Category: Uncategorized

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: XPeng Robotics, an affiliate of Chinese electric carmaker XPeng, raised $100M led by IDG, as it aims to commercialize household robotics in the next two years  —  – Xpeng Robotics on Tuesday said it raised $100 million as the affiliate company of Chinese electric carmaker Xpeng aims …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: After scrutiny, TikTok will pause a privacy update in Europe, due for July 13, whereby it would stop asking users for consent to be tracked to receive ads  —  TikTok has agreed to pause a controversial privacy policy update in Europe, which had been due to happen tomorrow …

WIRED’s editor in chief reflects on how digital surveillance infrastructure could be used to prosecute abortion, plus more thoughts on this month’s headlines.

Want to upgrade your audio? Here are the best-sounding items on Amazon this shopping holiday.

WIRED spoke with casting director Julia Bianco Schoeffling about breaking into the industry and how it’s more than just voice acting.

Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg: Sources: China decided to rein in Tencent after two scandals, including a secret WeChat project to use data to predict new Politburo standing committee members  —  Imagine for a second life before smartphones.  Simple tasks—ordering takeout, staying in touch—become frustratingly difficult, never mind dealing with emergencies.

For many graduate students, the first time they enter MIT’s campus as a student is a momentous occasion. Standing among the pillars and domes for the first time as an MIT student elicited a moment of quiet reflection for recent graduate Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22. “It was this moment of awe and kind […]

The boiling of water or other fluids is an energy-intensive step at the heart of a wide range of industrial processes, including most electricity generating plants, many chemical production systems, and even cooling systems for electronics. Improving the efficiency of systems that heat and evaporate water could significantly reduce their energy use. Now, researchers at […]

From TVs and fitness trackers to laptops, we found great discounts on some of our favorite products ahead of the retailer’s big sales event.

Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal: Thomas Krause, Broadcom’s software president, will leave on July 15 and become CEO of combined Citrix and Tibco; CEO Hock Tan will assume his responsibilities  —  Microchip company is in midst of acquiring software company VMware for $61 billion  —  The president of Broadcom Inc.’s AVGO -3.17%▼ …

Days after the deal to buy Twitter fell apart, fed up employees say they are being kept in the dark.

Amazon Prime Day isn’t the only sale this week. From video games to household essentials, here are our favorite picks from Target’s big sale.

An algorithm created by AI firm DeepMind can distinguish between videos in which objects obey the laws of physics and ones where they don’t

CNBC: GameStop launches its NFT marketplace in beta, letting users connect digital asset wallets, including the recently debuted GameStop Wallet, to buy and sell NFTs  —  – GameStop on Monday announced the long-awaited debut of its online marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: SEC filing: Twitter’s lawyers call Elon Musk’s deal termination “invalid and wrongful” and say Twitter “breached none of its obligations under the agreement”  —  Twitter Inc.’s lawyers called Elon Musk’s termination of his $44 billion buyout agreement “invalid and wrongful” …

Moore’s Law needs a hug. The days of stuffing transistors on little silicon computer chips are numbered, and their life rafts — hardware accelerators — come with a price.  When programming an accelerator — a process where applications offload certain tasks to system hardware especially to accelerate that task — you have to build a whole […]

In Florida, June typically marks the beginning of hurricane season. Preparation for a storm may appear as otherworldly as it is routine: businesses and homes board up windows and doors, bottled water is quick to sell out, and public buildings cease operations to serve as emergency shelters. What happens next may be unpredictable. If things […]

The MIT Libraries celebrated the exceptional contributions of its employees in June with its 2022 Infinite Mile Awards ceremony. Cleverly orchestrated around a mystery theme, the virtual ceremony featured video skits, a riddle contest, and performances by the libraries’ band, The Dust Jackets.  Awards were presented to individuals and teams in the categories listed below; […]

A leader prepares for the next phase of his career.

SCAN Health Plan reduced the gap by 35% — the equivalent of roughly 700 more Black and Hispanic members taking their medications as prescribed.

Developing employees’ skills doesn’t have to be disruptive. In fact, research suggests it shouldn’t be.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Germany-based Kadmos, a salary payments service for migrant workers, raises a €29M Series A led by Blossom Capital, after an €8.5M seed round in March  —  Companies from across the industrial spectrum often rely on a migrant workforce, with data from the International Labour Organization indicating …

Marginalized groups often think about the mental impact of the climate crisis in different terms—meaning they end up crowded out of the conversation.

These slates are cheap but hampered by the retailer’s limited app store. Here’s how to get a broader selection.

Without adequate consumer protections, social media companies can use any content you post, often without your knowledge or consent.

Jane Zhang / Bloomberg: Qiming Venture Partners, an early Xiaomi backer, raised $3.2B across two funds, bringing its total managed to $9.4B across 18 funds  —  Qiming Venture Partners raised $3.2 billion across two new funds, joining Sequoia China and IDG in securing fresh capital as investors grow more sanguine about the country’s startup arena.

