About: blatcho

Hannah Miller / Bloomberg: Singapore-based Amber Group, one of Asia’s largest crypto exchanges, cuts 40% of its staff, scraps retail operations, and terminates its Chelsea FC sponsorship  —  Amber Group, one of Asia’s leading crypto trading and lending platforms, is cutting jobs, scrapping retail operations and terminating …

Maggie Miller / Politico: A look at Estonia’s efforts to aid cybersecurity workers in Ukraine and coordinate with European and US allies to defend against Russia’s cyberattacks  —  TALLINN, Estonia — Ukraine has surprised the world with its ability to fend off major cyberattacks from Russia.

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg: As US prosecutors reportedly investigate FTX and Alameda’s role in orchestrating LUNA and UST’s collapse, a look at the timeline of events and evidence  —  The latest twist in the downfall of crypto maven Sam Bankman-Fried is prompting a reexamination of the implosion of the Terra algorithmic …

Clues to a black hole’s origins can be found in the way it spins. This is especially true for binaries, in which two black holes circle close together before merging. The spin and tilt of the respective black holes just before they merge can reveal whether the invisible giants arose from a quiet galactic disk […]

MIT engineers have developed ultralight fabric solar cells that can quickly and easily turn any surface into a power source. These durable, flexible solar cells, which are much thinner than a human hair, are glued to a strong, lightweight fabric, making them easy to install on a fixed surface. They can provide energy on the […]

Combustion engines, propellors, and hydraulic pumps are examples of fluidic devices — instruments that utilize fluids to perform certain functions, such as generating power or transporting water. Because fluidic devices are so complex, they are typically developed by experienced engineers who manually design, prototype, and test each apparatus through an iterative process that is expensive, […]

From monsters to kittens to strategy games, these sets will liven things up on nights when everyone is tired of screens.

These favorites from the second half of the year teach us about Ukrainian and Chinese-American cuisines, cocktails, and sourdough loaves.

You can read ebooks, write notes, or mark up PDFs on this new slate, but your wallet will feel a lot lighter.

Emily Bary / MarketWatch: DocuSign reports Q3 revenue up 18% YoY to $645.5M, vs. $627M est., and billings up 17% YoY to $659.4M, vs. $588.6M est.; stock is up ~10% after hours  —  Company easily tops expectations on billings and other key metrics  —  Shares of DocuSign were flying higher in aftermarket action Thursday …

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: Airtable, a developer of cloud-based collaboration software last valued at $11B in 2021, lays off 254 staffers or around 20% of its workforce  —  Just days ago, Airtable published a memo about how laid off workers can use Airtable to search for jobs.  “It’s been an unwelcome theme of 2022—layoffs,” the […]

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: GitHub launches Copilot for Business, with corporate licensing and policy controls, for $19/user per month, and claims it won’t store or share companies’ code  —  GitHub Copilot, GitHub’s service that intelligently suggests lines of code, is now available in a plan for enterprises months …

With the platform looking a little the worse for wear after its recent acquisition by Elon Musk, Annalee Newitz tries the best alternatives, so you don’t have to

A deepfake detector designed to identify unique facial expressions and hand gestures could spot manipulated videos of world leaders such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin

After more than 50 years in tech leadership, you might think that Jesus Sotomayor would be content to rest on his laurels. But he’s not. An advocate of lifelong learning, Sotomayor was recently awarded MIT Professional Education’s Professional Certificate in Digital Transformation after successfully completing five Digital Plus courses online in Spanish.  Now he has […]

Koroush Shirvan, the John Clark Hardwick Career Development Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), knows that the nuclear industry has traditionally been wary of innovations until they are shown to have proven utility. As a result, he has relentlessly focused on practical applications in his research, work that has netted him […]

A global pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Inflation. The first-ever serious challenge to the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. Forced to face a seemingly unending series of once-in-a-generation crises, how can the world continue to focus attention on goals around carbon emissions and climate change? That was the question posed by Philip […]

Sponsor content from Deloitte.

How to protect your career — and your mental health.

Self-doubt is a pervasive and often paralyzing concern, particularly for women. Here are three strategies to help you combat it.

From QAnon influencers to @catturd, the very online right sees exactly what they want to see in the CEO’s orchestrated disclosure.

Ezra Reguerra / Cointelegraph: Some NFTs minted on FTX are broken, showing only blank images, because metadata points to an FTX.US domain now used for a bankruptcy restructuring website  —  NFTs hosted on FTX platform were affected by the firm’s collapse, showing blank images instead of the original art.  —  191 Total views

Rebecca Picciotto / CNBC: A US federal judge dismisses a proposed class action lawsuit against Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and others over promoting EthereumMax on social media  —  – A federal judge dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit by investors against the founders of a cryptocurrency …

Bloomberg: Sources: Dutch officials plan new controls on exporting chipmaking equipment to China as soon as January, potentially impacting ASML, following US curbs  —  Dutch officials are planning new controls on exports of chipmaking equipment to China, according to people familiar with the matter …

Jorg Scholvin ’00, MEng ’01, PhD ’06 first set foot in a cleanroom midway through his undergraduate studies. It was the late 1990s and, as a computer science major, he’d registered for a fabrication class for a firsthand look at how a computer is assembled. “It’s amazing to see how it’s built,” he realized, “and […]

The company plans to expand its Communication Safety features, which aim to disrupt the sharing of child sexual abuse material at the source.

