Elon Musk says the blue checkmark system is “bullshit” and Twitter Blue will be $8/month with half the ads, priority in replies, mentions, and search, and more
Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
Sony plans to launch the PlayStation VR2 on February 22 for $550, £530, or €600; preorders open November 15
Sony will launch its PS VR2 headset on February 22nd priced at $549.99. The PS VR2 will be priced at $549.99 in the US, €599.99 across Europe, £529.99, and ¥74,980 in Japan.
Twitter's Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette “resigns”; sources say ad company IPG recommended that clients pause Twitter spending over moderation concerns
> Today, more than 40 organizations signed a letter to Twitter's major advertisers urging them to commit to pulling ads if Musk follows through with promises to roll back community safeguards and scal...
Elon Musk says Twitter will not reinstate banned accounts “until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks”
The pledge came after a Zoom meeting with representatives of civil rights groups that one participant called ‘respectful’
China's Zhengzhou industrial park, where Foxconn makes iPhones, begins a weeklong lockdown to counteract the “severe and complicated” spread of COVID-19
HONG KONG—The industrial park where Foxconn Technology Group's iPhone assembly plant is struggling to maintain production amid …
FinCEN: US financial firms processed ~$1.2B in likely ransomware payments in 2021, up almost 3x YoY; ~75% of H2 2021 ransomware incidents were linked to Russia
- U.S. banks and financial institutions processed more than $1 billion in potential ransomware-related payments in 2021.
Internal email: Twitter appears to be rushing out a “high”-risk “Paywalled Video” feature, letting users charge to view their videos, with Twitter taking a cut
The tool would let video creators charge users for access. The team working on it flagged big potential pitfalls.
Apple TV 4K (2022) review: affordable, snappy performance, and USB-C remote, but no AirTag-like remote tracking, lackluster live TV, and somewhat stale design
Packing more speed than ever (and now HDR10 Plus) at a cheaper price, the Apple TV 4K is the best overall streamer on the market — even if tvOS is falling behind in places
Elon Musk's history of amplifying misinformation shows that his Twitter won't be interested in protecting the LGBTQ community and others facing targeted abuse
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch :
A profile of, and interview with, Jony Ive, covering life before and after Apple, his artistic process, LoveFrom, the importance of words, and more
can always write an awful lot that I can't draw,“ Jony Ive, the mastermind behind Apple's most revolutionary products, says as he holds up a Space Age-style coffee cup. ”
Netflix begins rolling out its Basic with Ads tier; sources say licensing negotiations with Disney, Comcast, Sony, Warner Bros., and Lions Gate are ongoing
Disney, NBCU and Sony are among the companies still negotiating licensing with the streaming service
An ex-Apple employee, Dhirendra Prasad, pleaded guilty to mail and wire fraud charges after defrauding Apple of $17M+, including via kickbacks, starting in 2011
Former parts buyer engaged in theft, taking kickbacks and inflating invoices, prosecutors say. — Steven Musil
Google plans to roll out parental controls for Assistant, including disabling features, restricting services, and setting downtimes hours, in the “coming weeks”
Kids love to use smart speakers, but it's all too easy for things to go horribly wrong — including content that's decidedly not family-friendly.
Comedian and verified Twitter user Tim Heidecker puts the site's moderation practices to the test by starting #TrumpIsDead, which began trending on November 1
Sydney-based Blackbird raised an AU$1B+ fund, the largest Australian VC fund yet, including AU$284M for early-stage in Australia and AU$668M for follow-on bets
Blackbird Ventures has raised the largest Australian venture capital fund yet, securing more than A$1 billion ($640 million) …
Arta Finance, which is building a “digital family office for the world”, raised a $90M seed and Series A from Sequoia, Eric Schmidt, and others
Caesar Sengupta has worked on, and overseen, several category-defining projects in the past decade and a half.
Sources: Twitter managers told employees they would be paid for their newly vested shares in the first half of November 2022, starting as early as November 4
- Since Elon Musk closed his purchase of Twitter on Oct. 28, employees worried they would be fired or laid off before their stock options vested in early November.
Google adds Lens to the google.com homepage, letting users search by image, after rolling out the feature to the desktop in 2021
Google Lens will only become more important going forward, and one sign of that is its addition to the google.com homepage today.
Google plans to release a limited version of the Imagen text-to-image generator on its AI Test Kitchen app, letting users build cities and create a monster
Google is being extremely cautious with the release of its text-to-image AI systems. … Today, though, the search giant announced …
Google expands its flood forecasting and wildfire tracking services, adding a Flood Hub globally and improved wildfire tracking in more countries
Google announced a big expansion of its flood forecasting and wildfire tracking services today. It launched a tool called Flood Hub globally …
Sources: the US is exploring whether it has legal authority to review Elon Musk's Twitter deal, which gives large foreign investors access to confidential data
Terms of the deal give large foreign investors access to confidential information about the social media platform
A look at the everyday sexism faced by Indian women working in tech; around 36% of India's 5M tech workers are women, of which 7% hold executive-level positions
Tech helped more Indian women join the workforce, but they're still fighting to be treated equally. Tweets: @itikaspunit and @anupkaphle Tweets: @itikaspunit : All this plays out very subtly — like wh...
