Bank of America and Stripe target market for payments in cryptocurrencies

A new WSJ report suggests that Saudi Arabia’s now eight-year-old Neom project — a futuristic, carbon-neutral, 105-mile-long linear city envisioned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — has become a financial sinkhole. Plagued by delays and cost overruns, the country, which has already shelled out $50 billion, could reportedly face another 55 years of construction, […]

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When Amazon killed its TikTok-style feed, Inspire, last month, most advertisers were unsurprised. In their eyes, it just didn’t seem to have gained any real interest.

“It never really felt like it had enough traction, in terms of scale, to invest more than an initial test for many brands,” said Joe O’Connor, senior director of innovation and growth at Tinuiti. O’Connor noted that his team didn’t see much adoption from their clients, so they weren’t shocked that Amazon sunsetted it.

And while Amazon was nowhere near reliant on the video feed to generate any significant revenue, it’s still a little surprising that even the biggest e-commerce player couldn’t make social commerce work.

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A little over a month ago, a bombshell report documenting ad tech’s shortcomings in stopping the monetization of child sexual abuse material raised the ire of senior politicians and prompted leading names to tighten up their operations.

Since then, the industry debate has been intense, with a growing chorus calling for more vendor transparency. And with that has come some confusion as to how the industry’s leading demand-side platforms will respond.

IAB CEO David Cohen made his philosophy clear on how the industry should move ahead. “Instead of pointing fingers, it may make sense to talk about the misalignment of incentives … move the conversation from efficiency at all costs to effectiveness and starve bad actors from monetization,” he said in a LinkedIn statement.

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Being a working mother has never been easy — but in today’s world, the challenges are piling up faster than ever. 

International Women’s Day (March 8) is a moment to celebrate progress — but also to confront the realities that women, particularly working mothers, still face every day. 

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For Austin, Texas-based ad agency GSD&M, throwing a party during SXSW is a must.

The agency has called the city home for 53 years, according to GSD&M CEO Duff Stewart, and the party is a way to participate in the the South by Southwest festival and represent its hometown. What started as backyard concerts in 2009 has morphed into a mini-festival on the Monday night of SXSW, where somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 attendees will make a stop at the agency’s fete. Throughout the years, acts like The Hold Steady, Gary Clark Jr., Toro y Moi, Charley Crockett and Reggie Watts have taken the stage at GSD&M’s party.

The shop will kick off its 13th annual party at its headquarters in downtown Austin tonight, with Band of Horses headlining. Ahead of this year’s event, here’s the story of how the parties came to be, how they’ve grown, handled the pandemic and continue to this day, straight from the people who’ve built them.

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Roblox is ramping up its advertising push in 2025 — but the platform’s creator studios say they’re paying the price.

As Roblox has started selling more ads and sponsorship opportunities directly to brands, in-game creator studios argue that the shift is cutting into their own earnings — fueling growing frustration over how monetization is being shared.

For years, Roblox’s creator studios — in-game agencies that employ individual creators to build custom-branded worlds or integrate clients’ brands into their pre-existing experiences — have been among the metaverse platform’s most staunch supporters. Many of them have official partnerships with Roblox through the Roblox Partner Program, and have charged brands such as Vans and Nascar hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to design and build bespoke experiences and items. 

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As Google continues its legal battle in the search antitrust case, the giant is moving forward with expanding new search features powered by generative AI.

Last week, Google debuted an experimental “AI Mode” for search to let users ask follow-up questions. The feature, powered by the company’s new Gemini 2.0 model, will provide answers, real-time information, multimodal answers, and links within AI Overviews. The feature also uses Google’s ranking system from its knowledge graph with real-time data about places and products.

Google’s updates came just days before the company and the U.S. Dept. of Justice on March 7 filed final remedy proposals before a scheduled hearing in court next month. The DOJ’s proposal includes forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser, increasing transparency for its search ads business and introducing rules for data transparency and search partner interoperability. Google’s proposal includes barring exclusive pre-install deals for search, chrome and its Gemini assistant.

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A common story around the world of media agencies — notably holding company shops — is one of bolting on digital and lower-funnel expertise to their historical brand-building chops. In the case of iProspect, that expertise is flowing in the opposite direction, at last in its North American offices. 

Digiday has learned that North American CEO Liz Rutgersson, who took over in fall 2023, has moved three Dentsu veterans onto her executive leadership team — all three of whom bring broader more traditional chops to the team to widen out the agency’s ability to deliver up and down the funnel for its clients.

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The NHS is looking into claims that a software flaw at Medefer left patient data vulnerable.

The Justice Department said Chinese agencies paid as much as $75,000 (£58,200) for each hacked email inbox.

Phone centre waiting times for public services could be cut in half by using AI, a minister has suggested.

Last week, Apple introduced the new . It brought a new sky blue finish, and introduced a higher-resolution 12MP camera with support for Center Stage. However, it also included a much more important upgrade: a lower starting price.

That’s right, the MacBook Air now starts at $999 again. That’s a big deal for two reasons. One, you no longer need to buy last-gen tech for that price point, and two, it means there’s now incredible clearance deals on older models.

more…

President Donald Trump's executive order to create a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve disappointed investors.

Despite opposition investors are still looking at deep-sea mining technology.

Among all of the Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC24 last summer, notification summaries are likely one of the more controversial ones. Users have noticed a number of inaccurate summaries, which has resulted in Apple tweaking the design of notification summaries, as well as disabling it for news stories.

While these summaries will never be absolutely perfect, there is one way Apple could easily improve the quality and accuracy of them, and I’d like to see them take this idea into consideration for iOS 19.

more…

Hackers from the infamous Lazarus Group are in a cat-and-mouse game to launder their stolen funds from the ByBit heist.

UK drivers are "confused" by the country's electric car transition, ministers are being warned.

Researchers refined their size estimates of the prehistoric shark by studying the bodily proportions of 165 other shark species.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is coming to PlayStation 5 on June 26. At SXSW, Kojima Productions dropped a 10-minute trailer for the upcoming game, giving us our best look yet at the sequel to 2019’s Death Stranding. Pre-orders open on March 17 at 10AM local time, and those who buy the Digital Deluxe or Collector’s Edition will get early access two days before the game officially becomes available.

Hideo Kojima was joined by Norman Reedus and Troy Baker on stage at SXSW 2025 to discuss the much anticipated new game. The trailer reveals Death Stranding 2 takes place 11 months after the creation of the United Cities of America. As previous glimpses have shown, Reedus is back as Sam, along with Léa Seydoux, who voices Fragile, and Baker as Higgs. There’s otherwise a lot to take in over the course of the video’s 10-minute run, including a slew of new faces joining the cast. 

Death Stranding 2 was first announced back in 2022, and last year’s PlayStation State of Play brought a 9-minute look into the game. Come summertime, you'll finally be able to play it. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/death-stranding-2-just-got-its-release-date-and-a-10-minute-new-trailer-231240932.html?src=rss

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