Technical

On Saturday, Ukraine’s official Twitter account shared two cryptocurrency wallet addresses — a bitcoin wallet address and an Ethereum wallet address. “Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT,” @Ukraine wrote. But it’s hard to know for sure who owns and operates these wallets — a public address is just a long string of letters and numbers. They don’t technically belong to anyone as someone can transfer the ownership of a wallet. Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT. BTC – 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P ETH and USDT (ERC-20) – 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14 — Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 26, 2022 The first logical reaction to a tweet like that is that you should proceed with extreme caution. It is unclear if those wallets are run by a government member, a government agency, someone outside of the government who is informally f...

In 2018, Y Combinator released its first mega list of the top companies  valued at $150 million or more that have gone through the accelerator. Over the past four years, it’s updated the list to reflect the current status of its most valued companies . Valuation isn’t the best way to measure a startup’s success or real-life value, of course, and YC has always admitted that. Yet, as the accelerator points out, “it’s the most commonly available metric to compare companies in the startup world.” Thus, the original list of 101 companies has ballooned to 267 companies as of February 2022 ( YC list isn’t exhaustive; some founders opt out of being listed ). Many factors are responsible for this growth. One is the increasing size of YC cohorts and the acceptance of companies both within and outside the U.S. There were 141 companies from 24 countries in the winter 2018 batch, compared with 377 companies across 47 countries in the summer 2021 group . The second is that companies...

A joint advisory issued by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned that the wiper malware used to attack Ukrainian organizations could affect businesses in the United States. The alert , released over the weekend, provides information on WhisperGate and HermeticWiper, two destructive malware strains seen in recent attacks against organizations in Ukraine. WhisperGate is a form of wiper malware that masquerades as ransomware , yet rather than encrypting files, it targets a system master boot record for destruction. The malware, first discovered by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, was used in multiple cyberattacks against Ukrainian targets back in January, including government, nonprofit and technology organizations. HermeticWiper, another strain of disruptive wiper malware, was used to target Ukrainian organizations shortly before the launch of a Russian invasion. Discovered by ESET, the malware re...

Twitter announced on Monday new measures to prevent disinformation tied to the Russian government from spreading in light of the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The company will begin adding labels to tweets containing links from Russian state-linked media outlets noting their affiliation. The labels are accompanied by an orange exclamation point, warning Twitter users to “stay informed.” Twitter will also begin reducing the visibility of Russian state-linked media on the platform, dampening the ability for those outlets to reach a wide audience. Today, we’re adding labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites and are taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter. We’ll roll out these labels to other state-affiliated media outlets in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/57Dycmn8lx — Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) February 28, 2022 The changes to tweets with ties to the Russian government will roll out immediately. ...

Kris Holt Contributor Share on Twitter Kris Holt is a contributing writer at Engadget . More posts by this contributor LinkedIn debuts its own podcast network Extreme H is an upcoming off-road racing series with hydrogen cars Panasonic aims to start mass production of a higher-capacity battery for Tesla by March 2024. The company is building a production facility for the battery at its Wakayama Factory, where it will create two more production lines and make structural improvements. Development is continuing on the 4,680 lithium-ion battery. It’s expected to be around twice the size of current batteries and have a fivefold increase in energy capacity. While fewer of them would be required for each car (which will reduce costs and potentially lower EV prices), the batteries could boost the range of an EV by over 15 percent. Panasonic’s announcement lines up with previous reports suggesting it could start making the battery next year. The company was said to be i...

Alphabet today confirmed with TechCrunch that it has disabled certain Google Maps live traffic tools in Ukraine. The news, reported by Reuters , comes after the company has consulted with local authorities as the country faces attacks from Russian forces. The features will remain on for local turn-by-turn navigation for drivers, while broader global access is disabled. The popular mapping technology has served a surprise role in the invasion of Ukraine since the outset. One research facility in California was able to spot the Russian approach toward the Ukrainian border hours before the “special military operation” was officially declared, using a combination of Maps traffic data and satellite imaging to spot traffic pileups. “In the old days, we would have relied on a reporter to show us what was happening on the ground,” researcher Jeffrey Lewis told The Washington Post. “And today, you can open Google Maps and see people fleeing Kyiv.” Alphabet’s move appears to stem from conce...

Food tech company Better Dairy is closer to getting its aged and hard cheeses into the testing phase after securing $22 million in Series A funding. The U.K.-based company, founded in 2019 by Jevan Nagarajah, is still in the R&D phase of developing animal-free cheeses using precision fermentation. We initially got to know Nagarajah and Better Dairy back in 2020 when the company raised £1.6 million in seed funding in a round led by Happiness Capital. At the time, he explained that animal-based dairy farming was “hugely unsustainable,” needing 650 liters of water to produce just 1 liter of milk and utilizing a process that emits the equivalent of over 1.7 billion tonnes of CO 2 into the atmosphere each year. Instead, Better Dairy is using precision fermentation to produce products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy, Nagarajah said. The process is similar to brewing beer, with the end result being dairy. While other food tech companies are tackling softer chee...

