TeeJay Tech Bro

  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word essay this week declaring that “The Future is for Everyone” and painting an optimistic picture of a future powered by AI, where “everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about.” On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast , Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan, and I discussed why not everyone is buying Zuckerberg’s vision — including our colleague Russell Brandom, who wrote that the manifesto is “exactly why people don’t like AI.” Comparing Zuckerberg to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (who spent the weekend pushing back against the idea that he’s an AI doomer ), Rebecca said the Meta CEO seems to be positioning himself “almost like an anti-Dario.” The problem, however, is Zuckerberg and Meta’s history. “You look back to the social media days, [Zuckerberg] was saying that he wants to make sure that everyone has an outlet for talking to their friends and hav...

An unprecedented number of Apple customers have reported receiving a recent threat notification alerting them to suspected spyware attacks targeting their devices, according to experts who investigate these types of incidents.  Several people publicly and privately reported receiving Apple’s spyware alerts over the weekend, after Apple sent out a new wave of notifications on Friday alerting customers in 110 countries that they had been targeted with powerful spyware.  From time to time, the technology giant sends these types of alerts in batches to customers that it believes have been either targeted or compromised with malware normally used by governments, which the company refers to as “ mercenary spyware .” In the last few years, Apple says it has alerted people in more than 150 countries. The latest batch appears to have been the largest yet, per one of the digital rights groups that Apple suggests victims of spyware reach out to for help.   Mohammed Al-Maska...

  Perplexity spent the past year running one of the biggest AI growth experiments, giving its premium service away to customers of Indian telecom giant Airtel . Now, as the earliest of those free subscriptions expire, the results are starting to emerge, offering an early test of whether bundling paid AI services can create lasting users and revenue after the giveaway ends. In July 2025, Perplexity partnered with Airtel, India’s second-biggest telecom operator, to offer a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription, normally worth about $200, to the Indian carrier’s 360 million customers. New redemptions ended on January 16 . However, because subscribers retained Pro for a year from activation, the earliest users began reaching the end of their free access last month and had to opt out of auto-renewal if they did not want to be charged. Perplexity’s AI giveaway had an immediate impact, as it saw 5.9 million app downloads in India in July 2025, according to data Sensor Tower shared...