Author: GT

In 2013, Tatyana Marynich and Anastasiya Khamiankova opened the doors to Imaguru, a startup hub in Minsk, Belarus that would go on to launch some of Eastern Europe’s most prominent tech success stories. A decade later, they’ve been sentenced ‘in absentia’ to a combined 23 years in prison by Belarusian authorities. Their property has been seized. Their work was declared “extremist.” Marynich’s passport has expired and revoked, leaving her stranded and stateless in Spain. Their crime? Building an independent, pro-entrepreneurial future the Lukashenko regime deemed dangerous for its championing of entrepreneurship in a country normally dominated by state-owned industries. “What…

In what security experts are describing as a “distributed crisis,” a staggering 90% of cybersecurity and IT leaders worldwide reported experiencing cyberattacks targeting their cloud environments within the past year. This alarming statistic emerges from comprehensive research conducted across ten countries, highlighting the increasing vulnerability of organizations as they transition from on-premises systems to hybrid cloud infrastructures. The study, which surveyed more than 1,600 IT and security leaders, reveals that despite increased investment in cloud security, threat actors continue to find success in breaching these environments. The nature of cloud-targeted attacks has evolved dramatically, with adversaries shifting away from…

An eyeball-scanning crypto project that’s backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has launched in the U.S., Tools for Humanity, the venture’s developer, announced Wednesday evening. Originally dubbed Worldcoin, the project, now rebranded to World, aims to scan human’s irises through an orb to prove that humans aren’t AI. In return, participants receive a cryptocurrency called WLD. Americans can now access the eyeball-scanning orb, claim cryptocurrency, and use the associated World app. The project is first rolling out its iris scanners in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco, according to a press release. When it first launched in…

DUBAI (Reuters) – Crypto enthusiasts descended on Dubai on Wednesday, gathering under the Gulf’s scorching sun and hoping the industry’s buoyant mood can keep going despite signs the euphoria around Donald Trump’s crypto stance is ebbing. Speakers at the two-day event in the desert city include chief executives at some of the world’s major crypto firms, the head of digital assets at BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, as well as the U.S. president’s son, Eric Trump, who is set to take the stage on Thursday. Once a crypto sceptic, the U.S. president has vowed to support the industry by easing regulatory…

Google Play’s app marketplace is losing apps. From the start of 2024 to the present, the Android app marketplace went from hosting about 3.4 million apps worldwide to just around 1.8 million, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures. That’s a decline of about 47%, representing a significant purge of the apps that have been available to Android users globally. The decline is not part of some larger global trend, the firm also notes. During the same period, Apple’s iOS App Store went from hosting 1.6 million apps to now just around 1.64 million apps, for instance…

Freepik, the online graphic design platform, unveiled a new “open” AI image model on Tuesday that the company says was trained exclusively on commercially licensed, “safe-for-work” images. The model, called F Lite, contains around 10 billion parameters — parameters being the internal components that make up the model. F Lite was developed in partnership with AI startup Fal.ai and trained using 64 Nvidia H100 GPUs over the course of two months, according to Freepik. F Lite joins a small and growing collection of generative AI models trained on licensed data. We’ve been secretly working on this for months! It feels…

There’s a lot of hype around stablecoins right now. After Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge last year, everyone from startups to big banks are seeking to get in on the action. A crypto VC recently told me they’ve heard 15 pitches for stablecoin startups in the past few weeks. But beneath the hype is a powerful truth: Stablecoins are a transformative technology that are already remaking the global payments landscape and, in time, will play a pivotal geopolitical role by reinforcing the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s pre-eminent currency. Skeptics will be tempted to decry this as just…

As part of its Q1 2025 earnings release, Snap said it’s scrapping plans for a simplified version of its app. The news comes seven months after Snapchat began testing a redesigned version of the app without the Snap Map or Stories tabs. The new version consolidated the app’s navigation bar around three icons: chat, camera, and Snapchat’s TikTok competitor, Spotlight. Instead of continuing to test the simplified version, the social network is now going to begin experimenting with a “refined five-tab interface” that keeps all of the app’s existing tabs and makes it easier to access Spotlight. “In terms of…

(Bloomberg) — Cryptocurrency-linked stocks rallied in April, riding a surge in the price of Bitcoin to emerge largely unscathed by the turbulence that roiled US equity markets. Most Read from Bloomberg Shares of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, exchange operator Coinbase Global Inc. and mining firm CleanSpark Inc. all climbed sharply, logging double-digit gains even as the S&P 500 Index slipped 0.8%. The rally propelled them past the tech stocks they often mirror. The momentum came alongside a roughly 15% rally in Bitcoin, which has renewed the debate over its role as a safe haven for investors. Stocks tied to the digital…

AI cheating startup Cluely went viral last week with bold claims that its hidden in-browser window is “undetectable” and can be used to “cheat on everything” from job interviews to exams. But some startups are claiming they can catch Cluely’s users. And Cluely says it’s ready to develop hardware products like smart glasses, or even brain chips, that bypass anti-cheating software altogether. Validia, a San Francisco-based startup, launched a free product called “Truely” last week in direct response to Cluely. The software triggers an alarm if it detects someone using Cluely, Validia says.  Rhode Island-based startup Proctaroo also claims its…