Thursday, June 30, 2022

Technology News and more Thursdays

Technology News and More...






NASA Webb Telescope•
Enlarge / NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was placed in Johnson Space Center’s historic Chamber A for vacuum testing on June 20, 2017. (credit: NASA ) Six months have passed since a European rocket lofted the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit. Since that time, the ultra-complex telescope has successfully unfolded its expansive sunshield, commissioned its science instruments, and reached an



Lenskart Japanese Owndays•
India’s Lenskart is buying a majority stake in Japan’s Owndays, the two firms said, creating one of Asia’s biggest online retailers of eyewear. The firms did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but a person familiar with the matter said the merger values 32-year business Owndays at $400 million. The 12-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered startup is buying Owndays’ shares from L Catterton,



M2 MacBook Air July•
Mashable / 20min
When Apple launched its new MacBook Air with the M2 chip at WWDC in June, it never gave us an exact launch date, besides saying it's coming in July. Now, MacRumors says it has confirmed with a retail source that the new MacBook Air will get an official launch on July 15, with pre-orders starting a week before, on July 8. This is comforting given earlier rumors that the new MacBook Air might be la




Mashable / 5min
Although it's been long enjoyed and fretted over across the globe, Australians had been anticipating the arrival of Amazon's Prime Day for quite some time — and now, it's officially part of the calendar. Following the event's 2018 debut, Amazon is bringing Prime Day back to Australia, as part of its signature worldwide shopping marathon. Being ahead of the timezone, Aussie Prime members will get



Mashable / 46min
When Jimmy Kimmel's colleague Guillermo is interviewing celebrities you know there's going to be tequila involved — but in this game of "Spin the Hammer" with the cast of Thor: Love and Thunder above, there's so much more besides. Over the course of the five-minute video, Guillermo kisses Taika Waititi through some plexiglass, chugs mead with Tessa Thompson, smashes fruit with Natalie Portman, an



NFT OpenSea Data Breach•
OpenSea, the popular NFT marketplace that hit a colossal $13 billion valuation in January, is warning users of email phishing after a data breach. A staff at Customer.io, an email vendor contracted by OpenSea, misused their employee access to download and share email addresses of OpenSea’s users and newsletter subscribers with an unauthorized external party, the world’s largest NFT marketplace sa



Consumer packaged goods companies — think PepsiCo or Nabisco — face steep challenges from the rising cost of living and distribution. As inflation continues unabated, consumers’ disposable income isn’t going as far as it used to while products are becoming more expensive to ship. The pressure is on businesses to place their bets on the right innovations, then. That’s true during less chaotic time
YESTERDAY



Apple TV 2022 iPhone•
The Apple TV (2022) is the expected follow-up to the current Apple TV 4K – a new version of Apple's streaming set-top box – not to be confused with Apple TV (the app on Apple devices and smart TVs) or Apple TV+ (the streaming service). Rumored new Apple TV (2022) features - More powerful A14 chip with more memory - New Siri remote spotted in iOS 16 - Cheaper model may be coming There's growing ev



Unity Lays Hundreds•
Unity has laid off hundreds of employees in its offices across the globe, according to Kotaku . The video game software development company known for its popular game engine has reportedly let around 300 to 400 staffers go so far. Layoffs are still ongoing, sources said, so those numbers may be higher by the time the company is done. Unity has confirmed to Engadget that it's "realigning some of [



The online retail giant says it has to comply with the laws of the countries in which it operates.



Amazon Prime Video’s Watch Party feature, which lets you watch a movie or a TV show together with your friends remotely, is now available on smart TVs, streaming devices like Roku, and gaming consoles like Xbox or PlayStation. Before this expansion, the feature was available on desktops, Fire TV devices, and on the Prime Video app on iOS and Android. Now, you can watch titles with your friends th



The legal battle between Sonos and Google has gone up a notch following a new ruling by the US Customs Service. As reported by Paul Thurott , Google has been found guilty by the Customs Service of having broken an import ban imposed by the International Trade Commission (ITC) after continuing to infringe on five Sonos patents. “US Customs Service confirmed that Google was flouting the importation



Some SMEs don’t want to get (or have access to) equity funding, but also want to stay away from high-interest bank loans. That’s the gap that revenue-based financing platforms like GetVantage want to fill. The Mumbai-based startup announced today that it has raised $36 million led by Varanium Nexgen Fintech Fund, DMI Sparkle Fund, along with returning investors Chiratae Ventures and Dream Incubat



