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Sixteen years ago, engineers working on the Google self-driving project conducted their first autonomous vehicle tests on the freeway that connects Silicon Valley to San Francisco. The company would eventually become Waymo, autonomous vehicle testing would expand — fanning out to other cities. Eventually, the company launched commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Other cities soon followed. But freeways, despite some of that early testing, would remain out of reach. Until today. Waymo said Wednesday it will begin offering robotaxi rides that use freeways across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, a critical expansion for the…
WisdomAI, the new AI data analytics startup from Rubrik co-founder Soham Mazumdar, has landed a fresh $50 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from new investor NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm). This round comes roughly six months after the startup announced a seed round of $23 million led by Coatue. WisdomAI offers AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data that hasn’t been cleaned of typos or errors. A business user simply asks questions in natural language, such as, “How many customers do I have in my pipeline and…
Apple Watch and iPhone owners in the United States will now be able to carry a copy of their U.S. passport on their device, which they can then use at TSA checkpoints across more than 250 U.S. airports when traveling domestically. The feature, known as Digital ID, was previously announced as part of the iOS 26 release, and adds passports to the list of existing government IDs supported in Apple Wallet. The company has rolled out the feature to a dozen states and Puerto Rico, with more on the way. Using Digital ID in Apple Wallet, users can create and present an ID,…
A group of Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to several state governors, including in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Wisconsin, warning that their states are inadvertently sharing drivers’ data with federal immigration authorities. The letter, which was first reported by Reuters, told governors that their states are providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies “with frictionless, self-service access to the personal data of all of your residents,” through a nonprofit managed by state police agencies called the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or Nlets. Nlets facilitates the sharing of state residents’ personal data, in this case driver…
WASHINGTON (AP) — On any day during her eight years as first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama said she could go from giving a speech to meeting with a counterpart from another country to digging in her vegetable garden with groups of schoolchildren.And her clothes had to be ready for that. There was too much else to do, including raising daughters Sasha and Malia, and she said she didn’t have time to obsess over what she was wearing. “I was concerned about, ‘Can I hug somebody in it? Will it get dirty?’” she said Wednesday night during a…
A statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse stands in a garden in front of Cinderella’s Castle at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World on May 31, 2024, in Orlando, Florida.Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty ImagesDisney will report quarterly earnings on Thursday, and Wall Street will once again be focused on updates from the company’s media business — particularly when it comes to traditional TV and streaming.Here is what Wall Street is expecting Disney to report for its fiscal fourth quarter, according to LSEG:Earnings per share: $1.05 expectedRevenue: $22.75 billion expectedThis will mark the last time the company…
If there’s any question about whether data centers are driving the global economy, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) should dispel any doubts. This year, the world will spend $580 billion on data centers, $40 billion more than it will spend on new oil supplies. “This point of comparison provides a telling marker of the changing nature of modern, highly digitalized economies,” the agency said in the report. Electricity consumption from AI data centers is expected to grow fivefold by the end of the decade, doubling the total used by all data centers today. Conventional data centers…
Internet radio service TuneIn, a competitor of sorts to Sirius XM and other streamers that was valued at around $500 million during its heyday, has sold for just $175 million. The acquirer is the music and technology company Stingray Group, which will pay $150 million at closing and up to $25 million one year later. It financed the deal with a loan under its renewed credit facility, the company said on Wednesday. Founded in 2002, TuneIn was an early player in the online music space. Unlike rivals such as Apple Music or Spotify Premium that offer ad-free, subscription-based music on…
Crafting a perfect prompt for AI chatbots is often a challenge — so much so that startups are creating roles for prompt engineers. Consumer-facing AI apps are increasingly adding features like suggestion buttons or autogenerated recommendations to nudge customers to use the chatbot more frequently and show them about what the app can do. Hero, a productivity startup founded by former Meta employees, announced a new autocompletion SDK today that will fill in prompts for you based on context. The SDK is currently invite-only and will let developers integrate this tech into their apps. Here is how it works: When…
Search and rescue missions often happen in areas that are difficult for humans to navigate due to extreme weather, rough terrain, or dangerous conditions like smoke or dust. A researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) wants to send robots inspired by bats on these missions instead of humans. Nitin J. Sanket, a professor at WPI, has developed small flying robots with his team that fit in the palm of a hand and use ultrasound — just like bats. These robots use AI-powered software to filter out noise from the ultrasound signals the devices collect, allowing them to spot obstacles within…