Sean Lyngaas / CNN: How North Korean spies infiltrate US crypto firms, posing as remote workers; UN says the country has stolen billions of dollars’ worth of crypto from exchanges  —  Washington (CNN)Devin, the founder of a cryptocurrency startup based in San Francisco, woke up one day in February to the most bizarre phone call […]

The Guardian: A trove of 124k+ internal Uber documents from 2013 to 2017 reveals management discussions and lobbying efforts during the company’s aggressive global expansion  —  – More than 124,000 confidential documents leaked to the Guardian  — Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne

Biz Carson / Protocol: VC funding in Latin America, which hit a record $14.8B in 2021 according to PitchBook, has slowed down in 2022 as investors without large portfolios pull back  —  Shu Nyatta’s friends thought he was crazy when he said he was going to move to Miami and start investing in companies in […]

New York Times: Sources: defense contractor L3Harris scuttled plans to buy NSO Group despite alleged US intel officials’ support, after the Biden admin’s outrage over the talks  —  The American contractor L3 Harris is said to have cited support from intelligence officials for its effort to acquire NSO …

Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review: The war in Ukraine has prompted militaries to invest more money into AI; NATO has announced a ~$1B fund to invest in startups developing “priority” tech like AI  —  The invasion of Ukraine has prompted militaries to update their arsenals—and Silicon Valley stands to capitalize.

These free, simple tools for phone or web let you visualize urban sprawl or see what your street looked like before the turn of the millennium.

Gear can make or break your home office setup. Here’s our ultimate list of nearly 100 items, from monitors and desks to webcams and chairs.

Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: As mobile ad targeting becomes less effective, the “super app” idea could become more appealing in the West with companies scrambling to keep people inside apps  —  Super apps, immensely popular in Asia but not in the U.S., are the new hot thing for companies scrambling to capture ever […]

Vincent Manancourt / Politico: Despite many of CJEU’s rulings saying mass surveillance is banned in the EU, member states have been exploiting loopholes in them to collect and keep the data  —  Jack Murphy* was suspicious.  His ex-girlfriend, Eve Doherty, seemed to know a lot about who he was calling.  —  His suspicions were merited.

Thought for decades to be extinct, the tiny animal has stayed hidden in a former subterranean speakeasy.

Apple gets a maximum security mode, Twitter tests two-person tweets, and TikTok slows down its Shop plans.

Plus: A duplicitous bug bounty scheme, the iPhone’s new “lockdown mode,” and more of the week’s top security news.

Kellen Browning / New York Times: A look at the quirky geography game GeoGuessr, in which the world’s best players can pinpoint in seconds where a Google Street View image has been taken  —  In a game called GeoGuessr, competitors try to pinpoint where in the world a Google Street View image has been taken.  […]

Matt Levine / Bloomberg: Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter likely was a joke, since he previously pretended he would take Tesla private, but he may not be able to get out of the deal  —  Programming note: Ugh, here we are again, huh?  —  Oh Elon  —  I think it is helpful to start […]

Lucas Ropek / Gizmodo: Interview with NIST’s Dustin Moody on the agency’s recently selected encryption algorithms and why they’re designed to withstand future quantum hacking threats  —  The NIST’s “quantum-resistant” encryption standards, picked via contest, were designed to keep everybody one step ahead of hacking by quantum computers.

Spencer Soper / Bloomberg: CIRP: the number of Amazon Prime members in the US remained at 172M as of June 30, the same as six months earlier, after Amazon raised prices in February 2022  —  Amazon.com Inc.’s number of Prime members in the US stagnated in the first half of the year, suggesting a $20 […]

Need a new 4K screen? Some of our top picks are on sale right now.

Taika Waititi’s Ragnarok follow-up is full of inside jokes that make it almost impenetrable to outsiders. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not great either.

The #GentleMinions and the #minionscult have overrun TikTok, taking the franchise’s impact to all-new levels.

Kate Clark / The Information: As tech stocks fall, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, GGV, and other VC firms are buying publicly traded stocks of companies whose prospects they deem to be strong  —  Plunging shares of tech stocks have prompted venture capital firms to take an unusual step: buying publicly traded stocks.

If you prefer Google Assistant and the Nest ecosystem, there’s a discount here for you.

Axios: Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor says it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the deal and is committed to closing it on the price and terms agreed upon  —  Elon Musk is bailing on his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, claiming that the social media company hasn’t met its contractual obligations …

Financial Times: Sources: the US called on Japan to urge the country’s crypto miners in Siberia and some licensed crypto exchanges still in Russia to sever ties with Russia  —  Washington’s request aimed at further financially isolating Moscow  —  The US has called on Japan to step up pressure …