About: blatcho

Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg: PayPal reports Q1 total payment volume up 10% YoY to $354.5B, vs. $349.5B est., net revenue up 9% to $7.04B, and operating income up 41% to $1B; PYPL down 5%+  —  PayPal Holdings Inc. shares slumped after the payments giant warned that its adjusted operating margin won’t grow as quickly …

Capturing energy from the winds gusting off the coasts of the United States could more than double the nation’s electricity generation. It’s no wonder the Biden administration views this immense, clean-energy resource as central to its ambitious climate goals of 100 percent carbon-emissions-free electricity by 2035 and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050. The White […]

The following is a joint announcement from MIT and Community Jameel. An international project to build community resilience to the effects of climate change, launched by Community Jameel and a research team at MIT, has been recognized as an innovation sprint at the 2023 summit of the United States’ and United Arab Emirates’ Agriculture Innovation […]

Much of the human genome is made of regulatory regions that control which genes are expressed at a given time within a cell. Those regulatory elements can be located near a target gene or up to 2 million base pairs away from the target. To enable those interactions, the genome loops itself in a 3D […]

Protect your culture — and your talent.

Four strategies to help leaders get creative about maintaining their visibility — without resorting to a “butts-in-seats” approach.

A leader must learn how to reframe past experiences that may be holding her back, as she designs her new role.

A new paper showing how water actually travels through a plastic membrane could make desalination more efficient. That’s good news for a thirsty world.

The NASA team hopes the iconic spacecraft and its twin can continue taking data beyond the solar system past their 50th birthdays.

The Writers Guild of America’s demands for guardrails on artificial intelligence are a smart move—and the stakes are higher than ever.

Ryan Browne / CNBC: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the SEC is on “a lone crusade”, rows back on suggesting the company may relocate from the US, and expresses interest in Dubai  —  – The SEC earlier this year served Coinbase with a Wells Notice.  — Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO …

Bloomberg: After China banned crypto in September 2021, FTX’s creditor lists, citizens, and industry insiders suggest Chinese residents continue to trade digital assets  —  Nineteen months after China banned crypto, more signs have emerged that its citizens continue to buy and sell digital assets.

Ryan Browne / CNBC: After Arm shunned a London listing in favor of New York, some VCs in the UK blame Brexit and institutional investors, who lack a good understanding of tech  —  – British chip designer Arm recently decided to list in New York, leading to worries that London will miss out on more […]

These are our favorite gender-inclusive vibrators, wand massagers, and sleeves to give you and your partner(s) a helping hand.

Jan Schwartz / Reuters: Source: Volkswagen plans to fire most of the management team at Cariad next week, after the software unit missed its development goals and exceeded its budget  —  Carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) is set to dismiss all but one of the executive board members at its software division Cariad next week …

Wall Street Journal: Research papers and staff interviews detail the workarounds Chinese companies like Huawei, Baidu, and Alibaba use to develop AI systems without the latest chips  —  Research in China on workarounds, such as using software to leverage less powerful chips, is accelerating

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Apple says emerging markets like India, where the iPhone has a small market share, are ready to take off, which could add “a lot of switchers” to its ecosystem  —  Apple is turning its attention to emerging markets at a time when growth is slowing at home.

As the Elon Musk era of Twitter continues to throw up bugs and controversies, some people are looking at alternatives. The invite-only Bluesky is the latest challenger, but does it have staying power?

A  few simple tools can help filter out most Twitter Blue users (but still see the ones you like).

How many ports do you need? What does 4K UHD even mean? Here’s everything you need to know.

A decades-old conjecture about the best way to minimize the surface area of a three-bubble cluster seemed unprovable—until a breakthrough result.

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle / The Register: The organizers of DEF CON AI Village, set to run from August 10 to 13 this year, say they will host “thousands” of people to find bugs and biases in LLMs  —  Can’t wait to see how these AI models hold up against a weekend of red-teaming by infosec’s […]

Patrick Kulp / Emerging Tech Brew: Q&A with Marissa Mayer on her startup Sunshine that makes an AI-based contacts organizer, what she could have done differently at Yahoo, AI’s future, and more  —  The former Yahoo chief says she wishes she had acquired Hulu instead of Tumblr.  —  After a decades-long career …

Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk: Pepecoin, a meme coin launched in April, has a $1B+ market cap despite concerns about concentrated ownership; Arkham: a trader turned $263 into $3.8M in profits  —  A pseudonymous crypto trader bought trillions of the meme coin three weeks ago on UniSwap for $263, and still holds about $9 million …

An excellent student in math, science, and computing, Michael McDonald was nonetheless lukewarm about pursuing a career in any of those areas. It wasn’t until he actively engaged in the process of discovery related to astronomy research that he fell in love professionally. “I think I might have become a programmer in an alternate universe, […]

Finally, a robot vacuum has something I never knew I wanted: an air freshener!

