Thursday, January 9, 2025

India’s payment push is cutting out Visa and Mastercard

on 10:32 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

As global regulators increase their scrutiny on Visa and Mastercard over merchant fees, India has chosen a different path: creating rival payment networks that are increasingly sidelining international card networks. The strategy builds on India’s Unified Payments Interface, known as UPI, a nine-year-old system that now processes more than 13 billion real-time transactions monthly, or […]

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X says it is rolling out labels for parody accounts

on 10:02 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Elon Musk-owned social network X said today that it is rolling out labels for parody or satire accounts to differentiate them from other accounts. In the past, users, including news presenters, have mistaken posts from parody accounts as authentic statements made by real people or entities. The company’s safety account on the platform said that […]

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Tesla launches new-look Model Y in China

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Tesla has revealed a new-look Model Y meant for the Chinese and other Asian-Pacific markets, marking the first major update to the SUV since its launch in 2020. The redesign comes as Tesla finished 2024 having delivered fewer vehicles than it did in 2023. It was the first year-over-year drop since the company started selling […]

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This security system shoots paintballs at intruders

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Doorbell cameras are standard fare these days. More and more people have invested in connected security systemss, as the technology has become both cheaper and more user friendly. There’s one important thing these system won’t do, however: shoot people and animals with paintballs. That is, however, pretty much the Eve PaintCam’s whole M.O. Carrying the […]

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Every smartphone in LA accidentally received a wildfire evacuation alert

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As wildfires rage for the third consecutive day through parts of Los Angeles, now including the Hollywood Hills, several neighborhoods have been forced to evacuate for safety purposes. But on Thursday afternoon, a wildfire evacuation alert was mistakenly sent to the smartphone of every resident in Los Angeles County, a region with more than 9 […]

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Hippocratic AI raises $141M for creating patient-facing AI agents

on 5:02 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Hippocratic AI, a startup building AI solutions that can handle non-diagnostic patient-facing tasks, secured a massive $141 million Series B at a valuation of $1.64 billion led by Kleiner Perkins, the company announced Thursday. The funding comes nine months after Hippocratic AI raised a $53 million round from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz and five […]

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Nvidia’s AI avatar sat on my computer screen and weirded me out

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Nvidia unveiled a prototype AI avatar at CES 2025 that lives on your PC’s desktop. The AI assistant, R2X, looks like a video game character, and it can help you navigate apps on your computer. The R2X avatar is rendered and animated using Nvidia’s AI models, and users can run the avatar on popular LLMs […]

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ICON, a builder of 3D printed homes last valued around $2 billion, cuts about 25% of staff

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ICON Technologies Inc., which builds homes using 3D printing, is laying off 114 people, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to TechCrunch, providing a statement that ICON had “recently made a difficult decision to re-align” its team and team size “to focus […]

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Apptronik’s Apollo humanoid robot gets to work at CES 2025

on 4:02 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

CES 2025 has been a mixed bag for humanoid robots. The form factor had a watershed moment, as images of the top players flanked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang during his Monday keynote. Of these, Agility’s Digit also showed up alongside a miniature conveyer belt at a closed access NVIDIA booth. It was a nice return […]

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Defense startup Epirus in talks to raise over $150M, potentially cutting valuation

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The round could give the company a valuation of about $1 billion, a decrease from the company’s previous $1.35 billion valuation.

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TikTok tells LA staff impacted by wildfires to use personal/sick hours if they can’t work from home

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Wildfires are currently devastating the greater Los Angeles area, burning over 45 square miles, torching over 1,300 structures, and putting nearly 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday. And yet, TikTok’s LA-based employees are being told to either continue their work from home or use their personal/sick days if that’s not possible, while the […]

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VLC tops 6 billion downloads, previews AI-generated subtitles

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VLC media player, the popular open-source software developed by nonprofit VideoLAN, has topped 6 billion downloads worldwide and teased an AI-powered subtitle system. The new feature automatically generates real-time subtitles — which can then also be translated in many languages — for any video using open-source AI models that run locally on users’ devices, eliminating […]

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Apple might be working on a new ‘Invites’ app

on 3:01 AM in features, Tech News with No comments

The year has just begun, and Apple might already be in “Sherlocking” mode to create a new app for iOS called Invites. Details are still thin on what this app might look like, but it could potentially be a competitor to Evite or Partiful. According to findings in iOS 18.3 beta 2 code by 9to5Mac, Apple […]

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Grand Games, the Turkish gaming startup behind pouring game Magic Sort, drinks up $30M

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Gaming startups — specifically those building casual mobile games — are very hot in Turkey right now, and today another one is announcing a sizeable round just nine months into its existence. Grand Games, the publisher behind Magic Sort and Car Match, has picked up $30 million in funding — money that it will use […]

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Defiant is a new European VC firm that uses data and products to make better investments

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Defiant is a new early stage VC firm focused on B2B SaaS and fintech coming out of stealth today. Joseph Pizzolato (pictured right) and Cam Rail (pictured left), the duo at the helm of the firm who met when they were six years old, have already secured $30 million and plan to raise as much […]

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