MSI Net, Inc. & mCloudServ

Antenna: 9% of Netflix’s US sign-ups in November were for its ad tier; 57% of subscribers to the plan were re-joining or new signups, while 43% downgraded (Sarah Krouse/Wall Street Journal)

Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal: Antenna: 9% of Netflix’s US sign-ups in November were for its ad tier; 57% of subscribers to the plan were re-joining or new signups, while 43% downgraded — Streaming giant’s ad-backed plan accounted for 9% of new signups in the U.S., according to subscription-analytics firm Antenna

Fails of 2022: Peloton’s year of layoffs, gaffes, and ship metaphors

Micha Huigen / The Verge The year 2021 wasn’t great for Peloton. Its stock tanked. Its premium treadmill killed a small child, injured several others, and wound up being recalled. Its new, affordable treadmill also ended up being recalled before it ever officially launched. By December, Peloton was the butt of everyone’s jokes after Mr.

Oppo now promises to match Samsung for updates (or does it?)

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority Oppo has announced a revised update policy for upcoming flagship phones. The company says it’ll now offer four ‘major Color OS updates’ and five years of security patches. It’s unclear if the company will offer four Android version upgrades or four Color OS skin updates. Oppo announced a new

A drop in VC deals and a slow IPO market are pushing tech startups to debt-based options; Preqin shows new VC deals fell 42% YoY to $286B in January to November (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)

Tabby Kinder / Financial Times: A drop in VC deals and a slow IPO market are pushing tech startups to debt-based options; Preqin shows new VC deals fell 42% YoY to $286B in January to November — Tech founders seek creative financing solutions to sustain their businesses as venture capital dries up

Google Is Developing an AI That Can Transcribe Doctors’ Chicken Scratch

There are many universal experiences we share as human beings. One of those is getting a prescription from our doctor, and being unable to decipher it. Google is aware of this problem and is now working on AI technology that can do it for you. The company announced at its annual conference in India that

Conscious Machines May Never Be Possible

People won’t be saying “It’s conscious!” about an AI in 2023—no matter how smart it may seem.

Analogue Pocket Review: The Best Way to Play Old Game Boy Cartridges

Analogue Pocket’s 21st-century handheld makes revisiting games from outdated mobile consoles more fun than ever.

9 Best Retro Game Consoles (2022): Evercade, Polymega, Analogue Pocket, and Controllers

From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.

Tired, Filthy, and Overworked: Inside Amazon’s Holiday Rush

The retailer’s warehouses are flooded with packages. Workers say that means mandatory extra shifts and faster-paced work.

The Great Carbon Con Is Coming to an End

No more fluffy climate goals and emissions offsets. Businesses will soon be expected to show real progress.

Elon Musk and the Dangers of Censoring Real-Time Flight Trackers

Elon Musk claims plane-tracking data is a risky privacy violation. But the world loses a lot if this information disappears—and that’s already happening.

The Physics Behind The Collapse Of a Huge Aquarium

At the end of last week Aquadom, the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium, unexpectedly shattered and caused an emergency as it flooded both the Berlin hotel that housed it and the surrounding streets. From an engineering perspective it’s a fascinating story, because its construction was such that this shouldn’t have happened. We have an analysis of

A look at Modulo Capital, a mysterious multi-strategy hedge fund founded in 2022 and based in Albany in The Bahamas, which received $400M from Alameda Research (Tracy Wang/CoinDesk)

Tracy Wang / CoinDesk: A look at Modulo Capital, a mysterious multi-strategy hedge fund founded in 2022 and based in Albany in The Bahamas, which received $400M from Alameda Research — Founded in early 2022, Modulo operated out of the same luxury Bahamian condominium community where Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX employees lived.

