Saturday, June 04, 2022

Technology News and More-Saturday Edition

Technology News and More...






Global venture capital firms are pouring money into the semiconductor startups developing the next generation of chips. Semiconductors, which have become a valued asset, are used in virtually almost every industry, including 5G networks, automation, the Internet of Things, financials, smart homes, smart cities, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality and self-driving cars. Sunghyun Park , a forme



Biden Musk Moon Ford•
1KMashable / 11h
Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have a " super bad feeling " about the economy, but President Joe Biden isn't too concerned about the billionaire's feelings. Tweet may have been deleted "Lots of luck on his trip to the moon," shrugged Biden, literally throwing his hands up in the air, at a press conference on Friday after being asked about Musk's comments about the economy. Recently released internal Tes



Ford Farley Online•
300+SlashGear / 12h
Ford CEO James Farley announced that the company will move away from selling EVs with car dealerships: Here's why that's a good thing for you, the consumer.




There’s a lot of confusion in the private market right now. On the one hand, venture firms are still announcing new funds on a daily basis. They’re hosting catered sushi brunches . On the other, layoffs abound , and titans of industry sound worried. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon sees an economic hurricane ahead. For his part, Elon Musk reportedly told Tesla executives this week he has a “ super bad feel
YESTERDAY



For some of us, squeezing in a workout is a constant struggle — especially since so many workouts are just plain boring. Aviron is seeking to change that with their gamified rowing machines — which offer challenging full-body workouts that feel more like games. In fact, you may recognize several of the games from the arcades of your childhood. (And if those don’t keep you interested, you can watc



According to one rogue leak, the Google Pixel 7 could be joined by a premium sibling - I'm not talking about the 7 Pro, but another, possibly even higher-end alternative . As a photography fan, this news had my mind racing. Google's phones are regularly on TechRadar's list of the best camera phones , and if this hypothetical future powerhouse didn't need to consider things like 'affordability', i



TL;DR: A lifetime subscription to a 10TB Degoo Premium backup plan (two-account bundle) is on sale for £125.67, saving you 97% on list price. When it comes to cloud storage, the more space, the better. But with popular services like Dropbox and iCloud charging £10 a month for 2TB, it’s often hard to justify investing in more storage. Fortunately, there’s another option — and it doesn’t require mo



Amazon Consumer Clark•
Dave Clark, who headed Amazon’s worldwide consumer operations, announced he is resigning after 23 years at the company. The former Kentucky warehouse manager was in charge of overseeing the company’s retail business as well as its warehouse and shipping operations, which expanded due to the pandemic. Clark tweeted the announcement today along with an email sent to his team, writing that he had di



Sega Mega Drive Mini•
Sega is going retro again as it unveiled its old-is-new-again Mega Drive Mini 2. The Mega Drive Mini 2 was revealed in a rather bizarre live stream on Sega’s Japanese YouTube channel. Strange introductions aside, the new mini console is based on the Mega Drive Model 2 which came out back in 1994. The Model 2 was unique in that it supported the Mega-CD add-on (better known as the Sega CD in North



24Gizmodo / 8h
The summer movie season is in full effect and we still know almost nothing about Jordan Peele’s Nope . A new trailer should be on the way soon, especially with The Black Phone and Jurassic World Dominion coming from the same studio in the next few weeks, but up until now information has been at a premium . Read more...



CVE-2022-26134•
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) About this time last week, threat actors began quietly tapping a previously unknown vulnerability in Atlassian software that gave them almost complete control over a small number of servers. Since Thursday, active exploits of the vulnerability have mushroomed, creating a semi-organized frenzy among competing crime groups. "It is clear that multiple threat groups an



Elon Musk Tesla 10%•
The electric carmaker has been growing fast in recent years, but Elon Musk, its chief executive, appears to be concerned about a weakening economy.



In a push-back against people who can’t tell a real news source from an amphetamine-laden hamster with a Tumblr blog, San Francisco public radio station KQED this week announced it is launching a free workshop and self-paced online course to help increase media literacy. The resources are aimed at K-12 educators and other folks who are involved with teaching media, but are freely available to oth



In the days prior to the pandemic, I was a casual Broadway theatergoer, usually buying tickets to one musical a year; a few more “serious” downtown options filled out my social card. However, after sitting at home for more than a year, I found I really missed the company of live theater — the orchestra, the costumes, the intricate sets. Most importantly, though, I missed the audience of other lik



Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the coolest merchandise around the internet. This week, Hot Toys returns to the Doctor Strange sequel with a delightful, decaying treat; Lego continues to be all in on Star Wars (among other things); and we take a time-telling trip to Stranger Things ’ Upside Down.… Read more...



