🚨 Scoop with @charlesrollet.bsky.social: Intuitive Surgical, a $150-billion Silicon Valley medtech company with 13,000 employees, has paused job offers to all candidates who need H-1B sponsorship because of the recent Presidential proclamation. www.businessinsider.com/intuitive-si...

According to Peter Thiel, the "Antichrist" might be: - Skeptics of the current AI boom - Greta Thunberg. www.inc.com/sam-blum/pet... great reporting from @samblum.bsky.social

🚨 Scoop with @charlesrollet.bsky.social: Meta blew a Senate deadline to produce AI chatbot records tied to kids’ safety. “There’s no upside to meeting the deadline, no consequence for missing it, and a lot more options from buying time," experts said. www.businessinsider.com/meta-misses-...

@charlesrollet.bsky.social hired by @businessinsider.com as a tech reporter in San Francisco: talkingbiznews.com/media-news/b...

NEW: Scale AI's dropped investigation included a subpoena from the Department of Labor, but the agency isn’t enforcing it. Employment lawyers say that’s generally weird, and reflective of the Trump administration’s “unprecedented” relationship toward labor. www.inc.com/sam-blum/lab...

NEW: I obtained two internal Google reports that indicate the company has little control over Project Nimbus, its contract with the Israeli gov/military, and is largely in the dark about how it's being used. theintercept.com/2025/05/12/g...

The Department of Labor just dropped its investigation into Scale AI

ChatGPT’s new image generator is really good at faking receipts

🚨 BREAKING: A @techcrunch.com investigation reveals a previously unreported DOGE member: Mike Gonzalez, former founder of HR startup TraceHQ. He quietly joined as a "Senior Advisor" to DOGE at OPM—then scrubbed it off his LinkedIn after we reached out.

***UPDATE*** I hate being right about things. #OSINT What looks like the first photos of China’s ‘invasion barges’ we first reported in naval news recently www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2... The front barge (self propelled) is the smallest type, some are twice this size

“The investigation has been active since at least August 2024, a document seen by TechCrunch shows. And it’s ongoing, according to a person directly familiar with the matter.” bsky.app/profile/char...

FAA briefly halted flights into major Florida airports and diverted flights, much like last time. Bigger issue here is this could mean SpaceX has far more work to do than it was claiming on making Starship viable. techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/s...

SCOOP: Scale AI is being investigated by the US Department of Labor. The startup's former managing director Michael Kratsios is set to be confirmed as a top tech advisor to President Trump. techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/s... via @techcrunch.com

Scoop! Defense tech startup Epirus just raised a $250 million Series D. Epirus' flagship platform, Leonidas, uses electromagnetic pulses to take down drone swarms. Read more on @techcrunch.com: techcrunch.com/2025/03/04/d...

Singapore arrests alleged Nvidia chip smugglers

NEW: A healthcare startup co-founded by longevity guru Peter Attia just emerged from stealth. Its CEO is John Hering, a Silicon Valley VC best known for pouring billions into Elon Musk's ventures. Hering also donated $500k to a pro-Trump super PAC. techcrunch.com/2025/02/28/s...

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang is off DeepSeek as its sales soar. In fact, Jensen thinks reasoning models like DeepSeek's will boost compute demand by at least 100x. Read my latest on @techcrunch.com: techcrunch.com/2025/02/26/n...

Think 'GPT wrapper' startups are lame? Think again, says Stripe's CEO: they're growing faster than SaaS ever did. Good article from @maryannazevedo.bsky.social for @techcrunch.com techcrunch.com/2025/02/27/s...

NEW: Apple said it "can no longer" offer iCloud end-to-end encryption in the UK, and turned off the option to enable it for new users in the country. The unprecedented move comes after the British government demanded a backdoor into Apple's cloud service. techcrunch.com/2025/02/21/a...

Scoop: Despite recent layoffs, Meta is expanding in India by setting up a 'brand new' engineering site in Bangalore. This is a significant move by Meta, which hasn't used India as an engineering hub before. techcrunch.com/2025/02/21/d... via @techcrunch.com

Varo, a fintech that has already raised over $1 billion (!), is quietly trying to raise another $55 million, a filing shows. Its CEO also recently resigned. techcrunch.com/2025/02/19/a... Good post by @maryannazevedo.bsky.social

Breaking: A senior Elon Musk staffer with a role in the White House has quietly created an AI assistant to help DOGE "eliminate" government waste. The chatbot is powered by Musk's startup xAI. techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/e... via @techcrunch.com

the human cost www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/w...

