Technology
Disrupt 2024’s last sale week has begun
We’ve rebooted regular ticket prices for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, giving you one last chance to save big before the event. Enjoy up to $600 off individual tickets until September 27.
Disrupt 2024 is the ultimate startup hub, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. Join 10,000 startup, tech, and VC leaders; engage with top minds in over 200 sessions of meaningful discussions; gain valuable insights from industry giants; and so much more.
Don’t miss out on Ticket Reboot Week prices — secure your discounted ticket here.
Key takeaways from industry giants
Listen to leading industry voices as they dive into the startup and tech ecosystem across six industry-specific stages — AI, SaaS, Fintech, Builders, Space, and the Main Disrupt Stage.
AI Stage presented by Google Cloud
- Amit Jain, CEO, Luma AI
- Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder and CEO, Perplexity
- Jesse Levinson, Co-Founder and CTO, Zoox
Meet the rest of the AI Stage speakers.
Builders Stage
- Alex Pall and Drew Taggart from The Chainsmokers, Co-Founders and Partners, MANTIS Venture Capital
- Tamar Yehoshua, President of Product and Technology, Glean
- Wassym Bensaid, Chief Software Officer, Rivian
Meet the rest of the Builders Stage speakers.
Disrupt Stage
- Assaf Rappaport, Co-Founder and CEO, Wiz
- Colin Kaepernick, Founder and CEO, Lumi
- Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors
Meet the rest of the Disrupt Stage speakers.
Fintech Stage
- Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base, Base
- Josh Reeves, Co-Founder and CEO, Gusto
- Peter Hazlehurst, CEO and Co-Founder, Synctera
Meet the rest of the Fintech Stage speakers.
SaaS Stage
- Christina Cacioppo, Co-Founder and CEO, Vanta
- Denise Dresser, CEO, Slack from Salesforce
- Scott Johnston, CEO, Docker, Inc.
Meet the rest of the SaaS Stage speakers.
Space Stage presented by Aerospace
Meet the rest of the Space Stage speakers.
Witness intense startup battles
A highlight of every Disrupt has always been Startup Battlefield 200, where a few chosen startups will pitch to a panel of top VC leaders. The winner will earn a $100,000 equity-free prize and the coveted Disrupt Cup.
The judging panel includes industry heavyweights like Christine Esserman, partner at Accel; Sangeen Zeb, general partner at Google Ventures; Alice Brooks, partner at Khosla Ventures; Victor Lazarte, general partner at Benchmark; and many more.
Their feedback offers valuable insight into what makes a startup successful. Get a front-row seat to this expert evaluation and discover the qualities that drive success, only at Disrupt 2024.
Unparalleled networking
Make the right connections at every phase of your career or startup journey. Whether you’re a first-time founder, a seasoned entrepreneur, a recent graduate looking for your first tech job, or someone transitioning after a layoff, Disrupt offers networking opportunities for everyone.
Connect with fellow attendees in the bustling Expo Hall, the central hub for all 10,000 Disrupt participants. Discover groundbreaking innovations from pre-seed startups and industry leaders in this dynamic space.
Dive into detailed discussions through 1:1 or small-group Braindates. Use the Braindate app to post or look for your topics of interest, and then connect face-to-face in the Braindate Lounge at the event to delve deeper into these ideas. It’s a great way to have impactful conversations with like-minded professionals.
Continue the excitement of the main event during “Disrupt Week,” running from October 26 to November 1. With more than 50 Side Events, including happy hours, comedy nights, workshops, and meetups, you’ll find countless opportunities to connect and engage after hours.
Deep-dive sessions
Explore more than 200 sessions designed to build connections and delve into key issues with industry experts, focusing on the pressing challenges encountered by today’s entrepreneurs.
Engage in a 30-minute collaborative Roundtable with an industry expert in a personal setting. Or join a 50-minute Q&A session on a first-come, first-served basis.
Claim the final ticket reboot for Disrupt 2024
There are countless other reasons to attend one of the year’s most anticipated tech events, but it’s best to experience it for yourself.
This is the last chance for ticket discounts before the Disrupt 2024 countdown starts! Register before September 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT to enjoy savings of up to $600. Grab your discount here.