Monkeypox CDC Two US•
Enlarge / A negative stain electron micrograph of a monkeypox virus virion in human vesicular fluid. (credit: Getty | BSIP ) Health officials in the US have confirmed 21 cases of monkeypox across 11 states amid a multinational outbreak that has grown to more than 800 cases in over two dozen countries . In a press briefing Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discussed details of



Zain Mobile Voice Nokia•
Telecoms have been slow to hop on the 5G bandwagon — your smartphone normally relies on 4G or LTE for old-fashioned phone calls. But T-Mobile is venturing forward by launching its commercial Voice over 5G service today in limited areas of Portland and Salt Lake City. For now, only customers with Samsung Galaxy S21 5G phones will be able to access the technology. So while this is a truly small sam



Greece Mask Europe•
As you embark on your summer travels , be sure to pack a couple of face masks just in case. There are some activities in certain destinations that still require you to mask up to participate. As of June 2022, there’s no statewide mask mandate in public spaces, but certain cities — both in the U.S. and abroad — have taken matters into their own hands by implementing location-specific mask rules, a



33Gizmodo / 10h
Star Trek in all forms is about stunningly beautiful people being extremely good at their jobs (or sometimes bad at them in a fun, very dramatic way—they’re always stunningly beautiful regardless). But sometimes even the hard workers of Starfleet need a little R&R —and Star Trek has often obliged with episodes about… Read more...



Square Apple iPhone•
Small businesses will soon be able to accept payments from Apple’s Tap to Pay app thanks to a new collaboration. Digital payment platform Square is teaming up with Apple to roll out new support for Tap to Pay on iPhones. The feature will go onto Square’s Point of Sale app to allow “in-person contactless payments”. Business owners won’t have to rely on Square’s add-on devices to accept payments. Y



Is Southwest Airlines about to form alliances or partnerships with other carriers for the first time in recent decades? A new job posting suggests that might be on the table. The airline posted a new opening for a senior manager of “airline partnerships” role based out of its Dallas headquarters. Want more airline-specific news? Sign up for TPG’s free new biweekly Aviation newsletter . Henry Hart



Perhaps one day streaming platforms will quit studying our behaviors with their stalker-ish algorithms and give us what we actually need: a list of every damn short movie that’s streaming. Searching for a movie based on genre? An actor? A mood? I’m sorry, but that’s a luxury few can afford. Runtime is the first deciding factor, my friends. Until then, at least I’m not out of a job to provide that



The rise of smartphones with great cameras is one of many modern innovations that only reinforced an enduring fact of human existence: We’re all horny. Heck, innovation itself is horny—for a long time, the prevailing wisdom dictated that new tech would succeed as soon as someone figured out how to make it sexy . It’s… Read more...




To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Happy Fri-yay the 3rd of June 2022. Or, as this cursed pandemic is still doing its thing, perhaps it’s March 824, 2020, who knows. Whatever is happening in your world, we hope that you are experiencing peace and that you know the source of peace. Can you tell we’ve



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Silicon Valley is losing one of its most visible, outspoken and powerful women. Any gains have been incremental at best.



Ring Basic Subscription•
Popular smart home video doorbell camera company Ring is adding features, raising service fees, and making some customers very angry. Ring is expanding its Protect Basic Plan , allowing people to save videos up to 180 days, introducing discounts for other security devices, and expanding bulk video downloads to 50 at once. These three additions will be released in July 2022, and there are four mor



FarmWise Taylor Farms•
The rest of the startup universe may be struggling to bring in funds, but it’s still a good time to get a robotic raise. Agtech is high on that list. The median age of farmers is 55 years old in the United States, and finding human help is increasingly more difficult of late. FarmWise has been at this for a while, deploying its autonomous weeding robotics at farms in California and Arizona for th



Supply TPRM Zero•
Saket Modi Contributor Saket Modi is the co-founder and CEO of Safe Security, a cybersecurity and digital business risk quantification platform company. Today’s cybersecurity landscape requires an agile and data-driven risk management strategy to deal with the ever-expanding third-party attack surface. When a business outsources services by sharing data and network access, it inherits the cyber r



NASA has revealed a new program that'll aim to unravel the mysteries of the Gruithuisen Domes -- elements on the moon that we know precious little about.



Editor’s note: This post has been updated. It was originally published on April 14, 2020 . With a rise in low-cost carriers (and full-fare carriers now charging for checked bags), traveling with just a carry-on is becoming more popular. Traveling light has its advantages, like being able to head right out of the airport after your flight and not having to drag a giant suitcase behind you. However



When most of us think of registries and showers, we pair them with weddings and babies. But there are so many other lifetime milestones that it’s silly to limit them—especially for those who aren’t interested in married or having kids. You might feel weird considering asking for gifts or praise on other occasions, but… Read more...



