#techcrunch

[unwrapping]

Automattic CEO calls Tumblr his 'biggest failure' so far | TechCrunch

At WordCamp Canada 2025, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called Tumblr his “biggest failure,” noting the challenge of maintaining the platform

[nyancrimew]

new blog post! part 2 of the #FuckStalkerware series, this one is pretty big!

#FuckStalkerware pt. 2 - SpyHide couldnt hide forever

and once again it was way too easy

also exclusively covered by techcrunch (less technical but more analysis than my post) here:

Spyhide stalkerware is spying on tens of thousands of phones | TechCrunch

The Android spyware app, developed in Iran and hosted in Germany, has compromised about 60,000 Android devices since 2016.

content warning: mentions of abuse/controlling behaviour

[soapdispensersalesman]

YouTube's Realtime Sharing bar (2009)

Discontinued in March 2010

[valentinsylve]

Everyone in the US who has a brain and is interested in civil liberties and the shit happening in the shadows to smash them should be paying attention every time Senator Ron Wyden puts any kind of statement out in public. He is probably the most reliable watchdog we've got on the inside and he is meticulous.

In 2011, Wyden said that the U.S. government was relying on a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which he said — without disclosing the nature of his concerns — created a “gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”  Two years later, then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was relying on its secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to force U.S. phone companies, including Verizon, to turn over the call records of hundreds of millions of Americans on an ongoing basis. Since then, Wyden has sounded the alarm on how the U.S. government collects the contents of people’s communications; revealed that the Justice Department barred Apple and Google from disclosing that federal authorities had been secretly demanding the contents of their customers’ push notifications; and said that an unclassified report that CISA has refused to release contains “shocking details” about national security threats facing U.S. phone companies. As noted by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, we may not know yet why Wyden sounded the siren about the CIA’s activities, but every time Wyden has warned, he has also been vindicated.

[porterdavis]

The biggest breach of US government data is under way | TechCrunch

Elon Musk's DOGE has taken control and accessed large swathes of Americans' private information held by the U.S. federal government.

This is a clear-eyed analysis by people who actually know how the technology works and how widely it's been infiltrated.

They are amazed by the speed and scope of the DOGE codebros' work.

[boobachu]

Bad news, everyone in the 21st century

Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch

After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to

[shinnith]

The first AR laptop was just released.... to think it went from those weird ass 3DS cards to this is fucking wild????

Im fuckING LOSING IT RIGHT NOW. Everyone??? Meet fucking Spacetop??

You thought your 3DS AR Kirby cards were peak shit?? Think again.

Here's the link to the promo but if you want to hear my excited ass rant, it's below the cut lol:

Spacetop: Own Your Space (youtube)

Seeing how CNET talked about it, and actually seeing the promo made me realize this isn't some wish shit- this is actually happening. As someone who grew up obsessed with sci-fi, my heart is absolutely pounding.

No, this isn't Virtual Reality. It's Augmented Reality (AR). Meaning, despite having glasses on like a headset, your seeing the software literally floating in your living room/bathroom/local @dennys . This is totally in the starter stages, (remember when VR began popping off and it was... yeah) so don't expect it to be some perfect Star Trek shit, but it functions as intended.

Unlike VR, I am getting the impression this AR Laptop is more spatially aware and doesn't make you break your neck to look to the left. I could literally go on for years on this new technology but I'm gonna leave it here- or I'll never stop lol.

[desert-palm]

Tumblr to add support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Mastodon and other apps

Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that today is powering social networking softwar

Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that today is powering social networking software like Twitter alternative Mastodon, the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others. The news was revealed in response to a Twitter user’s complaint about Mastodon’s complexities. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg — whose company acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 — suggested the user “come to Tumblr” as the site would soon “add activitypub for interconnect.”

“Don’t stress,” he said, before clarifying that Tumblr first has to deal with the waves of new users coming in right now from Twitter but that support for “interop and activitypub” were due to come “ASAP.”

In short, this announcement means Tumblr would move from being only a niche blogging platform to becoming a part of a larger, decentralized social network of sorts — and one whose user base has grown in size in recent days as people flee Elon Musk’s Twitter in search of new communities.