The AG says Bitfinex lost access to funds it had transferred there after regular banks stopped handling its business and subsequently dipped into $900 million of Tether's cash reserves. According to the filing, Crypto Capital Corp. told Bitfinex the funds were "seized by governmental authorities in Portugal, Poland, and the United States" but the AG says Bitfinex doesn't believe that is true.The concept of Tether is supposed to be that it's a cryptocurrency backed one-to-one , however as the points out, the lack of an updated public audit has fueled speculation about whether the $2 billion or so that it should have in reserves are actually there. According to the AG, Bitfinex has taken "at least" $700 million from Tether....

It’s official: Nikkei, the Japanese media firm that owns the FT, has confirmed that it has acquired Singapore-based new media startup Deal Street Asia. (The Nikkei announcement is buried behind a paywall — make of that what you will!)The deal is undisclosed, but the announcement does confirm a TechCrunch report from last month which broke news of the impending acquisition.Deal Street Asia covers a mix of news from Asia’s financial markets, business verticals and startups… which I guess makes it a competitor to us here at TechCrunch. Like TechCrunch, it also runs an events business — its main show in Singapore in September costs upwards of $1,000 and features senior executives from the likes of DBS, Grab, Sea, GGV, Allianz and IFC....

Facebook is cracking down on services that promise to help Instagram users buy themselves a large following on the photo app. The social network said today that it has filed a lawsuit against a New Zealand-based company that operates one such ‘follower-buying service.’The suit is in a U.S. court and is targeting the three individuals running the company, which has been named as Social Media Series Limited.“The complaint alleges the company and individuals used different companies and websites to sell fake engagement services to Instagram users. We previously suspended accounts associated with the defendants and formally warned them in writing that they were in violation of our Terms of Use, however, their activity persisted,” Facebook wrote in a post....

China’s biggest ecommerce company Alibaba was again on the U.S. Trade Representative’s blacklist over suspected counterfeits sold on its popular Taobao marketplace that connects small merchants to consumers.Nestling with Alibaba on the U.S.’s annual “notorious” list that reviews trading partners’ intellectual property practice is its fast-rising competitor Pinduoduo . Just this week, Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang, a former Google engineer, wrote in his first shareholder letter since listing the company that his startup is now China’s second-biggest ecommerce player by the number of “e-way bills”, or electronic records tracking the movement of goods. That officially unseats JD.com as the runner-up to Alibaba....

Samsung asked iFixit, via the third party that provided the device, to take down the teardown of its Galaxy Fold.

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business.The company has held early conversations with a number of suitors in Asia, including ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek, over the potential acquisition of part, or all, of its business, according to two industry sources with knowledge of the talks.Founded in 2015, Honestbee works with supermarkets and retailers to deliver goods to customers using its store pickers, delivery fleet and mobile apps. The company is based in Singapore and operates in eight markets across Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan. In some markets it has expanded to food deliveries and, in Singapore, it operates an Alibaba-style online/offline store called Habitat....

Sinemia's all-you-can-eat movie package couldn't make it to 'Endgame' or outlast its rival MoviePass.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a bit of a reputation. Depending on what side you’re on, it’s either a necessary cog in the intelligence machine, or an evil organization used to spy on citizens both foreign and domestic. But whatever you believe, it’s become increasingly clear that the CIA isn’t what you think it is. And that’s by design.For decades, whenever someone mentioned the CIA it was typically under the guise of a favorable outcome or an explosive new allegation. It was a spy movie in that no one outside the agency truly understood what was happening. The CIA existed only because we were assured that it did. That curtain fell, for the first time, in 2011.Since 2002, when NBC first started to track public sentiment data on the CIA, its favorability ratings have been a wild ride. After peaking in 2011, they performed a Bitcoin-like reversal before 2012....

The never-ending quest to kill Comcast is poised to receive some renewed investment as an ambitious startup readies to secure some new cash.Starry, a Boston-based wireless broadband internet startup, has filed to raise up to $125 million in Series D funding according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by Pitchbook. If Starry closes the full authorized raise it will hold a post-money valuation of $870 million.A spokesperson for the company confirmed it had already raised new capital, but disputed the numbers. The company has already raised over $160 million from investors including FirstMark Capital and IAC. The company most recently closed a $100 million Series C this past July....

Carbon, the poster child for 3D printing, has authorized the sale of $300 million in Series E shares, according to a Delaware stock filing uncovered by PitchBook. If Carbon raises the full amount, it could reach a valuation of $2.5 billion.Using its proprietary Digital Light Synthesis technology, the business has brought 3D printing technology to manufacturing, building high-tech sports equipment, a line of custom sneakers for Adidas and more. It was valued at $1.7 billion by venture capitalists with a $200 million Series D in 2018.Carbon declined to comment on its upcoming fundraising plans.Redwood City-based Carbon is well-capitalized. To date, it’s raised a total of $422 million from investors like Sequoia, GV, Fidelity, General Electric, Hydra Ventures and Adidas Ventures, not including the incoming round of capital....

Staged shots? Cheesy out-of-context quotes and props? Possible haircare ? To the credit of America's clandestine services, it obviously understands what is all about. According to , the post also includes a few Easter eggs for CIA nerds, such as CIA Director Gina Haspel's original agency badge and a notebook with the agency's motto, "Share what we can, protect what we must," in Arabic.Why do the folks at Langley want an Instagram presence? Haspel said last week that the CIA wouldan Instagram account in an effort to increase transparency. Unfortunately, Instagram's world of filtered "I woke up like this" selfies, influencers posing with sponsored products in exotic locales and celebrities posting staged Instagram stories probably isn't the best place to do it....

Amazon announced today that it has beat Wall Street’s already optimistic Q1 projections. The e-commerce giant’s revenues have slowed a bit, contributing to moderate fluctuations in after hours trading, but the company’s greatly benefit by ever-increasing profit margins.Net income for the quarter hit $3.6 billion, a new record for the company. Much of those inflated margins can be chalked up to online services, including advertising and, most notably, cloud services through AWS.The earnings report demonstrates just how much the site has diversified its portfolio, with earnings that now include results from Whole Foods, which Amazon absorbed last year. The grocery store chain has seen the impact of multiple rounds of price cuts since becoming a part of Amazon, though growth on that side is slow compared to the company’s cloud offerings....

We know there’s no justice in the world because the Country Music Awards, held earlier this month, didn’t issue the evening’s most prestigious accolade to Botnik Studios for its AI-generated lyrical masterpiece “You Can’t Take My Door.”The song, sung by humans Elle O’Brien and Timothy Joyce, was written by Recursive Neural Network, which was programmed by Botnik Studios. As with most neural networks, the developers fed it data (jammed a bunch of country music into it), to create a similar, but unique output (it spit some fresh lyrics). Rumor has it, TNW’s US editor does the same thing if you feed him tacos.Based on our extensive research into the challenges involved in making it in the harsh world of country music (we watched “Coyote Ugly”), it can’t come as good news that the machines have mastered the genre. But we think “You Can’t Take My Door” is objectively the greatest country music song ever written. See for yourself in the video – created by Jonah Cooper – here:...

The air we breathe is killing us. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says air pollution causes the death of seven million people a year and accounts for a third of fatalities from stroke, lung cancer and heart disease, with more than 90% of children breathing toxic air every day.Until we tackle the root causes of air pollution - burning fossil fuels mainly - we can at least learn where and when it is likely to be at its most dangerous.And this is where the data collected by tens of thousands of air quality sensors and analysed in real time by machine learning algorithms could help.London was once nicknamed "The Big Smoke" in its coal-burning industrial heyday. Now it is traffic pollution that's smothering the UK's capital with "filthy, toxic air", according to mayor Sadiq Khan. This pollution contributes to more than 9,000 deaths a year, medical experts have estimated. ...

