TechCrunch Space: Catching stars

Hello, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. In case you missed it, Boeing and NASA decided to keep Starliner docked to the International Space Station for the rest of the month. The agency is aiming to complete a key review in the first week of August, at which point they’ll …...Read More

The question haunting Fisker's bankruptcy

As failed EV startup Fisker winds its way through bankruptcy, a persistent and tricky question has become a flashpoint of the proceedings: does its only secured lender, Heights Capital Management, deserve to be at the front of the line to reap the proceeds of a liquidation? Heights has maintained an …...Read More

Making AI models 'forget' undesirable data hurts their performance

So-called “unlearning” techniques are used to make a generative AI model forget specific and undesirable info it picked up from training data, like sensitive private data or copyrighted material. But current unlearning techniques are a double-edged sword: They could make a model like OpenAI’s GPT-4o or Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B …...Read More

Uber now lets users in India book three trips at once

Uber is rolling out concurrent rides in India, a feature that allows users to book up to three trips for any of their contacts, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with the company. The concurrent rides feature is the latest example of Uber developing products that will capture more customers, …...Read More

How to opt out of facial recognition at airports (if you're American)

U.S. airports are rolling out facial-recognition technology to scan the faces of travelers before they board their flight. Americans, at least, get to opt out. More than 230 U.S. airports have already rolled out facial-recognition technology, according to the website of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal …...Read More

Bee AI raises $7M for its wearable AI assistant that learns from your conversations

The promise of AI and large language models (LLMs) is the ability to understand increasingly wider amounts of context and make sense of that information easily, so it makes sense that we’re seeing a bunch of companies trying to make wearable hardware so that people can use AI in their …...Read More

India's Rapido becomes a unicorn with fresh $120M funding

Bike-taxi startup Rapido is the latest Indian startup to become a unicorn, meaning it reached $1 billion in valuation. The 8-year-old firm has raised $120 million in a new funding round led by WestBridge Capital, according to a regulatory filing. The new capital, a Series E infusion, underscores Rapido’s growing …...Read More

GovWell is bringing automation and efficiency to local governments

Government websites aren’t known for cutting-edge tech. GovWell co-founder and CTO Ben Cohen discovered this while trying to help his dad, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as a full stack engineer at Uber during the day and faxed documents for building permits at night. The difference in …...Read More

US border agents must get warrant before cell phone searches, federal court rules

A federal district court in New York has ruled that U.S. border agents must obtain a warrant before searching the electronic devices of Americans and international travelers crossing the U.S. border. The ruling on July 24 is the latest court opinion to upend the U.S. government’s long-standing legal argument, which …...Read More

Doomscrolling is bad for your brain, study finds

It turns out that maybe, just maybe, spending a lot of time staring at your phone and reading bad news isn’t great for your outlook on life or humanity. That’s the finding of a recent study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, which linked doomscrolling to existential anxiety, despair, …...Read More