In other tech news, CrowdStrike received the award for Most Epic Fail at Def Con’s Pwnie Awards following a software update that triggered a global IT meltdown. Waymo received approval to test its fully autonomous robotaxis on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area. OpenStreetMap celebrated its 20th birthday, and the FBI seized the servers of a ransomware and extortion gang called Radar. The dating app Score shut down, and Apple threatened to remove Patreon from the App Store over unsupported third-party billing options. California is working to launch support for digital IDs, and India’s top court put Byju’s insolvency proceedings on hold. Finally, Telegram announced new ways for creators to make money on its platform, and Palo Alto Networks faced criticism over a controversial trade show event.
Key takeaways:
- Google unveiled its new lineup of Pixel 9 phones, advanced AI-powered photo-editing tools, and the new Pixel Buds Pro 2 at the Made by Google event.
- Epic Games launched its rival iOS app store in the European Union, featuring games like Fortnite, Rocket League, Sideswipe and Fall Guys.
- X launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta with improved reasoning, but its image-generation feature has raised concerns due to lack of guardrails around creating images of political figures.
- Waymo received approval from California regulators to start testing its fully autonomous robotaxis on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area.