🚀 Stoked for space: Stoke Space, the startup known for working to build a reusable rocket, seems to be getting closer to its ambitious goals. TechCrunch's Aria Alamalhodaei looks at what progress the 5-year-old startup has made thus far and what it needs to do before its first potential launch next year. Read more
🍎 Apple APIs: Apple announced that it's opening up its near field communication (NFC), the tech that powers things like Apple Pay, to third-party developers in the U.S., Australia and Japan, among others. TC's Sarah Perez reports that this new access is likely a result of a yearslong investigation by the European Commission that prompted Apple to open up this capability in Europe a few months ago. Read more
💲 Wire whoops: On Saturday, Texas-based carbon black company Orion disclosed in an SEC filing that it lost $60 million in multiple fraudulent outbound wire transfers. Zack Whittaker reports that these kinds of attacks are only getting more common. Read more
🌟 Stars power: Telegram takes a nod from Patreon with its new subscription features. The platform announced today that its creators can now launch paid monthly subscriptions for their content that users pay for with Stars, Telegram's digital currency. Telegram will take a fee from each transaction, but it didn't disclose how much. Read more
🖥️ FTC rules: Yelp lurkers rejoice! After more than a year since it was first announced, the FTC announced that it has passed a rule meant to tackle several different types of fake reviews and prohibit marketers from using deceptive tactics. This is great news for consumers as fake reviews continue to be more prevalent. Read more
🙋 AI answers: Turns out AI models might be hallucinating, providing misinformation as fact, more than we thought. Kyle Wiggers reported that a new study found that even the best AI models can generate hallucination-free answers only about a third of the time. Looks like the industry still has a long way to go. Read more
🎧 More layoffs: Sonos, known for its speakers and headphones, just completed its second round of layoffs in 14 months. The company confirmed to TC's Brian Heater that 100 people were let go in this most recent round, representing about 6% of the company. Read more
