US crypto bills on the move, Worldcoin launches and Russia’s CBDC: Hodler’s Digest, July 23-29Crypto legislation goes to the House floor in the U.S., Worldcoin’s controversial launch and Russia’s digital ruble signed into law.

Twitter rebrands to ‘X,’ hackers infect Call of Duty, and foreign visitors to China go cashlessHey, friends, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s roundup of the week in tech news. Life getting in the way of your daily TechCrunch habit? Not to worry. WiR will get you caught up in no time.
This week, WiR covers the improving quality of AI porn generators and the ethical dilemmas they raise; Twitter rebranding to “X”; and hackers infecting Call of Duty with self-spreading malware. Elsewhere, we dive into a North Korean hacking group, foreign Chinese visitors’ newfound ability to go cashless, and the rollout of Sam Altman’s Worldcoin eyeball-scanning crypto project.
As always, it’s a lot to get to, so let’s not delay. But first, a reminder that if you haven’t already, sign up here to get WiR in your inbox every Saturday.
Most read
Twitter rebrands to “X”: This week, Twitter removed its iconic bird logo and adopted “X” as its new official branding. The move, which Elon Musk announced over the weekend, is a harbinger of the platform’s shift — perhaps more aspirational than concrete — to deemphasize text tweets in favor of audio, video, messaging and payment and banking.
Now it’s my X: Twitter’s rebranding to X hasn’t been faring exceptionally well. In addition to a haphazard rollout that saw parts of the site referencing “X” while others still implored you to “search Twitter” or push a blue button to “Tweet,” the company didn’t even make an attempt to secure the @x Twitter handle, owned by Gene X Hwang of the corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography. Twitter later wrested control of the handle without notifying or compensating Hwang.
Hackers infect Call of Duty: Hackers are infecting players of an old Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2, with a worm that spreads automatically in online lobbies. As Lorenzo writes, Modern Warfare 2 was released quite a bit ago — 2009 — but still has a small community of players. Call of Duty publisher Activision said in a tweet that it would bring the Steam version of the game offline as it “investigates report of [the] issue.”
Foreign visitors to China go cashless: This week, China’s two dominant mobile payment solutions, WeChat Pay and Alipay, announced that foreign users can now pay at Chinese retailers by linking their foreign credit cards, including Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Previously, using WeChat Pay and Alipay in China required a local bank account, making it challenging for short-term visitors to use these payment methods.
Worldcoin launches its eyeball-scanning project: Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s audacious eyeball-scanning crypto startup, has begun the global rollout of its services to help build a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online. People can download World App, the startup’s protocol-compatible wallet software, and visit an Orb, Worldcoin’s helmet-shaped eyeball-scanning verification device, to receive a unique “World ID.”
North Korean hackers expose themselves: Security researchers say they have high confidence that North Korean hackers were behind a recent intrusion at enterprise software company JumpCloud because of a mistake the hackers made. Mandiant, which is assisting one of JumpCloud’s affected customers, attributed the breach to hackers working for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, or RGB, a hacking unit that targets cryptocurrency companies and steals passwords from executives and security teams.
Waymo puts the brakes on trucks: Waymo is tapping the brakes on self-driving trucks and shifting most of its capital, resources and talent to one commercial bet: ride-hailing. Kirsten writes that the move, which was announced Wednesday in a company blog post, comes six years after Waymo first tested its autonomous vehicle system in Class 8 trucks. The company emphasized the decision was driven by the commercial opportunities in applying its autonomous vehicle technology to ride-hailing.
SEC probes Bolt ex-CEO: Ryan Breslow, co-founder of the e-commerce software outfit Bolt, was subpoenaed along with the company last year by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Christine reported this week. A letter authored in April by a lawyer representing Bolt investors said the SEC was investigating whether federal securities laws were violated in connection with statements made when Bolt was raising money in 2021.
Audio
In need of a podcast to fill the hours? You’re in luck. TechCrunch has a roster of new episodes to keep you both entertained and informed.
On Equity this week, the crew dug through the headlines of the past few days, starting with AngelList’s acquisition of Nova, Waymo steering toward robotaxis and the latest on interest rates from the Fed. They also touched on earnings for Big Tech and how more limited partner capital can funnel into diverse venture funds.
Found featured a conversation with Mandy Price, the co-founder and CEO at Kanarys, a software-as-a-service startup that helps companies tackle their diversity and inclusion problems with data. Mandy talked about why she started the company after a decade-long career as a lawyer and why she didn’t want Kanarys to just be focused on hiring metrics, as many other diversity, equity and inclusion platforms are.
And on Chain Reaction, Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, the co-founders of Boys Club, spoke about their social decentralized autonomous organization for the “crypto curious.” Originally designed to get women and nonbinary people into the web3 world, Boys Club now aims to be an open space for anyone looking to get into the space.
TechCrunch+
TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:
Why SAFE rounds are safe: SAFEs, simple agreements for future equity, have long been touted as a founder-friendly structure for signing venture deals. But is it really fair to call them that? Rebecca investigates.
Positivity in the face of toxicity: Dominic writes about how prioritizing positive company culture is just as important — or at least, should be as important — as investor returns.
Playing the long AI game: Microsoft’s and Alphabet’s results indicate the AI game is more of a long-term strategy, Alex writes.

