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The groups are Lazarus, Bluenoroff, and Andariel, all of them notorious for a variety of financially-motivated operations ranging from cyber-espionage to data theft, so as to fund the country’s illicit weapon and missile programs. Calling for a freeze of any financial asset associated with the three groups, the action also covers “any foreign financial institution that knowingly facilitates a significant transaction or provides significant financial services for any of the entities....

I’ve worked in venture capital for more than 10 years, but before I joined the industry, I founded a tech startup in my mid twenties. When I eventually found myself forced to wind the company down and return the capital I’d raised to my investors, I was confronted with my first real experience of failure and literally felt like I’d hit a wall. Today I’m incredibly grateful for the insight and empathy that this early experience of founding a company allows me to bring to my work as a VC....

Two decades ago, Maya was a groundbreaking 3D modeling technology co-developed by Disney during the production of their 2000 hit “Dinosaur.” Today, it remains one of the cutting-edge tools for digital artists working not only in movies and animation, but game development and even architecture. Now, you can start producing professional quality 3D graphics and effects with the training in The Mighty Maya Design Mastery Bundle. The package is hundreds off its regular price today, just $29....

I’ve wondered about electrifying all manner of cars, but one car I have NEVER wondered about electrifying is an old VW T3 Transporter flatbed truck. It seems not everyone thinks like me. Last year, a bunch of Germans put a Tesla drivetrain in one very green VW T3. You can imagine what happened, it’s silent chaos. But watch the video above and see for yourself. Do EVs excite your electrons?...

But startups are working hard to make buses a thing again. Let’s see how they compare: Flixbus FlixMobility, which owns Flixbus, started shaking up the bus world in 2013, creating an experience that combines technological advances, e-commerce capabilities, and sustainable transportation. In 2018, the company became the first to test ebuses on long-distance bus routes. Currently, these all-electric connections are in a pilot phase with two buses traveling between Paris and Amiens, France, and a third bus operating between Hessen and Baden-Württemberg, Germany....

Do you write for the tech-heads who obsess over every details? The broader public who may only upgrade their phone every few years? Sceptics? Fans? There’s simply no right way. Making this even trickier is the fact the devices are now incredibly mature. This year’s model (the iPhone 13 in case you didn’t get that from the headline) continues a series of iterative upgrades that streamline the phone. In other words, you already kinda know what you’re gonna get with a new iPhone: something incredibly familiar that’s a bit better than what’s come before....

Let’s start by setting the scene. When I co-founded Stream in 2014, I could never have guessed how 2020 would transform our business. As makers of enterprise-grade APIs that engineering teams use to build in-app chat and social activity feeds, we saw explosive growth last year with our technology in fields like healthcare, edtech, and virtual event live streaming. Suddenly, we found ourselves seeking Series A funding to help us make the most out of that opportunity and deliver more value faster to our growing customer base....

The new design provides a more consistent visual and navigation experience. It also offers smoother access to our range of sub-brands, from Plugged’s consumer tech stories to Neural’s human-centric AI reporting. “The concept behind our visual language is the ‘human and machine’ synergy,” says Alexander Griffioen, our head of design. “Humans represented by an organic element we call the nebula; machines represented by the clean geometric shapes that take subtle inspiration from common UI elements....

And while this figure is staggering, there’s more to the story than 533 million sets of data. This breach once again highlights how many of the systems we use aren’t designed to adequately protect our information from cyber criminals. Nor is it always straightforward to figure out whether your data have been compromised in a breach or not. This obviously has a huge impact on privacy. pic.twitter.com/lM1omndDET — Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) January 14, 2021...

Despite the steep price tag, anybody can watch or (with a simple right-click) save a copy of the videos, which show a cherub ascending over Mars, Earth, and imaginary landscapes. Rather than a copy of the files themselves, the eager buyers received a special kind of tradable certificate called a “non-fungible token” or NFT. But what they were really paying for was an aura of authenticity – and the ability to one day sell that aura of authenticity to somebody else....

