The most notable bit of today’s news, however, is probably Nothing’s embrace of ChatGPT this time out.
Think Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa-style access on a pair of earbuds, only this one taps directly into OpenAI’s wildly popular platform.
Nothing says the Ear buds bring improved sound over their predecessors, courtesy of a new driver system.
A “smart” active noise-canceling system adapts accordingly to environmental noise and checks for “leakage” between the buds and the ear canal.
The Ear and Ear (a) are both reasonably priced at $149 and $99, respectively.
But it’s unlikely that startups’ fundraising slog will become much easier soon, mostly because of venture capitalists’ own capital-gathering challenges.
In Q1, U.S. VC funds raised only $9.3 billion, according to PitchBook data.
At this pace, VC fundraising will end 2024 at just above $37 billion, the lowest capital raised since 2013 and a 54% decline from last year.
PitchBook estimates that dry powder, the amount of capital VCs still have to invest from previous funds, remains high.
“One low fundraising quarter is not going to make or break the future of VC,” said Kyle Stanford, lead venture capital analyst at PitchBook.
Fudge’s company, Wase, is offering them an alternative: treat the water on site, and get some free energy to boot.
The UK-based startup says its system is significantly smaller and can squeeze about 30% more methane from the sludge.
“They’re in the soil in the ground, they’re in wastewater sludge, they’re in anaerobic digestion systems, but they don’t have the environment where they can really thrive.”Basically, Wase built a contraption to make these bacteria happy.
Each colony contains a diversity of species and strains, and they evolve over time as they grow accustomed to the particular sludge they’re processing.
Wase is developing a control system that will maintain wastewater flow through the system to keep the bacteria at their best.
The Barcelona court accepted that the mental problems suffered by the worker are not a common illness but a work accident, per the newspaper.
Meta’s subcontractor had processed his absence from work as common ailment and sought to deny responsibility for any psychological harms suffered from reviewing violent content uploaded to Facebook and Instagram.
Meta also noted it provides technical solutions to subcontractors which are intended to enable content reviewers to limit their exposure to graphic material they are being asked to moderate as much as possible.
In the article the newspaper quotes a worker describing the support provided by their employer, and Meta’s subcontractor, as “very insufficient”.
Legal rulings that impose requirements on third party content reviewers to take care of workers’ mental health could put limits on the model, however.
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