Earlier this week, European Commissioner Thierry Breton sent a stark open letter to X, formerly Twitter, criticizing its failure to curb disinformation and illegal content on the platform after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Today, X responded with a lengthy letter that was short on numbers and directly acknowledged …
Read More »Strange Object Movements Beyond Neptune The Alternative Gravity Effect, Astrophysicists Say
The “Planet Nine” has been sought many times, but without success. In a new paper, a team proposes that gravity is wrong. Astronomers have been puzzled by a Kuiper Belt clustering for decades. Astrophysicists believe small objects are being “shepherded” by a large unknown planet far beyond Neptune’s orbit. Theoretical …
Read More »Open OSIRIS-REx cannister live today from NASA. How to Watch
A few weeks ago, OSIRIS-REx delivered priceless Bennu samples to Earth. NASA’s Johnson Space Center will livestream the opening of the canister today, revealing the precious material. To avoid contamination from Earth’s atmosphere, the asteroid bits will be opened in a glovebox. On Wednesday, October 11, showtime is 11 am …
Read More »Yooga wants its restaurant OS to be ‘Toast of Latin America’
Yooga, a Brazilian restaurant management system developer, received $2.3 million in seed capital. Gilgamesh, Apex Partners, and Backfuture joined SaaSholic in the round. Vinicius Melo, Victor Sortica, and Cassiano Guerra Fernandes co-founded Yooga in 2017 and bootstrapped it for three years before raising $300,000 in a 2020 friends-and-family round. Melo …
Read More »Formant handles data for robotics companies
Ten years ago this December, Google acquired Bot & Dolly and about a dozen other robotics companies. San Francisco-based firm known for special effects work on films like “Gravity,” was merged into a new portfolio with ambitious industry-changing plans. Things didn’t go as planned for many reasons we won’t discuss. …
Read More »China’s EV startups face challenges after WM Motor’s bankruptcy
WM Motor, another promising Chinese EV startup, has filed for bankruptcy as bigger players gain market share and Chinese spending on big ticket items declines. WM Motor, Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng were China’s best-funded EV startups, backed by Baidu and Tencent. Investors gave the company over $5.3 billion, including …
Read More »UK antitrust regulator investigates $19B Vodafone/Three mobile merger
In June, Vodafone and Hutchison-owned Three announced their plan to merge in a non-cash deal to create a $19B mega mobile operator. We predicted a significant regulatory hurdle. The country’s main antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, announced an investigation into the deal today. Today’s announcement invites competitors, companies, …
Read More »TabbyML raises $3.2 million as an open-source GitHub Copilot competitor
The race to create AI assistants that help programmers is on. TabbyML, founded by two ex-Googlers, received $3.2 million in seed funding for its open-source code generator. TabbyML, a self-hosted coding assistant, is more customizable than GitHub’s Copilot, according to startup co-founder Meng Zhang. “We believe in a future where …
Read More »Last month, ChatGPT’s mobile app earned $4.58M, a record. Growth is slowing
ChatGPT’s mobile efforts have good and bad news. On the bright side, the AI chatbot set a new record in September with 15.6 million app installs and nearly $4.6 million in gross revenue across its iOS and Android apps worldwide. New data from Appfigures shows revenue growth slowing. Revenue growth …
Read More »Former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst replaces unity CEO John Riccitiello
Today, Unity announced that CEO John Riccitiello was resigning as president, CEO, and board chair, leaving him with little to do after weeks of upsetting developers with a runtime fee. The company unexpectedly appointed former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst as interim CEO. Whitehurst is a placeholder while the company …
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