Bargain Blitz Blast

Jury finds Elizabeth Holmes guilty of 4 counts in Theranos fraud trial

On Monday, Jan. 3, after a four month-long trial in which Elizabeth Holmes herself took the stand, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud against investors in the blood-testing company.
The jury was deadlocked on three of the counts earlier in the day, which each involved specific charges of wire fraud in December 2013. These counts are still pending verdicts.
However, Holmes was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud, and not guilty on one conspiracy count and three counts of wire fraud.

The 7 weirdest moments of the Elizabeth Holmes trial

After a four-month trial, and seven days of jury deliberations, Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy Monday. Prosecutors were partially successful in their bid to prove that the former Theranos CEO intentionally misled investors and patients about the viability of her blood testing business. The San Jose-based jury decided that she did at least bilk some investors, couldn’t decide about others, and found Holmes not guilty of defrauding patients. She still faces up to 20 years in prison.
But while the judge's sentencing remains to be seen, the verdict is in on the trial itself: It was the kind of courtroom spectacle you can only imagine in the 21st century. Given the numerous tellings of Holmes' story — in book, podcast, documentary, and soon-to-be feature film form — a seat in the gallery became the hottest tickets in Silicon Valley. Tickets which Holmes' wealthy friends hired TaskRabbits to secure.

Amazon's Alexa is taking a trip to the moon

Alexa, can you go to space?
Apparently, Alexa can. Amazon Alexa, the digital technology assistant, will be breaking new ground in 2022. A version of the voice assistant will be included on NASA's Artemis I mission, a highly-anticipated flight beyond Earth.
Amazon engineers designed an advanced version of Alexa for the journey, intended to test whether this sort of technology would be useful for future space missions.
The upcoming NASA mission is a component of the Artemiss program, an initiative by NASA to send the first woman and person of color to the surface of the moon. Artemis I will be take place in NASA's next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). In conjunction with the SLS, which will carry crew and cargo, passengers will ride in a new capsule called Orion, designed by American aerospace and technology corporation Lockheed Martin. This is the first time the two vehicles will fly together, so for the test launch, the Orion won't be carrying any humans.

You can now only buy some Tesla merch with Dogecoin

Both the Gigi Texas Belt Buckle and the Cyberquad for Kids are solely available to purchase with Doge, and will set buyers back 835 and 12,020 Doge respectively — or around $160 and $2,300 at the current conversion rate. The Cyberwhistle was also one of these products, but the 300 Dodge or $60 stainless steel whistle has sold out already. There are no visible options for any other form of payment for these items.
Dogecoin's co-founder Billy Markus also shared the news on Twitter. According to CoinMarketCap data, the price of the meme coin has already jumped by 12 percent following this development.

Parloa, a conversational AI platform for customer service, raises $66M

Conversational AI platform Parloa has nabbed $66 million in a Series B round, a year after it raised $21 million from a swathe of European investors to propel its international growth.

The German company is focusing on the U.S. in particular, and last year opened an office in New York, too. It says this hub helped it sign up “several Fortune 200 companies” in the region. For the latest round, Parloa has secured Altimeter Capital as lead backer, a U.S.-based VC firm notable for its investments in the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Snowflake, Twilio and HubSpot.

AI and automation is not new in customer service, but with a new wave of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI infrastructure, truly smart “conversational” AI (i.e., not dumb chatbots) is again firmly in investors’ focus. Established players continue to raise substantial sums — Kore.ai, for example, closed a chunky $150 million round a few months ago from big-name backers such as Nvidia. Elsewhere, entrepreneur and former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, in February launched a new customer experience platform called Sierra that’s built around the concept of “AI agents,” and has raised more than $100 million from venture investors.

RBI bars Kotak Bank from adding new online customers and credit cards

India’s central bank on Wednesday ordered Kotak Mahindra Bank to immediately cease onboarding new customers via its online and mobile banking channels and to stop issuing fresh credit cards, citing serious deficiencies in the bank’s IT systems and risk management practices.

