Ethereum activates its long-awaited Merge upgrade, in development since 2020, and transactions are now being processed under proof of stake
- The Merge upgrade is transitioning Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake. — The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date.
Adobe plans to acquire UI design and prototyping tool Figma for around $20B in cash and stock; Figma CEO Dylan Field will continue in the role; ADBE drops 12%+
Adobe Inc. agreed to buy software design startup Figma Inc. in a deal valued at about $20 billion to help it expand tools for creative professionals.
In a US Senate committee hearing, Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter executives defended their platforms and dodged security, privacy, and moderation questions
Executives from four of the biggest social media companies testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday …
Apple Watch Series 8 review: watchOS 9, crash detection, and temperature sensors are excellent, but needs daily charging and the update is fairly incremental
... don't upgrade … The concept, made famous by Toyota, means continuous improvement.
Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining firm, plans to shut down its servers for miners after Ethereum's Merge and switch its mining pool to withdraw-only mode
1 big thing: Adobe is buying online design startup Figma for $20 billion … CoinDesk : Meet 8 Ethereum Developers Who Helped Make the Merge Possible Mike Truppa / The Block : Beyond The Merge: A look a...
TikTok and ByteDance's links to China mean wrongdoing will be punished more harshly in the US than Meta and Twitter, no matter how “transparent” the company is
In new testimony to Congress, the company faces stern questions on China — Ever since TikTok became …
A review of Intel's pre-release AI upscaling tech XeSS, used in its new Arc A770 GPU, shows competitive results against Nvidia's slightly older DLSS
A strong start for a new, more open AI upscaler. — Face-off by Alex Battaglia Video Producer, Digital Foundry
Adobe reports Q3 revenue rose 13% YoY to $4.43B, led by Digital Media, up 13% YoY to $3.23B, and Digital Experience, up 14% YoY to $1.12B
TikTok rolls out Now, a BeReal-like feed, to its app in the US, with daily prompts to capture a 10-second video or a photo using both front and back cameras
TikTok launched a new feature today that is basically just a copy of BeReal, the buzzy French social app that's been steadily gaining popularity.
Arm unveils Neoverse V2, its next-gen core for pushing cloud, hyperscale, and HPC performance workloads, which is set to power Nvidia's upcoming Grace CPU
Today Arm announced its next-generation cores for higher performance per core applications. Dubbed the Arm Neoverse V2 or “Demeter” … Source: Arm .
EU lawmakers propose the Cyber Resilience Act, a new set of rules for IoT and smart device makers to bolster cybersecurity or face fines
European Union lawmakers have proposed a new set of product rules to apply to smart devices that's intended to compel makers of Internet-connected hardware …
Google cancels seven out of 14 projects in its Area 120 incubator, including Qaya, which offered storefronts for creators, and shifts to only AI-first projects
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, speaking at the Code Conference last week, suggested the tech company needed to become 20% more efficient …
Sources: alongside the UK's CMA, the EU is expected to launch an in-depth investigation into Microsoft's $75B Activision bid due to size and competition fears
Regulators in Brussels expected to follow CMA with plans for prolonged competition investigation
Coinbase updates its app to let US users see a scorecard that evaluates members of Congress on crypto policy issues, register to vote, and find political events
- Coinbase is getting political: The exchange added new app features to help users evaluate lawmakers, register to vote and find political events.
Meta's Oversight Board says the company should be more careful with automated moderation and criticizes removing a cartoon depicting police violence in Colombia
Meta's Oversight Board says the company should be more careful with automated moderation tools, criticizing it for removing a cartoon depicting police violence in Colombia.
Snap makes Snapchat for Web available to all users globally, including support for video calls, releases iOS 16 lock screen widgets, and more
Snapchat's messaging and video chat features first made their way to browsers back in July, but only in select markets and for Snapchat+ subscribers.
Samsung Electronics pledges to invest $5B+ into R&D for tech that achieves net zero emissions in its devices business by 2030 and across the company by 2050
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) will invest over 7 trillion won ($5.02 billion) by 2030 as part of sweeping environmental initiatives aimed …
Walmart launches a virtual try-on tool to let shoppers see how a shirt, dress, or another clothing item would look on their own bodies without visiting a store
- Walmart is launching a virtual try-on tool to help shoppers see how a shirt, dress or another clothing item would look on their own body.
President Biden issues an EO directing the CFIUS to increase scrutiny of deals that could give China and others access to critical tech and personal data
A new executive order directs the panel screening foreign investment, Cfius, to look at deals in areas U.S. officials say are of interest to China
As Ethereum moves to proof of stake, about 11% of ETH is staked and earning but won't be withdrawable until the “Shanghai” update, expected in about six months
Research: Chinese investment in US VCs reached ~$880M in 2022, the second-highest level in 12+ years; China-linked groups invested $4B+ in US VCs since 2010
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal :
Research details Amazon's post-pandemic shrinking US warehouse footprint: 21 facilities have closed, 21 are canceled, and 27 are delayed or on hold
- Amazon is closing, canceling or delaying warehouses across the U.S. after its pandemic expansion left it with too much space.
