Big Tech take note: In what looks like a meaningful — and long overdue — reforming step, the European Commission has committed to dial up its monitoring of how data protection authorities at the EU Member State level enforce the bloc’s flagship data protection rules — committing to regular checks on “large scale” General Data
Month: January 2023
Everyone’s talking about unplugging these days — climbing a mountain, trekking through the forest, finding your way to a truly secluded beach. Central to that concept is turning off notifications, uninstalling work apps or even — if you’re feeling especially brave — leaving the phone at home for a week or two. But is paradise
Peacock is no longer offering its free tier to new customers, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. The company says it’s shifting its focus to its Premium offering, and that doing so will allow the streaming service to remain competitive in the marketplace. The change was first reported by The Streamable. The
Two quantum-adjacent technologies — quantum sensing (QS) and quantum communication (Qcomm) — are as important as quantum computing hardware itself since they help make quantum computers function more accurately. A Sydney-based startup called Q-CTRL has built quantum-sensing software that helps reduce errors on quantum computers. Today, the company announced that it has raised another $27.4
Welcome to the dark night of the smart speaker. A few years back, the category felt inevitable — and, frankly, why not? We’ve smartened our phones and watches. Why shouldn’t our homes be the next step? For decades, many looked longingly at home automation. Smart blinds that opened with your alarm clock might as well
Netflix announced today that its “One Piece” live-action series would be available to stream sometime in 2023. The company tweeted the announcement alongside a new poster of the upcoming series. The poster shows the main character, Monkey D. Luffy (played by Iñaki Godoy), with his back turned. A specific release date for the live-action series
Movano Health turned heads at CES with an ouroboros-esque smart ring designed for women. In the crowded field of fitness wearables, where the mainstream heavy hitter of the Apple Watch heads up a very long tail of typically less pricey and/or more specialist activity tracking bracelets and bands all keen to claim their own patch
After eight months, Netflix’s Kids Mystery Box feature has officially rolled out to Android devices today. Android users worldwide can now discover new children’s shows and TV characters by clicking on the “Mystery Box” in the “Favorites Row” at the top of the Netflix homepage. The company today updated its previous announcement post from May,
I have wanted a robot pet at least since Sony introduced the original Aibo in 1999 – probably earlier, but Aibo made it seem tangible. Since the, there’s been a steady stream of attempts at making robot pets a reality that matches what we often see in futuristic science fiction – including a recent Aibo
Nearly a year after ViacomCBS announced its rebrand to become Paramount, the company is now making a major change to its portfolio with today’s news that it will be fully integrating Showtime into Paramount+ — the streamer known in previous years as CBS All Access. The integration will include both streaming and linear platforms, the company
French startup Sorare has signed a four-year licensing partnership with the Premier League. This is an important move for the company as the English football league is one of the most-watched sports league in the world. Sorare is a fantasy sports gaming experience based on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. In particular, Sorare has partnered with
After a decade of frantic growth, China’s smartphone market is hitting a speed bump as COVID-19 roils the world’s second-largest economy. The country’s smartphone shipments dropped 14% year-over-year in 2022, reaching a ten-year low, according to research firm Counterpoint. It was also the first time that China’s handset sales had slid below 300 million units
French startup Welcome to the Jungle has raised a new $54 million (€50 million) Series C round. The startup helps other companies recruit new employees more easily by creating sophisticated profiles packed with a ton of information. In particular, Welcome to the Jungle sends a photo and video crew to your office so that they
German insurtech startup Getsafe is adding a fourth market with today’s product launch. In addition to Germany, Austria and the U.K., Getsafe is now going to offer insurance products in France. The company will first offer a home insurance product. Getsafe is trying to disrupt the insurance market with a focus on digital-first insurance products.
