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.
India’s election overshadowed by the rise of online misinformation Greater internet penetration and the rise of "cheapfakes" since the last general election in 2019 pose new challengesAs India kicks off the world’s biggest election, which starts on April 19 and runs through June 1, the electoral landscape is overshadowed by misinformation.
Misinformation is not just a problem for election fairness — it can have deadly effects, including violence on the ground and increase hatred for minorities.
“Ever since social media has been thriving, there is a new trend where you use misinformation to target communities,” he said.
The country’s vast diversity in language and culture also make it particularly hard for fact-checkers to review and filter out misleading content.
Moreover, just before the Indian election, Meta reportedly cut funding to news organizations for fact-checking on WhatsApp.
The tools would be part of a wider set of proposals Ofcom is putting together focused on online child safety.
Consultations for the comprehensive proposals will start in the coming weeks with the AI consultation coming later this year, Ofcom said.
AI researchers are finding ever-more sophisticated ways of using AI to detect, for example, deep fakes, as well as to verify users online.
It found that 32% of the kids reported that they’d seen worrying content online, but only 20% of their parents said they reported anything.
Among children aged 16-17, Ofcom said, 25% said they were not confident about distinguishing fake from real online.
Palo Alto Networks urged companies this week to patch against a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in one of its widely used security products, after malicious hackers began exploiting the bug to break into corporate networks.
Because the vulnerability allows hackers to gain complete control of an affected firewall over the internet without authentication, Palo Alto gave the bug a maximum severity rating.
The ease with which hackers can remotely exploit the bug puts thousands of companies that rely on the firewalls at risk from intrusions.
Adding another complication, Palo Alto initially suggested disabling telemetry to mitigate the vulnerability, but said this week that disabling telemetry does not prevent exploitation.
Security firm Volexity, which first discovered and reported the vulnerability to Palo Alto, said it found evidence of malicious exploitation going back to March 26, some two weeks before Palo Alto released fixes.
TikTok is working towards launching a new app called TikTok Notes that will allow users to post images in an apparent bid to rival Instagram, a service best known for its static-photo sharing feature.
Instagram, of course, has expanded into video and stories itself, taking pieces of other services and incorporating them into its own product.
As is nearly every social service you can imagine.
If it works for one social media service, expect the rest to follow in some manner at some point — probably sooner rather than later.
Expanding a feature set can bolster engaged time, and therefore how much revenue a social media service can earn.
Metalab goes from quietly building the internet to investing in itNearly 20 years after finding success in helping startups build products, Canadian interface design firm Metalab launches Metalab Ventures to invest in many of those product-led startups.
Then Metalab “lets them loose” to grow, CEO Luke Des Cotes told TechCrunch.
With Metalab Ventures, the venture arm will play the role of a long-term value investor, essentially “putting our money where our mouth is,” Des Cotes said.
When determining who to invest in Metalab Ventures, the process includes getting to know the founders and if the firm can add value.
“We’ve already operated very much like a venture fund,” Des Cotes said.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Wednesday announced plans to vote on rules restoring net neutrality.
The vote, set for April 25, would reinstate 2015 internet rules adopted under President Obama that were subsequently repealed by President Trump’s FCC two years later.
The official added that ongoing national security threats have further highlighted the need for strong oversight.
Net neutrality has the rare chance to receive widespread bipartisan support.
Should Trump be reelected in November, how can current officials ensure we don’t live through this all over again?
Marissa Mayer’s startup just rolled out photo sharing and event planning apps, and the internet isn’t sure what to thinkWhen Marissa Mayer co-founded a startup six years ago in Palo Alto, Ca., expectations were sky high for the former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee.
When that startup, Sunshine, revealed that its first app centered around subscription software for contact management, people wondered if something more ambitious might be around the corner.
Today, after Sunshine released two equally mundane features – event organizing and photo sharing – internet commenters were decidedly mystified.
I was also baffled last week, when Mayer walked me through Sunshine’s new offerings.
The core thesis has always been to take the mundane and make it magical.”The team “thought about naming it Mundane AI,” she continued.
A new web3 network is being built right now that wants to end Big Tech’s control of your dataMany of the people building Web3 feel like the traditional web ecosystem has taken advantage of users and their data.
It’s the initial team supporting The Graph, a decentralized network that indexes, queries and organizes data.
It has been called the “Google of web3” and aims to organize open blockchain data and make open data a public good.
“Web3 is still being built, we’re still working on building this decentralized internet that is censorship resistant.
“The one thing that’s really important about AI is that it’s all about data,” Kline said.
Where Loon relied on balloons, however, the newer project utilizes Zephyr solar-powered drones.
“[Loon] got really good customer engagement,” AALTO CEO Samer Halawi told TechCrunch in a sit-down interview last week at Mobile World Congress.
Airbus acquired the technology for the fixed-wing drones from U.K. Ministry of Defence and Space spinoff QinetiQ in 2022.
Every six months or so, the system will land for a battery swap, as these still have a limited shelf life.
Like Loon before it, the company is also exploring temporary deployment for downed cell towers following natural disasters.