27Gizmodo / 11h
Health officials continue to report more outbreaks of monkeypox in the U.S. and elsewhere, while a new analysis suggests that at least two different lineages of the viral illness are circulating around the U.S. These findings make it increasingly less likely that the virus can be stopped completely. Read more...



21Gizmodo / 11h
Axon, the maker of Tasers, police body cameras, and VR training simulations , wants to add a new buzzy product to its tech policing ecosystem: Taser Drones. While the company believes these shoebox-sized shock machines could potentially save lives during school shootings, privacy and civil liberties groups told Gizmodo… Read more...



Sheryl Sandberg Meta•
100+Futurism / 11h
Leaning Out Sheryl Sandberg, the outgoing COO of Facebook-now-known-as-Meta , made major waves this week when she announced her departure from the social media giant that she was instrumental in building. But while there seem to be some practical reasons for the decision — Facebook's rebrand , personal and family life — The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that her exit comes in the midst of



Carbon Dioxide Levels•
83Gizmodo / 11h
Carbon dioxide levels on the only planet known to be habitable are now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reported Friday . They’re at the highest levels in millions of years. Read more...



100+TechCrunch / 11h
Well, this is straight from the desk of “didn’t see that coming,” but search engine toolkit company Ahrefs just told me they’ve been working on their very own search engine on the sly, plowing $60 million of resources into its own search engine, called Yep . It’s a unique proposition, running its own search index, rather than relying on APIs from Google or Bing. As for the name? I dunno; Yep seem



Microsoft has announced that its popular predictive typing feature will soon come to Word on Mac. The Editor Text Predictions tool anticipates your next words and suggests words or phrases as you type, potentially expediating the writing process for the slow typists among us. Apple customers will have to exercise patience, however, with the feature not expected to be widely available until Septem



3D Printed Ear Cells•
3DBio is using a new 3D printing technique that'll allow the creation of a second ear for a girl born with just one, using cells from one to create the other.



Read more...



American Airlines says their corporate purpose is "caring for people on life's journey." Now, that sounds like the mission statement for an assisted living facility. But it is a reminder that each of the 2.3 million passengers carried on that airline over Memorial weekend alone isn't just a ticket number or a seat assignment. Continue reading ...



If you watched game one of the NBA Finals on Thursday, you will have seen more than just the Boston Celtics take an early series lead against the Golden State Warriors. The fast-casual chain restaurant Chipotle Mexican Grille partnered with the National Basketball Association gave away 10,000 burritos via a buy one,… Read more...




Machine learning models are increasingly augmenting human processes, either performing repetitious tasks faster or providing some systematic insight that helps put human knowledge in perspective. Astronomers at UC Berkeley were surprised to find both happen after modeling gravitational microlensing events, leading to a new unified theory for the phenomenon. Gravitational lensing occurs when light



After a month that saw nearly 16,000 tech workers lose their jobs, June is off to a similar tumultuous start. Startups across all sectors, from healthcare to enterprise SaaS to crypto, are laying off portions of staff and citing, seemingly, from the same notes: it’s a tough market, a time of uncertainty, and a correction toward sustainability is needed. This week, we’ll continue our round-up of l



American Airlines is the latest U.S. carrier to announce that its parking some regional jets due to a shortage of pilots . Speaking at an event for Wall Street analysts on Friday morning, American’s CEO, Robert Isom , said that the carrier has parked about 100 aircraft. “We have probably a hundred aircraft — almost a hundred aircraft that aren’t, aren’t productive right now, that aren’t flying,”



28SlashGear / 12h
The 2022 Toyota Tundra addresses most of the issues our reviewer had with its predecessor -- and added a few new tricks for good measure.



Autonomous ships just took a small but important step forward. Hyundai's Avikus subsidiary says it has completed the world's first autonomous navigation of a large ship across the ocean. The Prism Courage (pictured) left Freeport in the Gulf of Mexico on May 1st, and used Avikus' AI-powered HiNAS 2.0 system to steer the vessel for half of its roughly 12,427-mile journey to the Boryeong LNG Termin



Editor’s note: This is a recurring post, regularly updated with new information. From paid ticket sales to redemption promotions , there are seemingly endless opportunities to book travel at a discount. But few sales are as reliable as the Promo Rewards we see each month from Air France-KLM Flying Blue . These deals regularly appear on the Flying Blue website and offer a discount on flights to an



New York Legislature•
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko) New York's state legislature approved a bill that would prevent fossil fuel power plants from being revived to power cryptocurrency mining operations. If signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the proposed law would prevent new permits from being issued for two years. It's a "first-in-the-nation cryptocurrency mining moratorium bill," advocacy group Earth



New York Right Repair•
Enlarge (credit: Getty ) The fight for the right to repair scored a huge win Friday with New York state passing a bill that requires digital electronics manufacturers, like laptop and smartphone manufacturers, to make diagnostic and repair information available to consumers and independent repair shops. The bill, which passed in the New York Senate (49 to 14) on Wednesday and in the Assembly (145



When it comes to breakfast, the prevailing theme is carbs, carbs, carbs : a lot of cereals, toast, granola bars, and bagels. Of course, carbs aren’t bad, they’re just one element of a complete diet (and happen to be an easy option in the morning). With a little effort, though, you can add proteins, fats, fiber, fruits,… Read more...



