Monthly Archives: November 2022

Fintecture wants to replace paper checks or manual transfers for B2B payments

Meet Fintecture, a French startup that wants to upgrade B2B payments. While many payment companies have focused on B2C payments with Stripe leading the way, B2B payments haven’t changed much over the years. “In the U.S., there are still a lot of paper checks. In Europe, it’s mostly transfers and manual reconciliation,” Fintecture co-founder and…

Satellite startup Constellr wins backing to build out its water-monitoring platform

We are living in the era of so-called microsatellites, which are equipped with thermal cameras and other regalia to, for instance, alert farmers before crops are damaged, predict droughts, and aid in the juggling of supply chains. Climate change is making less land available for agricultural food production, leading to strict regulations on the use…

Twitter — one of the first companies to let staff WFH permanently after the pandemic — plans to order employees back to the office: reports

Twitter staff may have to return to the office full-time, in a reversal of its flexible WFH policy. Tayfun Coskun/Getty Images Twitter plans to cut about half of its workforce following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition. It is planning to order staff to return to the office on a full-time basis after layoffs, per Axios….

WhatsApp’s new Communities feature aims to bring related group chats together

WhatsApp is rolling out some new features, including one that’s designed to bring related group chats together. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Communities feature earlier this year, and the aim is to allow users to combine group chats “under one umbrella with a structure that works for them.” Similar tools are in the works…

WhatsApp gets better for big groups with new Communities and 32-person video chats

Communities are like Discord, but for WhatsApp. | The Verge Meta is rolling out a few changes to WhatsApp that will make the app better to use for large circles of people, including the wide rollout of Communities. Communities are designed to house multiple related groups within bigger organizations of people, such as a neighborhood…

Layover in Manila

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash Hello from Manila! You thought I’d be writing to you from Bali, and frankly, so did I. But the Gods of Air Travel had other ideas. Let me explain. The original plan was to fly from Los Angeles to Manila, change planes, then head for Bali. Our layover in Manila…

Meet Seoul-based accelerator SparkLabs’ 19th batch of startups 

SparkLabs Korea, a Seoul-based seed to early-stage accelerator, held a demo Day on Thursday for its 19th cohort of companies. The latest demo day marks its tenth year after SparkLabs launched its accelerator program in December 2012. The accelerator has backed more than 270 startups since its inception in 2012, co-founder and partner of SparkLabs…

Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween candy prank is officially back and making kids cry again

Jimmy Kimmel put a pause on the annual Halloween candy prank during the past two years, reasoning that children have had it hard enough during the pandemic. For years, each Halloween the late night host would instruct parents to tell their kids they’d eaten all their Halloween candy and record their reactions. While never fun…

Putin hints that Russia’s weapons are outdated, saying it needs to modernize its military hardware

A destroyed Russian tank is seen outside of Izyum district of Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine on October 13, 2022. Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s weapons need to be modernized. Weapons manufacturers should get feedback from soldiers, he said on Wednesday. It’s a rare acknowledgment of the flaws in the…