Category: Uncategorized

Yogita Khatri / The Block: Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden announces a $130M Series B led by Electric and Greylock at a $1.6B valuation, following a $27M Series A in March 2022  —  – Magic Eden has scored a $1.6 billion valuation in its latest funding round.  — The Solana-based NFT marketplace plans to launch […]

Andrew Rummer / The Block: BlockFi CEO Zac Prince says the crypto lending service has secured a $250M “revolving credit facility” from FTX  —  – BlockFi secures $250 million revolving credit facility from crypto exchange FTX.  — The crypto lender says the deal ‘bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength.’

Remote sensing systems can struggle to spot high waters, especially in stormy weather or at night. Synthetic aperture radar offers a shot in the dark.

Fireflies that light up dusky backyards on warm summer evenings use their luminescence for communication — to attract a mate, ward off predators, or lure prey. These glimmering bugs also sparked the inspiration of scientists at MIT. Taking a cue from nature, they built electroluminescent soft artificial muscles for flying, insect-scale robots. The tiny artificial […]

FinSMEs: New York-headquartered Wahed, a fintech which allows Muslims to invest in line with their faith, has raised a $50M Series B led by Wa’ed Ventures  —  Wahed Inc., a New York-headquartered global Islamic fintech company, raised USD50m in Series B funding.  —  The round was led by Wa’ed Ventures …

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura add an Automatic Verification option, which lets users bypass CAPTCHAs on websites and in apps that support the feature  —  Tapping on images of traffic lights or deciphering squiggly text to prove you are human will soon be a much less common nuisance for […]

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: London-based Instanda, which offers insurance providers a no-code core infrastructure to deploy products easily, has raised a $45M Series B led by Toscafund  —  Led by Toscafund, no-code insurance products management and distribution software maker Instada now shifts into high gear …

A temporary graphene tattoo that monitors blood pressure has been awarded the highest possible accuracy grading for such a monitoring device

Three steps to put your plan into action.

Cancer cells can have thousands of mutations in their DNA. However, only a handful of those actually drive the progression of cancer; the rest are just along for the ride. Distinguishing these harmful driver mutations from the neutral passengers could help researchers identify better drug targets. To boost those efforts, an MIT-led team has built […]

As AI becomes ever more embedded in people’s lives, effective communication with stakeholders can define a product’s success — or failure.

It’s good to honor Juneteenth or Pride month, but how are you showing up the rest of the year?

Meet the Cosmo, an all-metal electric ax with pickups that can be repositioned to create custom sounds.

Climate change and natural variability are making this a year of big weather events—so get ready for more heat waves, droughts, and hurricanes.

Sure, it’s known as a text-based platform. But it has some unique features and tools that can help visual artists share their work.

Celsius Blog: After pausing withdrawals last week, Celsius asks for more time to stabilize its liquidity and operations and halts Twitter Spaces and AMAs  —  It has been one week since we paused withdrawals, Swap, and transfers.  We want our community to know that our objective continues to be stabilizing our liquidity and operations.

Abel Rodriguez / Built In Chicago: Chicago-based Elevate K-12, which helps school districts alleviate teacher shortages by virtually connecting teachers to classrooms, has raised a $40M Series C  —  As the country has dealt with teacher shortages brought by unsafe work conditions due to the pandemic and burnout, among other reasons …

Wall Street Journal: JD.com reports revenue from its June 18 shopping festival rose 10.3% to $56.6B, the slowest growth since 2017, as China’s lockdowns dampen consumer demand  —  Consumers hit the brakes in latest indication of damaged sentiment from macroeconomic headwinds and lengthy lockdowns

It’s late, but not too late. Hurry up and snag a killer gift on these smartwatches, headphones, and more.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Telegram surpasses 700M MAUs and unveils Telegram Premium, which will let users follow up to 1,000 channels, send files up to 4GB, and more for ~$5/month  —  Telegram has amassed 700 million monthly active users and is rolling out a premium tier with additional features as the instant messaging platform makes […]

Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post: Interviews with members of Peter Thiel’s inner circle describe how he came to the decision to leave Meta’s board, a departure that was years in the making  —  Inside the billionaire investor’s journey from Facebook board member to an architect of the new American right

Wall Street Journal: The total value of all cryptocurrencies has gone down by roughly $2T, or two-thirds, since bitcoin hit its all-time high in November 2021  —  The cryptocurrency industry was built on swagger, enthusiasm and optimism.  All three are in short supply these days, as losses and layoffs mount.  —  1x

Jared Duker Lichtman proved a long-standing conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it was a “complete shock.”

Without it, it would be impossible to inflate a balloon or a tire. But understanding how it works requires a little bit of physics and chemistry.

