Monday, October 28, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got hackers getting hacked; an in-depth explainer on "world models;" why Instagram prioritizes bandwidth for popular content; Europe's next entrepreneurial frontier; more funding for cybersecurity; improvements to GrokAI; Japan's "punycorn" problem, and more.

Also: It's TechCrunch Disrupt this week! So watch for coverage of our headliners, who include the likes of Vinod Khosla and Ashton Kutcher.

Let's dive in! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Thieves get their due: An international law enforcement coalition has disrupted the operations of two serious hacking groups that have stolen the sensitive data of millions. The police claim they gained "full access" to the servers used by the Redline and Meta infostealers. Read More

What's a world model? If you like paying attention to AI, you'll have heard about "world models" as the next big thing in the industry. But what even are they? We've got an explainer right here: Read More

Quality over quantity: Instagram apparently makes it a point to show more popular videos in higher quality, and less popular videos get snicklefritz quality. Such a strategy might make it difficult for smaller creators to break through, but Instagram head Adam Mosseri said quality is a much bigger factor. Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Filigran

🔑 Keep it secret, keep it safe: Cybersecurity threat startup Filigran is riding the success of its first platform to launch its second — a full fledged suite of tools. And it has just raised $35 million to bring those tools to customers by 2026. Read More

🇪🇺 EU Inc: Europe needs to step up its game if it wants to remain competitive. An entrepreneur and VC-supported grassroots movement is trying to address that with an EU-wide corporate status for innovative companies. But will everyone agree on a common standard? Read More

🖥️ Smaller can mean better: The next Mac Mini might be getting even smaller: Small as an Apple TV set-top box, apparently. Despite its diminutive size, though, it'll pack a punch, thanks in part to the use of Apple's in-house silicon. Read More

💰 Beyond VC: In the latest episode of StrictlyVC Download, we spoke with General Catalyst about the firm's financing product that is akin to GE leasing, and how the role of Big VC has shifted. Listen Here

🎙️ Botcasts are a thing now, apparently: Meta has released its own "open" version of Google NotebookLM's generate-a-podcast feature. Called NotebookLlama, the project uses Meta's own Llama models for much of the processing. You know, in case you were sick of listening to your favorite podcast hosts. Read More

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Around the Web

🦄 Japan needs a boost: A Financial Times article explores Japan's "most intriguing industrial species: a large, whimpering herd of 'punycorns.'" The country has realized it doesn't have a pipeline set up to produce unicorns, and it urgently needs to do so. Read More

🤖 Automate all the things: Google is developing an AI that can take over a person's web browser and do tasks like pulling research, booking a flight, or buying something, reports The Information. Read More

🏥 AI isn't ready for hospitals: There have been a ton of AI transcription tools lately that are designed to lessen the workload for doctors and nurses in post-patient write ups. But researchers say the tools being used in hospitals are now hallucinating, the AP reports. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg / Getty Images

🙊 xAI's Grok AI model now has the ability to understand images. Paid users on X who have access to the AI chatbot can now upload an image and ask the AI questions about it. Read More