Helium Mobile’s suspiciously cheap phone plan is only for the bravest among us
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hey, remember Helium Network, the project that was praised by The New York Times for its cryptocurrency-powered approach to public internet before it was revealed that it had been misleading people about its partner companies and that insiders had disproportionately profited from the
Read moreX, formerly Twitter, slowed down access to Threads, The New York Times, Bluesky and more
X, formerly known as Twitter, was throttling traffic to websites that the social network’s owner Elon Musk publicly dislikes. The platform slowed down the speed it takes when accessing links to a handful of websites including The New York Times, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Threads, Reuters and Substack. The platform appears
Read moreCoffee Briefing Aug. 15 – Researchers developing next phase in self-driving cars; IPC releases lesson plans for media literacy and privacy education; Dr. Phone Fix announces its new partnership with Apple; and more
Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team! Missed last week’s Coffee Briefing? We’ve got you covered. Western University researchers are developing the next phase in self-driving cars A team at Western University’s faculty of
Read moreChicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment cuts costs a year after buying Redbox
A year after Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (CSSE) purchased Redbox for $375 million, the company continues to be hit by losses and looks to reduce costs across all aspects of its business. CSSE reported its second-quarter 2023 earnings this week, which showed a net loss of $43.7 million
Read moreGoogle-Backed HealthDart Spearheads Tech-Driven Efficiency
The South African healthcare system has long been plagued by inefficiencies, evident in the long queues at clinics and hospitals and months-long waiting lists for specialist appointments. While the private healthcare sector offers some respite, frustrations persist, as evidenced by the challenge of obtaining prescriptions that could easily be acquired
Read moreThe startup landscape has shifted dramatically: Accelerators must adapt or fade away
Brett Calhoun Contributor Share on Twitter Brett Calhoun is the managing director and general partner at Redbud VC. Unparalleled contrasts have marked the last decade and a half — from the devastating plunge of a major housing crash to the soaring heights of the longest bull market and the unforeseen
Read moreJumia expects losses not to exceed $100M this year, per Q3 financials
In the first quarter of 2023, we reported that Jumia recorded its lowest losses in four years. Its adjusted EBITDA and operating losses dropped to $27 million and $30.9 million, respectively. Those numbers represented a 55% and 57% decrease year-over-year, on track to meet the company’s end-of-year target of $100
Read moreIntuitive Machines sets November launch date for lunar lander mission
Lunar technology company Intuitive Machines may well be the first private American company to land a spacecraft on the moon. The company said Monday that it was targeting a six-day slot starting on November 15 to launch its IM-1 lunar lander mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Intuitive Machines
Read moreConfigu raises a $3M pre-seed round for its configuration-as-code platform
Nobody loves managing configuration files for their applications and as systems get ever more complex and distributed, errors — and the potential security issues that come with that — can easily multiply. Infrastructure-as-code has gone mainstream over the course of the last few years and now, Tel Aviv-based open-source startup
Read moreOpenAI proposes a new way to use GPT-4 for content moderation
OpenAI claims that it’s developed a way to use GPT-4, its flagship generative AI model, for content moderation — lightening the burden on human teams. Detailed in a post published to the official OpenAI blog, the technique relies on prompting GPT-4 with a policy that guides the model in making
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