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Companies including Nestle, Epic and reportedly Disney suspend YouTube ads over child exploitation concerns

Companies including Nestle, Epic and reportedly Disney suspend YouTube ads over child exploitation concerns Days after a YouTube creator accused the platform of enabling a “soft-core pedophilia ring,” several companies have suspended advertising on the platform, including Nestle, Epic, and reportedly Disney and McDonald’s. Nestle told CNBC that all of its companies in the U.S. have paused advertising on YouTube, while a spokesperson for Epic, maker of the massively popular game Fortnite, said it has suspended all pre-roll advertising. Other companies that confirmed publicly they are pausing YouTube advertising include…

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On-demand logistics startup Lalamove raises $300M for Asia growth and becomes a unicorn

On-demand logistics startup Lalamove raises 0M for Asia growth and becomes a unicorn Lalamove, a Hong Kong-based on-demand logistics startup, has closed a $300 million Series D round as it seeks expansion across Asia. In doing so, the company has officially entered the unicorn club. Founded in 2013 by Stanford graduate Shing Chow, Lalamove provides logistics and delivery services in a similar style to ride-hailing apps like Uber but it is primarily focused on business and corporate customers. That gives it more favorable economics and a more loyal customer base…

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This robotics museum in Korea will construct itself (in theory)

This robotics museum in Korea will construct itself (in theory) The planned Robot Science Museum in Seoul will have a humdinger of a first exhibition: its own robotic construction. It’s very much a publicity stunt, though a fun one — but who knows? Perhaps robots putting buildings together won’t be so uncommon in the next few years, in which case Korea will just be an early adopter. The idea for robotic construction comes from Melike Altinisik Architects, the Turkish firm that won a competition to design the museum. Their proposal…

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Security token offerings aren’t looking much better in 2019

Security token offerings aren’t looking much better in 2019 An analysis of a year of liquidity and trading data Galen Moore 9 hours Pressed to explain who is using them, and why, 99 percent of cryptocurrencies let out all their air, go flying around the room making a raspberry sound, hit the wall and fall behind the couch forever. The party is over. A few, however, can present a credible use case. “Tokenized securities” could be one of them: a more open and efficient way to transact shares and notes…

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Can you guess which face is real, and which is computer generated?

Can you guess which face is real, and which is computer generated? Computers have recently gotten much, much better at a somewhat unsettling skill: generating fake human faces. As in, creating an image of a human who has never existed before. We saw the concept go a bit viral this week with ThisPersonDoesNotExist, a website hooked to a machine that generates a new face every few seconds. Or the feline version that dreams up (sometimes nightmare-inducing) cats, ThisCatDoesNotExist. Now it has been turned into a game. Think you can tell…

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On-demand shuttle startup Via enters South American market

On-demand shuttle startup Via enters South American market Via, the on-demand shuttle startup backed by Daimler, has expanded into South America. The company launched a service in Goiânia, Brazil with HP Transportes Coletivos, one of the country’s largest public transportation operators. Via says the service called CityBus 2.0 is the first on-demand shuttle system operated by a public transit operator to launch in Latin America. Users are able to use an app to request a ride in 11 districts around the city. Base fares are R$2.50, or $0.68. Via’s service is features…

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Trustpilot is revealing more data about how businesses flag reviews

Trustpilot is revealing more data about how businesses flag reviews Review site Trustpilot says it’s creating more transparency around how businesses respond to consumer reviews. Founder and CEO Peter Mühlmann told me that while “the vast majority of companies” are using their ability to flag questionable reviews in “exactly the right way,” there’s a small minority that are potentially “ruining it for everyone” by aggressively flagging bad reviews. So with the new Transparent Flagging feature, Trustpilot visitors can actually see how many reviews a company flagged (starting on January 1st…

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This custom ‘hyperfisheye’ lens can see behind itself

This custom ‘hyperfisheye’ lens can see behind itself If you’re doing ordinary photography and videography, there’s rarely any need to go beyond extreme wide-angle lenses — but why be ordinary? This absurd custom fisheye lens has a 270-degree field of view, meaning it can see behind the camera it’s mounted on — or rather the camera mounted on it. It’s certainly a bit of fun from Lens Rentals, the outfit that put it together, but it’s definitely real and might even be useful. Their detailed documentation of how they put…

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Galaxy Fold: The internet reacts to Samsung's flexible phone

Galaxy Fold: The internet reacts to Samsung's flexible phone Media playback is unsupported on your device “How much!?!” It wasn’t so long ago that the tech press got in a tizz over the first $1,000 (£766) smartphones. Now we’re being expected to stump up roughly double that for the entry-level version of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. Yes, the phone-tablet hybrid seems to be a modern-day engineering marvel - although it is a bit concerning that neither the media nor industry analysts have been given any hands-on time with the device. Yes,…

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