How the rewards app Freecash scammed its way to the top of the app stores

How the rewards app Freecash scammed its way to the top of the app stores

A data harvesting app called Freecash appears to have tricked users as it quickly rose to the top charts on the App Store and Google Play, where it sat for months until a recent ban. If you’ve been on TikTok this year, you’ve more than likely encountered ads for Freecash. The app has been marketed…

Google adds AI Skills to Chrome to help you save favorite workflows

Google adds AI Skills to Chrome to help you save favorite workflows

Google is adding more AI capabilities to its Chrome web browser, the company announced on Tuesday. It’s introducing a new feature called Skills, which will allow users to save and reuse their favorite AI prompts that can run across different web pages without having to type them in again. The feature ties into Google’s integration…

Max Hodak’s Science Corp. is preparing to place its first sensor in a human brain

Max Hodak’s Science Corp. is preparing to place its first sensor in a human brain

Science Corporation, the startup from former Neuralink president and co-founder Max Hodak, has enlisted a top neurobiologist to lead the first U.S. human trials for its biohybrid brain-computer interface. Dr. Murat Günel, chair of Yale Medical School’s Department of Neurosurgery, has signed on as a scientific adviser after two years of discussions. His goal is…

AI datacenter startup Fluidstack in talks for $1B round at $18B valuation months after hitting $7.5B, says report

AI datacenter startup Fluidstack in talks for $1B round at $18B valuation months after hitting $7.5B, says report

Fluidstack, a startup that builds specialized data centers for AI companies, is in talks to raise a $1 billion round at an $18 billion dollar valuation, potentially led by Jane Street, Bloomberg reports. Should this deal come to fruition, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months. In December the company…

London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing

London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing

Waymo has started testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads in London as it prepares to launch a commercial robotaxi service in the city this year. The Alphabet-owned company has been working toward this moment for months. Waymo announced in October it planned to begin driving on London’s public roads. Waymo employees initially drove the…

Anthropic co-founder confirms the company briefed the Trump administration on Mythos

Anthropic co-founder confirms the company briefed the Trump administration on Mythos

Jack Clark, one of Anthropic’s co-founders who also serves as Head of Public Benefit for Anthropic PBC, confirmed that the AI company had briefed the Trump administration about its new Mythos model. The model, announced last week, is so dangerous that it’s not being released to the public, largely due to its alleged powerful cybersecurity…

Someone planted backdoors in dozens of WordPress plug-ins used in thousands of websites

Someone planted backdoors in dozens of WordPress plug-ins used in thousands of websites

Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a backdoor was discovered in them, used to push malicious code to any website that relied on the plug-ins. The backdoor was discovered after a new corporate owner bought these plug-ins. Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder sounded the…

YouTube livestreams will now hold back ads during peak engagement to protect the vibe

YouTube livestreams will now hold back ads during peak engagement to protect the vibe

YouTube announced this week that it will now hold back ads during livestreams if chat engagement is at its peak, and if users show support with Super Chat, Super Stickers, or gift purchases. Until now, the only way to avoid seeing ads was by paying for a YouTube Premium subscription. The Google-owned platform said in…

Financial risk management platform Pillar raises $20M seed in round led by a16z

Financial risk management platform Pillar raises $20M seed in round led by a16z

Pillar, a platform that helps commodity-driven businesses (like those in metals, food, and airline companies) manage financial risk, announced Tuesday a $20 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.  Others in the seed round include Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The company has raised $23 million to date. Pillar, founded in…