KTM City Posts

via https://ift.tt/AYSI1TU He’s only owned Twitter for a couple of days, but Elon Musk has already undermined his credibility on some of social media’s most vexing problems, all while displaying a disturbing inclination toward anti-LGBTQ views. The world’s most credulous billionaire couldn’t help but respond to a tweet over the weekend from Hillary Clinton denouncing Republican support for extremist conspiracies that inspire real-world violence. “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories,” Clinton wrote. “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.” Last week, a man broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband with a hammer. The assailant, 42-year-old David DePape, shared anti-semitic conspiracy theories, election denialism, screeds against transgender people and violent threats to journalists in the months leading up to the break in. Musk, who now owns the...

via https://ift.tt/1zp2FOZ Earlier this year, Immutable, a web3 gaming firm with its own layer-2 chain, Immutable X, launched a whopping $500 million fund to boost gaming on its platform. Fast forward a few months and the company says things are going according to plan. “It has been super busy,” Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, said to TechCrunch. “In the last quarter, we’ve onboarded more games than the rest of the company’s lifetime combined. As far as we know, it’s been more than any other layer-1 or layer-2 [blockchains] in the world and nearly half of those games came from competitors in migrations.” In Q3, Immutable onboarded about 50 games and has over 1,000 games being built in a “testing environment,” Ferguson said. “These are ones we’ve actively gone after.” Some games, like Delysium and Ember Sword, were initially developed for the layer-2 blockchain Polygon but switched to Immutable X, the company’s NFT platform and layer-2 scaling solution for the Ethereum bl...

via https://ift.tt/oGt0Nha Usually being a board chair is a job that involves running some meetings and pushing through routine company business, but when Bret Taylor became Twitter board chair last year, he was getting a lot more than he bargained for. Taylor was promoted to the job in November 2021, the same day Jack Dorsey resigned as CEO . That in itself was an inauspicious start, and it would only get rockier. As though that weren’t enough for one person to take on, he was also promoted to co-CEO at Salesforce in the same week . It seemed like a good thing at the time, helping run two of the most influential tech companies out there, but the situation with Twitter quickly devolved. By April, Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake and demanded a board seat before backing off that and making a $43 million offer to buy the company outright . It’s been a roller-coaster ride ever since, with the board accepting the offer, then Musk trying to back out, the board initiating a court case to f...

via https://ift.tt/TkWEZMa Elon Musk is now lord of the manor over at Twitter after the board of directors was dissolved as part of the merger agreement. While the state of affairs likely isn’t permanent, it does mean that as owner, director, and “Chief Twit,” he has what amounts to ultimate power to hire, fire, and change the social media platform. In an SEC filing , the company detailed some of the many changes having to do with the controversial purchase of the platform by Musk: [A]s a result of the consummation of the Merger, Mr. Musk became the sole director of Twitter. In accordance with the terms of the Merger Agreement, effective as of the effective time of the Merger, the following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the Merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou. You may recognize some or all of ...

via https://ift.tt/7KHd9on If you want to take a break from work or the never-ending news cycle, Google is here to give you an escape. The search giant has launched a new Halloween-themed playable Doodle that opens up to a Snake-like game that you can play with your friends or random players from around the world. The goal of the game is to collect as many wandering spirit flames as you can in two minutes and return them to their homebase. After time’s up, the team that has collected the most spirit flames wins. Here’s the catch: opponents can intercept spirits from one another as they bring them back to homebase. Ghosts that collect the most spirit flames will also unlock special powers, such as speed boosts and night vision. You can host a game and invite up to seven friends to play with you via a custom invitation link or choose to play with randomized players. Google says the team that developed the Doodle build several systems to enable this multiplayer gaming, all running...

via https://ift.tt/nXc5Kzh The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.  Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox . This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe for  free .  Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.  Welp, that was a week! My head is still spinning over here what with Mobileye going public, Argo shutting down and Elon Musk taking the reins at Twitter. Yes, there’s a transportation angle to Twitter beyond the less-than-happy reaction of Tesla shareholders. (GM temporarily paused paid advertising on Twitter , following Musk’s takeover.) Let’s just jump right in, shall we? Please email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, ...

via https://ift.tt/KY90ZW8 Alex Fedorov Contributor Alex Fedorov is CEO and founder at OBRIO , an IT company with Ukrainian roots that develops products in mobile applications, web products and SaaS. Business owners always say that each company has to live through a real crisis before it becomes a real business. All big companies we know have experienced a few big crises during their lifetimes, and they are still in the game. There are a lot of studies about crisis management on the web, but none of them tell us how to manage a company during times of war. Our company had never seen a real crisis before February 2022. However, even before we did, I always told my team: “Every company has its time in the sun and a time of crisis.” When the Russo-Ukrainian War began on February 24, all Ukrainian businesses faced a crisis. I’ll use our example to explain how we dealt with it. Here are six tips for effectively managing a team during a war. Establish an emergency communicatio...

