Soluzy

The Biden administration's Buy American ideal could impact America's race to close the digital divide, particularly in cases where it is not yet a realistic option. While the administration has earmarked over $90 billion to finish the private sector's work of connecting every home in America with broadband internet service, it must guard against unintended consequences that could delay progress.

Having a single user onboarding experience can make or break a startup. In this article, Jonathan Martinez explains why startups need more than one user onboarding experience and how to implement it.

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The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is taking on a case to defend 11 Bitcoin developers named in a lawsuit filed by Craig Wright, which could jeopardize the future of open source software development. The fund fights not just for Bitcoin but for the right of open-source developers to create and freely share their code with the world for the greater good.

Microsoft Designer, the AI-powered design tool, has launched in public preview with an expanded set of features, including generating written captions and hashtags relevant for social media posts and creating animated visuals powered by AI.

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Google is testing a new Play Store ad slot ahead of its I/O developer conference in May, which could significantly expand its Play Store search ads business. The ad slot appears when Android users navigate to the Play Store's search menu, where they can type in keywords to find apps. The test was first spotted by Android Police, and users have reported seeing it in multiple markets worldwide. Google has confirmed the experiment but hasn't offered any further information about this specific ad test.

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Brave has announced that it is now exclusively using its own index for its search engine, making it fully independent and not relying on third-party solutions like Bing anymore. Brave Search users will now receive 100% of results from the Brave Index, giving users fully independent results while preserving user privacy.

Meta's Q1 earnings call revealed that time spent on Instagram has grown 24% thanks to Reels and AI-powered content recommendations, but this growth is not yet directly translating to more revenue. However, Meta is confident that Reels will eventually become a key contributor to monetization.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, reported an increase in year-over-year revenue for the first time in three quarters despite harsh restructuring. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that the company is not making a u-turn into the AI lane but sees AI as technology that works in tandem with the metaverse. Read on to know more about Meta's revenue expectations and its commitment to the metaverse despite harsh restructuring.

Cloud storage company Dropbox has announced that it will be laying off 16% of its staff, equivalent to about 500 employees, due to slowing growth and the arrival of the AI era of computing. CEO Drew Houston cited the need to invest in new areas to keep up with the pace of change and maintain profitability. This marks the first layoffs since January 2021 and will result in charges of approximately $37 million to $42 million in Q2.

Recent surveys by Pew and Scale AI suggest that while companies are investing heavily in AI, workers remain wary but optimistic about its impact on their work lives.

A recent report by NewsGuard shows how ChatGPT repeats more inaccurate information in Chinese dialects than when asked to do so in English. This article explores why AI is more likely to spout misinformation in some languages than others and the implications of this phenomenon.

Google has disrupted the CryptBot malware and taken legal action against its distributors. The infostealer malware has been stealing sensitive information from hundreds of thousands of browser users for the past year. This disruption effort will slow new infections and decelerate the growth of CryptBot.

TikTok is testing a new tool that allows users to create generative AI avatars, similar to Lensa, directly within its platform. Users can pick up to five different styles for the tool to use when generating avatars, and can share them to their TikTok story or upload them as their profile avatar.

Operant is a startup that has developed a unique solution to protect cloud native applications without instrumentation. The company is the first runtime application protection platform, which can prevent lateral attacks and data breaches by securing cloud native applications from the inside out.

Phantom, a popular crypto wallet for Solana blockchain users, has expanded its support to Ethereum and Polygon blockchains in a public launch across browsers, iOS, and Android. The multichain integration will be available to its 3 million users and will allow them to transfer assets across blockchains and dApps like Uniswap and Aave as well as NFT marketplaces like Blur and OpenSea. The wallet also shows advanced metadata for NFTs and has added new safety features to help prevent phishing.

Snapchat's My AI bot might take a while to notice if you stop giving your location information to the app. The bot retains the location details for a while before understanding that a user has stopped sharing that info. After Snapchat rolled out its AI-powered chatbot My AI to everyone last week, there have been a ton of complaints about what it knows, especially a user's location.

