Author: GT

NEW YORK (AP) — A string of recent cyberattacks and data breaches involving the systems of major retailers have started affecting shoppers. United Natural Foods, a wholesale distributor that supplies Whole Foods and other grocers, said this week that a breach of its systems was disrupting its ability to fulfill orders — leaving many stores without certain items.In the U.K., consumers could not order from the website of Marks & Spencer for more than six weeks — and found fewer in-store options after hackers targeted the British clothing, home goods and food retailer. A cyberattack on Co-op, a U.K. grocery…

Pavlo Gonchar | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesThere’s a mini-boom happening in fintech.After a multi-year IPO slowdown triggered by rising rates and valuation resets, some of the emerging players in online stock trading, banking, lending and crypto-related services are hitting the public market, or at least preparing for a debut.The next test of Wall Street’s enthusiasm is expected to come on Thursday, when Chime is slated to start trading on the Nasdaq. The provider of online banking services offered a price range of $24 to $26 a share, which would equate to a market cap of about $9.1…

VCV | Visual China Group | Getty ImagesGoogle on Wednesday added a chief AI architect to its leadership ranks as the company continues to prioritize artificial intelligence and add the technology to more of its products.The company tapped Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer, for the new senior vice president position, the company confirmed Wednesday. Kavukcuoglu will report directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Semafor first reported the executive change.Kavukcuoglu will help with product strategy and “accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products, with the goal of more seamless integration, faster iteration, and greater efficiency,” Sundar…

This article was originally published June 9 at 6:43 a.m. PT. It has been updated to reflect new information from Waymo. Several Waymo robotaxis and Lime e-scooters were set on fire this weekend amid unrest in downtown Los Angeles spurred by groups protesting immigration raids in the city by the Trump administration.  A group of protesters attacked five Waymo autonomous vehicles on Los Angeles Street early on Sunday evening, reports the Los Angeles Times. They slashed tires, broke windows, spray-painted anti-ICE messages, and set the cars on fire. At one point, “the besieged Waymos began honking their horns in coordinated…

Dutch payments firm Adyen now has a market cap of over $61 billion, but that didn’t stop its co-founder Arnout Schuijff from stepping down in 2021 to focus on his new startup, Tebi. Now an Amsterdam-based fintech startup with 35 employees, Tebi helps restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses manage their operations with an all-in-one subscription-based platform that can handle payments, reservations, inventory, and more. This means that Tebi has a wealth of competitors, from POS systems to reservation platforms and analytics-driven solutions for inventory optimization. But it hopes to have an advantage by tying this all together with enterprise-level…

MILAN (AP) — A salvage company expects to lift the wreck of the luxury Bayesian yacht in late June from the seafloor off Sicily where it sank last summer, killing seven people, according to a recovery plan agreed with Italian maritime and investigating authorities, the TMC salvage company said Wednesday.Salvage teams in the past week have recovered 17 pieces of suspected Bayesian debris from the sea floor identified using a remote-controlled submersible. They have been transferred to shore in Termini Imerese as part of the investigation.The British-flagged superyacht sank in August, killing U.K. tech magnate Mike Lynch, his daughter and…

Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered tools, including chatbots, are devastating traffic for news publishers, per a Wall Street Journal report.  Now that people can simply ask a chatbot for answers — sometimes generated from news content taken without a publisher’s knowledge — there’s no need to click on Google’s blue links. That means referrals to news sites are plummeting, cutting off the traffic publishers need to sustain quality journalism.  Google released AI Overviews, its search result summary tool, last year. Its rollout hit traffic to sites like vacation guides, health tips, and product reviews, per the Journal. AI Mode,…

U.S. grocery distribution giant United Natural Foods (UNFI) said on Tuesday it is working to restore its capabilities following a cyberattack last week that continues to disrupt the grocery supply chain.  UNFI said as part of its third-quarter earnings report that it was “diligently managing through the cyber incident” it confirmed on Monday. The company is “helping our customers with short-term solutions wherever possible,” said UNFI chief executive Sandy Douglas in prepared remarks. On the company’s post-results conference call, Douglas said UNFI is “continuing to safely bring our systems back online and restore broad-based customer service as soon as possible.”…

NEW YORK (AP) — Disney and Universal have filed a copyright lawsuit against popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney on Wednesday, marking the first time major Hollywood companies have enter the legal battle over generative AI.Filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, the complaint claims Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios to generate and distribute “endless unauthorized copies” of their famed characters, such as Darth Vader from Star Wars and the Minions from Despicable Me. “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video…

U.K.-based autonomous vehicle technology company Wayve and Uber plan to launch a fully driverless robotaxi service in London in the coming years.  The news comes soon after the U.K.’s announcement of an accelerated framework for self-driving commercial pilots. U.K. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander confirmed Tuesday that the U.K. government would fast-track pilots to spring 2026, up from late 2027, to incentivize investment in autonomy in the country.     Wayve and Uber did not share many details of their upcoming launch, such as when exactly the companies would begin trials and service, with how many vehicles, or via which vehicle manufacturer partner…