blatcho.com – Page 157

The cheapest iPhone has the same processor as the most expensive iPhone. But it doesn’t feel very special.

The War in Ukraine Is a Reproductive Health Crisis for Millions

Russia’s invasion is making it harder to deliver babies and provide birth control, abortion services, and other essential care.

The Workaday Life of the World’s Most Dangerous Ransomware Gang

A Ukrainian researcher leaked 60,000 messages from inside the Conti ransomware group. This is what they reveal.

Wasoko, formerly Sokowatch, a Kenya-based B2B marketplace that offers a BNPL service to retailers, raises a $125M Series B, source says at a $625M valuation (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch: Wasoko, formerly Sokowatch, a Kenya-based B2B marketplace that offers a BNPL service to retailers, raises a $125M Series B, source says at a $625M valuation — Informal retail is king in Africa, with hundreds of billions of dollars of consumer goods are sold through its channels yearly.

Treehouse, which provides DeFi data analytics, raises an $18M seed led by an “undisclosed large fintech investor”, with Binance and others participating (Jamie Crawley/CoinDesk)

Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk: Treehouse, which provides DeFi data analytics, raises an $18M seed led by an “undisclosed large fintech investor”, with Binance and others participating — Treehouse aims to provide retail investors the infrastructure needed for them to make informed decisions on their DeFi positions

SpaceFill, which helps companies build flexible logistics networks in Europe by offering warehouse space and a SaaS monitoring tool, raises $27M led by NGP (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: SpaceFill, which helps companies build flexible logistics networks in Europe by offering warehouse space and a SaaS monitoring tool, raises $27M led by NGP — French startup SpaceFill has raised a $27 million funding round (€25 million) led by NGP Capital with Maersk Growth …

The Lapsus$ Hacking Group Is Off to a Chaotic Start

Telegram polls. Unusual demands. The latest extortion gang is on an unorthodox rampage.

Not Everyone Wants NFTs to Be the Future of Gaming

Tim Morten, cofounder of Frost Giant Studios and formerly production director on StarCraft II, doesn’t see the same dollar signs some studios do.

The Best Weighted Blankets for Calm and Comfort

These accessories might not cure your anxiety or insomnia, but they can feel like a hug when you really need one.

Google Domains comes out of beta in 26 countries, seven years after launch; the service now supports over 300 domain endings (Kris Holt/Engadget)

Kris Holt / Engadget: Google Domains comes out of beta in 26 countries, seven years after launch; the service now supports over 300 domain endings — Seven long, long years ago, Google started offering users a way to buy a domain without having to deal with a host provider. Now, Google Domains is at last […]

Bear Robotics, which develops food service robots that aim to reduce the workload of human waitstaffs, raises a $81M Series B led by IMM (Brian Heater/TechCrunch)

Brian Heater / TechCrunch: Bear Robotics, which develops food service robots that aim to reduce the workload of human waitstaffs, raises a $81M Series B led by IMM — One of the most interesting things about following food robotics startups over the past couple of years is tracking all of the different tasks companies …

Akeneo, which makes product experience management and product information management software, raises a $135M Series D led by Summit Partners (FinSMEs)

FinSMEs: Akeneo, which makes product experience management and product information management software, raises a $135M Series D led by Summit Partners — Akeneo, a Nantes, France- and Boston, MA-based provider of product experience management (PXM) and product information management (PIM) solutions, raised $135M in Series D funding.

IT Army of Ukraine: The amateur hacker team striking at Russia

An amateur army of hackers formed by the Ukrainian government is bringing down the websites of Russian government departments and national banks

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a planet? Nope, just a star

The first worlds beyond our solar system were discovered three decades ago. Since then, close to 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy. Astronomers have detected another 5,000 planetary candidates — objects that might be planets but have yet to be confirmed. Now, the list of planets has shrunk by at least three. In […]

How to Ease Back into Traveling for Work

Four strategies for your next business trip.

DEI Isn’t Enough; Companies Need Anti-Racist Leadership

A conversation about race, the workplace, and how corporate America can improve.

Standardized APIs Could Finally Make It Easy to Exchange Health Records

A U.S. law requires that the process be simplified by the end of 2022.

It’s a Perfect Time for EVs. It’s a Terrible Time for EVs

Gas prices are up, commutes are back, and Russian oil is under sanction. Too bad the electric vehicle industry isn’t ready to seize the moment.

Russian Missiles and Space Debris Could Threaten Satellites

As the war in Ukraine continues, the growing debris in low Earth orbit is a matter of national security.

It’s Like GPT-3, but for Code—Fun, Fast, and Full of Flaws

OpenAI’s new tool can autocomplete lines of programming or conjure software from a simple prompt. It could also riddle the internet with even more bugs.

France-based Doctolib, a booking service for doctors and medical workers, raises €500M in equity and debt led by Eurazeo at a €5.8B valuation (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: France-based Doctolib, a booking service for doctors and medical workers, raises €500M in equity and debt led by Eurazeo at a €5.8B valuation — French startup Doctolib has announced that is has raised a new funding round. With this round, the company has reached a valuation …

Germany-based Staffbase, a communications service for internal teams to send messages and measure their impact, raises a $115M Series E at a $1.1B valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Germany-based Staffbase, a communications service for internal teams to send messages and measure their impact, raises a $115M Series E at a $1.1B valuation — The Covid-19 pandemic, with its by-product of social distancing to help reduce the spread of infection, led to many organizations working …

ChannelEngine, which helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, raises a $50M Series B led by Atomico (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: ChannelEngine, which helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, raises a $50M Series B led by Atomico — ChannelEngine, a platform that helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, has raised $50 million in a series B round of funding.