Technology
Nexus review: Yuval Noah Harari is out of his depth in his new book
Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari (Fern Press, out 10 September)
Reading Nexus is a strange experience. The quality of the text lurches up and down: one minute you are reading something incisive, the next you are wading through banalities.
Its author, Yuval Noah Harari, is a medieval historian most famous for his book Sapiens, a whistlestop history of humanity from the Stone Age to the present day. Its central thesis is that humans came to dominate the planet because we can believe in things that only…
Technology
NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Sunday, September 22
The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now.
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.
Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well. I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for.
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website
Technology
Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s charging speed is the slowest among the series
Google unveiled the Pixel 9 Pro Fold alongside Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL last month. For those unaware, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the successor of last year’s Google Pixel Fold. Undoubtedly, Google has done a pretty good job with the second iteration of its foldable device. However, like any other smartphone, it isn’t perfect. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has downsides which are now being noticed, with one related to its charging speed.
The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold has the slowest wired charging speed of the series
The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reportedly has the slowest charging speed compared to other phones from the series. Today, Google confirmed 9to5Google that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold charging speed maxes out at 21W with the wired cable. Google hinted at the maximum power input received by the device based on the charging test carried out by its 45W charger.
That also means the Pixel 9 Pro Fold won’t receive any faster power input than 21W, even if you use a powerful charger. Well, the charging speed we are talking about here for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the same as the three-year-old Pixel 6. Surprising, right? Fortunately, this is not the case with other phones from Pixel 9 series.
In fact, all others got some generous charging speed boost from Google. For example, the Pixel 9 Pro XL has a capped wired charging limit of 37W. On the other hand, Google has slightly increased the charging speed on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro compared to their predecessors.
Wireless charging capabilities aren’t good either
Are you thinking about wireless charging speed? The Pixel 9 Pro Fold disappoints in that aspect too. It comes with a maximum Qi wireless charging speed of just 7.5W. What’s worse, Google recently confirmed that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold doesn’t work with the Pixel Stand too. Earlier this month, multiple reports hinted that it could be the reason why Google pulled the Pixel Stand 2 from the online Google Store.
All that said, if you want first-hand Android experience on a foldable with good battery life, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the right choice for you. However, if you are someone who is a fan of fast charging, this year’s foldable may not please you. But again, are you willing to give up on other aspects just for fast charging? Well, we’ll leave it up to you.
Technology
New Snowflake service enables secure AI, ML deployment
Snowflake on Thursday made Snowpark Container Services generally available to enable customers to securely deploy and manage models and applications, including generative AI, within the vendor’s environment.
First unveiled in preview in June 2023, Snowpark Container Services is a fully managed service now available in all AWS commercial regions and in public preview in all Azure commercial regions.
Containers are a type of software that can be used to isolate applications for secure deployment. Snowflake’s new feature enables customers to use containers to manage and deploy any type of model, but they are optimal for generative AI applications because they enable customers to safely join large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI-powered tools with their data, according to Jeff Hollan, Snowflake’s head of applications and developer platform.
Given its role in helping user develop AI tools, Snowpark Container Services’ launch builds on Snowflake’s recent moves to customers with an environment for developing generative AI models and applications, according to Mike Leone, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group.
Sridhar Ramaswamy took over as Snowflake’s CEO in February when Frank Slootman stepped down after five years of leadership that included guiding Snowflake through a record-setting initial public stock offering. Since then, the vendor has aggressively added generative AI-related capabilities such as launching its own LLM, integrating with Mistral AI and tools to enable users to quickly create AI chatbots.
“There has definitely been a concerted effort to enhance Snowflake’s capabilities and presence in the market when it comes to AI and, more recently, GenAI,” Leone said. “Offerings like Snowpark are helping AI stakeholders like data scientists and developers use the languages they prefer.”
As a result of what it adds, Snowpark Container Services is a significant new feature for Snowflake customers, he continued.
“It’s a big deal for the Snowflake ecosystem,” Leone said. “By being able to easily deploy and manage containers right in the Snowflake platform, it helps customers more easily handle complex workloads and keeps things consistent across development and production stages.”
“While Snowflake Container Services provides developers a secure environment, it was revealed in May that the log-in credentials of potentially 160 customers had been stolen and used to gain access to their data, although the vendor has stated it has not found any evidence that the infiltration resulted from a vulnerability, misconfiguration or breach of the Snowflake platform.
