Connect with us
DAPA Banner
DAPA Coin
DAPA
COIN PAYMENT ASSET
PRIVACY · BLOCKDAG · HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION · RUST
ElGamal Encrypted MINE DAPA
🚫 GENESIS SOLD OUT
DAPAPAY COMING

Tech

Jack’s Place doesn’t want to be a biz people “only remember from the past”

Published

on

“Nostalgia becomes dangerous if it prevents a business from improving,” says 3rd-gen director Alvin Say

There are restaurants you eat at, and restaurants you grow up in. Jack’s Place, for many Singaporeans, is firmly the latter.

Most Singaporeans would recognise its green-and-white checkered tablecloths anywhere. You might even remember the sizzle of a steak arriving at your table, or servers weaving between diners with gravy boats in hand.

This year, the homegrown chain celebrates its 60th anniversary. Any restaurant that survives six decades is remarkable. One that remains emotionally meaningful across multiple generations is something else entirely.

Vulcan Post spoke with Alvin Say, third-generation owner at Jack’s Place, about the brand’s evolution over the decades.

Advertisement

A cook boy’s unlikely inheritance

Jack's Place Punggol SafraJack's Place Punggol Safra
Image Credit: Mokkie Mok via Google Reviews

The Jack’s Place story begins with an immigrant who arrived with little and built something lasting through sheer grit and skill.

Say Lip Hai came from Hainan and found work as a cook boy for British troops stationed in Sembawang, where he learned the foundations of Western cooking—roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, rich gravies, the rhythms of classic British-style dining.

By the 1960s, he was running his own venture, Cola Restaurant, when a chance encounter changed everything.

Jack's Place Killiney RoadJack's Place Killiney Road
The first Jack’s Place outlet at Killiney Road./ Image Credit: National Library Board

A British housewife, impressed by his food, introduced him to her husband, Jack Hunt, who owned a pub and restaurant called Jack’s Place along Killiney Road. Lip Hai was invited to manage the catering and restaurant operations.

When Jack eventually returned to England in 1974, he sold the business to Lip Hai for S$28,000.

As the new owner, Say began reshaping the business. The pub gradually gave way to a restaurant, and while it initially leaned towards Italian influences, other culinary traditions soon found their way onto the menu. French cuisine, in particular, left a lasting mark.

Advertisement

In its early years, the restaurant’s S$3.80 set lunches became a hit with oil rig workers and office employees along Orchard Road. Lip Hai, committed to using fresh ingredients, would personally head to the market each morning on his Vespa to source supplies.

The restaurant’s 60-seater outlet at Killiney Road quickly outgrew itself. In 1977, Lip Hai opened a second outlet at the former Yen San Building. When queues formed at Killiney, he would even ferry waiting customers to the new location down the road.

Jack’s Place also doubled as a lively watering hole in those years. The bar counter was often packed, and Lip Hai would order whiskey by the hundred. Though closing time was officially 11PM, service frequently ran late to accommodate late-night regulars.

Jack’s Place had over 15 outlets at its peak

Jack's Place Ang Mo KioJack's Place Ang Mo Kio
Jack’s Place Ang Mo Kio outlet today./ Image Credit: Peter Rock Steady Crew, s g via Google Reviews

As Singapore’s HDB new towns expanded in the 1980s and ’90s, Jack’s Place followed suit. Its first heartland outlet opened in Ang Mo Kio and remains the brand’s oldest outlet today.

The restaurant’s positioning was deliberate: dependable, familiar, and welcoming.

Advertisement

Back then, Western dining still carried an air of novelty and occasion. Jack’s Place wanted to create a space that didn’t feel intimidating or exclusive—a place where ordinary families could enjoy a Western meal comfortably.

Image Credit: George Chua via Facebook

At its peak, the chain operated more than 15 outlets across the island, becoming a familiar presence in neighbourhood malls and town centres.

In 2008, the family formalised its business under a corporate umbrella, JP Pepperdine Group. Alongside the flagship Jack’s Place steakhouse brand, the group expanded its portfolio with Eatzi Gourmet, a halal-certified arm that spans steakhouses and a catering division.

