Category: Tech

Another star footballer has joined a startup’s lineup. Portugal’s Diogo Dalot is the latest recruit, teaming up with compatriot Cristiano Ronaldo to back personalised supplement pioneer Bioniq. Dalot has invested €1mn in the company, which has developed an innovative approach to nutrition. Founded in 2019, Bioniq analyses blood test biomarkers to create customised supplements for athletes. The recipes are created by an algorithm trained on over 6 million biochemical data points. According to Bioniq, the system can generate over 10 million combinations of nutrient granules, each tailored to the specific needs and goals of each customer. Dalot has received his own personalised formula,… This story continues at The Next Web

It’s been nearly two years now since game industry veteran Phil Harrison left Google following the implosion of the company’s Stadia cloud gaming service. But the passage of time hasn’t stopped one company from taking advantage of this week’s Game Developers Conference to poke fun at the erstwhile gaming executive for his alleged mistreatment of developers. VGC spotted a conspicuous billboard in San Francisco’s Union Square Monday featuring the overinflated, completely bald head of Gunther Harrison, the fictional Alta Interglobal CEO who was recently revealed as the blatantly satirical antagonist in the upcoming game Revenge of the Savage Planet. A large message atop the billboard asks passersby—including the tens of thousands in town for GDC—”Has a Harrison fired you lately? You might be eligible for emotional support.” Google’s Phil Harrison talks about the Google Stadia controller at GDC 2019. Credit: Google While Gunther Harrison probably hasn’t fired any GDC attendees, the famously bald Phil Harrison was responsible for the firing of plenty of developers when he shut down Google’s short-lived Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E) publishing imprint in early 2021. That shutdown surprised a lot of newly jobless game developers, perhaps none moreso than those at Montreal-based Typhoon Games, which Google had acquired in late 2019 to make what Google’s Jade Raymond said at the time would be “platform-defining exclusive content” for Stadia. Read full article Comments

Aerospike rocket engines are the stuff of legend in the space industry. Conceived in the 1960s, their unique spiked-nozzle design promises better efficiency, reusability, and performance at all altitudes. But their complexity — and the shutdown of major space programmes towards the end of the 20th century — meant they never entered the mainstream.  But now, startups are dusting off old designs and using new technologies to revive aerospike engines for modern spaceflight. One of these ventures is Spain’s Pangea Aerospace. Founded in 2018, Pangea has been operating under the radar for most of its seven-year history. But today, the… This story continues at The Next Web

Oslo-based startup Visoid has raised €700,000 in seed funding for its AI software, which helps architects turn their 3D models into striking renders within seconds.  For architects and designers, a good render can mean the difference between winning or losing a client. However, rendering typically requires a lot of time, effort, expertise — and money. Tools like Visoid look to disrupt the status quo. “What started as a simple tool for architects to generate beautiful visualisations has led us on a journey to simplify and democratise the visualisation process itself,” said co-founder Joachim Holwech. Here’s how the software works:  You… This story continues at The Next Web

The decision to fire the two members of the traditionally independent regulatory body is likely to face a legal challenge.

Google today announced a $32 billion deal to buy Wiz, an Israeli cloud security company that would become part of Google’s cloud division if the merger is completed. The all-cash deal requires regulatory approval at a time when the Department of Justice is trying to break up Google by forcing it to sell the Chrome browser after a judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly. Google is also awaiting a verdict in a separate ad-tech monopoly case brought by the US government. Google’s announcement this morning said that “Wiz’s products will continue to work and be available across all major clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud platforms.” Read full article Comments

It’s well understood that spiders have poor eyesight and thus sense the vibrations in their webs whenever prey (like a fly) gets caught; the web serves as an extension of their sensory system. But spiders also exhibit less-understood behaviors to locate struggling prey. Most notably, they take on a crouching position, sometimes moving up and down to shake the web or plucking at the web by pulling in with one leg. The crouching seems to be triggered when prey is stationary and stops when the prey starts moving. But it can be difficult to study the underlying mechanisms of this behavior because there are so many variables at play when observing live spiders. To simplify matters, researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Terradynamics Laboratory are building crouching spider robots and testing them on synthetic webs. The results provide evidence for the hypothesis that spiders crouch to sense differences in web frequencies to locate prey that isn’t moving—something analogous to echolocation. The researchers presented their initial findings today at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California. “Our lab investigates biological problems using robot physical models,” team member Eugene Lin told Ars. “Animal experiments are really hard to reproduce because it’s hard to get the animal to do what you want to do.” Experiments with robot physical models, by contrast, “are completely repeatable. And while you’re building them, you get a better idea of the actual [biological] system and how certain behaviors happen.” The lab has also built robots inspired by cockroaches and fish. Read full article Comments

The acquisition could make the Silicon Valley giant a bigger force in cybersecurity, and arrives months after an earlier round of talks collapsed.

Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen. Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an … ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen.” Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. The ads have a close option, but some users appear to have not seen it. When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out. Read full article Comments

A federal broadband official departed the US government with a warning that a Trump administration plan will strand rural Americans with worse Internet access in order to help Elon Musk secure public money for Starlink. “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse Internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” wrote Evan Feinman, who had been a Commerce Department official and director of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program since 2022. As Politico reported, Feinman made the statement in “a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company with money for rural broadband.” Read full article Comments

The giant chipmaker has transformed its annual developer conference from an academic event into a who’s who gathering for the future of artificial intelligence.

You could call Facebook Marketplace a digital thrift shop. But that underplays how unique and bizarre the platform is.

For nearly two decades, TNW Conference has been a launchpad for the next big things in tech. The likes of Slack, Wise, Bolt, and Trello all made their mark on our stage before becoming global brands. Visionary leaders from Google, Meta, and Reddit have joined them to share the strategies behind their success, while star speakers Edward Snowden, will.i.am, and Lila Ibrahim have explored the frontiers of innovation.  On June 19-20, we will return to the iconic NDSM venue in Amsterdam with a renewed focus on our founding mission: elevating the startups and scaleups that will change the world. Today,… This story continues at The Next Web