The U.S commodities regulator, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has filed civil charges against a South African company and its CEO for running a fraudulent commodity pool worth over $1.7 billion in bitcoin, and over registration violations. The regulator stated that the fraud scheme by Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (MTI), the South African bitcoin…
Meta’s main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, Sama, will retain its BCorp certification until the case against it in Kenya, over claims of union busting and exploitation, is determined. The referenced case, which also includes allegations against Meta, was filed in May this year by Daniel Motaung, a former content moderator in the East…
Stacks of teeny lenses that look like inverted pyramids could juice up solar panels, helping them capture more light from any angle on both sunny and overcast days. Solar panels perform best in direct sunlight, which is why some solar systems track the big fireball across the sky, turning to face it for maximum light.…
Welp. Three straight weeks of work travel amid a seemingly endless pandemic finally caught up with me. Forgive me, as I’m writing this under the influence of green tea and antivirals, so thank you in advance to the regularly Herculean efforts of our copy editor, David. Apparently the old adage of things happening in Vegas…
Storytelling platform Wattpad is introducing a new creator program for writers that can earn them up to $25,000 in compensation. The company is also debuting a new metric called “Engaged Readers,” to help writers gauge readers’ interest in their stories, and Wattpad Creator Portal, a new site for writers to get tips and tricks about…
Amazon Prime Video’s Watch Party feature, which lets you watch a movie or a TV show together with your friends remotely, is now available on smart TVs, streaming devices like Roku, and gaming consoles like Xbox or PlayStation. Before this expansion, the feature was available on desktops, Fire TV devices, and on the Prime Video…
Y Combinator has announced Launch YC, a platform where people can sort accelerator startups by industry, batch and launch date to discover new products. The famed accelerator, which has seeded the likes of Instacart, Coinbase, OpenSea and Dropbox, invites users to vote for newly launched startups “to help them climb up the leaderboard, try out…
Disney’s board unanimously voted to extend CEO Bob Chapek’s contract for three more years, the company announced yesterday. His current deal was set to expire in February 2023. Despite a chaotic tenure that began at the height of COVID, the new three-year agreement will begin Friday, July 1. “Disney was dealt a tough hand by…
Walmart is expanding its array of virtual try-on services for shoppers with today’s news that it’s planning to acquire Memomi, an AR optical tech company and current Walmart partner offering virtual try-on experience for eyewear. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Memomi has enabled digital measurements for all Walmart and Sam’s Club customers since 2019,…
Entrepreneur First made a name for itself a decade ago in its home base of London, and then further afield, for the novel approach it takes to tech investing: rather than seek out interesting, scaling startups like typical VCs, it backs founders and their very, very early stage startup ideas — so nascent in fact…
