Lehrer, who died July 26, wrote numerous satirical songs, including “Pollution” and “The Vatican Rag.” In the latter half of his life, he also taught math at Harvard and MIT.
Vast Data in talks with Alphabet’s CapitalG, Nvidia to fund round at up to $30B valuation
AI storage platform Vast Data is in talks with Alphabet’s venture arm CapitalG and existing backer Nvidia to raise a fresh round that could value the startup at up to $30 billion, Reuters reported, citing two sources.
TechCrunch reported last month that Vast Data was working to raise funds at a $25 billion valuation.
The round could close in the next few weeks, per Reuters, which would make New York-based Vast Data — last valued at $9.1 billion in 2023 — one of the most valuable tech companies.
Vast Data develops storage technology that claims to enable efficiency in AI data centers. As the AI boom intensifies and the U.S. government greenlights the scaled build-out of data centers, AI infrastructure startups are becoming a hot new focus for investment.
The startup has raised $380 million to date, and its CEO Renen Halak said the company is free cash flow positive. Sources told Reuters that Vast Data earned $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by January 2025, with projections to grow to $600 million in ARR next year.
Google is bringing image and PDF uploads to AI Mode
Google is updating AI Mode on desktop this week with the ability to process images, so you can ask it detailed questions about the pictures like you already can on mobile. In the coming weeks, the company is also adding support for PDF uploads on desktop, which could help you digest lengthy course or work materials. You can ask AI Mode to summarize the documents for you and ask follow-up questions that it will then answer by cross-referencing the materials you uploaded with information available on the web. Google says AI Mode’s responses will also include links to its references that you can visit in order to dig deeper. AI Mode will support additional file types for upload, including ones straight from your Google Drive, in the coming months as well.
In addition to PDF upload support, Google is also rolling out a new Canvas feature that you can access if you’re enrolled in the AI Mode Labs experiment in the US. You can use Canvas to consolidate all relevant information about a specific topic or for a specific purpose in a side panel that updates as you ask AI Mode more follow-up questions. If you’re traveling, for instance, you can ask AI Mode to make you an itinerary and click the Create Canvas button. You’ll be able to keep refining the itinerary with more questions, and you can always leave it alone for a while and come back to it later.
AI Mode’s Search Live is also getting video input on mobile this week, a feature Google announced at I/O 2025, after voice input arrived in June. To be able to access video input, you’ll have to open Lens in the Google app and tap the Live icon before asking questions on what the camera sees. When Google revealed the feature during its annual developers’ event, it said you could point the camera at a math problem, for example, and ask Search to help you solve it or to explain a concept you’re having trouble understanding.
Finally, with Lens in Chrome, you’ll be able to ask AI Mode what’s on your desktop screen. The company will roll out an “Ask Google about this page” dropdown option in the address bar “soon.” When you click on it, AI Mode will create an overview with key information on what’s being shown on your screen on the side panel, whether it’s a web page or a PDF. That side panel will also contain a new “Dive Deeper” button that gives you a way to ask AI Mode specific questions about you’ve selected on your screen with Lens on desktop.
Updated August 1, 2025 5:45AM ET: This story has been updated to add information on “Dive Deeper.”
Update, July 29 2025, 12:29PM ET: This story has been updated, as Google shared after the article was published that the image and PDF upload features will be available wherever AI Mode is available, not just in the US. That means those uploads will come to the US, India and the UK.
Google One Material 3 Expressive redesign drops the graphics
The Google One app on Android is getting a Material 3 Expressive redesign.
Update 7/31: The lack of Dynamic Color was a bug that has been fixed with version 1.272.x of Google One. This redesign is not yet widely rolled out.
Original 7/29: This redesign starts by removing the friendly illustrations that appeared at the top of every tab. In the Home feed, you immediately get the time-of-day greeting, with the Storage, Backup, and Clean up sections now higher up the screen. Cards throughout the app feature more rounded corners and make use of thin outlines.
The Storage tab places the per-app “details” breakdown in a card with the “Clean up space” button. The “Device backup” sees some tweaks, but is otherwise unchanged today.
Old vs. new
There are similar tweaks to Benefits, while the app’s bottom bar is now shorter. Material 3 Expressive abandons the previous tall style.
Finally, the most obvious expression of M3E is in the Settings list, with no changes to the navigation drawer (or the undersized account image in the top-right corner). There’s a large header, while each item is placed in a card and thematically grouped.
With this Material 3 Expressive redesign, the Google One app is no longer using Dynamic Color. In my case, they go from dark blue to just gray. The bottom bar uses the default blue accent color to highlight the current tab. This could simply be a bug as the status and navigation bars remain themed. However, this look is appearing on two of our devices (Android 16 and 16 QPR1).