Your package could arrive one day sooner.

, only users updating from Windows 10 v1803 (released April 2018) or Windows 10 v1809 (released October 2018) will run into this issue. Users running older versions of Windows 10 should be able to install the May update without any problems, regardless of USB devices and SD cards. Microsoft says it will resolve the glitch before future updates.This news comes shortly after Microsoft quietly killed Windows 10's , and even if you successfully install the update, there's a chance Microsoft could it. On the bright side, at least you'll be able to time....

Over the past few months, Sinemia has gone from promising MoviePass competitor to the source of frustration for moviegoers across the country. After rumors surfaced earlier this week that it would be backing away from its troubled subscription-based movie ticket offering, it posted official word tonight that it will be shutting down operations in the U.S.“Today, with a heavy heart, we’re announcing that Sinemia is closing its doors and ending operations in the US effective immediately,” the company writes in a statement posted to its front page.The service has also struggled with issues of monetization (not unlike MoviePass), leading onlookers to wonder ultimately how sustainable the subscription model is. Those issues have been coupled by increased competition from movie theater chains like AMC offering up their own services, even as Sinemia attempted to create a white label version for theaters....

Uber is reportedly looking to sell shares between $44 to $50, aiming to raise $8 to $10 billion in the offering. This would value the company between $80 billion to $90 billion, Bloomberg reports.Previous reports had pegged Uber’s valuation at around $120 billion. Still, that valuation is higher than its last valuation of $76 billion following a funding round.It’s likely this decrease in valuation is influenced by Lyft’s performance on the public market. Since its debut on the Nasdaq, Lyft’s stock has suffered after skyrocketing nearly 10 percent on day one.While Uber has yet to officially set the terms of its IPO, the company is reportedly expected to do so as early as tomorrow. Even if Uber seeks the low end of the expected range, it would be more than three times the amount of Lyft’s $2.34 billion IPO. It would also make Uber’s IPO the largest one in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014....

Based on , it appears the issue first started plaguing iOS device owners last night. It's not clear exactly how many people have been affected by the bug. Apple's system status page has not reflected any outages or other issues with the App Store and Apple hasn't issued any official comment about the company has deployed a fix for the problem. Users who have been experiencing the issue can expect it to disappear by the end of the day. If the terms and conditions loop is still popping up, users can tap the "cancel" button to continue using their device -- though they won't be able to complete any downloads from the App Store while the issue persists....

Third time lucky — unless you’re Facebook .The social networking giant was hit Thursday by a trio of investigations over its privacy practices following a particularly tumultuous month of security lapses and privacy violations — the latest in a string of embarrassing and damaging breaches at the company, much of its own doing.First came a probe by the Irish data protection authority looking into the breach of “hundreds of millions” of Facebook and Instagram user passwords that were stored in plaintext on its servers. The company will be investigated under the European GDPR data protection law, which could lead to fines of up to four percent of its global annual revenue for the infringing year — already some several billions of dollars....

Facebook said the data collection was "unintentional," and it was linked to a discontinued verification method in which it (it's a bad idea to share that with anyone, to be clear). The social network reportedly used the information to refine its ad targeting processes and friend connections, though it didn't tell users it was collecting their contact lists. It has since ended the data collection practice and said it will delete the contacts.The investigation will explore how the data collection happened, the New York Times, as well as whether the practice impacted more Facebook users beyond those who shared their email passwords."It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information," Attorney General Letitia James . "Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers' information while at the same time profiting from mining that data. Facebook's announcement that it harvested 1.5 million users' email address books, potentially gaining access to contact information for hundreds of millions of individual consumers without their knowledge, is the latest demonstration that Facebook does not take seriously its role in protecting our personal information."...

Tesla is poised to open up orders for the Model 3 in the UK by early May and other markets that have right-hand drive vehicles, according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk.The Model 3 order page will go live May 1 or 2 in the UK, followed by Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Tesla’s UK webpage says “deliveries in right-hand drive markets will begin in the second half of 2019.”The first Model 3 vehicles were handed over to U.S. customers, beginning in July 2017 at a splashy event at its factory in Fremont, Calif. Those first vehicles went to Tesla employees and deliveries limped along for months due to production bottlenecks. Deliveries began in earnest in 2018....

E-commerce is one of the economy’s bright spots; U.S. e-commerce sales have nearly doubled in five years, and now exceed $500 billion. Unsurprisingly, Amazon has swooped in to claim a disproportionate share of the riches, gobbling up nearly 50 percent of the market share, driving competitors out of business and solidifying its position as one of the world’s most valuable companies.As part of its complete transformation of the e-commerce landscape, Amazon has made two-day shipping the new industry standard — a standard which most would-be competitors can’t meet on their own without either investing millions in infrastructure or partnering with their greatest competitive threat. Fortunately for merchants, some exciting new logistics startups are emerging to help them compete with Amazon....

The tool works in collaboration with Europe's Flood Awareness System (EFAS). When EFAS identifies areas with heightened flood risks, it triggers SMFR to begin collecting flood-related tweets from users in those areas. Gathering reliable information from Twitter is no easy task, especially considering that EFAS covers an area with more than 27 languages. That's where the team put AI to work. To start, the researchers trained SMFR to spot flood-related keywords in English, German, Spanish and French. In a test during floods in Calabria, Italy, last fall, the tool successfully gathered 14,347 tweets over three days, sorted them by relevance and provided geo-location data.The Joint Research Center hopes EFAS might use the tweets alongside other flood data it collects, like satellite imagery. As the paper explains, we know social media can provide timely data during natural disasters, but less attention has been paid to how to integrate social media in a seamless, reliable way with other tools for disaster forecasting and monitoring. The Joint Research Center is not alone. Both and have committed to using AI to gather flood data. Together, all of these tools could give first responders a better picture of what they're heading into....

The rumored IPO plans of $4 billion spinning brand Peloton marks the rise of a wave of interactive fitness startups like Mirror, Tonal, Hydrow and At Home 360 that combine a monthly subscription to recorded and/or live video classes with workout hardware.There’s opportunity beyond this initial “Peloton for X” model, however, when you look at where the gamification of at-home workout experiences can overlap with actual games. We’re in the midst of rapid growth in the gaming industry, the rise of esports and the mainstream-ing of socializing within games due to Fortnite. The virtual cycling business Zwift is a five-year-old startup that has raised more than $170 million as a pioneer of fitness-gaming ― physical sport carried out in a virtual world. Athletes join together for group rides and races within a cycling game that hooks up to their own bike trainers at home in order to reflect their movements and physical exertion. Because users are represented as players within a social game, there is the benefit of network effects, opportunity for in-game commerce and an audience viewing the competition....

Last month, a New York Times piece heralded the arrival of Luminary. The story focused on the startup’s healthy funding (almost $100 million) and its “subscription-based business model that it hopes will push the medium into a new phase of growth.” You’d be hard-pressed to find better circumstances under which to launch your startup.A month and a half later, Luminary is live, and most of that good will seems to have evaporated. A number of prominent podcast hosts have requested that their shows be pulled from the “Netflix of podcasts.”The $8 a month premium service has added shows to its walled-off network without the permission of creators. There are several TechCrunch shows up there, including Original Content, Mixtape, Equity and several now defunct titles. My personal podcast somehow made it on there, as well....

