MSI Net, Inc. & mCloudServ

Munich-based car subscription startup Finn, which manages 25K subscriptions in Germany and the US, raised a €100M Series C at a €600M post-money valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Munich-based car subscription startup Finn, which manages 25K subscriptions in Germany and the US, raised a €100M Series C at a €600M post-money valuation — Finn, a startup based out of Munich that operates a platform for new car subscriptions — an alternative to buying or leasing …

Ripple Labs, creator of the XRP cryptocurrency, plans to buy back $285M in shares from early investors and employees, sources say at an $11.3B valuation (Krystal Hu/Reuters)

Krystal Hu / Reuters: Ripple Labs, creator of the XRP cryptocurrency, plans to buy back $285M in shares from early investors and employees, sources say at an $11.3B valuation — Cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs, known for its XRP coins, is buying back $285 million worth of shares in the company from early investors …

A look at some of the most interesting tech from CES 2024: Roxi’s interactive music video channels for linear TV, Samsung’s Ballie AI robot projector, and more (Chris Velazco/Washington Post)

Chris Velazco / Washington Post: A look at some of the most interesting tech from CES 2024: Roxi’s interactive music video channels for linear TV, Samsung’s Ballie AI robot projector, and more — Seeing everything the show has to offer is nearly impossible, but we’re trying anyway — LAS VEGAS — CES …

This slick WiFi-enabled Air Purifier just launched at CES 2024, and you can connect it to Apple Home with HomeKit support

Mila brings new Air purifiers with HomeKit support to the table over CES 2024.

Chinese security firm claims it can see encrypted AirDrop data using a flaw that has existed since 2019

A government-backed Chinese firm claims it can see encrypted user data from AirDrop.

Apple Watch ban saga takes another turn as ITC hits back — one legal expert claims Masimo “clearly abusing patents”

The ITC has filed its objection to Apple’s request to stay the Apple Watch ban, but one patent expert says Apple is in the right.

19th Century Copy Machine: The Cyclostyle

In the 2020s photocopiers are getting a bit exotic, although they are not gone yet. But these days, you are more likely to simply print multiple copies of a document. However, it wasn’t long ago that making a copy of a document was a tall order. Carbon paper was fine if you were typing and

Android’s eSIM conversion feature gets closer to launch

Credit: Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority The latest Android 14 QPR 2 Beta 3 includes a new stub for the “Convert to eSIM” feature within SIM card settings. This feature will presumably provide a consistent user experience across carriers for users who want to convert their physical SIM to eSIMs. The feature does not currently

Harvard spinout QuEra, a quantum computing startup, plans to release an error-corrected quantum computer with 10,000 physical and 100 logical qubits by 2026 (John Timmer/Ars Technica)

John Timmer / Ars Technica: Harvard spinout QuEra, a quantum computing startup, plans to release an error-corrected quantum computer with 10,000 physical and 100 logical qubits by 2026 — Company builds on recent demonstration of error-tracking in similar hardware. — On Tuesday, the quantum computing startup Quera laid …

Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees

Illustration: The Verge Turns out Google’s postpandemic reckoning didn’t just hit the Google Hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit products — it’s taken similarly sized bites out of Google’s core engineering and Google Assistant teams too. Google just confirmed to The Verge that it’s eliminated “a few hundred” roles in each of these

Toto Haba, the SVP of LVMH brand Benefit Cosmetics, says the luxury conglomerate is discussing a plan with TikTok for limiting counterfeit products on the app (Alex Barinka/Bloomberg)

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg: Toto Haba, the SVP of LVMH brand Benefit Cosmetics, says the luxury conglomerate is discussing a plan with TikTok for limiting counterfeit products on the app — – Agreements can help improve quality of TikTok’s Shop effort — TikTok aims for $17.5 billion US e-commerce business in 2024

Need hand-on time with the new Galaxy S24 series? Samsung is organizing something for you

Credit: Samsung Samsung is hosting Galaxy Experience Spaces in nine cities worldwide starting January 17. The pop-ups will allow people to experience the new flagships and their Galaxy AI features. Samsung’s Reserve offers are also available until January 16 and will give you $50 credit when you pre-order the S24 series. Now that CES 2024

Sources: several hundred employees from Google’s core engineering division received notices that their roles were eliminated and lost corporate access (Nico Grant/New York Times)

Nico Grant / New York Times: Sources: several hundred employees from Google’s core engineering division received notices that their roles were eliminated and lost corporate access — The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.

