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After YouTuber MrBeast made a video about paying for 1,000 blind people’s eye surgery, critics raise questions about “stunt philanthropy” and “charity porn” (Kelsey Weekman/BuzzFeed News)

Kelsey Weekman / BuzzFeed News: After YouTuber MrBeast made a video about paying for 1,000 blind people’s eye surgery, critics raise questions about “stunt philanthropy” and “charity porn” — Is it stunt philanthropy or self-funded charity in the YouTube age? — A YouTuber just helped treat 1,000 people with blindness and low vision.

37 Great Valentine’s Day Deals: Instant Cameras, Weighted Blankets, and More

From smartwatches to sex toys, we’ve got gift ideas to spread the love.

Candy Blaster Lets You Shoot PEZ At Your Friends

Nerf Blasters are great fun to play with, but you really shouldn’t eat the foam darts. Conversely, Pez dispensers are fussy and kind of boring, but the candy is a tasty treat. [Soloprototype] has presented us the best of both worlds, in the form of a 3D-printed Pez blaster, with a firm note that this

The LockBit ransomware gang claims ION Trading UK paid a ransom after the group’s cyberattack on the software firm upended derivatives trading around the world (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: The LockBit ransomware gang claims ION Trading UK paid a ransom after the group’s cyberattack on the software firm upended derivatives trading around the world — The hacking group behind the attack on ION Trading UK — the software firm that was struck by a cyberattack earlier this week …

A US judge denies the FTC’s bid to stop Meta’s acquisition of Within, rejecting the regulator’s concerns of the deal reducing competition in the AR/VR market (Diane Bartz/Reuters)

Diane Bartz / Reuters: A US judge denies the FTC’s bid to stop Meta’s acquisition of Within, rejecting the regulator’s concerns of the deal reducing competition in the AR/VR market — A judge on Friday released a ruling denying the Federal Trade Commission’s request to stop Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) …

Valencia-based Jeff, which provides a frontend app, data insights, and other tools to manage businesses, raised a $90M Series C, split ~50/50 in equity and debt (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/Sifted)

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / Sifted: Valencia-based Jeff, which provides a frontend app, data insights, and other tools to manage businesses, raised a $90M Series C, split ~50/50 in equity and debt — Profitability is now the number one priority for the company — Spanish startup Jeff — which helps entrepreneurs launch …

The LockBit ransomware gang claims ION Trading UK paid a ransom after the group’s cyberattack on the software firm upended derivatives trading around the world (Bloomberg)

Valencia-based Jeff, which provides a frontend app, data insights, and other tools to manage businesses, raised a $90M Series C, split ~50/50 in equity and debt (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/Sifted)

LeafLink, whose e-commerce marketplace connects 3,700+ cannabis brands with 8,400+ cannabis retailers, raised a $100M Series D co-led by CPMG, L2, and Nosara (Dan Primack/Axios)

Dan Primack / Axios: LeafLink, whose e-commerce marketplace connects 3,700+ cannabis brands with 8,400+ cannabis retailers, raised a $100M Series D co-led by CPMG, L2, and Nosara — LeafLink, a New York-based wholesale cannabis platform, raised $100 million in Series D funding co-led by CPMG, L2 Ventures and Nosara Capital.

Scratch Your Itch to Program a Microcontroller

One of the fun things about “old school” computers is that it was fairly easy to get kids into programming them. The old Basic interpreters were pretty forgiving, and you could do some clever things easily with very little theory or setup. These days, you are more likely to sneak kids into programming via Scratch

ChatGPT testing shows the chatbot struggles with basic arithmetic questions, confidently offering entertaining but wrong answers, an inherent problem with LLMs (Josh Zumbrun/Wall Street Journal)

Josh Zumbrun / Wall Street Journal: ChatGPT testing shows the chatbot struggles with basic arithmetic questions, confidently offering entertaining but wrong answers, an inherent problem with LLMs — ‘Large language models’ supply grammatically correct answers but struggle with calculations — Cheating With ChatGPT: Can an AI Chatbot Pass AP Lit?

