Tech & AI

Suppose your giftee loves growing mushrooms but has graduated to more challenging varieties. In that case, North Spore makes an automated monotub ($165) that can be paired with either substrate or the brand’s fruiting blocks. It keeps the growing environment with the proper airflow and humidity, and I’ve grown so many mushrooms in mine that…

You’ve seen this comic before: An anthropomorphic dog sits smiling, surrounded by flames, and says, “This is fine.” It’s become one of the most durable memes of the past decade, and now AI startup Artisan seems to have incorporated it into an ad campaign — an ad for which KC Green, the artist who created…

AI companions are quietly becoming a staple across the industry, and OpenAI is now joining the trend. The company has launched Codex Pets, an optional animated companion baked into its AI coding tool. SEE ALSO: Everything you need to know about Elon Musk’s OpenAI testimony Like most AI companions, it isn’t doing any heavy lifting….

This is really useful if you, like me, tend to swap out your Bluetooth trackers between items as you’re using them. If you’ve attached a Pebblebee Clip to your luggage, you can pop it out and put it in your pocket for when you grab dinner by yourself while you’re traveling. Pebblebee works with both…

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! We’re going to do a bit of a deep dive today, which may make this newsletter look a little different than…

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition will require some knowledge of popular U.S. sports and pop culture. As we’ve shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans. Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the “common…

So, what’s not to like? Well, early compatibility problems slowed the initial uptake of Snapdragon X, and the CPU’s integrated graphics performance turned out to be pretty terrible. And to date, powerful onboard AI features just haven’t proven important, as most AI workloads are still being done in the cloud. With the second-generation X2, Qualcomm…

After landing agreements with Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI, the U.S. Defense Department said on Friday that it has signed deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Reflection AI that allow it to deploy their AI tech and models on its classified networks for “lawful operational use.” “These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the…