New: A senior Elon Musk staffer, who has a role in the White House, created a custom AI chatbot that purports to help DOGE eliminate government waste, TechCrunch has learned. The chatbot is powered by Musk’s AI company, xAI. w/ @charlesrollet.bsky.social. techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/e...

The Risk of a Taiwan Invasion Is Rising Fast | Recorded Future assessment based on a range of behaviors and trends across China, Taiwan, and the United States (US) www.recordedfuture.com/research/ris...

Shopify took down Kanye’s swastika t-shirt shop, but another antisemitic storefront still operates

Scoop: Carta has quietly settled two more lawsuits from women who accused the firm of sexual harassment and discrimination. As of last month, Carta has now settled 3 such suits in San Francisco's superior court. techcrunch.com/2025/02/10/c... via @techcrunch.com

New, by me: Media giant Lee Enterprises says it was hit by a cyberattack last week, per an email seen by TechCrunch. Lee confirmed it was working to restore its systems. Lee publishes dozens of newspapers across the U.S., many of which are reporting disruption. techcrunch.com/2025/02/10/m...

SCOOP: FBI director nominee Kash Patel disclosed he received up to $5M in shares of a mysterious entity in the Cayman Islands called Elite Depot. Elite Depot is a parent organization of fast-fashion giant Shein, according to corporate records I reviewed www.wired.com/story/kash-p...

New: A coalition of more than a dozen U.S. states say they plan to file a lawsuit after Elon Musk’s DOGE gained access to the federal government's banks of Americans’ personal data. The states haven't yet filed the lawsuit... and Musk still has broad access to data. techcrunch.com/2025/02/07/c...

the human cost www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

Amazon doubles down on AI with a massive $100B spending plan for 2025

I linked DOGE staffer Marko Elez to a deleted X account that advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a “eugenic immigration policy,” and wrote, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity." He just resigned. www.wsj.com/tech/doge-st...

Meanwhile, morale has plummeted, said three OPM officials, as DOGE agents have clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young DOGE team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them “idiots.” Read about it here: wapo.st/3WNsOik

New, by me: Elon Musk's DOGE has taken control of large swathes of Americans' private information held by the U.S. government, representing the widest known compromise of government-held data by a private group of individuals — and little has gotten in their way. techcrunch.com/2025/02/05/t...

Bench burned through $135 million before shutting down

New with @sydneykbradley.bsky.social: Ex-Meta director sues the tech giant, alleging a "toxic pattern of silencing women."

Alphabet praises DeepSeek, but it’s massively ramping up its AI spending

This is a common (and totally false) point about DeepSeek - that its core model isn't censored. In fact, both WIRED and myself have investigated this topic. And it's unambiguous: DeepSeek is censored at both the application and training layer. techcrunch.com/2025/02/03/n...

After more than five years of reporting from Cambodia, my time there has been cut short arbitrarily. Immensely grateful to all who helped me and I'm proud of the work myself and my colleagues did for @mongabay.bsky.social and others. Heartbroken to leave behind the country that had become home.

A few months ago, HuggingFace CEO Clement Delangue warned that Chinese AI models censor Tiananmen & could spread values "the Western world wouldn’t want": techcrunch.com/2024/12/03/h... Now he's promoting DeepSeek's integration with Dell, with HuggingFace's help:

NEW: An international coalition of law enforcement agencies announced it has seized and taken down two prominent hacking forums with more than 10 million users. German police called them “the world’s two largest trading platforms for cybercrime.” techcrunch.com/2025/01/30/i...

A few months ago, HuggingFace CEO Clement Delangue warned that Chinese AI models censor Tiananmen & could spread values "the Western world wouldn’t want": techcrunch.com/2024/12/03/h... Now he's promoting DeepSeek's integration with Dell, with HuggingFace's help:

BREAKING: UnitedHealth has confirmed the ransomware attack and data breach on its Change Healthcare subsidiary in February 2024 now affects around 190 million people — almost double the previous estimate. techcrunch.com/2025/01/24/u...

DeepSeek's latest AI model R1 sticks to Chinese government restrictions on sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, and the treatment of Uyghurs in China (Jon Keegan/Sherwood News) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Everyone wants MrBeast on their TikTok bid, but he hasn’t committed yet