A family business across generations

Jack's Place SingaporeJack's Place Singapore
Image Credit: Prestige Consultants via Google Reviews

Today, the business is managed by the second and third generations of Lip Hai’s family, alongside a team of long-serving professionals.

Alvin frames his role as stewardship rather than ownership. “We see ourselves less as owners and more as stewards of the brand,” he says. “Every generation has a responsibility to protect what people love about Jack’s Place, while making sure it stays relevant for the next generation of diners.”

That stewardship comes with its own tensions. Members of the third generation were encouraged to gain experience elsewhere before returning to the family business—a deliberate choice to ensure fresh perspectives.

Advertisement

You are not just managing a company. You are managing something tied to your family history and identity.

Alvin Say, Director of Jack’s Place, JP Pepperdine Group

When generational disagreements arise, the tie-breaker is always the same question: what is genuinely better for the customer?

Jack’s Place has introduced a limited-time menu for its 60th anniversary./ Image Credit: Jack’s Place

As Jack’s Place is often associated with nostalgia, Alvin takes a measured view when asked whether it is an asset or a liability.

 “It can be both,” he said. “Nostalgia is valuable because it creates emotional trust that newer brands cannot easily replicate, but it becomes dangerous if it prevents a business from improving.”

“We don’t want to become a brand that people only remember fondly from the past. We want to remain part of people’s present-day lives as well.”

Advertisement

That tension between preserving heritage and avoiding stagnation is one Jack’s Place has had to navigate carefully.

Some elements of the menu have remained largely unchanged for decades: sizzling steaks on cow-shaped hotplates, lobster bisque, baked potatoes. These are not just signature dishes; they are emotional touchpoints. Change them too much, and you risk erasing the memories that bring customers back.

At the same time, dining habits have shifted significantly. Today’s customers are more health-conscious, more visually driven, and far more attuned to global food trends.

They are no longer comparing Jack’s Place only with other steakhouses, but with cafés, lifestyle concepts, and a wave of well-capitalised overseas brands—particularly from China—that have entered Singapore with aggressive pricing and polished social media playbooks.

Advertisement

“Many of these brands move very quickly,” Alvin observes. “They operate with strong capital backing and are highly aggressive in pricing, marketing, and expansion.”

Playing the long game

To keep up with Singapore’s challenging F&B industry, operations have changed significantly behind the scenes, from technology and food safety systems to supply chain management and central kitchen support.

While continuing to protect the classics, the brand has also gradually introduced newer ideas and offerings to appeal to today’s diners.

Jack’s Place outlet at Jewel Changi./ Image Credit: Jack’s Place

COVID-19 was a defining moment of reinvention. With dining rooms closed, Jack’s Place had to pivot its entire business toward delivery and ready-to-eat meals almost overnight.

“It forced us to accelerate a decade’s worth of digital transformation into a few months,” Alvin shared. The shift was painful, but it proved the organisation could move faster than it had believed.

Advertisement

Historically, the brand has also weathered multiple economic downturns by staying lean and anchored to its core identity as a value-for-money family destination.

Part of Jack’s Place’s longevity, Alvin said, is not accidental. It comes from taking a long-term view.

While the chain operates around 12 outlets today, down from a peak of more than 15, growth is no longer defined by outlet count.

Instead, the focus has shifted to something harder to measure: strengthening the experience, improving consistency, and earning relevance with a new generation of diners who did not grow up eating their first steak at Jack’s Place—but who might, given the right reason to walk through the door.

Advertisement
  • Find out more about Jack’s Place here.
  • Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Jack’s Place/ rainbows via Trip.com

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Tech

Ai2’s Skylight project launches ‘Shippy,’ an AI agent that dives into ocean data

Published

on

Skylight’s new Shippy AI agent answers a plain-language question about vessels in Seattle’s harbor, showing a breakdown of vessel types alongside a map of the area. (Skylight Image)

Skylight, the free ocean-monitoring platform built by Seattle’s Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), launched an AI agent that gives maritime analysts answers to plain-language questions about what’s happening across the world’s oceans, from illegal fishing to vessels that have gone dark.

The agent, dubbed Shippy, runs on Skylight’s live vessel-tracking and satellite data, with every answer linking back to the underlying records so analysts can verify and reproduce it.

Skylight is one of a group of environmental projects that moved in 2021 to Ai2 from Vulcan Inc., now known as Vale Group, the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s holding company.

Researchers at Skylight have spent years building tools to spot illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which it says accounts for billions of dollars in losses each year and hits developing countries that depend on their fisheries the hardest. The platform is free, and Skylight says it is used by more than 300 organizations across about 70 countries.

It combines free satellite data with commercial imagery and vessel-tracking feeds to flag suspicious behavior, such as a ship going dark or two vessels meeting at sea to transfer catch.

Advertisement

Ai2 has open-sourced the computer-vision models behind the project.

Like Skylight itself, Shippy will be free to governments, regional fisheries bodies and qualifying nonprofits. For now it is limited to a small group of agencies and partners, with Skylight planning to expand access to a broader community of users as it updates and improves the tool.

Skylight says it built in limits to keep the agent useful and accountable. Shippy sticks to maritime questions, presents facts without making legal judgments, declines defense-related requests, and stops rather than guess when a question runs past what its data can answer. Decisions such as where to send a patrol, the team says, stay with “the humans in the room.”

The launch reflects a broader shift at Ai2 toward applying AI to specific real-world problems. Former CEO Ali Farhadi and other researchers left earlier this year to join Microsoft, as the Ai2 board reconsidered whether the nonprofit should be trying to go toe-to-toe with heavily funded tech giants in developing advanced AI models.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Will AI ‘digital twins’ transforming heart care work for women?

Published

on

Sumesh Sasidharan of the Faculty of Medicine at Aix-Marseille University explores how transformations in medtech may not impact all patients equally.

AI-powered digital twin technology could transform how doctors understand and treat heart disease. But if the medical data used to build these virtual models overlook biological differences between women and men, the promise of truly personalised medicine may remain incomplete.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape how doctors study and treat heart disease. One of the most ambitious ideas is the ‘digital twin’, a computer model built from a patient’s medical data that allows researchers to simulate how a disease might develop and how treatments might work.

In cardiology, these models combine medical imaging, clinical records and biological data to create a virtual version of the heart. In the future, doctors could potentially test treatment strategies on this digital model before applying them to the patient.

Advertisement

But an important scientific question is emerging: What if the medical data used to build these models are missing important biological differences between women and men?

As digital health technologies move closer to clinical practice, ensuring these tools reflect the full diversity of human biology is becoming increasingly important.

In our research at Aix Marseille University on patient-specific computational models of inflammatory heart disease (MYOCAR3 funded by Civis Alliance), we are beginning to see how differences in immune responses between women and men could influence how these diseases develop and how they might appear in future digital models.

The promise of digital twins in heart medicine

Digital twins are attracting growing attention across Europe as a way to advance precision medicine.

Advertisement

Instead of treating patients based on average responses observed in large populations, researchers hope to build personalised models that capture the unique biological characteristics of each individual. Several European initiatives are exploring this approach.

The European Virtual Human Twin Initiative, supported by the European Commission, aims to accelerate the development of digital twin technologies for healthcare. Other projects, such as SimCardioTest, focus on building patient-specific cardiovascular models to improve diagnosis and treatment planning.

These efforts bring together engineers, clinicians and data scientists to better understand complex heart diseases. But the success of these models depends heavily on one crucial factor: the quality and representativeness of the data used to build them.

When medical data fails to represent everyone

Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly recognised that biomedical research has sometimes treated male biology as the default.

Advertisement

A widely cited analysis published in Nature reported that male animals historically outnumbered females by roughly five to one in many preclinical studies.

In cardiovascular medicine, this imbalance matters.

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for nearly 18 million deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet heart disease does not affect women and men in exactly the same way. Symptoms, disease mechanisms and responses to treatment can differ.

Advertisement

Inflammatory heart disease provides a striking example. Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, can occur after viral infections and, in rare cases, after vaccination.

Global estimates suggest that myocarditis affects around 1.8 million people each year and occurs two to four times more frequently in men than in women, particularly among young adults.

Research published in journals such as Circulation suggests that these differences may be linked to variations in immune responses, hormonal influences and cardiac tissue biology.

For scientists developing digital heart models, this raises an important question: if datasets do not fully capture these biological differences, can digital twins accurately reproduce how the disease behaves in different patients?

Advertisement

From sex differences to gender-sensitive medicine

These concerns are part of a broader shift in biomedical research towards what is known as sex and gender-sensitive medicine.

This emerging field recognises that both biological sex and sociocultural gender factors influence health, disease progression and responses to treatment.

Researchers are increasingly working to integrate these dimensions into medical research, clinical practice and healthcare education.

For example, the University Hospital Zurich Heart Center has developed consultations dedicated to gender-sensitive cardiology. Researchers analyse international datasets, identify patterns across large patient cohorts and generate new clinical data to better understand how sex and gender influence cardiovascular disease.

Advertisement

At the same time, European scientific collaborations are working to strengthen how sex differences are considered in research.

The European Initiative COST Action EU-SABV is the first Europe-wide effort that focuses on improving how “sex as a biological variable” is integrated into biomedical research, helping ensure studies produce findings that are both rigorous and relevant for diverse patient populations.

Together, these efforts aim to generate better data sets, the essential foundation for reliable digital health technologies.

Building better digital medicine

Digital twins represent one of the most exciting frontiers in cardiovascular medicine. In the future, these models could allow doctors to simulate disease progression, test therapies virtually and tailor treatments to individual patients.

Advertisement

But the promise of digital medicine ultimately depends on the data that shape these models.

If those data fail to reflect biological differences between women and men, even the most advanced algorithms may miss part of the picture.

Ensuring that digital twins reflect the full diversity of human biology will, therefore, be essential. Only then can these technologies fulfil their promise of truly personalised medicine, not for an ‘average’ patient, but for every patient.

The Conversation

Sumesh Sasidharan

Advertisement

Sumesh Sasidharan is a biomedical engineer and senior researcher at Aix-Marseille University‘s Faculty of Medicine and a CIVIS3i Laureate, funded by the European Union. He was ranked among the top selected candidates globally and is the first Indian researcher to receive this prestigious fellowship. His research focuses on developing patient-specific computational models and digital twin frameworks for inflammatory heart diseases, with particular emphasis on acute myocarditis and immune-mediated cardiotoxicity. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

AI Is in Schools. Teachers Are Not Ready.

Published

on

K-12 education is navigating an AI landscape that is shifting faster than most school policies can keep up, and teachers are getting caught in the middle. Join us on This Week with EdSurge where we look at new data on where ed tech decision makers actually stand on AI adoption, and hear from a leading expert on what it would take to bring educators meaningfully into the conversation.

Districts Are All In on AI, But Their Budgets Are Not.

A new report suggests that districts are moving on AI faster than many expected, but the infrastructure needed to do it responsibly is struggling to keep up. EdSurge reporter Lauren Coffey digs into the latest CoSN State of Ed Tech report, which finds that three-quarters of districts now have AI guidelines in place, a notable jump from just a year ago. The same report, however, surfaces a harder question: as schools move faster, who is making sure the tools and systems they are building on are actually secure, accessible, and ready?

82 Percent of Teachers Have Received No Formal AI Guidance. Here’s Why.

A new survey from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation finds that the vast majority of teachers have not received formal guidance on how to use AI in their work, and about a third have gotten none. Joseph South, Chief Innovation Officer at ISTE+ASCD, joins the show to unpack what is driving the disconnect and what schools can do about it. South points to a combination of factors: AI was not part of most teacher preparation programs, administrators are hesitant to lead with something they do not fully understand yet, and schools are already stretched thin. Two districts are starting to show what is possible, and South thinks the path forward is more accessible than most administrators assume.

The districts getting this right have a head start. Find out what they are doing and whether yours can do the same. Listen to the episode.

Advertisement

This Week with EdSurge is produced by the EdSurge newsroom. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for education news and analysis delivered to your inbox every week.

Stay informed, stay curious.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Code in iOS 27 hints at support for rumored iPhone Fold

Published

on

Code sleuths are diving into iOS 27 and finding hints about the unreleased iPhone Fold, and finding subroutines that report just how open or shut the foldable might be.

Apple does its best to hide any code that might give away some future product, but it isn’t always perfect. Code references in iOS 27 show some of what Apple is preparing for the upcoming iPhone Fold.

Even though there hasn’t been a single component leak or information about mass production starting, some believe iPhone Fold is still coming in September. These bits of code certainly suggest Apple is working to release iPhone Fold, but say little else.

The code shared by the social media user shows items for “foldState,” “angleDegrees,” and a reference to the number of present hardware displays. These are all clear references to the existence of an iPhone Fold.

Of course, there have been rumors, patents, and various dummy units confirming an iPhone Fold has been in the works since at least 2019. This is the first instance of iOS directly referencing the future foldable, which means it could be imminent.

However, Apple has feature flags meant for operating systems that are years away, so the discovered code could also provide nothing in terms of the release timeline. Time will tell if the product will actually be ready for its expected September debut.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Apple’s New Siri AI Assistant Finally Understands, Gains Context, Conversation, and Real Capability

Published

on

Apple New Siri AI Assistant Reveal
Apple has delivered the deeper Siri overhaul that many expected years earlier. The new version, officially called Siri AI, moves beyond simple voice commands into a system that reads the screen, pulls relevant personal details from across apps, and taps current information from the web to give answers that actually fit the moment.



Users are no longer required to repeat the same basic information each time they seek assistance; this is simply inconvenient. Siri may now catch up on restaurant details in Messages or hotel confirmations in Mail and return to them later without prompting. Similarly, for photographs from prior vacations or calendar entries, the algorithm evaluates them discreetly and extracts the necessary information.

Sale


Apple iPad Pro 11-inch (M5): Ultra Retina XDR Display, 256GB, Landscape 12MP Front Camera/12MP Back…
  • WHY IPAD PRO — iPad Pro with the Apple M5 chip delivers extraordinary performance for effortless productivity on a stunning display. Take on pro…
  • PERFORMANCE AND STORAGE — iPad Pro with M5 brings next-generation speed and the power of on-device AI to all your tasks.* Featuring up to 2TB of…
  • IPADOS — Run pro apps and get more done with iPadOS 26 with Liquid Glass design and game-changing capabilities.* With an intuitive and flexible…

On-screen awareness has changed how people interact with the information in front of them. Ask Siri a question about a place you see in an open Instagram post or a document on your screen, and she’ll respond without you having to explain or copy anything. This works in compatible apps, such as screenshots on iPad and quick picks on Mac.

Advertisement


Real-world actions feel more natural now that Siri can generate an email or message that sounds exactly like what you’d normally send to someone. It even promises to edit and proofread your material across a range of apps. The Camera app can even break down a meal bill using a photo of a receipt, which is excellent. With expanded Visual Intelligence, you can simply aim your camera or snap a screenshot, then ask follow-up questions or initiate associated steps.

Apple New Siri AI Assistant Reveal
The interface has also been updated. Using the Dynamic Island results in a cleaner, more subdued show instead of the original vibrant radiance. A new Siri app allows you to sync your conversation history across all of your devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, using private iCloud syncing, so you can always retrieve earlier conversations. Voice capabilities have also been expanded. Siri’s pace and expressiveness can now be modified to fit the context, making long conversations feel more natural, and dictation has improved dramatically, so you don’t have to worry about spelling, punctuation, or capitalization.

