Category: Uncategorized

Locating meteorites on Earth’s surface is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but using AI to analyse images captured by drones pinpointed a tiny space rock in just four days

Training artificial intelligences to identify faces or digitise text involves thousands or millions of iterations of a two-stage process known as back-propagation, but a new approach could save time, energy and computing power

Is Russia holding off on cyberwarfare while it has troops in Ukraine, or are cyberattacks failing to land thanks to vast international efforts to protect the country?

Financial Times: EU and the UK open an antitrust probe into Google and Meta’s Jedi Blue deal on online ads; EU is also probing whether Google acted without Meta’s knowledge  —  Europe’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager tells FT that ‘Jedi Blue’ deal represents ‘giant problem’ in industry

Annie Njanja / TechCrunch: India-based 100ms, which lets developers add video conferencing to their apps, raises a $20M Series A, bringing its total funding to $24.5M  —  100ms, the live video conferencing infrastructure startup based in India, has raised $20 million in Series A funding to power the next generation of live video apps …

Jessica Lucas / Input: A look at Loli Police Department, a police roleplay group in VRChat allowing nearly 11,000 of its members move through the ranks based on their activity level  —  Early last year, Jura was at the spa, chilling in a communal bath and having a casual chat with friends, when the Loli […]

Ilena Peng / Bloomberg: Twitter removes tweets by Russia’s embassy in London that claimed images from the Mariupol hospital bombing in Ukraine were fake, citing hateful conduct policy  —  Twitter Inc. has removed false tweets from the Russian embassy account in London that claimed images from the bombing of a children’s …

Zhiyuan Sun / Cointelegraph: NonFungible: Axie Infinity had $3.5B in NFT transactions in 2021, almost two thirds of the blockchain gaming industry; NBA Top Shot had $827M and Loot $242M  —  In second and third place were sports highlights marketplace NBA Top Shot with $827 million and community gaming platform Loot with $242 million, respectively.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Oracle reports Q3 revenue of $10.51B, up 4% YoY, cloud services and license support revenue of $7.6B, up 5% YoY, but misses with EPS of $1.13 vs est. of $1.18  —  – Oracle met expectations for revenue but fell short on earnings for the fiscal third quarter.

Harriet Agnew / Financial Times: London-based Lendable, which connects global institutional investors with borrowers, raises £210M led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan at a £3.5B valuation  —  Ontario Teachers’ investment in fintech group part of broader shift into private assets

Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: A look at the Islamic world’s debate over cryptocurrencies, seen as gambling by some, as millions of people in Indonesia and the Middle East invest in crypto  —  Mu’aawiyah Tucker is a religious man.  Because the Koran forbids the practice of earning interest on loans, Tucker has for years […]

Sami Fathi / MacRumors: Display analyst Ross Young expects Apple will release a 27-inch mini-LED display in June; Kuo says Apple “may not launch” mini-LED products in 2022 due to cost  —  Apple plans to launch a “Pro” version of its new Studio Display in June of this year that measures 27-inches …

Two teams of engineers have taken separate approaches to enable drones to carry out research or rescue operations with a reduced risk of crashing

Stephen Totilo / Axios: Eight more current and former PlayStation employees add their accounts of sexist treatment to a class action lawsuit filed against the company in November 2021  —  Eight more women, former and current employees at Sony PlayStation, have added their accounts of sexist treatment …

Bloomberg: SoftBank’s Z Holdings plans to launch an NFT marketplace in 180 countries and double its fintech unit PayPay’s users to 90M, tapping a five-year ~$4.3B budget  —  SoftBank Group Corp.’s Z Holdings Corp. unit is betting on non-fungible tokens and its PayPay service to drive growth …

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Twitter tests labeling images with alt text with an “alt” badge, which will show an image’s description by clicking on it, rolling out globally in April  —  A long-awaited accessibility upgrade  —  Twitter has announced that it’s testing new accessibility features …

Ryan Smith / AnandTech: An in-depth look at Apple’s M1 Ultra: combines two M1 Max chips using UltraFusion, 800GB/second memory bandwidth, 64 GPU cores to exceed the RTX 3090, and more  —  As part of Apple’s spring “Peek Performance” product event this morning, Apple unveiled the fourth and final member of the M1 family of […]

Shashank Pathak / Entrackr: Bengaluru-based Jiffy.ai, a B2B automation service, raises a $53M Series B led by Eight Roads Ventures, after raising an $18M Series A in June 2020  —  B2B automation platform Jiffy.ai has raised $53 million in its Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures.

