About: blatcho

Ooni’s first electric pizza oven is a fast and convenient (but tiny) pizza revelation.

Vivian Wang / New York Times: A look at livestream shopping in China, where an estimated $500B in goods were sold on apps like Douyin in 2022, an 8x jump since 2019, amid regulatory scrutiny  —  Star sellers can amass huge followings and eye-popping fortunes, through a format that mixes consumerism and entertainment.

Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal: A WSJ columnist used Synthesia, ElevenLabs, and ChatGPT to create an AI clone that could trick her bank’s voice biometric system, make a TikTok, and more  —  Our columnist replaced herself with AI voice and video to see how humanlike the tech can be.  The results were eerie.

Washington Post: Jack Dorsey criticized Elon Musk’s leadership of Twitter on Bluesky and refused to take responsibility for the acquisition, claiming “it all went south”  —  The former CEO issued his strongest criticism yet of Musk’s takeover of the social media site

President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea visited MIT on Friday, participating in a roundtable discussion with Institute leaders and faculty about biomedical research and discussing the fundamentals of technology-driven innovation clusters.  South Korea, Yoon noted in his remarks, has highly regarded educational institutions, hospitals, and research facilities, along with robust legal and business systems. […]

TechCrunch: Docs and sources: OpenAI closed a $10.3B+ funding round at a $27B-$29B valuation; investors include Microsoft, Tiger Global, Sequoia, a16z, and Founders Fund  —  OpenAI, the startup behind the widely used conversational AI model ChatGPT, has closed new funding, TechCrunch has learned.

Forbes: Filing and sources: drone delivery startup Zipline is raising a $330M Series F at a ~$4.2B valuation, up from its $2.7B valuation for its Series E in June 2021  —  The funding, revealed in a filing, shows that the logistics company priced a $330 million Series F funding round in April.

Kim Zetter / Wired: Sources: the US DOJ discovered the SolarWinds breach in late May 2020, months before its public disclosure in December 2020, but was unaware of its significance  —  In May 2020, the US Department of Justice stumbled upon Russian hackers in its network, but did not realize the significance of what it […]

AI search engines like Microsoft’s Bing Chat often fail to provide citations to back up statements, or cite information incorrectly – and this is more likely when answers sound more convincing

J-PAL North America, a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), has announced six new partnerships with government agencies and leading nonprofits through the State and Local Evaluation Incubator and the Housing Stability Evaluation Incubator, launched in August 2022. These collaborators span the contiguous United States and represent a wide range of […]

Four strategies based on in-depth studies of 12 large European firms.

Can Northvolt make greener batteries for a better world and a bigger profit?

SVB was a cautionary tale.

Light-on-dark displays tap into society’s deepest fears about technology’s ills. But reducing screen light isn’t the same as putting your device away.

Average sea surface temperatures have soared to record highs, and stayed there. It’s a worrying signal of an ocean in crisis.

These high-end cans look fantastic and sound great, but they don’t have noise canceling or advanced EQ.

Steve Dent / Engadget: Sony reports 6.3M PS5 sales in Q4 2022, up from 2M in Q4 2021, taking FY 2022 to 19.1M and 38.4M since launch, and $29B revenue for FY 2022, up from $19.9B YoY  —  Now that it’s solved its supply shortages, Sony is seeing a lot of pent-up demand for PlayStation […]

Viola Zhou / Rest of World: A profile of Liu Xiaoping, a dog food seller on Pinduoduo who coaches Chinese merchants on using legal action to fight Pinduoduo’s refund-without-return policy  —  A dog food seller known as “Lawsuit Bro” is leading the fight.  — A dog food seller on Pinduoduo has emerged as an unlikely […]

Blake Brittain / Reuters: Filing: Triller agrees to pay Sony Music $4.5M+ to settle claims that Triller breached a contract covering its use of musicians’ songs on the platform  —  TikTok rival Triller Inc has agreed to pay Sony Music Entertainment (6758.T) more than $4.5 million to resolve claims that Triller breached …

Maybe you can’t tell a book from its cover, but according to researchers at MIT you may now be able to do the equivalent for materials of all sorts, from an airplane part to a medical implant. Their new approach allows engineers to figure out what’s going on inside simply by observing properties of the […]

The Covid-19 pandemic has reduced how often urban residents intersect with people from different income brackets, according to a new study led by MIT researchers. Examining the movement of people in four U.S. cities before and after the onset of the pandemic, the study found a 15 to 30 percent decrease in the number of […]

The streaming service doesn’t quite have Netflix’s back catalog, but it has a solid lineup.

Earlier this month the company sought to remove videos of a YouTuber playing a new Zelda mod. It’s a move that goes against the spirit of interactivity that fuels the medium.

The security issues raised by ChatGPT and similar tech are just beginning to emerge, but Rob Joyce says it’s time to prepare for what comes next.