Amazon agrees to settle two EU antitrust cases related to third-party sellers on its platform, won’t pay a fine, and will adhere to commitments for seven years (Sam Schechner/Wall Street Journal)

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal: Amazon agrees to settle two EU antitrust cases related to third-party sellers on its platform, won’t pay a fine, and will adhere to commitments for seven years — Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to settle two European Union antitrust cases related to allegations about its treatment of third-party sellers …

The DEA finds a Mexico-based methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the US, Mexico, Europe, and Australia used Binance to launder $15M to $40M (Thomas Brewster/Forbes)

Thomas Brewster / Forbes: The DEA finds a Mexico-based methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the US, Mexico, Europe, and Australia used Binance to launder $15M to $40M — A methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Australia used the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance …

Auto parts maker Magna agrees to acquire a driver-assistance unit from SSW Partners for about $1.5B in cash and expects combined sales to reach $3B in 2024 (Elisabeth Behrmann/Bloomberg)

Elisabeth Behrmann / Bloomberg: Auto parts maker Magna agrees to acquire a driver-assistance unit from SSW Partners for about $1.5B in cash and expects combined sales to reach $3B in 2024 — Magna International Inc. has agreed to buy a driver-assistance unit from SSW Partners for about $1.5 billion following a drawn-out battle to control

As US lawmakers consider adding antitrust bills to the omnibus spending package, tech trade group CCIA, Meta, Amazon, and others ramp up spending to oppose them (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: As US lawmakers consider adding antitrust bills to the omnibus spending package, tech trade group CCIA, Meta, Amazon, and others ramp up spending to oppose them — Industry has spent more than $100 million to fight antitrust measures and other bills in Congress — How Apple’s iPhone and Apps Trap You in

When containers are not the answer

Containers seem to be the default approach for most systems migrating to the cloud or being built there, and for good reasons. They provide portability and scalability (using orchestration) that is more difficult to achieve with other enabling technology. Moreover, there is a healthy ecosystem around containers, and a solution is easier to define. However,

Intro to the Observable design pattern

The Observable design pattern is used in many important Java APIs. One well-known example is a JButton that uses the ActionListener API to execute an action. In this example, we have an ActionListener listening or observing on the button. When the button is clicked, the ActionListener performs an action. The Observable pattern is also used

The Quest to Defuse Guyana’s Carbon Bomb

A former BP lawyer is going up against Exxon—and her own country—in a bid to stop offshore oil drilling before disaster strikes.

Moving IoT data with MQTT

The internet of things (IoT) continues to expand. Transforma Insights projects the number of connected devices to exceed 13.1 billion worldwide this year. With that vast number of devices comes the need for them to communicate and move data across networks and cloud platforms, which is where IoT protocols come into play. The MQTT protocol

FTX plans to recoup political donations by Sam Bankman-Fried and his associates, estimated at $70M+ in the 2021-2022 election cycle, to help repay creditors (Joshua Oliver/Financial Times)

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times: FTX plans to recoup political donations by Sam Bankman-Fried and his associates, estimated at $70M+ in the 2021-2022 election cycle, to help repay creditors — Crypto group’s new management says if funds are not returned voluntarily it will pursue recipients in court

Sources: in a first, Apple plans to move some MacBook production to Vietnam in 2023, asking Foxconn to begin as early as May, to further diversify from China (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia)

Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia: Sources: in a first, Apple plans to move some MacBook production to Vietnam in 2023, asking Foxconn to begin as early as May, to further diversify from China — iPhone maker aims to have ‘out of China’ production alternatives for key products — TAIPEI — Apple plans to move …

Google settles a lawsuit with an ex-employee who said the Fellowship of Friends sect dominated a Google unit; longtime sect member Peter Lubbers leaves Google (Cade Metz/New York Times)

Cade Metz / New York Times: Google settles a lawsuit with an ex-employee who said the Fellowship of Friends sect dominated a Google unit; longtime sect member Peter Lubbers leaves Google — The suit claimed that the Fellowship of Friends, an obscure group based in the Sierra Nevada foothills, gained influence inside Google.

NASA’s InSight Lander Records the Largest Marsquake Yet

The NASA InSight lander. We are in the waning days of NASA’s InSight mission, but the spirited Mars lander isn’t done with science just yet. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) reports that InSight has just detected another marsquake. That by itself is not unexpected — the mission detected many more seismic events than scientists expected,

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