Sunday, November 27, 2022

China seems to be flooding Twitter with porn tweets mentioning places where people are protesting, overwhelming Twitter's radically reduced anti-propaganda team (Joseph Menn/Washington Post)

Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
China seems to be flooding Twitter with porn tweets mentioning places where people are protesting, overwhelming Twitter's radically reduced anti-propaganda team  —  For hours, links to adult content overwhelmed other posts from cities where dramatic rallies escalated



A look at OpenAI's Minecraft bot, which has learned to complete complex tasks in Minecraft after being trained on 70K hours of video of people playing the game (Will Douglas Heaven/MIT Technology Review)

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
A look at OpenAI's Minecraft bot, which has learned to complete complex tasks in Minecraft after being trained on 70K hours of video of people playing the game  —  Online videos are a vast and untapped source of training data—and OpenAI says it has a new way to use it.



Shanghai-based eRoad, which offers a cloud-based HR management service with a focus on payroll, raised a ~$140M Series D, after raising an ~$84M Series C (Eudora Wang/DealStreetAsia)

Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia:
Shanghai-based eRoad, which offers a cloud-based HR management service with a focus on payroll, raised a ~$140M Series D, after raising an ~$84M Series C  —  Chinese human resource technology firm eRoad on Tuesday announced the completion of its Series D funding round at 1 billion yuan …



Saturday, November 26, 2022

How live-action YouTube kids channels Vlad and Niki, Like Nastya, and Kids Diana Show, with a total of ~300M subscribers, are building global franchises (R.T. Watson/Wall Street Journal)

R.T. Watson / Wall Street Journal:
How live-action YouTube kids channels Vlad and Niki, Like Nastya, and Kids Diana Show, with a total of ~300M subscribers, are building global franchises  —  Vlad, Niki, Diana and Nastya party on yachts, ride in Ferraris and travel the world.  Their massive audience of fellow kids can't get enough.



New Delhi-based diabetes management app BeatO raised a $33M Series B led by Lightrock India, with Flipkart and others participating (Debjyoti Roy/Livemint)

Debjyoti Roy / Livemint:
New Delhi-based diabetes management app BeatO raised a $33M Series B led by Lightrock India, with Flipkart and others participating  —  Diabetes management app BeatO has raised $33 million in its Series B round of funding led by impact investor Lightrock India.



Source: the US DOJ is investigating whether rent-setting software made by RealPage is facilitating collusion among landlords to drive up rental prices (Heather Vogell/ProPublica)

Heather Vogell / ProPublica:
Source: the US DOJ is investigating whether rent-setting software made by RealPage is facilitating collusion among landlords to drive up rental prices  —  The DOJ will examine whether RealPage helped landlords coordinate rent increases.  Questions also swirl around a 2017 merger deal with its largest competitor.



An in-depth look at the US sanctions on China's chipmakers and worries over their impact on inflation and rising costs for Western manufacturers and customers (June Yoon/Financial Times)

June Yoon / Financial Times:
An in-depth look at the US sanctions on China's chipmakers and worries over their impact on inflation and rising costs for Western manufacturers and customers  —  The advice “dig two graves, before you set out” applies to anyone bent on revenge.  An old aphorism is hardly going to divert …



Reserve Bank of India declines a payment aggregator license for Paytm parent One 97, asking it to comply with foreign direct investment guidelines and reapply (Ira Dugal/Reuters)

Ira Dugal / Reuters:
Reserve Bank of India declines a payment aggregator license for Paytm parent One 97, asking it to comply with foreign direct investment guidelines and reapply  —  India's banking regulator has declined a payment aggregator licence for the One 97 Communications Ltd (PAYT.NS) …



Analysis: AI startup funding has been around 9%-10% of global VC investment in recent years, led by robotics, autonomous vehicles, and enterprise software (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)

Gené Teare / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: AI startup funding has been around 9%-10% of global VC investment in recent years, led by robotics, autonomous vehicles, and enterprise software  —  Editor's note: In this four-part series, we explore the impact of artificial intelligence startups on multiple sectors.



Friday, November 25, 2022

Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India on December 29, after launching it in May 2020 in Bengaluru, as part of a broader restructuring (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India on December 29, after launching it in May 2020 in Bengaluru, as part of a broader restructuring  —  Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India by the end of the year, the retailer said Friday, retreating from a vertical it entered less than three years ago.



Binance releases its proof-of-reserves system, starting with BTC, claiming it has 582,485 BTC and 575,742 BTC user balance, a reserve ratio of 101% for users (Tim Copeland/The Block)

Tim Copeland / The Block:
Binance releases its proof-of-reserves system, starting with BTC, claiming it has 582,485 BTC and 575,742 BTC user balance, a reserve ratio of 101% for users  —  - Binance has put out its proof-of-reserves system, in light of FTX's meltdown.  — It shows a reserve ratio of 101% for its users' bitcoin balances.



Zomato goes desi, app now available in Hindi and these local languages

The online food delivery platform consolidated net loss decreased to Rs 251 crore for the September quarter, against Rs 430 crore in net loss in the same quarter last year. https://ift.tt/ipEDdaQ

Meituan reports Q3 revenue up 28.2% YoY to ~$8.7B and ~$170M in profit, as its "core local commerce" segment, including food delivery and hotels, rose 24.6% YoY (Jane Zhang/Bloomberg)

Jane Zhang / Bloomberg:
Meituan reports Q3 revenue up 28.2% YoY to ~$8.7B and ~$170M in profit, as its “core local commerce” segment, including food delivery and hotels, rose 24.6% YoY  —  Meituan posted a 28% surge in revenue, affirming resilient demand in China for takeaway from people confined to home during the pandemic.



These premium Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus and other smartphones will be powered by the 'most powerful' Qualcomm processor

https://ift.tt/IqTHnlf

London-based The Applied AI Company, which uses AI to automate repetitive work prone to human error in insurance, pharma, and other sectors, raised a $42M seed (Dan Taylor/Tech.eu)

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu:
London-based The Applied AI Company, which uses AI to automate repetitive work prone to human error in insurance, pharma, and other sectors, raised a $42M seed  —  Investors include Stefan von Liechtenstein, Garry Kasparov, Dennis Mahoney, Valnon Holding, Freud Holdings, HCS GmbH …



SpaceX launches Starlink in Indonesia to improve internet access in remote parts of the country, starting with three local health centers (Stefanno Sulaiman/Reuters)

Stefanno Sulaiman / Reuters : SpaceX launches Starlink in Indonesia to improve internet access in remote parts of the country, starting w...