MSI Net, Inc. & mCloudServ

Cape Town-based Stitch, which enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products using its APIs, raised a $25M Series A extension led by Ribbit (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch: Cape Town-based Stitch, which enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products using its APIs, raised a $25M Series A extension led by Ribbit — Open banking, in which traditional banks release their data via application programming interfaces (APIs) …

Femtosecond Laser Clones Itself In Glass

When researchers at the Galatea laboratory in Switzerland set out to create a femtosecond in glass they weren’t certain it was going to work. To be precise, their goal was to create a femtosecond laser cavity using carefully aligned optics. Rather than using the traditional, discrete method, they used a commercial femtosecond laser to carve

You can buy a refurbished HomePod 2 at Apple right now

Apple has now started selling refurbished HomePod 2 models on its Store.

Email: Chainalysis lays off ~150 employees, or 15%+ of its workforce, and plans to focus on government contracts; the company cut staff by ~5% in February 2023 (Steven Ehrlich/Forbes)

Steven Ehrlich / Forbes: Email: Chainalysis lays off ~150 employees, or 15%+ of its workforce, and plans to focus on government contracts; the company cut staff by ~5% in February 2023 — Chainalysis is laying off approximately 150 employees, or slightly more than 15% of its staff of 900, CEO Michael Gronager told employees …

The Tensor G3 could be a surprisingly big upgrade for the Pixel 8

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority Specs for the Pixel 8’s Tensor G3 chipset have leaked online. The specs corroborate a previous Android Authority leak. Expect an eclectic nine-core CPU and Arm’s flagship GPU. Google has been offering semi-custom Tensor processors inside its Pixel phones since 2021, offering improved machine learning and image processing smarts.

TikTok is testing an ad-free monthly subscription plan (Update: Confirmation)

Credit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Code within the TikTok app indicates that TikTok is testing an ad-free monthly subscription plan. The plan currently costs $4.99 per month in the US in this testing phase, though pricing could change when the feature rolls out widely. TikTok has confirmed a test of this plan, albeit disputing

PMaps Pre-employment Assessment Tool to the Rescue

Did you know? Only 39% of your employee’s time is spent doing the task they were hired for. You might contradict this finding with “It’s not the hours they work but the quality of delivery.” Sure, it is. And that gives you even more reasons to hire mindfully. We know what you are looking for…

TikTok confirms the company is running a limited-scale test of an ad-free subscription plan, but only says the market is not the US and does not share the price (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Todd Spangler / Variety: TikTok confirms the company is running a limited-scale test of an ad-free subscription plan, but only says the market is not the US and does not share the price — TikTok is exploring a new way to make money: The popular video app has kicked off a limited-scale test of a

The Path to Profiling Extraterrestrial Atmospheres With Astrophotonics

A major part of finding extraterrestrial life is to be able to profile the atmosphere of any planets outside of our solar system. This is not an easy task, as these planets are usually found through the slight darkening of their star as they pass in front of it (transition). Although spectroscopy is the ideal

X Social Media is suing X, a social media company

Illustration: The Verge It was bound to happen eventually: a company has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Elon Musk’s X Corp. over its renaming of Twitter (via Reuters). The company in question is X Social Media LLC, an ad agency from Florida that alleges X Corp. is guilty of violating Florida common law

Source: Instagram seeks to revive interest in Threads by getting creators to post more, making Threads a place for real-time updates about big events, and more (Sylvia Varnham O’Regan/The Information)

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan / The Information: Source: Instagram seeks to revive interest in Threads by getting creators to post more, making Threads a place for real-time updates about big events, and more — Three months ago, Threads, Meta Platforms’ answer to Twitter, was the hottest social media app around. In just days, 100 million people

2023 Halloween Hackfest: Ouija Robot Is Even Creepier Than the Real Thing

When you’re a kid, nothing says spooky like turning off the lights and bringing out the Ouija board. For decades, this mystifying oracle has purported to channel the dead by spelling out messages using a board with numbers, letters, yes/no, and a heart-shaped windowed bit of plastic called a planchette. While the action of a

Source: Instagram seeks to revive interest in Threads by getting creators to post more, making Threads a place for real-time updates about big events, and more (Sylvia Varnham O’Regan/The Information)

Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse: fantastic or frightening?