Apple New Siri AI Assistant Reveal
The majority of the heavy lifting is still done on the device, allowing for speedy results while remaining private. When greater power is required, requests are sent through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which secures your personal information. This foundation underpins the rest of Apple Intelligence’s operations, which are now integrated with system-wide search, writing tools, and app interactions.

Apple New Siri AI Assistant Reveal
Betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27 are now being tested by developers. Compatible devices include the iPhone 15 Pro and later, modern iPads, Macs with Apple hardware, and a variety of Apple Watch as well as Vision Pro models. Improved on-device voice and dictation capabilities require cutting-edge technology and enough of RAM.
[Source]

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

OpenAI Confidentially Files for IPO on the Heels of SpaceX and Anthropic

Published

on

OpenAI has filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering, the company announced on Monday, kicking off what could be a monthslong process toward debuting on a US stock exchange. The move makes it the third company to file for what could be a trillion-dollar IPO this year.

Tech companies pursuing the most powerful AI models, including publicly traded giants Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, are hungry for tens of billions dollars each to build out more data centers and recruit scientists to grow their services.

An IPO would be yet another fundraising opportunity for OpenAI after the company privately raised $122 billion in March. Going public, which brings many workers closer to a life-altering payday and increases transparency about a business’ financial health, could also boost employee morale and customer confidence as OpenAI tries to regain its position as the clear front-runner in frontier AI.

OpenAI did not specify timing for the IPO nor how much it plans to raise. “We recently submitted a confidential S-1,” the company said in an unsigned, one-paragraph blog post. “We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

Advertisement

OpenAI declined to comment further. But by having paperwork ready, the company could draft off a potentially successful debut by Anthropic. If the rival runs into any challenges, OpenAI could hold off and recalibrate.

A Three-Way Race

Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, filed its confidential IPO paperwork on June 1. Just days before the filing, Anthropic’s latest fundraising brought its valuation to $965 billion, topping OpenAI’s $852 billion mark—both record-breaking figures in the world of tech venture capital. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which makes rockets, sells satellite internet, and also develops some of the world’s most capable AI models, publicly filed its IPO papers last month.

The IPOs could value each of these companies at over $1 trillion despite all of them being unprofitable and having roughly 80 percent to 90 percent lower sales than nearly every existing trillion-dollar public company. The only IPO to have broken the $1 trillion mark was oil company Saudi Aramco in 2019.

OpenAI’s revenue from subscriptions, ads, and service fees grew to somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion last year, according to previous company disclosures. But it spent far more money on cloud computing and thousands of staff, leading to billions of dollars in losses. In recent months, the company has carried out several restructurings due to executive illnesses and an attempt to focus on fewer projects.

Advertisement

OpenAI executives have debated for months whether the company is prepared to go public, according to two people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss confidential information. At one point last year, OpenAI was targeting an IPO in late 2027 or early 2028, according to another person familiar with the discussions.

Last week, President Donald Trump said his administration would look into the possibility of the US government taking a stake in AI companies as they go public. OpenAI has discussed the idea for months as a way to broaden public benefits of AI development, according to one of the people familiar with company discussions. An OpenAI blog post coauthored by CEO Sam Altman on Monday said “a good AI future” requires that “many people, companies, communities, and countries can build, benefit, and hold power.”

Legal Challenges

In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to allow it to fundraise vastly more sums than it believed people would be willing to donate. Today, the nonprofit owns roughly 25 percent, or more than $200 billion, of the company. It also has the power to block major business decisions and fire the company’s executives. Undoing the nonprofit is legally challenging.

Recently, OpenAI cleared a major hurdle on the road to its IPO by defeating a lawsuit brought by Musk, which accused the ChatGPT-maker of straying from its nonprofit mission. Musk’s claims were dismissed last month after a federal judge and jury ruled that he filed his lawsuit too late.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

The iOS 27 Beta Pretty Much Confirms That An Apple Foldable Is Happening

Published

on

Can’t a multi-trillion-dollar company have secrets any more?

Everybody knows that Apple has been working toward creating a foldable phone. Maybe the company hasn’t given the official word about the project, but we’ve had more than a few signals about it, such as the experimental iPhone Air that debuted last year. But today’s inaugural developer beta of the new iOS 27 also had a few dead giveaways.

