Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re looking at the internal chaos surrounding HP’s $116 million acquisition of AI Pin maker Humane; Mira Murati’s new AI venture coming out of stealth; Duolingo killing its iconic owl mascot with a Cybertruck; and more! Let’s get into it.
Humane’s AI pin is dead. The hardware startup announced that most of its assets have been acquired by HP for $116 million, less than half of the $240 million it raised in VC funding. The startup will immediately discontinue sales of its $499 AI Pins, and after February 28, the wearable will no longer connect to Humane’s servers. After that, the devices won’t be capable of calling, messaging, AI queries/responses, or cloud access. Customers who bought an AI Pin in the last 90 days are eligible for a refund, but anyone who bought a device before then is not.
Hours after the HP acquisition was announced, several Humane employees received job offers from HP with pay increases between 30% and 70%, plus HP stock and bonus plans, according to internal documents seen by TechCrunch and two sources who requested anonymity. Meanwhile, other Humane employees — especially those who worked closer to the AI Pin devices — were notified they were out of a job.
Apple’s long-awaited iPhone SE refresh has been revealed, three years after the last major update to the budget-minded smartphone. The 16e is part of an exclusive group of handsets capable of running Apple Intelligence due to the addition of an A18 processor. The iPhone 16e also ditched the Touch ID home button in favor of Face ID and swapped out the Lightning port in favor of USB-C. The iPhone 6e starts at $599 and will begin shipping February 28.
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RIP, Duo: Duolingo “killed” its iconic owl mascot with a Cybertruck, and the marketing stunt is going surprisingly well. The company launched a campaign to save Duo — and encourage users to do more lessons — as the company says it’s “Duo or die.” Read more
OpenAI “uncensors” ChatGPT: OpenAI no longer wants ChatGPT to take an editorial stance, even if some users find it “morally wrong or offensive.” That means ChatGPT will now offer multiple perspectives on controversial subjects in an effort to be neutral. Read more
Uber vs. DoorDash: Uber is suing DoorDash, accusing its delivery rival of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals. Uber alleges that DoorDash bullied restaurants into only working with them. Read more
Mira Murati’s next move: Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has come out of stealth. The startup, which includes OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and former OpenAI chief research officer Barret Zoph, will focus on building collaborative “multimodal” systems. Read more
Introducing Grok 3: Elon Musk’s xAI released its latest flagship AI model, Grok 3, and unveiled new capabilities for the Grok iOS and web apps. Musk claims that the new family of models is a “maximally truth-seeking AI” that is sometimes “at odds with what is politically correct.” Read more
Hackers on Steam: Valve removed a video game from Steam that was essentially designed to spread malware. Security researchers found that whoever planted it modified an existing video game in an attempt to trick gamers into installing an info-stealer called Vidar. Read more
Another DEI U-turn: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s charity will end internal DEI programs and stop providing “social advocacy funding” for racial equity and immigration reforms. The switch comes just weeks after the organization assured staff it would continue to support DEI efforts. Read more
Amazon shuts down its Android app store: Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android in August in an effort to put more focus on the company’s own devices. The company told developers that they will no longer be able to submit new apps to the store. Read more
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand didn’t pay off: A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans’ views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are more negative than positive. About 54% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Musk while a whopping 67% feel negatively toward Zuckerberg. Read more
Noise-canceling headphones could hurt your brain: A new BBC report considers whether noise-canceling tech might be rewiring the brains of people who use it to tune out pesky background noise — and could lead to the brain forgetting how to filter sounds itself. Read more
An exhaustive look at the DOGE universe: The dozens of individuals who work under, or advise, Elon Musk and DOGE are a real-life illustration of Musk’s weblike reach in the tech industry. TechCrunch has unveiled the major players in the DOGE universe, from Musk’s inner circle to senior figures, worker bees, and aides — some of whom are advising and recruiting for DOGE. We highlight both the connections between them and how they entered Musk’s orbit. Read more
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Sure, why not?
The more than 8,000 charging ports available to federal workers are going away.
It’s unclear who vandalized the site, or why.
February 20, 2025 was a big day for the world’s richest man and shadow President Elon Musk. He called an astronaut “fully retarded” during an online fight. The Wall Street Journal reported that his lawyers have been threatening companies with Federal regulatory problems if they don’t spend money advertising on X. And he capped off the day by ignoring the pleas of Grimes, mother of three of his children, as he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to mumble incoherently while wearing sunglasses and waving around a chainsaw.
To hear Musk and Newsmax host Rob Schmitt tell it, the world’s richest man is now a hero. His poll numbers aren’t trending well, but whatever. Conservative Americans, especially those who attend CPAC, aren’t living in the same reality as the rest of the country. Musk is in his own special echo chamber that’s even more removed from the public. Wealth insulates you from your fellow man, and Musk is the richest man who has ever existed. He’s rich enough to purchase a popular social media platform and turn it into a hall of hollow praise and Nazi memes.