SAVE 59%: NordVPN is a privacy-focused service that can unlock top streaming sites like Netflix . A two-year subscription to NordVPN is on sale for £59.76, saving you 59% on list price for a limited time. It's not easy to practise patience, especially when the thing you're desperately waiting for is the second instalment of the fourth series of Stranger Things . Volume 2 is dropping on July 1, so



Anyone who’s used the Xbox Series X|S controller over an extended period will know the perils of its Share button, but it need not annoy you any longer. The Share button on the Xbox Wireless Controller has a habit of getting in the way at the most inopportune times. As one Redditor recently pointed out, its placement between the controller’s View and Menu button makes it all too easy to accidenta



Samsung has introduced a new ultra-rugged Galaxy smartphone that, unlike most competing models designed for harsh environments, isn't entirely garish.



Niantic, the company best known for "Pokemon GO," has reportedly scrapped a handful of projects and laid off dozens of workers over economic concerns.



Familiar favorite podcasts' ads might start to sound a little different, as more audio shows take on the latest form of digital reproductive rights activism. The new PodVoices.help campaign is making its way through the podcast universe and encouraging the vast community of podcast professionals around the country to offer up their on-air advertising spots with messages about the overturning of R



Kubernetes has a reputation for being complicated. While it’s a fantastic piece of software, sometimes the benefits may not outweigh the added complexity, especially for small businesses managing simple deployments. Is plain old Docker good enough? Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



Today Wordle Answer June•
Thursday! What a concept! It's all downhill from here — in the sense that things get easier as we head towards the July 4 long weekend, not that they get worse. However, the daily Wordle doesn't care what day it is, and will be as hard as it wants. It's certainly more satisfying when you work it out all by yourself, but sometimes you just get stuck — and that's where we come in. The answer to the



Google Sign GDPR EU•
Ten European consumer organisations join forces to launch complaints to privacy and data regulators




Sales of items including flags and books were blocked in the country, where homosexuality is criminalized.



100Gizmodo / 8h
Yes, you read that headline correctly: a $5,ooo drink. It comes served in a camtono, the bounty hunter accessory container most recently featured on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett —which you can find it on Ebay for far less . So why is this drink, served only on the Disney Cruise Line’s newest ship, the Wish … Read more...



While today's Wordle solution isn't the most common word, we have some solid hints that'll push you in the right direction, plus the answer if you need it.



Asia the Middle East•
Enlarge / An Eastern Gray Wolf is a mix of Siberian ancestry and coyote DNA. (credit: Michael Cummings ) Man's best friend was the first of many animals humans have domesticated. But there was no clear before-and-after moment where dogs were suddenly a distinct population of wolves. While some ancient skeletons are clearly dogs, there are a lot of ambiguous skeletons earlier than that. It's possi



Europe has had a Mars orbiter in space for two decades, and so it's not surprising to learn it was using software made with an ancient version of Windows.



Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information. We’ll have to wait longer to learn the fate of Spirit Airlines. The Miramar, Florida-based ultra-low-cost carrier late Wednesday announced that a shareholder vote on its proposed merger with Frontier Airlines will be delayed until July 8 — just hours before the meeting was to begin. Want more airline-specific news? Sign up for TPG’s



The automaker has made it clear that the range, efficiency, and technological merits of the EQXX will trickle down to series-production Mercedes vehicles.



Space Tourism Earth•
100+Futurism / 9h
Space travel is undoubtedly one of the most exciting frontiers in science, especially now that there's significant private investment from companies like SpaceX — but it comes at a significant cost as well. With launch rates in recent decades tripling according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as significant investments in space tourism, the damage space trav



Y Combinator has announced Launch YC , a platform where people can sort accelerator startups by industry, batch and launch date to discover new products. The famed accelerator, which has seeded the likes of Instacart, Coinbase, OpenSea and Dropbox, invites users to vote for newly launched startups “to help them climb up the leaderboard, try out product demos, and learn about the founding team.” I



With the return of Jane Foster , the addition of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and a villain as evil as Gorr the God Butcher , Thor: Love and Thunder has a lot going on. That’s why, while Tessa Thompson’s character Valkyrie is, indeed, queer in the new film , it doesn’t sound like it’s a big part of that story. Read more...



Spirit Airlines sent me their release indicating that tomorrow will not be the day that shareholders vote on whether to sell to Frontier Airlines. Instead the shareholder meeting will be adjourned and reconvened on July 8. Spirit wouldn’t do this if all their ducks were lined up to gain approval for the Frontier deal that their board has endorsed. Continue reading ...



