Tag: seattle,
Seattle Startup’s Ex-CFO Accused of Diverting $35 Million, Losing It In Crypto Crash
The indictment in U.S. District Court charged Shetty with four counts of wire fraud. He is scheduled to be arraigned May 25. Shetty’s attorney, Cooper Offenbecher, said in an emailed statement that he and his client had been in regular contact with prosecutors and disagreed with the decision to bring an indictment. “As the CFO of his former employer, tasked with making investment decisions for its benefit, Mr. Shetty was personally devastated by these losses, which occurred as a result of a catastrophic crash in the cryptocurrency market in May 2022,” Offenbecher wrote. “We look forward to responding to these allegations in Court.”
Prosecutors, however, said that as the company raised hundreds of millions of dollars in startup funding, it adopted a conservative approach to managing that money — a policy that Shetty had helped draft. According to the Seattle tech news website GeekWire, fabric had raised more than $293 million by February 2022 and was valued at $1.5 billion. In an emailed statement, the company said it had been cooperating with law enforcement and appreciated the work of the FBI and federal prosecutors. “While the amount taken is substantial, fabric remains very well-funded with years of runway,” the statement said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Deliveries-By-Drone Continue Expanding. Pizza Deliveries Planned for Seattle
“If all goes well, the company expects to deliver pizzas in 2024,” reports local news outlet KUOW, noting that Zipline has battery-powered drones that hover above a customer’s location “and lowers the delivery on a tethered droid.”
“Obviously, it seems pretty sci-fi and a lot of customers think this is totally insane when they first hear about it,” said Keller Cliffton, cofounder and CEO of Zipline, a delivery drone company. “But what has really struck us is that there are about seven days of sci-fi magical amazement, and then on day eight people are basically bored of it — bored of it in the way that there’s no way they’re ever going back to the old way of receiving things… Anybody can pull out a phone, press a button on that phone, and place an order that can then be delivered autonomously to the home in a way that is 10 times as fast, half the cost, and fully zero emission compared to the way we do instant delivery today.”
Scenes of hot pizzas lowering out the sky onto Seattle porches are contingent on Zipline receiving approval from the FAA for an operations and safety plan. That plan is in the works but not yet submitted to the agency. The FAA may impose restrictions tailored to Seattle’s busy airspace such as on flight altitudes, hours of operation and places to avoid…
The plans don’t end with pizzas. Last year, Zipline announced a separate effort to deliver medical products and lab samples for the MultiCare Health System around Tacoma… As with the pizza proposal, the earliest estimates for medical deliveries around Tacoma are sometime in 2024. Zipline has also made delivery deals with supplement retailer GNC in Salt Lake City, and with Associated Couriers in Long Island, New York to deliver medications… [Zipline] has already been delivering some products for Walmart to customers in the Bentonville, Arkansas area and prescription drugs for some health care providers in parts of North Carolina and Utah. But the Washington state plans would involve newer types of drones, which the company calls Platform 2 Zips.
Pagliacci Pizza’s co-owner told the news outlet that the drones “will enable us to scale our deliveries sustainably with up to 97% fewer emissions than cars.” They told CNET drones would deliver pizzas “while they’re still hot,” and told the Seattle Times that drone deliveries will make it possible to deliver pizzas to further away or difficult-to-reach locations. (“The Zipline drones can deliver goods to customers in a 10-mile service radius,” according to the newspaper, with drones flying more than 300 feet above the ground while remaining ‘nearly silent, designed to sound like rustling leaves in the wind,’ according to Zipline.)
Local news station KIRO notes that Zipline’s current system uses larger drones and small parachutes “for Walmart and other customers around the world.” And Pagliacci Pizza told them that since there’s no driver, tips offered during drone delivery would go to the kitchen staff.
Wednesday Zipline also announced a deal with wellness brand GNC, according to CNET, which “will begin with customers in Salt Lake City, with other cities to follow…
Zipline is also announcing a partnership with Associated Couriers to begin delivering prescription medications to patients at long-term care facilities in Long Island, New York. Associated Couriers plans to expand the service across the US and then internationally. The delivery company has already completed more than 600,000 deliveries to customers since 2016 using its previous iteration of drones….
Zipline is far from being the only company experimenting with drone delivery — Walmart, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and startups like Flyby Robotics and Manna have also run trials and performed delivery services.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Dota 2’s The International tournament is returning to Seattle this year
Dota 2’s world championship returns to Seattle this year
Dota 2’s biggest tournament will return to Seattle this year
For the first time since 2017, The International, Dota 2’s most prestigious tournament, will take place in Valve’s hometown. The tournament will kick off with a group stage that begins on October 14th before moving to Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on October 27th, the studio announced on Saturday. The Climate Pledge Arena, previously known as KeyArena, is the same venue where Valve held The International between 2014 and 2017. It’s also the venue where Dota fans got to see one of the best plays in the tournament’s history.
In 2018, Valve moved The International to Vancouver’s Rogers Arena due to the start of multi-year renovations at KeyArena. In subsequent years, the event made stops in China, Romania and Singapore. Valve had also planned to bring the tournament to Sweden, but the pandemic forced the studio to cancel The International in 2020. On Saturday, Valve said The International 2023 would host the event’s largest audience to date. The studio promised to share more information about how fans can purchase tickets to The International 2023 closer to the date of the event.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dota-2s-biggest-tournament-will-return-to-seattle-this-year-182415738.html?src=rss
Dota 2 The International 2023 is coming to Seattle
Dota 2 The International 2023 is headed for Seattle. The annual esports tournament for Valve’s MOBA is both the culminating moment in the Dota 2 year and also traditionally able to boast the biggest prize pools in all of competitive videogame tournaments. Now, its twelfth instalment is heading to Washington state as the TI 2023 date is marked down for October.
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Seattle schools sue social media companies for causing “mental health crisis” among children
The 91-page complaint filed in US district court on Friday claims the social media companies are responsible for worsening the mental health of the children that they target. The tech giants are also blamed for rising rates of anxiety, depression, disordered eating, cyberbullying, self-harm, and suicide ideation. It’s led to…
Seattle Public Schools seeks damages against TikTok, Instagram, and more for youth mental health crisis
Seattle Public Schools, the largest K-12 system in Washington state with over 49,000 students and 106 schools, has filed a lawsuit against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.
They’re the first school district in the country to take the social media giants head-on, for a suggested incitement of mental health crises on its platforms. Filing the lawsuit on Jan. 6, the school district seeks to hold the social media conglomerates responsible for worsening student mental health and inciting cyberbullying, with the hopes that the U.S. District Court in Seattle will uphold the “maximum statutory and civil penalties permitted by law.”
A survey included in the lawsuit illustrates that there was a 30% increase, from 2009 to 2019, in students who were feeling “so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities.” The suit also proclaims that “This mental health crisis is no accident. It is the result of the Defendants’ deliberate choices and affirmative actions to design and market their social media platforms to attract youth.”
The lawsuit comes following a wave to ban TikTok and other social media platforms, particularly amongst the nation’s youth, for issues concerning privacy, internet addiction, and overall negative effect on mental health. In 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen shared that the makers behind Meta knew that apps like Instagram were negatively affecting teenagers, especially in regard to body image, but chose to prioritize profit over protection. Consolidating the many concerns Seattle Public Schools makes in its lawsuit.
Through their case, Seattle Public Schools hopes that some form of accountability will be reached alongside a push to implement appropriate resources within schools, like counseling services, to help students.