Munich-based Holidu, which runs a search engine and booking website for vacation rentals, raised a €100M Series E led by 83North, with €75M equity and €25M debt (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Munich-based Holidu, which runs a search engine and booking website for vacation rentals, raised a €100M Series E led by 83North, with €75M equity and €25M debt  —  Munich-based software and services vacation rental startup, Holidu, has topped up its coffers …

Reddit’s chief product officer says 3M+ users created Reddit Vault wallets, including 2.5M to buy NFT avatars that can be used as profile pictures on the site (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Reddit’s chief product officer says 3M+ users created Reddit Vault wallets, including 2.5M to buy NFT avatars that can be used as profile pictures on the site  —  In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed […]

ASML, the Dutch company that makes chip making equipment, expects US restrictions on exporting high-end chips to China to have “limited” impact on its business (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: ASML, the Dutch company that makes chip making equipment, expects US restrictions on exporting high-end chips to China to have “limited” impact on its business  —  – ASML reported third-quarter revenue and earnings on Wednesday that topped analyst expectations …

Bluesky previews its Authenticated Transport Protocol, formerly ADX, for large distributed social applications and says a Bluesky social app is “coming soon” (Sander Lutz/Decrypt)

Sander Lutz / Decrypt: Bluesky previews its Authenticated Transport Protocol, formerly ADX, for large distributed social applications and says a Bluesky social app is “coming soon”  —  The group, formed within Twitter, is building a decentralized protocol that limits corporate and governmental influence on social media platforms.

Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu says the company is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering” and plans to open a new gaming studio in Southern California (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu says the company is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering” and plans to open a new gaming studio in Southern California  —  At TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu dropped two bits of news about the streaming giant’s foray into games.

Google adds tablet-friendly features to Chrome on Android, like a visual tab grid, a drag-and-drop mode, and a side-by-side design; tab groups are coming later (Florence Ion/Gizmodo)

Florence Ion / Gizmodo: Google adds tablet-friendly features to Chrome on Android, like a visual tab grid, a drag-and-drop mode, and a side-by-side design; tab groups are coming later  —  The update brings abilities like tabs and a drag-and-drop mode, but it’s for Android tablets only.  —  Alerts

Ad hoc committee releases report on remote teaching best practices for on-campus education

The Ad Hoc Committee on Leveraging Best Practices from Remote Teaching for On-Campus Education has released a report that captures how instructors are weaving lessons learned from remote teaching into in-person classes. Despite the challenges imposed by teaching and learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, the report says, “there were seeds planted then that, we […]

Apple restores Russia’s largest social network VKontakte, Mail.ru, and other apps from VK, three weeks after removing them citing UK sanctions (Tim Hardwick/MacRumors)

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: Apple restores Russia’s largest social network VKontakte, Mail.ru, and other apps from VK, three weeks after removing them citing UK sanctions  —  Apple has restored Russian apps for social network VKontakte and webmail provider Mail.ru to the App Store, three weeks after removing …

UK’s CMA gives a final order to Meta to sell Giphy, after a judge ordered the CMA to reassess the case in July (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: UK’s CMA gives a final order to Meta to sell Giphy, after a judge ordered the CMA to reassess the case in July  —  Bye-bye: Meta has again been ordered by the UK’s competition watchdog to sell animated GIF platform, Giphy.  And this time it’s final.  —  The decision follows a […]

Unlocking the mysteries of how neurons learn

When he matriculated in 2019 as a graduate student, Raúl Mojica Soto-Albors was no stranger to MIT. He’d spent time here on multiple occasions as an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, including eight months in 2018 as a displaced student after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Those experiences — including participating in […]

Internal doc: Amazon has a high attrition rate across all levels, costing $8B annually, and workers choose to leave twice as often as layoffs and firings occur (Avery Menegus/Engadget)

Avery Menegus / Engadget: Internal doc: Amazon has a high attrition rate across all levels, costing $8B annually, and workers choose to leave twice as often as layoffs and firings occur  —  Amazon churns through workers at an astonishing rate, well above industry averages.  According to a tranche of documents marked …

Netflix rolls out a feature globally to let users transfer all their personalized viewing data to a new account, ahead of a crackdown on account sharing in 2023 (Janko Roettgers/Protocol)

Janko Roettgers / Protocol: Netflix rolls out a feature globally to let users transfer all their personalized viewing data to a new account, ahead of a crackdown on account sharing in 2023  —  Netflix is making it easier for people to disentangle their personal viewing data: The streaming service is rolling …

Sources: the FTC is investigating whether Visa and Mastercard’s security tokens restrict debit-card routing competition on online payments (AnnaMaria Andriotis/Wall Street Journal)

AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal: Sources: the FTC is investigating whether Visa and Mastercard’s security tokens restrict debit-card routing competition on online payments  —  The Federal Trade Commission is examining whether the companies’ security tokens prevent online debit-card payments from going over other networks

Alipay has quietly started testing money transfers through WeChat in September, available for a small number of users with a maximum of ~$278 per transfer (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: Alipay has quietly started testing money transfers through WeChat in September, available for a small number of users with a maximum of ~$278 per transfer  —  The wall separating China’s two leading mobile payment systems may have started to crack after Ant Group’s Alipay rolled out a trial […]

Vodafone and France’s Altice announce a ~$7B joint venture to build fiber optic lines to up to 7M homes in Germany; the deal is expected to close in H1 2023 (Thomas Seal/Bloomberg)

Thomas Seal / Bloomberg: Vodafone and France’s Altice announce a ~$7B joint venture to build fiber optic lines to up to 7M homes in Germany; the deal is expected to close in H1 2023  —  Vodafone Group Plc will roll out fiber to the home in Germany in a deal with Altice Europe NV to […]

Analysis: 14 self-driving vehicle tech companies that went public in the past two years have seen an 80%+ average decline in their post-IPO stock price (Joanna Glasner/Crunchbase News)

Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News: Analysis: 14 self-driving vehicle tech companies that went public in the past two years have seen an 80%+ average decline in their post-IPO stock price  —  A few years ago, public market investors sometimes lamented the lack of opportunities to directly invest in future-shaping technologies like autonomous driving.

Meta says it found an externally-created Meta Workplace account that was used to spoof an internal Instagram system used as “evidence” for The Wire’s reporting (Meta)

Meta: Meta says it found an externally-created Meta Workplace account that was used to spoof an internal Instagram system used as “evidence” for The Wire’s reporting  —  This is an ongoing investigation and we will update as it unfolds.  At this time, we can confirm that the video shared …

Elon Musk, SpaceX, and government partners should stop finger-pointing, commit to transparency, and figure out a long-term funding plan for Starlink in Ukraine (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Elon Musk, SpaceX, and government partners should stop finger-pointing, commit to transparency, and figure out a long-term funding plan for Starlink in Ukraine  —  What appeared earlier this year to be a selfless act of technotopianism, the widespread deployment of Starlink terminals in Ukraine …

Study: AI hiring tools don’t reduce bias or improve diversity; they can’t be trained to only identify job-related characteristics and strip out gender and race (Chris Vallance/BBC)

Chris Vallance / BBC: Study: AI hiring tools don’t reduce bias or improve diversity; they can’t be trained to only identify job-related characteristics and strip out gender and race  —  Artificially intelligent hiring tools do not reduce bias or improve diversity, researchers say in a study.