We’re seeing this redesign with a server-side update to version 1.271.x of Google One for Android. It’s not yet widely rolled out on all devices we checked today.
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Encore casino crash suspect in critical condition after being shot by police, DA says
A man who stole and crashed a Republic Services trash truck near Encore casino in Everett Thursday afternoon was shot by police during the incident and is now in critical condition, according to Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan.
Everett resident Admilson Vizcaino is facing charges including armed assault with intent to rob, carjacking and leaving the scene of a car crash involving property damage in connection with the incident, Ryan said during a Thursday evening press conference.
What authorities say happened
The incident began around 12:45 p.m. when Medford police received a report that a person at a Sunoco gas station — who was later identified as Vizcaino — that was “acting erratic,” Ryan said. Viscaino left the gas station in a black Chevrolet SUV before officers arrived.
Medford police asked other local police departments to be on the lookout for the SUV, and soon after, a Stoneham police officer unsuccessfully attempted to pull Vizcaino over, Ryan said. Around 2 p.m., the SUV was spotted at a 7-Eleven in Billerica at which a shoplifting incident had just taken place.
Around 3:15 p.m., Malden police responded to an address after a relative of Vizcaino’s reported that he was there, Ryan said. Officers arrived at the address as Vizcaino was leaving in the SUV. They then began pursuing him, but lost sight of him as he crossed into Everett.
Soon after, Vizcaino crashed the SUV near Encore casino, but kept driving it until it became completely inoperable, Ryan said. He then tried to steal several nearby vehicles — including a moped — but was unsuccessful.
Vizcaino continued down the road until he came to the trash truck, which was stopped at a red light, and tried to force the driver out, Ryan said. By this time, Everett and State Police had caught up to him and began trying to deescalate the situation.
Vizcaino ignored commands from police to get away from the truck, and police tazed him several times as he tried to force his way in, Ryan said. As he was trying to pull the truck door open, an Everett police officer shot at him several times and struck him.
Vizcaino still managed to get the truck door open and struggled with the driver while wielding a knife, Ryan said. The passenger in the truck got out through the passenger side door, and officers were eventually able to get the driver out of the truck safely.
Vizcaino then got into the driver’s seat of the truck and began driving down Broadway, striking utility poles, fire hydrants and a scooter and causing other property damage on the way, Ryan said. State Police troopers soon deployed “stop sticks” to deflate the truck’s tires, and the truck eventually came to rest on the Alford Street Bridge into Boston.
Troopers and police officers from other departments surrounded the truck and arrested Vizcaino as he tumbled out of it, Ryan said. He was taken to a hospital where he remains in critical condition.
Police later searched the SUV and found a gasoline can that Vizcaino had been seen with at the 7-Eleven, Ryan said. Authorities are still investigating what he planned to do with the gasoline, but the district attorney described the presence of the can as being among “very concerning facts.”
What’s next
Vizcaino will be arraigned on the charges at a later date if he recovers from his injuries, Ryan said. The district attorney would not speak to how many people were injured during the incident, if any.
The officer who shot Vizcaino has been put on administrative leave, per Everett police policy, Everett Police Chief Paul Strong said during the press conference.
“It is more likely than not that these officers and troopers saved many lives today during this event,” he said.
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Female-founded semiconductor AI startup SixSense raises $8.5M
A Singapore-based deep tech startup called SixSense has developed an AI-powered platform that helps semiconductor manufacturers predict and detect potential chip defects on production lines in real time.
It has raised $8.5 million in Series A bringing its total funding to around $12 million. The round was led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia India & SEA), with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital, FEBE, and others.
Founded in 2018 by engineers Akanksha Jagwani (CTO) and Avni Agarwal (CEO), SixSense aims to address a fundamental challenge in semiconductor manufacturing: converting raw production data, from defect images to equipment signals, into real-time insights that help factories prevent quality issues and improve yield.
Despite the sheer volume of data generated on the fab floor, what stood out to the co-founders was a surprising lack of real-time intelligence.
Akanksha brings a deep understanding of manufacturing, quality control, and software automation through her experience building automation solutions for manufacturers like Hyundai Motors and GE and led product development at startups like Embibe. Agarwal adds technical experience from her time at Visa, where she built large-scale data analytics systems, some of which were later protected as trade secrets. A skilled coder with a strong background in mathematics, she had long been interested in applying AI to traditional industries beyond fintech.
