About: blatcho

Volunteers are rushing to provide online counseling, art therapy, and stress relief for the more than 2 million Ukrainian children who have become refugees.

Europe Is Building a Huge International Facial Recognition System

Lawmakers advance proposals to let police forces across the EU link their photo databases—which include millions of pictures of people’s faces.

Meta Tries to Break the End-to-End Encryption Deadlock

A new report Meta commissioned aims to redefine comprehensive encryption as essential to protecting human rights.

Twitter changed how embeds work for deleted tweets, causing blank spaces on websites; Twitter says it is “to better respect” when users deleted their tweets (Kevin Marks)

Kevin Marks: Twitter changed how embeds work for deleted tweets, causing blank spaces on websites; Twitter says it is “to better respect” when users deleted their tweets — Twitter Edits You 2022-04-06 With all the fuss about Twitter’s promised edit button, and how they might design it …

Sky Mavis, which runs Axie Infinity, raises $150M led by Binance, with participation from Animoca, a16z, and others, to reimburse users after the Ronin exploit (Vishal Chawla/The Block)

Vishal Chawla / The Block: Sky Mavis, which runs Axie Infinity, raises $150M led by Binance, with participation from Animoca, a16z, and others, to reimburse users after the Ronin exploit — Sky Mavis, the creator of play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has raised $150 million to reimburse its users who lost funds during …

Inside Kyiv’s IT office, whose workers have spent the past five weeks adapting and repurposing everyday tech, like the Kyiv Digital smartphone app, for wartime (Vera Bergengruen/TIME)

Vera Bergengruen / TIME: Inside Kyiv’s IT office, whose workers have spent the past five weeks adapting and repurposing everyday tech, like the Kyiv Digital smartphone app, for wartime — Even the app’s logo reflects this shift. What was once a friendly sky-blue “K” for Kyiv has been redesigned into a black-and-gray military camo pattern.

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 12 subjects for 2022

MIT has earned a No. 1 spot in 12 subject areas, according to the QS World University Rankings for 2022, announced today. The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Architecture/Built Environment; Chemistry; Computer Science and Information Systems; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Materials Science; […]

Does this artificial intelligence think like a human?

In machine learning, understanding why a model makes certain decisions is often just as important as whether those decisions are correct. For instance, a machine-learning model might correctly predict that a skin lesion is cancerous, but it could have done so using an unrelated blip on a clinical photo. While tools exist to help experts […]

Ocean vital signs

Without the ocean, the climate crisis would be even worse than it is. Each year, the ocean absorbs billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, preventing warming that greenhouse gas would otherwise cause. Scientists estimate about 25 to 30 percent of all carbon released into the atmosphere by both human and natural sources is […]

Shutdown of Russia’s Hydra Market Disrupts a Crypto-Crime ATM

More than just a market for illegal drugs, the dark-web site allowed criminals to launder or cash out hundreds of millions in stolen cryptocurrencies.

Twitter requires removing tweets posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts that contain media of prisoners of war from the Russia-Ukraine conflict (Mitchell Clark/The Verge)

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Twitter requires removing tweets posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts that contain media of prisoners of war from the Russia-Ukraine conflict — It’ll ‘ask government or state-affiliated media accounts’ to take down pictures featuring prisoners of war

Dropbox Shop, which lets creators sell digital content directly to customers, launches an open beta in the US with more store customization options and tipping (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Dropbox Shop, which lets creators sell digital content directly to customers, launches an open beta in the US with more store customization options and tipping — Dropbox Shop, a platform that allows creators to sell digital content directly to their customers, is now available in open beta, Dropbox announced on Tuesday.

Canada’s government introduces legislation that would force major online platforms run by Google and Meta to negotiate deals with publishers, like in Australia (John Paul Tasker/CBC News)

John Paul Tasker / CBC News: Canada’s government introduces legislation that would force major online platforms run by Google and Meta to negotiate deals with publishers, like in Australia — Bill demands that companies like Google and Facebook pay news businesses to use their content

Why is the UK government getting into NFTs and is it a good idea?

