Category: Uncategorized

Converting sunlight into liquid fuel through artificial photosynthesis would be a huge environmental victory – and the latest prototypes look surprisingly effective

How inanimate molecules first arranged themselves into life is one of the great mysteries. The answer could lie in a systematic exploration of chemical space

Machines made of atoms are being used to sew together new materials molecule by molecule, which could open the floodgates to all manner of innovation

Bloomberg: Singapore-based gaming and e-commerce company Sea has lost $132B in market value from its October peak, including $11B in recent days after weak forecasts  —  Sea Ltd., once the hottest stock in the world, has lost more than $130 billion in market value from its peak last year …

Stephen Harrison / Slate: How Russia’s war with Ukraine is playing out on Wikipedia; Russian Wikipedia editors decided to call an invasion what it is, rejecting the Kremlin’s narrative  —  On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin issued the order for Russian forces to invade Ukraine.  Since then, Russians …

Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today: Meta releases its Q4 Widely Viewed Content report, showing the most viewed Facebook Page comes from a banned account; Meta would not reveal the account  —  Safe to say that Meta’s efforts to refute the idea that Facebook amplifies divisive political content are not going exactly as it would […]

Alicia Kelso / Restaurant Dive: Doordash says it is acquiring Bbot, which develops ordering and payment tools for restaurants, for an undisclosed amount; Bbot raised a $15M Series A in July  —  Dive Brief:  — DoorDash is acquiring Bbot, a hospitality technology startup that simplifies digital orders and payments processes, the company announced Tuesday.

Eric J. Savitz / Barron’s Online: HPE reports Q1 revenue of $7B, down 2% YoY, Compute revenue of $3B, up 1% YoY, and order growth up 20% YoY, including “as-a-service” orders up 136% YoY  —  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise posted better-than-expected profits, while boosting its earnings forecast for the full fiscal year ending in October.

Thermobaric weapons, sometimes called vacuum bombs, use powdered metal to create a rapidly expanding fireball. Under international law, they must only be used against military targets, not civilians.

Stephanie Condon / ZDNet: Salesforce reports Q4 revenue of $7.33B, up 26% YoY, including $6.8B from subscription and support, up 25%; platform and other, which lumps in Slack, was up 53%  —  The CRM giant beat top and bottom line estimates, with every segment of its Subscription and Support business bringing in more than $1 […]

Nanorobots propelled by magnets can be used repeatedly without fuel, offering a sustainable and cost-effective way to clean up industrial wastewater

The adoption of cryptocurrency as legal tender by El Salvador’s government has attracted enthusiastic tourists, concern from financial institutions and scorn from locals

Washington Post: After dire predictions, Russia has not yet unleashed a crippling cyberattack on Ukraine, leaving the country with functioning internet and infrastructure  —  For more than a decade, military commanders and outside experts have laid out blueprints for how cyberwar would unfold …

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Symantec details China-linked backdoor Daxin, a Windows kernel driver that can hijack TCP connections to stealthily connect with command-and-control servers  —  Security researchers have discovered Daxin, a China-linked stealthy backdoor specifically designed for deployment in hardened corporate networks …

Bloomberg: The US is expected to put pressure on SMIC, Lenovo, and other Chinese companies to join sanctions on Russia; China is Russia’s biggest electronics supplier  —  Washington is expected to lean on major Chinese companies from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. to Lenovo Group Ltd …

Maxwell Strachan / VICE: Following Ukraine’s request, Binance says banning Russian users would “fly in the face of” crypto’s purpose; NFT market DMarket bans Russians and Belarusians  —  Binance, the world’s largest exchange, said “unilaterally” banning users “would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.”