200+Gizmodo / 12h
Arguably the most important meeting in Star Wars history has taken place, we just haven’t seen it. After The Book of Boba Fett , we now know that Ahsoka Tano and Luke Skywalker were acquaintances in the time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens . But how that meeting of the forever-linked Force wielders… Read more...



All startups must grow, but as markets contract, conserving resources is a higher short-term priority. Crypto exchange Coinbase is in the headlines this morning after news broke that it is rescinding some candidates’ outstanding job offers. Yesterday, we reported that IRL, a social app, was laying off 25% of its staff a year after raising a $170 million Series A, even though it has enough cash to



Crypto Scams 2021 FTC•
The world of crypto continues to draw scam artists and fraud. People have reported losing a combined total of over $1 billion due to crypto scams since the beginning of 2021, according to an FTC report released today. From January 2021 through March of this year, more than 46,000 individuals filed a crypto-related fraud report with the agency. The median individual reported loss in these reports



Sega Mega Drive Mini•
After the success of the first Mega Drive Mini, Sega has announced the Mega Drive Mini 2. Here's what we know about the mini retro console so far.



Japan Deep Turbine•
5KFuturism / 12h
Deep Ocean In the wake of the devastating nuclear meltdown at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011, officials have been hunting for new sources of green energy — and they're leaving no stone unturned. A heavy machinery maker in Japan called IHI Corp has successfully tested a prototype of a massive, airplane-sized turbine that can generate electricity from powerful deep sea ocean currents, Bloo



Google Fi is a wireless network operated by Google that originally focused on low data usage, but recently expanded into unlimited plans. Now the carrier has a new “W+” feature to help expand network coverage. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



The self-driving company Cruise has worked tirelessly to bring its autonomous taxi service to the public, and now it’s finally happening. This week, Cruise received a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and can charge actual customers for driverless ridesharing. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Ergonomic mice have a bad reputation, mainly because trackballs and other ergonomic options look ridiculous and come with a steep learning curve. But vertical mice promise to deliver ergonomics and prevent wrist injury without throwing you out of your comfort zone. And yeah, this claim is mostly true. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



There are two primary ways to book “free” stays at Marriott properties worldwide: You can use Marriott points. You can use free night awards, which you can earn from something as simple as renewing your Marriott credit card membership each year. Currently, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card is offering an elevated welcome bonus that awards five 50,000-point certificates (up to 250,000 poi



Dave Wechsler Contributor Dave Wechsler leads insurtech investing for OMERS Ventures . After serving as the VP of Growth at Hippo, Dave is one of the first insurtech operators to become a full-time investor. Just over five years ago, the insurance industry entered the crosshairs of the tech world. Despite serving as the backbone of global growth, insurance lagged the pace of technology adoption e




Building the perfect gaming PC is as much about personal preference and needs as it is about style. Here's everything to consider.



69Gizmodo / 12h
Google took another hit today . The tech company has settled for $100 million following a class action lawsuit in Illinois over data privacy concerns from users of the Google Photos app. Read more...



If you’ve ever trained for a military fitness test or been made to do the presidential fitness test in gym class, you know the sit-up. Somebody holds down your feet, and you sit up as many times as you can before the test is over. But then again, you may have also heard that sit-ups are bad for your back, and that all… Read more...



400+Gizmodo / 12h
When you think about the brutal weaponry of the Crusades, you probably think of swords, bows, maces, axes, and flails. But according to a study recently published in PLoS One, you should add hand grenades to that list. Read more...



meanwhileongiphy : by @morganmonroe81 Librarian re-shelving books at the Santa Fe, New Mexico Public Library in 1957. via r/TheWayWeWere



70Gizmodo / 12h
At today’s press conference for Ms. Marvel , Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that, inspired by scenes in the Disney+ series , the studio is actually considering hosting a real-life Marvel convention. Read more...



Nintendo in 2022 means one thing and one thing only, and that’s the Switch. The handheld/home console hybrid is the name in gaming right now, outselling not only the next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, but Nintendo’s own Wii over the course of its five-y


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