Together, the duo evaluated sectors from aviation to automotive before landing on semiconductors. Despite the semiconductor industry’s reputation for precision, inspection processes remain largely manual and fragmented, Agarwal told TechCrunch. After speaking with more than 50 engineers, it became clear there’s significant room to modernize how quality checks are done, she added.
Fabs today are filled with dashboards, SPC charts, and inline inspection systems, but most only display data without further analysis, Agarwal said. “The burden of using it for decision-making still falls on engineers: [they must] spot patterns, investigate anomalies, and trace root causes. That’s time-consuming, subjective, and doesn’t scale well with increasing process complexity.”
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SixSense provides engineers with early warnings to address potential issues before they escalate with capabilities such as defect detection, root cause analysis, and failure prediction.
SixSense’s platform is also specifically designed to be used by process engineers rather than data scientists, Agarwal said. “Process engineers can fine-tune models using their own fab data, deploy them in under two days, and trust the results — all without writing a single line of code. That’s what makes the platform both powerful and practical.”
The competitive landscape includes in-house engineering teams using tools like Cognex and Halcon, inspection equipment makers integrating AI into their systems, and startups including Landing.ai and Robovision.
SixSense’s AI platform is already in use at major semiconductor manufacturers like GlobalFoundries and JCET, with more than 100 million chips processed to date. Customers have reported up to 30% faster production cycles, a 1-2% boost in yield, and a 90% reduction in manual inspection work, the founders said. The system is compatible with inspection equipment that covers over 60% of the global market.
“Our target customers are large-scale chipmakers — including foundries, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers (OSATs), and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs),” Agarwal said. “We’re already working with fabs in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Israel, and are now expanding into the U.S.”
Geopolitical tensions, especially between the U.S. and China, are reshaping where chips are made, driving new manufacturing investments across the globe.
“We’re seeing fabs and OSATs expand aggressively in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, India, and the U.S. — and that’s a tailwind for us. Why? Because we’re already based in the region, and many of these new facilities are starting fresh — without legacy systems weighing them down. That makes them far more open to AI-native approaches like ours from day one,” Agarwal told TechCrunch.
Reddit should be a ‘go-to search engine,’ Steve Huffman says
Reddit is going to be leaning even harder into search in the coming months. The company has already been working on a plan to integrate its LLM-powered search into its main search feature, but CEO Steve Huffman said he wants users to think of the site as an actual search engine.
During the company’s latest earnings call, Huffman said search is one of the top priorities for Reddit. “We’re concentrating our resources on the areas that will drive results for our most pressing needs, improving the core product, making Reddit a go-to search engine, and expanding internationally.”
The idea of reddit as a search engine isn’t that far-fetched. Many people are already in the habit of adding “Reddit” to traditional searches in the hopes of finding relevant threads from the site. And the company has been trying to take advantage of this with its own AI-powered search product . Though that feature is still labeled as being in “beta,” the company plans to eventually add it to its default search bar.
“Our focus right now is on unifying the Reddit search, like traditional search on Reddit, which is very widely used on Reddit, and the new Reddit answers product … we’re unifying those into a single search experience, and we’re going to bring that front and center in the app,” Huffman said.
Huffman’s comments come at a time when AI is increasingly for websites. It sounds like even Reddit, which has a multimillion-dollar data licensing , isn’t immune from those trends either. During the call, Huffman said that Reddit’s search traffic from Google “varies week to week,” but that overall “it was a headwind” during the last quarter.
That may help explain why Huffman is so eager to make Reddit itself a search destination, even as the company continues to license its data to AI companies. “AI doesn’t invent knowledge,” he said. “It learns from us; from real people, sharing real perspectives.”
Galaxy S26 series is readying some battery upgrades
While rumors are still up in the air regarding a battery upgrade for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, new information has come out on the base Galaxy S26 “Pro” as well as the Galaxy S26 Edge, with both devices set to pack bigger batteries.
GalaxyClub reports that the Galaxy S26 “Pro” – the confusing new name for Samsung’s base model of the series – will have a battery likely to be rated at 4,175 mAh, but advertised at 4,300 mAh. In other words, a 300 mAh increase from the existing Galaxy S25 which has a 4,000 mAh battery.
Meanwhile, Galaxy S26 Edge would have a 4,200 mAh battery (rated 4,078 mAh), which is also a 300 mAh increase over the existing Galaxy S25 Edge.
Obviously, the latter is getting the bigger upgrade. The larger display of Samsung’s Edge device means that the lower capacity can’t stretch as far, so the 8%~ increase will be more than welcome. But, for both devices, this is good news.