You may want to watch the interview between Lex Fridman and Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse — is it fantastic or frightening? I literally couldn’t decide — maybe you can. At first, it was thrilling to see and experience the unimaginable, exciting technology, but contemplating the uses for which this technology will march forth in

Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch

Queen B with that exclusive all-gold link band and original Apple Watch Edition. | Image: Beyonce.com It was never clear who the $10,000 to $17,000 18-karat gold Apple Watch was for, beyond celebrities and the ultrarich, but I hope whoever bought one way back in 2015 expected Apple to stop supporting them at some point.

Sources: ByteDance offers to buy back staff shares at a $223.5B valuation, down nearly 26% YoY, and made $20B+ in 2022 operating profit as revenue growth slowed (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Sources: ByteDance offers to buy back staff shares at a $223.5B valuation, down nearly 26% YoY, and made $20B+ in 2022 operating profit as revenue growth slowed — Social-media company reported an operating profit of more than $20 billion as its valuation fell by about 26%

The next foldable Pixel might not be the Pixel Fold 2

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority The latest version of the Google Pixel Buds app is hiding the codename “Comet.” It’s possible this could be the codename for the Pixel Fold 2. It could also potentially be the codename for a Pixel Flip. Google’s Pixel Fold is only a few months old at this point.

Filing: Virginia-based cybersecurity company IronNet, which was founded in 2014 by a former NSA director and raised $400M+, has shut down and laid off its staff (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Filing: Virginia-based cybersecurity company IronNet, which was founded in 2014 by a former NSA director and raised $400M+, has shut down and laid off its staff — IronNet, a once-promising cybersecurity startup founded by a former NSA director and funded by cyber and defense investors …

Google Pixel Buds Pro rumor says conversation detection is coming in an update

The Pixel Buds Pro may not be getting a replacement this year, but new software tricks are always welcome. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Google Pixel Buds Pro may be getting some nifty new software features that should sound a bit familiar if you were paying attention to the latest tweaks

Sources: at Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur factory, key to Apple’s pivot to India, issues persist, like disciplinary wage docking and poorer conditions for contractors (Billy Perrigo/TIME)

Billy Perrigo / TIME: Sources: at Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur factory, key to Apple’s pivot to India, issues persist, like disciplinary wage docking and poorer conditions for contractors — Set back from a dusty highway in South India, three newly completed factory buildings rise up behind a black spiked iron fence.

Microsoft okay with losing billions if Bing can be Apple’s search default

Credit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has testified at Google’s antitrust trial. Nadella claims Google’s status as the default search engine has crushed Bing as a business and product. Nadella also claims his company was willing to give up billions to have Bing as the default search engine on Apple devices.

ModuCoil – A Modular Coil for Motor and Generator Projects

While renewable energy offers many opportunities for decentralizing energy production, it can sometimes feel that doing so on a truly local level remains unachievable with increasingly large utility-scale deployments re-centralizing the technology. [AdamEnt] hopes to help others seize the means of energy production with the development of the ModuCoil. This modular coil is intended to

The Raspberry Pi 5 is here: Who is it for and is it worth buying?

Credit: Raspberry Pi For over a decade, the Raspberry Pi has reigned supreme as everyone’s favorite single-board computer. The Pi is best known for its credit card-sized form factor, affordable price tag, and low power consumption. And now, four years after the last major update, the Raspberry Pi 5 has finally landed. The new Pi

Amazon Bedrock generative AI service reaches GA

Amazon Bedrock, a serverless managed service that provides foundation models for building generative AI applications, is now generally available from Amazon Web Services. Availability was announced September 28, following the service being unveiled in a private preview in April. Bedrock was also updated in July with new models and tools. To read this article in

Documents and sources undermine Flexport founder Ryan Petersen’s claims that CEO Dave Clark overspent, overhired, and overpromised before being forced to resign (CNBC)

CNBC: Documents and sources undermine Flexport founder Ryan Petersen’s claims that CEO Dave Clark overspent, overhired, and overpromised before being forced to resign — – Immediately following Dave Clark’s abrupt ouster as CEO of Flexport, founder Ryan Petersen said the company was hiring too aggressively and needed to rein in spending.

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