About: blatcho

Wall Street Journal: Study: some streaming devices keep playing content when TVs are off, leading to ~17% of ads being shown when users can’t see them, costing brands $1B+ per year  —  Lack of communication between TV sets and streaming devices causes estimated waste of over $1 billion in ad dollars

A pair of ransomware attacks crippled parts of the country—and rewrote the rules of cybercrime.

Furniture 3D-printed from lemons and flat-pack concrete furniture are just some highlights from the Salone del Mobile trade show in Italy.

As American sports betting accelerates, a similar reckoning is sure to follow.

Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review: All three of China’s top livestreaming influencers on Taobao have gone dark in recent months amid increasing government scrutiny on e-commerce livestreaming  —  Three top livestreaming personalities on the platform Taobao commanded legions of fans who bought billions of dollars’ worth of goods—until they suddenly went dark.

AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Apple will use Apple ID data for identity verification and fraud prevention, rely on credit reports and FICO scores for its buy now, pay later service  —  Tech giant will approve borrowers and fund loans itself rather than rely on a bank  —  Apple Inc. tiptoed into finance […]

Tom Matsuda / The Block: Atlanta-based Ledgible, which develops crypto tax and accounting software to determine tax liabilities for consumers and enterprises, has raised a $20M Series A  —  Crypto tax and accounting startup Ledgible has closed a $20 million Series A led by asset management firm EJF Capital.

Jungwoo Chun makes surprising discoveries about sustainability initiatives by zooming in on local communities. His discoveries lie in understanding how renewable energy infrastructure develops at a local level. With so many stakeholders in a community — citizens, government officials, businesses, and other organizations — the development process gets complicated very quickly. Chun works to unpack […]

Plus: Metalenz’s camera tech makes its way into phones, Microsoft launches the Xbox TV app, and the OnePlus 10 Pro gets an upgrade.

Plus: Russia rattles its cyber sword, a huge Facebook phishing operation is uncovered, feds take down the SSNDOB marketplace, and more.

Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: A defense of blockchains and crypto, as they go through growing pains in a bid to transform the US payments industry, which has been stagnant for decades  —  Last week a group of technologists, including Bruce Schneier, sent a letter to Congress outlining their concerns around […]

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post: A look at advanced large language models, as a Google engineer is placed on paid leave after becoming convinced that its LaMDA chatbot generator became sentient  —  AI ethicists warned Google not to impersonate humans.  Now one of Google’s own thinks there’s a ghost in the machine.

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Dutch ACM says Apple’s latest changes to App Store rules, which let developers of dating apps choose payment methods, meet local and EU competition requirements  —  It’s still unhappy about the carve-out for dating apps in the Netherlands  —  Apple announced on Friday that it once again updated …

As climate change deals a blow to coastal habitats, coho salmon are disappearing from California’s Russian River. Can conservation hatcheries save them?

Amazon has six ebook readers. Here’s how they stack up—and which one might be right for you.

TikTok played an integral role in his defamation trial—now Depp himself has joined the cacophony of memes.

Politico: Elon Musk’s Starlink has become an unexpected lifeline in Ukraine, on the battlefield and in the war for public opinion, impressing many Western militaries  —  UkraineX:  —  How Elon Musk’s space satellites changed the war on the ground  —  From artillery strikes to Zoom calls,

Lance Ulanoff / TechRadar: An interview with Apple’s Craig Federighi and VP of Design Alan Dye on the new features in iOS 16 for customizing lock screens  —  Your iPhone’s Lock Screen is the first thing you see when you pick up your phone.  It’s also the face you present to the world and those […]

Casey Newton / The Verge: A week with Dall-E 2, OpenAI’s text-to-image AI tool that is in private research beta and feels like a breakthrough in the history of consumer tech  —  I remember the first time I Shazam’d a song, summoned an Uber, and streamed myself live using Meerkat.  What makes these moments stand […]

Twitter has reportedly given the billionaire access to its full stream of tweets and related user data. Is your privacy in jeopardy?

The House committee’s televised hearings interrogate the Capitol attack with damning new evidence. Whether it’s enough to prevent another one is uncertain.

The three-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel doesn’t quite hold up, but it’s still fascinating to watch.

Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac: AT&T says it is the first operator in the world to achieve 20 Gbps download and upload speeds with a production fiber network  —  Back in January, AT&T launched impressive speeds up to 5 Gbps with its fiber internet service in over 70 US cities.  Now AT&T fiber is out with […]

Ariel Shapiro / The Verge: Daniel Ek says Spotify’s upcoming audiobooks vertical will adopt the freemium model; Spotify’s acquisition of audiobook distributor Findaway is under DOJ review  —  This story is part of a group of stories called  —  This article first ran in Hot Pod Insider, The Verge’s audio industry newsletter.

