March 17, 2025

Google revives talks to acquire Wiz at higher valuation | TechCrunch

Google’s parent company Alphabet is again in advanced talks to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, a person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The two companies were close to securing a deal at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but the transaction failed to materialize.  This time, the price being discussed is higher, the person said. A price of around $30 billion was reported by The Wall Street Journal. Thomas Kurian, head of Google’s cloud

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AR/VR

Baidu delivers new LLMs ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 undercutting DeepSeek, OpenAI on cost — but they’re not open source (yet)

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Over the weekend, Chinese web search giant Baidu announced the launch of two new AI models, ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1, a multimodal language model and reasoning model, respectively. Baidu claims they offer state-of-the-art performance on a variety of metrics, besting DeepSeek’s non-reasoning V3 and OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 (how do you like the close name match Baidu

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Rippling sues Deel, Deel denies ‘all legal wrongdoing,’ and Slack is the main witness | TechCrunch

It’s gloves off in one of the more tense rivalries in the world of startups. HR company Rippling Monday morning announced a lawsuit against Deel, another big player in the same space. The dramatic 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and aiding and abetting a breach of fiduciary duty. The lawsuit is largely centered on an employee whom Rippling claims was working as a spy for Deel. Deel has

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Software

Why Are People Still Falling For Gift Card Scams? | HackerNoon

I need to have a word with humanity for a second. How? How is it possible that in 2025, people are still getting scammed with gift cards? I mean, at what point do we just accept that some people should not be left alone with money or the internet? I get it. Scammers are scummy. They prey on fear, urgency, and confusion. But at this stage, the gift card scam is practically a meme. How

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These fintech companies are hiring in 2025 after a turbulent year | TechCrunch

The fintech segment, which saw massive growth during the pandemic and immediately after, had a fairly rough 2024, ending with the abrupt shutdown — and then unexpected acquisition — of accounting startup Bench. Though the rapid pace of funding has slowed, some fintechs are continuing to see growth and expand their teams. In an effort to better understand just how many fintechs might fit into this category, I put out a call last year asking

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AR/VR

Mistral AI drops new open-source model that outperforms GPT-4o Mini with fraction of parameters

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More French artificial-intelligence startup Mistral AI unveiled a new open-source model today that the company says outperforms similar offerings from Google and OpenAI, setting the stage for increased competition in a market dominated by U.S. tech giants. The model, called Mistral Small 3.1, processes both text and images with just 24 billion parameters—a fraction of the size

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Software

European Cyber Report 2025: 137% More DDoS attacks Than Last Year – What Companies Need To Know | HackerNoon

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, March 17th, 2025/CyberNewsWire/–Cyberattacks are no longer an abstract threat – they dominate risk planning for companies worldwide. The latest Link11 European Cyber Report shows an alarming trend: the number of DDoS attacks has more than doubled, and they are shorter, more targeted, and more technically sophisticated. Organizations that do not continuously evolve their security strategies face significant financial losses and long-term reputational damage. The numbers speak for themselves: 137% more DDoS

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Flexport accuses former employees of stealing its source code to create a rival startup | TechCrunch

Creating a startup that competes with your former employer can be risky. Apple, for example, once sued a former chip design executive who founded his own chip startup in a case that was dropped in 2023. A recent case involving logistics unicorn Flexport and a new competitor formed by two former employees sheds light on those risks. Flexport is suing the pair alleging that they stole thousands of its documents along with its source code to create their

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Robotics

Dobot enters the humanoid robot race with Atom – The Robot Report

[embedded content] Dobot, a Chinese developer of collaborative robot arms, recently announced it developed a humanoid robot called Atom. The company is entering an increasingly crowded and still young market. Dobot hasn’t shared much about Atom yet, but it has shared a few videos of the robot operating autonomously. Atom has 28 degrees of freedom and ±0.05mm precision, giving it the ability to handle delicate tasks. It also works with straight knees, reducing energy consumption

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Software

AI Honeypots Are the Future of Cybersecurity | HackerNoon

Photo by Carla Quario on Unsplash Responding to cybersecurity threats means a company must be five steps ahead of the hackers. Clone traps, a vanguard in deception technology, automate threat response by deceiving the deceivers and fighting AI with AI. By the end of 2024, there were 240,830 live cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures(CVE): These are only the publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, and there may be many more. In the first half of 2024  new common CVEs identification represented a

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