has added $250 million to its Series A funding round, bringing the total raised in the round to $420 million and valuing the orbital computing startup at $2.3 billion.…

Tesla Recalls Nearly 3 Million Vehicles in China Over Hidden Emergency Door Releases

Tesla is recalling nearly 3 million vehicles in China as part of a broader safety campaign focused on hidden emergency door releases that can be difficult for occupants to find…

Apollo Global Management Confirms Data Breach After Social Engineering Attack

Apollo Global Management has confirmed a data breach in which hackers stole personal information from the private equity firm’s cloud environment following a social engineering attack. The compromised data included…

Senator Ron Wyden Seeks GAO Review of Federal Hacking and Spyware Use

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate how federal law enforcement agencies use hacking tools and spyware against Americans, citing limited public information about how…

Hackers Used Google Docs to Target Cybersecurity Researchers With Malware

A hacking campaign targeted cybersecurity professionals around the Black Hat and Def Con conferences by impersonating a crypto news organization and using a legitimate Google Doc to deliver malware. Security…

Mark Zuckerberg Buys 19th-Century Irish Castle Near Meta’s International Headquarters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has purchased Strancally Castle, a 19th-century estate in County Waterford, Ireland, along with 440 acres of surrounding land. The property is estimated to have cost between…

Google Adds Preferred Sources Button to Help Publishers Gain More Search Visibility

Google is giving publishers a new way to encourage readers to mark them as preferred sources across Search, Discover, and Google News. The company said publishers can now embed a…

Runlayer and Rippling Drop Competing Lawsuits as Rippling Launches MCP Gateway

Runlayer and Rippling have dropped their lawsuits against each other without reaching a settlement or exchanging money, according to court documents reviewed by TechCrunch. Shortly after the cases were dismissed…

Castelion Raises $1 Billion at $13 Billion Valuation to Expand Hypersonic Missile Production

Castelion, a defense technology startup founded by former SpaceX executives, has raised a $1 billion Series C at a $13 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz, Carlyle, and JPMorgan Chase co-led the…

Linkdaze Combines Family Calendars, Chores, and AI Meal Planning in One Display

Linkdaze is positioning its smart digital calendar as a shared household organizer that can combine schedules from multiple services while also handling chores, meal planning, shopping lists, and family photos.…

Grok Users Report Gibberish Responses From xAI Chatbot

Some Grok users are reporting an unusual bug that causes the xAI chatbot to return long strings of gibberish instead of normal answers. The issue appears to affect only a…

Pew Finds AI Signs in 35% of Web Pages Published Since ChatGPT’s Launch

More than one-third of English-language web pages published after ChatGPT launched show significant signs of AI authorship or editing, according to a new Pew Research Center study. Pew found AI-related…

Mayfield Hires Former Cerebras Investor Adit Singh as Infrastructure Partner

Venture capital firm Mayfield has hired Adit Singh as an infrastructure partner, adding an investor with a background in semiconductors, hardware, and early-stage infrastructure companies. Singh previously helped source and…

Ramp Launches Router to Manage AI Model Access and Inference Spending

Ramp has launched Router, an AI model routing service that lets companies access and switch between multiple large language models through a single API. The expense management company says it…

U.S. Senators Demand Answers From TikTok Over Safety Experiment Involving 15 Million Users

U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal have given TikTok until September 1 to answer questions about an experiment that withheld an algorithmic safety feature from about 15 million U.S.…