Wed. Sep 23rd, 2020

Grace

China’s electric carmaker WM Motor pulls in $1.47 billion Series D – TechCrunch

By Grace 22 hours ago

Chinese electric vehicle startup WM Motor just pocketed an outsize investment to fuel growth in a competitive landscape increasingly coveted by foreign rival Tesla. The five-year-old company raised 10 billion yuan ($1.47 billion) in a Series D round, it announced on Tuesday, which will pay for research and development, branding, marketing and expansion of sales channel.

WM Motor, backed by Baidu and Tencent, is one of the highest funded EV startups in China alongside NIO, Xpeng and Li Auto, all of which have gone public in New York. With its latest capital boost, WM Motor could be gearing up for an initial public offering. As Bloomberg’s sources in July said, the company was weighing a listing on China’s Nasdaq-style STAR board as soon as this year.

Days before its funding news, WM Motor unveiled its key partners and suppliers: Qualcomm Snapdragon’s cockpit chips will power the

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How to remove the 3D Objects folder from File Explorer in Windows 10

By Grace 1 day ago

The 3D Objects folder is not useful for many users but removing it from File Explorer in Windows 10 requires a tweak of the Registry File. We show you how.

Image: scyther5, Getty Images/iStockphoto

In addition to the traditional Paint application, which has been a part of Windows since its beginning, Microsoft has also added Paint 3D to its list of standard Windows 10 applications. When combined with a touch display and a stylus or pen, Paint 3D can be a powerful tool for creating three-dimensional objects, a feature many artists and designers find useful.

SEE: 30 Excel tips you need to know (TechRepublic Premium)

However, if you are not inclined to use Paint 3D, you may find the prominence of a 3D Objects folder, and possibly several other folders, on the This PC screen of File Explorer obtrusive and unnecessary. Unfortunately, you cannot remove those folders from File Explorer

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How to create and manage up to 50 rooms in Zoom

By Grace 1 day ago

This easy-to-use feature lets you assign people to a particular room, set a timer for how long the room is open, and switch room assignments.

Image: fizkes/Getty/iStock photos

Now that you’ve got the perfect Zoom background in place, it’s time to create more rooms to use it in. Learning how to manage the breakout rooms feature in Zoom will encourage networking, brainstorming, and small-group conversations.

It’s a simple process to turn on this feature and there are several helpful tools built into the service. You can create up to 50 rooms in a single meeting.

SEE: How to use Zoom: 15 tips and tricks (TechRepublic download)

Turn on the Rooms feature

zoomrooms-start01.jpg

Start with the Setting menu turn on the Rooms feature in Zoom.

First, go to your Profile page on the Zoom desktop app and select the Settings listing in the left column. You have to use the desktop

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Kindred Capital closes £81M second fund to back early-stage European startups – TechCrunch

By Grace 2 days ago

Kindred Capital, the London-based VC that backs early-stage founders in Europe, has closed its second seed fund at £81 million.

That’s only a tad larger than the the firm’s first fund, which invested in 29 companies and was raised in 2018. Portfolio companies from fund one include Five, which is building software for autonomous vehicles; Paddle, the SaaS for software e-commerce; Pollen, the peer-to-peer marketplace for experiences and travel; and Farewill, which lets you create a will online.

However, perhaps what really sets Kindred apart from most other seed VCs is its “Equitable Venture”. This sees the founders it backs get carry in the fund, effectively becoming co-owners of Kindred. Once the VC’s LPs have their investment returned, like the firm’s partners, the founders also share any subsequent fund profits, as long as they have passed the vesting period.

More broadly, Kindred says the idea is this extra

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Open source: Why governments need to go further

By Grace 3 days ago

Commentary: Yes, governments should open source their custom code. But more than that is needed.

Image: lucky-photographer, Getty Images/iStockphoto

For Drupal (and Acquia) founder Dries Buytaert, “the default [in government] should be ‘developed with public money, make it public code.'” That is, if a government is paying for software to be created, that software should be available under an open source license. While he acknowledged there might be exceptions (e.g., for military applications, as I’ve called out), his suggestion makes sense.

Years ago I argued that government mandates of open source made no sense. I still feel that way. Governments (and enterprises) should use whatever software best enables them to get work done. Increasingly, that software will be open source. But when good open source alternatives don’t yet exist, it makes no sense to mandate the use of suboptimal software. 

But software that governments create? There’s

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The TikTok deal solves quite literally nothing – TechCrunch

By Grace 3 days ago

Well… that was pointless.

After debasing the idea of free commerce in the U.S in the name of a misplaced security concern, stringing along several multi-billion dollar companies that embarrassed themselves in the interest of naked greed, and demanding that the U.S. government get a cut of the profits, the TikTok saga we’ve been watching the past few weeks finally appears to be over.

A flurry of announcement late Saturday night indicate that the TikTok deal was actually a politically-oriented shakedown to boost the cloud infrastructure business of key supporters of the President of the United States.

Oracle, whose cloud infrastructure services run a laughable fourth to AWS, Alphabet*, and Microsoft, will be taking a 20 percent stake in TikTok alongside partner Walmart in what will be an investment round before TikTok Global (as the new entity will be called) goes public on an American stock exchange.

According to a

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