The TechCrunch Podcast

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast, Becca Szkutak comes on to talk about the fraught state of extension rounds for many early-stage startups and Devin Coldewey about upcoming changes to Instagram that a lot of users agree will make the app much worse. And as always, Darrell will catch you up on the tech news you may have missed this week.

Articles from the episode:

• Instagram to walk back full-screen home feed and temporarily reduce recommended posts
• Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok
• Every startup wants an extension round, but there aren’t enough to go around

Other news from the week:

• Meta posts its first ever quarterly revenue decline
• Amazon’s shares rise on earnings beat, despite $2B loss
• iPhone revenue up slightly for Q3, as other hardware categories lose steam
• Rivian begins laying off 6% of workforce
• T-Mobile will pay out $350M to customers in data breach settlement

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell.

This week Darrell talks with Amanda Siberling about how the founder of Spill, a new social app, secured funding after he was laid off from Twitter. And new TC writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai talks about his illuminating scoop about a recent Google Fi hack. But first, Darrell goes over some of the top news from the week.

Articles from the episode:

• Three months ago, he was laid off from Twitter. Now, his competing app Spill is funded
• Google Fi hack victim had Coinbase, 2FA app hijacked by hackers

More from TechCrunch

• Netflix lists rules and exemptions to prevent account sharing outside household
• Hacker finds bug that allowed anyone to bypass Facebook 2FA
• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month
• Twitter to end free access to its API in Elon Musk’s latest monetization push

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell.

Snapchat Rolled out their generative AI chatbot, My AI to their 750 million monthly users so it feels like the right time to pause and ask whether we’re ready for the real thing – and ready or not, whether anybody wants one. This week on the TechCrunch Podcast, Darrell Etherington is talking to TechCrunch reporter, Amanda Silberling about making robot friends on the internet.

Articles from the episode:

• Snapchat’s AI chatbot is now free for all global us
• Snapchat sees spike in 1-star reviews as users pan the ‘My AI’ feature, calling for its removal
• Missouri trans ‘snitch form’ down after people spammed it with the ‘Bee Movie’ script
• SpaceX’s successful failure is a wake-up call for Starship’s timeline
• Google’s Bard AI chatbot can now generate and debug code
• Apple wins antitrust court battle with Epic Games, appeals court rules

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell.

Welcome back to the TechCrunch podcast. This week we're bringing you a special treat from our friends over at Equity.

This week, Alex recorded at Early Stage, TechCrunch's event for founders who are building startups from the ground up. Happily, Darrell from the TechCrunch team was sitting next to us on the show floor so we tagged him in for some rocket knowledge.

Anyhoo, here's the run of show!

• All things Early Stage: Notes from the show floor, what we can infer about attendance and a vibe check.
• Elon's new, larger rocket went up (very good) and then went "boom" (not as good). Happily for the space race, the overall result of the launch was good. Rockets have a tendency to go boom when they are new, and it's a bit of the, well, testing process to have them do so. Sure, a non-boom result would have been better, but SpaceX wasn't planning on trying to reuse the parts anyway.
• Tesla's earnings came out and investors are not that pleased. While there was some good stuff in the numerical set, price cuts at the company and moderating cash flow indicate that profitability gains could be harder to reach in the future.
• And layoffs. Meta is cutting staff. Insider is cutting staff. BuzzFeed is cutting staff. It's a mess out there.

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell.

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast Managing Editor Darrell Etherington gives you a rundown of the biggest stories in tech this week and sits down with TC writers for a deep dive into a few of them. In this episode, he talks with Zack Whittaker about Apple’s latest security feature, lockdown mode and Amanda Silberling about the end of former Theranos exec Sunny Balwani’s trial.

Please note, we recorded with episode before news of Elon’s attempt to terminate his deal to acquire Twitter broke. Read Taylor Hatmaker’s coverage here to stay up to date.

Articles from the episode:

• Apple says Lockdown Mode in iOS 16 will help block government spyware attacks
• Former Theranos exec Sunny Balwani is found guilty

Other news from the week:

• Elon Musk tells Twitter he is killing the deal
• Things get messy for Elon Musk with report about new twins he shares with Neuralink exec
• A huge data leak of 1 billion records exposes China’s vast surveillance state
• Hotel giant Marriott confirms yet another data breach
• Apple reportedly plans to launch an ‘extreme sports’ Apple Watch with a larger screen and metal casing

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell.