Category: Uncategorized

Financial Times: Filing: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund takes a ~5% stake in Nintendo, worth $2.98B; the PIF disclosed a 5% stake in Japan’s Nexon and Capcom in February  —  Sovereign wealth fund has already bought into Japan’s Capcom and Nexon  —  Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has acquired …

Tools used to find child abuse material could be wielded in the US to protect “unborn children” if the EU bans end-to-end encryption.

A raft of recent films like Everything Everywhere All at Once highlights the complicated relationships between immigrant Asian women and their mothers.

This little gadget tries to perfect the tried-and-true ball head, but it’s too expensive and has a few too many quirks.

Amelia Isaacs / AltFi: Dutch BNPL service in3 raises a $85.3M Series B in debt and equity, partners with Dutch payments company Mollie, and says it supports over 130K merchants  —  Mollie’s millions of consumers will now have access to ‘socially responsible’ BNPL services with in3.

New York Times: A profile of Do Kwon, the trash-talking founder of Terraform Labs, which raised $200M+ to build LUNA and UST; many investors avoided losses by cashing out early  —  Do Kwon, a South Korean entrepreneur, hyped the Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies.  Their failures have devastated some traders …

Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) student Sarah Cen remembers the lecture that sent her down the track to an upstream question. At a talk on ethical artificial intelligence, the speaker brought up a variation on the famous trolley problem, which outlines a philosophical choice between two undesirable outcomes. The speaker’s scenario: Say a […]

After the InSight lander studied the strongest marsquake ever detected, scientists gave the space robot a negative prognosis because of its dwindling solar power.

The government will fund a project to help humanitarians on the ground and gather evidence of war crimes.

Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal: As startups face potential drops in valuation and VCs demand lower spending and higher margins, some companies turn to cutting staff, marketing, and projects  —  Funding is suddenly scarce as venture capital firms grow stingy, forcing young companies to get frugal and focus on breaking even

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: Google Cloud launches new software supply chain and zero trust tools, including one that gives governments and enterprises access to vetted open-source packages  —  Google Cloud is holding its annual Security Summit this week and unsurprisingly, the company used the event to launch a few new security features.

Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan / Financial Times: Thought Machine, provider of cloud-based banking infrastructure for 35+ banks globally, raises a $160M Series D at a $2.7B valuation, up from $1B+ in November  —  Unicorn brings Morgan Stanley on board as client and investor  —  London-based fintech Thought Machine has doubled its valuation …

Researchers found a way to exploit the tech that enables Apple’s Find My feature, which could allow attackers to track location when a device is powered down.

The daughter of an American diplomat, Eleanor Freund spent most of her childhood living abroad in such places as Madagascar, Ghana, South Africa, and Austria. These experiences, she explains, led to an early interest in politics and international relations. “Whether in South Africa, which was emerging from decades of racial discrimination and violence under apartheid, […]

The value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has plummeted in recent weeks, but the computer power devoted to the industry continues to rise

Even as rapid improvements in artificial intelligence have led to speculation over significant changes in the health care landscape, the adoption of AI in health care has been minimal. A 2020 survey by Brookings, for example, found that less than 1 percent of job postings in health care required AI-related skills. The Abdul Latif Jameel […]

Quantum-encrypted messages sent through cables over long distances are sensitive to tiny vibrations, suggesting a possible by-product of a future secure network

For years, organizations have taken a defensive “castle-and-moat” approach to cybersecurity, seeking to secure the perimeters of their networks to block out any malicious actors. Individuals with the right credentials were assumed to be trustworthy and allowed access to a network’s systems and data without having to reauthorize themselves at each access attempt. However, organizations […]

A study illustrates how they harm both individuals and teams.

A leading political scientist outlines the challenges we face and explains what we can do about them.

Making new connections — and reviving old ones — doesn’t have to feel awkward.

This high-powered gaming phone will satisfy all the playing needs of obsessive gamers. The rest of us should look elsewhere.

We were promised jetpacks that never arrived. But you know what’s finally here? Big, honking drones you can ride on.

Ring in their special milestone with useful gadgets, outdoor gear, subscriptions, and modern conveniences.

