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No product? No problem. At Disrupt 2026, founders will learn how to win pre‑seed funding by showcasing unshakable conviction and craft‑first storytelling, even when their MVP is still on the drawing board. This session equips entrepreneurs to meet seed‑stage expectations without a finished product.

Patreon has shifted from politely requesting compliance with its robots.txt to actively blocking AI crawlers that scrape creator content. By partnering with Cloudflare, the platform now intercepts unauthorized scraping attempts at the network level, safeguarding creators’ work from being harvested for AI training without permission.

Parents are increasingly turning to purpose‑built “kids‑phone” devices that strip away apps, social media and web browsing in favor of basic calling and texting. Startups are seizing the opportunity, offering everything from ultra‑simple mobile handsets to stationary home phones that let children stay connected without the distractions of a full‑featured smartphone.

Apple’s high‑profile trade‑secrets lawsuit against OpenAI could throw a wrench into the AI firm’s planned IPO, as investors weigh the added legal risk and potential delays. The complaint alleges that a “pattern of misconduct” involving over 400 former Apple engineers has reached OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, raising questions about the company’s governance and intellectual‑property safeguards.

Australian founders have just 48 hours left to submit their pitch for Stripe x Startup Battlefield, with the winner securing automatic entry to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francany. This fast‑track opportunity offers global exposure, investor access, and a guaranteed spot on the Disrupt stage—so act now before the deadline closes.

The EU has issued binding DMA measures requiring Google to open Android AI assistant features and anonymised Search data to eligible rivals.

Stardust’s period‑tracker app was found to be sending users’ menstrual‑health data to a third‑party analytics firm, a practice starkly different from the “squeaky clean” app that keeps data local. Mozilla’s research highlights how such hidden data sharing can jeopardize users’ privacy and erode trust in health‑focused applications.

Former DeepMind researcher Andrew Dai secured a staggering $300 million pre‑seed valuation for his visual‑AI startup—a rarity for a round at this early stage. Leveraging over a decade of foundational AI work that helped shape today’s large‑language models, he now aims to launch a multimodal product that can both understand and generate images alongside text.

Yes, DoorDash теперь предлагает ограниченный бета‑вариант командной строки — dd‑cli, который позволяет искать рестораны, собирать корзину и оформлять заказ прямо из терминала. Этот инструмент открывает двери автоматизации и интеграции доставки еды в CI/CD‑pipeline, скрипты и AI‑агенты, делая процесс заказа полностью программируемым.

The two teenagers, Owen Flowers and Thalha Jubair, were sentenced to five years and six months after pleading guilty to compromising London’s metropolitan transit system as members of the Scattered Spider group. UK police say their arrest has dealt a significant blow to the notorious hacking collective, disrupting its operations and sending a strong warning to other cyber‑criminals.

Uber’s $14.8 billion all‑stock acquisition of Delivery Hero would almost double its worldwide presence, giving the company a foothold across Europe, the Middle East and emerging markets. The merged entity would rank among the largest food‑delivery platforms outside China, challenging rivals such as DoorDash, Grubhub and Meituan.

Google Vids now lets you star in your own AI videos, letting users generate clips featuring a personalized digital avatar of themselves. Powered by Gemini Omni, the tool creates and edits full‑length videos from simple text prompts or a reference photo, lowering the barrier to professional‑looking video content.