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 Messaging app Wire raises $21 million
Wire, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service, has raised a $21 million Series B funding round led by UVC Partners. As the company said a couple of years ago, the company is focusing on the enterprise market more than ever. While Wire started as a consumer app, it never managed to attract hundreds of […]
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China's Xpeng in the race to automate EVs with lidar
Elon Musk famously said any company relying on lidar is “doomed.” Tesla instead believes automated driving functions are built on visual recognition and is even working to remove the radar. China’s Xpeng begs to differ. Founded in 2014, Xpeng is one of China’s most celebrated electric vehicle startups and went public when it was just […]
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 Genetic Mistakes That Could Shape Our Species
Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay shares an excerpt from a BBC article that explores the new technologies that may have already introduced genetic errors to the human gene pool. The article starts by mentioning He Jiankui, a Shenzhen researcher who was sentenced to prison in late 2019 for creating the world's first genetically altered babies. From the report: Jiankui had made the first genetically modified babies in the history of humankind. After 3.7 billion years of continuous, undisturbed evolu
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Detroit Man Sues Police For Wrongfully Arresting Him Based On Facial Recognition
A man who was falsely accused of shoplifting has sued the Detroit Police Department for arresting him based on an incorrect facial recognition match. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Robert Williams, whom it calls the first US person wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition. The Verge reports: The Detroit Police Department arrested Williams in 2019 after examining security footage from a shoplifting incident. A detective used facial recognition technology on a gr
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NSA Helps Out Microsoft With Critical Exchange Server Vulnerability Disclosures
April showers bring hours of patches as Microsoft delivers its Patch Tuesday fun-fest consisting of over a hundred CVEs, including four Exchange Server vulnerabilities reported to the company by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The Register reports: Forty-four different products and services are affected, mainly having to do with Azure, Exchange Server, Office, Visual Studio Code, and Windows. Among the vulnerabilities, four have been publicly disclosed and a fifth is being actively exploi
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Inspur, China's Largest Cloud Hardware Vendor, Joins Open-Source Patent Consortium
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Open Invention Network (OIN) defends the intellectual property (IP) rights of Linux and open-source software developers from patent trolls and the like. This is a global fight and now the OIN has a new, powerful allied member in China: Inspur. Inspur is a leading worldwide provider and China's leading data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) server providers. While not a household name like Lenovo, Inspur ra
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School Custodian Refuses To Download Phone App That Monitors Location, Says It Got Her Fired
Michelle Dionne, a former employee at a cleaning company in Darwell, Alberta, says she was fired for refusing to download an app that would check her location and ensure she was working her scheduled hours. CBC.ca reports: Dionne says she was thrilled to get the job last fall -- responsible for things like disinfecting door handles, light switches and bathrooms to prevent possible spread of the coronavirus. When her boss told her to download the app, Dionne says she was concerned about her priva
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Las Vegas Pushes To Become First To Ban Ornamental Grass
With a first-in-the-nation policy, Las Vegas is seeking to ban grass that nobody walks on. "Las Vegas-area water officials have spent two decades trying to get people to replace thirsty greenery with desert plants, and now they're asking the Nevada Legislature to outlaw roughly 40% of the turf that's left," reports The Associated Press. By outlawing this ornamental grass that requires four times as much water as drought-tolerant landscaping, the region can reduce annual water consumption by roug
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Global PC Market Swells by 55% in Q1 2021 To 82.7 Million
The latest data from research firm Canalys shows continued strength in the worldwide PC market in the first quarter of 2021, with shipments of desktops and notebooks, including workstations, up 55% year on year. From the report: Though this growth rate was buoyed by a weak Q1 2020, total shipments of 82.7 million units is still impressive, and the highest Q1 shipment number since 2012. Backlogs on orders from 2020, particularly for notebooks, were a key driver, though new demand is also a factor
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Tech Workers At the New York Times Have Formed a Union
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tech workers at The New York Times have formed a union under the NewsGuild of New York, and they are demanding voluntary recognition from the paper's management. The new union, called the Tech Times Guild, represents more than 650 workers from the digital side of the company, including software engineers, designers, and data analysts. Those employees are not included in the editorial union of The New York Times, which represents more than 3,000
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What's fueling hydrogen tech?
Hydrogen is capturing the attention of governments and private sector players, fueled by new tech, global green energy legislation and post-pandemic "green recovery" schemes.
