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India’s startup ecosystem raised nearly $11 billion in 2025, but investors are writing far fewer checks and becoming more selective about where they take risks, highlighting how the world’s third-rich startup market is moving away from the AI-powered capital concentration seen in the United States. The selective approach was most evident in trading. According to Tracxn, the number of startup funding rounds totaled 1,518, down nearly 39% year over year. Total funding declined even more modestly, falling more than 17% to $10.5 billion. That pullback was uneven. Seed-stage funding plummeted to $1.1 billion in 2025, a 30% decline from 2024,…
For more than a decade, dozens of journalists and human rights activists have been targeted and hacked by governments around the world. Police and spies in Ethiopia, Greece, Hungary, India, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere use sophisticated spyware to compromise victims’ mobile phones, sometimes facing real-world threats, harassment and even death. In recent years, a team of more than a dozen digital security experts, primarily based in Costa Rica, Manila, and Tunisia, has played a key role in the fight to protect these high-risk communities. They work for the New York-based nonprofit organization Access Now,…
Facial images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) are so realistic that it is only by chance that even an elite group of “super-recognizers” with extremely powerful facial processing abilities can detect fake faces.People with typical cognitive abilities are worse than chance, most of the time assuming that AI-generated faces are real.This is according to a study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal on November 12th. However, the study also found that just five minutes of training on common AI rendering errors can significantly improve an individual’s ability to spot fakes. you may like “I think it’s encouraging that…
Archaeologists are busy unearthing lost civilizations, but they haven’t found everything. There are still prominent ancient cities, such as capitals of great kingdoms and empires, that have not yet been excavated by scholars.We know about these cities because they are described in ancient texts, but their locations can be lost over time.In some cases, looters discovered these cities and plundered large quantities of artifacts from them. However, these robbers have not disclosed their location. In this countdown, Live Science highlights six missing ancient cities. you may like 1.Irisagrig During the ceremony of its return to Iraq, ancient inscriptions, including some…
New York Governor Cathy Hochul signed a bill this week that requires social media platforms to display warning labels to young users before exposing them to features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling. The state Legislature passed a bill (S4505/A5346) in June that includes language calling for mental health warnings against “addictive social media platforms,” which are defined as services with “addictive feeds, push notifications, It is defined as a platform that provides “autoplay, infinite scrolling, and/or similar counting” as an essential part of its service, with exceptions if the Attorney General determines that these features are used for “a…
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest attracts thousands of applicants each year. These entries will be narrowed down to the top 200, and the top 20 will compete on the big stage to win the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000 in prize money. However, the remaining 180 startups all surprised us in their respective categories and are competing in their own pitch competitions. Here is the complete list of Space and Defense Technology Startup Battlefield 200 selectmen, along with notes on why they entered the competition. Airability What it is: Airbility is developing a two-seat manned electric vertical takeoff and landing…
Each week, Live Science features interesting case reports from the medical literature, exploring unusual symptoms, rarely seen diagnoses, and ready-to-use treatments. This Diagnostic Dilemma series describes how doctors work to finally discover the cause of a patient’s illness. In complex cases, this diagnostic process can be very difficult. One reason doctors share case reports is to help other medical professionals who may be facing the same problem.Here are 12 of last year’s most interesting diagnostic dilemmas. (If you are uncomfortable with descriptions of medical symptoms or procedures, please read with caution.)1. After the surgery, the boy spoke a foreign language.A…
December 27, 2025Ravi LakshmananDatabase security/vulnerabilities A high-severity security flaw has been identified in MongoDB that could allow an unauthenticated user to read uninitialized heap memory. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-14847 (CVSS score: 8.7), is described as a case of improper handling of length parameter mismatch. Length parameter mismatch occurs when a program fails to adequately handle scenarios where the length field does not match the actual length of the associated data. According to the flaw description on CVE.org, “A mismatch in the length field of the Zlib compression protocol header could allow an uninitialized heap memory read by an unauthenticated…
French startup Ÿnsect was thrust into the spotlight during Super Bowl weekend 2021 when “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. touted the company’s benefits on The Late Show. Now, almost four years later, the insect farming company is in judicial liquidation due to insolvent debts, meaning it is effectively bankrupt. Ÿnsect had been struggling for months, so its demise is not surprising. Still, there’s a lot to learn about how the startup went bankrupt despite raising more than $600 million from Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition, taxpayers, and many others. In the end, Ÿnsect was unable to achieve its ambition to…
With loneliness and social isolation becoming more prevalent in recent years, people are increasingly seeking new ways to form platonic connections. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General even designated this issue as a public health crisis. Remote workers who miss the daily interactions of an office and young people who want to create adult social circles based on shared interests and hobbies are among those seeking meaningful friendships. Thanks to online dating apps, there’s little stigma attached to finding connections online. This has welcomed a new wave of apps focused on fostering friendships and building local communities. Appfigures estimates that…