Category: Uncategorized

Data shows that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, profitability, safety, inventory control, and employee retention.

A city famed for friendliness also has a booming startup scene—and that network of founders supporting founders has led to a slew of firms taking the lead.

The city is a global hub for investors, startups, and larger companies seeking sunnier climes and a business-friendly atmosphere.

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Jiko, a neobank that gives companies “low-cost access” to short-term US Treasury bills, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $87.7M  —  Jiko started its life as a mobile bank for consumers.  But over time, the fintech startup has evolved its model …

Blockchain investigators have uncovered at least $4 million—and counting—in cryptocurrency fundraising has reached Russia’s violent militia groups.

Asa Hiken / Ad Age: Sources: Crypto.com saw a 30%-40% reduction in headcount between June and August, with 2,000+ employees leaving the company, mostly due to layoffs  —  The cryptocurrency exchange has been dramatically downsizing its marketing deals and headcount in the wake of crypto winter  —  May 7 was a joyous day at Crypto.com.

Francisco Pires / Tom’s Hardware: Samsung details GDDR7, already in production, with speeds up to 36Gbps, doubling GDDR6’s 18Gbps, and plans to release new V-NAND chips with a 230-layer design  —  Increasing investments as others tighten their belts  —  Samsung is looking to capitalize on its deep and varied revenue sources …

Computer chips are packed with billions of microscopic transistors that enable powerful computation, but also generate a great deal of heat. A buildup of heat can slow a computer processor and make it less efficient and reliable. Engineers employ heat sinks to keep chips cool, sometimes along with fans or liquid cooling systems; however, these […]

Bloomberg: Amazon stops working on Scout, its autonomous home delivery cooler-sized robot in testing since 2019; source: ~400 people were working on the project globally  —  Amazon.com Inc. is abandoning its home delivery robot, the latest sign that the e-commerce giant is starting to wind down experimental projects amid slowing sales growth.

These new Android handsets don’t represent a giant leap from last year’s Pixel 6, but they do contain some smart updates.

Hoping for an Apple iPad Mini or Dyson for the holidays? Both Target and Amazon are hosting a second yearly sales event.

The voice revealed in Nintendo’s trailer disappointed some fans—but honestly, could you listen to high-pitched peals of “Mamma mia!” for an hour and a half?

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Filing: a judge grants Elon Musk’s request to halt the Twitter trial and says that if the deal doesn’t close by 5pm on October 28, the trial begins in November  —  The pending trial between Elon Musk and Twitter is suddenly on hold, as Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted the Musk […]

Tiffany Hsu / New York Times: Pew: 6% of US adults regularly get news on BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram, or Truth Social, but no one site drew over 2% of those seeking news  —  The appeal of platforms like Parler, Truth Social and Telegram is another symptom of the partisan divide in media, […]

Standard silkworm silk has been made stronger than spider’s silk, one of the toughest materials known, by bathing it with metals and respinning it

In recent years, scientists have made great strides in their ability to develop artificial intelligence algorithms that can analyze patient data and come up with new ways to diagnose disease or predict which treatments work best for different patients. The success of those algorithms depends on access to patient health data, which has been stripped […]

Trying to decipher all of the factors that influence the behavior of complex ecological communities can be a daunting task. However, MIT researchers have now shown that the behavior of these ecosystems can be predicted based on just two pieces of information: the number of species in the community and how strongly they interact with […]

One of the most critical components of our technological future is easy to overlook. Microelectronics, the devices and circuits at the core of computer and communication chips, are aptly named: built on the micrometer (and nanometer!) scale, they cannot be seen with the naked eye, but they power almost everything around us from smart watches, […]

Focus on providing learning experiences for the next generation — and room for them to make mistakes.

Poorly designed programs can exacerbate inequity.

A roundtable conversation on Taylorism and how it shapes management still today.

Forty-eight states have passed protections against revenge porn—but their narrow definition of such content leaves many people exposed.

Playfulness and tickling aren’t always considered “serious” subjects, but a new study shows how they can address key questions about the brain.

WIRED spoke with the head of Facebook about competition from TikTok and his theory that algorithms can enhance our personal relationships.