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Incubators and accelerators can provide startups with a support system of peers and mentors, helping them refine their ideas and get their products off the ground. Joining one of these programs can help build lifelong relationships that can benefit startups in the long run.

WeChat has extended the use of digital yuan payments to transactions happening through its short video and mini-app platforms, potentially targeting a sea of microtransactions. This move is an expansion of the e-CNY payments option that WeChat already supports since early last year.

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Tinder is rolling out an AI-powered update to its Photo Verification feature, requiring a video selfie instead of photos, to make the app safer for its members. This is a much stronger means of vetting that people are who they say they are and weeding out spammers. The feature will fully replace the prior option to upload photos, and new features will soon allow users to only see other Photo Verified members in their recommendations.

Ursa Major, a rocket engine startup, has secured $100 million in new funding from investors, including BlackRock and Space Capital. The company, led by CEO Joe Laurienti, is focused solely on developing rocket engines and eschews the vertical integration paradigm that dominates the aerospace industry.

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Google Cloud has turned a profit on its cloud unit for the first time since it began reporting cloud income several years ago. This is a significant milestone for Google Cloud, which shows how hard it is for new players to enter the space and what's required to achieve escape velocity for cloud adoption.

A computer science student going by the username xtekky has created GPT4Free, a project that provides free access to OpenAI's GPT-4 AI model by exploiting the API and bypassing the paywall. The project has gained popularity on GitHub and Reddit, but it is a clear violation of OpenAI's terms of service. The developer claims that the project is strictly for educational purposes and is willing to comply with legal action if necessary. Read more about GPT4Free and its potential legal and ethical implications.

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Bobsled, a cross-cloud data sharing startup, has raised $17 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Greycroft and Madrona Venture Group. The company plans to simplify data sharing and connect various sources to help businesses prepare datasets for querying.

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Artifact, the personalized news aggregator founded by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, has introduced a new feature that generates article summaries using AI. The tool aims to give readers an overview of the high-level points of an article before they read it. The feature can also summarize news in fun styles like 'Explain like I'm five', in the style of Gen Z speech, or using only emojis.

Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, spoke about the impact of AI on the music industry during the company's Q1 earnings call. While the AI DJ feature is gaining traction, other AI advances, such as the creation of music that clones the voices of existing artists without their consent, have raised copyright concerns. Ek acknowledged that the progress in AI is both cool and scary and that there is a risk to the wider ecosystem.

OpenAI has announced the upcoming launch of ChatGPT Business, a new subscription tier of its AI-powered chatbot designed for enterprise customers. The company also introduced new privacy features for all ChatGPT users, including the ability to turn off chat history and export data.

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In recent years, the value of American startups has been on a decline, with total exit value dropping significantly. This article explores the numbers behind this decline and the worrying trend it represents for the startup industry.

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Hugging Face has released an open source alternative to ChatGPT called HuggingChat, which can handle many of the tasks ChatGPT can, like writing code, drafting emails and composing rap lyrics. The AI model driving HuggingChat was developed by Open Assistant, a project organized by LAION, which has broader ambitions to build the assistant of the future.

T2, a Twitter alternative founded by Twitter and Google veterans, has launched an invite system to expand its user base. Each T2 user will initially receive five invites to start, which the team hopes will bring on board at least 500 to 1,000 new users who will have immediate connections to someone else on the platform. The startup also recently brought on Discord's former Senior Director of Engineering Michael Greer as its new CTO.

Veo Robotics, a Massachusetts-based firm that builds software solutions to improve human-robot coexistence in industrial workspaces, has raised $29 million in Series B funding, with Amazon as one of the investors. The funding will be used to accelerate Veo's work with corporate partners and develop a new generation of safety systems for collaborative robotics. Amazon's investment is seen as a vote of confidence in Veo's focus on workplace safety and employee well-being.

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