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Ashneer Grover, co-founder of Indian fintech unicorn BharatPe, resigns from the company’s board, following a probe into alleged financial irregularities  —  Ashneer Grover, a founder and the public face of BharatPe, has resigned from the board and left the managing director position he held …

Stephanie Condon / ZDNet: Zoom reports Q4 revenue of $1.07B, up 21% YoY, vs $1.05B est., net income of $490.5M, up 88% YoY, and 2,725 customers paying $100K+ annually, up 66% YoY  —  Growth has slowed in comparison to Zoom’s business at the outset of the pandemic, but the company is shifting its focus to […]

About 40 per cent of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, but the European Union is expected to release a new energy strategy to reduce its reliance on Russian imports

Monica Chin / The Verge: Lenovo unveils updated ThinkPads: X13 with Snapdragon chips, X1 Extreme with a 165Hz display, and updated P-series and T-series with new Intel processors  —  A new X13, a new X1 Extreme, and more  —  Lenovo has dumped a whole bunch of new ThinkPads into the world, and there’s some exciting […]

João Carrasqueira / XDA Developers: Lenovo debuts updated Windows 11 and Chromebook IdeaPads with 12th-Gen Intel CPUs and the Tab M10 Plus running Android 12, available in June starting at $190  —  Lenovo has a ton of announcements coming out of MWC 2022, and among them are a handful of new laptops geared towards consumers […]

Rest of World: A look at AcadArena and other “game guilds” in Southeast Asia, which loan out NFTs of in-game creatures as “scholarships” to players of games like Axie Infinity  —  In just a year, guilds boosting players into NFT games raised more than $80 million in Southeast Asia.

Lily Hay Newman / Wired: A profile of iSTARE, an Intel hardware hacking group that analyzes and attacks future generations of chips to find critical flaws before they go into production  —  Researchers at iSTARE have to think like the bad guys, finding critical flaws before processors go to production.

Monica Chin / The Verge: Samsung updates its Galaxy Book Pro laptops with 1080p webcams, Intel 12th Gen CPUs, and brighter AMOLED displays, starting at $1,050 and shipping on April 1  —  There’s a clamshell and a convertible  —  Samsung has announced two updates to its premium Galaxy Book line: the Galaxy Book 2 Pro […]

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Opinion: as Apple prepares to launch an iPhone SE 5G, the company should keep selling the older iPhone SE model and bring its price down to $199  —  Apple is planning to unveil a 5G iPhone SE in March—but the big news could be a price drop for the current model.

Ben Thompson / Stratechery: An interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger about his IDM 2.0 strategy, partnering with TSMC, the Tower Semiconductor acquisition, and learning from AMD’s success  —  Intel has been one of the companies I have focused on from the very beginning of Stratechery.

Wall Street Journal: Analysts: Ukraine conflict could accelerate the fracturing of internet, amid pressure on US tech giants from both Russia and the West to respond to the conflict  —  Conflict could accelerate the fracturing of the internet into the ‘splinternet,’ analysts say

Financial Times: Sources: the UK government has shelved plans for a Silicon Valley rival around Oxford and Cambridge in order to prioritize spending in Northern England  —  UK prime minister’s levelling up agenda means plans for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc have been put on the backburner

Grace Dean / Insider: Customers of sanctioned Russian banks are unable to use their cards with Apple Pay and Google Pay, according to the Central Bank of Russia  —  – Customers of sanction-hit Russian banks are unable to use Apple and Google Pay, Russia’s central bank said.  — These banks include VTB Group …

Jennifer Koons / Axios: The US, EU, UK, and Canada agree to cut off a “certain number of Russian banks” from the SWIFT international payments system  —  The European Union, United States and other western nations on Saturday announced they would cut off a “certain number of Russian banks” …

Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge: Crypto became a viable option for transactions in Ukraine, where Tether is popular, after digital cash transfers were suspended and cash withdrawals limited  —  More than $15 million in cryptocurrency has been donated to Ukrainian groups since Russia attacked the country on February 24th, according to research firm Elliptic.

Reuters: Meta prohibits Russian state media organizations from running ads or monetizing on its platform anywhere in the world  —  Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) is barring Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on its platform anywhere in the world, the parent company of social media giant Facebook said on Friday.