The company will also soon support the use of physical authentication keys with Apple ID, and is adding contact verification for iMessage in 2023.

On cybercrime forums, user complaints about being duped may accidentally expose their real identities.

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Plaid lays off approximately 260 employees, or 20% of its workforce, citing macroeconomic conditions; the company was valued at ~$13.4B in April 2021  —  CEO says the fintech company ‘hired and invested ahead of revenue growth’  —  Fintech decacorn Plaid is laying off 260 employees …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: The Pentagon awards Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a cloud-computing contract of up to $9B each through 2028 under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability  —  – Of the four companies receiving cloud-computing contracts from the Pentagon, all of them had received requests for bids from the U.S. federal agency last year.

Shawna Chen / Axios: Texas bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices, becoming the fourth GOP-led state to do so, following South Dakota, South Carolina, and Maryland  —  A growing number of GOP-led states are barring state employees and contractors from using TikTok on government-issued devices …

A deepfake detector designed to identify unique facial expressions and hand gestures could spot manipulated videos of world leaders such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin

A simple robot has sensors that can detect when they are damaged, stop the robot, self-heal and instruct the robot to start moving again

Despite recent claims of vehicles having full automation, it is no more possible to buy a truly self-driving car now than it was 15 years ago. Will private cars that never need a driver ever reach the market?

Since 1901, MIT has offered a graduate program unlike any other at the Institute. The Naval Construction and Engineering program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering educates active duty officers in the U.S. Navy, U.S Coast Guard, and foreign navies. Every year, the U.S. Navy chooses 10 officers to enroll in the program, which is […]

MIT professor Michael Birnbaum strives to prepare his students for success, from day one of graduate school through embarking on an enriching career path. For the thoughtfulness and depth of his feedback, the variety of different career paths he exposes students to, and his far-reaching inclusiveness within both his lab and his greater department, he […]

Nearly 20 years ago, scientists developed ways to stimulate or silence neurons by shining light on them. This technique, known as optogenetics, allows researchers to discover the functions of specific neurons and how they communicate with other neurons to form circuits. Building on that technique, MIT and Harvard University researchers have now devised a way […]

It takes dedication — but it doesn’t have to take a lot of time.

The “production as a service” model enables firms to contract with independent factory operators on an as-needed basis.

Sponsor content from Zoho.

Andrew Romero / 9to5Google: Telegram partners with Fragment to let users create an anonymous number to join the service, removing the need for a SIM card, and expands security features  —  For years, apps like Telegram and Whatsapp have restricted access to users who could sign up using a SIM card and phone number.

Financial Times: Sources: FTX reached the late stages of talks with Taylor Swift over a $100M+ sponsorship deal, supported by Swift fan SBF, who faced opposition from FTX execs  —  Negotiations between singer-songwriter and Sam Bankman-Fried’s crytpo group collapsed this spring

Pew Research Center: A survey of 19 developed nations: 57% say social media has been good for democracy, 35% say it has been bad; in the US, 34% think it has been good for democracy  —  Most think social media has made it easier to manipulate and divide people, but also say it informs and […]

Searching the internet can reveal information a user would rather keep private. For instance, when someone looks up medical symptoms online, they could reveal their health conditions to Google, an online medical database like WebMD, and perhaps hundreds of these companies’ advertisers and business partners. For decades, researchers have been crafting techniques that enable users […]

America’s most popular music streaming service is adding the ability to turn down the vocals and sing along.

Don’t worry if you skipped the Cyber Monday madness. Some of the company’s best gear is on sale right now.

Disgruntled former staff allege they were not given the severance packages they were promised. The mountain of litigation could cost Twitter millions.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Loft Dynamics, which makes a VR training simulator for helicopter pilots, has raised $20M in a round led by Craft Ventures, Sky Dayton, and Up Partners  —  Loft Dynamics, a Swiss startup creating virtual reality (VR) simulation technology for helicopter pilots, has raised $20 million in funding …

Jason McMaster / VentureBeat: GameOn, which develops the AI chatbot ChatOS, used by major sports brands to connect with fans, raised a $35M Series B, bringing its total funding to $54M  —  Chat platform developer GameOn has raised $35 million in Series B funding.  Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Mighty Capital …

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Apple, AMD, and Nvidia have all indicated plans to buy chips from TSMC’s planned Arizona fabs  —  – Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at an event in Arizona on Tuesday, ahead of remarks expected by President Joe Biden later in the day, where Cook confirmed Apple will buy chips built in […]