Mickey Djuric / Canadian Press: Canada’s Online Streaming Act passes final hurdle in Parliament; it requires streamers to support Canadian content and gives the CRTC regulatory power over them  —  OTTAWA – A federal bill that will force digital platforms like Netflix and YouTube to contribute financially to Canadian content is on the cusp of […]

Rohan Goswami / CNBC: Cloudflare reports Q1 revenue up 37% YoY to $290.2M vs. $290.8M est., a $38.1M net loss, and revenue guidance for Q2 and FY 2023 below estimates; NET drops 20%+  —  – Cloudflare issued muted guidance for the upcoming quarter and full-year that sent shares down as much as 25%

Meagan Simpson / BetaKit: Toronto-based Practice Better, which makes client management software for health and wellness professionals, raised $27M led by Five Elms Capital  —  Practice Better claims to have more than 10,000 customers in more than 70 countries.  —  Practice Better is the result of its founder …

A four-legged robot has been designed to imitate the bouncing and lunging motion of a seal on land, but struggles to turn while moving forwards

As anyone who has ever unwound a string of holiday lights or detangled a lock of snarled hair knows, undoing a knot of fibers takes a lot longer than tangling it up in the first place. This is not so for a wily species of West Coast worm. Found in marshes, ponds, and other shallow […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) today named Asegun Henry, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, as a 2023 recipient of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is the NSF’s highest honor for early-career researchers and provides funding for research in any science or engineering field.  This is the second year NSF has […]

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult. However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three […]

A series of conversations on what leaders need to know about the powerful technology.

Senior leaders can take in valuable employee input while maintaining decision-making authority.

Can we really have both purpose and profit in a firm?

Artificial intelligence can be a font of inspiration. Here’s how to use OpenAI’s AI chatbot the next time you’re spitballing ideas.

This week on Gadget Lab, we dive into the market for male grooming products, scrotum deodorizers, and scented salves that target the nether regions.

No matter what happens with generative AI, its disruptive forces are already beginning to play a role in the fast-approaching US presidential race.

Bloomberg: Sources: Germany is in talks to limit the export of chemicals used to make advanced chips to China, seeking to join US and EU allies in closing ranks on China  —  Germany is in talks to limit the export of chemicals to China that are used to manufacture semiconductors as Berlin steps up efforts […]

Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: Apple reports European MAUs for its App Stores: iOS has 101M, iPadOS has 23M, macOS has 6M, tvOS has 1M, and watchOS, Books, and Podcasts have under 1M each  —  In order to comply with the European Digital Services Act, Apple has been forced to reveal the number of monthly active […]

Reuters: Stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse offers to buy Danish investment management software company SimCorp for €3.9B in cash; SimCorp had €561M in 2022 revenue  —  Stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE) on Thursday announced a 3.9 billion euro ($4.31 billion) …

Allocating land for people to use is one of the most powerful tools a government can have. A newly published study by an MIT scholar now identifies the extent to which state land distribution can be a politically charged act. The research, focused on Kenya in recent decades, challenges some conventional wisdom while bringing new […]

When manipulating an arcade claw, a player can plan all she wants. But once she presses the joystick button, it’s a game of wait-and-see. If the claw misses its target, she’ll have to start from scratch for another chance at a prize. The slow and deliberate approach of the arcade claw is similar to state-of-the-art […]

The legislation would insert the government into online platforms’ age-verification efforts—a move that makes some US lawmakers queasy.

UK antitrust authorities have blocked its $69 billion deal to acquire Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard.

The law says you can’t falsely claim that celebrities are paying for Twitter Blue.

Sara Merken / Reuters: Harvey, which builds generative AI tools for law firms, raised a $21M Series A led by Sequoia with participation from the OpenAI Startup Fund and others  —  With more and more lawyers at major law firms using fast-advancing generative artificial intelligence tools, legal AI startup Harvey …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google says it plans to add E2EE to Google Authenticator “down the line”, after researchers warned that its new feature to sync 2FA codes is not E2E encrypted  —  On Monday, Google Authenticator launched the ability to sync 2FA codes to your Google Account.

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch: Meta says time spent on Instagram grew 24%+ since Reels launched thanks to AI recommendations, and expects Reels to be revenue-neutral by year end or early 2024  —  Meta shared some updated engagement info around its platforms on its Q1 2023 quarterly earnings call on Wednesday …

Hormones released by the stomach, such as ghrelin, play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which controls hunger, nausea, and feelings of fullness. MIT engineers have now shown that they can stimulate these endocrine cells to produce ghrelin, using an […]

In 2017, astronomers captured the first image of a black hole by coordinating radio dishes around the world to act as a single, planet-sized telescope. The synchronized network, known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), focused in on M87*, the black hole at the center of the nearby Messier 87 galaxy. The telescope’s laser-focused […]