Author: insighter

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’re publishing these pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here. Dar’shun Kendrick is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, a position she was elected to at the age of 27 in 2010. She has a storied career in policy, equity and technology, including the Small Business Development and Jobs Creation Committee and the…

Shortly after the October 7 attacks on Israel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a statement on social media, extending sympathy to Israelis without mentioning the Palestinians. Other tech executives – including from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM – offered their gushing support for Israel as well. Since then, they have remained largely silent as the Israeli army has massacred close to 35,000 Palestinians, including more than 14,500 children, destroyed hundreds of schools and all universities and devastated Palestinian homes, healthcare infrastructure, mosques and heritage sites. To execute this shocking level of destruction, the Israeli military has been assisted by artificial…

A veteran cruise attendee at just 24 years old, Julia Wilcox is used to her inbox flooding with promotional emails from cruise lines courting loyal customers. But Wilcox, who vlogs her cruise experiences on TikTok, said one cruise line takes a more idiosyncratic approach to their marketing: Two or three times a month, she’ll get thick and glossy paper envelopes in the mail from Viking Cruises, the luxury cruise line which with she took a 10-day trip in January 2023. It’s the only cruise company that sends her paper mail—and it does so persistently. “I get so much paper mail…

As the war enters its 808th day, these are the main developments. Here is the situation on Sunday, May 12, 2024. Fighting A missile attack on a restaurant in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, killed three people and wounded eight, Denis Pushilin, the head of the region’s Russian-backed administration, said, adding that there were two strikes by US HIMARS precision rocket launchers. One woman was killed, 29 people wounded and hundreds of buildings, including a school and a hospital, were damaged after Ukraine attacked Russia’s Belgorod region over the weekend, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. Gladkov said Belgorod city, the region’s…

Ghost of Tsushima only requires PSN account linking for its Legends multiplayer mode, a requirement the single player campaign is exempt from, the game’s developer went out of its way to say in a recent post. Steam, Green Man Gaming, and Epic Games Store each had disclaimers noting the same thing. In theory, that would mean if you don’t care about multiplayer modes, you could still play — but in practice, the platforms are now delisting the game. You are receiving a refund for a game you pre-purchased – Ghost of Tsushima. The publisher of this game is now requiring…

Parenting brings many joys, but sleep deprivation is not one of them. So, it’s no wonder that moms and dads are willing to take some drastic measures—in the form of sleep medications—when it comes to getting their kids down for the night. New survey results from Sleep Doctor reveal that 79% of parents have given their child a substance to get them to sleep—with 66% using melatonin, 35% using Benadryl, and 20% turning to prescription sleep aids. Others reported using everything from herbal and over-the-counter aids to CBD, THC, and even alcohol. Millennial and Gen Z parents were most likely…

  Moscow’s forces captured five villages in a renewed ground assault in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence has said, as journalists in the city of Vovchansk described multiple buildings destroyed after Russian air raids. Ukrainian officials on Saturday did not confirm whether Russia had taken the villages, which lie in a contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia. Ukrainian journalists reported that the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha were taken by Russian troops on Friday. Russia said the village of Pletenivka was also taken. In an evening statement Saturday, Ukrainian President…

I was lucky enough to catch the elusive northern lights on a special delivery flight, Singapore Airlines’ first 787-10 Dreamliner delivery flight from Charleston, South Carolina, to Osaka, Japan, and finally on to Changi Airport. As our flight approached the state of Alaska, flyers on the starboard side were treated to a magnificent display, which — with much effort — I was finally able to clearly capture with my point-and-shoot camera. At that moment, I pledged to see the northern lights from the ground — not far from our Dreamliner’s flight path — in interior Alaska. That adventure became a…

Thousands of people have protested in the Swedish city of Malmo against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, with Israel’s war on Gaza casting a shadow over the final of the glitzy contest. On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters gathered on the central square of the Swedish host city before marching towards the contest venue, waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Eurovision united by genocide” – a twist on the contest’s official slogan “united by music”. A protester told Al Jazeera that it was unfair that a country that is “committing genocide” was allowed to take part in the…

China’s leadership is relying on an export surge to revive slumping growth, but those policies won’t extract the world’s second largest economy from the malaise that it’s in, a top China watcher said. Anne Stevenson-Yang, cofounder of J Capital Research and the author of Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy, pointed to failures by Beijing in an op-ed in the New York Times on Saturday. “Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and…

Apple is reportedly close to an agreement with OpenAI for integrating ChatGPT with iOS 18. The latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman firms up persistent rumors about a partnership ahead of AI announcements expected at Apple’s developer conference WWDC in June. Tweet may have been deleted “The two sides have been finalizing terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18,” said Gurman. We don’t know yet what those features will be, but insiders say Apple might leverage generative AI to improve existing apps and services. That could include summarization capabilities for Messages and Safari, and improved…

An unusually strong solar storm hitting Earth produced stunning displays of colour in the skies across the Northern Hemisphere early on Saturday, with no immediate reports of disruptions to power and communications. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning when a solar outburst reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than anticipated. The effects of the northern lights, which were on display in the United Kingdom, were due to last through the weekend and possibly into next week. Many in the UK shared phone snaps of the lights on social media early Saturday,…