India says its central bank will prepare a whitelist of legal loan apps and the IT ministry plans to ensure that only approved apps are hosted on app stores (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch: India says its central bank will prepare a whitelist of legal loan apps and the IT ministry plans to ensure that only approved apps are hosted on app stores  —  India plans to mandate which loan apps are allowed on app stores in the country, the latest in a series of recent steps …

Robinhood launches Investor Index, updated monthly, to track the performance of the 100 most popular stocks in its app, weighting users’ “conviction” in them (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Robinhood launches Investor Index, updated monthly, to track the performance of the 100 most popular stocks in its app, weighting users’ “conviction” in them  —  Robinhood Markets is launching an index to track the favorite stocks of its millions of predominantly young, social-media-savvy customers.

FTX Ventures buys 30% of Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital for an undisclosed amount; SkyBridge will use some of the funds to buy $40M in cryptocurrencies (Jamie Crawley/CoinDesk)

Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk: FTX Ventures buys 30% of Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital for an undisclosed amount; SkyBridge will use some of the funds to buy $40M in cryptocurrencies  —  SkyBridge will invest some of the funds into crypto assets for its balance sheet.  —  FTX Ventures, the investment arm …

Modeling the social mind

Typically, it would take two graduate students to do the research that Setayesh Radkani is doing. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about the human mind, she is working on two PhD thesis projects in two different cognitive neuroscience labs at MIT. For one, she is studying punishment as a social tool to influence others. For […]

DocuSign reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $622.2M, vs. $602.7M est., and a full-year billings forecast of $2.55B to $2.57B, vs. $2.53B est.; stock jumps 18%+ (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: DocuSign reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $622.2M, vs. $602.7M est., and a full-year billings forecast of $2.55B to $2.57B, vs. $2.53B est.; stock jumps 18%+  —  DocuSign Inc. rallied 17% after reporting quarterly sales that topped analysts’ estimates and raising its billings forecast …

The White House unveils its principles to enhance tech platform accountability and competition, including Section 230 reforms and robust data protections (Ben Brody/Protocol)

Ben Brody / Protocol: The White House unveils its principles to enhance tech platform accountability and competition, including Section 230 reforms and robust data protections  —  The White House on Thursday praised “bipartisan interest in Congress in passing legislation to protect privacy” …

A survey of ~4,000 Indian gig workers on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Amazon, and others: 42% say their income is flat, 47% have no insurance, and 51% can’t save money (The Economic Times)

The Economic Times: A survey of ~4,000 Indian gig workers on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Amazon, and others: 42% say their income is flat, 47% have no insurance, and 51% can’t save money  —  Gig workers in India are young, financially stressed, and largely uninsured, according to a new report.

MIT Spokes cycles across the country to teach STEM classes

Some students have jobs or internships over the summer. But members of MIT Spokes rode their bicycles 3,800 miles across the country to teach STEM classes at learning festivals, centers for adjudicated youth, summer schools, libraries, summer camps, and after-school programs.  Spokes members Robert Henning ’20, Mariela Perez-Cabarcas ’22, Simone Lassar ’22, Maxwell Yun ’22, […]

AI system makes models like DALL-E 2 more creative

The internet had a collective feel-good moment with the introduction of DALL-E, an artificial intelligence-based image generator inspired by artist Salvador Dali and the lovable robot WALL-E that uses natural language to produce whatever mysterious and beautiful image your heart desires. Seeing typed-out inputs like “smiling gopher holding an ice cream cone” instantly spring to […]

Mysten Labs, which is developing the Sui blockchain, raised a $300M Series B led by FTX at a $2B+ valuation; all five founders worked at Meta’s crypto unit (Ryan Weeks/The Block)

Ryan Weeks / The Block: Mysten Labs, which is developing the Sui blockchain, raised a $300M Series B led by FTX at a $2B+ valuation; all five founders worked at Meta’s crypto unit  —  – Mysten’s Series B round values the company at over $2 billion, giving investors equity and token warrants.

