Category: Uncategorized

Identify your compelling purpose, ambitious objectives, realistic timeline, and clear deliverables.

A pivotal moment in Polina Anikeeva’s career was when she looked at an MRI scan of Parkinson’s disease patient, about a decade ago. Now professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, Anikeeva had recently worked on optoelectronics, devices that can detect and control light, and her work was used […]

A roadmap for leaders in the hybrid era.

New research looks at when it works to bid on ads for a competitor’s keywords — and when it backfires.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: UK-based Token.io, an open banking-based account-to-account payments service, raises $40M co-led by Cota Capital and TempoCap  —  The rise of digital payments has changed the nature of how people do business with each other; and open banking — a movement in banking where incumbents …

Developers and esports stars are ready for the global stage. Now if only major publishers would let them in.

If you’re using a gas stove, give your kitchen the faster, safer, and more environmentally responsible upgrade.

The Coleman Cascade and 1900 series both feature cast-iron grates that make camp cooking just like home cooking.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Swiggy plans to acquire Dineout, a dining out table reservations and events service backed by Times Internet, a source says for $200M in an all-equity deal  —  Swiggy has amassed millions of users, helping them order food and grocery online in India.  The seven-year-old firm is now looking to reach those […]

Jane Lanhee Lee / Reuters: Arm reports 2021 revenue rose 35% YoY to $2.7B, driven by licensing, up 61% YoY to $1.13B, and royalties, up 20% YoY to $1.54B; 29.2B ARM chips shipped in 2021  —  SoftBank Group Corp’s(9984.T) chip technology firm Arm Ltd on Thursday reported record revenue for 2021, and Chief Executive …

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Qualified, a Salesforce-based service that helps companies convert website visitors into customers, raises a $95M Series C led by Sapphire  —  Qualified, a Salesforce-native platform that helps companies convert website visitors into paying customers, has raised $95 million in a series C round of funding.

Bloomberg: Analysis: Huawei spent $22.1B, or 22.4% of its revenue, on R&D in 2021, seeking to sidestep US sanctions; Meta invested 20.9% into R&D, far above its US peers  —  Few companies devote more of their revenue to research than Huawei Technologies Co., for which developing new technologies …

Matthew Gault / VICE: Emails reveal how some police officers have become superfans of autonomous drone company Skydio and regularly help to sell or promote its products to colleagues  —  A drone company called Skydio has managed to get autonomous drones into dozens of police departments by turning cops into their biggest fans.

Bloomberg: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chairman Bret Taylor told employees that the company will keep operating as usual; sources: the deal could take up to six months  —  Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal and Chairman Bret Taylor told employees on Monday that the social network …

Billy Mitchell / FedScoop: The Department of Defense hires Craig Martell, Lyft’s head of machine learning, as the Pentagon’s first chief digital and artificial intelligence officer  —  Craig Martell has left his role as head of machine learning for Silicon Valley rideshare company Lyft to be the Pentagon’s first chief digital …

Kate Conger / New York Times: Twitter employees say they heard little from Elon Musk, CEO Parag Agrawal, management, and Charles Schwab about what a sale to the billionaire means for them  —  Workers say they have been left largely in the dark about what a sale to the billionaire will mean for them and […]

Josh Ye / Reuters: Sources: Tencent-controlled Chinese video game streaming service Huya, which rivals DouYu, will lay off hundreds of staff; Huya had 2,075 employees in 2020  —  Chinese video game streaming site Huya (HUYA.N) has started laying off staff, three sources close to the matter said …

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Sources: Netflix staff morale is sagging amid its cratering stock price, subscriber losses, and an engineering restructuring to create levels, such as “junior”  —  As Netflix shares plunge to their lowest point in five years, the company risks losing its most valuable resource: its star employees.

Bloomberg: Source: Twitter could reach a deal with Elon Musk for a takeover as soon as today; Twitter stock jumps 5%+  —  Twitter is in the final stretch of negotiations about a sale to Elon Musk, a person with knowledge of knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reports.

New York Times: Sources: Twitter’s board met Sunday to discuss Elon Musk’s bid, which is being considered more seriously after Musk’s filing detailed $46.5B in financing  —  Twitter’s 11-member board met on Sunday morning to discuss Mr. Musk’s offer to buy the company and take it private.  — Give this article- – – Read in […]

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Oracle patches a critical bug in Java 15 and above, which lets attackers forge TLS certificates and signatures, two-factor authentication messages, and more  —  A failure to sanity check signatures for division-by-zero flaws makes forgeries easy.  —  Organizations using newer versions …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Reliance Industries calls off its $3.4B acquisition of core parts of Indian retail chain Future Group, following Amazon’s legal fight against the deal  —  Reliance Industries “cannot implement” its $3.4 billion deal to acquire core parts of retail chain Future Group after the latter’s secured …

Shruti Shekar / Android Central: Leaked images seem to show a Google Pixel Watch testing model left at a restaurant in the US, with a minimalist design in black and a proprietary Google band  —  If this is the final design of the Google Pixel Watch, then many of the rumors have come true.  —  […]

Emma Roth / The Verge: Apple warns it will remove apps from the App Store that haven’t been “updated in a significant amount of time” and is giving developers 30 days to update them  —  Wiping apps that haven’t been updated in a ‘significant amount of time’  —  Apple may be cracking down on apps […]

Kyle Chayka / New Yorker: Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter appears to be about preserving Twitter as a means for himself and others to continue influencing vast audiences without interference  —  The world’s richest man seems intent on preserving Twitter as a means for himself and others to continue influencing vast audiences without interference.

Joy Press / Vanity Fair: Streamers are acting like network TV, as they pull back on edgy content and seek “elevated broadcasts”, like sitcoms, under financial pressure and competition  —  Desperate for subscriber eyeballs, streamers are pulling back on edgy content—and acting more like the networks they trounced in the revolution.

