Photos: Triangle crowds get a slice of the total eclipse
Travis Long
·2 min read
The rare solar eclipse on April 8 did not cast a total shadow on North Carolina, as it did in other parts of the country.
But that didn’t stop thousands of curious onlookers to head outside Thursday afternoon with their special glasses to experience about 80% of the sun eclipsed by the moon.
With gatherings at the Morehead Planetarium, parks and fields and in streets outside office buildings — basically anywhere there was an unobstructed view of the sky — the eclipse gave viewers a rare experience.
This eclipse, which was total in parts of North America, was the last total eclipse visible on the continent until 2045.
U.K. fintech Vitesse has closed a $93 million Series C round of funding led by investment giant KKR. KKR said it's making the investment through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund III, a $3 billion fund it closed last year. Founded out of London in 2013, Vitesse is the handiwork of Paul Townsend and Phil McGriskin, who had sold an e-commerce payments company called Envoy to WorldPay back in 2011.
OpenAI is removing one of the voices used by ChatGPT. Users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson, the company announced on Monday, and Johansson herself released a statement saying she hired legal council to inquire about the Sky voice and get exact details about how it was developed. "We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice," the company wrote in a blog post.
When putting a video portal in a public park in the middle of New York City, some inappropriate behavior will likely occur. The Portal, the vision of Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys, was designed to bring people together and let them share common experiences. After it opened earlier this month, the vast majority of people who went to the portal on both sides of the Atlantic waved to each other, brought their kids and pets and did friendly human things.
The top vehicle safety regulator in the U.S. has launched a formal probe into an April crash involving the all-electric VinFast VF8 SUV that claimed the lives of a family of four, TechCrunch has learned. A spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told TechCrunch on Monday that its Special Crash Investigations division will "document the crash circumstances and the ensuing fire." The victims, who have been identified by the Alameda County Sheriff's Department as Tarun and Rincy George, and their two children, did not own the vehicle.
For those who haven't heard, the first crewed launch of Boeing's Starliner capsule has been pushed back yet again to no earlier than May 25. From NASA: "The additional time allows teams to further assess a small helium leak in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft’s service module traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster." Scheduling note: TechCrunch Space will be off on May 27 in observance of Memorial Day.
A gaggle of PC makers rolled out their first Copilot+ PCs on Monday, but they all run on Qualcomm silicon. Intel said today its first chips to support Copilot+ AI features, will arrive in the fall.
ASUS isn’t sitting out the rush of AI-enhanced Copilot+ PCs. The company’s Vivobook S 15 has Windows AI features like memory assistant Recall, the image generator Cocreator, and several ASUS-exclusive AI apps.
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice reported for the team's organized team activities amid his involvement in a multi-car crash and alleged nightclub assault during the offseason.