Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we learn that 4chan was hacked; we get a first look at how Lucid's Gravity SUV drives; and we have the latest on the drama between Rippling and Deel. Bon voyage!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: JuSun / Getty Images

💻 A hack! Controversial internet forum 4chan has been hacked. Several screenshots have been shared to rival message boards that show what appears to be 4chan's back end, source code, and other info that would have only been visible to the site's moderators.

🧹 Defying driving Gravity: We finally got our hands on a Lucid Gravity SUV for a test drive. Abigail Bassett concludes that this SUV has a lot of updated tech under the hood, compared to Lucid's Air Sedan, and overall is very fun to drive.

📧 You've got Notion: Notion released an email client, Notion Mail, today that connects Notion users' Gmail inboxes with the broader Notion platform. One of Notion Mail's features is an AI auto-labeling tool that pulls emails on a specific topic into a separate inbox.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

🗣️ OK, sure: OpenAI is allegedly branching out and working on an X-like social media platform. It's unclear whether this would be a stand-alone platform or part of ChatGPT. Having a social media platform would allow OpenAI to train its AI off of real-time data, like Meta and xAI.

🤷 No safety, no problem: When OpenAI released its new family of models, GPT-4.1, on Monday, it did so without a safety report as it typically would. OpenAI said it's not going to release one this time. These reports show the tests conducted internally on a model and aren't always flattering.

🎙️ Time for seconds: On this week's episode of the StrictlyVC Download, Hans Swildens, the founder and CEO of Industry Ventures, breaks down what's going on in the secondaries market right now, offers a look at the current liquidity crunch, and more.

🔍 Deel in Dubai: Rippling has been trying to serve Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz with no luck because they couldn't find him. Turns out, he's been in Dubai. The UAE has a reputation for being a safe haven for folks avoiding extradition. Somehow this story keeps getting crazier.

🤐 This diva: Apparently back in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg suggested wiping everyone's Facebook friends from their accounts as a possible solution to Facebook's declining significance. It's for the best that didn't happen because I think a lot of people would have just logged off for good.

Around the web

🛰️ Starlink surges: Starlink's internet kits are flying off the shelves in Nigeria with analysts predicting it will be the top internet source in the country by mid-2026. But there are concerns regarding the national security risks of letting a foreign company dominate internet access.

🦾 Planning ahead, I guess: Will the AI industry ever reach artificial general intelligence? Google clearly thinks we will: It's hiring a DeepMind researcher focused on the profound impact AGI will have on the world.