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Tesla CEO Elon Musk kicked off its Tesla AI Day 2022 with a quick level set on expectations — “we’ve come a long way” — and then stepped aside to allow the first iteration of its robot walk out onto the stage. The robot wasn’t a human dressed in a robot costume like last year.  Instead, Tesla introduced a functioning robot, albeit with exposed cables and a bit wobbly, at its second annual event. According to Musk, it was the first time it was working without “any support, cranes, mechanical mechanisms or cables.” Tesla Robot moving and waving After a brief turn about the stage, the robot left the stage before the rest of the presentation continued, which included several short videos of the robot (now tethered for stability) carrying a box in an office, watering a plant and lifting a small piece of metal in the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. The aim of the demo and ensuing presentation, in which a number of Tesla employees gave what can only be described as a bipedal r...

When ByteDance bought the Chinese VR headset maker Pico a year ago, the message it sent was clear: it was betting that the immersive device would be where future generations spend most of their time consuming digital content. It’s a marriage reminiscent of Meta’s acquisition of Oculus back in 2014, except the world is now in a different place with technological advances that make VR headsets cheaper, less laggy, and more comfortable to wear. The TikTok parent has long aimed to compete in a market dominated by Oculus’s VR devices for consumers. When Meta launched Quest 2 in 2020, ByteDance worked on a confidential internal project to develop AR glasses, The Information reported . Pico’s product launch this week is a further indication of its ambition to challenge Quest, which has enjoyed roughly two-thirds of the global AR and VR market for the past two years. The Pico 4, which starts at €429 (around $420 thanks to a strong dollar) for 128GB and ships to Europe, Japan, and Sout...

When ByteDance bought the Chinese VR headset maker Pico a year ago, the message it sent was clear: it was betting that the immersive device would be where future generations spend most of their time consuming digital content. It’s a marriage reminiscent of Meta’s acquisition of Oculus back in 2014, except the world is now in a different place with technological advances that make VR headsets cheaper, less laggy, and more comfortable to wear. The TikTok parent has long aimed to compete in a market dominated by Oculus’s VR devices for consumers. When Meta launched Quest 2 in 2020, ByteDance worked on a confidential internal project to develop AR glasses, The Information reported . Pico’s product launch this week is a further indication of its ambition to challenge Quest, which has enjoyed roughly two-thirds of the global AR and VR market for the past two years. The Pico 4, which starts at €429 (around $420 thanks to a strong dollar) for 128GB and ships to Europe, Japan, and Sout...

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 . Happy Friday! We don’t know about you, but we are both ready for some R&R after ploughing through a wall of deep-cringe texts from the Musk/Twitter trial. We hope you get some, too, this weekend. This afternoon, Tesla is running its second AI day. Last year’s was a hoot , and we have some predictions for what’s coming down the pipe today, too . — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Under attack : Microsoft confirmed that it “is aware” of some attacks to its Exchange server. Carly is staying on top of the story and reports that there is “no immediate fix.” Eyeing that sweet capital : Manish has a scoop that Uniswap Labs, a decentralized exchange, is going after over $100 million in new funding. Stream on : YouTube TV is offering a new à la carte option that enables subscribers to purchase stand-alone networks without subscribing to the...

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 . Happy Friday! We don’t know about you, but we are both ready for some R&R after ploughing through a wall of deep-cringe texts from the Musk/Twitter trial. We hope you get some, too, this weekend. This afternoon, Tesla is running its second AI day. Last year’s was a hoot , and we have some predictions for what’s coming down the pipe today, too . — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Under attack : Microsoft confirmed that it “is aware” of some attacks to its Exchange server. Carly is staying on top of the story and reports that there is “no immediate fix.” Eyeing that sweet capital : Manish has a scoop that Uniswap Labs, a decentralized exchange, is going after over $100 million in new funding. Stream on : YouTube TV is offering a new à la carte option that enables subscribers to purchase stand-alone networks without subscribing to the...

Google appears to have disabled access to Google Translate in parts of China , redirecting visitors to the Hong Kong domain — which isn’t accessible from the mainland. According to users on Reddit and site archives viewed by TechCrunch, Google swapped the Google Translate interface at translate.google.cn with a generic Google Search page at some point within the last 24 hours. The change is reportedly impacting the translation features of apps like KOReader, a document viewer, for China-based users, as well as Chrome’s built-in translation functionality. Google hasn’t responded to a request for comment; we’ll update this piece if we hear back. Google has a long and complicated relationship with the Chinese government. In 2006, the company entered the Chinese market with a version of its search engine that was subject to government censorship rules. But after state-sponsored hacks and government-ordered blocks on Google services in response to YouTube footage showing Chinese secur...

Google Colaboratory (Colab for short), Google’s service designed to allow anyone to write and execute arbitrary Python code through a web browser, is introducing a pay-as-a-you-go plan. In its first pricing change since Google launched premium Colab plans in 2020, Colab will now give users the option to purchase additional compute time in Colab with or without a paid subscription. Google says that the update won’t affect the free-of-charge Colab tier, which remains in its current form. The only material change is that users can buy access to compute in the form of “compute units,” starting at $9.99 for 100 units or $49.99 for 500. As Google Colab product lead Chris Perry explains in a blog post: Paid users now have the flexibility to exhaust compute quota, measured in compute units, at whatever rate they choose. As compute units are exhausted, a user can choose to purchase more with pay-as-you-go at their discretion. Once a user has exhausted their compute units their Colab usage ...