Bill Curry / Globe and Mail: Documents show wide-ranging opposition from Twitter and others to Canada’s online harms proposals, which the government recently said it will delay implementing  —  Newly released documents reveal Twitter Canada told government officials that a federal plan to create a new internet regulator …

Mimi Billing / Sifted: Stockholm-based Planhat, which provides customer relationship management software to companies, raises a $50M Series A after seven years of bootstrapping  —  Previously bootstrapped Planhat raises one of the Nordics’ largest Series A rounds of 2022  —  Planhat ends bootstrapped journey with $50m Series A

Reuters: China-based Q&A service Zhihu closed down 23.6% in its Hong Kong trading debut, after raising $106M in a secondary listing; Zhihu faces a potential US delisting  —  Question and answer website Zhihu Inc’s (2390.HK) shares ended down 23.6% on Friday in Hong Kong, making it one of the worst ever secondary listing debuts in […]

Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Despite lockdowns and tech crackdowns, China remains the best option for electronic manufacturers due to a comprehensive supply chain ecosystem and lower costs  —  Stringent tech regulations and Covid Zero lockdowns are challenging tech’s ties to China.  But first…

Dave Lee / Financial Times: Interview with Dave Limp, Amazon’s head of devices and services, on why he thinks ambient computing will enhance the real world, Fire phone’s failure, and Astro  —  When Amazon launched Alexa — its voice-activated virtual assistant — in 2014, it was met with scepticism.

Kif Leswing / CNBC: As of Friday’s close, Netflix had a $99.2B market cap, down from $300B+ in November 2021; Meta had a $532.6B market cap after passing $1T in June 2021  —  – The tech market has plunged since its peak in November, and Netflix and Facebook have been hit particularly hard.

Ash Parrish / The Verge: The NLRB rules that 21 QA employees at Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software unit are allowed to have a union election; they have until May 20 to submit ballots  —  The employees have until May 20th to submit their ballots  —  Twenty-one Raven Software QA employees have until May 20th …

Bloomberg: Sources detail how Elon Musk convinced Morgan Stanley and 11 other banks to back his Twitter bid, including ideas on how to run the business and boost revenue  —  Publicly, Elon Musk has said he doesn’t care about the economics of owning Twitter Inc.  —  But during a hectic …

Reuters: Investigation details Binance’s efforts to build ties with the Russian government, including handing over data on opposition leader Alexei Navalny in April 2021  —  In April 2021, Russia’s financial intelligence unit met in Moscow with the regional head of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

BBC: The UK’s Department for Transport outlines rules for self-driving vehicles, including letting drivers watch TV on the go, ahead of a full framework in 2025  —  People using self-driving cars will be allowed to watch television on built-in screens under proposed updates to the Highway Code.

Researchers hoping to identify bacteria capable of consuming radioactive waste at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant fear their work has been destroyed by Russian troops

Cecilia Kang / New York Times: As the EU prepares its third landmark tech law in the last few years, the US has enacted just two narrow federal tech laws in the past 25 years  —  Federal privacy bills, security legislation and antitrust laws to address the power of the tech giants have all failed […]

Lauren Feiner / CNBC: In a speech on disinformation, Obama said social media firms’ design choices contribute to polarization, and called for more transparency and Section 230 reform  —  – Former President Barack Obama criticized social media companies for contributing to polarization through design choices on their platforms.

Megha Mandavia / Wall Street Journal: Indian government data: Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe have a combined 80%+ share in India’s mobile payments market, WhatsApp has a 0.02% share  —  India will be a crucial market for Meta’s global e-commerce ambitions, but multiple missteps there are holding it back

Laurie Clarke / MIT Technology Review: How crypto investors are pushing for semi-autonomous crypto zones in Central America, as they risk repeating the region’s long history of corporate colonialism  —  A new class of crypto investors have bold plans to rebuild society from scratch.  But their pet projects risk repeating the region’s long history of […]

Researchers have designed proteins that self-assemble into tiny machine parts for use in molecular engines

Breaking the News, a new exhibition at the British Library, explores how our consumption of world affairs has transformed over five centuries of publication in Britain

Robotic limbs that are controlled by electrostatic brakes rather than many motors could lead to a new generation of lightweight robots

Nimah Quadri / Fortune: Oyster, an HR service aimed at distributed workforces, raises a $150M Series C led by Georgian at a $1B+ valuation, up from $475M in June 2021  —  Never miss a story: Follow your favorite topics and authors to get a personalized email with the journalism that matters most to you.

Wall Street Journal: A look at Russia’s efforts to promote homegrown social media like Rutube and VKontakte, even as local content creators choose to stick with Western services  —  Kremlin cracks down on Western social media, but Russia’s homemade alternatives are a tough sell

Bloomberg: Filings: Apple spent $2.5M on US lobbying in Q1 2022, up 34% from $1.86M in Q4 2021; Google spent $2.96M in Q1, up 34% QoQ but flat YoY; Microsoft spent $2.5M  —  Apple Inc. spent a record quarterly high of $2.5 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2022 amid increased pressure […]

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: A look at the downfall of Russian tech companies amid Putin’s crackdowns; Yandex looks to sell its news unit, Group-IB’s founder was arrested for treason, more  —  Yandex, VKontakte and Kaspersky all ran afoul of the Kremlin’s need to control Internet access, despite the efforts of their founders

Existing 3D printers work by building up an object one layer at a time, making it difficult to produce some intricate shapes, but a new technique involving lasers could change that

Bloomberg: Sources: Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground will not be signing a new deal with Spotify, and is in talks with others like Audible  —  Barack and Michelle Obama’s time with Spotify Technology SA is coming to an end.  —  The former first family’s production company …