Get your TechCrunch fix IRL. Join us at Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco this September to immerse yourself in all things startup. From headline interviews to intimate roundtables to a jam-packed startup expo floor, there’s something for everyone at Disrupt. Save up to $600 when you buy your pass now through August 11, and save 15% on top of that with promo code WIR. Learn more.

DECAP (DaBaby, Eminem) makes a beat from scratch
Multi-platinum producer DECAP sat down with us to showcase how he makes a beat from scratch in Ableton Live.

Cinematique Instruments Kalimba The kalimba is not just one kalimba - No, the kalimba is a big bundle of six different kalimbas as well as 2 articulations of the famous Guitaret. They are all different and all have a... Read More

Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for the independent do-it-yourselfers covered how to best prepare for a gig, how to increase your streams, and much more… Free Touring for Musicians. Continue reading
The post Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry’s week in reviewA busy week by any definition, and the music industry last week was no exception, with Barbie leading in music, Warner and TikTok cutting a deal, Spotify increasing prices, and. Continue reading
The post REWIND: The new music industry’s week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

G3 MultiBusComp plug-in from SSL SSl's latest plug-in offers three independent bands of G-Series compression, as well as variable saturation controls and a range of side-chain routing and processing options.

Graham Nash Benefit Concert Aids NAMM's Museum of Making MusicOn July 18, NAMM’s Museum of Making Music welcomed patrons to a sold-out “Concert for a Cause” benefit event that featured legendary Grammy Award®-winning renaissance artist Graham Nash. The event was held at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California, and raised more than $195,000 in support of the museum’s educational outreach programs, which impact thousands of school children and adults each year. Do you know an ambitious college student studying a career in music? The Lamond GenNext Award (formerly the President’s Innovation Award) honors and helps to fund college students who demonstrate excellence and are exploring career opportunities in music, sound and event technology.Apply Here

Music and music making are essential elements of the full human experience. Watch as Graham Nash expounds upon the benefits of making music from a young age, as captured by NAMM’s Oral History Program.

namm.org

NatLife Sounds True Trance Sounds V2 For Diva NatLife Sounds is back with a new massive soundbank for U-He Diva synthesizer. It's a 64 outstanding Trance presets, thats fit every needs from the sound design. One bank for... Read More

Worldcoin is making reality look like a lot like Black MirrorOpenAI’s sister company Worldcoin wants you to buy its coin — and possibly unleash a tempest of problems across the world in the process.

Angry Mob Presents New Normal Writing Camp, Announces Upcoming CampsThe New Normal Writing Camp presented by Angry Mob Music Group took place over five days (June 26-30) in Downtown Los Angeles and featured 30+ talented artists/writers/producers from 10+ different cultural backgrounds. In addition, out of those in attendance, 50% of them were women producers and 70% were female writers/artists. 

