About: blatcho

Slap on some protection and grab a charger for your very expensive investment.

The Intercept: Internal Iranian carrier documents detail SIAM, an Iranian government web program for surveilling the country’s cellphone users and disrupting communications  —  As furious anti-government protests swept Iran, the authorities retaliated with both brute force and digital repression.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Google acquired Alter, an AI avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity; source: the deal closed two months ago for ~$100M  —  Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity …

Washington Post: A look at the US government’s handwringing over TikTok and national security concerns, as China’s government seeks to protect its powerful app and algorithms  —  The wildly popular app’s link to China has sparked fears over propaganda and privacy.  It’s also exposed America’s failure to safeguard the web.

What’s next for the social network is anyone’s guess—but here’s what to watch as you wade through the privacy and security morass.

Get cameras, headphones, and powerful laptops before Halloween even arrives.

Discord, Mastodon, and other services are bustling as Twitter fans make backup plans for their online social lives.

Ismail Shakil / Reuters: Court filing: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, Within CEO Chris Milk, and others to testify in the FTC case against Meta’s acquisition of Within  —  Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg will testify in a case by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) …

Financial Times: eMarketer: US advertisers are on track to spend $65.3B on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks in 2022, up 3.6% YoY, which is ~10x slower than in 2021  —  A decade-long era of breakneck growth in social media advertising has come to an abrupt halt.  Who killed the boom?

CNBC: General Motors suspends its paid advertising on Twitter as the car company evaluates the “direction of the platform under their new ownership”  —  A General Motors sign is seen during an event on January 25, 2022 in Lansing, Michigan.  – General Motors will create 4,000 new jobs …

On a warm, sunny afternoon last Thursday, MIT’s community gathered under a tent on Hockfield Court to meet the Institute’s next president, Sally Kornbluth. Amid a festive, celebratory atmosphere that included live music and fall treats, Kornbluth soaked in MIT’s culture; chatted with faculty, students, and staff; heard from members of MIT leadership; and took […]

Five reasons people might be hesitant — and how to address their concerns.

Researchers who studied the Italian film industry identified four key factors.

To overcome challenges of scale, the company pairs new and veteran suppliers in formal mentoring relationships.

The entrepreneur’s laundry list of ideas includes scrapping content moderation, charging subscription fees, and even branching out beyond social media.

Ford and Volkswagen sank nearly $4 billion into developer Argo. Now, amid wider signs of slow progress in autonomous tech, they’re shutting it down.

The new top-end tablets from the company hardly offer much new, but they’re still the best if you don’t mind the high price.

Bloomberg: Since its NYSE debut in November 2013, Twitter stock has grown 8.4% annually on average, below the S&P 500’s 11% and Nasdaq 100’s 15%, due to slow user growth  —  Elon Musk’s buyout marks the end of nine years of public trading in Twitter Inc., which debuted with a bang but failed to match […]

Kate Conger / New York Times: Elon Musk takes Twitter private, merging the company with X Holdings, delisting from NYSE, dissolving the board, and moving to cash-based employee compensation  —  The social media company went public in 2013.  But Elon Musk is taking it private as part of his acquisition of the firm.

Dylan Patel / SemiAnalysis: A look at the ongoing Qualcomm-Arm legal dispute, as Qualcomm claims Arm plans to stop licensing its CPUs to semiconductor companies after 2024  —  No More External GPU, NPU, or ISP’s Allowed In Arm-Based SOCs  —  The Qualcomm-Arm saga is epic and there is a new massive update in the case.

The world’s largest digital camera for astronomy is taller than a car, has as many pixels as 266 iPhones and will, over the course of the next 10 years, help researchers study billions of galaxies

Analyzing the genetic mutations linked with diseases such as cancer has yielded many potential drug targets. However, a significant number of these proteins are considered “undruggable,” mainly because their structure is too floppy for any kind of small-molecule drug to bind to it. Angela Koehler, an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT, has made […]

If the crypto enthusiasts are right, the next decade will see billions of people begin using applications built off distributed, user-owned blockchains. The new paradigm has been dubbed Web 3. But Web 3 still has some significant challenges to overcome if it’s going to replace the digital world as we know it. Blockchain networks, for […]

Get cameras, headphones, and powerful laptops before Halloween even arrives.

Load up your iPhone 14, iPhone 13, or iPhone 12 with a wallet, power bank, or even a webcam mount.

These are some of our favorite stands, cases, keyboards, and Pencils no matter which iPad you have.