Wing, a nine-year-old, Silicon Valley venture firm co-founded by veteran VCs Peter Wagner and Gaurav Garg, produces interesting research about its own industry every now and then, based on smaller data sets than firms like PitchBook or CB Insights tend to use. Instead of looking at funding activity broadly, the firm tracks deal-making at the top 21 venture firms in the U.S. to “really focus on the signal,” as Wagner has explained to us in the past. Last year, for example, the firm determined that the funding pullback that everyone was worried about had actually happened in 2016.More recently, Wing has been tracking deal sizes, capturing the details of 6,205 financings of 2,982 companies funded by one of those 21 firms over the last nine years to discern the ways in which round sizes are changing. And the results, while not shocking, are still eye-opening....

Have you ever wanted to hear a concerto for piano and harp, in the style of Mozart by way of Katy Perry? Well, why not? Because now you can, with OpenAI’s latest (and blessedly not potentially catastrophic) creation, MuseNet. This machine learning model produces never-before-heard music based on its knowledge of artists and a few bars to fake it with.This is far from unprecedented — computer-generated music has been around for decades — but OpenAI’s approach appears to be flexible and scalable, producing music informed by a variety of genres and artists, and cross-pollinating them as well in a form of auditory style transfer. It shares a lot of DNA with GPT2, the language model “too dangerous to release,” but the threat of unleashing unlimited music on the world seems small compared with undetectable computer-generated text....

The Markup appears to be facing a staff revolt — and its financial backers may be reconsidering their support — following the firing of editor-in-chief Julia Angwin.When the site was announced last fall, it was backed by $20 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, with additional funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The goal was to do data-driven journalism about the impact of technology on society.Angwin and her co-founder Jeff Larson seemed particularly well-suited for the job — both are award-winning journalists who worked together at ProPublica, where they did impactful reporting around topics like Facebook’s ad practices....

She said the new site will provide employees with a simpler, clearer way for them to raise concerns. It's setting up a similar site for its vendors and temporary workforce, which should be ready in June.Following a four-month trial period, the company is expanding its Support Person Program, which allows employees to bring a trusted coworker with them to discrimination and harassment investigations. It's also rolling out a program to provide employees with better care both during and after an investigation. In addition, Google has published -- including on harassment, discrimination, conduct and retaliation -- and shared an Investigations Practice Guide, which details what Googlers can expect while their concerns are addressed....

The Survival mode will challenge players by getting rid of Fast Travel and Survival Vision. Players will be forced to brave the post-apocalyptic wilderness of the Pacific Northwest without on-screen indicators or a mini-map. With the weekly updates, players can expect of battles and opportunities to earn in-game rewards.From to, the zombie survival genre is already pretty crowded. An early look indicates that Days Gone, while no doubt entertaining, isn't really a standout entry. Especially for veterans of the genre, the game's pretty straightforward progression could get a little repetitive. But a new difficulty mode and weekly updates may give the Days Gone some variety....

In the era of Trumpian politics the public forum is no longer the evening news or the morning paper: it’s Twitter. We decided to see which politicians were embracing the platform to discuss what we feel will be one of the most important issues of their potential presidency: artificial intelligence. What we found wasn’t good.We gathered a list of every AI-related tweet 2020 Democratic hopefuls sent over the past 12 months. Our expectation was that there’d be a few thousand or so, and we’d spend the better part of the week parsing the information for insights. Turns out it wasn’t that hard.In total, the 27 Democrats we obtained data on have sent only 126 tweets since April 24, 2018 containing the phrases “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning,” “robot,” or “robotics.” Here’s the list of people who’ve sent any tweets meeting that criteria, and the number sent:...

Street price: $170; deal price: $150 w/ myBB membership (free)The Sonos One is presently down to $150 for myBest Buy members (free to join, price reflects when logged in). Historically $180-$200, the street price has fallen to $170 in recent weeks (decline in street price started with the release of the Gen 2). This speaker, the most compact in the Sonos lineup, is available in black or white and is a great way to start a multiroom system or add to an existing Sonos setup. This model also supports voice-control if that feature appeals to you. The Sonos One is the top pick in our guide to . Wirecutter Senior Staff Writer Chris Heinonen wrote, "The Sonos system is the best multiroom wireless speaker system because it supports the most services, and has a wide selection of great-sounding speakers, great search features, and a well-organized app that runs on almost all major platforms. Sonos keeps its platform up to date by adding more services all the time, introducing new features like Trueplay room-correction technology, and updating its models. The Sonos user experience is the best of any of the multiroom wireless speaker systems currently available."...

The statement is a not-so-subtle allusion to a recent Polygon covering working conditions at Epic Games. Reportedly, Fortnite's and near-constant updates have led to contractors and permanent employees working 70 to 100 hours per week. Epic claimed these examples are "incredibly rare" and that it wants to "immediately remedy" those situations, but anonymous employees disagreed -- they cited examples of staff being fired simply for refusing to work weekends. There's apparently intense pressure to work as long as possible, and Respawn clearly doesn't want that mindset to affect its team.This more measured pace has an effect on Apex. Rather than see a flurry of updates, you're more likely to see "large, meaningful" releases that have a "lasting impact." You'll always get a new Battle Pass, a new character and a new gameplay element, McCoy said, but you won't see constant tweaks. He also emphasized that the company wasn't diverting resources from one game to support another. There are "entirely separate" teams for Apex and , McCoy said, and the studio is "pushing out" future Titanfall games to properly support the Apex crowd....

There are discrete architectural elements from milestone models that you can use in the design of your own convolutional neural networks. Specifically, models that have achieved state-of-the-art results for tasks like image classification use discrete architecture elements repeated multiple times, such as the VGG block in the VGG models, the inception module in the GoogLeNet, …

SOSV, a multi-stage venture firm that was founded as the personal investing vehicle of entrepreneur Sean O’Sullivan after his company went public in 1994, then re-launched as a traditional venture firm with outside backers in 2015, has raised $218 million for its third fund. The vehicle has a…

This has given Epic an edge, and the company has lured a slew of high-profile developers away from Steam, complete with plans to launch their titles exclusively on the Epic Games Store. The list includes Super Meat Boy Forever, Metro: Exodus, The Division 2, Borderlands 3,Detroit: Become Human, Afterparty and the final season of Telltale's The Walking Dead. Many of these games will eventually hit Steam and other platforms, but they'll be exclusive to the Epic store for a long while first.However, this could all change. Epic Games CEO tweeted a challenge to Steam on Wednesday night, and it reads as follows: "If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam."...

Social media gets a lot of negative press, but there’s more to Twitter and Facebook than botnets, memes, and political trolls. In a research paper preprint on Arxiv.org (“Integrating Social Media into a Pan-European Flood Awareness System: A Multilingual Approach“), scientists at the Joint Research Center, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, detail a prototype — Social Media for Flood Risk (SMFR) — that “enriches” Europe’s Flood Awareness System (EFAS) with real-time reports from Twitter users.It builds on research published by Harvard and Google in August 2018, which described an AI model capable of predicting the location of aftershocks up to one year after a major earthquake, and by Facebook AI researchers in December, who developed a method to analyze satellite imagery and to quantify damage from fires and other disasters. More recently, scientists at Google published a retrospective on a machine learning system that accurately predicts riverine floods — that is, floods from overrun riverbanks — with 75% precision....

