Day: June 14, 2023

Day: June 14, 2023

Canva introduces new developer tools and $50M investment fund

Canva has been around since 2013, and has been a tremendously successful design platform, raising over $570 million and garnering 135 million users along the way. With that kind of traction, it makes a ton of sense to let developers tap into that user base and take advantage of the work that the company has already done. Today, at the first Canva Extend developer conference in San Francisco, the company announced a new SDK, more robust APIs and a $50 million fund to help encourage some of the better ideas. Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer at the company,

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Ask Sophie: How much time and money will we need for an H-1B transfer?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Ask Sophie: Why is there no movement in the June Visa Bulletin for India EB-3? Ask Sophie: How long until I can travel while waiting for my green card? Here’s another edition of “Ask Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your

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Sony readies PS5 game streaming for PlayStation Plus Premium members

Sony this morning announced that it has begun testing PlayStation 5 game streaming. The feature is still early days, but it will eventually be available for those subscribed to PlayStation Plus Premium. Sony notes, “Our goal is to add this as an additional benefit to PlayStation Plus Premium as part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the value of PlayStation Plus.” The move marks an evolution for the company’s cloud gaming strategy, which previously required users to download the title in order to stream it remotely from the console itself. “We think it’s important for Premium members to be able

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Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder office over unpaid rent

Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show. Since its takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter’s business has more or less fallen into disarray, and there have been numerous reports of unpaid bills. While a contractor going unpaid during a rocky transition is unfortunate but not uncommon, ceasing to pay rent altogether for months suggests Twitter’s operations may be farther gone than anyone expected. According to court documents and reporting by the Denver Business Journal, Lot 2 SBO LLC, the Chicago-based landlord

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Former SEC chair Jay Clayton feels ‘vast majority’ of crypto tokens are securities

Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has reiterated his position that many cryptocurrencies could be defined as securities, even as the crypto industry continues to combat the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the regulator’s prohibitive stance towards the industry. “I’ve said this for a long time: I think the market has evolved, but many, if not the vast majority, of the tokens that were sold for cash would fall within the definition of a security in America,” Clayton, now a senior policy advisor and counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, said at the R3 CordaDay conference on Wednesday. The definition

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Synthesia secures $90M for AI that generates custom avatars

Once the pandemic normalized virtual meetups, the concept of “personalized AI” began to gain steam. Startups creating “AI-driven” avatars — realistic-looking characters with synthetic voices that star in pre-recorded or live videos — have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital over the past few years. As such avatars improve, they promise to deliver more personalized digital marketing and training experiences while reducing the costs typically associated with video production. That’s at least the sales pitch from Synthesia, one of the startups using AI to create synthetic videos for advertising and other use cases. The company yesterday announced

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EVs are going backwards

When you send a rocket into space, you run into a paradox: Around 90% of the weight of the rocket is the fuel that it needs to lift away from Earth. As the rocket accelerates, three things happen: The speed increases, the rocket gets further away from Earth (and from the gravitational pull of the planet), and as the fuel burns off, the rocket weighs less and so can accelerate faster. We face a similar problem in the world of EVs, with an obvious exception. Technically, car batteries get heavier as they are charged, but the difference is so small

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Google Lens can now search for skin conditions

Google’s enhancing Google Lens, its computer vision-powered app that brings up information related to the objects it identifies, with new features. Starting today, Lens can surface skin conditions similar to what you might see on your own skin, like moles and rashes. Uploading a picture or photo through Lens will kick off a search for visual matches, which will also work for other physical maladies that you might not be sure how to describe with words (like a bump on the lip, a line on nails or hair loss). It’s a step short of the AI-driven app Google launched in

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Google intros new AI-powered travel and product search features

Google’s new AI-powered search experience, released in May, might have gotten a mixed reception. But the search giant isn’t letting that slow its feature roadmap. Google today announced new capabilities, some of which it previously previewed at its I/O conference, heading to Search Generative Experience (SGE) — the moniker for its experimental search experience — focused on travel and shopping. Now, when a user asks questions about a place or destination in Google Search (e.g. “Is this restaurant good for large groups?”), they’ll see a snapshot that brings together information from across the web as well as reviews, photos and

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Google Maps gains glanceable directions and an expanded Immersive View

Timed to arrive ahead of the summer travel season, Google’s bringing new features to Maps focused on discovery and navigation. New “glanceable directions,” which Google announced in February, will start rolling out this month in the Maps app on Android and iOS. They’ll let users who opt-in track walking, cycling and driving trip progress from their lock screen or route overview, and see updated ETAs and notifications about where to make each turn. Image Credits: Google Arriving alongside glanceable directions is updates to Recents on desktop, a shortcut that automatically organizes places you researched in Maps into a highlight on

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