The New Normal Writing Camp, founded by Ralph Torrefranca (Filipino-American Senior Director of A&R, Angry Mob), was created to bring our songwriting community together and lift each other up in an industry where underrepresented voices are often held back due to the old ways of thinking. The New Normal is a writing camp that encourages diversity and champions the melting pot of cultural backgrounds, which brings a unique and universally relatable perspective into the music world.

“Artists in residence” included UMI (RCA), YDE (Warner/Facethouse), Paravi (RCA), Deb Never (Moon Landing), Maris (Black House), Tempest (Arista/Sony), and Chandler Leighton; Our producers included MNDR (Mark Ronson, Charlie XCX), Chong The Nomad (21 Savage, Shang-Chi), Ali Stone, V-RON (Alicia Keys, Ambre), Joe Pepe (Iann Dior, Sam Short), Verskotzi (Prinze George, Sam Drysdale), Bus (Ty Dolla $ign, Brent Faiyaz) and Dominique Sanders (Tech9, Dr. Dre); and our writers/artists included Bailey Bryan, Sayak Das, Kiana V, Brooke Daye, Rose Tan, LeyeT, Galxara, Taylor Foley, Chloe Tang, Sad Alex, Floyd Fuji, Mori Einsidler, Gray Trainer, Dan Richards and Louis Castle.

The New Normal is proudly sponsored by BMI, Topo Chico, Shure, JHS Pedals, Izotope, Native Instruments, and Spitfire Audio, who all support the message and purpose behind what the camp aims to change in the industry. For more pictures, visit The New Normal Songwriting Camp's Instagram. Angry Mob Music is also planning to have another New Normal Writing Camp in Los Angeles, CA during the fall of 2023, followed by one in Nashville, TN in 2024. 

If it hadn’t been for them meddlin’ kidsWelcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
Not to get all GrumpyManYellsAtCloud.gif, but I’m getting pretty tired of the myth of the dropped-out-of-college founders. Investors — and the broader ecosystem — have known for a long time that while there are some high-profile outliers, it’s much easier to build a startup if you have a fat Rolodex, some experience, and perhaps a few failures under your belt. I know Hollywood doesn’t think it’s nearly as good of a story, but . . . perhaps it’d be good to balance things out a little on that front.
Apropos meddling: Those robots have been hard at work generating smut, and Kyle reports that as AI porn generators get better, the stakes get higher. Perhaps as a result of that story (and the internet reaching fever pitch over AI porn), an interview we did with the Unstable Diffusion team last year is hella trending again on TechCrunch.
Apropos even more meddling: It seems that even very experienced founders get things pretty wrong from time to time, too — Elmo isn’t done running Twitter into the ground, it seems. This week, the burning wreckage of a social media site officially changed its logo to X. That has had some, er, curious side effects, including a lot of rebranding and renaming. Uniting the themes of smut and social media, Twitter Videos has so far resisted to rename itself, and one social media account (NSFW) seems to hint at why.
More AI. Always more AI
Image Credits: nadia_bormotova / Getty Images
I know, it seems like there’s always an AI section in Startups Weekly at the moment. Don’t blame me — blame the flamin’ hot news coming out of that vertical at the moment.
On TC+, Nick Zamanov penned an article about how his company tried using OpenAI to generate marketing strategies — and was delighted to discover that it worked.
Meanwhile, OpenAI just released a neat feature that introduces customized instructions for ChatGPT. Instead of having to type “write me a three-section newsletter in the style of TechCrunch’s Startups Weekly, and smatter in some really dumb jokes,” you can configure that as the default behavior. Writing newsletters is going to be so quick in the future, I swear. (Just kidding: I’ve tried. ChatGPT’s attempts at writing this thing were as dull as dishwater. My job is safe for another week or two.)
The bots are coming to the Androids: ChatGPT comes to Android, and soon became available in the U.S., India, Bangladesh and Brazil. OpenAI plans to release the app in more countries very soon.
I’m sure that wasn’t a stressful job: After just 18 months in the job, OpenAI’s head of trust and safety Dave Willner steps down. The company’s CTO Mira Murati will manage the team on an interim basis while they find a replacement.
Let’s translate this from corporate-ese into bot-speak: A startup that’s building tools to help prepare enterprise data to get gobbled up into large language models, Unstructured raises $25 million.
The art of changing your mind
Image Credits: Images by Christina Kilgour / Getty Images
This week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the job of a founder. I already mentioned the TechCrunch+ piece I wrote about startups not just being a young person’s game, and I spoke with a founder who decided to replace himself as the CEO of his own company. Earlier this week, I also spoke with DeeDee Deman, who has spent the past 50 years headhunting CEOs, to get some tips on how you can think about finding a new CEO for your startup.
While on the topic of replacements — Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz moves on, almost 40 years after he joined the influential venture fund. He’s going to continue board work with a handful of companies but is planning to hand over most of the workload to other Sequoia partners.
Companies are still going public. Just not startups: It’s been a drought in the tech startup IPO space, but on TC+, Alex crunched the numbers and realized that there’s still a lot of activity — and it’s making startups look silly as hell.
Optimizing for impact: More and more companies are thinking about climate — and impact investors are flocking to the segment. That scares me a bit, but Agnes Svensson, the chief impact officer at Norrsken VC, shares five key questions climate tech founders should ask impact investors.
One of the most amazing social experiments: Reddits r/place is an incredible experiment, where a logged-in user can place a single pixel on a canvas every 5 minutes. It’s one of my favorite things about the internet, because it requires something utterly rare: coordination and teamwork. Of course, redditors used this year’s evolution of the game to shout loudly about the API changes that have sparked a revolt on the social media site.
Pulling into the pit stop
 
