GadgetFreak

New York Times : Employment in tech occupations grew 12% YoY to a record 6.39M in November 2022, as workers eye banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing amid tech layoffs   —  Most tech jobs are now in mainstream industries like health care, banking and retail, which are increasingly in need of workers with digital skills. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/hGn5FBo via IFTTT

Jenni Reid / CNBC : A look at ABBA Voyage, the hit London concert performed by 3D digital avatars of the band created from motion capture, as its producers plan a global expansion   —  - ABBA Voyage, which sees digital avatars of the four-piece Swedish band ‘perform’ a 90-minute concert created from motion capture … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/xVC95RI via IFTTT

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak : Leaked screener copies of big movies tend to surface at year's end, but didn't in 2022, probably due to more security, streaming, and shorter release windows   —  Screeners are advance copies of recent movies that are generally sent out to critics and awards voters for review. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/xpbqZue via IFTTT

Lily Hay Newman / Wired : A look at 2022's worst breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital takeovers, including at least two Twilio breaches   —  The year was marked by sinister new twists on cybersecurity classics, including phishing, breaches, and ransomware attacks. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/IoyX2AQ via IFTTT

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch : Meta buys Netherlands-based Luxexcel, which uses 3D printing to make prescription lenses for smart glasses; Meta reportedly worked with Luxexcel on Project Aria   —  As Meta faces antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of VR fitness developers Within, the tech giant is making another acquisition. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/RhXwem9 via IFTTT

Shared electric scooters came onto the scene five years ago with a promising vision of getting people out of cars and onto greener modes of transportation. Yet despite billions in VC money and plenty of hype , the future that micromobility companies promised still hasn’t quite arrived. In cities like Paris, most people aren’t replacing car trips with shared e-scooter jaunts in a meaningful way; the cost of riding scooters makes them an expensive option for last-mile transit connections and equitable access; and the public disclosures of Bird and Helbiz have shown us that achieving profitability is incredibly difficult. Plus, cities that allowed shared e-scooter companies in their midsts are increasingly making it difficult for scooter companies to operate sustainably. For the sake of traffic flow and carbon emissions , there need to be alternatives to cars. Are shared e-scooters the answer to that, or are they just another shitty option? What have we gained by introducing shared

Kashmir Hill / New York Times : Google changes its appeals process for accounts flagged as containing CSAM; the content deemed exploitative will still be removed from Google and reported   —  People who upload images of children that Google flags as potentially illegal will be able to provide more context to appeal bans. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/do7ynrm via IFTTT

Wall Street Journal : Source: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is likely to plead not guilty to eight counts of fraud at a hearing next week   —  Created with sketchtool.  —  FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is likely to plead not guilty to eight counts of fraud at a hearing next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/GbJ71RD via IFTTT

Generative AI is coming for videos. A new website, QuickVid , combines several generative AI systems into a single tool for automatically creating short-form YouTube, Instagram TikTok and Snapchat videos. Given as little as a single word, QuickVid chooses a background video from a library, writes a script and keywords, overlays images generated by DALL-E 2 , and adds a synthetic voiceover and background music from YouTube’s royalty-free music library. QuickVid’s creator, Daniel Habib, says that he’s building the service to help creators meet the “ever-growing” demand from their fans. “By providing creators with tools to quickly and easily produce quality content, QuickVid helps creators increase their content output, reducing the risk of burnout,” Habib told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Our goal is to empower your favorite creator to keep up with the demands of their audience by leveraging advancements in AI.” But depending on how they’re used, tools like QuickVid threaten to

The first open source equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has arrived, but good luck running it on your laptop — or at all. This week, Philip Wang, the developer responsible for reverse-engineering closed-sourced AI systems including Meta’s Make-A-Video , released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT. The system combines PaLM , a large language model from Google, and a technique called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback — RLHF, for short — to create a system that can accomplish pretty much any task that ChatGPT can, including drafting emails and suggesting computer code. But PaLM + RLHF isn’t pre-trained. That is to say, the system hasn’t been trained on the example data from the web necessary for it to actually work. Downloading PaLM + RLHF won’t magically install a ChatGPT-like experience — that would require compiling gigabytes of text from which the model can learn and finding hardware beefy enough to handle the training workload. Like ChatG

Matt Levine / Bloomberg : Crypto has built a toy financial system and had a toy financial crisis; in order to work in the long run it has to prove its real usefulness outside of finance   —  On Oct. 25, Bloomberg Businessweek published “The Crypto Story,” a cover-to-cover issue of the magazine that I wrote about what crypto is and what it all might mean. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/GRVpemA via IFTTT

Credit: Epix, HBO Max, Amazon Let’s face it: if you love watching great television, you know that we live in a new golden age of TV shows. The streaming revolution has brought us tons of great shows across various genres over the years. 2022 was no exception, and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon. However, that also means many great shows sometimes slip through the cracks of even the most dedicated TV fans. So what were some of the best streaming shows you may have missed in 2022? We picked 10 shows you may not have been aware of that were first launched in 2022. Sadly, some of these shows won’t be getting a second season, but they are still worth your time to check out. Be sure to check out our list of the best streaming shows of 2022 as well . from Android Authority https://ift.tt/uMi8bv0 via IFTTT

