Mortgage fintech Mesa has emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $9.2 million in seed capital and a novel idea for homeowners. It’s offering cash back and rewards on all spending done on the home, including the mortgage itself. 

Mesa is offering mortgage loans, original or refinancing, that include a credit-card-style 1% cash back on the loan. 

In addition, Mesa is offering a points-rewards-type credit card geared toward homeowners. The card lets homeowners accrue points for paying their mortgage and for paying for homeowner-related services like HOA fees, utilities, repairs, home insurance, and day-to-day purchases like gas or groceries. 

This is a standard unsecured credit card, meaning it is not related to or secured by the home, and the card issuer partner is Celtic Bank. Card users don’t need to have originated a home loan with Mesa in order to get a card, and the card’s spending limit is determined by the credit history of the applicant. It also carries a typical hefty credit card annual percentage rate, currently in the 20-21% range.

“We’ve just taken what everybody loves about travel and dining cards to re-contextualize that for the homeowner/parent,” Mesa’s founder CEO Kelley Halpin tells TechCrunch. “So it’s not rewarding you on travel and dining spend; it’s rewarding you on gas, groceries, your HOA, utilities, home goods as well as your mortgage payment.”

True, a homeowner could already earn points on these types of expenses simply by paying with whatever rewards-style card they already have. But Mesa’s pitch is that it’s structuring the points to be more generous toward ordinary home-owning expenses. It plans to offer one point for each dollar when used to make the mortgage payment, 2x for gas and groceries, 3x for the home services category.

Similar to American Express’ rewards program, points can then be redeemed in a variety of ways, including cash back, gifts, travel booked through its travel portal, or to offset monthly mortgage payments.

In addition, Mesa says that it will eventually offer benefits to cardholders such as discounts to home improvement merchants on its network, or discounts to other items prized by the homeowner/parent set such as memberships to warehouse wholesalers like Costco.

“Homeowners will get access to premium benefits, including big box memberships, credits towards home maintenance,” Halpin says.

Mesa is bucking the trend of tackling the home mortgage market after this fintech sector got crushed by high interest rates. While Mesa was in the works before the Feds cut rates last week, venture investing into such fintechs has been hovering at its lowest levels in six years, according to Crunchbase data.

By going for loan origination and credit cards, Mesa is hedging its bets. It will make money from a mix of interchange fees, interest revenue, and affiliate revenue. For the mortgage product, it will generate revenue from lead generation to its financial partners. 

Still, it’s been a slow launch. Mesa would not share any user or revenue numbers, with Halpin saying its been operating on an “invite-only waitlist.” Now that it’s out of stealth, it plans to slowly alert people on its waitlist.

While one could argue that the market isn’t hurting for credit card options or mortgage referral services, Mesa’s founders have the kind of belief that comes from a combo of startup expertise and a fintech background. Halpin hailed from Uber during its startup years, then founded three startups and sold one (Quantivize Health) for an undisclosed sum. Co-founder Peyton Hayslette worked at a long string of fintech companies, most recently wellness credit card startup Paceline. Mesa currently employs 13 people, Halpin says. Their backgrounds include such companies as Robinhood, Block, Capital One, and American Express.

Mesa is building out its company with $7.2 million in new seed funding led by Streamlined Ventures with participation from Starting Line, Assurant Ventures, Vera Equity, and others. It has also received $2 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank.

Nothing has announced its first pair of open wearable stereo (OWS) earbuds that could be better suited for activities where you actually want to hear what’s going on around you. With a design that rests just inside your ear, the new Nothing Ear Open could also be a more comfortable alternative to earbuds that rely on silicone tips inserted into the ear canal.

The Nothing Ear Open join a growing trend in headphones where active noise cancelling technology is eschewed for a design that deliberately lets outside sounds in. Shokz’ headphones have long offered this through the use of bone conduction technology that keeps your ears completely open. In February, Bose introduced its $299 Ultra Open earbuds and positioned them as headphones that can be comfortably worn all day long, even at work. Nothing’s new Ear Open earbuds offer similar functionality but for $149.

Nothing’s previous models, the Ear and Ear (a) that debuted last April, offer a slight advantage in battery life with 8.5 and 9.5 hours, respectively, while ANC is turned off. But the Nothing Ear Open still manage eight hours on a full charge, or a total of 30 hours when occasionally docked and recharged inside a slim case that’s 19 millimeters thick. It lacks wireless charging, but Nothing says a quick 10-minute charge with a USB-C cable will provide two hours of listening.

That’s solid battery life given the Ear Open feature the largest 14.2-millimeter drivers Nothing has included in its earbuds to date, but with a directional design to help minimize sound leakage. Each earbud also includes a pair of microphones and Nothing’s latest noise-canceling technology (Clear Voice Technology 3.0) to help stop outside noises from muffling your voice during a call.

The Nothing Ear Open use a “three-point balance system” and a silicone ear hook to keep the earbuds securely positioned just inside your ears. At 8.1 grams each, the Ear Open are the company’s heaviest earbuds to date, but that hook will help spread the weight out across your ear. However, as The Verge’s Victoria Song discovered while reviewing the Shokz OpenFit Air, headphones with ear hooks can sometimes be difficult to wear with some styles of glasses when the arms and the hooks are competing for space atop your ears.

The earbuds use Bluetooth 5.3 with support for the AAC and SBC codecs, can connect to two Bluetooth devices and quickly switch between them, and offer a “Low Lag Mode” for gamers that’s automatically activated when Nothing Phone users are in Game Mode. When paired to other phones, the Low Lag Mode can be activated using Nothing’s mobile app, which also facilitates an integration with ChatGPT.

