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Showing posts from October, 2022

Cyber officials from 37 countries, 13 companies to meet on ransomware in Washington

The White House will host officials from 37 countries and 13 global companies in Washington this week to address the growing threat of ransomware and other cyber crime, including the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, a senior US official said. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/IRpvkXC

Mastodon’s microblogging app saw a record number of downloads after Musk’s Twitter takeover

There are signs of a small but growing Twitter exodus underway following Elon Musk’s closure of the deal to buy the social media platform last Thursday. While many Twitter users are taking a wait-and-see approach and may not have fully deleted their accounts at this time, a sizable number of people are currently checking out Twitter alternatives. One of those alternatives is Mastodon , a decentralized social network that gained over 70,000 new sign-ups on Friday, the day after the Musk Twitter takeover completed. And this weekend, the official Mastodon mobile app saw a record number of downloads as more people fleeing Twitter began to seek out a new online home. Mastodon , to be clear, is not a new platform. The free and open-source microblogging service debuted in March 2016 , offering a different approach to online social networking. Similar to Twitter, you can follow other users and create posts that can be liked and retweeted (or “tooted,” in Mastodon lingo), use hashtags, share

ISRO gearing up for launching 2nd set of 36 OneWeb satellites in Jan 2023

The Indian space agency is gearing up for launching the next set of 36 satellites of the UK-based Network Access Associated Ltd (OneWeb) in January 2023 by testing the crucial cryogenic engine of its rocket LVM3. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/HMaFiGD

India e-logistics industry set to touch $9 billion with e-commerce boom

India's e-logistics sector has become one of the largest and fastest growing logistics markets globally and is all set to reach the $9 billion industry, with a compound annual growth rate of 35 per cent, a report showed. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/PIv34cb

Public Cloud spending to end-users set to reach $600 billion in 2023

The global end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20.7 per cent to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022, a Gartner report said. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/zarkSiJ

Reliance plans to enhance fire retardant, sustainable properties of Recron FS

Nofia's unique polymeric phosphorus-based chemistry helps make Recron FS more sustainable and technically superior for polyester textile applications. Nofia additives are certified by Oeko-Tex Standard 100 for textile applications and other sustainability certifications such as ChemForward, Green Screen, and TCO, accrediting that the technology meets these global standards of safety and sustainability. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/0S6HxMN

China launches final space station module 'Mengtian'

The uncrewed Mengtian, or "Dreaming of the Heavens", module was launched atop China's most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, at 3:37 p.m. (0737 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/lwMP7hq

This anode material may help to offer long life of lithium batteries, aid ultra-fast charging

The researchers believe that this is a promising technology for commercial applications where high energy density, high power, a long life and ultra-fast charging are desired. The research team plans to translate this work from the laboratory to a real-life application. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/8eh0769

Twitter takeover raises fear of misinformation wave ahead of US midterm elections

With the US midterm elections less than two weeks away, Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter could unleash a fresh wave of election misinformation just as voters are casting ballots that will determine control of Congress for the next two years, political and media experts say. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/myh1EvL

Elon Musk denies reports he is firing Twitter employees in attempt to avoid payouts

Twitter's new owner Elon Musk has denied a New York Times report about laying off Twitter employees at a date earlier than November 1 to avoid stock grants due on the day. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/LqWiB6w

Zebra Labs raises $5M to help Chinese celebrities enter the metaverse

In June, Chinese pop-punk singer Wowkie Zhang released a music video where he encounters a virtual character in a hyper-colored, animated world that is reminiscent of Pixar films. The avatar, sporting Gen-Z-styled silver hair, a yellow and black oversize sweat, and baggy pants, makes hip-hop moves to Zhang’s catchy, light-hearted tune. The virtual character isn’t a one-off creation; instead, Zebra Labs, which produced the video, is turning him into a piece of reusable intellectual property that can be bought as NFTs on marketplaces and appear in other virtual occasions like video games. The startup is waiting for the bull market to return to launch the NFT project, Scarlett Li, founder and CEO of Zebra Labs, tells TechCrunch. The aim of Zebra Labs is to “create intellectual property that’s deeply integrated with content” and “run virtual idols like celebrities,” says Li. Some of the avatars it creates are based on real-life stars, while others are original characters. To generate rev

Wordle 499 answer for October 31: Wordle 499 Hints, clues, and answer for today

The everyday puzzles keep the curiosity among the players guessing the word. Wordle can be paid for free on the New York Times website. The answer for the Wordle quiz on October 31 are here. Are you ready for today’s wordle solutions? from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/w2CleAd