Despite, well, everything, the U.S. is still the best place in the world for Black startup founders to raise money. The check sizes are bigger, the market more mature, the ambition oversized. There are more funds, more options, more opportunities, more, more, more. It’s quite easy to harp on the dismal funding and often discriminatory treatment that Black founders receive in the U.S. Through the haze, though, the reality is that the heart of the American Dream is still beating. For example, Lotanna Ezeike , a serial founder, said he’s looking to fundraise for his new startup in the U.S., despite raising more than $1 million for his U.K.-based fintech, XPO. “Across the pond in the U.K., thinking tends to be very limited, especially around the seed stage,” he said, adding that a seed in the U.S. is a pre-seed or family round in the U.K. “I think this is because of how small the U.K. is compared to other regions, so the mind can only dream so big. It’s a spiral really — less wealth,

The Google Play Store gets frequent updates, which is great news. The not-so-great news is that it can take weeks, or for some people even longer, to get the latest iteration. The basic functionality never changes, so being stuck on an older version isn’t all that bad. However, we understand the urge to get the latest and greatest version on your device. Looking to update Google Play Store on your device? Here’s how. Please note that this is just for downloading and installing the Google Play Store on Google Android devices. For non-Google Android devices, such as the Amazon Fire Tablet, you’ll need to install Google Account Manager, Google Services Framework, and Google Play Services, as well as the Play Store in that order. from Android Authority https://ift.tt/hxTe85b via IFTTT

Credit: TheTechOutlook The Samsung Galaxy A34 colors just leaked. If the rumor pans out, it could come in Lime, Silver, Graphite, and Violet colors. The overall design of the phone appears to line up with the rumored style of the Galaxy S23 series. Samsung is sometimes hit-and-miss with the colors it offers with its smartphones. Usually, the company plays it safe with a few neutral colors, but also throws in one wild color for folks who like a little variety. Thanks to a leak, we now have an idea of what to expect with the Samsung Galaxy A34 colors. In a bit of a change-up for Samsung, it appears the Galaxy A34 could come in one neutral color and three funky colors. from Android Authority https://ift.tt/FMvNZG2 via IFTTT

Big thanks to Joyce Sidopoulos, Peter Barrett and Ken Goldberg for filling in the last few weeks . I’m excited by the boost this newsletter has been getting in recent months and wanted to keep the light on while I was out. Three weeks is the longest break I’ve taken for work in…ever, really. Went to a bunch of museums (do yourself a favor and check out Edward Hopper at the Whitney and Morris Hirshfield at the American Folk Art Museum — can’t recommend them enough) and spent a few days in Aruba, of all places. Still not sure why flights were so cheap, but if you’re ever looking for a nice place to stay on the island for $150 a night, let me know. There’s also a great animal rescue. Go make friends with a miniature donkey. The minute you get off the plane at JFK, however . . . Let’s just say the inner peace from meditating on a white sand beach every morning wears off even faster than the tan. Suddenly you’re tossed back into New York during travel season in 30-degree weather. If anyon

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act is the first comprehensive Right to Repair bill to pass in the United States. Unfortunately, the bill got nerfed at the last minute. There are now plenty of exceptions companies can exploit to avoid changing much in response to the bill. The Right to Repair movement can chalk up a significant win to close out 2022. In New York this week, governor Kathy Hochul signed the Digital Fair Repair Act . Although this isn’t the first Right to Repair bill to pass in a state, it is the most comprehensive yet. The bill makes it law that consumers and independent repair providers must have access to manuals, diagrams, diagnostics, and parts from all OEMs that do business in the state. While that sounds great, the bill had some last-minute amendments added that essentially make it toothless. from Android Authority https://ift.tt/QuUlai8 via IFTTT

Tim Harned Contributor Share on Twitter Tim Harned is a managing director at Progress Partners . He has had an M&A and capital advisory career spanning more than 30 years making strategic transactions for Fortune 500 and early-stage enterprises. Ever since Elon Musk’s “be careful what you wish for” acquisition of Twitter, speculation about America’s first homegrown “super app” has soared. In October, Musk tweeted : “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” According to Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood, Musk is “thinking about a super app like WeChat Pay.” Keep in mind that Musk founded X.Com and merged it with Confinity to create PayPal. For context, China’s WeChat launched as a messaging service in 2011 and has since become a combination of Meta, Apple Pay, Venmo, Amazon, Uber, Robinhood, Rocket Mortgage, Kayak and Healthcare.gov — as well as more than 3.5 million partner “mini programs” that operate inside the app. PayPal and Walmart have

2022 was the kind of year that made us think, “What a time to be alive and reporting on transportation.” This year was absolutely dominated by conversations around the realities of bringing self-driving cars to market, the potential upheaval of the gig worker economy, micromobility dramas and, of course, all things Tesla. We took a look back at our top-performing transportation stories to determine what stood out as important to you, our dear readers. Ford, VW-backed Argo AI is shutting down Image Credits: Argo AI Autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI came onto the scene in 2017 with a $1 billion investment. Today, the company is no more after Ford and Volkswagen pulled out their investments. This one shocked the AV world, in particular because Argo had been in the middle of running a robotaxi pilot with Lyft in Austin and testing fully driverless technology in Miami . The shutdown of the company signaled two things: (1) Another round of consolidation is coming for self-driving t