founder
AI vibe check: Searching for human signals at a San Francisco tech conference
The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. AI looms large in the big national conversation. Would I find any recognition of growing concern and cynicism at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026? I spoke 1-on-1 with startup founders, searching for signals of a new AI vibe. As I was developing my reporting plan for TechCrunch Disrupt last week, one key question loomed large in my head: Would I find any AI startups at this annual summit for fledgling tech companies? The conference is in San Francisco, after all, so finding AI tech might prove difficult. But I wanted to at least try.
How Elizabeth Holmes Tricked WIRED--and Everyone Else
WIRED was the first magazine to cover Theranos and its enticing billionaire founder. There were warning signs even then. Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the fraud-ridden blood-test company Theranos, made her national press debut in The Wall Street Journal in 2013. It ran in the Opinion section, by a writer on the Journal's editorial board named Joseph Rago, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for critiques of the Affordable Care Act. He wrote that he was impressed by the prospect of individuals having more direct control of their health care; no less an eminence than former secretary of state George Shultz, a Theranos board member, had told Rago that Holmes was the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. By 2014, Holmes was the youngest woman billionaire ever, and the mid-2010s were electric with tech-industry success stories--the iPhone, Tesla, Airbnb, Twitter.
He Journeyed Deep Into Elon Musk's Brain. Spoiler: It Wasn't Pretty.
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Hollywoods tech movie boom has arrived
Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Look Up Trending Now Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net All Series Hollywood's tech movie boom has arrived As Silicon Valley's power and influence grow, Hollywood is putting its founders under the microscope. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.
She's 28, Loves God and Her Family, and Might Be the Reason You Can't Have Kids
She's 28, Loves God and Her Family, and Might Be the Reason You Can't Have Kids Emma Waters is leading a national fight against fertility tech--with her hot husband's permission, of course. By 5 am every morning, Emma Waters is on the sofa with a blanket, plotting America's baby-making future. For two hours, she stays off her phone, inspired by, the self-help bestseller. At 7:30, she does emails. Waters, 28 years old, is a monk of productivity who makes motherhood look like all-natural Adderall. At 8 am, it's time for breakfast and the Bible. Waters tries to live her life according to the mantra "Love God, get married, have babies." She asks that I not use the real names of her two daughters for their safety, even though they've been printed elsewhere. I'll call them Gertie and Ophelia, which are close enough. Ophelia, the baby, runs around in white tights, shirtless, clutching a pink purse; Gertie's doll won't stop crying. There isn't much to say about Jack, other than that he's hot, is studying to be a preacher, and has a big desk at home, much bigger than Waters', featuring a bust of Nietzsche. In the same room, Waters has a pull-out secretary where she takes meetings, not far from a portrait of a glowering President Trump . The only thing Waters doesn't really do is exercise; she hasn't found the time. Not many people outside of DC have heard of Waters, who mostly works from home in a dreary Pennsylvania suburb named after a long-offshored manufacturer. Yet Waters is a factory for policy papers and op-eds extolling the harms of unregulated reproductive technology, probing the moral issues that liberals don't want to touch with a 10-foot turkey baster.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire on Arc, the Future of Quantum and the Agentic Economy
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The CEO Moment: Airbnb's Brian Chesky
Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Next year, Airbnb will mark its 20th anniversary. Through its evolution--from a few air mattresses placed on an apartment floor to one of America's best-known American technology companies--it has been led by Brian Chesky.
75% of developers I surveyed prefer Claude Code - here's why they choose it over Codex
I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen Three out of four of the 138 developers I surveyed use Claude Code. Here's what they say matters in daily AI coding workflows. Claude Code dominates, but Codex has crucial advantages. Whichever AI you choose, human review remains essential. I explained how I use both tools and provided some suggestions for exploring them.
The New (And Slightly Smelly) Center of the AI Boom
San Francisco's brightest minds are stuffing themselves into hacker houses. The living room of the Accler8 hacker house in San Francisco, where the author stayed for a week. O n a Friday in April, I hopped into an Uber to a fish market in San Francisco with a couple of tech founders on a mission to buy lobsters. Not for dinner, but for science: The duo dreamed of one day altering human consciousness, but they would start by toying around with some crustaceans. They intended to perform neurosurgery on the lobsters in the hopes of controlling them with an AI bot. Leading the way was Elliot Roth, a bearded 32-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with Longevity printed across the chest and a silver chain with a double-helix pendant. To push the boundaries of the five senses, Roth has implanted a magnet in his left ring finger.