Elon Musk refutes Twitter layoff timing to affect year-end compensation

Elon Musk, Chief Twit, has refuted claims from a New York Times report this weekend that states he plans to lay off employees before Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting staff off from receiving stock grants as part of their compensation. In response to a tweet from Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor of ProPublica, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday,” Musk said: “This is false.” He didn’t provide any clarification about what, specifically, was false. This is false — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022 Umansky’s tweet included a screenshot of a highlighted portion of the NYT story that also noted stock grants make up a significant portion of an employee’s pay, and by laying off workers before that date, Musk may avoid paying the grants. Musk did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification on whether the layoffs will affect stock compensation. He may very well have been refuting

Remote work is here to stay. Here’s how to manage your staff from afar

Over the last two and a half years, remote and hybrid working has become the norm — a majority of employed Americans have the option of working from home for all or part of the week, and 87% of workers who were offered remote work embraced the opportunity heartily. While some companies are pushing for a return to the office, today’s strapped labor market is giving employees more power to push back for remote, or at least flexible, jobs. This isn’t just a pandemic response anymore — it’s a way of life, and it has the potential to make some businesses better. People who work from home have been reporting an uptick in their productivity levels without the distractions that come with an office — Oh, it’s Beth’s birthday. Cupcakes in the kitchen!  But both employers and employees have reported some downsides to remote work. Isolation can make people feel lonely and disconnected, leading to mental health issues. Learning and collaboration have taken a hit without the human element of bein

3 founders discuss how to navigate the nuances of early-stage fundraising

Fundraising isn’t a monolithic event but rather a series of meetings and pleasantries, each with their own vibe and nuance. Yet many pieces of fundraising advice to founders paint the process with a broad brush. We heard from three founders at TechCrunch Disrupt last week: Amanda DoAmaral, co-founder and CEO of Fiveable; Arman Hezarkhani, founder of Parthean; and Sarah Du, co-founder of Alloy Automation, each of whom has raised in the extreme highs and lows of last 18 months. They spoke about navigating the process, what worked (and what didn’t) and how to customize your pitch to navigate the many subtleties of fundraising. For DoAmaral, it was important to spend time researching which investors may actually back her company. She said she’s had investors take meetings with her due to a warm intro despite having no actual intention to invest. “My co-founder and I got in a car and drove down to Tennessee thinking we’re gonna get this check. And this guy didn’t even trust me to like, b

How you can unsend and edit a message with iPadOS 16

Apple recently rolled out the much-awaited iPadOS 16 update. The latest version of the operating system brings various useful features and one such feature is the ability to unsend and edit messages. With the iPadOS 16 update you can unsend and edit messages in the Messages app. With this feature you can easily fix a typo or pull back a message that you accidentally sent to the wrong person. Your recipient sees that you unsend a message and your edit history. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/9YVtUTN

Elon Musk completes Twitter purchase, Meta’s in trouble and it’s time to admit self-driving cars ain’t gonna happen

Hey, folks, welcome back to another edition of TechCrunch Week in Review , the place where we point you to the hottest stories of the past sevenish days. I’m stepping in front of the laptop for Greg Kumparak this week, but don’t fret, he will be back soon. If you want this goodness in your inbox every Saturday, head on over here to sign up. Now, let’s get to it. most read (Elon edition, somewhat) Elon did it : He bought Twitter. The $44 billion acquisition closed this week and on day 1, the platform’s new owner “cleaned house,” Taylor and Amanda write, firing CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde. The purchase capped off months of ups and downs, and this week was no different. Darrell rounded up some highlights. Elon’s layoff about-face : While Elon Musk immediately fired some folks at the top, earlier this week in a reversal from his layoff declaration last week , he said he won’t actually lay off 75% of Twitter’s staff — or 5,600 peo

Meta's social media apps back up after brief outage

Meta Platforms Inc said it has fixed the issue that was preventing users from accessing its social media platforms. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/vqswXxf

GM pauses paid advertising on Twitter as Chief Twit Elon Musk takes ownership

General Motors has temporarily paused paid advertising on Twitter, one day after billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk finalized a $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform. CNBC was the first to report GM’s decision. TechCrunch confirmed the U.S. automaker’s decision. “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership,” the company said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue.” It’s unclear what percentage of GM’s total advertising budget is dedicated to Twitter. Most, if not all, automakers have a presence on Twitter. Although not all of them opt for paid advertising. Ford, GM, Stellantis, Porsche, VW and Volvo are just a handful of the established automakers along with newer companies like Rivian that have social media accounts on the pla