Roam, founded by Yext's Howard Lerman as a “cloud HQ” for distributed remote companies, raised a $30M Series A and $10.6M seed at a $95M post-money valuation
Roam, which bills itself as a “cloud HQ” for distributed, remote companies, today emerged from stealth with $30 million …
A look at life for ether miners after the Merge, including repurposing obsolete equipment to mine other cryptocurrencies, host cloud services, and heat homes
Martha Muir / Financial Times :
Tharsis Labs, which develops the Evmos cross-blockchain tool to connect Ethereum and Cosmos, raised $27M via a token sale led by Polychain Capital
Polychain Capital led the funding raise to accelerate the cross-chain decentralized app platform — Tharsis Labs - the core developer of Evmos …
Dropbox says hackers stole code and some API keys from 130 GitHub repositories via a phishing campaign, but its core apps and infrastructure were unaffected
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer :
The UK's Ofcom begins scrapping legislation compelling BT and KCOM to provide affordable, dedicated landlines, sounding the death knell for the fax machine
Financial Times :
Snap partners with Amazon to let users try on eyewear in AR through dozens of new Shopping Lenses
Snap has landed a notable new partner for its augmented reality-powered Virtual Try-On shopping experience with today's news that Amazon will now offer Snapchat users the ability to digitally try …
Tumblr updates its community guidelines to allow nudity, mature subject matter, and sexual themes, but says sexually explicit acts “remain off-limits”
As a global platform for creativity and self-expression … Adam Vjestica / The Shortcut : Tumblr reverses its ban on nudity after four years Tweets: @dylan_macri : Tumblr's in a fascinating position ri...
Meta researchers create ESMFold, an LLM to predict the structures of 617M+ metagenomic proteins that is less accurate than DeepMind's AlphaFold but ~60x faster
Ewen Callaway / Nature :
Microsoft helped build a robust AI ecosystem in China but the company could be forced to reexamine its relationship with the country under tighter US rules
Through decades of support, Microsoft was an instrumental force helping China become the AI powerhouse it is today. Tweets: @katekayereports and @bennettrich Tweets: Kate Kaye / @katekayereports : It'...
Source: Meta plans to end human curation of its UK Facebook News tab, contracted to a team of ~15 journalists at Upday, and switch to an AI system in early 2023
William Turvill / Press Gazette :
AMD reports Q3 revenue up 29% YoY to $5.57B, vs. $5.62B est., net income down 93% YoY to $66M, and Client unit revenue down nearly 40% YoY due to weak PC sales
An engineer reimplemented Google AI's text-to-image diffusion model DreamBooth for Stable Diffusion, letting anyone cheaply and easily recreate artists' styles
Andy Baio / Waxy.org : Tweets: @waxpancake , @dreamwieber , @simonw , and @fredbenenson Tweets: Andy Baio / @waxpancake : Last week, a Redditor fine-tuned an AI image model on the work of one illustr...
Arizona-based Qwick, an on-demand staffing service that matches gig workers with hospitality jobs, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $69.1M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch : Tweets: @qwickshifts Tweets: Qwick / @qwickshifts : It's an exciting day for Qwick as we announce the close of a $40M Series B #investment led by Tritium Partners! This ye...
EA reports Q2 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.9B, vs. $1.94B est., net income up 2% YoY to $299M, net bookings down 5% YoY to $1.75B, and forecasts strong Q3 net income
Brendan Sinclair / GamesIndustry.biz :
Colorado-based ColdQuanta, which uses cold atom tech to build and integrate quantum computers, sensors, clocks, receivers, and networks, raised a $110M Series B
Daniel Levi / Tech Startups :
Toronto-based TouchBistro, which offers payments tools for restaurants globally, raised CA$150M led by Francisco Partners, bringing its funding to ~CA$433M
Keerthi Vedantam / Crunchbase News :
Redwood City-based Alation, which helps crawl and search enterprise databases, raised a $123M Series E at a $1.7B valuation, bringing its total funding to $340M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Uber tests showing ads for other companies in push notifications for its iOS app; Uber says users can “manage their mobile notification settings” in the app
Intel says its next-gen Sapphire Rapids Xeon chips are slated for January 2023, after a spate of delays dating back to 2021, another boon for AMD's server chips
Dylan Martin / The Register :
Rewind, whose Mac app creates a searchable recording to help users find what they've seen, said, or heard, raised a $10M seed led by a16z at a $75M valuation
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch :
Twitch launches Guest Star, which lets streamers pull other creators and fans into their streams for a talk show-like experience, out of beta for all users
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch : Tweets: @thegarrett Tweets: Brain De La Worms / @thegarrett : Well, its live. Can honestly say this has been one of the most challenging yet rewarding launch of my care...
Airbnb reports Q3: record revenue, up 29% YoY to $2.9B, vs. $2.85B est., net income up 46% YoY to $1.2B, and Nights and Experiences Booked up 25% YoY to ~100M
Russia's RT, banned by major platforms in March 2022, has found an audience on Thiel-backed Rumble, often pushing Russian propaganda about the Ukraine invasion
Danny Hakim / New York Times : Tweets: @timryan and @maddow See also Mediagazer Tweets: Tim Ryan / @timryan : JD Vance backed a company spreading butcher Vladimir Putin's propaganda. He continues to ...
Amazon's stock closed down 5.52% on November 1, down for the fifth straight day, its lowest close and below a $1T market cap for the first time since April 2020
Amazon shuts down its Treasure Truck deal-of-the-day program, after pivoting from a single product sold from a physical truck to online-only during the pandemic
Match Group reports Q3 revenue up 1% YoY to $810M, vs. $793M est., paying users up 2% YoY to 16.5M, and plans Hinge and The League investments; stock jumps 15%+
Twilio plans to sunset Zipwhip's business texting service on December 1, 2023, after acquiring the Seattle-based startup in May 2021 for $850M in cash and stock
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.