Bloomberg: Amazon plans to hire 150,000 seasonal workers, the same as in 2021, ahead of the holidays; Walmart plans to hire 40,000, down from 150,000 in 2021  —  Amazon.com Inc. plans to hire 150,000 seasonal workers, about the same as last year despite slowing sales and predictions of a lackluster holiday shopping season.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Minnesota-based Arctic Wolf, which offers cybersecurity tools and on-site experts, raised $401M in debt, after raising $150M at a $4.3B valuation in July 2021  —  In a sign that pure equity financing is getting harder to come by, cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf, which last July raised $150 million …

Gené Teare / Crunchbase News: Global VC funding in Q3 2022 was $81B, down 53% YoY from $171B and 33% QoQ from $121B, the lowest level since $70.6B in Q1 2020  —  The big global venture capital pullback we were all expecting is truly here.  —  Venture and growth investors in private companies scaled …

Scientists have found a way to use leaked electromagnetic radiation to measure nutrients in microwaved meals

Amelia Trainer applied to MIT because she lost a bet. As part of what the fourth-year nuclear science and engineering (NSE) doctoral student labels her “teenage rebellious phase,” Trainer was quite convinced she would just be wasting the application fee were she to submit an application. She wasn’t even “super sure” she wanted to go […]

An inquest found content on Pinterest and Instagram contributed to the 2017 death of Molly Russell. The sites say they’ve changed—with opposing strategies.

Forget hiding indoors during the cold season. Enjoy the crisp autumn air with backyard grills, cozy camping gear, and more.

From Serial to Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer series, it’s time to think about what pop culture’s fascination with murder cases does to viewers—and victims.

Lauly Li / Financial Times: Dutch chip manufacturer STMicroelectronics plans to invest €730M to build a chip materials plant in Italy to create a self-reliant supply chain amid shortages  —  Factory in Italy will help region become more self-reliant in key semiconductor market  —  STMicroelectronics …

Brendan Vaughan / Fast Company: Fast Company brings its site back online after eight days offline, saying a cyberattack hit its CMS and “no customer or advertiser information was disclosed”  —  Eight days.  That’s how long FastCompany.com was offline after we were targeted in a cyberattack, first on the afternoon of Sunday …

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News: Minneapolis-based NetSPI, which offers penetration testing and attack surface management services, raised $410M from KKR, bringing its total funding to $500M  —  Although venture funding in cybersecurity has taken a slight dip this year—as it has in most sectors—that does not mean large growth rounds do not exist.

A robot has established a Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 metres by a bipedal robot

A number of MIT affiliates featured prominently at the 43rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards presented by The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences — including the winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary. “The Hunt for Planet B” — which focuses, in part, on Sara Seager, MIT’s Class of […]

Britain’s travails are part of a wider set of political and economic problems in Europe.

Shape-memory metals, which can revert from one shape to a different one simply by being warmed or otherwise triggered, have been useful in a variety of applications, as actuators that can control the movement of various devices. Now, the discovery of a new category of shape-memory materials made of ceramic rather than of metal could […]

Nearly half the stars in our galaxy are solitary like the sun. The other half comprises stars that circle other stars, in pairs and multiples, with orbits so tight that some stellar systems could fit between Earth and the moon. Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have now discovered a stellar binary, or pair of stars, […]

Give yourself plenty of opportunities to change course.

Beware the corrosive effects of fake harmony.

On the visual search tool’s anniversary, we consider its promise and how that could play out.

A new and contentious five-year limit for getting rid of dead satellites could slow the growing orbital litter problem—if people actually abide by it.

Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times: LA County arrests election software maker Konnech’s CEO Eugene Yu over the alleged theft of data on poll workers and says some data was found stored in China  —  The executive, Eugene Yu, and his firm, Konnech, have been a focus of attention among election deniers.

Ken Sweet / Associated Press: A report by Senator Warren’s office: fraud and scams are occurring more often on P2P payments app Zelle, with banks only reimbursing ~47% of defrauded customers  —  Incidents of fraud and scams are occurring more often on the popular peer-to-peer payment service Zelle, according …

Bloomberg: Elon Musk’s revived $44B Twitter acquisition could rely on $12.5B from banks at a time when offloading risky debt is difficult, potentially leading to losses  —  Elon Musk’s shock proposal to proceed with his acquisition of Twitter Inc. for the original offer price poses a headache …

An experiment tests whether the gene-editing technology can stop the virus from replicating, which would ultimately wipe out the infection.

MIT is famous as a factory of ideas. You could also call MIT a factory for learning. But for one group of students over the past year MIT has been, in fact, a factory. The team of graduate students designed and built — entirely within an MIT lab — an assembly factory for a low-cost, […]

Jeremy C. Owens / MarketWatch: Elon Musk says buying Twitter “is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”; Musk previously teased launching X.com as a social media site  —  Entrepreneur’s first big hit was with X.com, an online bank that was acquired by PayPal; he re-acquired the rights to the website …