The Galaxy S26 Edge is expected to replace the Galaxy S26+ in Samsung’s lineup. It has the same size and roughly the same price point, but battery life is certainly going to continue to be a trade-off for the thinner form factor. All three of Samsung’s Galaxy S26 devices are expected to launch in January.
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R.I. man arrested after a nearly 50-mile police car chase across Mass.
A Rhode Island man was arrested early Wednesday morning after he and two other suspects stole a Kingston woman’s jet ski from her backyard, then led police on a nearly 50-mile car chase across Southeastern Massachusetts, according to police.
Providence resident Livan Sarit, 21, was the only one of the three suspects to be captured after the police pursuit, Kingston police said in a press release. But, as investigators have extensive video evidence of the theft and car chase, they are confident that the other two suspects will be identified, charged and arrested soon.
“Sleep well tonight gentlemen, we’ll see you soon – and don’t worry, we extradite from Rhode Island,” the police department wrote.
On July 30, a Kingston woman called 911 around 3:15 a.m. to report that a group of thieves was in the process of stealing her jet ski and trailer from her backyard, police said. She later gave police security video of the theft.
Officers responded to the home and found the suspect vehicle — a dark-colored pickup truck — fleeing the area with the jet ski trailer attached to it, police said. It was later discovered that the truck had fake license plates and had been reported stolen out of Rhode Island.
Officers tried to pull the truck over, but it drove away, police said. This sparked a lengthy car chase across southeastern Massachusetts during which Kingston and State Police pursued the truck down Route 3 south, onto Route 6 west and then on Route 25 west.
“Due to the brazen nature of the crime and the limited vehicular traffic in the middle of the night, the pursuit continued for approximately 47 miles,” the police department wrote.
At one point in the chase while passing through Bourne, the stolen jet ski and trailer detached from the truck, police said. State troopers eventually deployed “stop sticks” to deflate the truck’s tires, but the driver continued traveling at over 90 mph.
The truck’s deflated tires caused debris to fly up behind it and smash into the windshield of a pursuing Kingston police cruiser, police said. The officer was sprayed with shattered glass, but continued “his relentless pursuit of the felons.”
The truck eventually led police west on I-195 into downtown New Bedford, police said. The chase ended when the truck crashed on the highway and caught fire.
Three suspects ran from the truck after it crashed, police said. Sarit jumped over a guardrail on I-195 into the opposing lane of traffic, but was chased down and arrested by police. The other two suspects jumped off an overpass on the highway and fled into the city.
Sarit and the other two suspects may have been involved in other similar larcenies that are under investigation in the Kingston area, police said. No one was hurt during the incident, and the property of two different victims was recovered.
“Let this serve as notice to anyone who considers committing crimes like these in our town. Don’t risk it. Not in Kingston. We’ll chase you until your wheels fall off – literally,” the police department wrote.
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Quora’s Poe releases a developer API with access to a bouquet of AI models
Quora’s AI platform Poe announced on Thursday that it’s releasing an API that allows developers to easily access different models or bots for their own applications.
The API doesn’t require a separate fee. Instead, usage is tracked via Poe’s existing point-based subscription plans, where each model call costs a set number of points. For instance, low-quality image generation through GPT-4o in a 1:1 aspect ratio and 1024 x 1024 size would cost 328 points.
Today, Poe’s plans include the $4.99 per month plan (10,000 points per day), the $19.99/mo plan (1 million points per month), the $49.99/mo plan (2.5 million points per month), the $99.99/mo plan (5 million points per month), and the $249.99/mo plan (12.5 million points per month).
Developers will also be able to buy additional points at a rate of $30 for 1 million tokens. Add-on tokens don’t come in a fixed package, so customers can pay any dollar amount to get tokens based on that rate.
Through this API, developers can power tools like Cursor, Cline, Continue, Roo, and any others that work with OpenAI-compatible chat completion APIs. The platform currently provides access to more than 100 models across voice, text, image, and video generation.
These multimodal models include Imagen 4, GPT Image 1, Flux Kontext, Seedream 3.0, Veo 3, Runway Gen 4 Turbo, Kling 2.1, ElevenLabs, and Lyria.
“Currently, we are working on allowing developers to take a private bot they have built on Poe and use that through an API. Plus, we are thinking about better key management for developers for the API product,” Gareth Jones, Poe’s product lead for creators and developers, told TechCrunch over a call.
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While API provides a way for developers to use different models, Poe also offers tools aimed at consumers. Earlier this year, the company introduced a new way to allow users to easily create AI-powered apps. It also offers templates to build server bots, prompt bots, and image generation bots.
At the moment, developers will need to pick and manage model use manually. Jones said that the company will consider adding budget management functionality in the future, based on developer feedback.