About: blatcho

AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal: Sources: the FTC is investigating whether Visa and Mastercard’s security tokens restrict debit-card routing competition on online payments  —  The Federal Trade Commission is examining whether the companies’ security tokens prevent online debit-card payments from going over other networks

Artificial intelligence model predictions from historical data on how AI research would develop over five years matched reality with more than 99 per cent accuracy – soon they will be asked what comes next

In the past several years, hydrogen energy has increasingly become a more central aspect of the clean energy transition. Hydrogen can produce clean, on-demand energy that could complement variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. That being said, pathways for deploying hydrogen at scale have yet to be fully explored. In particular, […]

In the 1990s, if you suggested that the corner three-pointer was the best shot in basketball, you might have been laughed out of the gym. The game was still dominated largely by a fleet of seven-foot centers, most of whom couldn’t shoot from more than a few feet out from the basket. Even the game’s […]

Four students from the MIT club Engineers Without Borders (EWB) spent part of their summer in Tanzania to begin assessment work for a health and sanitation project that will benefit the entire village, and an irrigated garden for the Mkutani Primary School. The club has been working with the Boston Professional Chapter of Engineers Without […]

Three women describe the lessons they’ve learned and the realities they weren’t prepared for.

Six actions to take when your team is under-resourced but overly in-demand.

Corporate cooperation will be critical in the fight against climate change — but the law might get in the way.

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: Alipay has quietly started testing money transfers through WeChat in September, available for a small number of users with a maximum of ~$278 per transfer  —  The wall separating China’s two leading mobile payment systems may have started to crack after Ant Group’s Alipay rolled out a trial […]

Reuters: Sources detail how Changpeng Zhao and other execs sought to “insulate” Binance from scrutiny by authorities in the US and UK, including by setting up Binance.US  —  A plan to “insulate” itself from the SEC. A backdated document.  An exodus of compliance staff.

Thomas Seal / Bloomberg: Vodafone and France’s Altice announce a ~$7B joint venture to build fiber optic lines to up to 7M homes in Germany; the deal is expected to close in H1 2023  —  Vodafone Group Plc will roll out fiber to the home in Germany in a deal with Altice Europe NV to […]

The biggest name in action cams is back with a taller sensor optimized for a world of vertical video.

Whether you’re into esports or casual fragging, these are the greatest gaming mice we’ve tested.

Meta: Meta says it found an externally-created Meta Workplace account that was used to spoof an internal Instagram system used as “evidence” for The Wire’s reporting  —  This is an ongoing investigation and we will update as it unfolds.  At this time, we can confirm that the video shared …

Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News: Analysis: 14 self-driving vehicle tech companies that went public in the past two years have seen an 80%+ average decline in their post-IPO stock price  —  A few years ago, public market investors sometimes lamented the lack of opportunities to directly invest in future-shaping technologies like autonomous driving.

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Elon Musk, SpaceX, and government partners should stop finger-pointing, commit to transparency, and figure out a long-term funding plan for Starlink in Ukraine  —  What appeared earlier this year to be a selfless act of technotopianism, the widespread deployment of Starlink terminals in Ukraine …

Supermassive black holes are engines of galactic evolution, but new observations of our galaxy and its central hole don’t quite match expectations.

Google wants to make your digital life—in its ecosystem, anyway—passwordless and more secure.

Harley-Davidson’s second all-electric motorcycle seduced WIRED’s editor in chief—but sadly can’t go the distance.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: UK-based Zen Educate, a marketplace that algorithmically matches schools with the best available teachers, raised a $21M Series A extension to fuel US expansion  —  Zen Educate, an online marketplace that algorithmically matches schools with the best available teachers, has raised £19.3 million …

Chris Vallance / BBC: Study: AI hiring tools don’t reduce bias or improve diversity; they can’t be trained to only identify job-related characteristics and strip out gender and race  —  Artificially intelligent hiring tools do not reduce bias or improve diversity, researchers say in a study.

Meir Orbach / CTech: Alphawave IP acquires Banias Labs, an Israel-based optical digital signal processing chip developer for data centers, for $240M  —  The Israeli startup, co-founded by veteran entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, develops coherent optical DSP semiconductor technology for data centers

Susan Su thought she was discovering a new café. She was in Beijing for the second half of her gap year, working with a biomedical engineering group at Tsinghua University. But the lab was relatively new, and she was filling her time by exploring the city. She soon realized she had instead stumbled into the […]

Plus: iPhones are calling the cops from roller coasters, Polestar has a new electric SUV, and Meta makes another big bet on VR.

