Author: uzair
James Vincent / The Verge:Ad and content licensing company Veritone launches MARVEL.ai to let celebrities, influencers, and others clone their voices using AI and license them outDeepfake voices could be a lucrative business for influencersRecording advertisements and product endorsements can be lucrative work for celebrities and influencers. Click here to read full news..
“The platforms have driven the price of content to zero,” says William Deresiewicz, author of The Death of the Artist. “This demonetized content is still generating a fortune. But the artists aren’t getting that money.” “Artists today are beset on all sides by monopolists and oligopolists,” argues a 7,000 word analysis in The American Prospect. “Like so many sectors of our economy, government inaction has allowed the music business to consolidate, with devastating effects on musicians.Radio is to a shocking degree in the hands of one company, Liberty Media. Two companies, Live Nation and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), control a…
The Economic Times:Snap says it has 100M MAUs in India and partners with Flipkart, Zomato, and others to boost e-commerce offeringsBengaluru: Snap Inc., which houses Snapchat, has hit 100 million monthly users in India for the first time, the US-based company announced on Wednesday adding Click here to read full news..
Donald Trump received unexpected backing from Germany and France after the U.S. president was shut off social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook, extending Europe’s battle with big tech. From a report: German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions, saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private tech companies. “The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,” Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and…
A new mobile data network — accompanied by the quinfecta of a website, Medium post, white paper, dedicated subreddit and Discord channel — quietly launched late Tuesday evening in San Francisco, promising a new way to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds without relying on legacy carriers, and at a cheaper price. From a report: The peer-to-peer open source wireless network called Pollen Mobile will incentivize its users with cryptocurrency to run their own mini cell towers and build out the network’s coverage in the Bay Area where the service is initially launching. Anthony Levandowski’s autonomous vehicle technology startup…
Where there’s a coup, there will probably be an internet outage. From a report: Internet disruptions in Myanmar early Monday morning coincided with reports that top politicians, including the country’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, were being rounded up by the military. That’s no surprise: internet blackouts are now common around the world when power hangs in the balance. At least 35 countries have restricted access to the internet or social media platforms at least once since 2019, according to Netblocks, a group which tracks internet freedom. Authorities have used the outages to reduce or prevent unrest — or…
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:Squarespace raises $300M in a round valuing it at $10B, two months after it filed confidentially to go public via a direct listing or an IPOSquarespace has raised $300 million in a round of funding that values the company at a staggering $10 billion valuation. Click here to read full news..
The United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems. From a report: The Frontier system from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) running on AMD EPYC CPUs took first place from last year’s champ, Japan’s ARM A64X Fugaku system. It’s still in the integration and testing process at the ORNL in Tennessee, but will eventually be operated by the US Air Force and US Department of Energy. Frontier, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Cray EX platform, was the top machine by a wide margin, too. It’s the first (known) true…
Maggie Miller / The Hill:At Tuesday’s SolarWinds hearing, Microsoft and FireEye urged Congress to create mandatory breach reporting requirements for companiesTop executives from Microsoft and FireEye on Tuesday urged Congress to create mandatory breach reporting requirements for companies following Click here to read full news..
Swetha Gopinath / Bloomberg:PitchBook: VCs invested $148B globally in Q1, down 25% from $191B in Q4 2021, as rising inflation and the war in Ukraine dampen investor appetitesPrivate companies globally are pulling back sharply on raising new funds, as pressure on public markets begins to weigh on the lofty valuations sought by fast-growing startups. Click here to read full news..