Russia’s trade minister Denis Manturov says Russians will be able to buy the iPhone 14 despite US sanctions thanks to the country’s parallel import scheme (Reuters)

Reuters: Russia’s trade minister Denis Manturov says Russians will be able to buy the iPhone 14 despite US sanctions thanks to the country’s parallel import scheme  —  Russians will have the chance to buy the new Apple iPhone 14 despite the U.S. tech company having left the country thanks …

Apple’s state-backed Chinese data center partner, Guizhou Cloud Big Data, says lockdowns have paralyzed the city of Guiyang, stopping workers from seeing family (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: Apple’s state-backed Chinese data center partner, Guizhou Cloud Big Data, says lockdowns have paralyzed the city of Guiyang, stopping workers from seeing family  —  China’s latest Covid lockdown has virtually paralyzed a city of 6 million that houses much of the country’s electronic information …

Despite the recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market, Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 batch has 30 crypto startups, up from 25 in its Winter 2022 batch (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch: Despite the recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market, Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 batch has 30 crypto startups, up from 25 in its Winter 2022 batch  —  Crypto and web3 stands out in the Summer 2022 batch  —  Crypto founders have heard the saying a thousand times in the past few months …

GameStop partners with FTX on “e-commerce and online marketing initiatives” in the US and reports a Q2 net loss of $108.7M, up from $61.6M YoY; stock up 10%+ (Melissa Repko/CNBC)

Melissa Repko / CNBC: GameStop partners with FTX on “e-commerce and online marketing initiatives” in the US and reports a Q2 net loss of $108.7M, up from $61.6M YoY; stock up 10%+  —  – GameStop said quarterly sales declined and losses widened, as its cash pile shrank and inventory swelled.

Hebbia, a startup founded by Stanford AI researchers that’s developing AI-powered search tools, has raised a $30M Series A led by Index Ventures (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Hebbia, a startup founded by Stanford AI researchers that’s developing AI-powered search tools, has raised a $30M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  Hebbia, a startup developing AI-infused search tools, today announced that it raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures with participation from Radical […]

J-WAFS awards $150K Solutions grant to Patrick Doyle and team for rapid removal of micropollutants from water

The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has awarded a 2022 J-WAFS Solutions grant to Patrick S. Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, for his innovative system to tackle water pollution. Doyle will be working with co-Principal Investigator Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli, assistant professor in materials processing in the […]

How Minecraft’s ban on NFTs impacted the play-to-earn Critterz NFT community, some of whom bought in for thousands of dollars and earned hundreds per month (Neirin Gray Desai/Rest of World)

Neirin Gray Desai / Rest of World: How Minecraft’s ban on NFTs impacted the play-to-earn Critterz NFT community, some of whom bought in for thousands of dollars and earned hundreds per month  —  Kids in the Philippines were earning hundreds of dollars from a play-to-earn Minecraft game, until new rules sent the community into a […]

PolyAI, which uses AI to handle call center calls, raised a $40M Series B led by Georgian at a $300M post-money valuation, bringing its total funding to $70M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: PolyAI, which uses AI to handle call center calls, raised a $40M Series B led by Georgian at a $300M post-money valuation, bringing its total funding to $70M  —  Is it possible to build a voice assistant for the call center that can pick up on indirect questions to figure out […]

A wave of foreign buyers are planning to acquire fast-growing British tech companies, including Micro Focus, Avast, and Darktrace, thanks to a weakened pound (Alexandra Muller/Bloomberg)

Alexandra Muller / Bloomberg: A wave of foreign buyers are planning to acquire fast-growing British tech companies, including Micro Focus, Avast, and Darktrace, thanks to a weakened pound  —  A wave of foreign buyers is coming after British technology companies, threatening to rob the UK market of what little exposure it still has to high-growth […]

Turning carbon dioxide into valuable products

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major contributor to climate change and a significant product of many human activities, notably industrial manufacturing. A major goal in the energy field has been to chemically convert emitted CO2 into valuable chemicals or fuels. But while CO2 is available in abundance, it has not yet been widely used to […]

Collaborative machine learning that preserves privacy

Training a machine-learning model to effectively perform a task, such as image classification, involves showing the model thousands, millions, or even billions of example images. Gathering such enormous datasets can be especially challenging when privacy is a concern, such as with medical images. Researchers from MIT and the MIT-born startup DynamoFL have now taken one […]

Internal memo: Instagram plans to eventually eliminate its existing Shopping page and will test a simpler and less personalized page over the next few months (Sylvia Varnham O’Regan/The Information)

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan / The Information: Internal memo: Instagram plans to eventually eliminate its existing Shopping page and will test a simpler and less personalized page over the next few months  —  Instagram is planning to drastically scale back its shopping features, the company told Instagram staffers on Tuesday …