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EU Poised To Set AI Rules That Would Ban Surveillance and Social Behavior Ranking
The European Union is poised to ban artificial intelligence systems used for mass surveillance or for ranking social behavior, while companies developing AI could face fines as high as 4% of global revenue if they fail to comply with new rules governing the software applications. From a report: The rules are part of legislation set to be proposed by the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, according to a draft of the proposal obtained by Bloomberg. The details could change before the
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There's Another Facebook Phone Number Database Online
An online tool lets customers pay to unmask the phone numbers of Facebook users that liked a specific Page, and the underlying dataset appears to be separate from the 500 million account database that made headlines last week, signifying another data breach or large scale scraping of Facebook users' data, Motherboard reports. From the report: Motherboard verified the tool, which comes in the form of a bot on the social network and messaging platform Telegram, outputs accurate phone numbers of Fa
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'Why It's Easier To Move Country Than Switch Social Media'
Cory Doctorow, writing at Wired: When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. Yes, it's true that all your friends are already stuck in a Big Tech silo that doesn't talk to any of the other Big Tech silos. It needn't be that way: interoperable platforms have existed since the first two Arpanet nodes came online. You can phone anyone with a phone number and email anyone with an email address.
The reason you can't talk to
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NAME:WRECK Vulnerabilities Impact Millions of Smart and Industrial Devices
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting at Record: Security researchers have found a new set of vulnerabilities that impact hundreds of millions of servers, smart devices, and industrial equipment. Called NAME:WRECK, the vulnerabilities have been discovered by enterprise IoT security firm Forescout as part of its internal research program named Project Memoria -- which the company describes as "an initiative that aims at providing the cybersecurity community with the largest study on the security of TCP/IP s
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Counter Strike' Bug Allows Hackers To Take Over a PC With a Steam Invite
Hackers could take control of victims' computers just by tricking them into clicking on a Steam invite to play Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Motherboard reports, citing a bug filing review. From a report: A bug in the game engine used in Counter Strike: Global Offensive could be exploited by hackers to take full control of a target's machine. A security researcher alerted Valve about the bug in June of 2019. Valve is the maker of Source Engine, which is used by CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, and se
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The Global Business of Professional Trolling
Professional political trolling is still a thriving underground industry around the world, despite crackdowns from the biggest tech firms. From a report: Coordinated online disinformation efforts offer governments and political actors a fast, cheap way to get under rivals' skin. They also offer a paycheck to people who are eager for work, typically in developing countries. "It's a more sophisticated means of disinformation to weaken your advisories," said Todd Carroll, CISO and VP of Cyber Opera
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Security Researcher Drops Chrome and Edge Exploit on Twitter
An Indian security researcher has published today proof-of-concept exploit code for a recently discovered vulnerability impacting Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Brave. From a report: The researcher, Rajvardhan Agarwal, told The Record today that the exploit code is for a Chromium bug that was used during the Pwn2Own hacking contest that took place last week. During the contest, security researchers Bruno Keith (@bkth_) & Niklas Baumstark (@_ni
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Microsoft Announces New Webcam and USB-C Speaker for the Work from Home Era
Microsoft's long-awaited new webcam is finally here, alongside a number of accessories designed for the work from home era. From a report: Rumors of a new Microsoft webcam have been circulating for years, and the result is what Microsoft calls the Modern Webcam. It's a fairly basic and affordable 1080p webcam that will start shipping for $69.99 in June. The Microsoft Modern Webcam will support up to 1080p HDR output at 30fps and connects via USB-A, not USB-C. It's not the 4K webcam found on Micr
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Apple Will Hold a Special Event on April 20
If you're wondering when Apple will hold its next event, Siri may have the answer. From a report: Ask the digital helper: "When is the next Apple event?" and it will respond with "the special event is on Tuesday, April 20, at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA. You can get all the details on Apple.com." MacRumors, which spotted the reply, says the virtual assistant is providing it in certain instances on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and HomePod. While it's an open secret that Apple is planning an event for later
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US Recommends 'Pause' For J&J Vaccine Over Clot Reports
iggymanz writes: The U.S. is recommending a "pause" in using the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of potentially dangerous blood clots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday they were investigating unusual clots that occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination. The clots occurred in veins that drain blood from the brain and occurred together with low platelets. All six cases were in women between the
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New Quest 2 software brings wireless PC streaming, updated 'office' mode
After a relatively quiet couple of months from Oculus on the software front, Facebook’s VR unit is sharing some details on new functionality coming to its Quest 2 standalone headset. The features, which include wireless Oculus Link support, “Infinite Office” functionality and upcoming 120hz support will be rolling out in the Quest 2’s upcoming v28 […]
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New Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 Goes for Battery Life
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new 2021 Surface Laptop, called the Surface Laptop 4. The new version adds 11th-gen Intel Core processors, paired with Intel Iris XE graphics. There's also an AMD processor option -- Zen 2 series -- with a graphics chip called AMD Radeon Graphics Microsoft Surface Edition. From a report: For all the buzz Microsoft's Surface tablets get, I've always thought the Surface Laptop was actually Microsoft's secret weapon. Since Surface Laptop debuted in 2017, it's been a
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Deeplite raises $6M seed to deploy ML on edge with fewer compute resources
One of the issues with deploying a machine learning application is that it tends to be expensive and highly compute intensive. Deeplite, a startup based in Montreal, wants to change that by providing a way to reduce the overall size of the model, allowing it to run on hardware with far fewer resources. Today, the […]
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Billions of Smartphone Owners Will Soon Be Authorizing Payments Using Facial Recognition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The next few years will see billions of users regularly using facial recognition technology to secure payments made through their smartphone, tablets or smartwatches, according to new analysis carried out by Juniper Research. Smartphone owners are already used to staring at their screens to safely unlock their devices without having to dial in a secret code; now, facial recognition will increasingly be deployed to verify the identity of a user maki
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With a team that helped build the brain behind Alexa, HomeX raises $90M
HomeX, a home services platform for homeowners and service providers, has raised $90 million in a funding round led by New Mountain Capital. New Mountain Capital, a New York-based investment firm with more than $30 billion in assets under management, was the only institutional investor to put money in this round alongside company executives. The […]
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Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 is filling up fast. Apply today.