Scientists are searching for evidence of possible ancient life on Mars, but they may be looking in the wrong locations, according to new research.



YTStealer Malware YouTube•
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) In online crime forums, specialization is everything. Enter YTStealer, a new piece of malware that steals authentication credentials belonging to YouTube content creators. “What sets YTStealer aside from other stealers sold on the Dark Web market is that it is solely focused on harvesting credentials for one single service instead of grabbing everything it can get a



Flights to Europe are even more expensive than usual due, in part, to rising fuel prices , but round-trip flights to Oslo, Norway, just popped up for less than $500. With this deal, you can even get a round-trip flight from New York City ‘s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Oslo Airport (OSL) for as low as $227 in September and October. Round trips to Oslo from New York and other U.S



200+Mashable / 10h
"If you find a squirter marry her." That's the tweet currently taking over Twitter, with shocked reactions in the replies and quotes tweets asking, "What in the world is going on?" The tweet wasn't accidentally sent by a politician or a hacked company's account. RadioShack's "squirter" tweet went viral on Wednesday. Credit: Mashable Screenshot It was tweeted by RadioShack... on purpose . But why



Drones are more accessible than ever, and that means some people are able to buy them for nefarious purposes, such as snooping over private property.



Enlarge (credit: Douglas Rissing | iStock / Getty Images Plus ) Retaliating TikTok users have created an online blitz of protest videos following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade , and many of these videos claimed to be doxxing the five conservative judges who cast the votes denying the federal right to abortion. Vice reports that some TikTok videos with thousands of likes, comments, and



Interest in vintage turntables has risen steadily in recent years despite streaming’s reign as the medium of choice for listening to music. The trend follows the resurgence of vinyl records, which reached a new high in 2021 when vinyl outsold compact discs for the first time since 1991. Clearly, consumers still place a high value on the listening experience, especially at home where audiophiles c



Totally Made Up A mysterious Chinese Wikipedia contributor who goes by the alias "Zhemao" spent ten years making up fictional accounts of Russian history, writing over 200 articles, and contributing to hundreds of others, Chinese English-language publication Sixth Tone reports . Wikipedia editors have since noticed the falsified accounts — after ten years of unknowingly hosting their contribution



NASA Webb Telescope•
Very soon, humanity will get to view the deepest images of the universe that have ever been captured. In two weeks, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — NASA’s super expensive, super powerful deep space optical imager — will release its first full-color images, and agency officials today suggested that they could just be the beginning. “This is farther than humanity has ever looked




As of July 1, Americans returning to the U.S. from abroad are no longer allowed to enter the country with an expired U.S. passport . This had previously been allowed for passports that expired from Jan. 1, 2020, onward. In addition to needing a valid passport to enter the U.S., Americans planning to travel abroad should remember that many countries require you to have a minimum of six months of v



As a rule of thumb, I try to never check luggage when I fly, but there are times when it is simply unavoidable. Also unavoidable is the subsequent required trip to the luggage carousel. You know the scene: The area is littered with your fellow exhausted travelers who are eager to get their bags so they move along to… 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 . Greetings on this Hump Day. We’ve got one housekeeping item for you: We need your vote on what roundtable sessions you’d like to see at Disrupt . And if you didn’t get a chance to read Becca ’s piece on what venture capital deal terms look like in this environment,



Consumer rights groups in Europe have filed a new series of privacy complaints against Google — accusing the advertising giant of deceptive design around the account creation process that they say steers users into agreeing to extensive and invasive processing of their data. The tech giant profiles account holders for ad targeting purposes — apparently relying on user consent as its legal basis.



100+Gizmodo / 10h
Here’s everything you need to know about Prime Video ’s Paper Girls, the highly anticipated sci-fi YA adventure show adapting the Image Comics series from Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. The streamer recently debuted an exciting first look at the show, which arrives next month. Keep reading for a quick crash course! Read more...



We sat down with the cast of The Umbrella Academy season 3 to find out who they would trade powers with and why.



Substack Lays 13 14%•
The newsletter platform Substack laid off 13 employees today, mostly in HR and writer support roles . Co-founder and CEO Chris Best informed the company after holding meetings with the affected employees. The meetings also included founders Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi. That’s probably a better way to deliver the news than some other companies’ approaches ( cough , Coinbase ), but the news is



Fauci Covid Paxlovid•
300+Ars Technica / 10h
Enlarge / Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Alex Wong ) The country's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, has been struck by a phenomenon that appears to be becoming more common in the latest stage of the pandemic—rebounding bouts of COVID-19 a



If you've seen "Tommy Boy," you know the vehicle in it suffered quite a bit of damage. Despite that, at least a couple of those cars are still around.