Hola Pandemic Pals, Just so you know, I spent well over 10 minutes trying to find a joke to start this newsletter off with. But nothing seems particularly funny right now. The LA Times recently published an article detailing the plight of the inmates incarcerated at the San Quentin men’s correctional facility in California. San Quentin has been devastated by COVID-19. Per the LA Times article: “As of Monday, there had been more than 2,200 cases and 25 deaths, among a population of more than 3,260 people....

It’s important to note that true, fully autonomous vehicles do not exist. To say they are fully autonomous is heavy handed. There are some commercial tests taking place, but they are heavily geo-fenced and continually monitored. They are far from being cars capable of driving in all conditions. One such test comes from Waymo, Google’s self-driving off shoot. It’s been running a fleet of private “self-driving” taxis since 2015, and in April 2017 it launched its Early Rider Program in Phoenix Arizona, to offer its service to real air-breathing humans....

Let me take you back to a time before iPhones, Game of Thrones, and Netflix. The year is 1989. The hairstyles are big and curly. The earrings are huge. George H. W. Bush is sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Berlin Wall comes down. Madonna is singing “Like a Prayer” and movies like “Good morning, Vietnam” and “Die hard” have been released....

On March 19th, all residents in California, 40+ million people, were asked to “shelter in place” and leave their homes only for basic necessities. Any bay area citizen who has lived through often nightmarish commutes can now travel corridors with ease that a month ago would have been congested with bumper to bumper traffic. In the days since, New York City, Philadelphia, Ohio, Delaware, and numerous other states and cities have followed suit....

In order to limit the damage, the popular chat app is introducing a new limit on forwarding messages: You can now only do that to one chat at a time. That limit kicks in once the message has been forwarded more than five times in total. Just to explain this a bit further, WhatsApp can’t read the content your messages, but through the metadata, it can count the number of times a particular message has been forwarded....

Presto! Lower emissions = sustainable mobility. But the real value of a sustainable mobility initiative far exceeds the boundaries of fleet management to span the entire enterprise. The return on investment (ROI) for sustainable mobility touches nearly every aspect of an organization, from human resources to finance, from facilities and fleet management to energy consumption, and from customer service to building customer loyalty. Companies that take this holistic view of green transportation have much to gain....

Elon Musk recently went on the record with what might be his most ridiculous prediction yet: — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 30, 2022 “2029 feels like a pivotal year. I’d be surprised if we don’t have AGI by then. Hopefully, people on Mars too.” To the layperson unfamiliar with computer science, this probably just seems like a really smart person being optimistic. But to most people who understand the basics of AI, this is the kind of statement you’d expect from a mainstream journalist with a limited understanding of the topic....

The micro-blogging site has launched the industry’s first algorithmic bias bounty competition. The challenge was created to identify potential harms in Twitter’s notorious image cropping algorithm, which was largely abandoned after exhibiting gender- and race-based biases. The company now wants to incentivize the community to find further unidentified risks of the algorithm. The winners of the challenge will receive cash prizes of up to $3,500. The contest is a first in the field of AI biases, but bounty programs have a long history in IT security....

The ideas seem sound. Adults can’t possibly see and hear everything that happens on a school campus, so startups are marketing automated surveillance solutions to cover the gaps. One company says their facial recognition systems could have prevented the Parkland massacre. Another startup specializing in gunshot detection says its ‘aggression detectors’ can alert staff to violence before it even happens. But politicians, public school administrators, and teachers might not be in the best position to determine the efficacy of these programs....

Any business looking to streamline its processes and move to more efficient models will encounter automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence along the way. Although in 2020 we’re a far cry from sentient machinery taking over, these buzzwords are currently hot property across every industry, from manufacturing to services. So it’s essential to understand these terms by definition and the way they interact. Building the pyramids Traditionally, there has been a pyramid model for technology with artificial intelligence (AI) sitting at the top....