Andrew Duehren / Wall Street Journal: Biden will sign an EO instructing federal agencies to study the risks posted by digital assets, such as undermining sanctions, and investigate a digital dollar  —  Federal agencies to explore financial and environmental concerns and inform regulatory action

Rainbow, an algorithm that was supposed to protect data from hacking by quantum computers, has been defeated using a standard laptop

Mathew Di Salvo / Decrypt: SEC charges two siblings with defrauding investors out of $124M+ through their Ormeus Coin offering, alleging they acted as “modern-day snake-oil salesmen”  —  The “ground-breaking digital money system” Ormeus Coin was actually a scam, the SEC alleges.  —  In brief

Chris J. Preimesberger / VentureBeat: Employment data startup Argyle launches a SaaS tool that lets companies access user-permissioned employment records and raises a $55M Series B led by SignalFire  —  Having your updated and accurate personal and financial information under your control and ready to use at a moment’s notice …

Karen Weise / New York Times: AWS has stopped letting new customers in Russia and Belarus open accounts; AWS says its biggest customers in Russia are multinational firms with local dev teams  —  The policy change for Amazon Web Services started over the weekend but was not publicly announced until Tuesday.

Mandiant: Google plans to acquire cybersecurity company Mandiant for around $5.4B, or $23 per share, with the deal closing later in 2022; Mandiant will join Google Cloud  —  Acquisition to bring Google speed and scale to Mandiant’s unparalleled intelligence and expertise – at a time when security has never been more important

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Linux developers fix Dirty Pipe, a high-severity vulnerability in the kernel that let hackers carry out a host of malicious actions, like installing backdoors  —  Dirty Pipe has the potential to smudge people using Linux and Linux derivitives.  —  Linux has yet another high-severity vulnerability …

Krystal Hu / Reuters: Axonius, which provides a cybersecurity asset management service that helps companies analyze IT resources, raises $200M at a $2.6B valuation led by Accel  —  Axonius has raised $200 million from investors led by venture capital firm Accel at a valuation of $2.6 billion …

Untold amounts of plastic waste is polluting our land and seas. Now, we’re using chemical tricks to design infinitely and easily recyclable materials

Our indiscriminate development and use of chemicals has left an unwanted legacy, but chemistry’s untapped green potential means it can be part of the solution too

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Apple suspends Search Ads in Russia, putting current and future App Store advertising campaigns on hold in the country “until further notice”  —  Apple Inc. has suspended advertising on its App Store in Russia, a move that bars developers from placing ads in search results …

Bloomberg: Cybersecurity firm Resecurity says hackers accessed 100+ computers of current and former staff at 21 major natural gas suppliers and exporters in mid-February  —  In mid-February, hackers gained access to computers belonging to current and former employees at nearly two dozen major natural gas suppliers …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Instagram removes Boomerang and Hyperlapse from the App Store and Google Play, a week after Meta announced the company would shut down its IGTV app  —  A week after Instagram confirmed its plan to shut down its standalone IGTV app in order to better focus on initiatives, like Reels …

Noah Smith / Washington Post: Current and former esports players and agents say many contracts are predatory, have time-based gimmicks, allow trading players without their consent, and more  —  Even as esports blossoms into a billion dollar industry, player contract negotiations are a veritable Wild West

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: DDoS attacks are using TCP Middlebox Reflection, an amplification technique utilizing a fleet of 100K+ misconfigured servers to deliver large-scale attacks  —  100,000 misconfigured servers are creating a new way to knock sites offline.  —  Last August, academic researchers discovered …

Yang Jie / Wall Street Journal: A look at Apple’s power over suppliers, which don’t include its name in public filings and presentations to avoid accidentally revealing competitive information  —  A tech giant is known to billions, but suppliers hardly ever mention its name; ‘the honored North American customer’

