The LGBTQ+ dating app is going public through a blank check firm or Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) called Tiga, Bloombergreports. They’re merging to form a combined entity with a $2.1 billion valuation, which will give Grindr access to $384 million in funds to be used for debt payments, as well as to support growth areas and to launch new endeavors.
Grindr Chief Financial Officer Gary Hsueh told the media organization in an interview that the company had been approached by several SPACs in the past. It ultimately chose the SPAC route instead of a traditional IPO, he said, because it makes more sense. “[I]t had certainty and that’s even more important today than it was a year ago when the market was different,” Hsueh explained.
As Bloombergnotes, SPACs became hot over the past couple of years after the pandemic made traditional IPOs much riskier than usual. They offer better returns and protections and could provide an easier route to become a public company. However, the market has become oversaturated of late, and at least one analyst told CNBC that the SPAC bubble is bursting.
At the moment, Grindr’s revenue mostly comes from subscription, though it does earn some money from ads. It remains to be seen if a recent report that it sold user data would affect its future earnings: According to The Wall Street Journal, Grindr location data was for sale for at least three years, putting users’ privacy at risk.
Last week, a group of Apple employees wrote an open letter criticizing the company’s hybrid work-from-home policy, which requires employees to be at the office three days a week starting May 23rd. Now, Apple has lost director of machine learning Ian Goodfellow over the policy, according to a tweet from The Verge‘s Zoë Schiffer. Goodfellow may have been the company’s most cited machine learning expert, according to Schiffer. “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team,” he wrote in a note to staff.
A group of Apple staffers called “Apple Together” opposed to the RTO (return-to-office) strategy cited multiple arguments against it. They noted that in-person collaboration isn’t needed that often, thanks to apps like Slack. They also countered Apple’s argument that in-person work allows for “serendipity” when people bump into each other, saying that Apple’s siloed office structure makes that difficult.
It also noted that a daily commute “is a huge waste of time as well as both mental and physical resources,” and that the policy will lead to a “younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied” workforce.
Mainly though, the group cited Apple’s hypocrisy in the way it markets its products. “We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely? How can we expect our customers to take that seriously? How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products if we don’t live it?” the letter states.
Apple, which brought in a Q3 record $97.3 billion last quarter, has been facing employee discontent of late. On top of issues around RTO, it’s facing an NLRB complaint over hostile working conditions, and Apple Store employees are quietly attempting to unionize.
Yesterday, as Russia celebrated Victory Day, marking its role in defeating Nazi Germany, many of the country’s online platforms were defaced in protest of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
According to reports, Russians with smart TVs saw channel listings replaced with a message implicating them in the ongoing conflict. “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of murdered children is on your hands,” the message read. “TV and authorities are lying. No to war.”
According to The Washington Post, the hack apparently targeted several of the country’s largest internet companies, including Yandex and Rutube, Russia’s alternative to YouTube.
Russia passed a law this year that bans any efforts to discredit the country’s military, but that hasn’t stopped some media outlets from protesting the war. Articles on Lenta.ru noted they had “not been agreed with the editorial leadership” and that “the Presidential Administration will punish the publication for publishing this.”
It only sold two million last quarter, confirming Sony hasn’t overcome its supply issues.
Engadget
Sony announced it sold just two million PlayStation 5 units last quarter (Q4), bringing its overall total to 19.3 million. That’s down considerably on the same quarter last year when it sold 3.3 million units. Game sales went up, though, with 70.5 million PS4/PS5 titles sold compared to 61.4 million a year ago.
While Sony contends with supply constraints, it’s expecting better days ahead. It forecast a 34 percent increase in sales next quarter to 929 billion yen ($7.13 billion) due to better parts supply and higher sales of third-party games. Sony is also launching PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium, its take on Xbox Game pass, in June. While PS Plus subscriber levels were flat, the new tiers could help draw more subscribers — and some might pay more than they do right now.
Kendrick Lamar’s new music video for The Heart Part 5 revolves exclusively around deepfake celebrity faces superimposed on Kendrick’s body as he raps across topics including mental illness, murder and more.
Lincoln College was unable to access recruitment and fundraising systems for months.
Lincoln College says it will close this week in the wake of a ransomware attack that took months to resolve. While the impact of COVID-19 severely impacted recruitment and fundraising, the cyberattack seems to have been the tipping point for the Illinois institution.
Lincoln says it had “record-breaking student enrollment” in fall 2019. However, the pandemic caused a sizable fall in numbers. The college — one of only a few rural schools to qualify as a predominantly Black institution under the Department of Education — said it affected its financial standing. Barring a last-minute respite, the combination of the pandemic and cyberattack may have brought an end to the 157-year-old institution.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says they’re on the way to Facebook as well.
As promised (or threatened), NFTs are coming to Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the app will this week start testing a way for users to display non-fungible tokens on their profiles.
“We’re starting building for NFTs, not just in our metaverse and Reality Labs work but also across our family of apps.” Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook. “We’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs.”
A similar feature is coming to Facebook in the near future, and Meta is considering enabling NFTs in its other apps, such as Messenger and WhatsApp. Also in the works is a way for people to display 3D NFTs in Instagram Stories using augmented reality.
Forty years after it first began to dabble in quantum computing, IBM is ready to expand the technology out of the lab and into more practical applications — like supercomputing! The company has already hit a number of development milestones since it re…
Nintendo sold (PDF) 23.06 million Switch units overall for the fiscal year ending in March 2022, over 5 million units fewer than its previous year. The gaming giant originally thought it was going to sell 25.5 million units this fiscal year, but it lowered its forecast to 24 million (and then 23 million) because the continued global chip shortage has made it difficult to procure components. In fact, the company most likely expects to continue grappling with supply chain issues, because it has lowered its forecast to 21 million Switch units sold for its next fiscal year ending in March 2023.
Nintendo’s sales were buoyed by the pandemic in previous years, with people purchasing new gaming consoles to get them through the COVID lockdowns. The Switch even became the company’s best-selling home console ever after total sales eclipsed 103.54 million units in the third quarter. Nintendo noted in today’s financial release that it has now sold a total of 107.65 million consoles.
Even though global lockdowns aren’t as regular, parts continue to be harder and harder to get, so the company’s forecast must also reflect that reality. Analysts and industry execs previously expected the chip shortage to persist throughout 2023, but Intel chief Pat Gelsinger recently said that the issue could drag on until 2024.
Nintendo also expects lower net sales and net profit overall in its next fiscal year. In FY2022, it reported net sales of 1,695 billion yen (US$13 billion) and an operating profit of 592 billion yen (US$4.6 billion). Next year, it expects its net sales to fall to around 1,600 billion yen (US$12.3 billion) and its annual operating profit to fall to $500 billion yen (US$3.8 billion).
Despite the lower hardware sales, Nintendo has claimed the highest annual software sales for a single hardware family. It sold 39 million Switch games in its 2022 fiscal year, led by Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearlwith 14.65 million units sold. Pokémon Legends Arceus, which sold 6.5 million copies in seven days, has sold 12.64 million units so far. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 9.94 million units, while Kirby and the Forgotten Land sold 2.1 million units in just over two weeks.
In 2020 Erica Synths released the SYNTRX, an ode to the legendary EMS Synthi A. It wasn’t what exactly you’d call practical. It was large, niche and quite expensive at around $3,000. But, I was unabashedly head-over-heels for it. Now Erica is taking th…
