Pluto TV co-founder Ilya Pozin's Telly opens a waitlist to give away 500,000 55-inch 4K HDR TVs in 2023 with a second screen that constantly shows ads (Jared Newman/Fast Company)

Jared Newman / Fast Company:
Pluto TV co-founder Ilya Pozin's Telly opens a waitlist to give away 500,000 55-inch 4K HDR TVs in 2023 with a second screen that constantly shows ads  —  Would you take a free TV if it constantly ran banner ads beneath everything you watched?  —  That's the proposition for Telly …

Tech layoffs: Cred-owned Happay lays off 15% workforce

Cred-owned startup Happay has reportedly laid off 15% of its workforce. Cred's Kunal Shah acquired the business expense management solutions Happay in 2021. The company has laid off the employees in a restructuring exercise. As reported by The Economic Times, the exact number of impacted employees is not known right now. However, the company has reportedly laid off about 10 to 15% workforce. https://ift.tt/ARcfKoY

Kenya-based M-KOPA, an asset financing service offering African customers access to "productive assets" and digital payments, raised $55M equity and $200M+ debt (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Kenya-based M-KOPA, an asset financing service offering African customers access to “productive assets” and digital payments, raised $55M equity and $200M+ debt  —  M-KOPA, the asset financing platform that offers underbanked African customers access to “productive assets” …

Oppo may soon exit European market, wiped its German website

Following a patent dispute with Nokia, Oppo (and its sub-brand OnePlus) was compelled to suspend operations in Germany last year. Since then, rumors have circulated about Oppo potentially shutting down shops in Europe, despite the company's denial. Nonetheless, the actions taken by Oppo seem to indicate otherwise. Now the company's official website in Germany currently has no product listings, leaving it empty. https://ift.tt/ZD6k5JC

At I/O 2023, Google Assistant was an afterthought, superseded by Bard, a notable omission after Assistant took center stage at multiple previous I/O keynotes (Khari Johnson/Wired)

Khari Johnson / Wired:
At I/O 2023, Google Assistant was an afterthought, superseded by Bard, a notable omission after Assistant took center stage at multiple previous I/O keynotes  —  Google's generative AI chatbot Bard took center stage at the company's I/O conference.  The company's answer to Siri was left backstage.

How love for 5G phones ‘helped’ Amazon India in the first quarter of the year 2023

5G smartphones seem to be a rage, especially in Tier 2 markets in the country. The love for 5G smartphones reportedly spurred US-based ecommerce giant Amazon’s sales in the first quarter of the year. According to a report in Economic Times (ET), strong demand from Tier 2 markets for 5G smartphones boosted Amazon India’s smartphone sales to double-digit growth in the first quarter of the year. The double-digit growth reportedly came during the first three months of the year (Q1-2023) when several market research reports pegged the overall industry shipments to have slumped nearly 20% year-on-year. https://ift.tt/nOCTutG

Swedish cybersecurity company Truesec and experts: Russia-linked "Anonymous Sudan" is one of the most prolific hacktivist groups targeting Swedish organizations (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Swedish cybersecurity company Truesec and experts: Russia-linked “Anonymous Sudan” is one of the most prolific hacktivist groups targeting Swedish organizations  —  Since February, a mysterious hacker group calling itself Anonymous Sudan has targeted dozens of Swedish airports …

A look at TikTok's #medicalmoms, where mothers of disabled and chronically ill kids share parenthood journeys, raising privacy, consent, and autonomy concerns (Fortesa Latifi/Washington Post)

Fortesa Latifi / Washington Post:
A look at TikTok's #medicalmoms, where mothers of disabled and chronically ill kids share parenthood journeys, raising privacy, consent, and autonomy concerns  —  When Bella was born in 2013, she didn't leave the hospital for the first two years of her life because of a combination of a rare form …

Apple tests M3 chip with 12 CPU and 18 GPU cores, 36GB of RAM; Meta shows how it feels about Apple Watch by pulling Messenger and launching WhatsApp for WearOS (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple tests M3 chip with 12 CPU and 18 GPU cores, 36GB of RAM; Meta shows how it feels about Apple Watch by pulling Messenger and launching WhatsApp for WearOS  —  As Apple prepares to launch its next M2 Macs, the company is already ramping up testing of M3 chips.

Apple’s mixed-reality headset could run into ‘production delays’

The Wall Street Journal recently provided an update on the Apple headset, which includes details that have already been widely discussed, such as the rumoured $3,000 price tag and external battery. In addition, the report suggests that Apple is aware of potential production issues with the device. The production of the headset is delayed due to manufacturing issues. https://ift.tt/LsUmGv0

US universities are revamping their semiconductor curricula and striking industry deals to train staff as the CHIPS Act aims to kick start chip making in the US (Prachi Patel/IEEE Spectrum)

Prachi Patel / IEEE Spectrum:
US universities are revamping their semiconductor curricula and striking industry deals to train staff as the CHIPS Act aims to kick start chip making in the US  —  The CHIPS Act could require 50,000 new engineers  —  The CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at kick-starting chip manufacturing …

A look at Forever Voices, which launched GPT-4-powered chatbot CarynAI, letting the fans of influencer Caryn Marjorie chat with her replica for $1 per minute (Taylor Lorenz/Washington Post)

Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
A look at Forever Voices, which launched GPT-4-powered chatbot CarynAI, letting the fans of influencer Caryn Marjorie chat with her replica for $1 per minute  —  CarynAI is the first AI companion product from a new startup called Forever Voices, allowing users to chat with a digital version of the fastest growing Snapchat star

Ahead of Sunday's presidential election in Turkey, Twitter restricts some content "in response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available" (Matt Novak/Forbes)

Matt Novak / Forbes:
Ahead of Sunday's presidential election in Turkey, Twitter restricts some content “in response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available”  —  Twitter announced on Friday that it's blocking some content in Turkey ahead of Sunday's presidential election in the country.

Indian streaming service JioCinema adds a Premium subscription plan, offering content from HBO and more for ₹999 per year (Livemint)

Livemint:
Indian streaming service JioCinema adds a Premium subscription plan, offering content from HBO and more for ₹999 per year  —  JioCinema has introduced a new Premium subscription plan, providing its users with access to a broader range of content.  The streaming platform gained …

OpenAI says it is rolling out web browsing and 70+ third-party plugins in beta to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week (Kristi Hines/Search Engine Journal)

Kristi Hines / Search Engine Journal:
OpenAI says it is rolling out web browsing and 70+ third-party plugins in beta to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week  —  Uncover new possibilities with ChatGPT web browsing and plugins beta features.  Available to ChatGPT Plus users who opt-in for experimental features.