FPL Technologies, the Indian startup that operates OneCard, is set to double its valuation to about $1.5 billion in a new financing round, just a month after it disclosed its previous funding, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Singapore’s Temasek, one of the world’s largest investors, is in advanced stages of talks to lead a new financing round of the Pune-headquartered startup, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberation is ongoing and private. The size of the round is over $100 million, two sources said. OneCard declined to comment whereas Temasek said it does not comment on market rumors and speculation. The new round follows a $75 million Series C funding that OneCard disclosed last month. The Series C round, led by QED, valued OneCard at about $750 million. Founded by banking veterans, OneCard operates a mobile-first credit card. Its cards come without any joining or annual fee and give customers more control and flexibility over how and whe...

After dominating the world of high-end mobile processors for so long, Qualcomm’s got a laptop it would like to sell you. Announced at the tail end of last year as part of the annual Snapdragon summit, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 marks the chipmaker’s latest foray into the world of laptop components. As the name suggests, this marks Qualcomm’s third major foray into the category. It arrives at time when Apple in-house chip production has given way to its own ARM-based laptop chips — to some pretty spectacular performance results. Qualcomm is hoping to do the same, leveraging mobile performance games into a Windows 11 Pro-based laptop. Image Credits: Lenovo As rumors swirl around a Microsoft Surface device built around the platform, Lenovo just used Mobile World Congress to launch its own device, the ThinkPad X13s. The advantages of the platform are apparent at first glance — adhering to the longstanding promises of shifting to ARM architecture in a laptop form factor. Namely, it’s s...

Future Retail, India’s second largest retail chain, is scaling down its operations to reduce losses, it said, the latest casualty in its years-long battle with estranged partner Amazon. The firm, led by Kishore Biyani, said in filings to the stock exchanges that it has been finding it “difficult to finance the working capital needs,” and its losses at store level are “increasing” and of “grave concern.” Future Retail has lost about $593 million in the last four quarters, it said in the filings. The admission follows a local media report that said Reliance Industries – which entered into a now-hotly contested $3.4 billion deal to acquire several operations of Future Retail – was taking over about 200 of Future’s 1,700 stores and absorbing as many as 30,000 workers of the smaller retail giant after brokering deals with landlords. Reliance will rebrand those outlets as its own, Business Standard reported. Reliance Industries had no comment. India’s Future Retail operates over 1,7...

As Ukraine continues to make efforts to mobilize and equip ordinary citizens on the ground to resist Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country, those who are outside Ukraine who want to help are being asked to get involved in the fight in the virtual world. While the G7 (today with the addition of Japan ) mobilize to shut down Russia’s access to the Swift banking system, the country has been running campaign corralling developers to join an “IT army” tasked with specific cyber challenges. It’s also making specific calls to technology leaders to do their part, too. The “ IT Army of Ukraine “, announced yesterday and already with nearly 184,000 users on its main Telegram channel (and that number is growing – it gained almost 10,000 users in the time I wrote this story), is using that account to name specific projects and call-outs for help to shut down Russian sites, Russian agents and those working in concert with the country, and to mobilize those living in Ukraine around work ...

Reface , an a16z-backed synthetic media app that’s developed out of Ukraine, has added push notifications informing its ~200 million-strong global user-base about Russia’s invasion of the country — urging people to #StandWithUkraine, including by watermarking face-swapped videos created with the app. All videos created in the app are now being watermarked with the Ukrainian flag and the #StandWithUkraine hashtag. On first opening the app after this update, it also displays an image of civilians sheltering in Kyiv, with a caption that describes the picture as “evidence” of Russia attacking Ukraine. The message also calls for Russia to be excluded from the SWIFT international banking payment system — in order to “stop the war”. Reface said another incoming update to the app will urge all users to “Make a statement against war in Ukraine”. It is also pointing users towards resources where they can help Ukraine. [gallery ids="2277190,2277232"] The startup began the anti...

Welcome to my new weekly fintech focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Equity podcast and hear Alex Wilhelm , Natasha Mascarenhas and me riff on all things startups! And if you want to have this hit your inbox directly once it turns into a newsletter (soon!), sign up here . It’s been really tough concentrating during the latter part of this week due to global events so forgive me if my tone is less upbeat than normal. My heart goes out to all of the people of Ukraine and our TechCrunch readers there. This week, I wrote about a couple of instances in which fintech companies went horizontal with their approach. Pipe, which aims to be the “Nasdaq for revenue,” announced it was expanding into media and entertainment. And corporate spend startup Ramp told TC exclusively it is branching out in the travel space . Truth be told, Pipe’s foray into media and entertainment was a bit of a surprise and it will be interestin...

Step aside, whatever “ Pokémon Café Remix” is — the ninth generation of Pokémon is coming. This morning, a Pokémon Presents broadcast announced “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet,” the latest installment in the main series Pokémon games after “Pokémon Sword and Shield” came out in late 2019. The Nintendo Switch games are expected to be released in late 2022. Check out the extremely dramatic trailer here: From the trailer, the graphics look similar to the recently released (and very fun) “Pokémon Legends: Arceus,” but the footage may not show actual gameplay, so it’s still up in the air if we’ll encounter over-world Pokémon again (that implementation worked in “Arceus,” but let’s not pull a “Pokémon Let’s Go” again, please.) But, the YouTube description of the trailer declares, “Welcome to the open world of Pokémon,” so maybe this game will take a nod from “Arceus” (which isn’t technically an open world game, but it’s the closest thing the Pokémon franchise has to a “Breath of the Wild”...