Google’s Nest Wifi Pro is a dead simple way to bring Wi-Fi 6E home

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A quick caveat up top. This isn’t a review. TechCrunch does reviews. This isn’t one. There are several reasons for this. First, last week was Disrupt — I was busy on the other side of the country. Second, this week is my COVID week (third round, otherwise self-explanatory w/r/t a limited output). Third, we very rarely review routers here, for a lot of reasons, including resources. Even so, the Nest Wifi Pro is available now, so I’m committing some of my initial impressions to the page, after setting it up and using it for a few days. I hope this is helpful if you’ve been eyeing one since its unveiling earlier month. If you need something a bit more substantial than my doughy brain can offer up at the moment, I completely get it. We’ve got plenty of big reviews planned over the horizon. Let’s start with what the Nest Wifi Pro is an isn’t. It’s “Pro” in the sense of where it fits in the broader Google Wifi line. It’s a home router, one that looks nice and is easy to set up. There are

The TwitterMusking and other news

Lo, the day is upon us: Elon Musk owns the bird app and all that comes with it. Musk’s $44 billion Twitter acquisition has closed, and he fired most of the top people in charge and is now busy learning about this thing he sort of wanted, then didn’t want at all, and now has been at least in part forced to spend a large fortune on. This week I talk with Taylor Hatmaker about the Twitter’s new owner and what it means. I also talk to Amanda Silberling about YouTuber MrBeast’s business, and why a billion-dollar-plus valuation for it makes us nervous. Plus, Kirsten Korosec comes on to talk about the scoop of the week after she broke the news that Argo is shutting down. Be sure to find us and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or your podcast app of choice, leave us a rating and a review. The TwitterMusking and other news by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/qW81VvS

Here’s why ServiceNow’s stock soared in a week of dismal tech earnings reports

If you’re a regular reader of this publication, chances are you know that it hasn’t been a great year for many tech company stocks — one in which giants like Meta , Amazon, and Alphabet have been mauled by the markets after less than stellar earnings reports. Even an enterprise stalwart like Salesforce is behind hounded by activist investors . The fact is that few have been spared, whether startups or established public companies. We’ve seen a litany of stories on hiring freezes, layoff announcements , and tech stocks taking bigger hits than an NFL quarterback behind a bad offensive line — in other words, getting crushed. SaaS stocks in particular are having a rough year, so when a SaaS stock does well, well, that’s news. And that’s what happened to ServiceNow this week when it reported Q32022 earnings . It bucked the odds with a mostly positive earnings report — good revenue, good guidance, the whole nine yards — and believe it or not, Wall Street rewarded the company, with

Weak Amazon outlook another blow to tech-related growth stocks

Amazon's net sales were $127.1 billion in the third quarter ended September 30, lower than analysts' expectations of $127.46 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. For the holiday quarter, the world's biggest online retailer forecast net sales of between $140 billion and $148 billion, versus expectations of $155.15 billion. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/DjhgJp5

It happened: Elon Musk officially owns Twitter

It’s for real this time. After months of legal drama , bad memes , and will-they-or-won’t-they-chaos to put your favorite rom-com to shame, Elon Musk has closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. A number of outlets reported that Musk sealed the deal Thursday night , taking Twitter private and ousting a handful of top executives — CEO Parag Agrawal included — in the process. Musk reportedly cleaned house on Thursday, firing CFO Ned Segal, Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett right out of the gate. Though it’s still an aggressive and abrupt day one move, Agrawal was inevitable given his well-documented clashes and a failed virtual meeting with Musk. It’s also no surprise that Gadde was among the first to go. Musk previously singled the top policy executive out with accusations of “left wing bias” over her role in politically-charged decision making at the company, driving a wave of racist hate and harassment her way. The road to tak

Hidden Door wants to turn fiction into immersive roleplaying experiences

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The first season of “ House of Dragon ” just ended, and I find myself wishing for more. I’ve seen each episode twice already, read through the lore and even re-watched some “Game of Thrones” episodes. If I had the option to immerse myself in that world and roleplay as a dragon-riding Targaryen queen, you bet your ass I would do it. That’s eventually the vision of Hidden Door , a game studio that specializes in narrative AI and which participated in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 200 last week. Hidden Door wants to be able to turn any work of fiction into an immersive collaborative roleplaying experience, where players can jump into their favorite story worlds turned into dynamic graphic novels, with text and images being generated based on their choices. Hidden Door is currently testing out an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” because the story addresses various age groups and the original text is “so banana pants, which is perfect because it’s supposed to be silly and fun