A federal jury in San Francisco finds Elon Musk not liable in a Tesla shareholder suit over 2018 tweets in which he said he was considering taking Tesla private (CNBC)

CNBC: A federal jury in San Francisco finds Elon Musk not liable in a Tesla shareholder suit over 2018 tweets in which he said he was considering taking Tesla private — – Tesla CEO Elon Musk was found not liable in a shareholder class-action suit stemming from 2018 tweets in which he said he was

The Chinese Spy Balloon Shows the Downsides of Spy Balloons

A popular military tool during the Cold War, spy balloons have since fallen out of favor—for good reason.

Contractors who work on YouTube Music are striking

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Over 40 contractors for YouTube Music are going on strike — a first at Google, according to the Alphabet Workers Union (or AWU). The action is in response to an order to return to in-person work next week, something that many of the workers say they can’t do.

Germany-based Sdui, whose software provides communication and diary tools for schools, raised an $18M Series A extension, bringing total Series A to €25M (Callum Cyrus/Tech.eu)

Callum Cyrus / Tech.eu: Germany-based Sdui, whose software provides communication and diary tools for schools, raised an $18M Series A extension, bringing total Series A to €25M — Described as an operating system for digital education, five-year-old startup Sdui is live in seven European markets.

Treasury Prime, which offers APIs to help businesses integrate with banks, raised a $40M Series C led by BAM Elevate, bringing its total raised to about $73M (Mary Ann Azevedo/TechCrunch)

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Treasury Prime, which offers APIs to help businesses integrate with banks, raised a $40M Series C led by BAM Elevate, bringing its total raised to about $73M — Treasury Prime co-founder and CEO Chris Dean believes that the best outcomes for consumers will result from traditional banks and fintechs working

The Chinese Spy Balloon Shows the Downsides of Spy Balloons

A popular military tool during the Cold War, spy balloons have since fallen out of favor—for good reason.

Levitating Banana Is An Excellent Conversation Starter

“I really like your floating banana.” If that’s something you’ve always wanted your guests to say when visiting your living room, this levitating banana project from [ElectroBing] is for you. The design is simple. It relies on a electromagnet to lift the banana into the air. As bananas aren’t usually ferromagnetic, a simple bar magnet

Onehouse, a cloud data lake service based on the Apache Hudi platform, raised a $25M Series A led by Addition and Greylock, bringing its total funding to $33M (Ron Miller/TechCrunch)

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Onehouse, a cloud data lake service based on the Apache Hudi platform, raised a $25M Series A led by Addition and Greylock, bringing its total funding to $33M — Onehouse emerged last year with a cloud data lake product built on top of the open source Apache Hudi project.

A remastered version of Myst is coming to iOS

Indie studio Cyan is bringing its latest Myst remaster to iOS. | Image: Cyan The classic puzzle game Myst is celebrating its 30th birthday this year with a new way to play: on your iOS device. Myst Mobile is based on the remastered version of the original that’s been released for Oculus headsets and PCs

This Apple TV Plus show just got the service back into streaming’s top 10

Apple TV Plus is back in the top ten of streaming with Shrinking, the new comedy starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford.

Apple’s Crash Detection is flooding 911 dispatchers with false alarms

Credit: Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority Skiers are triggering Apple’s Crash Detection feature and unintentionally sending false alarms to 911 dispatchers. The problem became so bad it’s forcing ski resorts to put up signs asking iPhone 14 and Apple Watch owners to turn the feature off or update to the latest version of the software.

Internal messages: Twitter wants to charge brands $1,000 per month to keep their gold verification badges, plus $50 per month for each affiliated account (Erin Woo/The Information)

Erin Woo / The Information: Internal messages: Twitter wants to charge brands $1,000 per month to keep their gold verification badges, plus $50 per month for each affiliated account — Twitter is likely to charge brands $1000 a month to keep their gold verification badge, plus $50 a month for each affiliated account …

LG now supports the Apple TV app, Apple Music, AirPlay, and HomeKit in 100 countries

LG has announced that it is bringing the Apple TV App, Apple Music, AirPlay, and HomeKit to over 100 countries and regions with its webOS Hub.

EA and Meta weren’t the only companies to ax games this week

Apex Legends Mobile is one of the games shutting down. | Image: EA Over the course of this week, the developers of several major live service titles announced that their games would be shutting down. That means that players who actively enjoyed those games — and possibly spent money on them — might have to

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