Waymo has created a new computer model designed to more accurately answer a fundamental question: how does its autonomous driving software stack up against humans? The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company, which developed the computer model of human driving capabilities in conjunction with TU Delft, published a research paper about it in Nature Communications on Wednesday. Waymo said it expects the new model to be more accurate than the previous version it has used over the past several years. The new model was built using a framework called active inference — the theory that a driver is constantly imagining possible futures and…

As was widely reported, Oracle axed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people via email on March 31. One of the employees cut that day told TechCrunch about the experience: “I had, like, this weird feeling in my stomach. I went to go sign into the VPN, and the VPN was like, ‘this user doesn’t exist anymore.’ Then I called my friend, and I was like, ‘Hey, can you see me in Slack?’ And she said, ‘No, your account’s been deactivated.’” The person soon received an email stating their role was terminated immediately. The severance offer arrived a few days later. But…

Indian startup Rocket is betting that the next big opportunity is the part before vibe coding: having AI help people decide what to build. It has launched a platform that produces consulting-style product strategies. The startup, based in Surat, India, on Tuesday launched its platform, Rocket 1.0, which connects research, product building, and competitive intelligence in a single workflow. The platform generates detailed product strategy documents — including pricing, unit economics, and go-to-market recommendations. As AI-powered coding tools proliferate — from platforms like Cursor, Replit, and Lovable to features such as Claude Code and Codex — writing code has become…