Apple is rolling out a fix for an App Store bug that was preventing users from downloading new iOS apps or app updates. The issue, which impacted an unknown number of users, involved a Terms & Conditions dialog box that would continue to pop up even when users tapped the “Agree” button.The issue had frustrated users who took to Twitter in an attempt to get help from Apple Support.9to5Mac and AppleInsider previously reported on the problem, citing the social media complaints. The Apple Support account had not responded publicly to those who reached out, beyond asking customers to get in touch on DM with more details or pointing those with more vague complaints to a support doc about connection issues....

Amazon is always looking for ways to increase the options it offers developers in AWS, and to that end, today it announced a bunch of new AMD EPYC-powered T3a instances. These were originally announced at the end of last year at re:Invent, AWS’s annual customer conference.Today’s announcement is about making these chips generally available. They have been designed for a specific type of burstable workload, where you might not always need a sustained amount of compute power.“These instances deliver burstable, cost-effective performance and are a great fit for workloads that do not need high sustained compute power but experience temporary spikes in usage. You get a generous and assured baseline amount of processing power and the ability to transparently scale up to full core performance when you need more processing power, for as long as necessary,” AWS’s Jeff Barr wrote in a blog post....

Cabinet sources have told the BBC there will be a formal inquiry into the leak of the discussions about Huawei at the National Security Council.Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill will lead the inquiry, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg has learned.This follows the Daily Telegraph publishing details of a meeting about using Chinese telecoms firm Huawei to help build the UK's 5G network.Several cabinet ministers have denied they were involved in the leak.The National Security Council (NSC) is made up of senior cabinet ministers and its weekly meetings are chaired by the prime minister, with other ministers, officials and senior figures from the armed forces and intelligence agencies invited when needed. ...

If you’re a student at UC Berkeley, the diminutive rolling robots from Kiwi are probably a familiar sight by now, trundling along with a burrito inside to deliver to a dorm or apartment building. Now students at a dozen more campuses will be able to join this great, lazy future of robotic delivery as Kiwi expands to them with a clever student-run model.Speaking at TechCrunch’s Robotics/AI Session at the Berkeley campus, Kiwi’s Felipe Chavez and Sasha Iatsenia discussed the success of their burgeoning business and the way they planned to take it national. In case you’re not aware of the Kiwi model, it’s basically this: When you place an order online with a participating restaurant, you have the option of delivery via Kiwi. If you so choose, one of the company’s fleet of knee-high robots with insulated, locking storage compartments will swing by the place, your order is put within, and it brings it to your front door (or as close as it can reasonably get). You can even watch the last bit live from the robot’s perspective as it rolls up to your place....

Musical AI is fast evolving. In March, Google released an algorithmic Google Doodle that let users create melodic homages to Bach. And late last year, Project Magenta, a Google Brain effort “exploring the role of machine learning as a tool in the creative process,” presented Musical Transformer, a model capable of generating songs with recognizable repetition.In what might be characterized as a small but noteworthy step forward in autonomous music generation research, San Francisco capped-profit firm OpenAI today detailed MuseNet, an AI system that can create four-minute compositions with 10 different instruments across styles “from country to Mozart to the Beatles.”OpenAI plans to livestream pieces composed by MuseNet on Twitch later today starting at 12 p.m. Pacific, and has released a MuseNet-powered music tool that’ll be available through May 12. The MuseNet composer has three modes: simple mode, which plays an uncurated sample from a composer or style (and an optional start of a famous piece), and advanced mode, which lets you can interact with the model directly to create a novel piece....

You might have heard of FreedomBox. If not, it's a $100 box you can buy, which allows you to take back control of your internet-based services (See: Put the internet back under your control with the FreedomBox). With Freedombox, you can run the likes of:All from within a tiny, self-contained server. For those people who would like to test FreedomBox before making the purchase, the developers made it possible with the help of an image file that can be booted as a virtual appliance in VirtualBox.SEE: Server deployment/migration checklist (Tech Pro Research)I want to walk you through the steps of getting that up and running, creating a user account, and installing your first service.The only things you need to make this happen are:...

The development builds upon previous advances made by the lab, which found it was possible to use an infrared frequency comb in lasers to generate terahertz wavelengths capable of moving data -- and do it at speeds hundreds of times faster than today's wireless internet services. The latest findings make it possible to extract and transmit wireless signals from the frequency comb, which was made possible by creating a rabbit ears-style antenna that could receive and decipher the information being transmitted by the laser. The first thing they sent: the song "Volare" by Dean Martin.Harvard has been for more than a decade now, and while researchers note the latest development bodes well for the future of wireless communication, the actual use of terahertz communication is still a ways off. That said, lasers have proven to be a viable option for , and companies like and have experimented with to underserved regions via lasers....

"Our vision is for gamers to open up their favorite game, regardless of what device it's on, and easily "scan and play" to bring their Bitmoji directly into the game. At the option to choose an avatar or character, gamers will be shown a Snapcode on screen, prompting them to scan the code via Snapchat to link the account and play as your own Bitmoji," wrote a Snapchat spokesman.There's no word on which developers or games will choose to integrate Snapchat's Bitmoji avatars. There's currently for Unity, Unreal and British VR gaming startup PlayCanvas already inside Snapchat. The Bitmoji for Games website players to stay tuned for more updates.Opening up its features to video game developers is part of Snapchat's most recent attempt at the gaming community. The app has struggled to increase user growth, and its venture into gaming could help it gain momentum. Earlier this month, Snapchat six new titles on its all-new gaming platform, including Bitmoji Party, which also integrates your Bitmoji avatar....

Nintendo is preparing to offer up its next mobile game, and rumor has it the company is hoping this one will be a gold mine. Given the franchise it’s from — and what Nintendo has done adapting its less well-known series — it probably will be.A new report from Bloomberg, which focuses on the prospects of Nintendo in China after a rather lackluster stateside year, quotes an insider as saying the company is betting a lot on the upcoming smartphone app Mario Kart Tour. Analysts estimate it could be Nintendo‘s first “billion dollar app.”Nintendo investing even more in the mobile space makes sense — while not all of their mobile games have been winners, they’ve all been at least solid games. And if it’s true the company’s looking to create an even greater success story, Mario Kart Tour is a good app to bet the farm on....

Social media-fuelled anti-vaxxer propaganda is the latest online harm the U.K. government is targeting.Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program this morning health secretary Matt Hancock said he will meet with representatives from social media platforms on Monday to pressure them into doing more to prevent false information about the safety of vaccinations from being amplified by their platforms.“I’m seeing them on Monday to require that they do more to take down wrong — well lies essentially — that are promoted on social media about the impact of vaccination,” he said, when asked about a warning by a U.K. public health body about the risk of a public health emergency being caused by an increase in the number of British children who have not received the measles vaccination....

The retailer is aware of the potential worries about privacy, and is determined to be as open about what's going on as possible. The cameras and even the data center are clearly on display, while educational kiosks and a Welcome Center are strewn throughout the store to answer questions. It even tries to humanize the technology through an interactive display that mimics the behavior of passers-by Walmart that it only keeps data for less than a week, so there won't be a permanent record of shopping activity no matter how anonymous it might be.Whether or not Walmart will really preserve jobs in the long run is up for debate when the company has made a point of . However, there's undoubtedly pressure on the chain to deploy AI more broadly. Amazon is believed to be testing its checkout-free technology . If Walmart doesn't act, it risks losing customers who might be drawn by Amazon's promise of a seamless experience....

