December 2023

Circuit City, angling for a comeback of sorts, hopes to raise $25M

December 13, 2023

At the risk of dating myself, I’m old enough to remember the days when Best Buy had a formidable rival in superstore chains: Circuit City. A cross between an appliance store (at least until it stopped selling appliances) and all-around electronics retailers, Circuit City was the place to be for nerdy, tech-obsessed kids like myself […]

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Apple will no longer give police users’ push notification data without a warrant

December 13, 2023

Apple said it will no longer give over records of users’ push notifications to law enforcement unless the company receives a valid judge’s order. In its law enforcement guidelines updated this week, Apple said law enforcement and government agencies can now obtain push notification records with a court order or a search warrant, both of […]

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Vertex will pay tens of millions to license a controversial CRISPR patent

December 13, 2023
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a dominant CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease. The agreement allows Vertex to start selling its treatment, approved last Friday, without fear of patent infringement claims. The one-time treatment…

Spotify u-turns on Uruguay exit after government gives assurances on artist payments

December 13, 2023

Spotify has reversed course on a decision to exit the Uruguayan market, after gaining assurances from the government that copyright law changes it’s introducing won’t result in Spotify incurring extra costs. For those not following all the goings-ons in Uruguay’s music-streaming scene, the saga unfolded something like this. Last October, Uruguay passed a new law […]

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Instagram’s status feature now lets you post short video updates

December 13, 2023

Instagram is launching the ability for users to post video Notes, the company announced on Wednesday. Notes is Instagram’s status feature that launched a year ago. Up until now, you could only post text or emojis to your status update. Now, you can post a two-second looping video Note that will be visible to your mutual […]

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Globetrotter’s new app is a ‘Spotify Wrapped’ for your travel memories

December 13, 2023

Frequent travelers who want to track their trips and reminisce about their favorite spots and travel memories now have a new app to do so. Globetrotter is today introducing a location-based travel photos app that lets you look back on your past travels and share your memories and stats out to other social apps, like […]

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What X needs most now is for Snap to post a solid Q4

December 13, 2023

Will Snap’s recent good fortunes benefit X? With new numbers on hand, let’s take a look at X’s financials and its valuation.

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With AI Studio, Google launches an easy-to-use tool for developing apps and chatbots based on its Gemini model

December 13, 2023

After announcing its family of Gemini models last week and bringing it to its Bard chatbot experience, Google is now bringing Gemini to developers by launching a slew of new and updated services today. One of these services is AI Studio — which was previously known as MakerSuite. AI Studio is a web-based tool for […]

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Why Automattic spent $50M on Texts.com

December 13, 2023

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a key topic and dive deep into it. You may recall that Automattic bought all-in-one messaging […]

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