Posts by blatcho:

Despite China’s private sector crackdown in 2021, two unidentified Tencent executives still earned ~$200M each; Tencent’s shares dropped 19% in 2021 (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Despite China’s private sector crackdown in 2021, two unidentified Tencent executives still earned ~$200M each; Tencent’s shares dropped 19% in 2021  —  Tencent Holdings Ltd. doled out more than $200 million apiece to two unidentified executives in 2021, even as it cut founder Pony Ma’s compensation …

FactSet: revenue growth for China’s tech giants is slowing; the average target for Meituan’s shares fell 20%+ in March, while Tencent and JD’s shares fell 10%+ (Clarence Leong/Wall Street Journal)

Clarence Leong / Wall Street Journal: FactSet: revenue growth for China’s tech giants is slowing; the average target for Meituan’s shares fell 20%+ in March, while Tencent and JD’s shares fell 10%+  —  Beijing’s anti-Covid measures are likely to exacerbate a slowdown in revenue growth for companies including Alibaba and Meituan

Finding the questions that guide MIT fusion research

“One of the things I learned was, doing good science isn’t so much about finding the answers as figuring out what the important questions are.” As Martin Greenwald retires from the responsibilities of senior scientist and deputy director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), he reflects on his almost 50 years of […]

New tool reveals how immune cells find their targets

The human body has millions of unique B and T cells that roam the body, looking for microbial invaders. These immune cells’ ability to recognize harmful microbes is critical to successfully fighting off infection. MIT biological engineers have now devised an experimental tool that allows them to precisely pick out interactions between a particular immune […]

Leveraging science and technology against the world’s top problems

Looking back on nearly a half-century at MIT, Richard K. Lester, associate provost and Japan Steel Industry Professor, sees a “somewhat eccentric professional trajectory.” But while his path has been irregular, there has been a clearly defined through line, Lester says: the emergence of new science and new technologies, the potential of these developments to shake […]

TSMC reports a record ~$17B in Q1 revenue, up 36% YoY and above estimates, boosted by increased demand for chips as the prolonged shortage helped raise prices (Betty Hou/Bloomberg)

Betty Hou / Bloomberg: TSMC reports a record ~$17B in Q1 revenue, up 36% YoY and above estimates, boosted by increased demand for chips as the prolonged shortage helped raise prices  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. revenue rose to a record in the first quarter on demand for chips used in smartphones …

Gartner: total global tech spending will rise 4% YoY to $4.4T in 2022, device spending will reach $824.6B, and software spending will rise 9.8% YoY to $674.9B (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Gartner: total global tech spending will rise 4% YoY to $4.4T in 2022, device spending will reach $824.6B, and software spending will rise 9.8% YoY to $674.9B  —  The respected analyst firm Gartner Inc. said today in its latest forecast that worldwide information technology is expected …

US judge sentences Denys Iarmak, a Ukrainian and member of the FIN7 hacking group, to five years in prison; FIN7 has stolen 20M+ credit card numbers since 2015 (Tonya Riley/CyberScoop)

Tonya Riley / CyberScoop: US judge sentences Denys Iarmak, a Ukrainian and member of the FIN7 hacking group, to five years in prison; FIN7 has stolen 20M+ credit card numbers since 2015  —  Denys Iarmak, a high-level member of the criminal hacking group FIN7, was sentenced to five years in prison today by a U.S. […]

Bridging communities to reimagine cultural preservation

Many young people in rural communities around the world feel the need move to big cities in order to find work. The migration has unfortunate ripple effects. In the cities, people with less formal education are often relegated to slums and can become the victims of exploitation. Meanwhile, the families, communities, and rich cultural traditions […]

Twitter says its ALT badge for images with text descriptions and an expanded description window is now available globally, after testing the features in March (Kim Lyons/The Verge)

Kim Lyons / The Verge: Twitter says its ALT badge for images with text descriptions and an expanded description window is now available globally, after testing the features in March  —  The platform said earlier this year it was making improvements to the process  —  Twitter said Thursday that its ALT badge …