Igor Bonifacic / Engadget: Activision Blizzard and Epic Games suspend sales of their games in Russia; Activision Blizzard will also pause offering in-game microtransactions in the country  —  Activision Blizzard and Epic Games have joined a growing list of publishers suspending sales of their games in Russia due to the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Bloomberg: TikTok suspends livestreaming and new content uploads in Russia in response to the country’s new law that would impose prison terms for spreading “fake news”  —  TikTok says it’s suspending livestreaming in Russia amid the country’s new “fake news” law that’s aimed at silencing dissent …

Brent Lang / Variety: Netflix says it is shutting down its service in Russia, which operates through a joint venture with the country’s National Media Group, and has 1M+ subscribers  —  Netflix has suspended its service in Russia to protest the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Zeyi Yang / Protocol: How Alibaba, which has a joint venture in Russia and significant sales in Ukraine, navigates challenges caused by Russia’s invasion and international sanctions  —  The day before bombs started raining down on Kyiv, Dmytro Romashko streamed for three hours on AliExpress, Alibaba’s global ecommerce platform.

Silicon Canals: Swiss investment management firm Partners Group buys Forterro, a provider of resource planning software and services for SMBs, from Battery Ventures for €1B  —  Partners Group, a Swiss investment management firm, announced that it has acquired Forterro from Battery Ventures at an enterprise value of €1B.

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: TikTok plans to start labeling videos from some state-controlled media outlets “over the coming days”, expediting its policy due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine  —  It’s part of a broader state media policy  —  TikTok has announced that it’ll start putting labels on videos from …

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: Washington state passes the Silenced No More Act, becoming the second state to ban NDAs preventing workers from discussing harassment, wage violations, and more  —  Washington state became the second in the nation to pass the Silenced No More Act on Thursday.

Jacob Silverman / New Republic: For some right-wing libertarian-minded coiners, the right to freely trade crypto takes precedence over opposing a Russian invasion of a sovereign nation  —  Last month, a non-fungible token, or NFT, collector who goes by the pseudonymous Twitter handle @punk6529 posted a 56-part Twitter thread …

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Lapsus$ says if Nvidia doesn’t remove crypto mining limits on its graphic cards and open source its GPU drivers, the group will release the source code it stole  —  Chipmaker has until Friday to comply or see its crown-jewel source code released.  —  Data extortionists who stole up to 1 […]

This underwater sea farm uses biospheres 10 metres under the water to find sustainable ways of growing vegetables and herbs

Paresh Dave / Reuters: PayPal suspends its services in Russia, including its money transfer service Xoom; Wise and Remitly have also suspended some services in Russia  —  Payments company PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL.O) shut down its services early on Saturday in Russia, citing “the current circumstances,” …

New York Times: A look at volunteer hackers in the Russia-Ukraine war, many scattered globally with unverifiable identities, as both sides recruit them to launch cyberattacks  —  The hackers have claimed a number of disruptions over the past week, blurring the lines between amateurs and groups linked to governments.

Rick Whiting / CRN: Software AG, a developer of business and application integration software, acquires DataOps software developer StreamSets for €524M  —  Software AG says StreamSets’ technology is complementary to its application integration product portfolio and will provide a boost to the company’s Helix transformation initiative.

Sohee Kim / Bloomberg: Source: Samsung has suspended all product shipments to Russia, including chips, smartphones, and electronics; Samsung has a 30%+ market share in Russia  —  Samsung Electronics Co. said product shipments to Russia have been suspended due to current geopolitical developments …

NBC News: Twitter has banned 100+ accounts that pushed the #IStandWithPutin hashtag for “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, days after it trended on Twitter  —  Twitter has banned more than 100 accounts that pushed the pro-Russian hashtag #IStandWithPutin for participating in …

Washington Post: Activision Blizzard is sued by the family of an employee who died by suicide, alleging that sexual harassment was a “significant factor” leading to her death  —  Activision Blizzard, the embattled gaming giant that Microsoft recently agreed to buy for nearly $69 billion …