Amazon announces a Tailored Audiences tool, coming to all US sellers in early 2023, which will let brands and merchants send marketing emails to shoppers
Amazon.com Inc. will let brands and merchants send marketing emails to shoppers, a risky bid to boost sales that could inundate inboxes with spam.
Memo: Netflix told ad buyers the company expects its ad-supported tier to reach 4.4M unique viewers globally in 2022, and ~40M by Q3 2023, with 13.3M in the US
Streaming giant shared projections for ‘unique viewers’ across a dozen launch markets with ad buyers
California's AG files an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, focusing on the company allegedly penalizing sellers who list products at lower prices on other sites
inflating prices across the web isn't exactly customer-obsessed. https://twitter.com/... Stacy Mitchell / @stacyfmitchell : 8/8. Here's the filing itself. Lots of damning quotes and data from independ...
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to start regulating BNPL companies, such as Klarna and Affirm, and will release guidance in the future
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) plans to start regulating “buy-now, pay-later” (BNPL) companies like Klarna and Affirm Holdings …
Google redesigns the Memories feature in Photos to spotlight more videos, launches a collage editor, and will let users share Memories with friends and family
here's what's new Kris Holt / Engadget : Google updates Photos with redesigned Memories and a new collage editor Abhishek Mishra / Fossbytes : Google Photos Gets The Biggest ‘ Memories’ Update This Ye...
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs AB 587 into law, requiring social networks to share moderation rules, despite concerns it may violate the First Amendment
Esports collective FaZe Clan plans to launch FaZe World, a virtual world built on The Sandbox, in 2023 with digital goods, real estate, events, and experiences
J. Clara Chan / The Hollywood Reporter :
Experts say Peiter Zatko's Senate testimony on Twitter is unlikely to have a big impact on Elon Musk's legal battle to terminate his $44B takeover deal
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times :
Fortanix, which offers enterprise encryption tools for data being processed, raised a $90M Series C led by Growth Equity, bringing its total funding to $122M
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE :
French director Marion Siéfert blames Meta's policies for banning livestreams of her “Instagram play” about teenage sexuality, even though it contains no nudity
Laura Cappelle / New York Times : Tweets: @jilliancyork , @jeremyoharris , @bloggeronpole , @lauracappelle , @rasmus_kleis , @mischabreslin , and @bloggeronpole Tweets: @jilliancyork : Excellent piec...
Discord rolls out Reddit-like Forum channels, designed for asynchronous chat about specific topics, after testing them with some communities since February 2022
California-based Hone, an online executive learning and development service helmed by FanDuel co-founder Tom Griffiths, raised a $30M Series B led by 3L Capital
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch : Tweets: @jcspinell and @tomgriffiths Tweets: Jason Spinell / @jcspinell : Incredibly excited to continue backing @tomgriffiths and the whole team @HoneHQ in continuing to ...
Intel, Arm, and Nvidia propose a new open, license-free specification using 8-bit floating point, or FP8, precision as a common interchange format for AI
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Users say a demo of ERNIE-ViLG, Baidu's new text-to-image AI model, labels words in political contexts as “sensitive” and blocks them from generating a result
Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review : Tweets: @mmitchell_ai , @greatfirechina , and @kwestin Tweets: @mmitchell_ai : “The difficulty of identifying a clear line between censorship and moderation is als...
A look at Shanghai's status as China's chip hub: SMIC and SMEE making 14nm and 90nm chips, ~$36.95B market size in 2021 or ~25% of China's total, and more
Jiaxing Li / South China Morning Post : Tweets: @pstasiatech Tweets: Paul Triolo / @pstasiatech : Shanghai emerges as China's semiconductor highland City has emerged as a centre for China's most comp...
Tel Aviv-based Groundcover, a performance monitoring service for cloud apps, raised a $20M Series A led by Zeev Ventures, bringing its total funding to $24.5M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Crypto market maker Portofino, founded by former Citadel Securities executives, emerges from stealth with $50M from Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures and others
Tom Matsuda / The Block :
Houston-based Majority, a mobile bank serving migrants to the US, raised a $30M Series B and $7.5M in debt, bringing its total funding to $83.5M since June 2021
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch :
Group-IB: since the data of ~1B Chinese citizens appeared for sale, smaller tranches have appeared on forums, often including personal info and national IDs
Bloomberg : Tweets: @jeffstone500 Tweets: Jeff Stone / @jeffstone500 : Vast amount of Chinese data for sale on dark forums after Shanghai cops lost control about 1 billion people, @_szheng finds. Bre...
Verkada, an IoT security device maker accused of lax data protections and a toxic workplace, raised a $205M Series D at a $3.2B valuation led by Linse Capital
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch :
Canva unveils new products Docs, Websites, Whiteboards, and Data Visualization, brings background removing to videos, and adds a remote control to Presentations
A profile of Salesforce co-CEO and Twitter chairman Bret Taylor, a calm operator who is taking point on suing Elon Musk to enforce the $44B Twitter acquisition
Seesaw, a messaging app for parents and teachers with 10M users, says hackers used a credential stuffing attack after users said they received an explicit image
Kevin Collier / NBC News :
Q&A with Mark Bergen on his book “Like, Comment, Subscribe”, chronicling YouTube's evolution from a scrappy startup to a pivotal part of Google and social media
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.