November 8, 2024

The Download: AI vs quantum, and the future of reproductive rights in the US

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. Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse…

Squarespace sells restaurant reservation system Tock to American Express for $400M

June 21, 2024

Website building platform Squarespace is selling Tock, its restaurant reservation service, to American Express in a deal worth $400 million — the exact figure that Squarespace paid for the service three years ago. The news comes shortly after news emerged that private equity giant Permira was taking Squarespace private in a deal worth $6.9 billion […]

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Google is pausing its experiment of allowing real-money games on the Play Store

June 21, 2024

Google said today that it is globally pausing its experiment of allowing real-money games on the Play Store, where there was no central body for this kind of app. In January, the company said it would start allowing real-money apps widely in June in India, Brazil, and Mexico. Notably, India has had a pilot program […]

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The Download: replacing animal testing, and underwater drones

June 21, 2024
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. Is this the end of animal testing? Animal studies are notoriously bad at identifying human treatments. Around 95% of the drugs developed through animal research fail in people, but until recently there was…

Kevin Hartz’s A* raises its second oversubscribed fund in two years

June 21, 2024

Venture firms raised $9.3 billion in Q1 according to PitchBook data, which means this year likely won’t match or surpass 2023’s $81.8 billion total. While emerging managers are feeling the fundraising market’s frost the most, some emerging VCs like A* have enough name recognition, and a good enough track record, to still find success. A*, […]

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Google is making your movie and TV reviews visible under a new profile page

June 21, 2024

Google is making all your movie, TV shows, books, albums and game reviews visible under one profile page starting June 24, according to an email sent to users last month. These profiles are also searchable through Google searches, which can lead to users’ being profiled based on their likes and dislikes. The company first launched […]

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Should social media come with a health warning?

June 21, 2024
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.  Earlier this week, the US surgeon general, also known as the “nation’s doctor,” authored an article making the case that health warnings should accompany social media. The goal:…

Is this the end of animal testing?

June 21, 2024
In a clean room in his lab, Sean Moore peers through a microscope at a bit of intestine, its dark squiggles and rounded structures standing out against a light gray background. This sample is not part of an actual intestine; rather, it’s human intestinal cells on a tiny plastic rectangle, one of 24 so-called “organs…

Zepto, a 10-minute delivery app, raises $665 million at $3.6 billion valuation

June 21, 2024

Zepto has more than doubled its valuation to $3.6 billion from $1.4 billion in less than a year in a new funding round of $665 million as the Mumbai-based startup intensifies the quick commerce competition in the world’s second largest internet market. Zepto sells and delivers everything from grocery items to electronic gadgets within 10 […]

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