Startups

Daily Crunch: Experts say Musk’s open-source vision could make Twitter vulnerable to attack

Comment

illustration of twitter logo, padlock pattern and shields
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

It’s April 26, 2022, and today, all we’ve been heron about is news that has made our stomach churn – a case of irritable owl syndrome, if you will. No fowl play is suspected, although we did get an impression that Musk is just winging it here.

We know, we know — all of these puns are clucking terrible, but what is a poor pair of newsletter writers to do when they pull our favorite social media site from the stork exchange? – Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Same Twitter time, same Twitter channel: Today, we took a look at the aftermath of Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter, this time on the privacy front. Cybersecurity experts say that Musk’s idea to make Twitter’s tech open-source could make it more susceptible to attacks, though his ideas for going after spam bots may lead to better detection — and perhaps a reduction of followers for many people wondering about that blank egghead following them.
  • Left Lane making a right turn when it comes to investments: It was the gift that keeps on giving for Left Lane CEO and managing partner Harley Miller, who closed the venture capital firm’s $1.4 billion fund on his birthday. The firm is targeting “internet-enabled consumer tech with recurring business models,” which Miller felt was a white space among all the other enterprise and SaaS investors. We wonder what his birthday gift will be next year.
  • Teach a teen about money and you’ll raise a more financially conscious adult: At least that’s the goal most parents have. Being a good steward of your money is something even adults can have trouble with, which is why we’ve seen so many child- and teen-focused financial apps attract funding. The latest is Copper, which raised a $29 million Series A, offering debit cards, ATM access and digital wallet support. Parents can participate alongside their child, adding funds and monitoring their spending. Copper even helps with the financial basics, like what compound interest is.

Po-tee-weet?

If you don’t give two craps about Twitter or Elon Musk … we’re really sorry, it’s got to suck being you on the internet right now. Take a breath and go look at some actual birds. You know, the ones that live outdoors.

Break out the binoculars; we’re doing a lot of bird-watching today, just so you have it all in one handy place. In case you’ve been offline for the past month, we put together a handy timeline, which will give you some of the context.

We reported yesterday that Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter, and then all hell broke loose. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said Musk is the only solution he trusts, but as you read above, Carly isn’t so sure, saying that this is going to be a privacy nightmare. We discussed both how Trump wouldn’t be coming back to Twitter and how that is hogwash; he’ll be back.

Alex took a punt at what is next for Twitter with Elon taking over the penthouse suite of the birdhouse and encouraged Musk to please not mess it up. Natasha wondered what the Twitter diaspora will get up to. Sarah was curious whether all the advertisers are going to make nests on other platforms, and Amanda reported that Twitter is locking away the source code for the platform.

Startups and VC

The hardware dweebs among us were having a great day today. The detail of the EV Corvette using excess battery heat to heat the cabin — much like ICE cars using excess engine heat to make you nice and toasty as you cruise around – is such a cool (ha!) detail. The obvious benefit of reusing waste heat instead of spending electric power to run heaters is extended range – very clever indeed. Also in the world of hardware, Launcher demoed a 3D-printed rocket doing a full-scale burn, and the space-obsessed 15-year-old that lives within us is very very excited.

Non-Twitter news:

Klaviyo co-founder Ed Hallen’s 3 top pieces of advice for launching a startup

Image of two silhouetted heads, one orange and one yellow, with arrows running from one to the other to represent knowledge transfer.
Image Credits: jayk7 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Most founders are not experienced entrepreneurs, which means they tend to make the same mistakes as they try to overcome universal challenges like fundraising and hiring.

According to Klaviyo co-founder and chief product Ed Hallen, luck was a contributing factor to his marketing automation company’s success.

“But it’s also clear that if we had known more upfront, we wouldn’t have had to luck into those choices in the first place,” he says. “And for a founder, less luck means you’ll encounter less risk.”

In a TechCrunch+ guest post, he shared three fundamental pieces of advice for new founders. Lesson one: Don’t attempt to change user behavior — instead, look for a problem to solve.

“Rather than focus on telling a story, we found a problem and came at it hard because we knew if we found enough people with the same problem, we could build a company.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Klaviyo co-founder Ed Hallen’s 3 top pieces of advice for launching a startup

Big Tech Inc.

More TechCrunch

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube…

YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

Featured Article

Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

CSC ServiceWorks provides laundry machines to thousands of residential homes and universities, but the company ignored requests to fix a security bug.

11 hours ago
Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the buzz is palpable. But what if we told you there’s a chance for you to not just attend, but also…

Harness the TechCrunch Effect: Host a Side Event at Disrupt 2024

Decks are all about telling a compelling story and Goodcarbon does a good job on that front. But there’s important information missing too.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Goodcarbon’s $5.5M seed deck

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefit plans disclosed a data breach affecting almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. WebTPA said…

Healthcare company WebTPA discloses breach affecting 2.5 million people

Featured Article

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

13 hours ago
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank’s business customers can access Ember’s services from their online accounts.

Embedded finance is still trendy as accounting automation startup Ember partners with HSBC UK

Kudos uses AI to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice, like maximizing rewards and utilizing credit effectively.

Kudos lands $10M for an AI smart wallet that picks the best credit card for purchases

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo

Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…

Sony Music warns tech companies over ‘unauthorized’ use of its content to train AI

Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.

GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.

Bolt founder Ryan Breslow wants to settle an investor lawsuit by returning $37 million worth of shares

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…

With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…

Google expands hands-free and eyes-free interfaces on Android