For them, the difficulty hasn’t been opening local USD accounts; it’s been cost-effectively facilitating payments from international employers and online platforms.
“Using local products meant many remote workers had large chunks of their earnings eaten away with excessive fees.
The USD products couldn’t be local,” said Oudjidane, who is also the founding partner of emerging markets fintech fund Byld Ventures.
“The product would need to move to offering U.S.-based USD accounts,” accounts that, critically, would facilitate ACH payments to enable those freelance payments and came with the security that you get with U.S. banking, such as FDIC assurance.
“Freelancers and remote workers in these markets will undoubtedly be a critical source of foreign income to help rebuild,” Oudjidane said.
Announced earlier this year, Roku revealed today that its Pro Series TVs, the lineup of high-end televisions, are now available for purchase in the U.S.
Starting today, Roku Pro Series TVs are being sold at Best Buy stores and online at BestBuy.com, Amazon.com, and Walmart.com.
Compared to the Roku Select and Roku Plus Series TVs, which were the first-ever Roku-branded smart TVs that launched in 2023, the Roku Pro Series has a slimmer design that can be flush mounted to the wall.
Like the Roku Plus TVs, the Pro Series has HDR10+ and Dolby Vision for a cinematic viewing experience, as well as 4K QLED displays and local dimming.
In addition to the Pro Series launch, Roku announced new software updates coming to all Roku TVs that aim to enhance the viewing experience.
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.
Phantom Auto, a remote driving startup that launched seven years ago amid the buzz of autonomous vehicle technology, is shutting down after failing to secure new funding, TechCrunch has learned.
Phantom Auto, which had cut staff last year, employed a little more than 100 people as of this week.
Phantom Auto’s demise is the latest in a long line of startups that popped up as the autonomous vehicle technology industry gained attention and investment from investors.
Phantom Auto was founded in 2017 and initially focused on applying its teleops technology to autonomous vehicles on public roadways such as robotaxis and self-driving trucks.
Phantom Auto pivoted in 2019 and started shopping its remote driving system to logistics, specifically forklifts and yard trucks that have no autonomy as well as autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.
As remote work becomes increasingly prevalent, organizations globally are adapting, especially regarding onboarding procedures for new employees and navigating cross-border payment complexities.
RemotePass, one such business out of the UAE, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by New York-based 212 VC.
CEO Kamal Reggad and Karim Nadi founded RemotePass in late 2020 to allow businesses to onboard, manage and pay their talent base in countries where they lack local legal presence.
Several companies are actively facilitating remote work and aiding employees in receiving payments from employers.
“Addressing today’s workforce challenges like talent mobility and remote work, RemotePass stands out as a key enabler.
Security researchers say a pair of easy-to-exploit flaws in a popular remote access tool used by more than a million companies around the world are now being mass-exploited, with hackers abusing the vulnerabilities to deploy ransomware and steal sensitive data.
ConnectWise first disclosed the flaws on February 19 and urged on-premise customers to install security patches immediately.
Finnish cybersecurity firm WithSecure said in a blog post Monday that its researchers have also observed “en-mass exploitation” of the ScreenConnect flaws from multiple threat actors.
It’s not yet known how many ConnectWise ScreenConnect customers or end users are affected by these vulnerabilities, and ConnectWise spokespeople did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions.
The company’s website claims that the organization provides its remote access technology to more than a million small to medium-sized businesses that manage over 13 million devices.
Today, KKR added to that growing total when it announced it was going to acquire Broadcom’s end user computing business for $4 billion.
These pieces include VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon, two remote desktop applications that had been part of the VMware family of products.
Almost immediately, Broadcom began slashing costs, starting with laying off over 2000 VMware employees, just a week after the deal was official.
KKR managing director Bradley Brown still sees a lot of room for growth moving forward to build out the EUC (end user computing) division into a vibrant stand-alone business.
One interesting aspect of this deal is that KKR intends to implement an employee ownership program, giving employees a chance to own equity in the new company alongside KKR.
Researchers warn high-risk ConnectWise flaw under attack is ’embarrassingly easy’ to exploit “I can’t sugarcoat it — this shit is bad," said Huntress' CEOSecurity experts are warning that a high-risk vulnerability in a widely used remote access tool is “trivial and embarrassingly easy” to exploit, as the software’s developer confirms malicious hackers are actively exploiting the flaw.
The maximum severity-rated vulnerability affects ConnectWise ScreenConnect (formerly ConnectWise Control), a popular remote access software that allows managed IT providers and technicians to provide real-time remote technical support on customer systems.
Cybersecurity company Huntress on Wednesday published an analysis of the actively exploited ConnectWise vulnerability.
ConnectWise also released a fix for a separate vulnerability affecting its remote desktop software.
The U.S. agencies also observed hackers abusing remote access software from AnyDesk, which was earlier this month forced to reset passwords and revoke certificates after finding evidence of compromised production systems.
Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter.
It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name.
But sometimes we forget that technology does, too — especially when it comes to AI, which is still in its early days in many respects.
— AnnaAI unfairness at workEmployee-monitoring software isn’t new.
Also known as bossware, it is pitched by its makers as a way to help boost productivity, but by those who endure it, it’s a surefire way to deplete morale.
U.S. software giant Ivanti has confirmed that hackers are exploiting two critical-rated vulnerabilities affecting its widely-used corporate VPN appliance, but said that patches won’t be available until the end of the month.
Ivanti said the two vulnerabilities — tracked as CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 — were found in its Ivanti Connect Secure software.
Formerly known as Pulse Connect Secure, this is a remote access VPN solution that enables remote and mobile users to access corporate resources over the internet.
When TechCrunch asked why patches weren’t being made available immediately, Ivanti declined to comment.
Ivanti is urging that potentially impacted organizations prioritize following its mitigation guidance, and U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has also published an advisory urging Ivanti Connect Secure to mitigate the two vulnerabilities immediately.
