Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

The day a Russian missile hit a Ukrainian tech giant


Every entrepreneur has to overcome obstacles, but few have faced the challenges of Oleksandr Kosovan. As the founder and CEO of Ukrainian scaleup MacPaw, Kosovan runs his business in a country under invasion. The company has even been hit by missile barrages. As relentless Russian bombing and shelling pummel Ukraine, his team presses on with their work. In October, they released a new version of CleanMyMac, MacPaw’s flagship maintenance and optimisation product.  “It was completely developed during the war,” Kosovan tells TNW on a video call from his home in Kyiv. The software earned rave reviews. But two months later,…

This story continues at The Next Web

Soaring AI energy use sparks call to ‘fundamentally redesign’ computing  


One of Europe’s leading climate tech VC firms has called for a “fundamental redesign” of traditional computing methods amid surging energy consumption from AI applications. The Berlin-based World Fund warns that simply transitioning data centres to renewable power will not be enough to fully decarbonise AI compute.  “We need to rethink the way we go about computing, from the materials and chips we use to software we run,” Daria Saharova, founding partner at World Fund, said at the Future of Green Computing event in Munich today.   At the event, World Fund joined Dealroom and Intel’s deeptech accelerator Ignite to unveil a…

This story continues at The Next Web

Lucien Engelen: Wellbeing tech is the new battleground for top talent


Gone are the days when a bean bag and free kombucha made your office cool. Today’s top tech talent wants something far more valuable: their health. That’s the view of Lucien Engelen, a renowned healthcare innovation expert, who believes workplace wellbeing is about to spark a seismic shift. This transition will not only transform employment perks, but also create a new tech market. Engelen’s vision draws on deep experience. Across three decades in healthcare, his work has spanned acute care, ambulance services, and dispatch centres. As the founding director of the REshape Center of the Radboud University Medical Center, he spent…

This story continues at The Next Web

Airbus to build lander for Europe’s first Mars rover after Russia dropped


The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover is back on course for a landmark trip to Mars, where it will probe the red planet for signs of extraterrestrial life.  ESA initially designed the Mars rover alongside Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, as part of the ExoMars programme. The vehicle was set to launch in 2022, but when Russia invaded Ukraine, ESA severed ties with Moscow, putting the mission in jeopardy. Rosalind Franklin — named after the British chemist whose work was crucial to understanding the structure of DNA— was left without several key components, including a landing platform to safely…

This story continues at The Next Web

Orbital rocket launches from Western Europe for first time


German startup Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Norway today, marking the first-ever vertical orbital rocket launch in Western Europe. Spectrum blasted off at 12:30 PM CEST (11:30 BST) but lost control at about 25 seconds into the flight. A video from the launch shows the rocket wobble, pitch over, and then plummet back to the ground, where it collided with the ocean, causing a large explosion. The launchpad remains intact and no one was injured, Isar said. Drone and pad footage from Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum launch. You can see it avoided the pad when it…

This story continues at The Next Web