Praveen chintu

Four of the world’s top runners reveal how they prepare for gruelling races, both mentally and physically from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/39d5Q9M

Several dozen groups are disseminating white supremacist propaganda and videos of lynches and shootings from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/3aeztYj

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Facebook Messenger has ditched chat bots and removed Discover tab as part of a larger redesign process to remain simple and catch more eyeballs. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2T7UxtI

[Editor’s note: Welcome to our weekly review of news that startups can use from across TechCrunch and Extra Crunch. If you want this post by email, just subscribe here .]  Why some fintech startups aren’t blinking at customer acquisition costs Distribution channels are getting saturated across the internet and beyond, and in many tech sectors the cost of acquiring new customers is crimping profitability. But so far, so good in the “great credit card craze,” as Alex digs into this week for Extra Crunch . It turns out that the remaining revenue possibilities combined with the current revenues from interchange fees mean costs are staying relatively flat — or so say a few well-placed execs. “If anything, our customer numbers are massively accelerating despite cutting back on marketing spend,” explains Brian Barnes of M1 Finance. “And I do think that gets into how we positioned ourselves [as] a firm and what drives at the capital efficiency of how we’ve gotten to where we’ve gotten.”

Russia's capital Moscow, which for the past months has largely been deprived of its traditional seasonal covering of snow, has seen its warmest winter since records began, the state weather service said on Saturday. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/385IQIk

The basis of the classic James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” is an evil media mogul who instigates war between the U.K. and China because it will be great for TV ratings. There’s been a wake-up call recently that our most popular social networks have been indirectly designed to divide populations into enemy camps and reward sensational content, but without the personal responsibility of Bond’s nemesis because they’re algorithmically driven. (This is part five of a seven-part series about virtual worlds .) The rise of “multiverse” virtual words as the next social frontier offers hope to one of the biggest crises facing democratic societies right now. Because the dominant social media platforms (in Western countries at least) monetize through advertising, these platforms reward sensational content that results in the most clicks and shares. Oversimplified, exaggerated claims intended to shock users scrolling past are best practices for individuals, media brands and marketing depart

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a  record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis. This week, we’ll look at the coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the App Store, China’s demand for App Store removals — and soon-to-be-removals, it seems. We’re also talking about Facebook’s lawsuit over a data-grabbing SDK, Tinder’s new video

Consumerist mecca New York targets its throwaway culture this weekend with a ban on single-use plastic bags that has been years in the making and is still rare in America. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/38buIxk

A study out of Mississippi State University evaluated the impact insect pest management strategies have on the economic return of small-scale tomato production. The results of this evaluation are published in the article "Economic Effect of Insect Pest Management Strategies on Small-scale Tomato Production in Mississippi" in the open access online journal HortTechnology. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2VsWIK9

Turbulence is everywhere—it rattles our planes and makes tiny whirlpools in our bathtubs—but it is one of the least understood phenomena in classical physics. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/3cbNvvw

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chief Mukesh Ambani is the ninth richest person in the world along with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Larry Page of Google, each having a net worth of $67 billion, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2TbWwgS

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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Switzerland has risen to 15, and more than 100 people are in quarantine, government minister Alain Berset said. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2Ta1ZVt

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already pledged $100 million to fight the outbreak. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2VyPl3Y

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The 9am to 9pm, six days a week culture has seeped into almost all working life from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2Tu5fcW

February 29 is broken, and it's leading to calls to rip up our calendars for good from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/39c80WW

The 13 finest gear and concepts this month from the Polestar Precept to gamer glasses and a keyboard case to turn your iPad Pro into a MacBook from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2Vz3mym

Since I first stumbled across it on Netflix, I have watched every series of the drag show on perpetual loop – but why am I so hooked on its celebration of sheer bravado? from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/32D2n1I

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Well, after what I’m sure was a hectic few days for the folks planning the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the team announced today that they have officially decided to cancel the event happening this March, saying in a blog post that they hoped they would be able to reschedule an event for “later in the summer.” In recent days, nearly all of the event’s top corporate sponsors announced that they would not be sending employees to the event due to concerns surrounding coronavirus. Microsoft, Unity, Epic, Amazon, Facebook and Sony had all bowed out of the event. GDC’s statement did not reference the virus. The company behind GDC detailed that they will be refunding conference and expo attendees in full, though a blog post details the group hopes to host a GDC even later in the summer, noting, “We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.” GDC is just the latest tech conference to be shut