Meta is in trouble

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A day after weighing in with its third-quarter earnings report, Meta is flailing. The company formerly known as Facebook was in trouble Thursday after uninspiring numbers and an apparent lack of faith in Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision sent its shares plunging by 25%. At the time of writing, Meta was trading around $98, down from $130 on Wednesday. Other tech stocks are in a similar boat broadly. A challenging economic climate and a war that’s worsened geopolitical tensions have sent many tech valuations back to Earth, but Meta’s fall —and the message it sends about the company’s future — is really something. Meta’s stock price is now worth almost a quarter of the all-time high of around $380 that the company recorded late last summer. Image Credits: companiesmarketcap.com Thursday’s situation saw Meta hit a low that its shares haven’t touched since 2016 — well before Zuckerberg’s big and possibly doomed pivot toward a virtual social platform to succeed Facebook. A run of hi

How to raise funds when you aren’t in the Bay Area

Perhaps sitting perched somewhere in sunny Miami, Florida, is a founder wondering the best ways to fundraise for a company when situated outside a traditional tech hub like the Bay Area. They need not worry. Last week, Mike Asem from M25, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund and Accel’s Rich Wong answered that question at TechCrunch Disrupt. The consensus of the venture capitalists was that remote work accelerated the trend of VCs looking at emerging markets, founders and companies throughout the nation. That and social media — specifically Twitter — have made it easier to connect with people. To some, sliding into an investor’s DMs can be just as legitimate as diving into one’s network for a warm intro. “We noticed a couple of years ago, in looking at our own analytics, that most of our deals were coming through Twitter,” Yin said at Disrupt. “If I look at my portfolio, my companies who are active on Twitter actually do have an easier time raising money because investors feel like they

Dawn of the tentacle

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Fair warning, it’s going to be a quick one from me today. I caught the thing again, roughly three months after the last time I caught the thing. They say, “third time’s the charm,” and I now recognize that they were referring to chest pain and a general light-headedness. Turns out it doesn’t get easier. Send soup. With that in mind, consider this week’s Actuator a bit more on the housecleaning side of things (don’t we have robots for that now?). It’s more of a smattering of links to interesting stories from the past week, along with some that no doubt fell through the cracks last week, during Disrupt. If this is your first Actuator, sorry. Trying hard not to be sick this time next week. Trend-wise (if a week of news can be referred to as such), I’m seeing a bit of a dip in robotic investment news, with university research rushing in to fill the vacuum. More than anything, the latter is most likely due, in part, to the school year being back in full force. Not that robotics researcher

Charge+Zone to set-up charging stations for Mahindra electric SUVs

By the end of this fiscal, Mahindra's EV users will have access to the Charge+Zone's network of more than 2,500 charging points across 25 cities and 10,000 km of highways. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/45LVNfi

Meta will release a new consumer-grade VR headset next year

A follow-up to the Quest 2, Meta is launching another consumer-grade virtual reality headset next year. The company announced this during today’s Q3 earnings call , in which the company marked yet another $3 billion quarterly loss to its metaverse investments. But CFO David Wehner says that some of this continued cost can be explained via Meta’s continued investment in new hardware development, including another consumer-grade headset that will come out next year. Just weeks ago, Meta unveiled the Quest Pro, a $1,499 headset that is targeted toward power users, especially those who will use it to work. But existing headsets like the Quest 2 are aimed to immerse average people in the company’s dreams for the metaverse. Right now, the Quest 2 retails for $399, but this summer, Meta hiked the price by $100 to try to make up for lost costs. We don’t know much more about Meta’s new headset, aside from the fact that … it’s in the works! But in the lead up to the Quest Pro, previously re

Ford takes $2.7B hit on Argo shutdown, shifts its bet to driver assist tech

As the third-quarter earnings drumbeat continues, we learned more about the state of global supply chains, global consumer appetite for big-ticket items and the future of self-driving technology. After the bell this afternoon, Ford beat Wall Street analyst revenue estimates of $36.25 billion, per Yahoo Finance , with automotive Q3 2022 top line of $37.2 billion , and total revenues of $39.25 billion, up 10% despite lingering supply chain issues. The company’s adjusted earnings per share also came in ahead of expectations. However, the financial news was quickly outweighed at least in commentary terms by the company’s choices regarding autonomous vehicle technology. TechCrunch broke the news earlier Wednesday that Argo AI, a self-driving company in which Ford was an investor, is shutting down . Ford, in its earnings report, wrote that it is shifting its capital spend from the Level 4 autonomous systems being developed by Argo AI to internally developed “L2+/L3” advanced driver a