Author: Bilal

In what could be a starting gun for the commercialization of the cell-based meat business, upstart cultivated meat company Higher Steaks said it has managed to produce samples of its first products — bacon strips and pork belly made in a lab from cellular material. With the revelation, Higher Steaks, a bootstrapped Cambridge, UK-based company, leapfrogs into … Continue reading Higher Steaks brings home the bacon, revealing lab-grown pork belly and bacon strips Continue Reading →

A number of ride-sharing companies are feeling the strain from reduced business, with many consumers still reluctant to travel, and especially to travel in surroundings that might increase the risk of spreading or catching the novel coronavirus. But today, one of the startups in the space is announcing a significant round of funding to continue growing … Continue reading Gett raises $100M more to double down on its B2B on-demand ride business Continue Reading →

Plum, the London and Athens-based fintech that offers a ‘smart’ money management app to help you improve your “financial resilience,” has raised a further $10 million in funding, as it gears up for European expansion. The new round is led by Japan’s Global Brain, and the European Bank  for Research and Development, which has participated in previous Plum … Continue reading Plum raises $10M for its ‘smart’ money management app Continue Reading →

Consolidation continues apace in the world of e-commerce, and today it was the turn of the classified ads market. Today, eBay announced that it had reached a deal to sell off its Classifieds business unit to Adevinta, a Norway-based classified ads publisher majority owned by Danish publisher Schibsted. The deal is valued at $9.2 billion, which includes … Continue reading Adevinta acquires eBay’s Classifieds business unit in $9.2B deal Continue Reading →

Smol is a startup that delivers eco-friendly laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets on subscription through letterboxes, which undercut the price of the leading brands, to people’s homes. It’s now raised £8 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital with participation from JamJar Investments. The funding will see smol push into new product … Continue reading Eco-friendly laundry goods subscription service smol raises £8M from Balderton Continue Reading →

Social network still has trouble separating “opinion” from disinformation. Facebook has touted its fact-checking process as one of the ways it intends to fight rampant disinformation heading into the 2020 US presidential election. New reports about the way the site handles the fact-checking of climate science stories, though, make clear that fact-checking can only work … Continue reading Facebook overrides fact-checks when climate science is “opinion” Continue Reading →

The new “convergence package” offers more RAM and storage as well as a USB-C dock. Yesterday, Pine64 announced the end of the PinePhone UBPorts Community Edition campaign—but more importantly, the company declared the beginning of the postmarketOS Community Edition campaign. The base version of the new run of PinePhones shares the same $149 price point and the same basic technical specs … Continue reading New Pine64 phones with upgraded hardware begin shipping in August Continue Reading →

Microsoft sends its unique control accessory down the final memory hole. Roughly one year ago, Microsoft revealed the Xbox Series X (then referred to as “Project Scarlett”) in part by highlighting the system’s extensive backward compatibility: “Your games, your achievements, your progression, your accessories, your console experience with Xbox: it all comes forward with Scarlett.” Today, though, the … Continue reading Xbox Series X won’t support Kinect hardware, games Continue Reading →

Rapid analysis shows this event is hard to explain without climate change. Generally speaking, 2020 has been a hell of a year. But in Siberia, there is an additional reason to make comparisons to the inferno: record-breaking warmth and its consequences. Wildfires have burned about 8,000 square miles, aided by a bumper crop of silk … Continue reading Siberia’s hot 2020 “effectively impossible” without global warming Continue Reading →

Hardware keys are more secure—and finally ready for the masses. Almost three years ago, Google introduced its Advanced Protection Program (APP), a security plan for high-risk users that requires hardware keys for account access and is arguably the industry’s most effective way to stop account takeovers in their tracks. But until now there was a major flaw … Continue reading Apple has finally embraced key-based 2FA. So should you Continue Reading →