Sources: OpenAI, Inflection, and Cohere held back-channel talks on AI policy and safety with Chinese state-backed groups in Geneva in July 2023 and October 2023 (Madhumita Murgia/Financial Times)

Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI, Inflection, and Cohere held back-channel talks on AI policy and safety with Chinese state-backed groups in Geneva in July 2023 and October 2023 — OpenAI, Inflection and Cohere held back-channel talks with Chinese state-backed groups in Geneva

Big changes at Google: Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit teams to merge under one hardware umbrella

Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Google is consolidating its hardware teams into a single team handling Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit devices. The company has also laid off around a thousand employees. Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving the company and hundreds of AR employees are being laid off. Google is

Google is losing its Fitbit leaders and laying off hundreds of AR employees

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google’s hardware division just took a body blow. The company has confirmed it’s laying off hundreds of hardware workers, especially in its augmented reality division — and 9to5Google is reporting that Fitbit co-founders James Park, Eric Friedman, and other Fitbit leaders are leaving the company entirely. Update,

Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams working on the Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest; Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving Google (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams working on the Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest; Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving Google — Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware.

Google lays off hundreds of people working on Assistant and says the restructuring would help improve Assistant as it explores integrating newer AI technology (Louise Matsakis/Semafor)

Louise Matsakis / Semafor: Google lays off hundreds of people working on Assistant and says the restructuring would help improve Assistant as it explores integrating newer AI technology — Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and eliminating a similar number …

Pico-Sized Ham Radio

There are plenty of hobbies around with huge price tags, and ham radio can certainly be one of them. Experienced hams might have radios that cost thousands of dollars, with huge, steerable antennas on masts that can be similarly priced. But there’s also a side to the hobby that throws all of this out of

Here’s what we know about the SAG-AFTRA AI voice acting licensing deal

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Update January 10th, 9:02PM ET: Shortly after we published this post, SAG-AFTRA shared the full text of its agreement with Replica Studios as well as an FAQ document and a summary. Our original story follows. During CES 2024, SAG-AFTRA announced an agreement with AI voice technology company

Netflix says its ad tier has 23M+ MAUs globally, up from 15M+ in November 2023, and 85% of customers on the ad tier are streaming for over 2 hours per day (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Todd Spangler / Variety: Netflix says its ad tier has 23M+ MAUs globally, up from 15M+ in November 2023, and 85% of customers on the ad tier are streaming for over 2 hours per day — Netflix is seeing strong growth of its advertising-based plan, having recently eclipsed 23 million global monthly active users, president

Best of CES 2024 Awards: The top products from the show!

CES 2024 has brought an impressive array of new tech products to the forefront, everything from smartphones to televisions to audio gear. This year’s event featured a diverse range of gadgets and innovations, each vying for attention in their respective fields.

The Hobbes OS/2 Archive Will Shut Down In April

The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is a large collection of OS/2 software that has been publicly available for many years, even as OS/2 itself has mostly faded into obscurity. Yet now it would appear that the entity behind the Hobbes OS/2 Archive, the Information & Communication Technologies department at the New Mexico State University, has decided

A survey of 9,388 software engineers in December 2023 finds ~90% believe getting a job now is harder than pre-pandemic, 60%+ believe AI will lead to less hiring (Maxwell Strachan/VICE)

Maxwell Strachan / VICE: A survey of 9,388 software engineers in December 2023 finds ~90% believe getting a job now is harder than pre-pandemic, 60%+ believe AI will lead to less hiring — 9,388 engineers polled by Motherboard and Blind said AI will lead to less hiring. Only 6% were confident they’d get another job

The US ITC files its opposition to Apple’s motion for the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 sales ban to remain paused for the duration of the company’s appeal (Joe Rossignol/MacRumors)

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: The US ITC files its opposition to Apple’s motion for the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 sales ban to remain paused for the duration of the company’s appeal — The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) today formally opposed Apple’s motion for the Apple Watch sales ban to remain paused

Blog