Michael McSweeney / The Block: Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin venture TBD plans to launch a “Web 5” platform, using the Ion network, focused on decentralized identity and data storage for applications  —  TBD, the Bitcoin-focused venture first announced last spring, unveiled an ambitious effort Friday to build a decentralized Web platform dubbed “Web 5.”

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has bought a quantum computer that doesn’t require bulky cooling equipment, meaning it could one day be installed on military hardware such as tanks

Virtual humans are gaining popularity on social media, with some amassing millions of young followers. But what psychological impact are they having?

William Shakespeare might have been talking about Apple’s recently released M1 chip via his prose in “A Midnight Summer’s Dream”: “And though she be but little, she is fierce.” The company’s software runs on the little squares made of custom silicon systems, resulting in Apple’s most powerful chip to date, with industry-leading power efficiency. Yet […]

Strategies for leaders to align all three.

The biggest liability could be how policymakers respond in the next few months.

WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist on the virtues of sharing a streaming profile and screwing with algorithms.

It’s the company’s first in this product category, and it’s one of the best we’ve tested.

The video game combines couch co-op bonding with the joy of watching horror films with friends.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: some US news outlets prepare for shortfalls as Meta weighs ending fees for news; annual fees averaged $20M+ for NYT, $15M+ for WaPo, and $10M+ for WSJ  —  Social-media company pays more than $10 million a year to a handful of news organizations to feature their content on its news tab

Aggi Cantrill / Bloomberg: After delivery startup Gorillas raised $1B in October, sources say it is drastically cutting costs, reducing staff benefits, and considering closing warehouses  —  After Germany’s rapid food delivery startup Gorillas Technologies GmbH closed a $1 billion funding round last October …

Alex Heath / The Verge: Source: Meta will distribute the first version of its AR glasses, codenamed Orion, exclusively to developers, helping them build software for future devices  —  It’s also canceling a planned smartwatch with two cameras  —  Meta has decided to not sell the first version of its full-fledged AR glasses …

For many of us, the pandemic sparked pivotal changes. And Magdelena S. Allen was no exception. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Allen wanted to learn about everything. She loved stargazing and the physical sciences, but she was also interested in law and writing. Her parents, who homeschooled her and her sister until high school, were […]

The high concentration of wealth and privilege in the field deprives it of essential perspective on issues such as inequality, unemployment, and inflation.

It’s no longer enough to keep your board happy and appease shareholders.

If you keep changing it, did you even have one to begin with?

But at least it’s a remake of The Last of Us Part 1.

A researcher found that a recent update lets anyone enroll their own key during the 130-second interval after the car is unlocked with an NFC card.

Founded by ex-Blizzard devs, the new studio’s first foray is a real-time strategy game that focuses on fun and ’90s vibes.

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z launch The Bitcoin Academy, giving free financial education classes on Bitcoin at the Brooklyn public housing complex where Jay-Z grew up  —  Is billionaire-funded crypto education really what low-income people need?  —  Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey …

Ryan Smith / AnandTech: AMD updates its Zen architecture roadmap, including Zen 4 improvements in 2022 and Zen 5 in 2024 with a mix of 4nm and 3nm processes and AI and ML optimizations  —  Today is AMD’s Financial Analyst Day, the company’s semi-annual, analyst-focused gathering.  While the primary purpose …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: DocuSign reports Q1 revenue up 25% YoY to $588.7M, vs. $581.8M est., and a $27.4M net loss, up from $8.4M YoY, as the company moderates hiring; stock drops 20%+  —  – DocuSign delivered 25% revenue growth from a year earlier but investors are increasingly concerned with profitability.

Not only do quantum computers have the edge over classical computers on some tasks, but they are also exponentially faster, according to a new mathematical proof

The way we can tweak interactions between qubits in quantum computers means the machines could help us create novel structures with weird properties we have never seen in nature

The Human Genome Project was an ambitious initiative to sequence every piece of human DNA. The project drew together collaborators from research institutions around the world, including MIT’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and was finally completed in 2003. Now, over two decades later, MIT Professor Jonathan Weissman and colleagues have gone beyond the sequence […]

From their early days at MIT, and even before, Emma Liu ’22, MNG ’22, Yo-whan “John” Kim ’22, MNG ’22, and Clemente Ocejo ’21, MNG ’22 knew they wanted to perform computational research and explore artificial intelligence and machine learning. “Since high school, I’ve been into deep learning and was involved in projects,” says Kim, […]