A year ago, Lyft submitted a report to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that summed up its 2018 autonomous vehicle testing activity in a single, short paragraph. “Lyft Inc. did not operate any vehicles in autonomous mode on California public roads during the reporting period,” the letter read. “As such, Lyft Inc. has no autonomous mode disengagements to report.” The 2019 data tells a different story. Lyft had 19 autonomous vehicles testing on public roads in California in 2019, according to data released earlier this week by the CA DMV. Those 19 vehicles, which operated during the reporting period of December 2018 to November 2019, drove nearly 43,000 miles in autonomous mode. The report is the latest sign that Lyft is trying to ramp up its self-driving vehicle program known as Level 5.  The CA DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the state, requires companies to submit an annual report that includes data such as total AV miles

The iconic stripes of zebrafish are a classic example of natural self-organization. As zebrafish embryos develop, three types of pigment cells move around the skin, eventually jostling into positions that form body-length yellow and blue stripes. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2TmSFMz

Sitting by a model of the Earth shaped like a pancake, Brazilian restaurant-owner Ricardo lets out an exaggerated laugh: "'Hahaha!' That's how people react when you tell them the Earth is flat," he says. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/3adZbME

University of British Columbia astronomy student Michelle Kunimoto has discovered 17 new planets, including a potentially habitable, Earth-sized world, by combing through data gathered by NASA's Kepler mission. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2IfH6Sx

As much as a third of food produced for human consumption is wasted or lost globally every year. New research published in Frontiers in Microbiology suggests one way to take a big bite out of food waste is to use bread destined for the dumpster as a medium for cultivating microbial starters for the food industry. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/380yx8s

Conspiracies abound in society and can have real world impacts when it leads some people to act, whether that means becoming more engaged politically, or less engaged. Previous research linking conspiracy beliefs and political actions provide mixed results. Some studies show people with a conspiracy worldview are more likely to disengage politically, while others show they are more engaged. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/3cadkw9

What children choose to read outside school directly influences their academic performance, according to a major new study led by the University of Malaga and UCL, and published in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Review of Education. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/3adrJ8O

New Zealand has deployed soldiers to help prevent drought-stricken North Island towns from running dry as authorities consider imposing water restrictions in Auckland, the country's largest city. from Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories https://ift.tt/2I5mxYB

Stung by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has filed a federal lawsuit in California court against New Jersey-based data analytics firm OneAudience for secretly harvesting its users' data. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2I0oNQY

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The move comes after U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg's campaign started paying popular meme accounts on Facebook-owned Instagram to post content as part of its social media offensive ahead of the 2020 election. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3abActb

Amazon Holi Store offers up to 50% discounts on speakers and other mobile accessories. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2T5Xzi3

A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, and frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition refuses to back down. Her rival is not a human. She is playing against a machine that is mimicking the game of badminton legend P.V. Sindhu, toned down a few notches to adjust for the age difference. By the court, her father, Jayanth Kolla, is watching the game and taking notes. Kolla is a familiar name in the tech startup and business ecosystem in India. For the last eight years, he has been helming the research firm Convergence Catalyst , which covers mobility, telecom, AI and IoT. When his daughter showed interest in badminton, Kolla rushed to explore options, only to realize that the centuries old sports could use some deep tech. He reached out to a few friends to explore if they could build a device. “I have always wondered how a younger version of players who have made it to the professional arena must have played like,” he said in an i

​This issue matters particularly in some critical areas. Like autonomous driving. Crucial decisions the car has to take cannot depend on data from the car going to a distant data centre to be analysed. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/39363w2

Sony WI-C200 Bluetooth in-ear headphones can be purchased at Rs 1,890 from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2I0oaGX

Schools are closing their doors in response to coronavirus cases. It might help stem initial outbreaks, but won't do much good in a full pandemic from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2VvsEO2

Whether you're looking for an iconic wristwatch, high-tech guitar, the perfect mid-layer or the most useful bag you'll ever own in your life, it's time to seriously consider getting into the navy from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2vnrfyg

For better or for worse, Brexit has happened. For UK tech, opportunity beckons from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2T8BiQR

The app’s algorithm didn’t set out to use race, age and gender to sort users, but it may have inadvertently created a biased feedback loop from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2T59tZy

Amazon Web Services has entered a partnership with Safaricom — Kenya’s largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa. In a statement to TechCrunch, the East African company framed the arrangement as a “strategic agreement” whereby Safaricom will sell AWS services (primarily cloud) to its East Africa customer network. Safaricom — whose products include the famed M-Pesa mobile money product — will also become the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in East Africa. “The APN is…the program for technology…businesses who leverage AWS to build solutions and services for customers…and sell their AWS offerings by providing valuable business, technical, and marketing support,” Safaricom said. “We chose to partner with AWS because it offers customers the broadest and deepest cloud platform…This agreement will allow us to accelerate our efforts to enable digital transfo