Washington Post: A look at tech political advocacy group American Edge, funded solely by Meta, as it tries to create the appearance of grassroots opposition to antitrust reform  —  Records show Facebook-funded American Edge backed minority interest groups, conservative think tanks and small business groups …

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Unit, a banking-as-a-service startup, raises a $100M Series C led by Insight at a $1.2B valuation, following a $51M Series B in June 2021  —  Unit, a banking-as-a-service startup, has closed on a $100 million Series C round of funding led by Insight Partners.

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Apple announces several accessibility features, including Watch improvements and a live captioning tool for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, rolling out later in 2022  —  Apple has released a bevy of new accessibility features for iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac, including a universal live captioning tool …

With today’s staffing shortages, the usual solutions just won’t cut it.

No one likes sitting at a red light. But signalized intersections aren’t just a minor nuisance for drivers; vehicles consume fuel and emit greenhouse gases while waiting for the light to change. What if motorists could time their trips so they arrive at the intersection when the light is green? While that might be just […]

The US government is sending 8 more at-home tests to every household. Here’s how to get yours, and how to troubleshoot common problems.

A growing number of people on the platform claim to have a perceptual condition that lets them smell colors, see music, or taste sounds. But do they really?

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: The DOJ says that Moises Luis Zagala Gonzalez, a 55-year-old cardiologist living in Venezuela, created and rented Jigsaw and Thanos ransomware to cybercriminals  —  The US Department of Justice today said that Moises Luis Zagala Gonzalez (Zagala), a 55-year-old cardiologist with French …

A newly unsealed opinion is likely the first decision from a US federal court to find that cryptocurrencies can’t be used to evade sanctions.

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple now allows devs to auto-renew users for increased subscription prices once a year as long as the increase doesn’t exceed $50 or 50% of the annual price  —  Apple today informed developers that it is implementing a new subscription feature that will allow customers to be charged automatically …

Bloomberg: Logs show that the alleged Buffalo shooter spoke explicitly in a private Discord server about plans to conduct and livestream an attack since at least December  —  The accused gunman behind 10 deaths and 3 injuries in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend had spoken explicitly about his plans …

The winner of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight […]

In deeply decarbonized energy systems utilizing high penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE), energy storage is needed to keep the lights on and the electricity flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing — when generation from these VRE resources is low or demand is high. The MIT Energy Initiative’s Future of […]

For more than four decades, the U.S. and Iran have had a relentlessly poor relationship. To be sure, it is hardly a shock that tensions would run high between the countries following the hostage crisis of 1979-1981, when Iran held more than 50 U.S. diplomats in captivity for 444 days. Even so, little progress has […]

Amy G contributes her conflict-management expertise to an episode of Women Amplified.

Sponsor content from Deloitte.

Big decisions can feel scary. Here’s how to avoid a knee-jerk reaction.

Sam Kessler / CoinDesk: Luna Foundation Guard says its bitcoin reserves have depleted from ~80K to ~300 and the remaining UST and LUNA tokens will be used to compensate investors  —  The announcement comes after reports that over a billion dollars of Terra’s bitcoin reserves are unaccounted for.

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says bitcoin has no future as a payments network because of its inefficiency and high environmental costs  —  Bankman-Fried criticises biggest digital asset over inefficiency and high environmental costs  —  Bitcoin has no future as a payments network …

A spate of layoffs is just the first sign of trouble for early-stage companies facing an economic downturn.

Sellers keep getting hit with fee increases—at a time when shelves are sitting empty.

​In our passwordless future, we’ll lose the frustration—and freedom—of getting locked out.

Ryan Weeks / The Block: Elwood Technologies, a crypto-focused market access and trading service for institutional investors, raises a $70M Series A led by Goldman Sachs, Dawn Capital  —  Quick Take  — Goldman Sachs, Barclays and CommerzVentures invested in the Series A round alongside venture capital firms.

Building around the so-called typical user is a dangerous mistake.

In theory, the building blocks of life are possible with a more expansive code than three-letter codons. New work shows that would be a challenge.

From record cleaners to slip mats, these extras are for budding enthusiasts and die-hard collectors alike.