A look back at the rise of the custom ringtone industry, which had sales of $1.1B at its peak in 2007 before sales shrunk by 97% in the following decade — Before the iPhone, Venmo, or Spotify, there were ringtones. You might remember them fondly as those lo-fidelity sounds we used …
AI-generated “textfakes”, masked as regular chatter on Twitter and Facebook, can be potentially far more subtle and sinister than deepfake videos or audiofakes — Synthetic video and audio seemed pretty bad. Synthetic writing—ubiquitous and undetectable—will be far worse.
Several pro sports teams, including Mets and the LAFC, are testing facial-recognition to make entry into stadiums as touchless as possible during the pandemic — Los Angeles Football Club wants to ‘move everything to face,’ while the New York Mets are testing system on players and staff
IBM report: in 2020, the average data breach costs companies $3.86M to remedy, up 1.5% YoY; “mega” breaches involving 50M+ consumer records can cost up to $392M — When consumer PII is involved, the cost increases. — The average cost of a “mega” data breach has risen astronomically …
Ad analytics platform Pathmatics: Facebook's top 100 advertisers spent $221.4M from July 1 through July 29, down 12% YoY from the $251.4M they spent in 2019 — Major advertisers on Facebook reduced their spending by millions of dollars in July, but not enough to significantly damage the platform's revenue.
Officials say the Trump admin is withholding $20M approved by Congress for the Open Technology Fund, forcing the fund to halt 49 of 60 internet freedom projects — The Trump administration is withholding $20 million in funding approved by Congress for a U.S. Internet freedom organization …
Facebook complies with an order by the Brazil's Supreme Court to block the accounts of a dozen top allies of President Bolsonaro, says it will appeal the order — Facebook has complied with an order by Brazil's Supreme Court to block the accounts of a dozen top allies of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Berlin-based Everphone, which sells a “mobile as a service” device rental package to businesses, raises ~$40M Series B led by Signals Venture Capital — The latest startup to see an uplift in inbound interest flowing from the remote work boom triggered by the coronavirus pandemic …
Enlarge / Crew Dragon backs away from the International Space Station on Saturday. (credit: NASA TV)
On Saturday evening the Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, named Dragonship Endeavour, undocked from the International Space Station to begin its journey home.
The undocking came after NASA and SpaceX determined the spacecraft would find calm seas and light winds off the coast from the Florida Panhandle, in the Gulf of Mexico, on Sunday. This will be the first water landing for a U.S. spacecraft since 1975, when an Apollo capsule splashed down after the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in the Pacific Ocean. Landing is slated for 2:48pm ET (18:40 UTC). A final call on weather will be made on Sunday.
After moving away from the "Keep Out Sphere" surrounding the space station, Endeavour will put distance between itself and the orbiting laboratory before performing more engine burns. This will set the spacecraft up for a de-orbit burn on Sunday, about 50 minutes before splashdown. Asked what he and Behnken would spend most of their final night in space doing, Hurley quipped during a news conference with reporters this week, "Sleeping."
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Pranshu Verma / Washington Post : Arizona's Maricopa County is set to have the second largest concentration of US data centers by 202...