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. When  Phil Libin  co-founded  Evernote he spent tons of money making the perfect working environment with chic offices, a shuttle bus and headphones to block out all of his employees’ distracting co-workers. He’s since seen the work-from-home light and co-founded  mmhmm to make working remotely more efficient and even more fun. In this episode Phil breaks down his pyramid of communication, explains how embracing asynchronous videos changed everything about meetings at mmhmm and states why he will never go to work in the metaverse. If you love live conversations with founders, you’ll love  TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco from October 18-20. Use  code FOUND  for 15% off your ticket. Subscribe to Found  to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: On  Twitter On  Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com mmhmm co-founders are building th...

Truepill , a platform that helps other companies offer diagnostics, telehealth services and prescriptions, has conducted its fourth layoff of the year. Sources say the layoff impacted around 65% of the existing staff across the engineering, human resources, design, IT and finance teams. The layoff comes around two months after its last round, which impacted about a third of the company, or 175 people. One employee, who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity, said that they were told that their position was “no longer sustainable due to economic factors” on a 1:1 call with leadership. Severance was mentioned but HR has not yet reached out to the employee with further details. “[The company said] it hoped there wasn’t going to be any layoffs after the August round,” the source said. “[Leadership said that] investors made some requests in order for the company to extend the financial runway so they made tough choices, but that we were now on good footing.” A company-wide al...

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 . Today we are mostly listening to acoustic covers of songs we love (a surprise Iron and Wine cover , perhaps?), and mentally preparing ourselves for TechCrunch Disrupt. Which reminds us — did you know you can get 15% off passes with the DC discount code for being a Daily Crunch reader ? Don’t say we never did anything for you, dear reader!  — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Simple crypto : Cryptocurrencies are still complex, or that’s the viewpoint of Solvo, a new app that is making crypto investment simpler, Romain reports. What’s different is that instead of being offered dozens of currencies to choose from, Solvo has curated a list of 10 so you don’t get lost in all the names. Well that didn’t last long : On Monday we brought you news that “the OG app is out to bring Instagram back to its glory days .” Today, Ivan has an update tha...

SpaceX and NASA have signed a new agreement to study the feasibility of sending a commercial crew in a SpaceX Dragon to boost the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope. If completed, the mission could extend the operational lifespan of the telescope by as much as 20 years. NASA officials cautioned that today’s news is not a mission announcement. For now, it’s just a feasibility study to consider whether such a mission is sensible, given technical and other constraints. Indeed, one might assume that an uncrewed space tug might be best suited for an orbital boosting mission, and there are plenty of space startups working on that kind of technology. But apparently the mission was SpaceX’s idea, and for some reason, they (and their partner, Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Program) want humans involved. The agreement starts to make more sense with NASA’s acknowledgement that the mission, should it go forward, would come at no cost to the government. NASA and SpaceX are also each funding their part...

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 . Today we are mostly listening to acoustic covers of songs we love (a surprise Iron and Wine cover , perhaps?), and mentally preparing ourselves for TechCrunch Disrupt. Which reminds us — did you know you can get 15% off passes with the DC discount code for being a Daily Crunch reader ? Don’t say we never did anything for you, dear reader!  — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Simple crypto : Cryptocurrencies are still complex, or that’s the viewpoint of Solvo, a new app that is making crypto investment simpler, Romain reports. What’s different is that instead of being offered dozens of currencies to choose from, Solvo has curated a list of 10 so you don’t get lost in all the names. Well that didn’t last long : On Monday we brought you news that “the OG app is out to bring Instagram back to its glory days .” Today, Ivan has an update tha...

Rocket launch company Astra will no longer send the remaining NASA TROPICS payloads to space, but instead will launch other “comparable” scientific missions for the agency, the company announced Wednesday. The change to the launch agreement comes a little over three months after Astra’s first TROPICS launch ended in failure after the upper stage shut down prior to delivering the payload to orbit. NASA’s TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats) program includes a trio of launches aimed at sending a total of six earth science CubeSats to space. The TROPICS satellites will be used to measure variables like humidity and pressure inside storm systems — a need that’s especially prescient today, when Hurricane Ian made landfall on the west coast of Florida. Astra was awarded the launch contract for TROPICS in February 2021 at a total value of $7.95 million. It is unclear whether the modification to this existing l...

We’re beyond amazed at the collective creativity, ingenuity and technical prowess of the Startup Battlefield 200 . Out of thousands of applications, only 200 early-stage startups made the final cut, and you’ll find all of them — and only them — exhibiting on the TechCrunch Disrupt show floor on October 18-20 in San Francisco. That’s a whole lotta noteworthy startups, so we’re going to break it down a bit for you and highlight them by vertical. Today it’s hardware, robotics and mobility. Hungry for more? You can find them all listed in the Exhibitor Directory . Startup Battlefield 200: Hardware, Robotics, AI+ML & Mobility + Transportation edition Aether Biomedical Pvt Ally Robotics Boundless Robotics Buzr Labs, Inc. Deep Render Ltd. FLUIX Helios Life Enterprises Hidden Door Impossible Metals Jasper KATAKEM LintrinsIC Metabob PantheonDesign PseudolithIC Inc. RIF Robotics Studiobox Swap Robotics (opens in a new window) (opens in a new window) Swap Robotics ...