Natasha Lomas, Author at TechCrunch

Glint Solar grabs $8M to help accelerate solar energy adoption across Europe

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Solar energy is booming, which is good news for Glint Solar. The Norwegian software-as-a-service startup has built a platform that’s helping energy giants and large solar developers such as E.ON, Recurrent Energy, and Statkraft cut the time it takes to plan and pre-design solar installations to accelerate the transition to renewables. Glint’s software pulls in data […]

Corning, maker of toughened Gorilla Glass for phones, faces EU antitrust probe

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:40:37 +0000

On Wednesday, the European Union opened an investigation of U.S. manufacturer Corning over possible anti-competitive practices. Corning may not be a name that’s super familiar to the average tech consumer, but you are almost certainly within touching distance of its products, as it’s a leading supplier of speciality toughened glass for mobile devices, including Apple’s […]

Apple to be fined for breaching EU’s Digital Markets Act, Bloomberg reports

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:17:54 +0000

The European Union’s flagship market contestability regulation has been in force on a handful of tech giants for months. Since March, the bloc has had open investigations on several gatekeepers. But it’s Apple that will face the first Digital Markets Act (DMA) fine, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the case. Apple’s App Store rules […]

Meta found to have exposed info on North Korean defectors to advertisers

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:30:05 +0000

Meta has added another privacy sanction to its extensive collection: South Korea’s data protection agency fined the social media giant around $15.7 million for processing sensitive user data and passing it to advertisers without a proper legal basis, Reuters reports. Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) found Facebook’s parent collected information from about 980,000 users, […]

Printful and Printify ink a merger deal

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Two veteran European companies in the world of on-demand printing are merging, and you may have not even realized they were separate companies to begin with. Printful and Printify, both startups with Latvian roots providing custom printing services, are coming together as a single company. They are framing the move as a natural fit to […]

Nvidia-Run:ai deal to be reviewed under EU’s merger rules

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 15:11:28 +0000

The European Union has tossed a wrench in the works of chipmaker Nvidia’s proposed acquisition of Tel Aviv-based AI workload management startup Run:ai. The deal, which was announced back in April — with a price tag of $700 million per our sources — will be reviewed by the bloc after a request by competition regulators in […]

Temu’s low-cost marketplace faces formal probe in EU over raft of DSA compliance concerns

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:13:23 +0000

The European Union has expanded its scrutiny of online marketplaces by opening a formal proceeding on Chinese low-cost e-commerce platform, Temu, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission announced Thursday. Enforcers of the online governance framework will now dial up their oversight of Temu. The bloc’s suspicions are focused on concerns about the sale […]

EU boosts EIC budget for supporting deep tech R&D and strategic scale-ups

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:33:16 +0000

The European Union will spend €1.4 billion (about $1.5 billion) next year to bolster deep tech research and support scale-ups in strategic areas like AI, low-carbon technologies, agritech and biotech, the European Commission said on Tuesday. The budget for the 2025 Work Program of the European Innovation Council (EIC), part of the bloc’s flagship Horizon Europe […]

Margaret Atwood’s verdict on AI poetry is in — and it’s not good

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 11:50:50 +0000

Best-selling author Margaret Atwood isn’t worried about the indefatigable rise of generative AI — telling Reuters that she’s too old to be concerned about its impact on the arts. Her remarks follow a petition calling for an end to the unlicensed use of creative works to train AI models that’s now amassed more than 31,000 […]

Emidat is building a tool to clean up construction by automating environmental reporting

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Fixing the climate crisis is a vast, world-sized puzzle. But one particularly large piece of this ginormous conundrum is construction and real estate — which collectively amount for around 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Enter Munich-based data startup Emidat, which has built a software platform for automating the generation of validated Environmental Product Declaration […]

Medtech Alimetry gases up with $18M for a wearable to help diagnose gastric disorders

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 16:05:40 +0000

Gut health isn’t the most glamorous of topics, but as many as 1 in 10 people regularly suffer from gastric symptoms like nausea, bloating, or cramping after eating. Figuring out exactly what’s causing stomach misery is not easy without invasive tests. But New Zealand-based startup Alimetry has developed a wearable device that can speed up […]

UK revives plan to reform data protection rules with an eye on boosting the economy

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:53:27 +0000

A new data bill from the U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) aims to revive several measures that failed to pass under the prior government, while rowing back on some controversial post-Brexit reforms proposed by conservative ministers. The government reckons the “Data (Use and Access) Bill” (DUA) stands to boost the U.K. economy […]

LinkedIn fined $335 million in EU for tracking ads privacy breaches

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:11:47 +0000

Bad news for LinkedIn in Europe, where the Microsoft-owned social network has been reprimanded and fined €310 million for privacy violations related to its tracking ads business. The administrative penalties, which are worth around $335 million at current exchange rates, have been issued by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) under the European Union’s General Data […]

Intel’s $1.45 billion EU antitrust fine is officially history

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 08:58:20 +0000

A €1.06 billion EU antitrust penalty on chipmaker Intel for abuse of dominance dating back to 2009 (when it was equivalent to $1.45 billion) has been consigned to the history books after the bloc’s top court rejected the Commission’s appeal against a 2022 lower court ruling that annulled the sanction. “The Court of Justice dismisses […]

Pinterest faces EU privacy complaint over tracking ads

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:00:00 +0000

When it comes to privacy nightmares, Pinterest is unlikely to be the first social app that springs to mind. But the visual discovery engine’s use of tracking ads is the target of the latest complaint from European privacy rights nonprofit noyb, which accuses it of breaching the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing […]

Kevin Bacon, Thom Yorke, Julianne Moore and thousands of other creatives sign petition against AI data scraping

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:49:53 +0000

What do the actor Kevin Bacon, the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the musician Robert Smith, and the journalist and historian Sidney Blumenthal have in common? They are among the 11,500 signatories of a petition against unlicensed use of creative works for AI training. “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, […]

Meta tests facial recognition for spotting ‘celeb-bait’ ads scams and easier account recovery

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 22:00:00 +0000

Meta is expanding tests of facial recognition as an anti-scam measure to combat celebrity scam ads and more broadly, the Facebook owner announced Monday. Monika Bickert, Meta’s VP of content policy, wrote in a blog post that some of the tests aim to bolster its existing anti-scam measures, such as the automated scans (using machine […]

Ireland adopts Online Safety Code for video-sharing platforms including TikTok

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 14:35:16 +0000

Ireland’s media and internet watchdog, Coimisiún na Meán, has adopted and published an Online Safety Code that will apply to video-sharing platforms headquartered in the country from next month (November 19) — including the likes of ByteDance’s TikTok, Google-owned YouTube, and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook Reels. Under the Code, in-scope platforms are required to have […]

French court blocks porn sites over age verification for child protection

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 15:52:05 +0000

The Paris Court of Appeal ordered some pornography websites to be blocked on Thursday over failure to implement robust age verification systems that are capable of preventing minors from accessing the adult content, Politico reports. Porn sites Tukif and Xhamster were among several adult websites subject to the order. The sites have been given 15 […]

Elon Musk’s X boosts DSA info for EU users as bloc’s probe of its complaint handling continues

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 11:50:47 +0000

An incoming privacy policy update to Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) will see the company making it clearer to users in the European Union that they have the right to appeal decisions under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), such as account bans, content takedowns and shadowbanning. The online governance regulation, which applies on scores […]