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Autonomous trucking company Aurora sells $820 million worth of stock in order to continue its drive toward launching an autonomous trucking business in 2024. Around the same time, Waymo put the brakes on its self-driving trucks program.
Meanwhile, peeking at Tesla’s business fundamentals, Rebecca reminds us that the company is an automaker, not a tech company — and that its margins look a lot more like Ford than, say, Salesforce.
Time for another U-turn: We’ve been flip-flopping on this one for a while, but it seems like GM has changed its mind once again, saying it isn’t going to kill off the Chevy Bolt EV after all. Personally, I think that’s great. We need smaller, more affordable EVs.
Tapping the zap: Seven of the largest automakers today announced a joint venture to create a massive EV charging network across North America.
Topping up at home: In smaller charging news, Voltpost raised a $3.6 million seed round to bring EV charging to the curbside.
Top reads on TechCrunch this week
In addition to some of the big hitters sprinkled throughout above, here are some of our mustn’t-miss stories for the week:
Maybe it’s just taking a nap?: I argued that VR as a category is dead and failed to find a killer app. AR is picking up the mantle, but we’ll see if it can do better.
I dunno, maybe hide better?: Zack reports that North Korean hackers targeting JumpCloud may have forgotten to mask their IP addresses properly, researchers say.
Buy it, then kill it: Aria reports that SpaceX has made only one acquisition to date (that we are aware of), but Swarm Technologies is halting new device sales. It seems that the acquisition may have been an aqui-hire, as Swarm’s founders are finding senior positions across SpaceX.
Stalking for cash: Zack had a couple of popular articles this week. He reported that Spyhide stalkerware is spying on tens of thousands of phones, and he dug into how TheTruthSpy stalkerware made its millions.
Enough, already: It’s getting more and more frustrating to report on this, but startups with all-women founding teams raised just $1.4 billion in H1, Dominic-Madori reports. That’s a paltry 1.6% of all venture funding invested. Mixed-gender teams picked up 28%.