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would cancel its annual developer conference due to fears over the coronavirus, as growing concerns about the economic impact of the global outbreak drove Wall Street to tumble for a sixth straight day. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2Vw5C9A

After claiming that it would only sell its controversial facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, a new report suggests that Clearview AI is less than discerning about its client base. According to Buzzfeed News , the small, secretive company looks to have shopped its technology far and wide. While Clearview counts ICE, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the retail giant Macy’s among its paying customers, many more private companies are testing the technology through 30-day free trials. Non-law enforcement entities that appeared on Clearview’s client list include Walmart, Eventbrite, the NBA, Coinbase, Equinox, and many others. According to the report , even if a company or organization has no formal relationship with Clearview, its individual employees might be testing the software. “In some cases… officials at a number of those places initially had no idea their employees were using the software or denied ever trying the facial rec

Sophia Wood Contributor Share on Twitter Sophia Wood is a Venture Partner at Magma Partners. Sophia is also the co-founder of LatAm List, an English-language Latin American tech news source. More posts by this contributor Latin America Roundup: XP’s chart-topping IPO, Wildlife becomes a unicorn, SoftBank backs Konfio Latin America roundup: Neobanks raise $205M+; Softbank backs VTEX After investing nearly $2 billion of its Innovation Fund in Latin America in 2019, SoftBank announced this month that it would add an additional $1 billion into the fund to continue supporting tech startups across the region. While the Japanese investor faces the challenge of raising a second global fund after its Vision Fund, SoftBank is still investing heavily in Latin America.  One of its early Latin American investments – and the first in Colombia – Ayenda Rooms, is performing particularly well, raising $8.7 million from Kaszek Ventures this month. Ayenda is the local version of

Like baseball, cricket relies on grass, dirt, wood, cork, spit, spin, drop and rise en route to either victory or loss. And like baseball — and just about any other sport, really — cricket coaching staffs and their players worldwide are looking for more ways to track every move. Tracking statistics is nothing new. With each action, a player produces a stat that can be used to track improvement or struggle over a given period of time. But as players get stronger and stakes — financial and otherwise — get higher, a need for more specific data is proving necessary. India-based SeeHow transforms sports equipment into sensors to do just that, and it does so without having to alter anything on the athlete’s body. Its sensors are baked into cricket balls and bat handles to track very specific types of data that batsmen and bowlers generate. And tracking the behavior of a bowled ball and where and how it lands on a bat all play a role in the story of cricket. “Putting the sensor inside th

Spin, the electric scooter company owned by Ford, is gearing up to launch its vehicles for the first time outside of the U.S. This spring, the plan is to launch in Cologne, Germany, followed by other German cities. Spin also plans to apply for the e-scooter permit in France next month, as well as explore opportunities in the U.K. for electric scooter sharing. In the last year or so, Germany has become a major hotspot for micromobility. As of December 2019 , there were seven startups operating across 37 cities in the country. In Cologne, Spin will find itself competing against the likes of Bird, Lime and Circ. Spin’s current fleet relies on Segway’s scooter designed for the sharing economy, but it plans to deploy its first custom vehicle sometime this year. Spin, which got its start as a bike-share startup, sold to Ford in November 2018 in a deal worth about $100 million. Prior to the deal, Spin had raised just $8 million in outside capital. After sale to Ford, Spin charges ahea

Dahmakan , a full-stack food delivery startup based in Malaysia, announced today that it has closed a $18 million Series B. Investors include Rakuten Capital, White Star Capital, JAFCO Asia and GEC-KIP Fund, along with participation from South Korean food delivery app Woowa Brothers, and returning investors Partech Partners and Y Combinator. This brings Dahmakan’s total funding to about $28 million. Its previous round of financing was announced last May . Launched by former executives from FoodPanda, Dahmakan was the first Malaysian startup to participate in Y Combinator’s startup accelerator program. Operational costs for food delivery companies are notoriously high, and eat away at their profitability, but Dahmakan is among several startups that use “cloud” kitchens, located closer to customers, in order to reduce delivery costs. The foundation of the startup’s full-stack platform is an operating system that controls nearly every step of its operations, from recipe development to

The NHS' plan to go paperless has been pushed back again and again. But its digital ambitions go way beyond getting rid of pagers from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2I0NkW8

EU citizens were a boon for the UK's startup ecosystem. Now what? from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/3ad2zXR

