Tech Talk

A collective of more than 1,000 researchers, academics and experts in artificial intelligence are speaking out against soon-to-be-published research claims to use neural networks to “predict criminality.” At the time of writing, more than 50 employees working on AI at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft had signed on to an open letter opposing the research and imploring its publisher to reconsider. The controversial research is set to be highlighted in an upcoming book series by Springer, the publisher of Nature . Its authors make the alarming claim that their automated facial recognition software can predict if a person will become a criminal, citing the utility of such work in law enforcement applications for predictive policing. “By automating the identification of potential threats without bias, our aim is to produce tools for crime prevention, law enforcement, and military applications that are less impacted by implicit biases and emotional responses,” Harrisburg Univ

Brazil, the second largest market for WhatsApp, has suspended the instant messaging app’s mobile payments service in the country a week after its rollout in what is the latest setback for Facebook. In a statement, Brazil’s central bank said it was taking the decision to “preserve an adequate competitive environment” in the mobile payments space and to ensure “functioning of a payment system that’s interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open and cheap.” Banks in the nation have asked Mastercard and Visa, who are among the payments partners for WhatsApp in Brazil, to suspend money transfer on WhatsApp app. Failure to comply with the order would subject the payments companies to fines and administrative sanctions. In its statement, Brazil’s central bank suggested it hadn’t had the opportunity to analyze WhatsApp’s payment service prior to its rollout. Tuesday’s announcement is the latest setback for Facebook, which began testing WhatsApp Pay in India two years ago and has ye

Qupital , a trade financing platform, announced today that it will partner with eBay as one of its officially recommended Hong Kong financing service providers. In today’s announcement, Qupital said it will provide offshore financing services, including working capital, to eBay sellers in China through QiaoYiDai, its main product. The agreement with eBay means Qupital will be able to monitor the real-time data of eBay sellers who apply for their services, which the fintech startup says will enable it to assess credit applications within three days, on average, and settle drawdown requests in less than a day. Founded in 2016 and based in Hong Kong, Qupital raised a $15 million Series A last year led by strategic investor CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, with participation from Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and MindWorks Ventures. Qupital is one of a growing roster of fintech companies in Asia— Aspire and First Circle are a couple other examples—that provide loans, cre

LG's new sub-flagship shines with a striking design and Dual Screen, but fumbles some of the basics. The long-running LG G series retires this year, and in its place comes a new mid-level flagship built around design and aesthetic beauty. The LG Velvet mixes up the stale design language seen in some of the company's recent phones, and also boasts 5G connectivity thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765G platform. In fact, it'll be among the first 765-powered phones to arrive in the West. LG's Dual Screen is back too, with a new, slimmer, and more stylish version of the accessory shipping for the Velvet. The Dual Screen was pretty goofy a year ago when it first debuted alongside the V50. In the past year, however, LG has refined the hardware and software to the point where it's genuinely useful, improving gaming and multitasking similarly to a phone with a true foldable screen. But even though this might be LG's best-looking and most useful phone yet, it&

AngelList, a platform that helps startup founders discover and connect to angel investors and job seekers, on Wednesday branched out to a new category in India to further serve the ecosystem. The startup platform said its new product, called EquityList , allows founders to easily manage their cap table, which as the name suggests, is a table that documents a firm’s percentages of ownership, value of equity in each round, and equity dilution. AngelList’s new offering pits it against the talk-of-the-town Carta’s core service — though by limiting EquityList to India, AngelList is tapping a booming market that the Palo Alto-based startup is yet to explore. By targeting India, AngelList is also ploughing through a field that is vast but doesn’t have as many challengers. Most startups in India currently rely on lawyers, papers, and Microsoft Excel to manage their cap tables. EquityList also enables startup founders to manage equity they are granting to employees. The tool, which allow

Some provoking thoughts from a massive former figure in Sony's development army. What you need to know Shawn Layden is the former Chairman of Sony Worldwide Studios. During Gamelab Live today, Layden noted that the cost of game development is continuing to rise. Layden also explained he'd prefer to see more 12-15 hour games making a return. Shawn Layden, the former Chairman of Sony Worldwide Studios , left abrubtly in September 2019. Since then, he's been on an extended hiatus but he made time to talk with VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi during Gamelab Live today. During the extended talk, Layden noted that the cost of game development will continue to rise even as the pre-remote development world is gone. "That world is gone. That world is now sealed in amber. Everything that was pre-virus is now a historical artifact," he explains, even as he remembers the days that games took $1 million to make — days long gone by, as AAA budgets now range from &

Each year, the hiring platform Hired produces a look at tech salaries based on the data it says it gleans from hundreds of thousands of interview requests and job offers. This year, as in past years, it looked at salaries around the globe for software engineers, product managers, DevOps engineers, designers, and data scientists. Of course, this year is a very funky year, one that, owing to the pandemic, looks to see an accelerated shift toward more remote work. So this year, Hired split its findings its two parts — pre COVID-19 and post. It published data about who was being paid what in 2019, but also how those numbers might change going forward, particularly if more companies adopt localized compensation as Facebook has said it will do with its own employees. First, a look at the world before the coronavirus swept through and upended so much. From San Francisco to London, everyone working in tech was seeing steady gains leading into 2020, according to Hired. San Francisco sala