Author: Editor-in-Chief

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company’s Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure — but one he hasn’t given up on yet. The comments were made at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025conference, where Mullenweg went live for a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community. The exec noted that Tumblr was still on a different technical stack than WordPress — something he had intended to correct by migrating the back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that massive undertaking was put on hold earlier this year, as the cost to move Tumblr’s half-billion blogs…

X is launching a marketplace for inactive handles that will allow Premium subscribers to request and purchase usernames. The marketplace will offer both free and paid options for requesting or acquiring eligible handles. Rare handles could be priced at anywhere from $2,500 to over seven figures, X says. “Priority” handles refers to usernames that often include full names, multi-word phrases, or alphanumeric combinations. These handles are free to request for Premium+ and Premium Business subscribers. If a user’s request is approved, X will transfer the handle to them for free. However, if a user cancels or downgrades their subscription,…

Oura announced on Monday that it’s launching a new redesigned app experience and a “Cumulative Stress” feature. The company also shared that it’s pursuing FDA clearance for blood pressure features that give users a likelihood assessment of hypertension. The redesigned Oura app introduces more personalization with three main tabs. The “Today” tab surfaces the most relevant insights for daily decisions, and the “Vitals” tab provides at-a-glance views of things like sleep, stress, and cardiovascular trends. The “My Health” tab offers insights into the user’s long-term well-being, highlighting strengths, trends, and opportunities for proactive care. The tab also includes “Habits” and…

Creative design giant Adobe is beefing up the products it offers businesses to include custom generative AI models. Adobe launched Adobe AI Foundry on Monday, a new offering that allows enterprises to work with the company to build custom generative AI models trained on their branding and intellectual property. The Foundry’s custom models, which can produce text, images, video, and other mediums like 3D scenes, are built off Adobe’s Firefly family of AI models. These Firefly models were launched in 2023 and have been trained entirely on licensed data. Adobe’s Foundry service then fine-tunes these models for each customer…

Lee Roberts meets me at the University Club of San Francisco on a Friday morning, hours before his football team will lose to Cal in heartbreaking fashion — a fumble at the goal line, because little about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s expensive experiment with Bill Belichick has gone according to script. But Roberts, the Chancellor of UNC, doesn’t know this yet. Right now, he’s in California to talk about artificial intelligence, which is both forward thinking and — I’d hazard a guess — a welcome distraction from a lot else happening at the 235-year-old school.…

Home goods company Kohler recently unveiled a new device called the Dekoda — a $599 camera that can be attached to your toilet bowl and take pictures of what’s inside. CNET reports that the Dekoda analyzes these images in order to provide updates on your gut health and hydration, and to potentially detect blood. It also comes with a rechargeable battery, a USB connection, and a fingerprint sensor to identify who’s using the toilet. The Dekoda is currently available for preorder, with shipments scheduled to begin on October 21. In addition to the hardware purchase fee, customers will need to…

The Trump administration is taking its social media attacks on Democratic opponents to an unlikely platform, with the White House and numerous other government agencies joining Bluesky on Friday. In its first post, the new White House account uploaded a highlight reel of Trump footage and memes, along with the message, “What’s up, Bluesky? We thought you might’ve missed some of our greatest hits, so we put this together for you.” Other government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services,…

A federal judge has granted Meta-owned WhatsApp’s request for a permanent injunction blocking Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group from targeting the messaging app’s users. At the same time, the judge dramatically reduced the fine that NSO Group must pay to Meta. Earlier this year, a jury decided that the cyberintelligence company would have to pay Meta more than $167 million following a 2019 campaign that targeted more than 1,400 WhatsApp users, including human rights activists and journalists. However, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled Friday that because the court did not have enough evidence to determine that NSO Group’s…

Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, appears to be walking back comments calling for the National Guard to patrol San Francisco. “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” Benioff said in a post on X. “My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused. “ Benioff stirred up controversy last week after giving an interview with The…

Silicon Valley leaders including White House AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks and OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon caused a stir online this week for their comments about groups promoting AI safety. In separate instances, they alleged that certain advocates of AI safety are not as virtuous as they appear, and are either acting in the interest of themselves or billionaire puppet masters behind the scenes. AI safety groups that spoke with TechCrunch say the allegations from Sacks and OpenAI are Silicon Valley’s latest attempt to intimidate its critics, but certainly not the first. In 2024, some venture…