32Gizmodo / 10h
In order to protect the Earth, some sacrifices must be made. NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to a binary asteroid system known as Didymos and will essentially crash into one tiny asteroid to test out a deflection method. But rather than leaving behind an impact crater as initially intended, the DART… Read more...



An increasing number of Americans are asking whether living in the United States is still a good idea—and I don’t blame them; there’s a lot going on right now. I’m still a fan, but that doesn’t mean I’m not keeping my options open, downloading Duolingo, and learning as much as I can about how to move to somewhere else… Read more...



Roe Abortion Travel US•
20Engadget / 11h
The Supreme Court's ruling last week has overnight transformed many states where abortion access was prohibitively difficult to ones where it is now de facto illegal . Congressional Democrats squandered nearly 50 years of opportunities to strengthen the right to bodily autonomy, and now in the wake of a post- Roe nation, large companies have been attempting to perform some form of triage, but the



Gaming chairs under $100 are the overlooked cherry on top of a great gaming rig. After all, it’s a hobby that is usually enjoyed sitting down, whether you game on PC or consoles. Many “gaming chairs” run upwards of a couple thousand dollars, but there are a handful of inexpensive models well within any budget. These chairs come with features you want, and a few you didn’t even know you wanted. He



Abortion Access Aid•
200+Futurism / 11h
The reverberations of the Supreme Court decision to overturn the abortion-legalizing precedent Roe v. Wade have been swift and severe. Among those immediate consequences? Skyrocketing demand for both abortion and non-abortion emergency contraceptive pills. In other words, it sounds like folks are stockpiling the drugs amid the looming threat to reproductive autonomy. And that also means added str



ARM X3 Cortex-X3 GPU•
Enlarge / The Arm Cortex X3 brings some modest improvements. (credit: Arms) Fresh off a dramatic journey of not being bought by Nvidia, Arm announced its latest flagship CPUs. Coming soon to your 2023 Android devices, we have the Cortex-X3 and Arm Cortex-A715 CPUs . As usual, these designs will be part of a system-on-chip CPU cluster. Assuming the normal layout, Arm's proposed design would have a



Doom RPG Fan BE•
Doom RPG Enlarge / A seemingly lost turn-based version of Doom RPG is now fully playable on modern Windows PCs, thanks to efforts from the Doom reverse-engineering community. (credit: id Software) The creators of the Doom series have presented plenty of official and unofficial historical retrospectives, but these often leave out the weirdest official Doom game ever made: Doom RPG . Even id Softwa



If you’re making travel plans for the coming months, you may have noticed escalating hotel prices. Don’t be dissuaded from traveling because of this sticker shock, though. We have some good news in the world of accommodations today, especially if you’re looking to travel overseas. Hilton is offering up to 25% off stays at participating hotels across its portfolio in Europe , the United Kingdom an



Three Arrows Capital•
100+Gizmodo / 11h
Three Arrows Capital, one of the crypto industry’s biggest sinking ships, is finally being put out of its misery. Read more...



Editor’s note: This guide has been updated with the latest information. Whether you’re traveling or not, credit card companies are looking to entice consumers to keep spending — both at home and on the road. And Chase has become one of the most proactive card issuers in announcing temporary card bonuses and benefits . As we move into a busy summer season, spending on your credit card can still re



Shared micromobility company Bird’s board of directors has appointed Shane Torchiana as president of the company, replacing the company’s CEO and founder Travis VanderZanden. The new roles will begin effective June 29, per a regulatory filing . VanderZanden, who previously served as the chief operating officer (COO) at ride-hailing company Lyft, will stay on as CEO of Bird and chair of the board




AlgiKnit Series Seaweed•
AlgiKnit is on a mission to offer more environmentally conscious materials for the heavily polluting fashion and textile industries. The startup is developing materials from seaweeds such as Macrocystis pyrifera, one of the planet’s most renewable and regenerative organisms, creating yarns and fibers that don’t rely on petroleum or toxic chemicals. Aleks Gosiewski , Aaron Nesser and Tessa Callagh



Amazon Paper Girls•
If you just watch this 30-second slice of the upcoming Prime Video series, Paper Girls , you'll pick up on a few things. Four newspaper delivery girls — Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), KJ (Fina Strazza), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), and Mac (Sofia Rosinsky) — get zapped into the future, where they meet the adult version of Erin (played by Ali Wong). There are some flashes of more intense moments, but the over



A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips. Continue reading ...



