Author: Naveed Ahmad

Theo Baker is graduating from Stanford this spring with one thing most seniors don’t have: a e-book deal, a George Polk Award that he acquired for his investigative reporting as a scholar journalist, and a front-row account of some of the romanticized establishments on the planet. His forthcoming The right way to Rule the World: An Training in Energy at Stanford College was excerpted Friday in The Atlantic and based mostly on that alone, I can’t wait to see the remaining. The one query value asking is identical one Baker himself is perhaps too near reply, which is: Can a…

Amazon’s podcasting enterprise has remodeled over the previous six months, according to The New York Times. Again in August 2025, the corporate reportedly eradicated greater than 100 jobs from its podcast studio Wondery. On the time, Amazon insisted it was not shutting Wondery down, and that seems to be technically true — it nonetheless makes use of the Wondery model. However the NYT stated Amazon “took a sledgehammer” to the studio. Audio-only podcasts now function beneath Audible, whereas a brand new division known as Creator Companies works with on-camera celebrities like Dax Sheperd, Keke Palmer, and Jason and Travis Kelce.…

After 15 years as Apple’s CEO, Tim Prepare dinner shall be stepping down from the position in September.  On the most recent episode of TechCrunch’s Fairness podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I mentioned Apple’s large announcement. We mirrored on how Apple has modified since Prepare dinner took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, and what challenges incoming CEO John Ternus shall be dealing with. “When you take a look at a sure camp, it is rather very like, ‘John Ternus is a product man and that is going to be superb’ and it’s very nostalgic and going again to…

I always use dictation apps reminiscent of Wispr Circulation, Willow, or Typeless to answer to messages and emails on each my Mac and my cellphone. However to take action, I’ve to make use of my cellphone’s mic or AirPods to dictate my messages, and so they usually don’t decide up what I’m saying. That’s why when Notta-owned SpeakOn pitched me to check a devoted gadget for dictation, I used to be intrigued by its potential. Sadly, I had combined experiences with the product due to its kind issue and platform limitations. Nonetheless, I believe there’s house for dictation gadgets like…

Welcome again to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for information and insights on the way forward for transportation. To get this in your inbox, enroll right here without spending a dime — simply click on TechCrunch Mobility! Tesla earnings got here and went, and far of it fell into the “we anticipated this” class. Buyers appeared shocked by the $1.4 billion in free money stream, which gave shares a quick bump, and income met or barely exceeded expectations, relying on which batch of analysts you reviewed.  The earnings name, nevertheless, did ship one eyebrow-raising second that prompted readers (together…

Somebody’s providing an uncommon deal for a 13-acre property in Mill Valley, simply north of South Francisco. Home-owner and funding banker Storm Duncan has created a LinkedIn page for the house, which he stated he’d “prefer to change […] for Anthropic fairness.” The San Francisco Standard reports that Duncan described this as a “diversification play,” as he’s “under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the significance of AI sooner or later, and over-concentrated in actual property,” whereas a younger Anthropic worker could be “within the precise reverse state of affairs.” Duncan is asking potential consumers to e mail him to debate…

As AI brokers transfer from analysis demos to manufacturing deployments, one query has turn into unattainable to disregard: how do you truly know if an agent is sweet? Perplexity scores and MMLU leaderboard numbers inform you little or no about whether or not a mannequin can navigate an actual web site, resolve a GitHub situation, or reliably deal with a customer support workflow throughout lots of of interactions. The sphere has responded with a wave of agentic benchmarks — however not all of them are equally significant. One necessary caveat earlier than diving in: agent benchmark scores are extremely scaffold-dependent.…

import subprocess, sys subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, “-m”, “pip”, “install”, “-q”, “datashader”, “colorcet”, “numba”, “scipy”]) import numpy as np import pandas as pd import datashader as ds import datashader.transfer_functions as tf from datashader import reductions as rd import colorcet as cc import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import matplotlib.colours as mcolors from matplotlib.gridspec import GridSpec from scipy.stats import multivariate_normal import time, warnings warnings.filterwarnings(“ignore”) print(“Datashader model:”, ds.__version__) def present(img, title=””, ax=None, figsize=(6, 5)): standalone = ax is None if standalone: fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=figsize) rgba = img.to_pil() ax.imshow(rgba, origin=”higher”, side=”auto”) ax.set_title(title, fontsize=11, fontweight=”daring”) ax.axis(“off”) if standalone: plt.tight_layout() plt.present() print(“n=== SECTION 1: Core Pipeline ===”) rng =…

Retrieval is the place most RAG programs quietly break. Conventional pipelines depend on vector similarity—embedding queries and doc chunks into the identical area and fetching the “closest” matches. However similarity is a weak proxy for what we really need: relevance grounded in reasoning. In lengthy, skilled paperwork—like monetary reviews, analysis papers, or authorized texts—the appropriate reply typically isn’t in essentially the most semantically related paragraph. It requires navigating construction, understanding context, and performing multi-step reasoning throughout sections. That is precisely the place vector-based RAG begins to crumble. PageIndex is designed to resolve this hole by rethinking retrieval from first ideas.…

Snabbit, an Indian immediate house-help startup, is near elevating contemporary funding at a valuation of round $400 million in a spherical led by Susquehanna Enterprise Capital, TechCrunch has discovered. The Bengaluru-based startup is in talks to boost round $50 million within the spherical, in keeping with three individuals with data of the deal. One of many individuals added that the spherical could possibly be round $55 million or increased, as sturdy investor demand could immediate the corporate to boost greater than initially deliberate. The spherical is anticipated to incorporate participation from Mirae Asset, FJ Labs, and present traders together with…