Why concerns over the sustainability of carbon removal are growing

February 29, 2024
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. There’s a looming problem in the carbon removal space. By one count, nearly 800 companies around the world are exploring a wide variety of methods for drawing planet-warming greenhouse gas out of…

Generative AI: Differentiating disruptors from the disrupted

February 29, 2024
Generative AI, though still an emergent technology, has been in the headlines since OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked a global frenzy in 2023. The technology has rapidly advanced far beyond its early, human-like capacity to enhance chat functions. It shows extensive promise across a range of use cases, including content creation, translation, image processing, and code writing.…

Popular video doorbells can be easily hijacked, researchers find

February 29, 2024

Several internet-connected doorbell cameras have a security flaw that allows hackers to take over the camera by just holding down a button, among other issues, according to research by Consumer Reports. On Thursday, the non-profit Consumer Reports published research that detailed four security and privacy flaws in cameras made by EKEN, a company based in […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

How scientists are using quantum squeezing to push the limits of their sensors

February 29, 2024
When two black holes spiral inward and collide, they shake the very fabric of space, producing ripples in space-time that can travel for hundreds of millions of light-years. Since 2015, scientists have been observing these so-called gravitational waves to help them study fundamental questions about the cosmos, including the origin of heavy elements such as…

Meta’s Zuckerberg woos big tech in Asia to double down on AI chips

February 29, 2024

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is touring Asia countries this week, said in a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday that Meta wants to beef up its cooperation with Samsung Electronics for AI chips to offset geopolitical risk issue in Taiwan, where TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chip manufacturer, is headquartered. […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ex-Meta employees’ Aptos tests Hong Kong’s crypto appetite

February 29, 2024

Ever since Hong Kong legalized cryptocurrency trading last June, blockchain projects from the West have been paying more attention to the Asian financial hub. Aptos, the a16z-backed blockchain network developed by a group of former Meta employees, is one of them. Started by some of the original creators of Meta’s abandoned crypto payment project Diem, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Silence Laboratories, a cryptographic security startup, secures funding

February 29, 2024

Silence Laboratories, a startup that builds infrastructure using multiparty computation (MPC) to help enterprises keep data private and safe, said it has raised a $4.1 million funding round. Pi Ventures and Kira Studio co-led the recent funding, which brings its total raised to $6 million, along with angel investors. The startup will use the funding to scale […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Bfree, a Nigerian startup enabling lenders recover debt ethically, gets $3M backing

February 29, 2024

Bfree, a tech-enabled debt collection startup based in Nigeria, was founded to automate and introduce ethical debt recovery processes after its founders witnessed the use and adverse effects of aggressive retrieval techniques, such as incessant calling and debt-shaming, by predatory digital lenders. After its launch in 2020, the startup introduced a number of scalable debt […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Mastodon users can now share their profile via QR code on Android

February 29, 2024

Decentralized social network Mastodon has updated its official app for Android to let users easily share their profiles with QR Codes. This could be useful in loud places like event and hotel lobbies to exchange profiles, the company said in a blog post. To share the QR code, users can go to their profile tab […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta’s ‘consent or pay’ data grab in EU faces fresh charges of privacy coercion

February 29, 2024

A controversial move by Meta last year, when it switched to charging users in the Europe Union for an ad-free subscription for access Facebook and/or Instagram unless they agreed to be tracked and profiled so it could keep running its attention-mining microtargeting ad business, has triggered a set of complaints from consumer rights groups. The […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.