About: blatcho

A newly unsealed opinion is likely the first decision from a US federal court to find that cryptocurrencies can’t be used to evade sanctions.

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: The DOJ says that Moises Luis Zagala Gonzalez, a 55-year-old cardiologist living in Venezuela, created and rented Jigsaw and Thanos ransomware to cybercriminals  —  The US Department of Justice today said that Moises Luis Zagala Gonzalez (Zagala), a 55-year-old cardiologist with French …

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple now allows devs to auto-renew users for increased subscription prices once a year as long as the increase doesn’t exceed $50 or 50% of the annual price  —  Apple today informed developers that it is implementing a new subscription feature that will allow customers to be charged automatically …

Bloomberg: Logs show that the alleged Buffalo shooter spoke explicitly in a private Discord server about plans to conduct and livestream an attack since at least December  —  The accused gunman behind 10 deaths and 3 injuries in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend had spoken explicitly about his plans …

In deeply decarbonized energy systems utilizing high penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE), energy storage is needed to keep the lights on and the electricity flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing — when generation from these VRE resources is low or demand is high. The MIT Energy Initiative’s Future of […]

The winner of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight […]

For more than four decades, the U.S. and Iran have had a relentlessly poor relationship. To be sure, it is hardly a shock that tensions would run high between the countries following the hostage crisis of 1979-1981, when Iran held more than 50 U.S. diplomats in captivity for 444 days. Even so, little progress has […]

Amy G contributes her conflict-management expertise to an episode of Women Amplified.

Sponsor content from Deloitte.

Big decisions can feel scary. Here’s how to avoid a knee-jerk reaction.

​In our passwordless future, we’ll lose the frustration—and freedom—of getting locked out.

Sellers keep getting hit with fee increases—at a time when shelves are sitting empty.

A spate of layoffs is just the first sign of trouble for early-stage companies facing an economic downturn.

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says bitcoin has no future as a payments network because of its inefficiency and high environmental costs  —  Bankman-Fried criticises biggest digital asset over inefficiency and high environmental costs  —  Bitcoin has no future as a payments network …

Sam Kessler / CoinDesk: Luna Foundation Guard says its bitcoin reserves have depleted from ~80K to ~300 and the remaining UST and LUNA tokens will be used to compensate investors  —  The announcement comes after reports that over a billion dollars of Terra’s bitcoin reserves are unaccounted for.

Ryan Weeks / The Block: Elwood Technologies, a crypto-focused market access and trading service for institutional investors, raises a $70M Series A led by Goldman Sachs, Dawn Capital  —  Quick Take  — Goldman Sachs, Barclays and CommerzVentures invested in the Series A round alongside venture capital firms.

From record cleaners to slip mats, these extras are for budding enthusiasts and die-hard collectors alike.

In theory, the building blocks of life are possible with a more expansive code than three-letter codons. New work shows that would be a challenge.

Building around the so-called typical user is a dangerous mistake.

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Komodor, which helps companies troubleshoot issues in Kubernetes installations, raises a $42M Series B led by Tiger Global, bringing its total funding to $67M  —  For a time, Kubernetes, the open source container management platform, was as hot as it comes, but lately it has settled …

Michael Schroeder / MedCity News: San Diego-based Turquoise Health, a free search engine that lets patients compare hospital prices for US medical procedures, raises a $20M Series A led by a16z  —  Pulling back the curtain on healthcare pricing is easier said than done, acknowledged Chris Severn, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

Caitlin Harrington / Wired: A look at the Apple Together solidarity movement that emerged from #AppleToo to provide support for Apple employees organizing in retail, AppleCare, and more  —  A solidarity movement called Apple Together has provided tools and support as the company’s retail employees organize.

Don’t break a sweat trying to beat the heat. We make it easy with these tips on what to wear, how to hydrate, and which cooling gadgets can help.

You’ve decided to join the ebiking boom, and so have your kids. Congrats! Here’s the gear and advice you need to ride safely.

The audiophile brand has just launched the world’s finest streaming speakers with grin-inducing sound, but are they worth $7,000?

Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat: Evisort, which offers an AI-powered contract management software, raises a $100M Series C led by TCV, bringing its total funding to $155.6M  —  For lawyers and the organizations that employ them, time is quite literally money.  The business of contract management software is all about helping …

Arielle Pardes / Wired: Several women who attended Miami’s Bitcoin 2022 conference were harassed and say the conference didn’t enforce its anti-harassment policies  —  For some women, inappropriate conduct from other conference-goers continued to haunt them online.  —  Miami’s annual gathering of Bitcoin zealots began with a bull.

