Rest of World: Inside China’s $16B virtual influencer industry, as motion capture actors complain of hard working conditions powering their avatars four to five hours per day  —  Hidden behind the perfect faces of China’s $16 billion virtual celebrity industry is an angry, overworked labor force.

Natasha Singer / New York Times: A cyberattack on Illuminate Education, exposing the personal data of 1M+ students, highlights the dangers of stockpiling school children’s sensitive information  —  At a moment when education technology firms are stockpiling sensitive information on millions of school children, safeguards for student data have broken down.

Matt Burgess / Wired: How Tor is fighting Russia’s efforts since December 2021 to block the anonymous browser, such as by using Telegram to share details of volunteer-run Tor bridges  —  Russia has been trying to block the anonymous browser since December—with mixed results.  —  For years, the anonymity service Tor …

Rooms with a lot of natural light can make it hard to see some screens, but the QN90B’s mini LEDs make it a lot easier to see.

In 1973, Paul Erdős asked if it was possible to assemble sets of “triples”—three points on a graph—so that they abide by two seemingly incompatible rules.

Forget (almost) all other performance clothing and just get this versatile denim.

Nikkei Asia: A look at the supply chain resilience myth, as efforts to replicate the chipmaking process inside single countries or regions reveal and exacerbate bottlenecks  —  TAIPEI — In the sweltering Asia summertime of mid-June, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. urgently dispatched a team …

Cal Newport / New Yorker: Chasing TikTok’s success and leaving behind the protection of hard-to-replicate, large social graphs could end the lengthy dominance of platforms like Facebook  —  Facebook is trying to copy TikTok, but this strategy may well signal the end of these legacy platforms.

Asked once about the most difficult part of her research, Danna Freedman could not stop referring to obstacles as opportunities, and to challenges as excitement. “Every time we hit a barrier it enables us to discover new science,” she told an interviewer at Northwestern University in 2017, describing difficulties encountered in her research as among […]

Rieko Miki / Nikkei Asia: The US and Japan plan to open an R&D center for 2nm chips in 2022 and start mass production in 2025, to establish secure supply chains amid tensions over Taiwan  —  Economic and diplomatic chiefs to discuss supply chains at 2+2 meeting Friday  —  Taiwan hosts the lion’s share …

Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News: A look at the rise and fall of Bird, now a penny stock with a public market cap under $140M, as valuations in the scooter rental sector collapse  —  Almost exactly five years ago, the scooters came.  That’s when Bird, the first unicorn in this once sizzling startup sector, launched […]

Monica Chin / The Verge: Dell XPS 13 Plus review: thin with a great OLED screen and a powerful P-series chip but expensive, gets very hot, mediocre battery life, and very few ports  —  The XPS 13 has a new design and a whole bunch of new problems  —  Dell collectively shocked everyone who follows […]

If you’re buying games or services for a family, this subscription service is worth a look. We break down the cost, features, and highlights.

Chaotic returns leave some communities with an abundance of fish, and others with none.

Such books offer little guidance and rely on a home cook’s good judgement. Some of these are more successful than others.

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: How Modi’s government is increasingly skirting India’s own internet rules to crack down on free speech and dissent on social media, under a “fake news” pretext  —  Sandeep Ravindranath, an Indian filmmaker, posted his latest work to YouTube in May. The video …

New York Times: Some streamers on Twitch, a more intimate platform than others, endure threats and stalkers and say Twitch gives limited support when dangerous situations arise  —  Stars on Twitch, the video game streaming platform, invite viewers into their homes virtually.  What happens when one shows up in person?

Bloomberg: Sources: the Commerce Department has told all US chipmaking equipment manufacturers to not supply gear to China for fabs for making 14nm chips or below  —  The US is tightening restrictions on China’s access to chipmaking gear, according to two major equipment suppliers …

Probably not, but tell that to the conspiracy theorists.

Lori Garver’s new memoir details her struggles to get NASA colleagues to embrace SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Earnings season was dominated by two companies—both existential threats to their competition.

Sagar Naresh / SamMobile: Samsung announces a feature that keeps users’ data secure during a phone repair, starting with the Galaxy S21 series in South Korea  —  You’ll obviously have some anxiety about the security of your data if you leave your smartphone at a repair center for a couple of days.

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Elon Musk countersues Twitter over the merger agreement in a confidential filing in a Delaware court  —  – Elon Musk counter sued Twitter on Friday, intensifying the conflict between the social networking company and centi-billionaire but keeping details hidden from the public.

