Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Tesla’s Cybercab and Robovan reveals, the “complete disarray” at Fisker HQ, and a horrifying side effect of living in our modern world: AI summaries of your breakup texts. Let’s do this.
Tesla finally revealed its Cybercab robotaxi. Unveiled at the company’s We, Robot event, the Cybercab looks like a smaller, sleeker, two-seater Cybertruck — and the company claims it’ll cost less than $30,000. In a surprise reveal, Elon Musk also unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s Robovan: An electric, autonomous vehicle roughly the size of a bus, designed for transporting people around high-density areas.
Fidelity Investments confirmed that over 77,000 customers had personal information compromised during an August data breach, including Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. The investment firm said in a filing with Maine’s attorney general that an unnamed third party accessed information “using two customer accounts that they had recently established.”
Babbel CEO Arne Schepker is stepping down, and the company’s co-founder and former CEO, Markus Witte, is stepping back in to lead Babbel “into a new phase” as they search for Schepker’s successor. This new phase for the popular Berlin-based language learning platform, unsurprisingly, will involve AI.
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News
Walking out of Just Walk Out: Three Amazon execs in charge of developing new technologies for checking out of physical stores — including Just Walk Out, Dash Cart, and Amazon One — are leaving or have left the division, TechCrunch has learned. Read more
How do you do, fellow kids? Facebook launched a Gen Z-focused redesign with an emphasis on videos and events in an effort to woo younger users to join the social network and to better compete with TikTok. Read more
Editing out AI on Wikipedia: As AI-generated slop continues to take over parts of the internet, Wikipedia editors are having to spend an increasing amount of time trying to clean up AI content on the site. Read more
Maybe AI doesn’t have to summarize everything: After downloading a beta of iOS 18.1, Nick Spreen got an Apple Intelligence notification he wasn’t expecting — an AI-generated summary of breakup texts from his now ex-girlfriend. Read more
Layoffs at TikTok: TikTok is laying off hundreds of employees, mainly in Malaysia, as the social network is increasingly turning to AI for content moderation. The company said fewer than 500 people were affected. Read more
Dude, where’s my (clay) car? Fisker’s HQ was left in “complete disarray,” with drums of apparent hazardous waste, vehicles, and full-size clay models left behind, according to the landlord. Read more
Tyler, the Creator changes his tune: Tyler, the Creator switched the lyrics to his 2017 song “911” from “Shout out to Elon Musk” to: “man, f— Elon” while performing at the Austin City Limits music festival. Read more
The Internet Archive takes a hit: The Internet Archive experienced a DDoS attack this week, resulting in a breach of 31 million unique email addresses and usernames. The organization says it has “fended off” the DDoS attack “for now.” Read more
NYC’s top VCs under 30: The next generation of New York City investors is already making their mark in the Big Apple. Here are some of the young investors helping to shape the future of venture capitalism in New York City. Read more
Filter out those party pics: A new feature on the photo album-sharing platform Swsh is the ability to filter out alcoholic beverages and Solo cups so that young users can maintain a squeaky-clean image on social media. Read more
Analysis
Face-to-face with “I told you so”: China reportedly hacked the wiretap systems required by U.S. internet providers under a 1994 U.S. wiretapping law. The wiretap systems are some of the most sensitive in a telecom or internet provider’s network, typically granting a select few employees nearly unfettered access to information. But as Zack Whittaker writes, for those who have sounded the alarm on the internet backdoor law, the news is the “told you so” moment they hoped would never come — but knew one day would. Read more