Kenrick Cai / Forbes: Material Security, which helps enterprises protect sensitive info stored in email accounts even if they are hacked, raises a $100M Series C at a $1.1B valuation  —  A growing wave of tech layoffs have given rise to remorseful CEOs’ lamentations that they hired too quickly during the pandemic.

Plus: The iPod is dead, iPhones might go USB-C, folding screens get bendier, and a beloved music synthesizer gets an upgrade.

Plus: New details of ICE’s dragnet surveillance in the US, Clearview AI agrees to limit sales of its faceprint database, and more.

New York Times: As the possibility of Roe v. Wade overturn becomes a reality, pro-choice activists and nonprofits are looking at crypto and DAOs to speed up fundraising  —  Activists and nonprofits are considering digital currencies as a way to raise funds.  But can they really do anything other payment methods can’t?

Peter White / Deadline: Sources: Netflix is exploring live streaming for its unscripted shows and stand-up specials, which would enable live voting for competitions  —  EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is going live for the first time.  —  Deadline understands that the streamer is exploring the launch of live streaming.

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times: An interview with Sam Bankman-Fried on crypto hype, blockchain’s potential to build a fairer financial system, bitcoin as an asset, philanthropy, and more  —  When an aide told me that “one of our drivers” would pick me up for my lunch with Sam Bankman-Fried, I imagined a hulking black SUV […]

Brewers could create new recipes that produce beers with desired properties using AI, and it will even work if you are missing some ingredients

Great looks and good sound make this USB microphone a favorite for new and veteran Twitch streamers alike.

Although real-world data is scant, proponents say robotics and AI will soon revolutionize agriculture.

Tech can get us down—but it can also empower us to help others. Here’s how to volunteer virtually, share your skills, or simply brighten someone’s day.

Sam Nussey / Reuters: Tokyo- and Bangkok-based Opn, formerly Synqa, a digital payments and blockchain tech provider, raises a $120M Series C+ at a $1B+ valuation  —  Digital payments processor Opn, formerly known as Synqa, said it had raised $120 million in a Series C+ funding round, becoming a rare unicorn, or startup worth more […]

The Economic Times: Sources: Amazon, Flipkart, and Reliance Retail are in talks to join India’s open e-commerce network, which aims to break the dominance of large e-commerce firms  —  Logistics providers Ekart, Dunzo sign up on network; PhonePe in final stages of integration  —  Bengaluru: Ecommerce majors …

Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE: Q&A with retail traders after Terra’s crash: some lost their life savings, others shared suicidal ideation on forums, some now acknowledge it’s a Ponzi scheme  —  It took less than a week for the third largest stablecoin and its ecosystem to become virtually worthless, wiping out countless traders’ savings.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reinstated a law that says that a user can’t be censored based on their “viewpoint.”

You can definitely use the stars as your guide. But let’s check whether a scene from the Disney+ live action series would work in the real world.

Johnny Depp is suing Amber Heard for defamation. As the trial wears on, mocking her testimony has become the latest disturbing thing to go viral on social media.

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: Two groups representing Meta, Google, and others ask SCOTUS to block Texas’ social media law prohibiting content moderation, arguing the law is unconstitutional  —  The emergency application follows a surprise ruling in a lower court Wednesday that allowed the law to take effect

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Filing: Salesforce sold all its remaining Snowflake shares in Q1 2022; Salesforce bought 2.1M shares for $250M in Snowflake’s IPO in 2020, and sold ~95% in 2021  —  – Salesforce placed a $250 million bet on Snowflake at the time of the software company’s IPO in 2020.

Brian Heater / TechCrunch: A Q&A with Reggie Fils-Aimé, former Nintendo of America president and COO, on his time at the company, plans for a $200M SPAC, the future of gaming, and more  —  The former Nintendo of America president and COO discusses his journey with the gaming giant

A sweater containing tubes filled with a liquid metal alloy can charge up wearable electronic devices

Neither ARIA’s chief executive nor its chair have been appointed yet, though announcements are expected imminently

E. coli bacteria modified to act like electronic components called memristors can be set up to act as a simple neural network and trained to play noughts and crosses

A pivotal moment in Polina Anikeeva’s career was when she looked at an MRI scan of Parkinson’s disease patient, about a decade ago. Now professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, Anikeeva had recently worked on optoelectronics, devices that can detect and control light, and her work was used […]