Strategy Analytics: Global smartphone shipments fell 7% YoY to 291M units in Q2 2022; Samsung had a 21.5% market share, followed by Apple’s 16.3%, its best Q2 in the past 10 years  —  BOSTON—(BUSINESS WIRE)— According to new research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments fell -7% YoY to 291 million units in Q2 2022.

Here’s how to spot the signs before you become exhausted.

How marketers can maximize returns.

Five strategies to help you set healthy boundaries.

My rooftop panels showed me that a world powered by renewables would be an overflowing horn of plenty, with fast, sporty cars and comfy homes.

This summer’s heat wave knocked roads, railways, and runways out of action. But existing solutions could help shore up critical infrastructure.

Law enforcement officers face an air assault as drugs, weapons and phones are flown in to prisoners.

Cecilia Kang / New York Times: Lina Khan’s attempt to block Meta’s Within acquisition upends decades of antitrust standards and could shift how DC regulates competition in nascent industries  —  Lina Khan may set off a shift in how Washington regulates competition by filing cases in tech areas before they mature.

Olivia Solon / Bloomberg: Sources: a Chinese government PR division asked to open a stealth account on TikTok, targeting Western audiences; TikTok declined the “sensitive” request  —  A Chinese government entity responsible for public relations attempted to open a stealth account on TikTok targeting Western audiences …

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: Sources: EU is considering creating a new directorate headed by two top antitrust officials, amid concerns EU competition watchdog may struggle to enforce DMA  —  The European Commission is considering creating a new directorate that may be headed by two top antitrust officials to enforce tough …

An artificial intelligence voice jammer can unobtrusively block microphones recording a single voice in an area, avoiding causing wider disruption that might tip people off

The $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act wants to jumpstart the domestic semiconductor industry, starting with manufacturing.

Getting a scan usually means a visit to a doctor and some giant equipment. What if that gear was wearable?

Fans went all-out for the first in-person Comic-Con since Covid-19 hit.

Kharishar Kahfi / The Block: Space and Time, a decentralized blockchain data platform, raised a $10M seed led by Framework Ventures, and says it is building a new cryptographic protocol  —  Framework Ventures is leading the seed funding round.  —  The $10 million in funds will be used to add engineers to work on the […]

Bloomberg: An in-depth look at the issues facing Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm, and other BNPL players, such as economic uncertainty, competition, regulators, and customer debt  —  For three days each week during the month of April in 2014, a seasoned product manager named Lulu Young, an engineering manager …

Paul Alcorn / Tom’s Hardware: Intel is winding down its Optane memory business, incurring a $559M inventory impairment; it’s Intel’s sixth non-core business sold under CEO Pat Gelsinger  —  3D XPoint at the last crossroad.  —  Intel’s Q2 2022 earnings report today was uncharacteristically disappointing …

Investigators in the US found they could acquire enough radioactive material to build a “dirty bomb” by using fake companies and fraudulent licences

A patch the size of a postage stamp can continuously deliver ultrasound imaging for 48 hours, and it has been used to see changes in the lungs, heart and stomach of people exercising and drinking

Networks of nanoscale resistors that work in a similar way to nerve cells in the body could offer advantages over digital machine learning

Ultrasound imaging is a safe and noninvasive window into the body’s workings, providing clinicians with live images of a patient’s internal organs. To capture these images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out to produce high-resolution images of a patient’s heart, lungs, and […]

As scientists push the boundaries of machine learning, the amount of time, energy, and money required to train increasingly complex neural network models is skyrocketing. A new area of artificial intelligence called analog deep learning promises faster computation with a fraction of the energy usage. Programmable resistors are the key building blocks in analog deep […]

To the outside world, much of what goes on at MIT can seem mysterious. But the MIT Museum, whose new location is in the heart of Kendall Square, wants to change that. With a specially designed space by architects Höweler + Yoon, new exhibitions, and new public programs, this fall marks a reset for the […]

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How entrepreneurs can decide whether to pursue corporate funding, and if so, which CVC to pick.

Recessions present different kinds of opportunities.

John Loeffler / TechRadar: Recent AMD and Nvidia leaks show upcoming GPUs will consume excessive amounts of power, creating a high environmental cost for limited improvement in graphics  —  The planet may burn but at least the end will be ray-traced at 8K  —  A number of recent news items over the past few weeks […]