Iran says it has fewer than 100 coronavirus cases, but the number of deaths points to a much higher number of infections – and that’s bad news for us all from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2I1g4Ok

The tech has been 20 years in the making, and, with the Z Flip, it's finally here. But where is it going next? from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2wOUlqB

Atomico partner Siraj Khaliq shares his tips for founders in the deep tech sector from WIRED UK https://ift.tt/2ThK8KR

South African fintech startup Jumo closed a $55 million round from a diverse group of investors, the company confirmed. Founded in 2015 and based in Cape Town, the venture offers a full tech stack for partners to build savings, lending, and insurance products for customers in emerging markets. This week’s funding follows a $52 million raise by Jumo in 2018 , led by U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs, that saw the startup expand to Asia. “This fresh investment comes from new and existing…investors including Goldman Sachs, Odey Asset Management and LeapFrog Investments,” Jumo said in a statement —  though Goldman told TechCrunch its participation in this week’s round isn’t confirmed. After the latest haul, Jumo has raised $146 million in capital, according to Crunchbase . With its VC the company plans to move into new markets and launch new products in Asia and Africa. “I’m excited for our next phase. This backing will help us build a better business and break new ground,”  Jum

The company added that the new investments will focus on 11 states including Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2vnnloW

The proposal, which called for Apple to report whether it has "publicly committed to respect freedom of expression as a human right," was defeated, but 40.6% of votes cast supported the measure, according to company figures. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2HWRhLh

Twitter has rolled out its 'Hide Replies' feature to its developer community, allowing them to create tools that would help users hide replies in the conversation thread on the micro-blogging platform that are offensive, hateful or racist in nature. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/32uHmGp

Flipkart-owned digital payments company PhonePe has received about Rs 427.25 crore from its parent firm in another round of funding, according to regulatory filings. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2vlBAdV

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Smartphones from Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are listed with up to a discount of 45% as part of Amazon’s Deal of the Day offer. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2wSB087

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it would ban advertisements for products offering any cures or prevention around the coronavirus outbreak, and those that create a sense of urgency around the situation. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/3c96gQd

Apple Inc will open its first physical retail store in India in 2021, Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Wednesday. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/2Tm1q9B

In an early-evening press conference, President Donald Trump tapped Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the COVID-19 outbreak that has spread through Europe, Asia and Latin America. The new coronavirus strain, which has infected about 81,000 people around the world and killed 3,000, has already wrought havoc on the global economy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned yesterday that the U.S. will likely not be able to escape the spread of the virus. “It’s not a question of if this will happen but when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses,” said Dr. Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in a press conference given by the Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday. “Disruption to everyday life might be severe.” Earlier this evening, California reported its first case of community transmission, which was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control, accordin

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TikTok is one of the hottest social media platforms but the CEO of Reddit had some harsh words for the popular app, calling it “fundamentally parasitic” at an event Wednesday. The comments from Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman were some of the more controversial offered up during a panel discussion with former public policy exec Elliot Schrage and former Facebook VP of Product Sam Lessin. During a brief conversation about the feature innovations of TikTok, Huffman pushed back hard on the notion that Silicon Valley startups had something to learn from the app. “Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them,” Huffman said. “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.” “I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone,'” he later added. The com

Online gaming platform Roblox, now home to 115 million largely Gen Z players per month, announced today it has raised $150 million in Series G funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Late Stage Venture fund. The company will also open a tender offer for up to $350 million of common and preferred shares, it says. The company has previously offered stakeholders and employees liquidity through periodic secondary offerings, as it believes in its long-term potential. Roblox is also cash-flow positive, according to its CFO Michael Guthrie. Others participating in the Series G include new investors Temasek and Tencent Holdings Limited, as well as existing investors Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital, and Tiger Global Management. The funding comes at a period of significant growth for the gaming platform. Just last summer, it was being visited by 100 million users , topping Minecraft, and its developer community was on track to earn $100 million in 2019. Since then, Roblox has further investe

It seems like everyone wants student entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur First makes startups out of raw student material, for instance. Most countries want high-skilled students to stick around and make new companies. Only the UK likes to charge them a fortune for an education and then kick them out if they don’t earn enough. But I digress! In its long march to gradually cover several aspects of the UK’s startup scene, Founders Factory has invested in Creator Fund , the student-led venture capital fund. It launches today in the UK but plans to spread abroad to unearth startup innovation within European universities. It will use a network of “student VCs” in university campuses to invest in new technology ventures and student founders. The idea here is that students invest in their peers, offering an alternative route to growth for university-based startups. So far it has people signed up in 13 UK universities and offers up to £30,000 investment per startup. Equity is determined on a “