TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Peak Silicon Valley: The U.S. immigration department is paying Palantir $30 million to create what it's calling "ImmigrationOS" to help decide who to target for deportation, something YC founder Paul Graham criticized as "police state" technology. Palantir exec Ted Mabrey defended the company, saying it wants to "make the world a better place." Read More

2. The zoomers were right after all: Internal documents shared during the Meta antitrust trial last week show how the company has been fighting to keep Facebook culturally relevant. Emails from 2022 show that Mark Zuckerberg mused on ways to get back to the OG Facebook by focusing on improving the "Friend" experience. Read More

3. Minecraft Mania: "A Minecraft Movie" is the biggest movie of the year so far, and it comes after the massive success of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." You know what that means: Expect to see more video games adaptations in cinema and TV. Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

🧳 Still cheaper than a hotel? Airbnb is finally showing users the total cost of their stay, including cleaning fees, by default when they search for a property – not at the time of checkout after careful searching. Read More

🧬 Yes, that's your DNA data: Congress has sent a letter to 23andMe's interim CEO to ask how the now-bankrupt company will handle customer data if it gets acquired. "Given the lack of HIPAA protections, the patchwork of state laws covering genetic privacy…we are concerned that this trove of sensitive information is at risk of being compromised." Read More

🤖 Run, Forrest! Beijing's E-Town tech hub hosted the world's first humanoid half-marathon, with 21 bots competing alongside thousands of humans. The winning bot from government-backed research institute X-Humanoid finished in two hours and 40 minutes. Read More

😣 Tone deaf? Mechanize says it wants to replace all humans everywhere. At its controversial and attention-seeking helm is AI researcher Tamay Besiroglu, whose nonprofit firm Epoch, ironically enough, analyzes the economic impact of AI and produces AI benchmarks. Read More

🚗 More delays: Tesla is reportedly pushing back the promised launch of a more affordable EV by months. A stripped-down Model Y was supposed to debut in the first half of this year, but things are kind of a mess at Tesla at the moment so this delay checks out. Read More

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Around the Web

❓The DOGE grift: It's become clear that DOGE isn't actually saving any federal funds. What Elon Musk's project has been good at is slashing government employees at agencies that prevent disease, provide aid to allies, regulate his industries, and ensure food and medicine safety. What can this tell us about what Musk is actually doing? Read More

⚽ Goal! Wired takes a look at three companies – OneCourt, Field of Vision, and Touch2See – that are creating devices called "tactile broadcasters" that help visually impaired people watch sports by converting on-field action into movement that the user can feel with their fingertips. Read More

👀 Zoomers, beware: Millennials grew up with chatrooms full of creeps, so we know not to trust randoms on the internet. That's a lesson many will soon learn as U.S. police departments use secretive tech that generates personas to collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, and suspected traffickers. 404 Media has the story. Read More

Before You Go

🗣️ Watch your manners: Is it possible that saying "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots is actually costing the companies money in computing costs? Yes! But being polite also sets the tone for a polite response. Read More