File sizes get bigger. Hard drives get bigger. And the need for file storage has to keep pace. Of course, that means we’re almost perpetually scoping out deals on expanded storage options, particularly cloud storage.Considering how much data most of us are looking to save that we don’t need to access regularly, services like Zoolz are perfect. They offer up vast cloud storage possibilities for low monthly rates on content you can safely lock away for the day you absolutely have to have it.It’s even better when you can find it at a discount. Like right now, with a 1TB of Zoolz Cloud Backup from TNW Deals. It’s currently 90 percent off for a one-year plan, just $19.99.With Zoolz, you’ll get 1TB of Cold Storage where you can backup your old documents, videos, individual file backups and mountains of other information safely, defended by military-grade AES-256 encryption....

Every move is unique, but they all share the same over-the-top, ultra-ridiculous DNA that's sustained Mortal Kombat for the past 27 years. Each game in the series takes advantage of relatively modern graphical power, rendering characters in the most realistic way possible -- only to show their muscles exploding yet still bearing weight, their organs dangling from perfectly circular torso holes, or their bones shattering to dust in a 3D X-ray mode.At some point, each fatality becomes so gory that it's funny."I have it up on my screen while I'm doing testing at work, and people come by and it's equal parts disgust and laughter," said Shannah O'Meara, senior cinematic artist at NetherRealm Studios. She's one of the architects behind Mortal Kombat 11's fatalities, often spending weekdays in a meeting room with a handful of other developers, discussing all of the worst ways to murder people. Fictionally, of course....

Huawei’s controversial status in North America and Europe stems from a lot of different factors. At the heart of most of them, however, is the hardware maker’s alleged ties to the Chinese government. The notion of government control has been enough to cause something approaching an outright ban on its products in the States, over worries that handsets and networking equipment could be used to spy on the U.S. government and its citizens.A recently published report from professors at Fulbright University Vietnam and George Washington University Law School resurfaced those issues. The simply titled “Who Owns Huawei?” attempts to get to the bottom of who is controlling the rapidly ascending smartphone maker. The results published struggle to draw a clear conclusion on the matter, though the authors note in the summary, “Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not.”...

According to the CBC, Therrien and his counterpart in British Columbia, Michael McEvoy, say . They relate to "unauthorized access; lack of meaningful consent from 'friends of friends'; no proper oversight over privacy practices of apps" and "overall lack of responsibility for personal information."While Facebook has accepted there was a "major breach of trust," it has disputed the report. Therrien and McEvoy claimed Facebook has declined to implement some recommendations to mitigate privacy deficiencies. Facebook is also said to have refused voluntary audits of privacy policies and practices over the next five years.The Canadian commissioners' report follows Facebook making a deal earlier this month with the EU that will see it . Among them is an update on its limitation on liability, which essentially makes the company accountable for Cambridge Analytica-style data misuse fiascos in the future....

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.1. Facebook reserves $3B for FTC fine, but keeps growing with 2.38B users in Q1A massive penalty hangs over Facebook’s head, but it otherwise had a very strong Q1 earnings report. The company reached 2.38 billion monthly users, up 2.5 percent from the previous quarter, and it pulled in $15.08 billion in revenue.Facebook recorded earnings per share were significantly lower than expected, but that’s because it set aside $3 billion to cover a potential FTC fine that it’s still resolving....

Comcast is in talks about selling its 30 percent stake in Hulu to Disney, according to a report from CNBC this morning. The discussions are still in early stages. Comcast is considering whether the timing is right for the sale, as Hulu’s valuation could still increase over time. But if Comcast is less certain about Hulu’s future, it may want to unload its minority stake now, then use the cash to pay down its other debt — like that from its $39 billion acquisition of Sky, for example.The report weighs the broader set of pro’s and con’s associated the potential deal, noting that retaining the stake could give Comcast a bargaining chip with Disney further down the road, among other advantages. But it’s also unclear how much Hulu aligns with Comcast’s long-term strategic plans — especially considering it has plans for its own streaming service in 2020. ...

Nike Inc has submitted a trademark application for the word ‘cryptokicks’, signalling it may be gearing up to launch its own digital currency and a host of cryptocurrency related products.The application, filed on April, 19, outlines how the company‘s proposed digital currency could be used by an online community. The document also describes an online footwear and clothing marketplace, as well as “a website featuring technology that enables users to mine, earn, purchase, receive by any other means, store, and transfer blockchain-based tokens, coins, cryptocurrencies, and other crypto assets.” Nike’s application comes amid a company wide effort to focus on its digital footprint. The American multinational is seemingly focusing on e-commerce and mobile sales as part of a business strategy that places specific emphasis on launching products to market at greater speed and fostering greater connections with consumers. ...

This week, Microsoft published a Windows Support document detailing a frustrating problem: Users receiving a "This PC can't be upgraded to Windows 10" error on computers that have a USB device or SD card attached.The root of the issue is "inappropriate drive reassignment," which can occur on Windows 10-based machines that have an external USB or SD memory card attached during the installation of the update, according to the document. When these devices are in place, they can block the computer from getting the update, generating the error message if the update is attempted again. SEE: 20 pro tips to make Windows 10 work the way you want (free PDF) (TechRepublic)For example, if an upgrade to the May 2019 version is attempted on a computer with a thumb drive inserted into a USB port, the device is reassigned to a different drive letter, instead of being mounted in the system as drive G, the document said. ...

If you are a Linux administrator, you know the value of Secure Shell. Without this tool, remoting into a Linux server (or sending files via a secure channel) might pose quite the challenge. Then you get SSH, and you can use it without thought. But for those new to Linux administration, you might not quite understand how SSH works. Sure, you can probably sit down at a machine and issue the command:You'll log in, and you can do your work. What goes on behind that connection? What are the pieces that make it work? I thought it would be a good idea to break SSH down to the four most important files for SSH connections, so you can start using the tool with a better understanding of how it works.Let's take a look at those key SSH files....

The latest damning assessment of Facebook’s trampling of user privacy comes from the Canadian and Columbia privacy commissioners — which have just published the results of an investigation kicked off in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal last year.They found the social network company committed serious contraventions of local laws and failed generally to take responsibility for protecting the personal information of Canadians.Facebook has disputed the findings and refused to implement the watchdogs’ recommendations — including refusing to voluntarily submit to audits of its privacy policies and practices over the next five years....

Long before there was an autonomous vehicle industry, there was Project Chauffeur — a secret endeavor staffed by about a dozen engineers and housed under Google’s moonshot factory X.That venture, popularly known as the Google self-driving car project, would eventually graduate from its project status to become a standalone company called Waymoin 2016 — along the way helping launch an entire industry and numerous careers.AndWaymo’s CTO and VP of engineeringDmitri Dolgov has been there for the entire ride.We’re excited to announce that Dolgov will participate in TechCrunch’s inaugural TC Sessions: Mobility, a one-day event on July 10, 2019 in San Jose, Calif., that is centered around the future of mobility and transportation....

I recently heard that MSI's line of laptops appeals to content creators who want to get things done and get things done on-the-go. Whenever I think of MSI, motherboards, graphics cards, and gaming come to mind. However, if you consider the hardware needed for a great gaming experience, it makes sense to have hardware configurations available for content creators. When MSI reached out challenging me to put my Thinkpad T470 away for a week to see which I liked better—my Thinkpad or MSI's Prestige PS63 Modern—I was game.SEE: Hardware decommissioning policy (Tech Pro Research)The highlights of the Prestige PS63 Modern include: All of the tech specs sound like a machine worthy of battling the rigors of Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. My primary concerns include display quality, GPU prowess, battery life, and heat dissipation. When editing digital content you need a bright enough display with optimal contrast and clarity. You also need a GPU and system RAM that will keep up with your adjustments, color grading, and visual effects. Lastly, you don't want the system to melt your desk space, and you need it to last longer than two hours on a single charge. ...

