KIMIHIRO HOSHINO / AFP via Getty Images Remember when Facebook’s News Feed was chock full of apps like Zynga’s FarmVille? This era in the early 2010s was Mark Zuckerberg’s first big attempt at making Facebook much bigger than just a social network and more like a platform for developers akin to Windows. It was a…
Enlarge (credit: Qualcomm) Qualcomm’s long-awaited update to its smartwatch SoC line is official. These chips have typically been called “Snapdragon Wear,” but it sounds like that brand is dead, so it’s time to meet the “Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen1” and “Snapdragon W5 Gen1.” Qualcomm promises that the chips provide the company’s “most advanced leap yet,”…
A B-52 in California on August 8, 2020, before it carried out a hypersonic test. US Air Force / Kyle Brasier The middle of July saw a whopping three successful hypersonic missile tests by the United States—tests of missiles designed to go at least five times the speed of sound. On July 13, DARPA announced…
Yep, Actuator is coming to you a day early — mostly because it felt a bit weird to drop the robotics newsletter right in the middle of the robotics conference. Good news for everyone who’s sick of me telling you to SIGN UP FOR FREE RIGHT HERE: This is the last you’ll be hearing that…
HBO Max just released the first official trailer for “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” prequel series that premieres on August 21. The show takes place 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones” and is based on George R.R. Martin’s book “Fire & Blood.” Two centuries before the War of the…
Google has announced they will be taking a two-week hiring freeze, according to an article published by The Information earlier today. This comes after the company announced last week they would be slowing down their hiring process for the remainder of the year to take a fresh look at their overall hiring process. The company…
We’ve written a few times about Alt, a platform that helps trading card collectors (think Pokémon, NBA, NFL, etc.) research, buy/sell, and securely store high value cards. This week, after a few months of quiet testing, the company is announcing a new product: Alt Advance. The idea? If you’ve got rare/valuable trading cards stored with Alt,…
Facebook Gaming is rolling out a new “Clips to Reels” feature that allows creators to turn their live gameplay clips into Reels. Facebook first announced the feature last month and is now rolling it out to all of its partners. With this new feature, creators can now cut clips of their favorite gameplay moments down…
In the past few months, both Stripe and Instacart have seen their internal valuations updated in a 409A appraisal process. The startups saw their valuations being slashed by 28% and 38%, respectively, as a result of the appraisals. What do these re-pricings signal to other late-stage, pandemic-spurred startups? And how seriously should we be taking…
Stripe has been in the news this past week for lowering its own valuation to around $74 billion from $95 billion, a 28% decline that made waves in startup-land. Given the company’s size and its status as one of the most richly valued startups in history, the payments giant carries significant weight in the private…