Robotaxi Traffic Control

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Happy Thursday, Future Party. Marty Supreme is quickly claiming the title for the best movie marketing of the year. First, there was the release of a hoodie that’s become the biggest fashion statement of 2025. Then came the viral A24 marketing meeting with star Timothée Chalamet, followed by the unforgettable orange blimp. And now, Airbnb is hosting a table-tennis tournament in NYC called the “Marty Supreme Invitational.” Ping-pong has never been cooler.

A new startup called Autolane wants to build the physical and digital infrastructure to help businesses and other private spaces navigate the autonomous vehicles that go in and out of their properties.

Why It Hits: Autonomous-vehicle adoption is accelerating across the globe. The only problem is that while these vehicles are getting better at traversing city streets, the logistics of parking, idling, and other pedestrian-adjacent tasks remain a major blind spot — one that’s creating bottlenecks and general chaos.

Between The Lanes: Autolane has raised $7.4 million to become what co-founder and CEO Ben Seidl calls, “air traffic control for autonomous vehicles.”

Last Turn: Seidl told TechCrunch that what Autolane is trying to address are incidents like the one that happened at a Chick-fil-A in Santa Monica earlier this year. After a Waymo dropped off passengers, it didn’t know how to leave the premises properly and got stuck in the drive-thru. We can only imagine how confusing that must’ve been for the employees.

Next Stop: With seemingly no competition, Autolane could gain a first-mover advantage by securing funding and deals — similar to how Waymo has pulled ahead of the competition.

The post–Cyber Monday lull is usually when merchants realize just how much rising processing fees and fraud attempts are eating into their margins. That’s why many are turning to Kurv — the provider keeping swiped, keyed, and online rates below 3%, even during the busiest stretch of the year.

Why it matters: December brings higher volume, faster checkout expectations, and a spike in suspicious activity. Kurv’s fast onboarding, real 24/7 support, and strong fraud controls make the transition feel smooth instead of chaotic.

The bottom line: After four decades in payments and millions of weekly transactions, Kurv is becoming the quiet cost-saver merchants rely on to survive the holiday push — without paying for it in January.

🔔 See How Kurv Can Work For You This Holiday Season 🔔

A new interactive slasher movie titled Slay Day will give audiences control over what the characters do during theatrical screenings.

The Big Picture: Hollywood has been chasing choose-your-own-adventure storytelling for years, but the cost, logistics, and sheer filmmaking complexity have kept it from scaling. The industry may essentially be waiting for a breakout hit to justify committing to the format.

Behind The Choices: Slay Day “follows six teens preparing for their biggest night of the year: the Sadie Hawkins dance. But when the town exhumes the body of the real Sadie Hawkins to unravel the truth behind her killing spree fifty years earlier, a malevolent force returns to the town.”

Final Girl: Buxton told Variety that “horror has always been about participation — yelling at the screen, covering your eyes, daring the killer to come closer. Slay Day turns that instinct into action.” While audiences do love yelling at the screen for characters to “get out!” (which Jordan Peele, of course, tapped into with perfection), they don’t really love the in-theater, second-screen experience. Audiences didn’t love Blumhouse’s M3GAN chatbot screenings.

But theaters recognize that certain audience segments want more interactivity when it makes sense, which has led to sing-along screenings of Wicked and rowdy showings of Minecraft. Maybe Slay Day will find the same appeal if the tech works well.

Coming Soon: If the movie is actually good, though, it could naturally lead audiences to check out the film multiple times — potentially making it the highest-grossing film from the smallest audience pool.

Brad’s Deals’ biggest shopping event of the year has finally arrived.

Get your holiday shopping done early — and save money while you do. Each day, they’ll feature one exclusive offer available only at Brad’s Deals.

Holiday deals this good won’t last long, so shop now before they disappear!

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43.2% of you voted A mix of both (positive and negative) in yesterday’s poll: How would you describe your overall perception of fame?

“Fame feels great as it’s happening, horrible as it’s being lost, and a mixed bag while it’s established.”

“At its best, it provides resources for the famed person to create more stuff. At its worst, it dictates what that stuff must be.”

“I work in Hollywood, so fame is a big deal within the industry — however, it's a mental illness, to be honest. I meet famous people weekly, and it gets exhausting to lie to them about how great their new movie is. You start to feel like you’re going insane in those situations and have to take breaks from being around all the chaos.”

“I worked in the music business for several years in the mid-’70s and didn’t see a lot of real happiness among those who’d achieved fame — or those striving for it. Yes, they got to party a lot. It looked like a good time onstage and backstage, but when the crowds weren’t there, the musicians were tired, anxious about staying on top, and often numbed by substance abuse. They were on concert tours when I worked with them, but it didn’t seem like a fabulous life.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

🎤 Bad Bunny has topped Spotify Wrapped as the most-popular artist of the year worldwide.

🎫 Italian tech conglomerate Bending Spoons is buying event-ticketing platform Eventbrite for $500 million.

💸 Crypt TV founder and Chain investor Jack Davis is launching Tamarisk Lane — a holding company that will invest in consumer brands experimenting with new tech.

🦾 Anthropic is exploring an IPO in 2026 that could value it at over $300 billion.

🤖 OpenAI is already working on a new large language model, codenamed “Garlic,” to compete with Google’s Gemini 3.

🛰️ Google is launching solar-powered satellites to capture energy for its data centers.

🎲 Prediction market Kalshi has raised $1 billion in a new funding round, making 29-year-old co-founder Luana Lopes Lara the youngest female self-made billionaire.

🤳 An Ipsos study found that 60,000 American TikTok Live creators will make a median part-time monthly income from gift earnings alone.

👀 Your location data could determine how much you pay for groceries online.