I learned a lot about myself this morning thanks to Dimensional, a social media app that serves up a bunch of personality tests and encourages you to compare results with your friends. Not that I learned much from the tests themselves—personality tests are silly—but I did discover I am someone who can be made aware… Read more...



TikTokkers have been sharing their results from BetterMe's "Childhood Trauma Test," but the site's privacy policy reveals that the test is a data collection tool. A typical TikTok about the test starts with something like, "Test shouldn't be that bad. My childhood was good," before the creator reveals their test results that show severe levels of trauma. The tags "trauma test" and "childhood trau



The post appeared first on Popular Mechanics .



A cancept for a nuclear-powered plane hotel shows that the sky might not be the limit for luxury vacations.



Google Switch Android 12•
Google just expanded the list of phones compatible with its simple Switch to Android app from Pixels to all devices running Android 12 or newer.



Google and iFixit teamed up earlier this year to offer genuine replacement parts and repair guides for Google Pixel phones, with the goal of making self-repairs as easy as possible. Now the promised parts are available to purchase. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



The day you’ve waited for is finally here; GPUs are now reasonably priced, in stock, and on sale. Buying a graphics card today guarantees you the best price of the last three years—yeah, you can finally afford to buy a GPU again. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Microsoft is taking Collections in a rather Pinterest-like direction. A new Microsoft Edge update promises several new organization features, an inspiration feed, and the ability to directly follow creators. In fact, Collections is getting the lion’s share of enhancements in the update. For those unaware, Collections allows you to pull together web pages, pictures, or videos from across the inter



CATL Chinese Qilin EV•
100+Ars Technica / 11h
Enlarge / Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), poses for a photograph in Ningde, Fujian province, China, on Wednesday, June 3, 2020. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images ) The headquarters of battery giant CATL tower over the coastal Chinese city of Ningde. To the untrained eye, the building resembles a huge slide rising out of the urban sprawl. It is, in fact, a giant



The Tesla Model 3 is a popular EV, though some buyers have reported frustrations with the vehicle, and many of the complaints involve quality control issues.



Spirit Airlines shareholders are set to vote Thursday on whether or not to approve the airline’s plans to merge with fellow low-cost carrier Frontier. While the merger initially seemed likely to pass, a proverbial wrench was thrown in the works in April when JetBlue made an unsolicited bid to acquire Spirit, raising its offer higher and higher in an effort to lure Spirit shareholders away from th



IHG Hotel Russia Marriott•
Major Western hotel companies like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG Hotels & Resorts and Accor garnered scrutiny earlier this year for maintaining a presence in Russia following its invasion of Ukraine . Other companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks pulled out fairly quickly from Russia in light of mounting pressure to do so. Hotel companies eventually moved in lockstep earlier this year in closing c



400+Gizmodo / 12h
It’s now been six months since the Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana towards its observation point in space, one million miles from us. Now the telescope’s first color images are finally being taken; they will be released to the public on July 12. Read more...



While your smartphone’s mobile hotspot may be useful for keeping your laptop and other devices connected while on the road, they have their limitations in speed and the amount of high-speed data. If you travel regularly and need to stay connected, you’re going to need a standalone mobile hotspot to meet your needs. These hotspots are offered by the national cell phone carriers and can provide you



100+Futurism / 12h
Ticket to Ride General Motors just started charging for rides in its new fleet of driverless Cruise model robotaxis in San Francisco last week, and next it plans to expand to other cities. It’s a historic moment, and likely a glimpse of things to come. There aren't a lot of companies with fully driverless vehicles on public streets, and even fewer are charging for rides. It was only back in March



SpaceX Starlink FCC Dish•
Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish. (credit: Starlink) SpaceX is asking Starlink customers to help the company win a regulatory battle against Dish Network. In an email urging users to contact the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress, SpaceX yesterday said a Dish plan to use the 12 GHz spectrum band for mobile service will cause "harmful interference [to Starlink users] more



Opera GX was made specifically to give its user the ability to control RAM and CPU usage to avoid becoming yet another process-hogging web browser.