Kotak Mahindra Bank is India’s fourth most valuable bank. It’s also one of the key partners for many fintech startups — including KredX and Rupeek — in the country. The lender, also an investor in many startups, additionally works with many fintech firms to extend credit to SMEs and MSMEs and to issue co-branded credit cards.

The lender operates Kotak811, a digital offering that has emerged as its strongest customer acquisition tool in recent years. Kotak811, which allows onboarding of customers digitally and within “three minutes” without paperwork, serves nearly 20 million customers.

Former Magic Leapers launch a platform for AR experiences

When Trace’s future co-founders Greg Tran, Martin Smith and Sean Couture joined Magic Leap in spring/summer of 2015, it was about as hot as startups come. After years of secrecy, the augmented reality company captured Silicon Valley’s imagination with in-device footage, before capping the year with an $827 million raise.

The story of the intervening years is one of a massively funded and extremely promising startup struggling to find market fit. Tran exited his creative director role in January 2020, while Couture and Smith left in July 2020 and February 2021, respectively.

Trace was founded in 2021, with Tran, Smith and Couture stepping into the respective roles of CEO, CTO and head of 3D art. The startup, which builds location-based branded augmented reality experiences, is a product of some of Magic Leap’s early content struggles.

Hinge adds a way to mute requests containing words you specify

Hinge is adding a “Hidden Words” feature to its app, which will filter out likes with comments containing those phrases or words. It pretty much works like a mute filter on social media apps.

On Hinge, users can send a message when they like a profile — that message can contain any text. Rivals, such as Bumble, also introduced a similar feature called Compliments in 2022. Match Group-owned Hinge is trying to cut down on online harassment through those messages with this new ability to hide words.

If a like with a comment contains any of the words you added to the mute list, the profile doesn’t appear in your usual like list. Instead, it shows up in a separate “Hidden Likes” section. This is reminiscent of the message request inbox on Twitter/X or Instagram. You can review these comments or delete these requests directly.

Apple’s new series Sunny pairs Rashida Jones with a mystery-solving robot

Apple TV Plus has been killing it on the sci-fi front lately, but this summer, the streamer’s taking another stab at the murder mystery genre with Sunny, a new A24-produced series from showrunner Katie Robbins, director Lucy Tcherniak, and executive producer Rashida Jones.

Based on Colin O’Sullivan’s novel The Dark Manual, Sunny revolves around Suzie Sakamoto (Jones), an American woman living in Kyoto whose life is thrown into turmoil following the disappearances of her roboticist husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and their son in a catastrophic plane crash.

Apple is finally rolling out AirPlay in hotel rooms

After some delay, Apple is finally bringing AirPlay to hotel room TVs — but you can only use it if you’re staying in one of the “more than” 60 IHG hotels it’s available in starting today.

Apple first announced the ability to use AirPlay in hotels with LG TVs during its Worldwide Developer Conference in 2023. The feature lets you stream shows, movies, and music from your phone to your hotel TV, as well as view photos or play games from a bigger screen.

Although Apple previously said AirPlay in hotels would arrive by the end of 2023, it ended up pushing back its launch until this year. The feature finally popped up with the release of iOS 17.3 earlier this year.

Transformers One turns Cybertron’s greatest warriors into bumbling youths in first trailer

Transformers One turns Cybertron’s greatest warriors into bumbling youths in first trailer

https://youtu.be/5a09yJU-mCI

Paramount’s live-action Transformers movies have always made its alien robots seem like they were born ready for battle and knowing how to navigate the world, but the first trailer for director Josh Cooley’s Transformers One animated prequel reveals that to be anything but the case.

Set in the distant past on the Cybertronian homeworld, Transformers One tells the story of how Orion Pax / Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 / Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from being best friends to mortal enemies soon after discovering their powers to turn into various kinds of vehicles.

Transformers One | Official Trailer (2024) - Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson Every Transformer has an origin. Watch the new trailer for - only in theatres September 20.TRANSFORMERS ONE is the untold origin story of Op...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg

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