Despite the closure of cryptojacking attack facilitator CoinHive and decreases in cryptocurrency valuation, cybercriminals are still focusing on cryptojacking attacks against enterprises, according to a Symantec report published Thursday. Beapy, a file-based coinminer, was first discovered in January 2019, with attacks accelerating since March. Enterprises comprise 98% of Beapy's victims, with organizations in Asia the most common targets—more than 80% of victims are located in China, with South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam comprising most of the rest of the targets.This may be, in part, due to the exploit used to infect systems. The EternalBlue and DoublePulsar exploits were released publicly by an organization called The Shadow Brokers in April 2017, but were originally developed by the NSA Office of Tailored Access Operations and CIA Information Operations Center. EternalBlue has been used to great effect by the Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-sponsored actor, responsible for the WannaCry attacks and the 2014 Sony Pictures hack....

Generation Z—those born after 1996—will flood the workforce in the coming years. With approximately 62 million Gen Zers in the US, this generation outnumbers Gen X, and is projected to soon outnumber millennials, according to a recent LinkedIn report. SEE: Recruiting and hiring top talent: A guide for business leaders (free PDF) (TechRepublic) Being born alongside the creation of the Internet, Gen Z is made up of digital natives. Because of their familiarity with an ever-evolving tech world, this generation will reshape the workforce. To prepare for this next generation of workers, recruiting firm LaSalle Network outlined the specific factors Gen Z will be looking for in a job. In a recent report, LaSalle Network surveyed more than 3,000 2019 college graduates, determining what the generation expects and desires from hiring companies. Here are the three factors Gen Z wants most in a job position:...

Everyone loves Lego, but there's another reason to adore the company now: the announcement of Braille Bricks to help kids learn the system.

The adapters were designed for use primarily in Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK and shipped between 2003 and 2010.

A teaser trailer shows protagonist Joker slashing his way through waves of enemies at what looks like Tokyo's famed Shibuya Crossing, so it appears Scramble draws more from Dynasty Warriors for its beat-'em-up gameplay than the Persona series. There have been a number of Warriors crossovers, including and Fire Emblem Warriors, while in added smoke to the fire for those hoping for a straight port of the game on Switch. Not so, at least for the time being. Atlus didn't reveal a release date for Scramble, which is also coming to PS4....

A couple of weeks ago, when Pinterest filed its S-1, its AWS bills raised eyebrows and questions about cheaper alternatives for startups. Render is a small startup with a big idea to provide infrastructure services for developers, who might be looking for a cheaper and easier alternative to bigger more familiar names. The company launched today with broad ambition and $2.25 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and the South Park Common Fund.As developers work with increasingly complex sets of technologies, it often requires teams of people to launch an application and keep it running.”What we’re doing at Render is making it incredibly easy and quick for application developers to deploy their applications online without knowledge of servers, and without having a DevOps person with them,” Anurag Goel, founder and CEO told TechCrunch....

Microsoft has seen its stock market value top $1 trillion (£774bn) after reporting better-than-expected sales and profits. The US software giant passed the mark briefly on Thursday, before its share price fell back. It makes it one of only three public firms to have hit the $1tn mark, the others being Apple and Amazon.Microsoft's stock has climbed by about a third in the past year, helped by the growth of its cloud business.On Wednesday, the firm said revenue rose 14% to $30.6bn in the fourth quarter, thanks to more cloud growth and an unexpected boost for its software. Net profit surged 19% to $8.8bn.It continues the strong performance seen under boss Satya Nadella, who has spent the past five years trying to lessen the firm's reliance on its once-dominant Windows operating system....

A team of engineers, dentists, and biologists from the University of Pennsylvania developed a microscopic robotic cleaning crew. With two types of robotic systems -- one designed to work on surfaces and the other to operate inside confined spaces -- the scientists showed that robots with catalytic activity could ably destroy biofilms, sticky amalgamations of bacteria enmeshed in a protective scaffolding. Such robotic biofilm-removal systems could be valuable in a wide range of potential applications, from keeping water pipes and catheters clean to reducing the risk of tooth decay, endodontic infections, and implant contamination.The work, published in Science Robotics, was led by Hyun (Michel) Koo of the School of Dental Medicine and Edward Steager of the School of Engineering and Applied Science....

Purdue University researchers and experts in brain-inspired computing think part of the answer may be found in magnets. The researchers have developed a process to use magnetics with brain-like networks to program and teach devices such as personal robots, self-driving cars and drones to better generalize about different objects."Our stochastic neural networks try to mimic certain activities of the human brain and compute through a connection of neurons and synapses," said Kaushik Roy, Purdue's Edward G. Tiedemann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "This allows the computer brain to not only store information but also to generalize well about objects and then make inferences to perform better at distinguishing between objects."...

With the advent of sophisticated natural language processing, text-to-speech (TTS) systems — software programs designed to verbalize text — have become increasingly efficient. Take Google’s Tacotron 2, for instance, which can build voice models based on spectrograms alone.One drawback to these “neural TTS” approaches is that they require more data than traditional methods, but that might not be the case for long. In a new study penned by scientists at Amazon’s Alexa division, an AI TTS system trained on voice data from multiple speakers yielded more-natural-sounding speech than a single-speaker model trained on a greater number of samples. Moreover, the team found the former model to be more “stable” overall: It dropped fewer words, “mumbled” less frequently, and avoided repeating single sounds in rapid succession....

New Enterprise Associates, the 42-year-old venture capital firm, has invested in the $23 million Series B round for Mejuri, a startup capturing millennial women’s penchant for affordable and treat yo’ self type of jewelry rather than diamonds and precious stones for special occasions.It’s the latest instance of startups drawing investor interest with their direct-to-customer retail model. Based in Toronto and Buenos Aires, four-year-old Mejuri designs, makes and sells jewelry directly to women online and through offline showrooms, bypassing middle-person costs. Besides striving for reasonable prices, Mejuri also wants to upend an entrenched practice in its industry....

The Entrepreneurs’ Roundtable Accelerator is today presenting yet another batch of startups to the world at its Demo Day in NYC. ERA has already launched a total of 180 startups which have raised more than $300 million and are collectively valued at more than $2 billion.This sixteenth class is comprised of 13 companies across a variety of sectors, all of whom have received $100K in investment from the accelerator.So without any further ado, here’s a look at the startups launching out of ERA today:Apteo is a platform that helps financial institutions &mash; analysts, equity researchers, asset managers, etc. — make sense of all the data at their fingertips without actually hiring a data scientist. The key features of the product include continuously updated data (on the interval of your choice), automatically cleaned and normalized data, and easy-to-use access to troves of publicly available datasets....

Bitcoin had a varied first quarter in 2019, it went up, it went down. But thankfully, it closed the quarter slightly up on where it opened. Good news for investors.

Adobe today used the OFFF festival in Barcelona to show off an experimental feature for its Illustrator vector drawing application. The basic idea here is to allow Illustrator users to easily experiment with color palettes based on photos and other images. That makes it incredibly easy to create new variations of an existing drawing, based on real-life color palettes from an image.For now, though, this is only what Adobe likes to call a ‘sneak,’ that is, an experimental feature that the company plans to bring to its applications but that hasn’t quite reached the production stage yet.Some of these feature eventually become part of their respective Creative Cloud app, some don’t. This experiment, however, seems pretty straightforward, so I would be surprised if it didn’t end up in one of the next versions of Illustrator. Extracting a color palette isn’t all that hard, after all. Indeed, with Adobe Color, the company already offers a stand-alone tool that can do just this. The trick then is to match those palettes to the existing drawing. It’s hard to tell how well that currently works, but at least in Adobe’s demos, it’s a pretty seamless experience....