21Gizmodo / 12h
So you’ve figured out how to time-travel . Don’t abuse your new skill by messing up the timeline! Irresponsible space-time shenanigans can have a devastating effect on you and the future—which is why so many sci-fi stories have law enforcement agencies ready to intervene when things start careening off the rails. Read more...



67Gizmodo / 12h
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to return the ownership of a beach to a Black family almost a century after it was taken from them. Read more...



iPhone Apple Years•
The early days, when the iPhone was new, were special. 15 years ago, Steve Jobs and Apple engineered what could best be described as a hype beast of a product launch. First, Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld in January 2007, but it would be months before the iPhone would officially launch. Whether by design or necessity, that delay turned out to be the best possible way to launch what would be



Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, people have been talking about what abortion was like in the days before modern medical procedures. Even in ancient history, abortions were performed with both surgical and medicinal techniques; Ben Franklin famously included a protocol for herbal abortions in one of his books . And… Read more...



Facebook Messenger•
A brand new phishing campaign leveraging chatbot software on Messenger has been uncovered by cybersecurity firm SpiderLabs. The goal of the campaign is to obtain people’s Facebook credentials and various other personal information, the researchers explained. At first, the victim receives an email, pretending to be from Facebook, claiming that their page is in violation of the site’s community sta



Firefox Tracking QPS•
93Gizmodo / 12h
Mozilla’s latest version of Firefox might just be the answer for users who hate being tracked when clicking on links off sites like Facebook. Read more...



Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information. Citi is a TPG advertising partner. Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® Overview The Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® is a solid mid-level credit card for anyone who wants to earn American Airlines miles and enjoy elite-status-like benefits. Although this card won’t help you with Ad



Niantic Pokémon Go•
100+TechCrunch / 12h
Pokémon GO developer Niantic is running into trouble as it builds “ the real-world metaverse .” Like so many other tech companies facing turbulent economic times , the company decided to let go of 8% of its staff, affecting about 85 to 90 people. Just seven months ago, the company raised $300 million at a $9 billion valuation, more than doubling its valuation from 2018. In an email to staff, repo



Belkin 3 Apple Watch•
Enlarge / Belkin's new 3-in-1 MagSafe charging stand is identical to its predecessor, pictured above, but true change occurs within. (credit: Corey Gaskin / Ars Technica) Belkin just launched its second 3-in-1 device capable of fast-charging the latest Apple Watch Series 7. The new Boost Charge Pro 3-in-1 MagSafe charging stand joins its pad-shaped sibling as the only other all-in-one solution th



Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica) It's Wednesday, which means it's time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes the Google Chromecast back down to $40 at various retailers. While we've seen this deal a handful of times this year, it's still $10 off Google's MSRP, making it another solid opportunity to save on what we consider the best 4K streami



100+Ars Technica / 12h
Enlarge (credit: Yiu Yu Hoi | The Image Bank ) Before the summer ends, California may pass the first US bill that would hold social media companies liable for product features that research has found are harmful to children. If passed, the law could have far-reaching consequences, potentially impacting how kids throughout the US use social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. On Tues



Sabrina Spellman has another chilling adventure coming up: an appearance on Riverdale . Fans, including myself, were devastated when Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was canceled by Netflix in 2020. Why should Riverdale , which resides in the same Archie Comics universe, be renewed for yet another season and not Chilling Adventures of Sabrina ? When Sabrina Spellman’s appearance on Season 6, Episod



Virgin Orbit LauncherOne•
We’re sorry in advance for getting Paula Abdul stuck in your head today. Virgin Orbit is ready to launch the “Straight Up” mission this evening at 10 PM PDT — yes, it’s named after the singer’s 1988 hit — and you can watch it live below. The mission will ferry seven experimental satellites to orbit for the United States Space Force, demonstrating both new hardware (a new satellite bus and radio c



Modsy , an online interior design services company, has ceased to offer design services, a move that comes at the cost of the team behind the effort and customers who have orders in flux. In an email to TechCrunch, Modsy CEO Shanna Tellerman provided this statement when asked about the disruption of business: We have worked hard over the past seven years to build Modsy and never expected we would



48Gizmodo / 12h
A data breach at the California Department of Justice has spilled a wealth of data about the state’s gun owners onto the internet. Read more...



Cloud IDC Microsoft 2021•
Imagine for a second that you could roll up the entire cloud market, everything from SaaS to infrastructure to platform, CDNs (content delivery networks), managed private clouds, data center rentals — everything. What would that be worth in a quarter? Well, the folks at Synergy


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