Month: August 2024
Fundraising is a lot easier when you have traction
Some stories emerge and die in a matter of days. Others require us to stay tuned for more, and this week brought us several of these.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Some stories emerge and die in a matter of days. Others require us to stay tuned for more, and this week brought us several of these.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Should I Put $1,000 Into a CD or High-Yield Savings Account?
You can get a great rate with either option, but that’s not the only thing to consider.
You can get a great rate with either option, but that’s not the only thing to consider.
Texas judge decides Texas is a perfectly good venue for X to sue Media Matters
Judge says Musk critic “targeted” advertisers in Texas, denies motion to dismiss.
Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at Tesla’s “Cyber Rodeo” on April 7, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | AFP/Suzanne Cordeiro)
A federal judge in Texas yesterday ruled that Elon Musk’s X Corp. can continue its lawsuit against Media Matters for America. US District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, who recently refused to recuse himself from the case despite having purchased Tesla stock, denied Media Matters’ motion to dismiss.
X Corp. sued Media Matters after the nonprofit watchdog group published research on ads being placed next to pro-Nazi content on X, formerly Twitter. X’s lawsuit also names reporter Eric Hananoki and Media Matters President Angelo Carusone as defendants.
Because of O’Connor’s ruling, X can move ahead with its claims of tortious interference with contract, business disparagement, and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage. A jury trial is scheduled to begin on April 7, 2025.
Will.i.am Loves Radio. And He’s Convinced AI Is Its Future
I spoke with the musician and entrepreneur about Radio.fyi, which will let you interact with AI personas about music, news, sports and culture.
I spoke with the musician and entrepreneur about Radio.fyi, which will let you interact with AI personas about music, news, sports and culture.
Tumblr migrates more than 500 million blogs to WordPress
Parent company Automattic insists the user experience won’t change a bit.
Enlarge / “You’ll never be bored again” is one of the more fitting slogans attached to Tumblr. (credit: Getty Images)
Once-great social media and blogging platform Tumblr has gone through a number of big changes in recent years, and another one is right around the corner. Parent company Automattic says it is migrating all Tumblr blogs—more than half a billion in number—to the WordPress back end.
In a blog post announcing the initiative this week, Automattic is careful to note that it doesn’t want anything about the front-end user experience of Tumblr to change. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that,” a rep wrote.
In terms of user experience, the two blogging platforms have very different emphases. WordPress is meant to be powerful, customizable, and extensible to serve a variety of needs, while Tumblr is meant to streamline the experience to be something like a middle ground between operating a WordPress blog and using something like X or Threads.
CrowdStrike exec will testify to Congress about July’s global IT meltdown
Image: The Verge
A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that grounded planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.
Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2PM ET, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently listed as a witness.
In a statement, Committee Chair Mark Green (R-TN) said that while he’d hoped Kurtz could attend, “I look forward to hearing testimony from Mr. Meyers, who CrowdStrike assured was the appropriate witness to discuss the details of the outage. Americans deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors.”
Green said in a separate statement that the flawed software update that impacted 8.5 million Windows machines “…demonstrates the urgency of promoting cyber hygiene and resiliency amid increased threats,” and that the “growing reliance on interconnected IT systems has expanded the risk surface.”
Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, said in a statement that the hearing will be “an important opportunity to learn more about what steps the company has taken in the aftermath of the outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Though the outage wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, Garbarino said adversaries likely watched the event and “learned how a faulty software update can trigger cascading effects on our critical infrastructure.”
Image: The Verge
A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that grounded planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.
Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2PM ET, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently listed as a witness.
In a statement, Committee Chair Mark Green (R-TN) said that while he’d hoped Kurtz could attend, “I look forward to hearing testimony from Mr. Meyers, who CrowdStrike assured was the appropriate witness to discuss the details of the outage. Americans deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors.”
Green said in a separate statement that the flawed software update that impacted 8.5 million Windows machines “…demonstrates the urgency of promoting cyber hygiene and resiliency amid increased threats,” and that the “growing reliance on interconnected IT systems has expanded the risk surface.”
Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, said in a statement that the hearing will be “an important opportunity to learn more about what steps the company has taken in the aftermath of the outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Though the outage wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, Garbarino said adversaries likely watched the event and “learned how a faulty software update can trigger cascading effects on our critical infrastructure.”