The UK has announced plans to create its own non-fungible tokens in a bid to demonstrate its enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies

Solar panels that work at night produce enough power to charge a phone

Solar panels are cooler than the night air, creating a temperature difference that can be exploited to produce electricity

What Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means for the world

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has global implications. A panel of MIT foreign policy experts convened on Monday to examine those reverberations — on European domestic politics, the refugee crisis, great-power relations, and nuclear security. Currently Ukraine has experienced widespread devastation, and millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes as refugees. Many countries have allied to […]

Study reveals the dynamics of human milk production

For the first time, MIT researchers have performed a large-scale, high-resolution study of the cells in breast milk, allowing them to track how these cells change over time in nursing mothers. By analyzing human breast milk produced between three days and nearly two years after childbirth, the researchers were able to identify a variety of […]

How One Airline Is Using AR to Improve Operations

Lessons in enterprise AR’s potential from China Southern Airlines.

3 Ways to Boost Retention Through Professional Development

Data suggests it’s one of the best ways to improve company culture.

Working with Colleagues: Should You Collaborate or Compete?

A conversation with London Business School professor Randall Peterson about navigating coworker relationships.

In the World of NFTs, Who’s Making Money Off Your Image?

Celebrities struggle with ownership of their image. It’s time to prevent “portrait piracy” before the rest of us need to worry too.

This Is How the Global Energy Crisis Ends

With future price rises baked in and some countries on the verge of rationing gas, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get any better.

What Twitter Is Really Planning for Crypto

The duo behind Twitter Crypto say NFT profile pics and crypto tipping are just the beginning.

Microsoft announces a preview of ARM-based chips for Azure virtual machines, using Ampere Altra CPUs (Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet)

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet: Microsoft announces a preview of ARM-based chips for Azure virtual machines, using Ampere Altra CPUs — It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft is making available a preview of Azure VMs supporting Arm-based processors from Ampere. — It’s been a long road, but Microsoft announced …

Internal Amazon documents show its planned internal messaging app would block union-related words, including “union”, “grievance”, and “pay raise” (Ken Klippenstein/The Intercept)

Ken Klippenstein / The Intercept: Internal Amazon documents show its planned internal messaging app would block union-related words, including “union”, “grievance”, and “pay raise” — Amazon will block and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining …

FTX makes a “significant” investment in stock exchange IEX, made famous by Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys”; IEX represented 2.7% of US equities volume in March (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: FTX makes a “significant” investment in stock exchange IEX, made famous by Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys”; IEX represented 2.7% of US equities volume in March — Crypto exchange FTX US agreed to take a stake in IEX Group Inc., owner of the stock exchange made famous by …

System helps severely motor-impaired individuals type more quickly and accurately

In 1995, French fashion magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a seizure while driving a car, which left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome, a neurological disease in which the patient is completely paralyzed and can only move muscles that control the eyes. Bauby, who had signed a book contract shortly before his accident, […]

Technology Can Fix the Climate Mess—but Not Without Help

Another damning IPCC report insists that to reduce emissions, humanity will need more political willpower and help from nature’s carbon-sequestering powers.

The Apple Watch Series 7 Is At Its Lowest Price Ever

The latest smartwatch from Cupertino currently has a less daunting price tag.

Roblox’s ‘Layered Clothing’ Is Here—but Don’t Call It an NFT

The platform’s new technology for adaptable clothing design has broader implications for discussions about things like the metaverse and NFTs.

Roku and Amazon extend their distribution agreement, letting users continue accessing Prime Video and IMDb TV apps on their Roku devices; Roku stock is up 5%+ (Etan Vlessing/Hollywood Reporter)

Etan Vlessing / Hollywood Reporter: Roku and Amazon extend their distribution agreement, letting users continue accessing Prime Video and IMDb TV apps on their Roku devices; Roku stock is up 5%+ — The new multi-year agreement means the Amazon Prime Video app will remain in Roku’s Channel Store.

