Tag: founder’s
Ex-Call of Duty Dev Reveals How Activision Tried to Convince Infinity Ward Staff to Stick Around After Firing the Studio’s Founders
A Chat with Brice Dondelinger, Bob Krier, Dylan Thompson, and Marc Donis, Founders at AI Start Up: Balloonary
Helping side hustlers, solopreneurs and micro businesses conquer the world of online ads to supercharge the earning potential of their…
The post A Chat with Brice Dondelinger, Bob Krier, Dylan Thompson, and Marc Donis, Founders at AI Start Up: Balloonary appeared first on TechRound.
Cash App Founder’s Accused Killer Will Plead Not Guilty, Lawyer Says
Nima Momeni, the suspect accused of stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee to death on April 4, will plead not guilty to murder, according to multiple reports. Momeni’s lawyer, Paula Canny, told journalists outside the San Francisco state court on Tuesday that, in the defense’s view, a premeditated murder charge isn’t…
Aventurine helps early-stage founders find their footing
While it would be ideal if the startup made it, the financial returns, perhaps lasting decades, come through the IP operation.
Aventurine helps early-stage founders find their footing by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
Suspect in Cash App Founder’s Murder Arrested [UPDATE: Suspect Charged]
Police have made an arrest in the murder of Bob Lee, 43, the tech executive and co-founder of Cash App who was found stabbed to death in downtown San Francisco last week.
Instagram founders’ news app Artifact is… Reddit now?
Artifact, the significantly less addictive app brought to you by the creators of Instagram, was originally pitched essentially as a TikTok For You page, but for news. But after launching its brand new social discussions feature, which rolled out on April 11, it looks a lot more like Reddit.
The app launched in February and intended to merge articles, facts, and AI. One of the creators, Mike Krieger, called it “a personalized news feed driven by the latest in artificial intelligence.” You could always DM people from the app, but it didn’t really invoke a lot of community-forming emotions. For the first few weeks of its existence, using the platform felt a lot like using Pocket or Apple News but, honestly, worse.
Now, users can create profiles, comment on articles, upvote and downvote (hi Reddit), and earn a “reputation” (not Taylors Version). It seems like these new features — particularly the comment abilities — could help make Artifact a social media app instead of just a news platform. The new social discussions component on Artifact will allow users to comment on articles and engage in conversation around news, according to TechCrunch. Users can’t comment on the articles without creating a profile — which requires a phone number and includes a display name — Artifact confirmed to Mashable.
While this might make Artifact more interesting for users, it’s also opening a Pandora’s box of moderation issues which will be mitigated by “reputation scores” based on upvotes and downvotes on comments, similar to Reddit’s voting system, TechCrunch reported. That “reputation score” will display next to users’ names and profiles, and will help determine how comments are ranked.
Artifact is also relying on community flagging to help with moderation, and is “using AI models to proactively scan for problematic content” that doesn’t follow community guidelines, Artifact told Mashable in an email. But those models simply flag the content to be reviewed by their human team.
While these additions might make the platform more intriguing to the everyday user, it’s tough to imagine an app all about reading the news that beats the mind-numbing joy (and pain, and fear, and anger…) that we get from Instagram and TikTok.
Libreboot Founder’s ‘Minifree’ Sells Free-Software Laptops with Libreboot Preinstalled
A company in the U.K. calling itself Minifree has started to ship old Thinkpad (specifically the X series and T series models) with Libreboot firmware. Which is based on coreboot firmware.
More specifically, Libreboot is the free-as-in-speech replacement for proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, the site notes, “offering faster boots speeds, better security and many advanced features compared to most proprietary boot firmware.” Those advanced features include the GNU project’s multiple-OS-booting “grand unified bootloader” GNU GRUB directly in the boot flash, along with several other customization options. “The aim is simple: make it easy to have a computer that was made to run entirely on Free Software at every level, meaning no proprietary software of any kind. That includes the boot firmware, operating system, drivers and applications.”
The Libreboot project’s founder is also the founder of Minifree, and the profits from Minifree’s sales directly fund the Libreboot project. (The whole Minifree web site runs on Libreboot-powered servers, on a network behind a Libreboot-powered router…) Their site points out that Minifree Ltd has also privately funded several new board ports to coreboot, including 90,000 USD to Raptor Engineering for ASUS KGPE-D16 and KCMA-D8 libreboot support, and 4000 AUD to Damien Zammit for Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L and Intel D510MO libreboot support.
The installed OS on the laptops is either encrypted Debian (KDE Plasma desktop environment), with full driver support, or “other Linux distro/BSD (e.g. OpenBSD, FreeBSD) at your request… Advanced features like encrypted /boot (GNU+Linux only), signed kernels and more are available.” And the laptops are also shipped — worldwide — with “your choice of 480/960GB SSD or 2x480GB/2x960GB RAID1 SSDs, with good batteries and 16GB RAM. Free technical support via email/IRC plus 5-year warranty.”
But judging by their FAQ, the support is even more extensive. “If you brick your Minifree laptop when updating Libreboot, Minifree will unbrick it for free if you send it back to us. Even if your warranty has expired! However, such bricking is rare.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Founders — Pitch to VCs at TC Early Stage
On April 20th, TechCrunch will host TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston — an event designed to equip entrepreneurs will all the tools needed to build their unicorn startups. No founder event would be complete without pitches! TechCrunch editorial is looking for six-seven founders to take part in a Pitch Deck Teardown. Onstage. In Boston. Live. […]
Founders — Pitch to VCs at TC Early Stage by Neesha A. Tambe originally published on TechCrunch
Funko leadership fires Mondo founders, ending pop culture’s best poster maker
Collectible maker’s toy and LP divisions remain, nominally