Walmart this morning unveiled a new “store of the future” and test grounds for emerging technologies, including A.I.-enabled cameras and interactive displays. The store, a working concept called the Intelligent Retail Lab — or “IRL” for short — operates out of a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, New York.The store is open to customers and is one of Walmart’s busiest Neighborhood Market stores containing over 30,000 items, the retailer says, which allows it to test out technology in a real world environment.Similar to Amazon Go’s convenience stores, the store has a suite of cameras mounted in the ceiling. But unlike Amazon Go, which is a grab-and-go store with smaller square footage, Walmart’s IRL spans 50,000 square feet of retail space and is staffed by over 100 employees....

The six-episode series is written by Luke Davies, who wrote Lion, and David Michôd, who wrote War Machine. In addition to staring in the show, Clooney will direct alongside Grant Heslov, who produced Argo. While Catch 22 has been adapted for the big screen and a television pilot, this will be the first full TV series based on the Joseph Heller novel....

There is, undoubtedly, a great deal of stuff on the Dark Web. Though marketplaces for buying drugs and weapons hosted on the Dark Web have faced a month of exit scams and shutdowns, countless other marketplaces for selling illicit goods—including website credential—still exist. Specialized marketplaces for buying and selling user credentials have emerged over the last several years, reducing the amount of manual work needed by cybercriminals to profit: Indexes of searchable, validated accounts, can be browsed by potential buyers, with purchases automated by the selling platform. To replenish these marketplaces, cybercriminals have relied on automated tools for hacking multiple random accounts, according to a report published Thursday by Recorded Future. Though this trend was first observed in late 2014, it continues to grow as platforms for stolen account credentials increase in popularity. Likewise, the maturation of the automated hacking tools, called "checkers," aids the process....

Have you heard? This Saturday is Tell a Story Day in the U.S., Scotland, and U.K., an unofficial holiday dedicated to conjuring up tales and reading books together with friends, family, and loved ones of all ages. To help get folks in the spirit, Google’s bringing Tell Me a Story, a Google Home smart speaker feature that reads aloud stories from popular franchises like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Blaze and the Monster Machines, to Android and iOS devices via Google Assistant.Starting today in English in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, and India, parents and kids can ask Google Assistant “Hey Google, tell me a story” or “Hey Google, tell me a bedtime story” to hear over 20 stories like Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks, The Tired Alien, The Chef Who Loved Potatoes, and The Cat’s Elopement. Note that you’ll need to have the latest version of Google Play Books for Android or iOS installed....

For the last year or so, you could ask the Google Assistant on your Google Home device to read your kids a story. Today, just in time for National Tell a Story Day, Google is bringing this feature to Android and iOS phones, too. It’ll be available in English in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and India.When you asked the Assistant on your phone to tell you a story before, you’d get a short inspirational quote or maybe a bad joke. Having two different experiences for the same command never really made much sense, so it’s good to see Google consolidate this.The available stories range from tales about Blaze and the Monster Machines to more classic bedtime stories like ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’...

Facebook has open-sourced one of the tools it uses to help manage an enormous amount of data on a daily basis. The social media giant has added its F14 hash table to its Folly open source library of components written in the C++ programming language.Hash tables are widely used by software to rapidly store and look-up data, and are prized for their ability to look-up data in a timely fashion, even as the volume of data stored in the table increases. "Folly's F14 is widely used inside Facebook," write Facebook software engineers Xiao Shi and Nathan Bronson in a blog post, who go on to spell out how F14 has improved the efficiency of everyday hash table operations. "F14 works well because its core algorithm leverages vector instructions to increase the load factor while reducing collisions, because it supports multiple memory layouts for different scenarios, and because we have paid attention to C++ overheads near the API. F14 is a good default choice - it delivers CPU and RAM efficiency that is robust across a wide variety of use cases."...

All you or your little ones have to do to get started is say "Hey Google, tell me a story" to hear tales such as Let's Be Firefighters! (Blaze and the Monster Machines) and Robot Rampage (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Ask Assistant to tell a bedtime story to help send the kids to the land of nod, and it will do just that. One caveat: you'll need to have the latest version of Google Play Books installed.It complements other family-friendly book features, including the , which provides sound effects on Home smart speakers as young bookworms read aloud. It works with some Disney Little Golden Books (such as Coco and Toy Story 3) and by a Google engineering manager, which aims to help kids learn about computers and technology. Assistant can also from Google Play....

Analysts have been all too happy to discuss 5G’s cart and horse problem, even as they wax poetic about the wireless technology’s future. Networks require devices and devices require networks. And while many have positioned 2019 as the year of 5G, both seem to be trickling out at a 2G rate.Verizon (disclosure: our parent company’s parent company) just revealed a one-two punch, opening up preorders for the Galaxy S10 5G and announcing a list of 20 cities that will be getting the technology before year’s end.The markets run coast to coast in the continental United States, including: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Memphis, Phoenix, Providence, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Washington DC....

More than half (55%) of executives at small-to-medium-sized companies (SMBs) said they would pay a ransom to hackers if it got them their stolen data back, according to an AppRiver report released Thursday. This number increases to 74% for professionals at larger SMBs, who reported they "definitely would pay ransom at almost any price" to either get their data back, or prevent it from getting stolen, the report found. SEE: Ransomware: What IT pros need to know (free PDF) (TechRepublic)Ransomware is one of the most popular forms of cyberattack, compelling US companies to pay an average of $57,088 to get their data back, especially as attacks grow more targeted. However, 45% of SMB leaders said they refuse to engage cybercriminals demanding a ransom, the report found. Legal services and nonprofit SMBs, in particular, were the least willing to pay a ransom, regardless of the amount....

The 256GB model of the S10 5G costs $1,300 and the 512GB option will set you back $1,400 ($54.16 or $58.33 per month respectively for 24 months on Verizon Device Payment plans). It'll be available in Verizon stores May 16 -- though Samsung will surely be hoping for a smoother launch than it's had .The S10 5G is a Verizon exclusive for a limited time and those who pre-order one will snag a free set of and a Samsung Wireless Charging Battery Pack. Verizon also noted access to its 5G Ultra Wideband network, which will typically cost $10 per month, will be included with Above and Beyond Unlimited plans for a limited period.Verizon it would open its 5G mobile network in parts of more than 30 US cities this year. It has already in areas of and it plans to do the same in the following 20 cities in 2019: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Memphis, Phoenix, Providence, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Washington DC. It will roll out in some of those cities too....

Coursera, an online learning startup that offers free and paid short courses, skills certifications, and complete degrees in partnership with universities and businesses, has raised another $103 million to scale out its business into new geographies, subject areas and products — a Series E led by a strategic investor, the Australian online recruitment and course directory provider SEEK Group, with participation from Future Fund and NEA.Coursera currently offers 3,200 courses and 310 specializations with partners including Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan. Some 40 million people have now taken online classes through the startup — a significant jump on the 26 million figure Coursera noted when it last raised money, in 2017, a $64 million Series D....

Moog has designed Matriarch's four analog VCOs so that they can be split into four notes of paraphony. From there, they can be sequenced, shifted and stored, or you can stack them in unison for a four-oscillator mono synth. And as you might expect, the synthesis modules here are based on Bob Moog's original circuit designs. Even though you don't have to use them, Matriarch offers 90 modular patch points for exploring the sonic possibilities of space and time this beast has to offer. At $1,999, this beast isn't cheap, but the sounds it's capable of are pretty insane.As far as connections go, there's a 1/4-inch input for processing guitars, drum machines and other gear through the Matriarch's analog circuitry. There are also 1/4-inch sustain and expression pedal inputs, in addition to stereo 1/4-inch and 3.5mm Eurorack outputs. MIDI I/O and MIDI over USB are here as well....