Andrew Orr / AppleInsider: Apple reports a record $11.5B in Mac revenue for Q4, up 25% YoY, and sets “a quarterly record for upgraders”, but expects a YoY decline in Q1 2023  —  Mac sales were strong during Apple’s September quarter amid a declining PC market, but the company expects Mac revenue to slow down […]

Harmeet Singh Walia / Counterpoint Research: Global smartphone shipments fell 12% YoY to 301M units in Q3 2022, the lowest Q3 level since 2014; Apple was the only top-five brand to grow YoY, up 2%  —  – The global smartphone market declined by 12% YoY even as it grew by 2% QoQ to reach 301 […]

Yousef Saba / Reuters: Classera, a San Francisco-based ed tech startup focused on the Middle East and Africa, raised a $40M Series A led by Sanabil, which is run by Saudi Arabia’s PIF  —  Classera, an education technology company headquartered in San Francisco, said on Thursday it had raised $40 million from investors …

A flying robot can be used to scare away flocks of birds in fields. RobotFalcon resembles a peregrine falcon in size, shape and colouration.

On Oct. 12, MIT mechanical engineering alumnus Vishnu Jayaprakash SM ’19, PhD ’22 was named the first-place winner in the graduate category of the Collegiate Inventors Competition. The annual competition, which is organized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame, celebrates college and university student inventors. Jayaprakash won for his pesticide innovation AgZen-Cloak, which he […]

Frank Sidney Jones, professor emeritus in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), passed away on Aug. 28 at the age of 93. In 1971, Jones was named Ford Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, becoming the first African American to be tenured at MIT. He also taught courses in civil engineering. From his […]

Sponsor content from Siemens.

How firms can fight the temptation.

Four traps that hold leaders back.

Industry players are working on standardized swappable batteries that could shake up everything from garden trimmers to EV rickshaws.

This week, we list all the ways plastic is ruining our planet and making us sick, then come up with some ideas for reversing the damage.

It’s the miracle material that makes cars, computers, and modern medicine possible. It has also corrupted every corner of the environment.

Nivedita Balu / Reuters: Shopify reports Q3 revenue rose 22% YoY to $1.4B, above $1.34B estimates, and GMV grew 11% YoY to $46.2B; shares jump 7%+  —  Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO) beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, as businesses stuck to the Canadian online services provider’s tools and payment options to scale up.

Rest of World: Didi, Kuaishou, Huawei, TikTok, and other Chinese tech companies are expanding in Latin America and poaching talent from each other, as competition intensifies  —  These young employees are so coveted that Chinese tech companies are quick to poach each other’s talent.  —  • MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

Yonhap News Agency: South Korean prosecutors indict four current and former Samsung employees over allegedly stealing and leaking semiconductor tech to overseas companies  —  Prosecutors have indicted four current and former employees of electronics giant Samsung Group on charges of stealing highly valued …

On Sept. 13, MIT AgeLab co-hosted a celebration honoring the 10th anniversary of Boston Bridge, a nonprofit professional development organization in the field of aging with a longtime AgeLab association. Since its founding in 2012, AgeLab has been affiliated with Boston Bridge, an interdisciplinary program that works with business, government, and nongovernmental organizations to improve […]

AI image generators, which create fantastical sights at the intersection of dreams and reality, bubble up on every corner of the web. Their entertainment value is demonstrated by an ever-expanding treasure trove of whimsical and random images serving as indirect portals to the brains of human designers. A simple text prompt yields a nearly instantaneous […]

Your anti-malware software may not work if you upgraded to the new operating system. But Apple says a fix is on the way.

People with Android phones got a notification that a trembler was about to rock Silicon Valley. WIRED looks at the tech behind that feat.

The suspected Chinese influence operation had limited success. But it signals a growing threat from a new disinformation adversary.

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Leaked data from TheTruthSpy stalkerware network reveals its Android apps tracked the calls, locations, and other information of hundreds of thousands of people  —  Leaked data reveals the apps tracked locations and recorded calls of Americans  —  A massive cache of leaked data reveals …

Han Chen / Axios: Report: US state and local governments kept buying Chinese telecom equipment despite a federal-level ban; only five states have rules to limit such purchases  —  Despite federal efforts to block Chinese telecom equipment from U.S. supply chains, state and local governments across …

Jon Victor / The Information: Andy Rubin incorporated home security monitoring software startup Simple Things in July 2020 and appears to have hired staff from his defunct startup Essential  —  Andy Rubin is planning his next act.  —  The former Google executive, who received a $90 million severance package following …

Artificial intelligence models can outperform humans at tasks AIs normally struggle with if they are told to think a certain way, but it doesn’t help them grasp sarcasm