Plus: Apple and Google plan to stop AirTag stalking, Meta violated the FTC’s privacy order, and how to tell if your car is tracking you.

Tom Phillips / Eurogamer.net: The International Olympic Committee adds Fortnite to its Olympic Esports Series competition, which will also feature Just Dance and Gran Turismo  —  Five years after the IOC criticised shooters.  —  News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-chief  —  Fortnite has been named as a late addition …

Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch: Scammers appear to be hacking verified Meta accounts to impersonate the company and run Facebook ads asking users to download shady tools likely with malware  —  Sketchy Facebook pages impersonating businesses are nothing new, but a flurry of recent scams is particularly brazen.

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: An in-depth look at the regulatory risks for OpenAI under GDPR, including questions around future data scraping and handling “right to be forgotten” requests  —  The European Union’s fight with ChatGPT is a glance into what’s to come for AI services.

Fisheries managers are recognizing the ecological importance of the maligned marine suckers and are stepping up efforts to help their populations recover.

When was the last time you cleaned your floors? If you’re checking out these deals, it’s probably been too long.

Queen Elizabeth II was a blank canvas onto which scores of memes were projected. Charles III is nothing of the sort.

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: A journalist recounts discovering that ByteDance surveilled her in 2022 after reporting on TikTok’s staff troubles in London and wonders why she was targeted  —  The FT’s Cristina Criddle on discovering she’d been surveilled by the controversial social media company

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Q&A with Vint Cerf, chief internet evangelist at Google and recipient of IEEE’s Medal of Honor, on how Google has changed since 2005, the hazards of LLMs, more  —  “That’s always an exciting place to be — a place where nobody’s ever been before.”  —  Vint Cerf has been a near-constant […]

Lora Kelley / New York Times: A profile of Roger Lee, who runs Layoffs.fyi that has catalogued ~450,000 tech job cuts and Comprehensive.io that tracks compensation in tech job postings  —  Roger Lee has cataloged hundreds of thousands of tech job cuts on his site Layoffs.fyi.  He still believes the industry will “100 percent” bounce […]

By reading a rat’s intentions from its brain patterns, an AI can help the rodent move objects in a virtual environment

Want to stream the royal ceremony wherever you are? Here’s where you can tune in on Saturday.

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: In an email to users, Twitter acknowledges a bug that showed some Circle tweets to users outside of the Circle in April 2023 and says the issue has been fixed  —  Back in April, several Twitter users were affected by a bug that showed private Twitter Circle tweets to random users […]

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: Brydge, an iPad, Mac, and Surface accessory maker, is shutting down; sources: Brydge has neither paid its staff salaries nor fulfilled orders since January 2023  —  Brydge, a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products, is ceasing operations.

Theo Wayt / The Information: Amazon is working on AI tools to generate photos and videos for merchants’ ad campaigns on its platform, as the company seeks to build a broader ad business  —  Amazon is building a team to work on artificial intelligence tools that will generate photos and videos for merchants to use […]

The long-accepted practice of search engines scraping content from websites is being re-examined now that the data is being used to build valuable artificial intelligence tools

A VR accessory called JumpMod can make users feel like they are jumping higher or landing harder, just by moving a weight on their back

After more than two decades as part of Amazon’s core leadership team, Jeff Wilke helped transform the way people buy almost everything. His next act is no less ambitious: proving that America can make just about anything. In March 2021, Wilke stepped down from his post as CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer business — encompassing […]

In the early 1980s, Richard Samuels PhD ’80 was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, specializing in Japanese politics and public policy. With the rapid emergence of Japan as a global economic powerhouse, Samuels, now the director of the Center for International Studies (CIS) and Ford International Professor of Political Science, had […]

A thoughtful message can make the difference between a lost customer and a loyal one.

The UK-based AI company has mastered games. Next challenge: science.

A survey of 79 firms found that inclusion and adaptability are closely linked.

Warning labels on AI-generated media give viewers little context. Artists and human rights advocates have forged a more effective—and creative—path.

Recycling was already a mess. Now a study finds that one facility may emit 3 million pounds of microplastics a year.