Ties

by Joseph N. DiStefano, The Philadelphia Inquirer Credit: Stanley Morales from Pexels Two information technology companies based in Montgomery County—Unisys, the venerable Blue Bell tech services and consulting provider, and Boomi, the fast-growing Conshohocken software-systems integrator—have teamed to speed up California's state college financial aid payment systems.…

Camilla Hodgson / Financial Times: After its early OpenAI bet, Microsoft hiring Mustafa Suleyman and Inflection's staff continues a strategy of developing close ties with leading AI practitioners — Satya Nadella's hiring of Mustafa Suleyman continues strategy of developing close ties with fledging artificial intelligence companies Camilla Hodgson / Financial Times: After its early OpenAI bet, Microsoft hiring Mustafa Suleyman and Inflection's staff continues a strategy of developing close ties…

Total War: Warhammer 3 has just launched a new hotfix that, among other things, removes a randomly generated High Elf name that shared ties with a German general from World War Two. One of the randomly generated High Elf names, Guderian, is the surname of Heinz Guderian, a Nazi general. He led armoured divisions into Poland, France, and Russia, and was an early pioneer of the infamous blitzkrieg tactic employed by Germany to rapidly overwhelm countries in World War 2. Guderian rose to the role of Hitler’s personal…

SAN FRANCISCO —  Mayor London Breed was all smiles during a packed primary party on Tuesday in Hayes Valley, a boutique neighborhood about a half mile from City Hall, stopping for selfies and congratulations as she navigated the crowded bar toward a microphone. “Change is coming!” Breed shouted to thundering applause from the patio at the hip cocktail bar Anina. Early results showed promise for a slate of local candidates running on a more centrist agenda, and for ballot measures that would transform downtown with new…

More than 600 Google workers and counting have signed a letter addressed to Google marketing leadership demanding that it drop its sponsorship of Mind the Tech, an annual conference promoting the Israeli tech industry taking place in New York this week. “Please withdraw from Mind the Tech, issue an apology, and stand with Googlers and customers who are despairing over the overwhelming loss of life in Gaza; we need Google to do better,” reads the letter, which was seen by WIRED.The two-day event began on Monday with a…

Payments firm Paytm on Friday cut some ties with its payments bank unit, which India's banking regulator has ordered to be wound down, in its latest attempt to address compliance concerns that triggered a meltdown in its shares last month.Paytm, formally known as One 97 Communications, and its banking unit mutually agreed to end various inter-company agreements, the company said. It did not specify what agreements were being terminated.Paytm Payments Bank also agreed to simplify the shareholders' agreement to support…

He rubbed elbows with Russian elites, spoke of an exclusive invite aboard an oligarch’s mega-yacht and cozied up to foreign intelligence agencies. As a valued FBI informant for the last 13 years, Alexander Smirnov hopscotched the globe to sweep up information on powerful figures and illicit activities. Federal agents even authorized him to break the law while doing so.For much of this time, Smirnov, 43, also lived a quiet, seemingly unremarkable life in the suburbs of Los Angeles with a long-term girlfriend 15 years his…

This facility will be launched soon at Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam railway stations as part of the first phase. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Thursday announced that it has tied up with Swiggy Foods for the supply and delivery of pre-ordered meals to train passengers through IRCTC’s e-catering portal.This facility will be launched soon at Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam railway stations as part of the first phase. “The IRCTC…

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Bad Batch find themselves up against, and running away from, some kind of giant creature. “Why,” grunts Wrecker, the team’s beefy strongman as he huffs along, “why is there always a huge monster?” It’s a fun gag, because really, with The Bad Batch, there almost always is a huge monster. But it’s also an awkward truth of the show at large.Bad Batch has struggled to find a balance between telling a variety of one-off stories of the week (like, say, the perpetual huge monster the…

In our review of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, we said that it was arguably the best Android phone on the market. One of its many strengths is battery life, as the S24 Ultra lasts about as long as any phone we have reviewed in the last year. But you don’t have to take our word for it, as YouTuber PhoneBuff put the Galaxy S24 Ultra through its paces against an iPhone 15 Pro Max and found that Samsung’s latest high-end phone ended an impressive streak by Apple.In their new video, PhoneBuff noted that it has been five…