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To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Fri-yay Crunch! We are pretty excited about Disrupt 2023 getting a whole stage dedicated to fintech . And while we’re talking about events…There’s just a few hours left to save $200 on TC Early Stage tickets in Boston in a couple of weeks, so get yer tickets while you can! On that note, enjoy your weekend! — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Italy gives ChatGPT the boot : Italy’s government has been on a blocking kick lately. A few days ago, we wrote about a possible ban on cultivated meat , and today Italy wants to block ChatGPT, citing data protection concerns. Natasha L writes that the country’s data protection authority is opening an investigation into whether OpenAI is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Groupon gets its Czech book : Ingrid reports that Groupon has lost 99.4% of its value since its IP...

There’s enough trouble on this planet already that we don’t need new problems coming here from the sun. Unfortunately, we can’t yet destroy this pitiless star, so we are at its mercy. But NASA at least may soon be able to let us know when one of its murderous flares is going to send our terrestrial systems into disarray. Understanding and predicting space weather is a big part of NASA’s job. There’s no air up there, so no one can hear you scream, “Wow, how about this radiation!” Consequently, we rely on a set of satellites to detect and relay this important data to us. One such measurement is of solar wind, “an unrelenting stream of material from the sun.” Even NASA can’t find anything nice to say about it! Normally this stream is absorbed or dissipated by our magnetosphere, but if there’s a solar storm, it may be intense enough that it overwhelms the local defenses. When this happens, it can set electronics on the fritz, since these charged particles can flip bits or disrupt volat...

A U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York threw out a lawsuit against Meta this week that had been simmering for a year and a half. The suit, filed in late 2021 by now-shuttered social app Phhhoto, alleged that Meta violated federal antitrust law by copying its core features with the Instagram-adjacent video looping app Boomerang . Like Boomerang, which Meta launched in October of 2015 and later integrated into Instagram itself, Phhhoto invited users to share very short GIF-like loops. U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto ultimately granted Meta’s motion to dismiss the complaint due to time-limits imposed by the relevant statutes of limitations. “Phhhoto has failed in its 69-page Amended Complaint of 222 paragraphs to allege sufficient facts that cure the untimeliness of all of its federal claims,” Matsumoto wrote in the opinion, calling the possibility of any amendment to resolve the issue of the lawsuit’s timing “futile.” New antitrust suit from Phhhoto a...

April 1 is the dumbest day on the internet, and this year, it’s not just because brands will try to prank you by selling “hot iced coffee.” Starting on Saturday, Twitter will begin removing blue checks from “legacy verified” users if they don’t sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription. This is part of new owner Elon Musk’s grand plan to make Twitter profitable, but this particular scheme has a glaring issue: if anyone with $8 per month can get a blue check, the symbol won’t be cool anymore (and also disinformation will proliferate , but Musk doesn’t seem super worried about that). Twitter initially launched its verification system in 2009 to protect celebrities from impersonation. Someone made an account pretending to be former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, but instead of just asking for the account to be taken down, La Russa sued Twitter. And so, the three-year-old company introduced its iconic blue check badge. Now, we’ve come full circle. Celebrities are a day awa...

With a U.S. ban of TikTok looming , it might look like game-over for the hit video sharing app, which has taken the world by storm in recent years, reshaping every aspect of culture in the process. Uncertainty abounds right now, but TikTok’s fate is far from sealed. We’ve answered some common questions about a situation that’s complex, confusing and changing as we speak. What happened in Congress? TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress last week, enduring five hours of intense questioning from lawmakers over concerns that China might leverage the app to compromise U.S. national security. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, setting it apart from other major social media companies based in the U.S. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said in his opening statements, a refrain TikTok’s CEO repeated throughout the hearing as he sought to reassure lawmakers. National security concerns were just one of ...

Hulu is slowly rolling out a new interface on streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku, among other compatible devices. The new redesign moves the navigation to the left side with options for TV, Movies and My Stuff. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the updated interface began rolling yesterday. It will be available across all supported connected TV devices in the coming months, including Android TV devices as well as Chromecast, LG smart TVs, Samsung smart TVs, Vizio SmartCast TVs and more. Cord Cutter News was the first to report the new interface. Users that have seen the update were welcomed with a message from Hulu that writes, “Over the next few weeks, Hulu’s navigation menu will move to the left side of the screen on living room devices. Press ‘back’ to open the menu for easy access to TV, Movies, My Stuff, and more.” The update makes it easier for TV users to navigate to these destinations. Previously, viewers had to scroll all the way up to the top of the...

