About: blatcho

Kate Conger / New York Times: A jury finds ex-Amazon engineer Paige Thompson guilty of wire fraud and hacking charges for downloading the personal info of 100M+ Capital One customers in 2019  —  Paige Thompson’s lawyers said she had been looking for cracks so they could be fixed.  A jury found her guilty of wire […]

Bloomberg: Bitcoin falls by 6%+ to below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020, the twelfth straight day of decline, as ether briefly dropped below $1,000  —  Bitcoin dropped below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020 as evidence of deepening stress within the crypto industry keeps piling …

Nikkei Asia: Chipmakers including TSMC embark on a $120B investment spree across Taiwan, with 20 new fabs ready or in the works, dwarfing planned investments in US and Japan  —  20 new fabs ready or in pipeline, dwarfing planned investments in U.S. and Japan  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan’s chipmakers have launched …

Tesla’s Autopilot and other automotive safety features are involved in plenty of car crashes. But thanks to spotty data, it’s still not clear how many, or what to do about it.

The WikiLeaks founder will appeal the UK Home Office’s decision to extradite him to the US.

In an interview with WIRED, the engineer and priest elaborated on his belief that the program is a person—and not Google’s property.

Lauren Feiner / CNBC: In a letter, 21 US lawmakers ask Google to clamp down on “misleading” search results that steer people searching for abortions services to anti-abortion clinics  —  – A group of lawmakers are urging Google to clamp down on misleading search results that allegedly steer people searching …

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Meta unveils Avatars Store, where users can buy digital clothes for avatars, and plans to make it a marketplace where developers can create and sell clothing  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is launching a digital designer clothing store called the “Meta Avatars Store.”

Andrea Peterson / The Record: The US DOJ says RSocks, a Russian botnet used to hijack millions of devices worldwide for use as proxy servers, was disrupted in an international operation  —  The Department of Justice announced Thursday that the U.S. and international law enforcement partners in the United Kingdom, Germany …

By detecting tiny movements of particles of light, a quantum microphone has recorded human speech that is easier to understand than if it is captured by an equivalent classical version

Upon looking at photographs and drawing on their past experiences, humans can often perceive depth in pictures that are, themselves, perfectly flat. However, getting computers to do the same thing has proved quite challenging. The problem is difficult for several reasons, one being that information is inevitably lost when a scene that takes place in […]

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor at MIT, received yesterday the 2022 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine in recognition of his contributions to messenger (mRNA) therapeutics and delivery technology, which enabled the rapid development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Langer shares the award with Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, […]

Sponsor content from Siemens Energy.

It’s not a fixed personality trait. It’s a state any employee can attain — with enough organizational support.

Three tips.

Here’s what’s coming in the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system, which arrives later this year.

Oliver Knight / CoinDesk: Hong Kong-based crypto lender Babel Finance says it has suspended withdrawals and redemptions due to “unusual liquidity pressures”  —  Babel Finance has responded to a market downturn by temporarily freezing withdrawals and redemptions.  —  Hong Kong-based crypto lender Babel Finance …

Financial Times: Blockchain.com data: bitcoin’s hash rate fell 4% since the start of the week, as the value of revenues paid to miners fell to its lowest level in nearly a year  —  Share prices of companies that validate crypto transactions have tumbled over the past month  —  Bitcoin miners are scaling …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Prague-based online grocery delivery service Rohlik has raised a €220M Series D led by Sofina and says it had revenues of €500M in 2021  —  The salad days are over for many startups in the online food delivery sector.  Following a long period of cash injections …

Artificial intelligences continue to exhibit the same biases and prejudices as humans because they are trained on what we create, but there are ways we can improve the situation

The hard times could be a harbinger for everyone else.

Democrats are pumping the brakes on an ambitious Senate bill over long-shot concerns about content moderation.

In Outerloop’s new game, the South Asian hero battles exes and cooks with her parents. It’s a big step toward creating more games for non-white audiences.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Klarna is in talks to raise fresh funds at a ~$15B valuation, down from its $45.6B valuation in June 2021; source: a deal could yield at least $500M  —  The SoftBank-backed, buy-now-pay-later startup is discussing raising cash at a valuation around $15 billion, down from 2021’s near $46 billion valuation

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Boston-based remote notarization startup Notarize has laid off 110 of ~440 employees, or 25% of its workforce; Notarize was valued at $760M in March 2021  —  Notarize, a startup that offers remote online notarization services, has let go of 110 people – or 25% of its workforce.