via https://ift.tt/oqeGhTP Egyptian fintech Money Fellows has raised $31 million in what it describes as the first close of its Series B investment. The round, which the startup expects to top up in the coming months, was led by CommerzVentures, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) and Arzan Venture Capital. Other participating investors include Partech, Sawari Ventures, Invenfin, National Investment Company (NIC), 4DX Ventures and P1Ventures. Money Fellows has raised $37 million in total funding since its inception. Money Fellows’ premise is the digitization of money circles or what’s commonly known as the Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCAs), a system where a group of people agree to contribute money for a specific period, thereby saving and borrowing together. ROSCAs, which Money Fellows CEO Ahmed Wadi says is a $700 billion opportunity globally, are quite popular in over 90 emerging and developing markets with several names: Esusu or ajo in Nigeria, Kameti or chit f...

via https://ift.tt/IWVkRHj In June, Chinese pop-punk singer Wowkie Zhang released a music video where he encounters a virtual character in a hyper-colored, animated world that is reminiscent of Pixar films. The avatar, sporting Gen-Z-styled silver hair, a yellow and black oversize sweat, and baggy pants, makes hip-hop moves to Zhang’s catchy, light-hearted tune. The virtual character isn’t a one-off creation; instead, Zebra Labs, which produced the video, is turning him into a piece of reusable intellectual property that can be bought as NFTs on marketplaces and appear in other virtual occasions like video games. The startup is waiting for the bull market to return to launch the NFT project, Scarlett Li, founder and CEO of Zebra Labs, tells TechCrunch. The aim of Zebra Labs is to “create intellectual property that’s deeply integrated with content” and “run virtual idols like celebrities,” says Li. Some of the avatars it creates are based on real-life stars, while others are original...

via https://ift.tt/lqwQFSv Elon Musk, Chief Twit, has refuted claims from a New York Times report this weekend that states he plans to lay off employees before Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting staff off from receiving stock grants as part of their compensation. In response to a tweet from Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor of ProPublica, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday,” Musk said: “This is false.” He didn’t provide any clarification about what, specifically, was false. This is false — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022 Umansky’s tweet included a screenshot of a highlighted portion of the NYT story that also noted stock grants make up a significant portion of an employee’s pay, and by laying off workers before that date, Musk may avoid paying the grants. Musk did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification on whether the layoffs will affect stock compensation. He may v...

via https://ift.tt/EZbyR42 Over the last two and a half years, remote and hybrid working has become the norm — a majority of employed Americans have the option of working from home for all or part of the week, and 87% of workers who were offered remote work embraced the opportunity heartily. While some companies are pushing for a return to the office, today’s strapped labor market is giving employees more power to push back for remote, or at least flexible, jobs. This isn’t just a pandemic response anymore — it’s a way of life, and it has the potential to make some businesses better. People who work from home have been reporting an uptick in their productivity levels without the distractions that come with an office — Oh, it’s Beth’s birthday. Cupcakes in the kitchen!  But both employers and employees have reported some downsides to remote work. Isolation can make people feel lonely and disconnected, leading to mental health issues. Learning and collaboration have taken a hit w...

via https://ift.tt/pRi7hx4 Fundraising isn’t a monolithic event but rather a series of meetings and pleasantries, each with their own vibe and nuance. Yet many pieces of fundraising advice to founders paint the process with a broad brush. We heard from three founders at TechCrunch Disrupt last week: Amanda DoAmaral, co-founder and CEO of Fiveable; Arman Hezarkhani, founder of Parthean; and Sarah Du, co-founder of Alloy Automation, each of whom has raised in the extreme highs and lows of last 18 months. They spoke about navigating the process, what worked (and what didn’t) and how to customize your pitch to navigate the many subtleties of fundraising. For DoAmaral, it was important to spend time researching which investors may actually back her company. She said she’s had investors take meetings with her due to a warm intro despite having no actual intention to invest. “My co-founder and I got in a car and drove down to Tennessee thinking we’re gonna get this check. And this guy did...

https://ift.tt/hH2yfXj It is a sight Ya Lewa Aji says she can never forget: a baby strapped to her mother's back, shot dead while the mother lay lifeless on the floor.

via https://ift.tt/RyLzSBl Hey, folks, welcome back to another edition of TechCrunch Week in Review , the place where we point you to the hottest stories of the past sevenish days. I’m stepping in front of the laptop for Greg Kumparak this week, but don’t fret, he will be back soon. If you want this goodness in your inbox every Saturday, head on over here to sign up. Now, let’s get to it. most read (Elon edition, somewhat) Elon did it : He bought Twitter. The $44 billion acquisition closed this week and on day 1, the platform’s new owner “cleaned house,” Taylor and Amanda write, firing CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde. The purchase capped off months of ups and downs, and this week was no different. Darrell rounded up some highlights. Elon’s layoff about-face : While Elon Musk immediately fired some folks at the top, earlier this week in a reversal from his layoff declaration last week , he said he won’t actually lay off 75% of Tw...

via https://ift.tt/PJ1bk2X Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports . Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up...