Amazon is acquiring some assets of MX Player, but not the entire firm, which also counts Tencent among its backers.
TechCrunch reported in February last year that Amazon and MX Player were engaging for a deal.
MX Player is especially popular among such demographic groups, and Amazon’s e-commerce service has long only been popular among the urban city consumers.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed it has agreed to purchase some assets of MX Player after publication of this story.
Following the acquisition, Times Internet made strategic moves to transform MX Player from a local video playback app into a comprehensive video streaming platform.
The company first started working with Mr. Bricolage, a popular DIY retailer in France.
Dealt operates a white-label platform for Mr. Bricolage so that it can upsell its own clients with services.
After that, retailers like Mr. Bricolage can provide services and generate new revenue lines as they take a cut on each transaction.
Other Dealt clients include Fnac-Darty, Orange, E.Leclerc, Conforama, Boulanger, 3Suisses and Rue du Commerce.
Some of these retailers work with Dealt to provide services that aren’t necessarily related to a new purchase.
Google has acquired Cameyo, a company developing virtualization tools to run Windows apps on ChromeOS devices, for an undisclosed amount.
Cameyo CTO Eyal Dotan founded the startup in 2018, aiming to create a platform to virtualize Windows apps so that they could run on non-Windows machines and even within web browsers.
Last year, perhaps foreshadowing the acquisition, Google partnered with Cameyo to launch features including Windows app local file system integration and the ability to deliver virtual Windows apps as progressive web apps, or apps hosted in datacenters that run in browsers.
With Cameyo’s tech, organizations looking to move away from Windows — or work with both Windows and ChromeOS — have a potentially more appealing avenue, particularly as more and more apps move to the cloud and web-based technologies.
Indeed, Cameyo claims on its website that hundreds of organizations, including school districts and financial institutions, already rely on its software.
Last week, Australian authorities sounded the alarm saying they had become aware of “successful compromises of several companies utilising Snowflake environments,” without naming the companies.
TechCrunch has this week seen hundreds of alleged Snowflake customer credentials that are available online for cybercriminals to use as part of hacking campaigns, suggesting that the risk of Snowflake customer account compromises may be far wider than first known.
When we checked the web addresses of the Snowflake environments — often made up of random letters and numbers — we found the listed Snowflake customer login pages are publicly accessible, even if not searchable online.
In our checks, we found that these Snowflake login pages redirected to Live Nation (for Ticketmaster) and Santander sign-in pages.
There is some evidence to suggest that several employees with access to their company’s Snowflake environments had their computers previously compromised by infostealing malware.
The self-driving technology company announced Wednesday plans to begin testing in Austin and Miami this summer.
Earlier this week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requested more information from Zoox to aid its probe into rear-end crash risks posed by unexpected braking.
Zoox also didn’t say when it aims to remove the safety driver or begin commercial operations in Austin or Miami.
The plans to test in Austin and Miami come as Zoox gears up for its first commercial launch.
The company won’t be testing those vehicles on public roads in Austin or Miami, just yet.
Ms. Rachel isn’t a household name, but if you spend a lot of time with toddlers, she might as well be a rockstar.
Ms. Rachel – a music teacher named Rachel Accurso – decided to use her platform for good.
And for a full-time content creator and graduate student in early childhood education, that’s not much time to record 500 personalized videos.
However, Cameo was aware of Ms. Rachel’s highly popular fundraiser, since Cameo posted about it on X.
Given that Ms Rachel intended to fulfill her Cameo requests, it’s unclear why Cameo didn’t grant her additional time to do so in the first place, rather than refunding buyers.
With the launch of TC’s AI newsletter, we’re sunsetting This Week in AI, the semiregular column previously known as Perceptron.
But you’ll find all the analysis we brought to This Week in AI and more, including a spotlight on noteworthy new AI models, right here.
The group published an open letter on Tuesday calling for leading AI companies, including OpenAI, to establish greater transparency and more protections for whistleblowers.
(Reward models are specialized models to evaluate the outputs of AI models, in this case math-related outputs from GPT-4.)
Should generative AI replace most knowledge workers within three years (which seems unrealistic to me given AI’s many unsolved technical problems), economic collapse could well ensue.
Hoop, a productivity startup founded by a group of early Trello employees, wants to use AI to help you automatically generate and track your to-do list.
Image Credits: HoopThe core idea behind Hoop is that it will use AI to automatically capture potential tasks from Google Meet and Slack meetings and Slack messages (with other platforms coming later, starting with email) and pull those into the Hoop to-do list.
Currently, Hoop is a bit of a single-player experience, but Garber tells me that the company plans to add more team features in the future.
“We are really, really focused on making [Hoop] as useful for the individual as possible before we expand to teams, but it’s a very natural thing for us to do,” Garber said.
And while Hoop right now mostly looks like a standard to-do list, the company plans to add different views over time as well.
Google’s newest startup program, announced on Wednesday, aims to bring AI technology to the public sector.
The newly launched “Google for Startups AI Academy: American Infrastructure” will offer participants hands-on training from AI experts and other support for companies solving problems in areas like agriculture, energy, education, public safety, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, urban development, and more.
Over the course of twelve weeks, startups participating in the equity-free program will be guided by an AI curriculum developed by Google’s People + AI Research (PAIR) team and will participate in advanced sales and go-to-market workshops.
They’ll also be able to access industry connections and, of course, tap into Google’s AI tools as they build.
While much focus is on the AI companies building the models, tools, and interfaces for working with AI, a focus on real-world applications of the technology could impact communities at the local, state, and national levels, Google believes.
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