Foreign visitors to China can finally go cashless like locals
Great news for those traveling to China! You can finally enjoy the seamless, cashless payment experience that you may have heard about for years and avoid the awkward interaction of asking your local friends to pay and giving them paper money that they can’t spend anywhere. This week, China’s two
Read moreThreads in decline? Don’t count out Instagram’s new Twitter rival yet
A Wall Street Journal article on Friday warns that Instagram’s new Twitter competitor Threads is already losing steam. Citing third-party data from Sensor Tower, the paper reports the number of daily active users on Threads dropped for the second week down to 13 million, a 70% decline from a July
Read moreCongress probes Ford’s big battery deal with China’s CATL
In a public letter addressed to Ford boss Jim Farley, House Republicans Mike Gallagher and Jason Smith announced that two congressional committees are investigating the automaker’s licensing deal with Chinese battery maker CATL. The probe centers on Ford’s efforts to put CATL’s battery cell technology to use at an upcoming,
Read moreCyber Security Today, Week in Review for the week ending Friday, July 21, 2023
Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Friday, July 21st, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S. In a few minutes David Shipley of New Brunswick’s Beauceron Security will be here to discuss some of the headlines. But first a review of headlines
Read moreLeave sex workers out of your NPC TikTok discourse
Every time a woman monetizes the absurd, she’s accused of making fetish content. It’s a symptom of the anti-sex moral panic sweeping pop culture — and this time, it’s coming for TikTok’s NPC creators. Snippets of these creators’ livestreams keep going viral, and because the internet loves to hate on
Read moreAMC scraps plan to charge more for better seats
AMC Theaters has announced that it’s dropping plans to charge more for preferred seats and less for front-row ones through a tiered pricing system. The plan, called “Sightline,” was being tested in three U.S. markets since March. The company says it saw “little or no increase in patronage of front
Read moreFedNow is finally live in the US
The U.S. government’s instant payment system, FedNow Service, went live this week. Here’s a quick refresher on what that is: FedNow is an instant payment infrastructure for transferring money that promises to be a faster payment rail for financial institutions, offering immediate access to funds no matter the day or
Read moreTechCrunch+ Roundup: Generative AI marketing, European edtech report, falling fintech valuations
Maintaining a full content pipeline is a laborious, subjective process, and with so many people involved, it can be hard to remain data-driven. Generative AI tools speed up this work dramatically: Once a system is trained on your content, it will churn out keywords and ideas by the bushel, but
Read moreTesla’s margins remind us that it’s an automaker, not a tech company
Tesla’s stock is worth more than that of Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Stellantis combined. Even though Tesla is an automaker, it’s valued as more of a tech company, with a share price that puts it in the camp of companies like Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft. But that share
Read moreRed Hat saved IBM’s bacon this quarter
IBM reported earnings this week, and if we’re being honest, the results were rather uninspiring. The company generated revenue of around $15.5 billion, down a disappointing 0.4% from its year-ago result. However, even inside its less than stellar report, there were some favorable tidbits for the well-known tech giant. On
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