Microsoft says it obtained a court order to take control of seven domains used by Russia-linked hacking group Strontium, disrupting its attacks on Ukraine (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Microsoft says it obtained a court order to take control of seven domains used by Russia-linked hacking group Strontium, disrupting its attacks on Ukraine  —  Microsoft has successfully disrupted attacks against Ukrainian targets coordinated by the Russian APT28 hacking group after taking …

Sensor Tower: Tencent’s Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile are the world’s most lucrative mobile games, respectively earning $735.4M and $643M in revenue in Q1 2022 (Xinmei Shen/South China Morning Post)

Xinmei Shen / South China Morning Post: Sensor Tower: Tencent’s Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile are the world’s most lucrative mobile games, respectively earning $735.4M and $643M in revenue in Q1 2022  —  Honour of Kings, PUBG Mobile and Genshin Impact remained the most lucrative mobile games in the world in the first quarter […]

MIT welcomes two from the Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellowship for 2022

MIT’s School of Science welcomes postdocs Malena Rice and Eva Scheller, recipients of the 2022 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 31 by the Heising-Simons Foundation. The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, named after the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a sun-like star, was established in 2017 to provide postdocs with the opportunity to […]

Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on using data and science to forecast climate-related risk

Note: This is the final article in a four-part interview series featuring the work of the 27 MIT Climate Grand Challenges finalist teams, which received a total of $2.7 million in startup funding to advance their projects. This month, the Institute will name a subset of the finalists as multiyear flagship projects. Advances in computation, […]

MIT to name Building 12, home of MIT.nano, in honor of Lisa Su

Building 12, the home of MIT.nano, will soon be named in honor of Lisa T. Su ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’94, chief executive officer and chair of the Board of Directors of AMD. Su is the first MIT alumna to make a gift for a building that will bear her own name.  Lisa Su led […]

Tencent will shutter its game streaming service Penguin Esports on June 7, after China blocked a Tencent-led merger between Huya and DouYu (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Tencent will shutter its game streaming service Penguin Esports on June 7, after China blocked a Tencent-led merger between Huya and DouYu  —  Tencent Holdings Ltd. announced it will shut down its game streaming service, more than a year after Beijing blocked its effort to create China’s equivalent …

One-click checkout service Bolt acquires crypto payments startup Wyre, sources say for around $1.5B (Paul Vigna/Wall Street Journal)

Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal: One-click checkout service Bolt acquires crypto payments startup Wyre, sources say for around $1.5B  —  Deal extends crypto’s hot M&A market following record deal activity in 2021  —  Bolt Financial Inc., a payments-focused financial technology company, is acquiring crypto-services startup …

How Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, and others are pushing women to invest in NFTs, which critics see as a form of self-serving feminism centered on white women (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post: How Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, and others are pushing women to invest in NFTs, which critics see as a form of self-serving feminism centered on white women  —  Gwyneth Paltrow and Mila Kunis joined a Zoom in January to encourage 5,000 women in the audience to break into the male-dominated […]

Nord Security, the Lithuania-based startup behind NordVPN, raises $100M, its first ever funding, at a $1.6B valuation led by Novator Ventures (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Nord Security, the Lithuania-based startup behind NordVPN, raises $100M, its first ever funding, at a $1.6B valuation led by Novator Ventures  —  VPN usage has surged in the last several years, with growing concerns over data privacy and security — and sometimes completely different motivations …

Sources: banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are considering whether to use Zelle as a payment option to compete with Visa and Mastercard (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Sources: banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are considering whether to use Zelle as a payment option to compete with Visa and Mastercard  —  The money-transfer service boomed amid pandemic.  Some banks want to expand it to retail payments.

Letter regarding graduate student unionization election

The following letter was sent to MIT graduate students, and subsequently shared with the wider MIT community, today by Chancellor Melissa Nobles and Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education Ian A. Waitz. To MIT graduate students, The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has counted the ballots from the graduate student unionization election held on […]

Emery Brown earns American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Pierre Galletti Award

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering has awarded its highest honor this year to Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT. Brown, who is also an […]

An optimized solution for face recognition

The human brain seems to care a lot about faces. It’s dedicated a specific area to identifying them, and the neurons there are so good at their job that most of us can readily recognize thousands of individuals. With artificial intelligence, computers can now recognize faces with a similar efficiency — and neuroscientists at MIT’s […]