The Nothing Ear Open can be preordered in the US, Canada, and Europe starting on September 24th through the company’s website and will be available globally starting on October 1st.

The scale of VPN removal in Russia is worse than previously reported as VPN apps keep disappearing from the local Apple App Store.

This is the worrying finding coming from an exclusive report from the App Censorship Project that found 60 apps, including some of the best VPN services on the market, were silently removed by Apple between early July and September 18, 2024. Russia’s censor body, Roskomnadzor, publicly acknowledged only 25 VPN apps.

The messaging app Telegram has said it will hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities who have search warrants or other valid legal requests.

The change to its terms of service and privacy policy “should discourage criminals”, CEO Pavel Durov said in a Telegram post on Monday.

“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he continued.

The announcement marks a significant reversal for Mr Durov, the platform’s Russian-born co-founder who was detained by French authorities last month at an airport just north of Paris.

Days later, prosecutors there charged him with enabling criminal activity on the platform. Allegations against him include complicity in spreading child abuse images and trafficking of drugs. He was also charged with failing to comply with law enforcement.

Mr Durov, who has denied the charges, lashed out at authorities shortly after his arrest, saying that holding him responsible for crimes committed by third parties on the platform was both “surprising” and “misguided.”

Critics say Telegram has become a hotbed of misinformation, child pornography, and terror-related content partly because of a feature that allows groups to have up to 200,000 members.

Meta-owned WhatsApp, by contrast, limits the size of groups to 1,000.

Telegram was scrutinised last month for hosting far-right channels that contributed to violence in English cities.

Earlier this week, Ukraine banned the app on state-issued devices in a bid to minimise threats posed by Russia.

The arrest of the 39-year old chief executive has sparked debate about the future of free-speech protections on the internet.

After Mr Durov’s detention, many people began to question whether Telegram was actually a safe place for political dissidents, according to John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

He says this latest policy change is already being greeted with even more alarm in many communities.

“Telegram’s marketing as a platform that would resist government demands attracted people that wanted to feel safe sharing their political views in places like Russia, Belarus, and the Middle East,” Mr Scott-Railton said.

“Many are now scrutinizing Telegram’s announcement with a basic question in mind: does this mean the platform will start cooperating with authorities in repressive regimes?”

Telegram has not given much clarity on how the company will handle the demands from leaders of such regimes in the future, he added.

Cybersecurity experts say that while Telegram has removed some groups in the past, it has a far weaker system of moderating extremist and illegal content than competing social media companies and messenger apps.

Before the recent policy expansion, Telegram would only supply information on terror suspects, according to 404 Media.

On Monday Mr Durov said the app was now using “a dedicated team of moderators” who were leveraging artificial intelligence to conceal problematic content in search results.

But making that type of material harder to find likely won’t be enough to fulfill requirements under French or European law, according to Daphne Keller at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society.

“Anything that Telegram employees look at and can recognize with reasonable certainty is illegal, they should be removing entirely,” Ms Keller said.

In some countries, they also need to notify authorities about particular kinds of seriously illegal content such as child sexual abuse material, she added.

Ms Keller questioned whether the company’s changes would be enough to satisfy authorities seeking information about targets of investigations, including who they are communicating with and the content of those messages.

“It sounds like a commitment that is likely less than what law enforcement wants,” Ms Keller said.

Drivers on a busy US freeway have been controlled by an AI since March, as part of a study that has put a machine-learning system in charge of setting variable speed limits on the road. The impact on efficiency and driver safety is unclear, as researchers are still analysing the results.

Roads with variable speed limits, also known as smart motorways, are common in countries including the US, UK and Germany. Normally, rule-based systems monitor the number of vehicles on one of…

Kyle Chandler is poised to become the next actor to join the DC Universe.

Per Deadline, Chandler is in negotiations to star to play Hal Jordan in Lanterns, an upcoming series based on the DC comic. The series will follow Hal Jordan and John Stewart, two intergalactic cops from the Green Lantern Corps. called to Earth to investigate a murder. Jordan becomes a mentor to the younger Stewart, one of DC’s first Black superheroes.

Josh Brolin was first approached to play Hal, but ultimately passed. The casting search for Stewart is still underway.

Chandler is best known for the Emmy-winning role of Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights. Chandler’s other notable works include Argo, Bloodline, and Manchester by the Sea.

In June, Lanterns officially received a straight-to-series order for eight episodes. The series stems from the creative trio of Chris Mundy (Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Watchmen), and comic book writer Tom King. Mundy is Lanterns’ showrunner and will co-write and co-executive produce the series with Lindelof and King. HBO will produce the series in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy winner Kyle Chandler is in negotiations to star in ‘Lanterns,’ HBO’s high-profile series based on the Green Lantern DC comics, sources tell Deadline.

All the details we know here: https://t.co/Y8kQyn7aUO pic.twitter.com/rqD1d7z5HS

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) September 23, 2024

Lanterns was first announced in January 2023 by co-CEOs of DC Studios James Gunn and Peter Safran. The series will fall in Chapter 1 of the DCU, officially known as “Gods and Monsters.” The duo compared the series to True Detective and said it would feel like an “HBO-quality event.”

“Lanterns plays a really big role leading us into the main story that we’re telling across our film and television,” Safran said via Variety. “So this is a very important show for us.”

Over a decade ago, Ryan Reynolds notoriously played Hal in Green Lantern, a film that failed critically and commercially.

Lanterns has no release date. Filming is expected to begin in 2025.