Hello, lovelies, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s common e-newsletter that recaps the week in tech. For many people, this workweek was a day shorter, thanks to the Juneteenth observance on Monday. But lots occurred.
We’ve bought coverage on the OceanGate tragedy, and we’ve continued to intently observe the Reddit API controversy — which exhibits no indicators of abating. Elsewhere, TC has a full review of the brand new Google Pixel Tablet (spoiler alert: the bundled dock is a main spotlight), and we now have the thin on Microsoft’s quantum plans and extra.
If you haven’t already, sign up here to get WiR in your inbox each Saturday. Then learn on for the week’s digest.
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OceanGate fired a whistleblower: The director of marine operations at OceanGate, the corporate whose submersible went lacking Sunday on an expedition to the Titanic within the North Atlantic, was fired after elevating issues about its first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and different techniques earlier than its maiden voyage, in accordance to a courtroom submitting in a 2018 lawsuit.
Hackers threaten to leak Reddit data: Hackers are threatening to launch confidential information stolen from Reddit except the corporate pays a ransom demand — and reverses its controversial API price hikes. In a put up on its darkish net leak website, the BlackCat ransomware gang, often known as ALPHV, claims to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed information from Reddit throughout a February breach of the corporate’s techniques.
Reddit protests continue: In extra Reddit information, a number of subreddits are adopting different strategies of protesting the aforementioned API adjustments, comparable to publishing just one type of put up, altering the subject in focus and days when the neighborhood turns personal. Many of those communities took half in a “blackout” from June 12–14 to protest the API rule adjustments, which might successfully kill a host of third-party apps.
Google Pixel Tablet review: Brian evaluations the brand new Pixel Tablet, Google’s first try in a minute at an Android-powered gadget with a pill type issue. The verdict? The so-so slate is larger than the sum of its elements with the addition of a bundled good dwelling dock. Read on for the remainder of his impressions.
Microsoft gets serious about quantum: This week, Microsoft introduced its roadmap for constructing a quantum supercomputer, utilizing the topological qubits the corporate’s researchers have been engaged on for fairly a while. There’s nonetheless loads of middleman milestones to be reached. But the corporate believes that it’ll take fewer than 10 years to construct a quantum supercomputer utilizing these qubits.
WhatsApp gets automatic silencing: WhatsApp has launched a new function to routinely silence calls from unknown numbers. It comes after a number of prospects in India, the chat app’s largest market with greater than 500 million customers, complained about an increase in spam calls over the previous 12 months.
Marvel’s AI art controversy: Marvel’s newest sequence, “Secret Invasion,” made its debut on Disney+ this week — sparking backlash after it was confirmed that the intro sequence was AI-generated. Method Studios, the VFX firm accountable for the graphics, instructed The Hollywood Reporter, “No artists’ jobs were replaced by incorporating these new tools” — however that didn’t cease many artists from taking to Twitter categorical their frustrations.
Board members quit Byju’s: On Thursday, international big Deloitte give up because the auditor of Byju’s and three board members resigned from essentially the most worthwhile Indian startup, sending a shock wave by the trade a 12 months after the Indian agency’s tardy monetary reporting attracted global scrutiny.
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This week’s episode of Found featured Web Sun, the co-founder and president of Komodo Health, a startup that makes use of information to create a complete map of the U.S. healthcare system. Web opened up about what drove him to entrepreneurship and how mutual associates launched him to his co-founder, pondering they’d get alongside (little did they know!). He additionally talked about navigating fundraising through the bull market and layoffs — a well timed matter to ensure.
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TC+ subscribers get entry to in-depth commentary, evaluation and surveys — which you recognize for those who’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:
Europe’s and Israel’s unicorns: Accel companion Harry Nelis writes about how, within the final twenty years, we’ve seen a wealth of robust founders and operators emerge throughout Europe and Israel, constructing revolutionary merchandise and category-defining unicorn corporations that are actually competing on the worldwide stage.
Coinbase, the next super app: As the crypto markets proceed to face uncertainty, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong sees larger potential for the digital asset ecosystem to develop. In the subsequent 5 to seven years, Armstrong’s imaginative and prescient for Coinbase consists of turning it into a “super app,” referring to apps like WeChat and Alipay, that are used for messaging, commerce, banking, loans, funds and even for ordering meals.
AI infiltrates crowdsourced work: A brand new paper from researchers at Swiss college EPFL means that between 33% and 46% of distributed crowd staff on Amazon Mechanical Turk seem to have “cheated” when performing a explicit activity assigned to them, utilizing instruments comparable to ChatGPT to do a few of the work. If that follow is widespread, it might prove to be a fairly severe concern, Haje writes.
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