Electric aircraft founder Kyle Clark threw out the Silicon Valley playbook

On a cool morning last November, 800 people gathered before sunrise in a South Burlington hangar to witness the maiden flight of Beta Technologies’ first electric aircraft to be built on its new scaled production line. Kyle Clark, Beta’s enigmatic founder and CEO, piloted the Alia CX300 — one of the startup’s two aircraft models […]
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Trump’s FTC is looking into censorship on tech platforms

The Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday that it will launch a public inquiry into “censorship by tech platforms,” soliciting comments from people who feel they have been demonetized, banned, or otherwise censored due to their speech or affiliations. “Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a statement. […]
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The Showdown Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

This week, the Uncanny Valley hosts discuss the lawsuits, bidding wars, and power plays over OpenAI.

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The Watergate-Inspired Law That’s Being Used to Fight DOGE

Here’s how the 1974 Privacy Act is being used in legal battles against DOGE—and how you can protect yourself from government surveillance.

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61 US startups became unicorns in 2024: Here’s the full list

The list included Elon Musk’s xAI, as well as a good number of other AI startups.
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Inside the Humane acquisition: HP offers big raises to some, others immediately laid off

Hours after the acquisition was announced, several Humane employees received job offers. Others were not so lucky.
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DOGE Puts $1 Spending Limit on Government Employee Credit Cards

The restrictions are already in place at the General Services Administration along with several other agencies. Soon they’ll roll out to most of the federal government, sources say.

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Figure’s humanoid robot takes voice orders to help around the house

Figure founder and CEO Brett Adcock Thursday revealed a new machine learning model for humanoid robots. The news, which arrives two weeks after Adcock announced the Bay Area robotics firm’s decision to step away from an OpenAI collaboration, is centered around Helix, a “generalist” Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model. VLAs are a new phenomenon for robotics, leveraging […]
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Instagram’s new ad format lets creators get paid for testimonials in comments

Instagram is introducing a new way for creators to work with brands to make money by recommending products. On Thursday, Meta introduced an addition to its Partnership Ads called Testimonials, which allows creators to get paid via written endorsements, shared as comments on the brand’s social media posts and advertisements. The new ad format is […]
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Amazon to gain creative control of James Bond franchise from Broccoli family

Amazon reached a deal with the Broccoli family, the James Bond franchise’s longstanding producers, to form a new joint venture.

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