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: A look at the safety and economics of autonomous trucks as Aurora and TuSimple say they plan to have commercial-trucking services in the US by the end of 2023  —  Autonomous trucks that mostly stick to highways could make sense, both technologically and economically, in ways robotaxis have not.

Stop fumbling for cables in the dark. These WIRED-tested stands and pads will take the hassle out of recharging your iPhone or Android phone.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India lifts ban on Mastercard from issuing new debit, credit, or prepaid cards after it demonstrated “satisfactory compliance” with the local data storage rules  —  India has lifted business restrictions on Mastercard, nearly a year after imposing the ban, once again allowing …

New York Times: Apple employees at a store in Towson, Maryland vote 65-33 to unionize, making it the company’s first US store where employees voted in favor of unionization  —  Roughly two-thirds of employees at the store in Towson, Md., voted to join the union.  — Give this article- – – Read in app

A good service is the easiest way to save your memories and share files. These are the best WIRED-tested ones for personal use.

It’s late, but not too late. Hurry up and snag a killer gift on these smartwatches, headphones, and more.

Sophia Kunthara / Crunchbase News: Postscript, which helps Shopify merchants reach customers via SMS, has raised a $65M Series C led by 01 Advisors and says it now works with 8K+ Shopify brands  —  SMS marketing startup PostScript has raised $65 million in a Series C round of funding, the company said Wednesday.

Plus: Firefox adds new privacy protections, a big Intel and AMD chip flaw, and more of the week’s top security news.

Kishan Vyas / XDA Developers: WhatsApp widely rolls out new privacy control settings to give users more control over who can see their Profile Photo, About, Last Seen, and Status  —  WhatsApp is rolling out new privacy control settings to provide users greater control over who can see their profile photo, “About,” “Last seen,” and […]

Rest of World: Despite a cratering crypto market, many traders in Latin America still see crypto as a way to circumvent unstable or stagnant economies where they live  —  Caught between rocketing inflation and a cratering crypto market, many stick with Bitcoin.  —  • MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

The thing about identity is, it changes over space and time.

Hurricanes, heat, fires, smoke, drought. Is it time to stop making the hottest part of the year seem cool?

WIRED spoke with the Environmental Protection Agency to learn more about the government’s energy efficiency program.

Nikkei Asia: Chipmakers including TSMC embark on a $120B investment spree across Taiwan, with 20 new fabs ready or in the works, dwarfing planned investments in US and Japan  —  20 new fabs ready or in pipeline, dwarfing planned investments in U.S. and Japan  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan’s chipmakers have launched …

Kate Conger / New York Times: A jury finds ex-Amazon engineer Paige Thompson guilty of wire fraud and hacking charges for downloading the personal info of 100M+ Capital One customers in 2019  —  Paige Thompson’s lawyers said she had been looking for cracks so they could be fixed.  A jury found her guilty of wire […]

Bloomberg: Bitcoin falls by 6%+ to below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020, the twelfth straight day of decline, as ether briefly dropped below $1,000  —  Bitcoin dropped below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020 as evidence of deepening stress within the crypto industry keeps piling …

The WikiLeaks founder will appeal the UK Home Office’s decision to extradite him to the US.

In an interview with WIRED, the engineer and priest elaborated on his belief that the program is a person—and not Google’s property.

Tesla’s Autopilot and other automotive safety features are involved in plenty of car crashes. But thanks to spotty data, it’s still not clear how many, or what to do about it.

Andrea Peterson / The Record: The US DOJ says RSocks, a Russian botnet used to hijack millions of devices worldwide for use as proxy servers, was disrupted in an international operation  —  The Department of Justice announced Thursday that the U.S. and international law enforcement partners in the United Kingdom, Germany …

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Meta unveils Avatars Store, where users can buy digital clothes for avatars, and plans to make it a marketplace where developers can create and sell clothing  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is launching a digital designer clothing store called the “Meta Avatars Store.”

Lauren Feiner / CNBC: In a letter, 21 US lawmakers ask Google to clamp down on “misleading” search results that steer people searching for abortions services to anti-abortion clinics  —  – A group of lawmakers are urging Google to clamp down on misleading search results that allegedly steer people searching …

Upon looking at photographs and drawing on their past experiences, humans can often perceive depth in pictures that are, themselves, perfectly flat. However, getting computers to do the same thing has proved quite challenging. The problem is difficult for several reasons, one being that information is inevitably lost when a scene that takes place in […]

By detecting tiny movements of particles of light, a quantum microphone has recorded human speech that is easier to understand than if it is captured by an equivalent classical version

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor at MIT, received yesterday the 2022 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine in recognition of his contributions to messenger (mRNA) therapeutics and delivery technology, which enabled the rapid development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Langer shares the award with Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, […]

It’s not a fixed personality trait. It’s a state any employee can attain — with enough organizational support.