Social

A CES 2024 preview, 23andMe victim blaming and MIT’s obesity-fighting pill

Comment

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JANUARY 06: Taxi cabs line up in front of the new West Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center during CES 2022 on January 6, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, is being held in person through January 7, with some companies deciding to participate virtually only or canceling their attendance due to concerns over the major surge in COVID-19 cases. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Image Credits: Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech that was. Hope the holidays were restful for those who observed them. We at TC, for our parts, are gearing up for an eventful next week at CES in Las Vegas — while keeping an eye on the news cycle, as ever.

In this edition of WiR, we spotlight Brian’s CES 2024 preview, 23andMe blaming victims for its data breach, GitHub making Copilot Chat generally available and Frontdesk laying off its entire staff. Also on the agenda are spiders and body butter, Fidelity marking down X’s valuation, Meta cutting the price of the Quest 2 and MIT scientists’ vibrating obesity pill.

It’s a lot to get through, so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

CES 2024: Brian has a thorough roundup of what to expect at CES 2024, including — but not limited to — generative AI, robotics, TVs, cars, smartphones, and health tech. He writes that he’s optimistic about the show overall, particularly in light of the consumer electronics industry’s move to more decentralized manufacturing and the quality of startup pitches that’ve come in so far.

Your fault, not ours: Facing over 30 lawsuits from victims of a data breach implicating ~6.9 million customers, 23andMe is now deflecting blame to attempt to absolve itself of any responsibility. In a letter, the genetic testing company says that users “negligently recycled and failed to update their passwords following these past security incidents, which are unrelated to 23andMe.”

Copilot Chat launches: GitHub has rolled out Copilot Chat, a ChatGPT-like programming-centric chatbot, in general availability for all paying Copilot users and free for verified teachers, students and maintainers of certain open source projects. The chatbot’s powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s flagship generative AI model, and fine-tuned specifically for dev scenarios.

Frontdesk implodes: Mary Ann writes that Frontdesk, a startup that managed more than 1,000 furnished apartments across the U.S., laid off its entire 200-person workforce Tuesday after attempts to raise more capital failed. Frontdesk CEO Jesse DePinto said that Frontdesk would be filing for a state receivership, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to TechCrunch’s sources.

Spiders and body butter: Sol de Janeiro’s Delícia Drench Body Butter went viral on social media after users claimed they were hunted, bitten and (unsuccessfully) courted by wolf spiders when they applied the moisturizer, thanks to the alleged inclusion of chemicals that spiders find sexually arousing. But Sol de Janeiro — and independent experts — tell TechCrunch that there’s no merit to the rumors.

X’s valuation falls . . . again: Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X Holdings, the parent company of X (formerly Twitter), by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, reports Ivan. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022.

Quest 2 discounted: Months after Meta launched the Quest 3, the company is slashing prices for the VR headset’s predecessor, the Quest 2, by $50. The 128GB version drops from $299 to $249 and the 256GB version drops from $349 to $299 — with plenty of accessories on sale to boot.

Vibrating the fat away: Brian writes about an MIT team’s new obesity-fighting, pill-like vibrating capsule, which is designed to send signals to the brain to simulate the sensation of being full. Early tests are promising — giving animals the pill 20 minutes before eating reduced their consumption by around 40% — but the capsule is a long way from human trials.

Audio

In need of new podcasts to fill out your rotation? Don’t panic — TechCrunch has you covered.

On a throwback episode of Equity, Morgan interviewed Shruti Dwivedi — the co-founder and CEO of health tech startup Duly, which is focused on simplifying and personalizing contraception for young women in India and beyond — at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. The pair talked about the stigma around contraception, cultural roadblocks Duly faces and what’s next for the startup.

Meanwhile, Found went Down Under with Rebecca, who spoke with Alex Zaccaria, the co-founder and CEO of Australia-based Linktree. The two chatted about how the startup scaled the freemium model to grow the now-massive social media reference landing page business.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn dove back into the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. as anticipation builds. Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, a digital asset technology company and the largest publicly traded bitcoin mining firm, joined the episode to talk crypto shop.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Another alleged cool superconductor: Tim has the story on the latest team of scientists who claim to have discovered a near-room-temperature superconductor. He’s not convinced that the paper, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, will stand up to scientific scrutiny; time will tell.

Crypto losses decline: While malicious actors continue to hack the crypto industry for a cash grab, the dollar amount is down substantially — 51% — compared to the previous year, Jacquelyn writes.

The coming copyright challenges: When news broke last year that AI heavyweight OpenAI and Axel Springer had reached a financial agreement and partnership, it seemed to bode well for harmony between folks who write words and tech companies that use them to help create and train AI models. But perhaps it doesn’t, Alex posits.

More TechCrunch

Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a…

Why companies are turning to internal hackathons

Featured Article

I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Women in tech still face a shocking level of mistreatment at work. Melinda French Gates is one of the few working to change that.

7 hours ago
I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s  broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of…

Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022

Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many…

Hollywood agency CAA aims to help stars manage their own AI likenesses

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which…

OpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions

When Jeffrey Wang posted to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral.

With AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to…

VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads

When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying…

Deal Dive: Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI moves away from safety

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube…

YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

Featured Article

Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

CSC ServiceWorks provides laundry machines to thousands of residential homes and universities, but the company ignored requests to fix a security bug.

2 days ago
Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the buzz is palpable. But what if we told you there’s a chance for you to not just attend, but also…

Harness the TechCrunch Effect: Host a Side Event at Disrupt 2024

Decks are all about telling a compelling story and Goodcarbon does a good job on that front. But there’s important information missing too.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Goodcarbon’s $5.5M seed deck

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefit plans disclosed a data breach affecting almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. WebTPA said…

Healthcare company WebTPA discloses breach affecting 2.5 million people

Featured Article

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

2 days ago
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank’s business customers can access Ember’s services from their online accounts.

Embedded finance is still trendy as accounting automation startup Ember partners with HSBC UK

Kudos uses AI to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice, like maximizing rewards and utilizing credit effectively.

Kudos lands $10M for an AI smart wallet that picks the best credit card for purchases

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?