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Some Rednote users have reported that their accounts were automatically converted from the Chinese to the international version of the website recently. One American user, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid being punished by the platform, shared a screenshot with WIRED showing that when he logged into the platform in April, a banner appeared that read “Your account is a rednote account. We have automatically redirected you to rednote.com.”The user says he registered his account with a Chinese phone number years ago, but suspects his account was converted because of using a non-Chinese IP address. “I have never posted…

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Instagram is testing a new image-sharing app called “Instants,” the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The app, which is available in Spain and Italy, lets users share disappearing photos with their friends that can be viewed only once and remain available for 24 hours. With Instants, you capture a photo in a single tap, with no editing allowed. The app doesn’t allow uploads from your camera roll and only lets you capture and share content using the in-app camera. While you can add text to your “instants,” as these unedited photos are called, you can’t modify them any further.…

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The goal, he says, is to create thousands of sperm from a standard tissue biopsy. The company has had a high success rate in generating sperm from dozens of tissue samples.Pastuszak says early testing shows the lab-made sperm look “effectively identical” to naturally made sperm. The procedure is not yet ready to be used to start pregnancies, though. Paterna created embryos as an early test to validate that its lab-made sperm was actually viable. The company plans to conduct a larger, more comprehensive study involving men with infertility. Paterna will extract sperm from their ejaculate or testicular tissue and use…

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Surely a legacy brand like Crayola has done all it could to grow, right? Wrong. In this episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast, recorded live at Brandweek in Atlanta, Victoria Lozano, then-CMO of Crayola, proves that the growth work of even the most iconic brands can and should never stop. From how nostalgia can be leveraged to the advantage of expanding into unexpected categories, this conversation covers it all. What you’ll learn: How to merge nostalgia with future-forward relevance Why a CMO’s role with high-awareness brands requires category expansion The framework for segmented messaging across stakeholder groups How to unlock hidden revenue streams…

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Artisan may be known for their bold “Stop Hiring Humans” campaign but the reality is every founder needs to assemble the right team if they want to scale. The fast-growing AI startup is building AI employees for sales outbound and customer engagement. This week on Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen spoke with Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, the co-founder and CEO of Artisan about the early days growing their team and the hiring mistakes that could have killed them before they got off the ground.  Making the wrong hires or filling the wrong positions are mistakes that compound quickly. They waste time, drag down…

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As thousands of influencers descended on southern California earlier this month for the annual Coachella Music Festival, a very Silicon Valley program dubbed “AI Coachella” was taking shape a few hundred miles north in Palo Alto. The class, CS 153, is one of Stanford’s buzziest offerings this semester, and like the music festival, it features a star-studded lineup of celebrities—in this case, not pop artists, but Big Tech CEOs.The course is co-taught by Anjney Midha, a former Andreessen Horowitz general partner, and Michael Abbott, Apple’s former VP of engineering for cloud services. The list of guest lecturers reads like a…

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Meta is planning to cut 10% of its workforce, amounting to 8,000 employees, according to a report from Bloomberg. Meta also will not hire for 6,000 roles that are currently open. According to an internal memo sent to employees Thursday and viewed by Bloomberg, Meta told staff that the cuts will begin on May 20. Reuters had earlier reported on Meta’s plans for sweeping layoffs. TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment. “We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” chief…

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Some running shoes swagger into town, stirring up hype, making big promises. Like the Nike Vaporfly or the Puma Fast-R Nitro 3 Elite, the Adidas Hyperboost Edge ($200) promises to usher in “a new era of road running,” with brand-new supershoe DNA—a giant stack of new super foam, lightweight uppers, and a bold new design.It certainly looks a lot different than the shoes we might have laced up just a few years back. But what’s really different about these so-called super trainers like the Hyperboost Edge? Here, I’ll break down what’s going on inside the new wave of high-performance running…

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Bluesky is beefing up its social network as a better place to post photos. Late Wednesday, the company announced a new version of its app (version 1.121), which boosts the quality of images in posts both in terms of upload size and resolution. Before, Bluesky only supported photo uploads of 1MB or less. Now, that limit has doubled to 2MB. In addition, photos will render at up to 4000px, instead of 2000x, as before. In addition, the company replaced its old image grid with a swipeable carousel that can handle mixed aspect ratios without cropping. (Although early feedback from some…

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It took just a few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for Palantir employees to question their company’s commitments to civil liberties. Last fall, Palantir seemed to become the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, providing software identifying, tracking, and helping deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), when current and former employees started ringing the alarm.Around that time, two former employees reconnected by phone. Right as they picked up the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”“That was their greeting,” the other former employee says. “There’s this feeling…

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From sparking mass layoffs to reducing junior roles, there is much doom and gloom about how AI will impact the advertising business. That fear comes with reason. According to a Sunup report, 91% of senior US agency leaders expect AI to reduce agency headcounts, and over half (57%) of agencies have slowed or paused entry-level hiring.As an agency owner who has lived through many sea changes in our business, I have a more positive outlook. I believe we can use AI to improve job satisfaction and make our work more enjoyable.In his most recent annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders, Jamie Dimon…

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Launched in 2021, when the company was still known as Twitter, Communities were meant to provide the social network’s users with a place to connect with each other around shared interests. Now, X is shutting down the feature for good, saying it was overrun with spam and a headache to manage. Plus, noted X’s head of product Nikitia Bier, hardly anyone was using them. “Communities had a great vision, but they were used by less than 0.4% of users—yet contributed to 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware on X,” Bier wrote on X, explaining the company’s thinking behind…

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I’ve recently introduced a few friends to the power of a great robot vacuum. One of my friends calls hers a marriage saver, while the other was both thrilled and horrified by how many stains the vacuum’s AI found on her floors. Personally, my robot vacuums keep me from wanting to set the litter box on fire, since my cat is on a mission to create his own navigational trail of litter through my home.The best robot vacuums these days aren’t just vacuuming your floors, nor are they blindly bumping around your house like they used to. These gadgets are…

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Whether it’s Tubi or not Tubi—or any of Fox’s other properties—AI insights are no longer a question.Today, ahead of the upfront, Fox is announcing a new AI-driven platform, Fox AdStudio, which is set to give clients real-time insights across the company’s portfolio. With the launch coinciding with the company’s new brand positioning of turning “passion into performance,” Fox’s ads leader, Jeff Collins, told ADWEEK that the idea is to give clients an understanding of audiences across Fox, leveraging AI to analyze content in real time and strategically deliver ad messages at the most relevant moments.Collins said the offering came after…

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App and website hosting giant Vercel on Thursdays said hackers had accessed some of its customers’ data before the company discovered its recent data breach, suggesting that this incident may have broader security implications than initially known. In an update on its security incident page, Vercel said it had identified evidence of malicious activity on its network preceding the early-April breach after it expanded its initial investigation. “We have uncovered a small number of customer accounts with evidence of prior compromise that is independent of and predates this incident, potentially as a result of social engineering, malware, or other methods,”…

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It’s been five years since Google officially acquired Fitbit for a reported $2.1 billion, grabbing hardware and software teams that also absorbed assets from Pebble, which Fitbit itself acquired in 2016. So, how have things changed? Well, for starters, Fitbit is now Google Fitbit. It’s not the most imaginative of name changes, and it hasn’t stuck in consumers’ minds, but the good news is that Fitbit devices remain some of the most user-friendly and welcoming fitness trackers available. This is especially true if you’re just starting, or reigniting, your fitness journey.Fitbit’s dominance has waned slightly in the face of countless…

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