Grimes—the mother of three of Musk’s children, including the one he carries around with him for photo ops—took to X to plead with him yesterday. “Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis,” she said in a post on X. “I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention.”
She went on at length in several posts. She was replying to something Musk had posted unrelated to her and said Musk had stopped replying to her texts, emails, and phone calls. Newly revealed Musk mother Ashley St. Clair went through something similar earlier this week. Both women tried, and failed, to get Musk’s attention by replying to him on the social media site he owns. The result was the apparent “shadowbanning” of Grimes on the platform.
Musk was pretty busy all day getting into fights with astronauts and constantly posting. Later in the day was his big interview at CPAC. That’s the kind of thing a billionaire needs to focus on. Besides, the medical emergencies of your biological children can be so boring. Musk just wants to have a little fun.
Musk took the stage at CPAC, shook hands with disgraced meme-coin pumping rug-pulling Argentine president Javier Gerardo Milei and picked up a glittering chrome-plated chainsaw. Musk started the interview by waving the chainsaw around the stage and hooting for the audience.
Musk wore sunglasses, a Texas-style belt buckle, a black-on-black MAGA hat, and a gold chain. He didn’t take off the sunglasses for the entire interview and his body-mic picked up the flopping and rubbing of the gold chain as Musk nervously twitched and gesticulated during the conversation.
“I am become meme. There’s living the dream. And there’s living the meme,” Musk said to the audience after he sat down. “DOGE started out as a meme. Think about it. And now it’s real. Isn’t that crazy?”
Then he talked about how much fun he’s having and how everything is so very funny right now. “The left wanted to make comedy illegal. Y’know. You can’t make fun of anything. Like, comedy sucks. Nothing’s funny. You can’t make fun of anything. It’s like, legalize comedy! Yeah! Legalize comedy,” Musk said.
Schmitt asked how Musk found himself on the right side of the political spectrum. The billionaire blanked, like a computer program stuck in a recursive loop. Schmitt prompted him by asking if the left had gone crazy and forced him out.
“Y’know, the whole cancel culture stuff. Freedom of speech,” Musk said. “Infringe upon people’s personal freedoms. They just want state control. State control of what you say. They want to take away your guns.” Musk then rambled about how, now that he’s looked at the various government departments, he doesn’t even believe there’s a real left wing in the country. “I’m not sure how much of the left is even real…it doesn’t have popular support.”
Seventy-five million people voted for Kamala Harris.
Schmitt and Musk did a rapid-fire question-and-answer session about a bunch of conservative bête noires, talking points, and conspiracy theories.
Is it true that DOGE and Trump are going to send Americans $5,000 checks? “It sounds like that’s something we’re gonna do,” Musk said.
On assassinations, Musk would like to know more. “Why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler? What’s going on? Kash is going to get to the bottom of it!” We know a lot about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who took a shot at Trump. It’s been reported largely in the mainstream media that Musk decries.
“We’re fighting the Matrix big time here,” Musk said.
Trump has talked a lot recently about the concern that Fort Knox, which is supposed to hold America’s gold reserve, has no gold. Schmitt asked Musk if he thought the gold was there.
“I don’t know….we wanna go see it and make sure someone didn’t spray paint some lead or something, y’know?” Musk said. “Like, is this real gold? Bite the bar, y’know? Honestly, part of this is just like, let’s have some fun. And like, I said, all this gold at Fort Knox. It’s your gold. It’s the public’s gold, so like, I think you have a right to see it.”
Musk is governing by meme. He just wants to have fun. Slashing tens of thousands of jobs from the federal bureaucracy, accessing the private data of American citizens, and peddling bizarre conspiracy theories to a clapping audience is all just fun and games. “It’s very easy to take advantage of the federal government,” Musk said, with no self awareness whatsoever.
To see Musk out, Schmitt asked a tough question. “How much do you sleep?”
Musk hunched over in his chair, lowered his sunglasses, and darted his eyes back and forth over the crowd. They laughed. Musk didn’t answer.
“Paint us a picture of inside the mind of a genius,” Schmitt said.
“Uh,” Musk said. He made a face at the crowd. They laughed.
“My mind is a storm,” Musk said. “So. It’s a storm. But. But. I mean maybe let me tell you something, I mean, you can ask the question, but I think it’s worth elaborating on something. Which is. I grew up in South Africa and my morality was informed by America. I read comic books. I played Dungeons and Dragons. I watched American TV shows. It seemed like America cared about being the good guys. About doing the right thing. And that’s actually pretty unusual, by the way. So I was like, yeah. You wanna be on the side of good. You wanna care about what’s right. And um. And uh. That’s uh. That’s what I believe in.”
“I gave you a tough one at the end,” Schmitt said.
Musk stared into space. “So, uh, yeah.”
On X, someone pointed out to Grimes that she’d probably been shadowbanned and that it was hard for anyone to see her begging Musk for help with their children.
“lol” Grimes replied.
The billionaire and presidential buddy is focused on Mars but ignores the many reasons why ditching the ISS too soon is a mistake.