James Archer / Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Interview with Gabe Newell, Valve president and co-founder, on the Steam Deck, the company’s past and future hardware plans, consolidation in gaming, and more  —  We interview Valve’s co-founder on hardware plans and consolidation in gaming  —  I recently had the chance to grill Gabe Newell …

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE: In a report, Chinese cybersecurity company Pangu Lab says the NSA is behind the Equation Group and Bvp47, a hacking tool in use for the past 10 years  —  A Chinese security firm released a detailed report about what it says is malware created by Equation Group, a hacking group widely […]

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Zendesk abandons its $4.1B plan to acquire Momentive, which owns SurveyMonkey, after Zendesk stockholders rejected the deal  —  Zendesk announced today that it was walking away from the proposed $4.1 billion deal to buy Momentive, the owners of SurveyMonkey after stockholders rejected the deal.

Bloomberg: In a letter, Ukraine’s vice prime minister requested Tim Cook halt Apple’s product sales and shut down its App Store in Russia  —  Mykhailo Fedorov, who serves as Ukraine’s vice prime minister and oversees digital operations, urged Apple Inc. to halt product sales in Russia and shut down its App Store in the country.

These machines can learn and adapt, and then reproduce to generate better versions of themselves.

Russia has flooded social media with disinformation as part of its offensive on Ukraine, but unlike its previous campaigns to spread falsehoods, few people seem to be falling for it

Bitstamp, Europe’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, says it has handed over information on some of its customers to the UK’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6

Bloomberg: Nvidia confirms a cyber “incident” caused internal outages; source: it appears to be a minor ransomware attack that’s not connected to the Ukraine crisis  —  A cyber breach suffered by Nvidia Corp. in recent days appears to have been a ransomware attack that’s not connected …

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: Google is under pressure to remove or cut commercial ties with some prolific pro-Russian YouTube channels; pro-Kremlin broadcasters are popular on the platform  —  With sanctions on Russia ramping up following its invasion of Ukraine, Google’s YouTube is under pressure to remove …

Thomas Brewster / Forbes: A profile of Nebraska-based PenLink, a wiretapping company helping law enforcement like the FBI, DEA, and ICE collect data from Apple, Meta, Google, and others  —  A small Nebraska company is helping law enforcement around the world spy on users of Google, Facebook and other tech giants.

Politico: Russia-backed falsehoods and digital tricks related to its invasion of Ukraine are putting tech giants on the defensive over the spread of online disinformation  —  The world’s biggest social media companies are scrambling to combat a global barrage of Kremlin-backed falsehoods …

Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal: Vox Media, Complex Networks, and BDG are considering using their own mobile-optimized article pages instead of using Google’s AMP; WaPo dropped AMP last summer  —  Owners of the Verge and Bustle test alternatives to AMP framework, an effort they expect will generate more ad revenue

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Etsy beats with Q4 revenue of $717M, up 16.2% YoY, vs. $685M est., and 2021 revenue of $2.3B, up 35% YoY, with 96.3M active buyers, up 17.6% YoY; stock up 20%+  —  – Shares of Etsy soared as much as 24% in extended trading on Thursday.  — The company reported fourth-quarter […]

Russia, Ukraine and many of the latter’s Western allies have the ability to launch cyberattacks on other nations, and both sides seem ready for digital skirmishes

Machines that can mate and produce offspring can help us clean up nuclear sites, explore asteroids and terraform distant planets – but could they prove a threat, asks Emma Hart, who is helping develop them

Michael McSweeney / The Block: Block reports Q4 revenue of $4.08B, up 29% YoY, and $1.96B in Cash App bitcoin revenue, up 12% YoY; bitcoin revenue hit $10B in 2021, up 119%; stock is up 20%+  —  Quick Take  — Payments company Block, formerly known as Square, said Thursday that it made $1.96 billion in […]

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India-based Niyo, which provides digital savings accounts and other banking services, raises a $100M Series C led by Accel and Lightrock India  —  India’s Niyo has raised $100 million in a new financing round as the consumer-facing neobank platform looks to add lending and other features …

New York Times: Experts say Russia could use cryptocurrency to minimize the impact of US sanctions, including a forthcoming digital ruble and spoils from ransomware attacks  —  Russian companies have many cryptocurrency tools at their disposal to evade sanctions, including a so-called digital ruble and ransomware.