When you think of the biggest tech stories of the year, you think of things like Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX filing for bankruptcy or the tens of thousands of people who lost their life savings when UST collapsed. It was not a great year for technology. There is a lot to be excited about, from progress in climate tech to the most awe-inspiring images of outer space.
Congress took a step towards addressing climate change with a surprise bill that funds everything from green hydrogen to cold-weather heat pumps. The Inflation Reduction Act was going to fail like every other climate bill before it. It looked like Senator Joe Manchin was trying to kill the bill in order to guarantee American competitiveness in some of the more consequential industries of the 21st century. It is not nearly enough to address the scope of the problem, but it is better than nothing. The lure of climate tech may be the reason investor sentiment is so high.
–Tim De Chant
Manchin’s ultimatum may turn the US into a battery powerhouse
There are problems withrative artificial intelligence. Positive disruptive potential is what it has. We got a glimpse of the labor it can save across the art with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence this year. Code-generated artificial intelligence can reduce the amount of repetitive coding while art-generated artificial intelligence can eliminate mundane work. If social media is any indication, generative artificial intelligence is already supercharging the white-collar workforce.
Kyle Wiggers is one of the people.
A brief history of diffusion, the tech at the heart of modern image-generating AI
Satellite-based internet connections are coming true, but they are not evenly distributed. We have already seen Starlink connectAntarctica and war-tornUkraine. They can do it in rural America, regions hit by natural disasters, or in far- flung villages in developing countries if they can do it there. There are pirate internet connections in places like China and North Korea. It was the year that it went from experiment to product. Wait until you can use your phone to do it.
The person isDevin Coldewey.
Starlink isn’t a charity, but the Ukraine war isn’t a business opportunity
One of the biggest criticisms of the technology is how much energy it can consume. As more people join the space in 2021, the environmental impact of the industry has become more concerning. For years, the team behind theEthereum has promised a monumental event called The Merge, which would transition the project from the energy intensive proof-of-work protocol to the more eco-friendly proof-of-stake method. The change, with a capital M, was finally achieved in September.
Are we saying that it is not bad? I don't want you to send me a message. Is it a good thing that the second most popular Blockchain is more energy efficient? It's definitely true.
The person isAmanda Silberling.
Now that the Ethereum Merge is behind us, what’s next?
The Amazon Labor Union, led by future folk hero Christian Smalls, secured the first union election victory at Amazon in the US in April. The Staten Island fulfillment center was stopped from advocating for themselves by Amazon, which spent millions of dollars on anti-union consultants. Against all odds, Amazon has to fight for a union.
In the video game industry, the first union at a major U.S. gaming company took place. A second group of tester formed a union just a few weeks ago. Apple Stores won their first unions in the U.S. More than 250 Starbucks stores have unionized in the last two years, while more than a dozen Trader Joe's have also done so.
Small gains are being made on the national level in the gig economy. The Department of Labor proposed a ruling that would make it easier for app-based workers to become employees if they can prove they are economically dependent on the company.
Silberling and Bellan are related.
Staten Island Amazon workers vote to unionize
The exclusive domain of well-financed labs and companies used to be capable text- generating artificial intelligence models. Over the past year, the open source community has developed free, permissively licensed alternatives. BigScience is a community-powered project with the goal of making natural language systems widely available for research. BigScience launched the Petals project, which allows volunteers to donate their hardware power to tackle a portion of a text-generating workload and tap others to complete larger tasks, similar to Folding@ home. Progress in the text-generating domain is speeding up.
Kyle Wiggers is one of the people.
A year in the making, BigScience’s AI language model is finally available
The first deep field images were delivered by the JWST this summer. What these incredible photographs represent is even more stunning than the images of Stephan's Quintet. These achievements are just the beginning. Scientists still have a lot of questions about exoplanets, the formation of the universe and more, and now they have a new powerful tool in their arsenal.
The person isAmanda Silberling.
How the Webb sends its hundred-megapixel images a million miles back to Earth
The Dot Pad is a huge leap forward in the world of braille displays, which have traditionally been bulky, expensive and limited in function. The Dot Pad can show multiple lines of text at the same time, as well as displaying icons and images in touchable form. The American Printing House for the Blind has licensed the technology and is building its own version, so we will be testing it out at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show.
The person isDevin Coldewey.
Dot Pad tactile display makes images touchable for visually impaired users
It is not a good thing when the social media companies that drive the public conversation are for-profit entities that can be traded on the stock market and taken private by egomaniacal billionaires. Mastodon, an open source social network that is part of the fediverse, has had a big year. Mastodon has become more popular since Musk took over. There was a 1,500% increase in traffic to joinmastodon.org in November. Mastodon's monthly active user count doubled within two weeks. Mastodon will not be able to reach more mainstream audiences if the exodus to Mastodon is not temporary. There has never been a time when a social media landscape without tech giants has been more accessible.
The person isAmanda Silberling.
Galaxy plans to acquire Argo’s bitcoin mining facility Helios for $65 million and provide a $35 million loan amid the miner’s restructuring. Building an investor network from scratch sounds daunting, particularly if you aren’t part of a circle where talking to potential investors is easy. We’re excited to announce two more early-stage startups participating in the Cross Chain Coalition Web3 Demo Day on January 11. If you haven’t heard, this free online showcase features more than 12...Can the EAD process be expedited? Do employees have to stop working if they don’t receive their new EAD card before the old one expires? It takes a special kind of boldness to raise a wad of cash, claim to have $90 million worth of preorders, then pivot away from passenger ferries and light container ships, and instead start selling...Amazon is developing a standalone app for watching sports, according to a new report from The Information. The move signals Amazon’s continued push toward investing in Prime Video and live sp...De Souza discusses the implications of China’s investments in battery swapping, challenges in scaling fast-charging infrastructure and more. Venture firms are often involved in multiple deals, so the need to protect one’s IP during early fundraising is far from theoretical. The U.S. House of Representatives has ordered its staff and lawmakers to delete TikTok from any government-issued mobile devices due to “security issues” with the popular video-sharing app. The ord...A recent study finds that software engineers who use code-generating AI systems are more likely to cause security vulnerabilities in the apps they develop. The paper, co-authored by a team of resea...Climate tech is more relevant than ever in 2022, so we rounded up our hottest TechCrunch+ climate coverage over the past year. Twitter is a mess, but it’s still addictive. While some folks might have headed to Mastadon, those who stick around might still want to get the best out of the bird site. If you feel that you...Pakistan’s markets regulator issued new guidelines for digital lending in the country, cracking down on several sketchy practices that it said have become prevalent in the South Asian market. The S...Movano’s getting a week’s jump on what might well prove a banner CES for the smart ring. Today the Bay Area-based firm debuted Evie, a smart ring focused on women’s health set to hit the market lat...Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package. As generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 attract investor attention, startup entrepreneurs are looking to cash in with new business models built around them. One of the more interesting ventures ...Two top Solana NFT projects, DeGods and y00ts, have announced they are leaving the blockchain in 2023, which is stirring up conflicting sentiments in the crypto community. Over the weekend, DeGods ...Aerones, a robotics startup that scrubs and inspects wind turbines so humans don’t have to, secured $38.9 million in fresh funding this month from dozens of undisclosed investors, TechCrunch ...In any region with extremely low productivity and slow economic growth, disruption will create long-term value.Boosted by Twitter drama, Mastodon reaches 1 million active monthly users
All Rights Reserved © 2024
