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Heat Wave Hefty: Quilt’s Series A Secures $33M for Heat Pump Rides

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Heat pumps are having a bit of a moment. Consumer hesitancy has been on the top of Paul Lambert’s mind as he navigates bringing Quilt’s new heat pump to market. Heat pumps are just different enough from existing heating and air conditioning setups to give many consumers pause. Design isn’t the only challenge facing traditional heat pumps. Quilt’s heat pumps will roll out in a few regions initially before expanding further.

The Enduring Presence of Remote Work: A CEO’s Unlikely Wish

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Working from home isn’t going away, even if some CEOs wish it would Most workers crave flexibility and work-life balanceWhen I started working from home in the late 1980s as a freelance technical writer, I was clearly an outlier. Today, 14% of U.S. workers work at home full time (including me), and that number is expected to increase to 20% by next year, according to data published by USA Today. Wayfair, the Boston-based online furniture company, concentrated on remote workers over in-office folks in a layoff earlier this year, according to a WSJ report. Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg suggested remote workers weren’t actually working, but playing golf (which honestly sounds like projecting to me). That’s a lot of executive energy being directed against working from home and toward working in the office.

“Fueling Optimism: Unveiling the Past and Potential of Tomorrow in ‘A Brief History of the Future'”

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Cynicism is a quality taken almost for granted in tech journalism, and certainly we are as guilty as the next publication. “A Brief History of the Future,” hosted by Ari Wallach, also has the compelling quality of, as a PBS production, being completely free. But now we’re at a point that if we continually do that, we’re going to we’re going to lose the thread. And everyone seems to be relieved to be able to talk about the promise of the future rather than the threat of it. In case you’re wondering what moneyed special interest is trying to placate you with this beneficent presentation of a kindlier, wiser future… don’t worry, I asked.

“Internet Confused by Launch of Marissa Mayer’s New Photo Sharing and Event Planning Apps”

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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.

“The Intelligence of Honda’s Hydrogen-Fuelled CR-V: Breaking Stereotypes”

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Just like battery-electric cars 20 years ago, hydrogen fuel cell cars suffer from the old chicken and the egg problem. Nobody wants to buy a fuel cell vehicle until the supporting infrastructure is in place, but it’s tough to invest in infrastructure when nobody owns a fuel cell vehicle. Honda sees four ways to apply the second-generation hydrogen fuel cell: in consumer and commercial fuel cell vehicles, in stationary power stations and in construction machinery. Honda learned that Clarity Fuel Cell owners usually drove very short distances, five or 10 miles at a time and a hydrogen fuel cell isn’t the most efficient on quick trips. The fuel cell CR-V has a 10.2-inch digital gauge cluster with all the power-delivery information your nerdy brain could possibly want.

Ex-Gaming Entrepreneurs Secure $2.5M in Funding for NFT Marketplace in Effort to Keep Users, Even During Non-Profitable Periods

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Former web3 gaming founders raise $2.5M for their NFT marketplace to retain users even when there ‘isn’t money to be made’Even though NFT sales volume is still down 88% from 2022 all time-highs (and down 38% year-to-date), Pallet Exchange is building a new type of NFT marketplace focused on user retention. “It’s cool if there’s a lot of financial innovations happening, but at the same time we saw there’s pain points from a user experience,” Li said. It’s using social media tactics like in-app messaging that lets people interested in the same NFT collections engage with each other on its marketplace. That’s when Seiyans, an Sei-based NFT collection fueled by meme culture, capitulated the new blockchain and marketplace into the talk of the crypto world. Down the line, Pallet plans to look into working with big partners in the art marketplace and create a separate marketplace for those creators.

“Transparency at its Finest: Lenovo’s Revolutionary Laptop Concept Reveals Boundless Possibilities”

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Something I’ve always admired about Lenovo is the way the Chinese tech giant really lets its freak flag fly. In fact, visiting the company’s booth nestled in the way, way back of Hall 3 has long been a highlight of MWC for me. This year’s big scrum gatherer was Lenovo’s long-rumored transparent laptop. Broadly speaking, it looks like a laptop, with a transparent pane where the screen should be. Lenovo loves making weird tech for weird tech’s sake, and that’s totally fine.

“Maximize Your Phone’s Potential: Utilize the Back with These Tips”

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The back of your phone is useless. Sure, the cameras are back that, but what about all of that blank real estate monopolizing 90% of the surface area? The Infinix E-Color Shift improves upon Yota’s phone somewhat, by adding color to the mix. Like e-ink, however, the back panel does have the advantage of holding a static image even when the battery isn’t putting in the work. It remains to be seen whether this gets licensed by a third party or simply shows up on an Infinix device.

faces massive layoffs, discontinues publishing operations

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Riot Games is laying off about 530 employees, which represents 11% of its workforce, the Tencent-owned company announced on Monday. The League of Legends maker is also sunsetting its five-year-old publishing group, Riot Forge. Riot Games wrote two posts about the changes, addressing the affected employees in one and its players in another. He also highlighted two areas that’ll see “immediate impact” from the organizational changes– Riot Forge and the digital collectible card game Legends of Runeterra. Riot Games joins other video game publishers making job cuts, such as Epic Games, which eliminated 830 employees in September.