July 2023

Ex-Twitter Blue chief on Musk’s ‘lack of process’ and impulsive management style

July 27, 2023
Esther Crawford, the former head of Twitter Blue, wrote a long post on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, talking about the old management, working under Elon Musk, and going viral for sleeping on the floor in the office. Crawford, who joined Twitter in 2020 after the company acquired her social startup Squad, […]

Photoshop’s new generative AI feature lets you ‘uncrop’ images

July 27, 2023
Adobe is building on Firefly, its family of generative AI models, with a feature in Photoshop that “expands images beyond their original bounds,” as the company describes it. Aptly called Generative Expand, the capability, available in the beta version of Photoshop, lets users expand and resize images by clicking and dragging the Crop tool, which […]

a16z-backed Eco unveils Beam, a P2P crypto transfer service aiming to be a ‘global Venmo’

July 27, 2023
The crypto payments space is seeing a surge of activity these days as developers strive to make decentralized finance as user-friendly as web2 experiences. Eco Inc, an a16z-backed payments startup that’s raised $95 million in funding to date, just unveiled a decentralized payments project called Beam. In an interview with TechCrunch, the company’s CEO Andy […]

The Download: protecting photos from AI, and air-conditioning’s dilemma

July 27, 2023
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This new tool could protect your pictures from AI manipulation What’s happening? There’s currently nothing stopping someone taking the selfie you posted online last week and editing it using powerful generative AI systems.…

US government contractor says MOVEit hackers accessed health data of ‘at least’ 8 million individuals

July 27, 2023
U.S. government services contracting giant Maximus has confirmed that hackers exploiting a vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer accessed the protected health information of as many as 11 million individuals. Virginia-based Maximus contracts with federal, state, and local governments to manage and administer government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, healthcare reform, and welfare-to-work.  In an 8-K filing […]

GlossGenius raises $28M to expand its bookings and payments platform for beauty businesses

July 27, 2023
GlossGenius, a platform designed to handle bookings and payments for salons and spas, today announced that it raised $28 million in a Series C funding round led by L Catterton with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Imaginary Ventures. The round values GlossGenius at $510 million — the startup’s second up-round in the past 12 […]

Previous governments’ incompetence crippled India’s semiconductor growth, deputy IT minister says

July 27, 2023
In an indictment of past administrations, a senior Indian minister blamed their strategic and political vision and “a big dose of incompetence” as significant contributors to the country’s underdeveloped semiconductor industry. “India has missed the bus repeatedly on electronics and semiconductors. There was a lack of strategic and political vision and a big dose of incompetence,” […]

EU opens competition probe of Microsoft bundling Teams with Office 365

July 27, 2023
The European Union has finally announced a formal antitrust investigation of Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The move comes two years after rival workplace comms company Slack complained to the bloc that Microsoft was unfairly bundling the collaboration and comms software with its popular cloud-based productivity suites for business. Announcing […]