Credit: Xiaomi Xiaomi has announced an NFC variant of the Mi Smart Band 6 in Europe. The new model will enable contactless payments. It also features Alexa support. Xiaomi announced its 11T series and the Mi Pad 5 in Europe yesterday, but these weren’t the only standouts at its launch event. For the first time ever,
Read MoreFormer Ferranti Electric engineer [Martin Mallinson] recently posted a 1980s documentary on YouTube (see the video below the break). It shows in some detail the semiconductor plant at Gem Mill outside of Manchester UK, as seen through the eyes of the ghost of founder Dr. Sebastian Ferranti. This dramatic device seems a little silly at
Read MoreFrench startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million). The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your company. What makes it special is that Skello automatically takes into account local labor laws and collective agreements. Partech is leading today’s funding round. Existing
Read MoreBloomberg: Oppo is cutting around 20% of its staff in key software and device teams after it merged operations with affiliate OnePlus — – Oppo has merged operations with OnePlus and cut key divisions — The scale-back is China industry’s first major consolidation
Read MoreRomain Dillet / TechCrunch: French startup Skello, which develops a SaaS tool that lets companies manage their work schedules, raises €40M led by Partech — French startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million). The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your
Read MoreSarah McBride / Bloomberg: Brooklyn-based Genius, a music-annotating startup that provides context for rap lyrics, has sold its assets for $80M, less than the total funding it raised — The sale price is less than the total funding raised. — Music-annotating startup Genius Media Group Inc., a site that drew attention …
Read MoreRyan McMorrow / Financial Times: Research: Didi’s average daily user count for August fell to 10.9M, from 15.6M in June after its NY IPO triggered a fierce backlash by Chinese regulators — Promotions and discounts help ride-hailing rivals increase customer numbers — China’s leading ride-hailing app, Didi …
Read MoreMaggie Miller / The Hill: FTC asks health apps, such as those tracking fitness or menstrual cycles, to notify consumers of data breaches as per the 2009 Health Breach Notification Rule — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3-2 Wednesday that a decade-old rule on health data breaches applies to apps …
Read MoreProject Taara link | Image: X In January, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, shut down Project Loon, an initiative exploring using stratospheric helium balloons to distribute wireless internet (an attempt to use solar-powered drones folded in 2017). However, some technology developed as a part of the Loon project remained in development, specifically the Free Space Optical
Read MoreWhat you need to know Apple’s refreshed iPad mini gains an additional gigabyte of RAM. New iPad minis ship with 4GB of RAM, rather than the 3GB found in previous models. The new iPad mini now has the same amount of RAM as the iPad Air. That’s plenty. Apple’s newly announced and refreshed iPad mini
Read MoreWhat you need to know Apple has a new store coming with Apple The Mall at Bay Plaza opening on September 24. The new store will open on the same day new iPhones go on sale. Talk about a baptism of fire. Apple fans in The Bronx, New York have a new Apple Store coming,
Read MoreHugh Son / CNBC: Goldman Sachs is acquiring buy now, pay later fintech GreenSky for about $2.24B, in an all-stock deal — – Goldman Sachs is acquiring fintech lender GreenSky for $2.24 billion as the investment bank pushes further into consumer finance. — The all-stock deal for GreenSky …
Read MoreWhat you need to know Apple has confirmed that tvOS 15 will launch on Monday, September 20. It will launch alongside iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8. It is still unclear when macOS Monterey will launch this fall. macOS Monterey has to watch everyone launch without it. It looks like tvOS 15 is getting
Read MoreWhat you need to know The iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 feature the same amount of RAM. The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini have 4GB of RAM. The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max feature 6GB of RAM. Who needs more RAM when you have the A15 Bionic? There doesn’t appear to
Read MoreReuters: Melio, a B2B payments startup for small businesses, raises $250M Series D led by Thrive Capital and General Catalyst at a $4B valuation, up 3x from January — Melio, a payments platform for small businesses, said on Tuesday it had raised $250 million in a late-stage funding round …
Read MoreGetty Theranos lab assistant-turned-whistleblower Erika Cheung testifies in the Elizabeth Holmes wire fraud trial Continue reading…
Read MoreDavid McLaughlin / Bloomberg: FTC says Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft made 819 unreported acquisition deals of $1M+, including for patents and acquihires, from 2010 to 2019 — – Report shows hundreds of deals by tech giants went unchecked — Antitrust enforcers must close loopholes, FTC Chair Khan says
Read MoreThe first all-civilian crew in history has made it to space. The Inspiration4 crew took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:04 EST PM, commencing the first space mission in human history featuring zero trained astronauts. The reusable first-stage of the Falcon 9 rocket executed two burns in its journey back to
Read MoreIt’s back to school season and on TikTok, that means students are inexplicably stealing everything that isn’t bolted down. The latest TikTok trend to generally wreak social havoc sees students pulling off “devious licks” — small-scale heists of everything from soap dispensers, Covid test kits and hand sanitizer to high value items like classroom tech.
Read MoreSpaceX launched four private citizens to space on Wednesday, kicking off the first-ever crewed mission to orbit without any professional astronauts on board. Dubbed Inspiration4, the mission marks the latest private foray into space as companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX compete to normalize space travel for paying tourists, not just government astronauts. SpaceX’s Falcon 9
Read MorePhoto by Tom Warren / The Verge Sony’s update adding the much-anticipated support for M.2 SSD storage expansion is here, letting you install more PS5 games than the 825GB built-in SSD allows. When the feature first launched in beta, Sony provided a list of requirements, making it clear that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to
Read MoreWe wouldn’t go so far as to say “don’t try this at home”, but the way [Troy] brought an expensive (but out of warranty) laptop back to life is interesting, even if it shouldn’t be anyone’s Plan A for repair work. It started with a friend’s Alienware laptop that would only boot to a black
Read MoreDan Primack / Axios: Rebellion Defense, the Eric Schmidt-backed developer of AI defense tech, raises $150M led by Insight and Venrock at a $1B pre-money valuation — Rebellion Defense, a developer of AI solutions for U.S. defense, tells Axios that it has raised $150 million in venture capital at a $1 billion pre-money valuation.
Read MoreCredit: Ankit Banerjee / Android Authority More and more people are using a virtual private network (VPN) to improve their browsing experience. There are so many providers out there to choose from that you may not know where to start. To give you a hand, we’ve rounded up the best VPN deals from many of
Read MoreWhat you need to know Apple’s 3rd generation AirPods are reportedly in production. The earbuds were missing from yesterday’s iPhone 13 event which was a surprise to many. Could the 3rd generation AirPods be announced through a press release? Yesterday, Apple hosted its “California Streaming” event where it announced the iPhone 13, Apple Watch Series
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