Get your TechCrunch fix IRL. Join us at Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco this September to immerse yourself in all things startup. From headline interviews to intimate roundtables to a jam-packed startup expo floor, there’s something for everyone at Disrupt. Save up to $600 when you buy your pass now through August 11, and save 15% on top of that with promo code STARTUPS. Learn more.

Daft Punk’s Guy-Man credited as producer on Travis Scott’s UtopiaRapper Travis Scott has finally released his long-awaited album, Utopia, and to the surprise of Daft Punk fans, one song on it was produced by Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo, AKA Guy-Man of the iconic French dance duo.

READ MORE: Beatport.io launch digital collectable series about Berlin’s techno scene

The album is filled to the brim with producer collabs from James Blake to Beyonce, SZA and even the controversial Kanye West.
However, the third track on the album, MODERN JAM, is where Guy-Man’s production skills really come to light. You can even hear Scott refer to Guy-Man at one point with the lyrics “Hey, Guy-Man, brought him home from France”.

Unsurprisingly, it is certainly one of the more electronic-sounding tracks on the album and has Scott rapping over the top of a looped beat that develops throughout the song.
Fans in the comments have praised Scott and Guy-Man’s production skills on the track, with many even claiming how old-school it sounds.
“I’m feeling this 90s type beat. I need a music video on this that has a 90s theme. Travis killed it,” writes one listener.
“This is going to go nuts in the club. Brought an old-school vibe. 80s type shit,” wrote another.
In more Utopia-related news, Travis Scott’s Utopia launch concert and livestream from Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza has officially been cancelled due to safety concerns. The Egyptian Musicians Syndicate announced that there were also issues with the “peculiar rituals performed by the star during his performance, contradicting our authentic societal values and traditions.”
The concert was set to take place tonight (28 July), and all ticket holders are being issued refunds via Live Nation Middle East.
The post Daft Punk’s Guy-Man credited as producer on Travis Scott’s Utopia appeared first on MusicTech.

The second single, Loading, from James Blake’s next album is hereJames Blake has released the second single from his forthcoming album – a track entitled Loading.

READ MORE: Romy’s moody new dance anthem The Sea is produced by Fred again..

This new song is set to be part of Blake’s seventh full-length body of work, Playing Robots Into Heaven, which is due to be released on Polydor in September.
Listen to Loading below:

The track sees the Limit To Your Love producer and singer dip into a 909-flecked 4×4 techno beat and back out into softer moments typical of Blake’s style. Although they haven’t been credited, the track features Blake’s vocals in various pitches, alongside other undisclosed vocalists.
This track follows the first single from the album, Big Hammer, which was revealed in June. While the second single is more in-keeping with mellow sounds associated with Blake today, Big Hammer reverts to his post-dubstep style, with a boisterous leftfield trap-cum-trip-hop beat, a bleeping synth and rap samples.
The music video for Big Hammer, which you can see below, shows a Clockwork Orange-esque mob crashing into various buildings, terrorising the public.

The tracklist for the forthcoming album, Playing Robots Into Heaven, which will come out on 8 September, is below:
1. Asking to Break
2. Loading
3. Tell Me
4. Fall Back
5. He’s Been Wonderful
6. Big Hammer
7. I Want You to Know
8. Night Sky
9. Fire the Editor
10. If You Can Hear Me
11. Playing Robots into Heaven
In May of 2022, Blake created an album specifically for users of Endel, an app that uses AI to create reactive soundscapes for sleeping and studying. The album is called Wind Down and is an ambient group of tracks designed to allow listeners to sleep healthily.
On the Wind Down album, Blake said: “The Wind Down soundscape I created with Endel lets me explore the more ambient side of my music and create a project to support people in a new way.
“It’s mesmerising to hear how my music blends with the science-based sounds of Endel’s AI and I think we’ve invented something not just beautiful or even meaningful, but truly practical.”
Pre-order James Blake’s next album, Playing Robots Into Heaven, via jamesblakemusic.com.
The post The second single, Loading, from James Blake’s next album is here appeared first on MusicTech.