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Daily Crunch: Blocking VLC player downloads violates Indian law, claims VideoLAN in legal challenge

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Good to have you with us again, as the TechCrunch train continues to rumble along the tracks. It’s gonna be a fun and busy week, so let’s dive straight in with the news! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Last to know: VideoLAN, maker of the popular media player VLC, sent a legal notice to some of India’s ministries alleging that they banned its website without informing the company it was going to do so. Manish has more.
  • The next Mark Zuckerberg?”: Two Stanford dropouts created Fizz, which Amanda describes as “the anonymous, college-only, Reddit-like social app” that helps you stay connected should your alternative pandemic communication options fail you.
  • It’s here, it’s here!: The Google iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets are starting to roll out, enabling users to put widgets on the Lock Screen of their iPhone, Sarah writes.

Startups and VC

John Curtius, the prolific Tiger Global senior partner who has been at the center of some of the firm’s biggest deals in the last several years, is leaving the firm, Ingrid writes. He will be leaving to start his own firm, which will concentrate investments from Series A to Series C. Curtius will stay with Tiger until June.

In the broadest of strokes, the circular economy represents a colossal shift in how humanity makes and uses stuff. Instead of primarily harvesting raw materials to produce goods that wind up incinerated, or in oceans or landfills, the circular economy offers an alternative where stuff is deliberately reused, repaired and recycled over and over again. Harri reports that Google is spinning up a new, online-only startup accelerator centered around the elusive circular economy. The effort is Google’s latest to help environmentally focused startups grow while potentially hooking them on its cloud products in the process.

In other news:

Edtech’s honeymoon might be over, but expect a second boom

A group of books laid in a pattern on a colorful background. one is standing out from the crowd
Image Credits: Daniel Grizelj (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

After the pandemic drove students at every level into remote learning, the edtech sector saw record levels of investment — until the public markets began to cool off several months ago.

“That said, it’s important to remember that publicly traded value represents a fraction of the overall edtech sector,” found Dealroom edtech analyst Carla Napoleão and Rhys Spence, head of research at Brighteye Ventures.

In a detailed report that studies both the public and private markets, the duo looked at global deal flow, trends in subsectors like K–12 and corporate learning, and recent M&A activity.

“Edtech still has deep and untapped opportunities. The markets may have slowed, but it won’t be long until the momentum returns.”

Edtech’s honeymoon might be over, but expect a second boom

But wait, there’s more!

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

Aren’t you glad you came here? It’s an Elon Musk day. The big story was Connie’s report on Mr. Musk and how his opinion on a peace plan for the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war was not taken probably the way he thought it would. Then in a strange turn of events today, Amanda writes that Musk will now go through with the deal to buy Twitter at his initial offer of $54.20 per share. Representatives filed a notice with the SEC. That news sent shares of the company skyrocketing to over $47 from the open at nearly $43.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed Brian’s Q&A with new Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor, who has been in the role for less than a week and is already hitting the ground running.

Here’s five more for ya:

More TechCrunch

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

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Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

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If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

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Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Several hotel check-in computers are running a remote access app, which is leaking screenshots of guest information to the internet.

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Gavet has had a rocky tenure at Techstars and her leadership was the subject of much controversy.

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out

The struggle isn’t universal, however.

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic

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A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…

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HoundDog actually looks at the code a developer is writing, using both traditional pattern matching and large language models to find potential issues.

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking

The changes are designed to enhance the consumer experience of using Google Pay and make it a more competitive option against other payment methods.

Google Pay will now display card perks, BNPL options and more

Few figures in the tech industry have earned the storied reputation of Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For over 40 years, he has been at the center…

Vinod Khosla is coming to Disrupt to discuss how AI might change the future

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…

Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to…

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story

Spotify launched its own font, the company announced on Wednesday. The music streaming service hopes that its new typeface, “Spotify Mix,” will help Spotify distinguish its own unique visual identity. …

Why Spotify is launching its own font, Spotify Mix

In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks. Fellow Cisco veteran Hasan Alayli joined Kagan…

Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup…

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

If you’ve been looking forward to seeing Boeing’s Starliner capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The…

Boeing, NASA indefinitely delay crewed Starliner launch

TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business, as the company announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a new “TikTok Symphony” AI suite for…

TikTok turns to generative AI to boost its ads business

Gone are the days when space and defense were considered fundamentally antithetical to venture investment. Now, the country’s largest venture capital firms are throwing larger portions of their money behind…

Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero

These days every company is trying to figure out if their large language models are compliant with whichever rules they deem important, and with legal or regulatory requirements. If you’re…

Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction

Link-in-bio startup Linktree has crossed 50 million users and is rolling out the beta of its social commerce program.

Linktree surpasses 50M users, rolls out its social commerce program to more creators

For a $5.99 per month, immigrants have a bank account and debit card with fee-free international money transfers and discounted international calling.

Immigrant banking platform Majority secures $20M following 3x revenue growth

When developers have a particular job that AI can solve, it’s not typically as simple as just pointing an LLM at the data. There are other considerations such as cost,…

Unify helps developers find the best LLM for the job

Response time is Aerodome’s immediate value prop for potential clients.

Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime

Granola takes a more collaborative approach to working with AI.

Granola debuts an AI notepad for meetings