If you live in France and you want to add a security system to your home, you don’t have a ton of options. You can contact a home security company like Verisure and Homiris. But you’ll end up paying expensive subscription fees with long-term contracts. You can also buy your own security camera and connected
When Shutterstock and OpenAI announced a partnership to help develop OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 artificial intelligence image-generating platform with Shutterstock libraries to train and feed the algorithm, the stock photo and media giant also hinted that it would soon be bringing its own generative AI tools to users. Today the company took the wraps off that
When payments giant Stripe raised $600 million at a $95 billion valuation in 2021, it made headlines for raising capital at the highest-ever valuation for a privately held startup. Defending that valuation appears to be challenging. The fintech company has reportedly approached investors about raising more capital — at least $2 billion — at a
An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it. Called MusicLM, Google’s certainly isn’t the first generative AI system for song. There have been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by
Seen through the lens of His Royal Highness, Prince Constantijn Haje Jan Kamps 12 hours I find something very intriguing about members of a royal family working to further the startup scene for a particular country. In a magnificently frank conversation, I spoke with HRH Prince Constantijn, fourth in line to the throne of the
Kano, the venture-backed U.K. startup known for its build-your-own computer kits and software for teaching coding and associated STEM skills, has accused Warner Bros. of copying one of its products and infringing on its intellectual property (IP). The product in question is the Harry Potter: Magic Caster Wand that Warner Bros. announced back in October, and which
HBO announced today that the hit series “The Last of Us” is getting a second season, likely satisfying more than 22 million domestic viewers that watched the Season 1 premiere episode so far. On the night of the premiere, it was viewed by 4.7 million Americans. The announcement comes less than a week after “The
Despite Canva being worth in the region of $26 billion, it appears startups feel there is still plenty to be mined from this “easy-to-use design platform” arena. Admittedly, Professional Adobe tools remain fiddly for most people. Perhaps that’s why Berlin-based startup Kittl has now raised a €10.8 million ($11.6 million) Series A for its design
Comcast-owned streaming service Peacock had its best quarterly result since its 2020 launch, adding five million paying subscribers in its fourth quarter of 2022 to bring the total to 20 million, up from the over 15 million subs in the previous quarter. In Q1 2021, Peacock had 9 million paid users. Peacock gets much of
In the wake of a seminal wave of new artificial intelligence startups such as OpenAI, a new U.K. company claims it can track and rank banks on their ability to develop and deploy AI platforms. Evident, a benchmarking and intelligence company, says its inaugural Index can rank the 23 largest banks in North America and
Today, HBO announced that the fourth season of the Emmy-winning drama series “Succession” will premiere on Sunday, March 26. It will debut at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and will stream on HBO Max. “Succession” focuses on the Roy family and their media empire, Waystar Royco. Throughout the show, Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox),
Meet Renaissance Fusion, a Grenoble-based startup that has been working on nuclear fusion for the past couple of years. The company recently raised $16.4 million (€15 million) in funding in a seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital. Several European investors also participated in the round, such as HCVC, Positron Ventures and Norssken. “We are proud
The folks behind Nebia — the techy shower-head startup backed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and a host of other big names — have sold to Mark Cuban’s Brondell, which makes bidets, air purifiers and the like. The Nebia name and water-saving nozzles will live on following the deal, co-founders Philip Winter and Gabriel Parisi-Amon
Newsletter platform Substack announced today that it’s introducing several new features, including private Substacks. A private Substack is a publication that you can host alone or readers can request to subscribe to read your posts. Writers can choose to approve or decline each subscription request. In a blog post, Substack explained that private Substack accounts
As much as 40% of all food produced each year goes nowhere near a human mouth, resulting in economic, environmental, and social costs of an estimated $2.6 trillion. While there are a multitude of social, cultural, and even technological reasons for these staggering statistics, we’ve seen a slew of startups emerge with propositions on how
Nobody is going to accuse Angry Miao of making boring keyboards (or earbuds). The company’s previous releases, The Cyberboard, Am Hatsu and Am AFA, are as overengineered as they are unique. When the company first started teasing its new 60% board, it almost looked too conventional to be an Angry Miao product, but keeping with
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