We found lots of math-filled and science-rich toys for tiny nerds to disassemble, set on fire, and then rebuild.

Plus: Hackers hit the Mormon Church, Signal plans to ditch SMS for Android, and a Fat Bear election erupts in scandal.

Osato Avan-Nomayo / The Block: Hacker behind the Mango Markets exploit keeps $47M and returns $67M to the DeFi platform after a Mango community vote; he claims his actions were legal  —  – Eisenberg called the exploit a “profitable trading strategy” and said his actions were legal.  — The Mango exploiter said the deal …

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk: Binance’s mining service Binance Pool launches a $500M fund to provide 18-to-24-month loans for private and publicly listed Bitcoin miners  —  The entity is the latest to join the growing ranks of alternative lenders looking to provide capital to the distressed mining industry.

Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Elon Musk claims SpaceX will continue subsidizing Starlink in Ukraine “for free” even though the service is still losing money; SpaceX receives government funds  —  – Elon Musk said in a tweet Saturday that his company SpaceX would continue to fund Starlink satellite internet terminals …

City residents have long resorted to low-cost, do-it-yourself remedies that may be harmful to human health.

Here’s a guide to all the models—plus case recommendations and hidden software tricks to try.

There are many ways to make your internet faster, but the specifics depend on what you’re willing to spend right now.

Simon Owens / Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter: A look at Spotify’s podcast exclusivity strategy, which led to 75% audience drops for some Gimlet shows and caused others, like the Obamas, not to renew deals  —  The open podcast ecosystem isn’t dead yet.  —  Welcome!  I’m Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter.

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Fewer than half of the US and European rapid delivery startups launched in the pandemic are still operating; they face huge losses, a funding drought, and more  —  As nervous consumers avoided supermarkets during the Covid-19 pandemic, tech entrepreneurs spied a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvent the humble grocery run.

Tim Keary / VentureBeat: New York City-based IronVest, which uses biometric authentication and AI to verify the identity of users online, raised a $23M seed led by Accomplice  —  The challenge of assuring identity is becoming more and more difficult.  According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) …

This video game lets you work as a salvager in low Earth orbit. Essentially, it is like building a Lego set in reverse, and, like Lego, it is a very satisfying experience, finds Jacob Aron

Social media provides a lot of discourse, but sometimes, a minor revolt over a coffee chain’s loyalty program is the best use of its tools.

Plus: How Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with VR, the fake future of documentaries, and Armageddon.

This easy-going little electric bike has a step-through frame so low that anyone can cruise it out.

George Simister / UKTN: Manchester-based Connex One, which provides customer engagement tools to contact centers, raised a £93M Series C  —  Manchester-based customer engagement platform Connex One has secured £93m in a Series C funding round.  —  Connex One’s software, used by the likes of O2 and Gousto …

The Information: Doc: a shareholders’ agreement from Elon Musk for Twitter investors gives him “sole discretion” on an IPO decision, “exclusive authority” on board changes, more  —  Elon Musk may be relying on outside investors to help finance his $44 billion purchase of Twitter.

Drew Harwell / Washington Post: A look at TikTok’s rise, as US viewers spend longer in the video app than Facebook and Instagram combined, and ongoing issues with its Chinese ownership  —  The world’s most popular app has pioneered a new age of instant attention.  Can we trust it?  —  On the night Shelby Renae […]

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company can no longer pay for the Starlink satellites providing internet for Ukraine’s government and military. What you need to know

As more data centres are being built to meet growing demand, their water use is coming under scrutiny – particularly in regions of the US affected by the ongoing megadrought

A brain decoder can extract words and sentences from the brain recordings of people listening to stories or watching silent films

Thomas W. Eagar, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems, post-tenure, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and an internationally recognized expert in welding, died Oct. 9 at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was 72. An outspoken scholar and admired teacher, Eagar had a reputation for saying, as he put it, […]

Daniel J. Riccio, an advisory board member for the School of Engineering’s Undergraduate Engineering Leadership Program, has made a gift of $10 million to expand MIT’s Graduate Engineering Leadership Program, which will be renamed in recognition of the support. The gift will allow the program to grow and sustain its operations for years to come […]

Sponsor content from Imperium Group.

Research shows that agendas often create the appearance of effective meetings — without actually improving how they’re run.

Insurers can take three steps to retain the benefits of copayments and avoid their downside.