Online education giant Coursera has raised $103 million in a series E round of fudning led by Seek Group, with participation from Future Fund and NEA.A spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that it’s now valued at well over $1 billion, making Coursera the latest entry to the unicorn brigade.Founded in 2012, Coursera is one of a number of well-funded MOOCs — massive open online course — to emerge. Coursera partners with universities and other educational institutions to deliver online courses to 40 million students, covering subjects such as technology, business, science, and even autonomous cars.Coursera also has specific product offerings for the corporate market as well as governments and non-profits....

Hover, a startup developing AI-imbued apps that create customizable 3D models of homes from smartphone photos, today announced that it has raised $25 million in series C funding from Menlo Ventures, with participation from previous investors, including GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Standard Industries. This brings the company’s total venture capital raised to $87 million and will be used to grow Hover’s team and further develop its technology, according to CEO and cofounder A.J. Altman.“Hover gives homeowners the information needed to maximize the value of their largest economic asset. In a world where you can buy and sell your home online, you should also have the ability to plan and complete renovation projects from the palm of your hand,” Altman added. “With Hover, we are transforming homeownership by dramatically improving a notoriously frustrating process. [C]ontractors can give a quote to the homeowner during their first visit … This inevitably increases their chance of closing the deal on the spot.”...

Social media website VKontakte temporarily removes 400,000 users by mimicking Avengers: Infinity War.

Want your video game character to look just like you? Soon you’ll be able to scan an in-game code with Snapchat to play as your personalized Bitmoji avatar on PC, console, and mobile games. Today Snapchat announced is new Bitmoji For Games SDK that will let hand-selected partners integrate 3D Bitmoji as a replacement for their character skins. With support for Unity, Unreal, and the Play Canvas engine behind Snap’s new Bitmoji Party game inside Snapchat, the SDK should make it easy for developers to pipe in life-like avatars that give people a stronger emotional connection to the game.“It’s kind of a no-brainer to bring Bitmoji into games. Games can be so much more engaging with you…in the game” Bitmoji co-founder Ba Blackstock tells me. “We’re adding an identity layer to gaming that has the potential to have a transformational effect on the industry.”...

As Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana see usage climbing around the world, it’s hardly surprising that some folks are expressing misgivings about the always-on voice assistants in their homes. A report commissioned by Microsoft found that 41% of those surveyed had trust concerns, while a third said they’d prefer to use assistants that don’t tap their personal information or data. These are not baseless fears — Bloomberg earlier this month reported that Amazon contractors listen to and annotate sample audio from Alexa-powered devices, and Google patents detail audio systems that could recognize when a kid is engaging in “mischief.”It’s in this climate of wariness that Chatterbox, a startup headquartered in Campbell, California, is launching a build-it-yourself smart speaker for kids on Kickstarter. The company’s plan to convince skeptical parents? Instead of leveraging Amazon or Google’s platforms for voice recognition, it’s smartly using Mycroft, an independently developed and open source assistant focused on privacy....

In the wake of a number of high-profile breaches that leaked the personal information of millions, demand for cybersecurity professionals continues to grow, jumping up 7% from 2017 to 2018, according to a Wednesday report from job search site Indeed. But job seeker interest in these roles is diminishing, meaning companies often need to offer top dollar to attract and retain the most skilled candidates. From 2017 to 2018, clicks on US cybersecurity job listings dropped 1.3%, the report found. This could be due to a number of factors, including a failure to attract women and millennials to the field, as well as job postings that are seeking too many specific skills that could be trained on the job. ...

At least for Chris it didn't. Maybe you've had the opposite experience. Or perhaps you found the Pencil instrumental in drawing a floor plan, or noticed how good your photographs look on the 2,732 x 2,048 "Liquid Retina" display. If you've got thoughts and opinions, take 'em on over to our and leave a review (or even just a rating) for the tablet that Apple touted as the "future of computing." Note: Comments are off; please contribute your review on the !All products recommended by Engadget were selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company, Verizon Media. If you buy something through one of our links, we may earn an affiliate commission....

Uber drivers in seven US cities are planning protests to highlight what they claim are poor working conditions and low wages at the ride-hailing firm.The drivers say they are paid below minimum wage levels required by some states and barely above national rates.For 12 hours, the drivers involved in the protests plan to turn off the Uber app and stop working for the ride-hailing firm.The protests will take place on 8 May when Uber makes its stock market debut."Uber's much-anticipated IPO [initial public offering] will put millions into the pockets of executives, but the drivers who are the core of the service of the company will get nothing," Shona Clarkson from Gig Workers Rising, which is helping to organise the protests, told The Guardian....

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting businesses seeking a payday, according to a Thursday report from Malwarebytes. Threats aimed at corporations increased 235% between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019, with Trojans and ransomware as the most popular tools for hackers to use against businesses, the report found.Malwarebytes compiled statistics from its Intelligence, Research, and Data Science teams with data from its consumer and business products across PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Overall detection of threats to businesses increased by 7% over the previous quarter. SEE: Ransomware: What IT pros need to know (free PDF) (TechRepublic)The Trojan Emotet in particular was among the most dangerous threats faced by businesses this year, as it shifted almost completely away from consumers to enterprise targets, the report found. Detections of Trojans on business endpoints spiked more than 200% from the previous quarter, and nearly 650% year over year. ...

Shopify is expanding its efforts in brick-and-mortar retailer with the launch of its new retail hardware collection.The company is best-known as a platform for building online stores, but it also offers point-of-sale software for physical stores, and it launched a credit card reader a couple years ago. With the new collection — which includes a redesigned Tap & Chip Reader, as well as the Dock and Retail Stand — Shopify has created a more comprehensive solution for offline retail.Chief Product Officer Craig Miller told me that Shopify is taking advantage of an “industry-wide trend,” where online retailers hit a “tipping point” and realize that “the next step to scale your business is opening an offline store.” He pointed to bedding and home decor company Parachute as an example — after all, Miller and his team were demonstrating the hardware in Parachute’s New York City store....

cites one Peloton user, Ally, who says that "Random songs are plopped in the middle of an otherwise consistently themed playlist." Meanwhile, the Peloton subreddit brings up dozens of complaints about the service's subpar music quality. "I'm enjoying rides much less than before," one redditor, while another , "I bought this bike because I like to ride to good music and now I'm forced to ride to terrible tunes."Of course, music is an entirely subjective preference -- perhaps some riders would be quite content with the "2 Pink songs and 2 'Now that's What I Call Music' tracks" by one dissatisfied customer. But it does seem that Peloton knows something's up. As one redditor , "Had anyone noticed it's like the instructors are trying to convince you it's good when we both know it's not as good? They seem to make a lot of comments like, 'This is a band you've never heard of, but it's awesome!' and 'Whoever knew____ could sound like this?' It's awkward."...

Nintendo’s Switch has now outsold its N64 console on lifetime sales, but prospects for the portable gaming system look mixed for the next year following a conservative sales forecast.Nintendo just announced its end of year financials, and in doing so it revealed that it sold 16.95 million Switch consoles in the last year, taking it to 34.7 million sales to date and therein surpassing the N64. That annual sales figure is about on par with Nintendo’s target of 17 million — which was revised from an initial (and very ambitious) 20 million — but what happens over the next twelve-month period is less clear....