Summarization is one of the common use cases of different AI models. Multiple tools have come up with a summarization of articles, PDFs, videos, and transcripts. Meeting intelligence tool Read has introduced a new feature that trims an hour-long meeting into a two-minute clip with important pointers. The company said that it is using large language models — without specifying which one — combined with video analysis to understand the most notable parts of the meeting. Read also incorporates participants’ reactions in the highlight reel. Users can go to their recording of a meeting and turn off the “Play highlights only” toggle to see the condensed clip. Image Credits: Read.ai Read was co-founded in 2021 by former Foursquare CEO David Shim to gather meeting intelligence. The tool, which works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex gives you analytics like sentiment, and participant engagement scores to provide knowledge about the effectiveness of a meeting. The compan...

Mukesh Ambani’s Jio, the South Asian telecom powerhouse, has long sought to entice its customer base with a plethora of services aimed at boosting subscriber retention. Despite amassing over 425 million customers and claiming the mantle of India’s top network provider—due in large part to its aggressively competitive data pricing—Jio’s array of additional services has yet to gain significant traction. With the highly anticipated Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament starting later today, Ambani is eyeing this as the perfect opportunity to revamp Jio’s service adoption strategy. Viacom18 – a venture between Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount – outbid Disney to secure five years of IPL’s streaming rights for the Indian subcontinent region with a sum of $3 billion. Unlike Disney’s Hotstar, which restricted access to IPL streaming to paid subscribers in recent seasons, Viacom18 is opening the floodgates for IPL games to everyone on the Jio network. In a move that proved transform...

Shared micromobility company Helbiz said it will do a reverse stock split in an attempt to get back into compliance with the Nasdaq, which issued a delisting notice last July because Helbiz’s stock was trading too low. Helbiz is also rebranding to Micromobility.com Inc. in order to position itself as a micromobility brand that offers retail, rentals, shared micromobility and *checks notes* sports streaming services. The rebrand comes alongside the launch of a new brick-and-mortar retail business, which will include the setting up of physical stores across the U.S., starting with its first store in SoHo, New York City in the next 60 days. There’s also an e-commerce site available today, featuring a small selection of e-scooters, e-bikes, helmets and water bottles. Due to the name change, Micromobility.com’s stock will start trading under the new ticker symbol MCOM and its warrants under MCOMW starting Friday. Helbiz’s stock price closed Thursday at $0.12, down 4.5%, and then tumbl...

Stripe competitor Checkout.com announced last month that Céline Dufétel was appointed as its new president. She had previously served as the London-based fintech startup’s CFO and COO for about 18 months before her promotion. In her expanded role, which still includes serving as the company’s COO, Dufétel oversees all operational and go-to-market teams, including finance and marketing. When announcing the New York-based executive’s appointment, the company had told me that the move was symbolic of Checkout.com “staking its claim in the U.S.” Dufétel certainly has an impressive background in the world of financial services. Immediately prior to joining Checkout, she was the COO and CFO of T. Rowe Price for three years. And before that, she worked at Neuberger Berman and served as a partner at McKinsey & Company. Dufétel was also named to Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance in 2021, and to Fortune’s 40 under 40 in 2020. Checkout.com is building a full-stack pay...

Audible is testing ad-supported access to select titles for non-members, the Amazon-owned audiobook company revealed on a help page on its website. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the test is very limited and does not apply to paid members. The news was first reported by Marketing Brew . The move indicates that the company may be exploring the possibility of an ad-based membership option. Audible declined to comment on any specific plans. The test includes audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals. Audible says the test applies to a limited subsection of titles on its platform. Content providers were informed of the change and given the chance to opt out of ads. Users who are part of the test will hear a total of eight ads within a 24-hour period. Audible says it has taken additional measures to make sure that ads won’t be heard too frequently within a short time span. “Audible is dedicated to continuously optimizing how we deliver audio programming to listeners every...

You’ll have to forgive the truncated newsletter this week. Turns out I brought more back from Chicago than a couple of robot stress balls (the one piece of swag I will gladly accept ). I was telling someone ahead of the ProMat trip that I’ve returned to 2019 travel levels this year. One bit I’d forgotten was the frequency and severity of convention colds — “con crud,” as my comics friends used to call it. I’ve been mostly housebound for the last few days, dealing with this special brand of Chicago-style deep-dish viral infection. The past three years have no doubt hobbled my immune system, but after catching COVID-19 three times, it’s frankly refreshing to have a classic, good old-fashioned head cold. Sometimes you want the band you see live to play the hits, you know? I’m rediscovering the transformative properties of honey in a cup of tea. The good news for me is that (and, hopefully, you) is I’ve got a trio of interviews from ProMat that I’ve been wanting to share in Actuator. As ...