Reuters: Lyft reaches a $25M settlement to resolve shareholder claims that it concealed safety problems, including sexual assault by drivers, before its IPO in 2019  —  Lyft Inc (LYFT.O) has reached a $25 million settlement to resolve shareholder claims that the ride-hailing company concealed safety problems …

A new hack called Hertzbleed can read snippets of data from computer chips remotely and could leave cryptography algorithms vulnerable to attack

El Salvador has invested heavily in bitcoin and related infrastructure in a bold plan to build its economy around the cryptocurrency, but now its value has plummeted

In the popular board game “Puerto Rico,” players are placed in the role of colonial governors. Their task, while growing crops on plantations, is to earn points by shipping goods to Europe and owning buildings — the violent project of territorial expansion reduced to a tabletop game for three-to-five players. Such games, influenced by a […]

Many of us easily recognize emotions expressed in others’ faces. A smile may mean happiness, while a frown may indicate anger. Autistic people often have a more difficult time with this task. It’s unclear why. But new research, published June 15 in The Journal of Neuroscience, sheds light on the inner workings of the brain […]

The economic downturn of 2008-09 has often been described as a financial-sector crisis, featuring failing banks. But it was much more than that. Many people with stagnant or dropping incomes, having borrowed to sustain their standard of living, found themselves deep in debt when the economy sagged and joblessness increased. In turn, those economic problems […]

Sponsor content from EY-Parthenon.

Prioritize, build trust, simplify, and prepare.

Create a calculus that helps your team weigh and align on conflicting objectives.

This week on Gadget Lab, we reckon with streaming’s growing pains and think ahead to what watching TV will be like in five or 10 years.

Here’s how to cast correctly—it’s never been easier.

Researchers say that the rising number of space launches around the world will warm parts of the atmosphere and thin the ozone layer.

Thomas Brewster / Forbes: TikTok is less transparent than US platforms about how long it keeps content deleted by users, as US law enforcement agencies increasingly seek to get such data  —  New!  Follow this author to improve your content experience.  Got it! … The FBI said it used cell-tower data earlier …

Katie Collins / CNET: The EU toughens its disinformation Code of Practice, covering deepfakes, bots, fake accounts, and more; Meta, Google, TikTok, Twitter, and others have signed up  —  Katie Collins  —  Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer.  Officially, she is CNET’s European correspondent …

Matt Burgess / Wired: In occupied Ukraine, Russia is forcing multiple ISPs to reroute connections through Russian infrastructure, subjecting traffic to censorship and surveillance  —  In occupied Ukraine, people’s internet is being routed to Russia—and subjected to its powerful censorship and surveillance machine.

The most advanced atomic clocks don’t just tell time – they could soon get so ludicrously accurate that they could be used for detecting gravitational waves and testing the limits of relativity

Using computer-vision algorithms to crunch through satellite image and shipping location data has revealed areas where ships may be catching seafood illegally

Volunteers who spent a working week in a virtual-reality environment have reported more anxiety, lower productivity and migraines – which could have big implications for the future of work

Look, I can’t help how my brain is wired, but I can trick it into relaxing.

Nikkei Asia: Japan’s business and government agencies are panicking as Internet Explorer shuts down; a March survey showed 49% of organizations use the browser for work  —  Government, corporate users scramble to find alternative to Microsoft program  —  TOKYO — Microsoft bids farewell to Internet Explorer …

Aislinn Keely / The Block: BitMEX co-founder Benjamin Delo is sentenced to 30 months probation without home confinement after pleading guilty to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act  —  BitMEX co-founder Benjamin Delo received 30 months probation without home confinement for Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations.

The Markup: Investigation: ~300 US crisis pregnancy centers, which try to dissuade people from abortions, share website visitor info with Facebook via Meta’s tracking pixel  —  The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account

A robotic game of cat and mouse shows how neuromorphic chips inspired by the brain could allow small robots to make decisions without using too much power

The US military is funding research to develop “Reefense” structures that rapidly recruit oysters and coral for defence against storm surges

“Fusion energy was always one of those kind-of sci-fi technologies that you read about,” says nuclear science and engineering PhD candidate Evan Leppink. He’s recalling the time before fusion became a part of his daily hands-on experience at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he is studying a unique way to drive current in […]