Technology
The Arc browser that lets you customize websites had a serious vulnerability
One of the feature that separates the Arc browser from its competitors is the ability to customize websites. The feature called “Boosts” allows users to change a website’s background color, switch to a font they like or one that makes it easier for them to read and even remove an unwanted elements from the page completely. Their alterations aren’t supposed to be be visible to anyone else, but they can share them across devices. Now, Arc’s creator, the Browser Company, has admitted that a security researcher found a serious flaw that would’ve allowed attackers to use Boosts to compromise their targets’ systems.
The company used Firebase, which the security researcher known as “xyzeva” described as a “database-as-a-backend service” in their post about the vulnerability, to support several Arc features. For Boosts, in particular, it’s used to share and sync customizations across devices. In xyzeva’s post, they showed how the browser relies on a creator’s identification (creatorID) to load Boosts on a device. They also shared how someone could change that element to their target’s identification tag and assign that target Boosts that they had created.
If a bad actor makes a Boost with a malicious payload, for instance, they can just change their creatorID to the creatorID of their intended target. When the intended victim then visits the website on Arc, they could unknowingly download the hacker’s malware. And as the researcher explained, it’s pretty easy to get user IDs for the browser. A user who refer someone to Arc will share their ID to the recipient, and if they also created an account from a referral, the person who sent it will also get their ID. Users can also share their Boosts with others, and Arc has a page with public Boosts that contain the creatorIDs of the people who made them.
In its post, the Browser Company said xyzeva notified it about the security issue on August 25 and that it issued a fix a day later with the researcher’s help. It also assured users that nobody got to exploit the vulnerability, no user was affected. The company has also implemented several security measures to prevent a similar situation, including moving off Firebase, disabling Javascript on synced Boosts by default, establishing a bug bounty program and hiring a new senior security engineer.
Technology
She sat down during the COVID lockdown and started coding — now she’s taking on Bolt
Sitting in Athens during the first COVID-19 lockdown, entrepreneur Rania Lamprou watched online e-commerce exploding because of social distancing. But merchants still struggled with low conversion rates because their checkout processes were complicated, and they had to integrate multiple providers for payments, shipping, and loyalty programs.
“I knew there had to be a better way to reduce friction for both merchants and customers,” Lamprou told TechCrunch. So, she thought, why not turn the checkout process into a “checkout-as-a-service” platform that streamlined it for both merchants and shoppers? She started coding in Python.
But, she wasn’t alone. Tech giants Shop Pay and Bolt were in the same space, but were focusing on the U.S. market. Europe was less of a focus. Shop Pay, for example, had started back in 2014 and has now raised a total of $982.1 million. So what was Lamprou going to do with her tiny startup, which she’d named Simpler?
She brought on two friends she’d known from university, Alex Kyriakopoulos and Spyros Mandekis, started building the team, and they raised their first $1 million pre-seed round.
Today, Simpler has over 250 merchants, more than half-a-million registered shoppers, and expects to increase its revenue by 10 times by the end of 2025, said Lamprou. It recently also raised €9 million (about $10 million) in a pre-Series A round to double down in the U.K., Italy and Spain. Participating in the round were VentureFriends, MMC Ventures and Lamda Development.
“Yes, Bolt is a big, massive company, but they are focused on the U.S., mostly with handling fraud problems, like chargebacks. That is a very big problem in the U.S., but it’s not so much in Europe,” she said.
In Europe, she said, there are different issues: “We have to localize and add all these different solutions, different providers. Every country has different needs, customer preferences, different payment providers, loyalty coupons, etc.”
That’s important because European e-commerce sales increased 66% from 2019 to 2021. Despite a temporary decline, the market is expected to keep growing, potentially reaching $955 billion by 2028.
The solution turned out to be elegant.
On Simpler, merchants can outsource payments, shipping and loyalty programs into one system, which, the company says, boosts conversions and reduces complexity. For shoppers, it means a one-click buying experience across multiple stores and channels.
“We’re seeing strong demand from both SMEs and enterprise-level businesses,” she said.
While Shop Pay is exclusive to Shopify, Simpler is designed for all platforms. And, unlike Bolt, which focuses heavily on the U.S. market, Simpler is targeting the U.K. and Europe.
“We’ve built a robust end-to-end solution with three orders of magnitude less funding than Bolt,” she added.
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