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PayPal's CEO Change Blindsided HP's Board

Slashdot.org - 1 hour 4 min ago
An anonymous reader shares a report: PayPal said on Tuesday it was booting its CEO and replacing him with its board chair Enrique Lores, sparing no ambiguity as to why: "The pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board's expectations," it said in a statement. One group that was blindsided was HP, where Lores was until Tuesday serving as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. Lores' switchup sent them rushing to launch a search process, those people said. HP's board does have internal candidates which it's considering for the top job, according to a person familiar with the board's thinking. As chair of PayPal's board, Lores played a role in a process evaluating internal and external candidates. It was unclear when or if he recused himself from the final decision to name him as CEO. But HP's board was only made aware that Lores was taking the CEO role at PayPal in recent weeks, the people said.

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Adobe Is Killing A Popular Animation And Game Development Program

Slashdot.org - 2 hours 4 min ago
Adobe has emailed users of Adobe Animate to let them know the popular animation and game development program will be discontinued on March 1, an abrupt decision that has angered animators and game developers who say the tool remains an industry standard in television and game production. Animate, the successor to the once-popular Flash, is widely used for graphic creation, animation and building games in HTML5. The company has not offered a reason for the shutdown. On BlueSky, artist and animator Julia Glassman wrote that many television productions, games, and animated media still rely on Animate and Flash pipelines and cannot simply pivot to entirely new software.

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Fintech CEO and Forbes 30 Under 30 Alum Charged for Alleged Fraud

Slashdot.org - 3 hours 4 min ago
An anonymous reader shares a report: By now, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become more than a little notorious for the amount of entrants who go on to be charged with fraud.[...] Gokce Guven, a 26-year-old Turkish national and the founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, was charged last week with alleged securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The New York-based fintech startup -- which uses the "Turn Your Rewards into [a] Revenue Engine" tagline -- says it can help companies create and monetize individual rewards programs. The company was founded in 2022, and offers participating firms the opportunity to earn ongoing revenue streams via partner affiliate sales, Axios previously reported. Guven was featured in last year's Forbes 30 Under 30 list. The magazine notes in the writeup that Guven's clients included major chocolatier Godiva and the International Air Transport Association, the trade organization that represents a majority of the world's airlines. Kalder also claims to have enjoyed the backing of a number of prominent VC firms. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that, during Kalder's seed round in April of 2024, Guven managed to raise $7 million from more than a dozen investors after presenting a pitch deck that was rife with false information. According to the government, Kalder's pitch deck claimed that there were 26 brands "using Kalder" and another 53 brands in "live freemium." However, officials say that, in reality, Kalder had, in many cases, only been offering heavily discounted pilot programs to many of those companies. Other brands "had no agreement with Kalder whatsoever -- not even for free services," officials said in a press release announcing the indictment. The pitch deck also "falsely reported that Kalder's recurring revenue had steadily grown month over month since February 2023 and that by March 2024, Kalder had reached $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue." The government also accuses Guven of having kept two separate sets of financial books.

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The Switch is Now Nintendo's Best-Selling Console of All Time

Slashdot.org - 5 hours 34 min ago
The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS. In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration." Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.

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Draw with the World’s Wind: Artist Jitish Kallat makes the invisible visibleDraw with the World’s Wind: Artist Jitish Kallat makes the invisible visibleHead of Google Arts & Culture Lab

GoogleBlog - 7 hours 4 min ago
Wind Study (Hilbert Curve) is a new interactive experience from Google Arts & Culture that takes you inside artist Jitish Kallat’s work.Wind Study (Hilbert Curve) is a new interactive experience from Google Arts & Culture that takes you inside artist Jitish Kallat’s work.
Categories: Technology

Here’s how to tune into the Winter Olympics with GoogleHere’s how to tune into the Winter Olympics with Google

GoogleBlog - 9 hours 4 min ago
Learn more about using Google tools to stay in the know on the 2026 Winter Olympics.Learn more about using Google tools to stay in the know on the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Categories: Technology

Hidden Car Door Handles Are Officially Being Banned In China

Slashdot.org - 10 hours 3 min ago
sinij writes: Automakers have increasingly implemented door handles that retract into the bodywork for aerodynamic reasons, but they are now off limits in China. My issue is with electronic-only door latch mechanism. It should be possible to open the door from both inside and outside the car in case of complete power loss.

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SpaceX Acquires xAI in $1.25 Trillion All-Stock Deal

Slashdot.org - Mon, 02/02/2026 - 22:46
Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired his AI startup xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what would be the largest initial public offering in history. SpaceX pegged its own valuation at $1 trillion -- a markup from the $800 billion it commanded in a December secondary stock sale -- and priced xAI at $250 billion based on a recent $20 billion funding round that valued the two-year-old AI company at $230 billion. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen told investors on a call Monday that shares in the combined company would be priced at $527 and that xAI shares would convert into SpaceX stock at a roughly seven-to-one exchange rate. The company is still targeting a June IPO expected to raise as much as $50 billion, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion listing in 2019. Musk said the least expensive way to do AI computation within two to three years will be in space. "Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment," he wrote. SpaceX filed last Friday for permission to launch up to a million satellites into Earth's orbit. xAI merged with Musk's social media platform X last March in a $113 billion deal, and Tesla announced a $2 billion investment in xAI last week.

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A Century of Hair Samples Proves Leaded Gas Ban Worked

Slashdot.org - Mon, 02/02/2026 - 21:30
Scientists at the University of Utah have analyzed nearly a century's worth of human hair samples and found that lead concentrations dropped 100-fold after the EPA began cracking down on leaded gasoline and other lead-based products in the 1970s. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, drew on hair collected from Utah residents -- some preserved in family scrapbooks going back generations. Lead levels peaked between 1916 and 1969 at around 100 parts per million, fell to 10 ppm by 1990, and dropped below 1 ppm by 2024. The decline largely tracks the phase-out of leaded gasoline after President Nixon established the EPA in 1970; before the agency acted, most gasolines contained about 2 grams of lead per gallon, releasing nearly 2 pounds of lead per person into the environment each year. The study arrives amid the Trump administration's broader push to scale back the EPA. Lead regulations have not yet been targeted, but the authors note concerns about loosened enforcement of the 2024 Lead and Copper rule on replacing old lead pipes.

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Leica Camera's Owners Weigh $1.2 Billion Sale of Controlling Stake

Slashdot.org - Mon, 02/02/2026 - 19:01
The owners of Leica Camera AG -- Austrian billionaire Andreas Kaufmann and private equity giant Blackstone -- are considering a sale of a controlling stake in the German camera maker in a deal that could value the company at about $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, and Altor Equity Partners are among a handful of bidders. The Kaufmann family could re-invest following a transaction. Leica traces its roots roughly 150 years to Ernst Leitz's microscope company and was publicly traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange until the Kaufmann family took it private in 2012.

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Feds Skipping Infosec Industry's Biggest Conference This Year

Slashdot.org - Mon, 02/02/2026 - 17:33
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency won't attend the annual RSA Conference in March, an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Register. Sessions involving speakers from the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) have also disappeared from the agenda. "Since the beginning of this administration, CISA has made significant progress in returning to our statutory, core mission and focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy told us. "CISA has reviewed and determined that we will not participate in the RSA Conference since we regularly review all stakeholder engagements, to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars." McCarthy declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week. Easterly, who was appointed to lead America's top cyber-defense agency under the Biden administration, joined her predecessor and CISA's first-ever director Chris Krebs in President Trump's line of fire back in July.

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Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles

Slashdot.org - Mon, 02/02/2026 - 16:01
alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage. (Why isn't everyone doing this already?)

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