When it comes to AI, can we ditch the datasets?

Huge amounts of data are needed to train machine-learning models to perform image classification tasks, such as identifying damage in satellite photos following a natural disaster. However, these data are not always easy to come by. Datasets may cost millions of dollars to generate, if usable data exist in the first place, and even the […]

4 Years On, a New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’

Astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang. They saw nothing.

The Top Features in Apple’s iOS 15—and Its Newest Update

You can now download iOS 15.4, which allows you to use Face ID even if you have a face mask on, among other new perks.

The Best Sunglasses for Every Outdoor Adventure

Protect your eyes in style while you lounge, run, paddle, or work on your computer outside.

Microsoft brings its DirectStorage API from Xbox to Windows to improve game load times and graphics details, after promising it in September 2020 (Michael Kan/PCMag)

Michael Kan / PCMag: Microsoft brings its DirectStorage API from Xbox to Windows to improve game load times and graphics details, after promising it in September 2020 — “Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage,” Microsoft says. “This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times …

Gauntlet, which offers a financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raises a $23.8M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Ribbit Capital (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: Gauntlet, which offers a financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raises a $23.8M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Ribbit Capital — Gauntlet, a financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raised a new round of funding that pushed its valuation to $1 billion.

Israel’s National Cyber Directorate says the country has recovered from a large-scale DDoS attack on Monday, which took down several government websites (Jon Fingas/Engadget)

Jon Fingas / Engadget: Israel’s National Cyber Directorate says the country has recovered from a large-scale DDoS attack on Monday, which took down several government websites — Israel appears to be recovering from a large-scale cyberattack. According to Haaretz and Kan’s Amichai Stein, attackers took …

How do organisations find and debunk disinformation on war in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is the subject of much online disinformation and propaganda but fact-checking organisations are tracking down how social media posts spread and debunking them

What Stops People on Your Team from Leaving?

Ask these four questions in your next one-on-one.

Why U.S. Frontline Workers Are Quitting

And what companies can do to stem the tide.

Stop Wasting People’s Time with Meetings

Prepare in advance to showcase your best self and make the most of your time.

In Life, as in Wordle, Success Often Depends on Where You Start

We all have to start somewhere, but some of us have a leg up over others—even when it comes to simple games.

How to Safely Travel Within the US

You’re ready to take to the skies, hit the open road, or ride the rails. Wonderful. Here’s how to do it safely.

This Is What an RPG for Indie Movie Heroines Would Look Like

Press A to cry in your overpriced apartment, press B to run toward the sunset.

Sources: Tencent is facing a record fine after Chinese regulators found WeChat Pay flouted anti-money-laundering rules and had other regulatory lapses (Jing Yang/Wall Street Journal)

Jing Yang / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Tencent is facing a record fine after Chinese regulators found WeChat Pay flouted anti-money-laundering rules and had other regulatory lapses — China’s central bank found regulatory breaches and lapses during a recent inspection of the ubiquitous payments network

A look at the limitations of deep learning, and how “neurosymbolic” approaches to AI could offer a way forward for developing artificial general intelligence (Gary Marcus/Nautilus)

Gary Marcus / Nautilus: A look at the limitations of deep learning, and how “neurosymbolic” approaches to AI could offer a way forward for developing artificial general intelligence — Let me start by saying a few things that seem obvious,” Geoffrey Hinton, “Godfather” of deep learning …

Foxconn is halting operations at two of its Shenzhen sites, one of which produces iPhones, after the government imposed a lockdown in the city till March 20 (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Foxconn is halting operations at two of its Shenzhen sites, one of which produces iPhones, after the government imposed a lockdown in the city till March 20 — Apple Inc. supplier Foxconn is halting operations at its Shenzhen sites, one of which produces iPhones, in response to a government-imposed lockdown on […]

Microbes and minerals may have set off Earth’s oxygenation

For the first 2 billion years of Earth’s history, there was barely any oxygen in the air. While some microbes were photosynthesizing by the latter part of this period, oxygen had not yet accumulated at levels that would impact the global biosphere. But somewhere around 2.3 billion years ago, this stable, low-oxygen equilibrium shifted, and […]

How People Actually Make Money From Cryptocurrencies

Power traders use “staking” and “yield farming” to generate passive income, but there are risks.

Clearview AI’s CEO says that Ukraine has started using the company’s service for free to identify Russian troops, combat misinformation, and identify the dead (Reuters)

Reuters: Clearview AI’s CEO says that Ukraine has started using the company’s service for free to identify Russian troops, combat misinformation, and identify the dead — Ukraine’s defense ministry on Saturday began using Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology, the company’s chief executive told Reuters …

Thoughts on newly announced iPhone SE, iPad Air, and Mac Studio, and an in-depth look at the M2 chip, Mac Pro, iMac Pro, and Apple’s future display plans (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Thoughts on newly announced iPhone SE, iPad Air, and Mac Studio, and an in-depth look at the M2 chip, Mac Pro, iMac Pro, and Apple’s future display plans — Here are my thoughts on Apple’s new iPhone SE, iPad Air and Mac Studio, as well as an in-depth look at the […]

Research: 23 of the top 30 search results for the numbers 11, 12, 13 on Facebook were groups targeting children of those ages, including with sexual references (Lara Putnam/Wired)