Research: RT en Español is the third-most shared site on Twitter for Spanish-language info about Russia’s invasion and in March saw a boost in Facebook likes (Associated Press)

Associated Press: Research: RT en Español is the third-most shared site on Twitter for Spanish-language info about Russia’s invasion and in March saw a boost in Facebook likes — Disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is surging in Spanish, as stories crafted for a Latin American audience gets a boost from the Kremlin

Former ByteDance employees say the company scraped Instagram, Snap, and others to make fake accounts on TikTok predecessor Flipagram, later renamed Vigo Video (Emily Baker-White/BuzzFeed News)

Emily Baker-White / BuzzFeed News: Former ByteDance employees say the company scraped Instagram, Snap, and others to make fake accounts on TikTok predecessor Flipagram, later renamed Vigo Video — In 2017, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, scraped short-form videos, user names, profile pictures, and profile descriptions from Instagram …

The Essentials: Retaining Talent

Questions, incentives, and data that’ll help you keep your team members from eyeing the door.

Where We Go Wrong with Collaboration

How our desires, expectations, and fears about what “showing up” looks like can end up backfiring.

Four Practices Your Organization May Need to Lead Its AI Transformation – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELOITTE

Sponsor content from Deloitte.

If Someone Is Typing, Then Stops … Can I Ask Why?

WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist on textual etiquette, self-expression, and information overload.

With Peloton Guide, the Fitness Company Bets Big on Body Tracking

Peloton has made a device that uses a camera to track your strength-training workouts. The “camera” part, though, still needs to prove itself.

As Russia Plots Its Next Move, an AI Listens to the Chatter

With vast amounts of data becoming available to intelligence analysts, new tools will help them sift and interpret it all—but they will introduce new risks, too.

Huawei promotes CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, as one of three rotating chairs, six months after her detention in Canada (Eva Dou/Washington Post)

Eva Dou / Washington Post: Huawei promotes CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, as one of three rotating chairs, six months after her detention in Canada — SHANGHAI — Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has promoted chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou to a key role just half a year …

French startup Budget Insight, which helps clients initiate payments and aggregate financial data and documents, raises $35M from PSG Equity (Finextra)

Finextra: French startup Budget Insight, which helps clients initiate payments and aggregate financial data and documents, raises $35M from PSG Equity — Budget Insight, the leading aggregator of banking and financial data in France and a pioneer of Open Finance in Europe, is pleased to announce $35m …

Sources: Truth Social’s CTO Josh Adams and product chief Billy Boozer have quit, following a troubled launch for the Trump-backed social network (Reuters)

Reuters: Sources: Truth Social’s CTO Josh Adams and product chief Billy Boozer have quit, following a troubled launch for the Trump-backed social network — The two Southern tech entrepreneurs had the two qualities that Donald Trump’s Truth Social startup needed: tech-industry expertise …

What’s the Matter? We Explain the New Smart Home Standard

The open source standard called Matter makes sure that your devices play nicely. Here’s how it could change how you shop for and use them.

Trick Out Your Two-Wheeler With These 33 Bike Accessories

Everything you need to turn your bicycle into a killer commuter, errand bike, or freedom machine.

6 Free Ways to Practice Sign Language Online

You don’t need to spend any money to start learning American Sign Language (ASL) with these resources.

Government record keepers and watchdogs worry that use of Wickr and other auto-deletion apps may help CBP and other agencies sidestep transparency requirements (NBC News)

NBC News: Government record keepers and watchdogs worry that use of Wickr and other auto-deletion apps may help CBP and other agencies sidestep transparency requirements — In October, Laurence Brewer, the chief records officer of the National Archives and Records Administration …

How Apple’s rumored subscription programs for iPhone and other hardware may work, and why the company may expand its financial services (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)