The common assumption among iPhone security experts has been that finding vulnerabilities and developing exploits for iOS was difficult, requiring a lot of time, resources, and teams of skilled researchers to break through its layers of security defenses. That meant iPhone spyware and zero-day vulnerabilities, which aren’t known to the …

Autonomous military aircraft maker Shield AI has raised $1. 5 billion in Series G funding at a $12. 7 billion post-money valuation, the company announced on Tuesday. The deal was led by PE firm Advent (which has a $1 billion budget to invest in defense tech, it says) and a …

senators on Thursday fired the latest salvo in an increasingly active front against data centers and their energy use. Senators Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the U. Energy Information Administration (EIA) asking it to collect details on energy use from data centers — and how that …

OpenAI has put the kibosh on yet another project — at least for the time being. On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that the AI company would be “indefinitely” pausing plans to develop an “erotic” mode for ChatGPT. The proposed “adult mode,” which CEO Sam Altman first floated in October, …

Google announced on Thursday that “Live Translate,” its AI-powered Google Translate feature that lets you hear real-time translations in your headphones, is expanding to iOS and to more countries. With this expansion, the feature is now available on iOS and Android in the U. , India, Mexico, Germany, Spain, France, …

AI was once again the buzzword for this latest batch of YC Demo Day companies. Nearly 190 companies participated in Y Combinator’s Winter ’26 cohort and presented their startups in a Demo Day on Tuesday. These companies are working on products across industries such as law, transportation, and healthcare. I …

Netflix has quietly hiked its prices once again. The streaming giant’s most affordable, ad-supported tier now costs $8. 99 per month, up from the previous $7. 99 monthly subscription fee, Netflix confirmed to TechCrunch in an email. The standard plan without ads also now costs $19. 99 per month, a …

Mastodon is making changes in the hopes of making its social networking service more appealing and easier to use, especially for more mainstream users looking for an alternative to X or Threads. On Thursday, the decentralized social networking software maker said it’s redesigning a key part of its platform by …

As AI makes inroads into the worlds of editorial and media, websites are scrambling to establish ground rules for its usage. This week, Wikipedia banned the use of AI-generated text by its editors — although it stopped short of banning AI outright from the site’s editorial processes. In a recent …

When it comes to AI chatbots, there’s currently a war on for consumer attention. All the big chatbot providers are looking to increase their user count and, in a minor coup for itself, Google just made it significantly easier for users of those other chatbots to defect to Gemini. On …