On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate, unanimously and with nearly zero debate, passed legislation to make daylight saving time (DST) permanent across the country.
The vote took place two days after lawmakers lost an hour of sleep on Sunday when the clocks sprang forward, marking this year’s DST start, and bringing with it one additional hour of sunshine for most Americans.
Hello readers, and welcome back to Week in Review!
Last week, I talked about the future of this newsletter and what’s coming next. The short of which is that in the coming weeks I will be winding down my time authoring the Week in Review newsletter as I start sending out a brand new newsletter for TechCrunch called Chain Reaction focused exclusively on crypto, web3 and the metaverse — with all of its ridiculousness and intrigue.
The extra-thrilling element is that this weekly newsletter will have a weekly podcast attached to it, which I will share some more details on soon.
Thirty years ago when communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, Western firms stepped up their presence in Russia.
The arrival of big Western companies symbolised the start of a new era with Russians becoming eager consumers of brands ranging from fast-food chain McDonalds to Levi jeans and luxury goods.
Now, in the wake of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a growing number of firms have suspended activities in Russia.
So which firms, in which sectors, are exiting and why have others held back?
YOU SAW THE many cryptocurrency-related Super Bowl ads, and maybe you found them weird, or deeply dystopian, or just disturbingly familiar. Nevertheless, perhaps you believe the blockchain has financial rewards left to reap and want to jump in, or you’ve already got some of your money tied up in cryptocurrencies via companies like Coinbase and FTX that were advertising during the big game.
What now? Keeping track of the ups and downs of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto coins and actively trading on those fluctuations can be a full-time job. Day-trading, basically. And jumping into NFTs, the digital baubles you can mint, buy, or sell, is still daunting for many.
ON TUESDAY, APPLE unveiled an array of new devices, including a new iPhone SE with 5G, a new version of the iPad Air, and Mac Studio, a whole new desktop PC with a powerful new processor. Apple made all these announcements in a prerecorded presentation that oddly did not reference the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, even though the company changed its policies last week in response to the conflict. Apple’s product shows are like Waffle House—no matter how many crises befall the world around them, they’ll keep on going.
Here’s everything that was announced.
Tech stocks, like the rest of the broader market, have seen their fair share of ups and downs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February. But for one part of the technology sector — cybersecurity -— it’s been a roaring bull market for the past few weeks.
The ETFMG Prime Cyber Security (HACK) and First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity (CIBR) exchange-traded funds, which both own shares of top cybersecurity companies such as Zscaler (ZS), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Cloudflare (NET), Fortinet (FTNT) and Splunk (SPLK), have each surged about 10% since Russia attacked Ukraine.
The rally makes sense. After all, there are growing concerns about cyber warfare from Russia against the West in response to sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Windows 11 released last fall and promised to be a new and refreshing update that tries to rid itself of the past. Unfortunately, it seems that Windows 11 adoption has been slowing in lieu of Windows 10 updates. That’s not always a bad thing and doesn’t necessarily mean Windows 11 is a failure, though.
AdDuplex, an ad network, released statistics on Windows 11 adoption based on their sampling of 60,000 computers running the software. The percentage of users who installed the Windows 10 21H2 update is at 21%. By contrast, almost 20% of Windows PCs have been updated to Windows 11 since its October release.
Cryptocurrency analysts say at least $13.7m (£10.2m) has so far been donated to the Ukrainian war effort through anonymous Bitcoin donations.
Researchers at Elliptic, a blockchain analysis company, say the Ukrainian government, NGOs and volunteer groups have raised the money by advertising their Bitcoin wallet addresses online.
More than 4,000 donations have been made so far, with one unknown donor gifting Bitcoin worth $3m to an NGO.
The median donation is $95.
Step aside, whatever “Pokémon Café Remix” is — the ninth generation of Pokémon is coming. This morning, a Pokémon Presents broadcast announced “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet,” the latest installment in the main series Pokémon games after “Pokémon Sword and Shield” came out in late 2019. The Nintendo Switch games are expected to be released in late 2022.
From the trailer, the graphics look similar to the recently released (and very fun) “Pokémon Legends: Arceus,” but the footage may not show actual gameplay, so it’s still up in the air if we’ll encounter over-world Pokémon again (that implementation worked in “Arceus,” but let’s not pull a “Pokémon Let’s Go” again, please.) But, the YouTube description of the trailer declares, “Welcome to the open world of Pokémon,” so maybe this game will take a nod from “Arceus” (which isn’t technically an open world game, but it’s the closest thing the Pokémon franchise has to a “Breath of the Wild”-style adventure).
Ordinarily, traffic lights change color in response to predetermined rules and induction loop sensors embedded in the road. According to new research, however, making those lights artificially intelligent may keep traffic flowing faster and smoother.
The study is being conducted as part of Germany’s KI4LSA project – it’s funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, and includes several partner organizations.
Dispatches From The Front 