Startup Alley — the very name conjures up images of early-stage startups demonstrating game-changing products, platforms and services to thousands of Disrupt attendees and industry influencers. It's where you'll find envelope pushing and boundary breaking going down. If you're busy shoving envelopes and busting down boundaries, don't miss your chance to exhibit in Startup Alley […]
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Clubhouse rolls out payments to over 60K creators following initial test
Clubhouse is rapidly expanding access to payments, its first revenue-generating feature for creators, since its launch into testing earlier this month. At the beginning of April, Clubhouse said it would give a “small test group” of creators the ability to accept payments from their fans and supporters through the social audio app. These donations go […]
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1Password acquires SecretHub and launches new enterprise secrets management tool
1Password, the password management service that competes with the likes of LastPass and BitWarden, today announced a major push beyond the basics of password management and into the infrastructure secrets management space. To do so, the company has acquired secrets management service SecretHub and is now launching its new 1Password Secrets Automation service. 1Password did […]
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Apple's next event is April 20
Apple only dropped info about WWDC two weeks back, but the company just announced another event - this one happening much sooner. After Siri spilled the beans this morning, the company has officially confirmed its next event for April 20. Invites for its “Spring Loaded” event went out just now, sporting what appears to be […]
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Daily Crunch: Spotify unveils an in-car entertainment system
Spotify wants to have a bigger presence in your car, Apple hints at iPad-centric announcements and Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop goes on sale. This is your Daily Crunch for April 13, 2021. The big story: Spotify unveils an in-car entertainment system Spotify’s new device is the oddly (but memorably!) named Car Thing. While there are […]
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Google Is Removing Its Play Movies and TV App From Every Roku and Most Smart TVs
Google has announced that the Google Play Movies and TV app will no longer be available on any Roku set-top box or any Samsung, LG, Vizio or Roku smart TV starting July 15th. The Verge reports: If you have movies or TV shows purchased or rented through the service, you'll still be able to access them through the "Your movies and shows" section of the YouTube app on those devices. This change will also affect you if if you used the Movies and TV app to access Movies Anywhere, the service that all
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Researchers Create Light Waves That Can Penetrate Even Opaque Materials
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light waves for which this does not apply: for any specific disordered medium -- such as the sugar cube you may just have put in your coffee -- tailor-made light beams
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Facebook tests video speed dating events with 'Sparked'
Facebook confirmed it’s testing a video speed-dating app called Sparked, after the app’s website was spotted by The Verge. Unlike dating app giants such as Tinder, Sparked users don’t swipe on people they like or direct message others. Instead, they cycle through a series of short video dates during an event to make connections with […]
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Japan To Start Releasing Fukushima Water Into Sea In 2 Years
According to the Associated Press, Japan's government decided it will start releasing treated radioactive water accumulated at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years. From the report: Under the basic plan adopted Tuesday by the ministers, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, also known as TEPCO, will start releasing the water in about two years after building a facility and compiling release plans adhering to safety requirements. It said the disposal of the wa
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Risk startup LogicGate confirms data breach
Risk and compliance startup LogicGate has confirmed a data breach. But unless you’re a customer, you probably didn’t hear about it. An email sent by LogicGate to customers earlier this month said on February 23 an unauthorized third party obtained credentials to its Amazon Web Services-hosted cloud storage servers storing customer backup files for its […]
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