Sam Henri Gold spied the latest indications that a foldable is in the works in the iOS 27 frameworks. The documentation contains references to terms such as “foldState” and “angleDegrees” as well as language for the total number of built-in displays on the host device. Each of those point to the operating system being used on a foldable rather than a traditional, single-screen smartphone. 9to5Mac confirmed the existence of these references in iOS 27 and that they were not present in iOS 26. 

Further intrigue came from Apple’s own developer State of the Union, where the company said it was adding support for resizing iPhone apps in both macOS’ mirroring feature and on iPad. That does sound useful for iPad and Mac users, but sure seems like a prelude to introducing an iPhone with a new form factor to us.

In Apple’s defense, it’s hard to hide an item once people know what they’re looking for. Between the presence of many other foldables already on the market and the level of detail developers get access to about new operating systems, it’d be pretty tricky to disguise this type of prep work for a new form factor. Especially since we’re anticipating that the iPhone Fold could be announced this fall, meaning it would be running iOS 27.

For everything Apple actually wanted people to know about during today’s WWDC keynote, we’ve got you covered.

Advertisement

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

For the 2nd time in weeks, Microsoft packages laced with credential stealer

Published

on

Dozens of cryptographically verified open source packages from Microsoft were compromised late last week to add advanced credential-stealing code that was triggered when developers opened them in AI coding agents.

In all, multiple researchers said, 73 packages were flagged as malicious when automated systems on GitHub blocked them on the platform. Rather than noting they are malicious—and that developers who used AI agents to work with them should assume their systems are compromised—the Microsoft-owned GitHub said it disabled the packages “due to a violation of GitHub’s terms of service.” The text went on to encourage the package owner to contact GitHub.

Devs: Assume compromise and proceed accordingly

It wasn’t until Monday that Microsoft even raised the possibility the packages were infected. In an email, the company stated: “We have temporarily removed some repositories as we investigate potential malicious content.”

The incident is the second supply-chain attack in as many months to breach an official Microsoft repository account. In mid May, the firm StepSecurity documented the compromise of Microsoft’s durabletask Python SDK on PyPI. The package is a framework for building fault-tolerant workflows and orchestrations to automate distributed transactions and other workflows. It receives 400,000 downloads per month.

Advertisement

The compromise packages executed a 28 KB payload that steals credentials from AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, password managers, and over 90 developer tool configurations. It then spreads laterally through cloud infrastructures to infect other developer machines. The attack, which has been linked to a threat actor tracked as TeamPCP, poisoned the durabletask package after compromising Microsoft credentials for publishing the package. The technique allows attackers to bypass the repository’s build pipeline entirely.

The malware used in the attack is tracked as Miasma. It’s essentially a clone of TeamPCP’s Mini Shai-Hulud toolkit, which the threat actor open-sourced recently. Security firm Cloudsmith said the malware harvests OIDC (OpenID-Connect) token credentials that are used in SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts) provenance attestation, a method for providing cryptographically signed guarantees of a software’s integrity.

As was the case in the May compromise of Microsoft’s durabletask, the one last week made use of the functionality to steal a legitimate Microsoft OIDC token. It was also used in a separate supply-chain attack poisoning dozens of Red Hat packages.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

IEEE Celebrates Technology’s Brightest at Annual Event

Published

on

New York City was the backdrop of this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, held on 24 April.

The event celebrates engineering pioneers who have developed technologies that have changed how people connect and learn about the world. This year’s celebrants included the engineers behind innovations such as text-to-donate technology, AI-powered diagnostic tools, and the graphics processing unit, among many others.

Prior to the Honors Ceremony, IEEE hosted a forum on 23 April for a select group of early-career achievers to exchange ideas and experiences with laureates and awardees, speakers, and IEEE leaders. Attendees from around the world, working in a variety of technical areas, shared their journeys and explored the intersections of technologies, disciplines, and missions.

The event culminated in Friday evening’s black tie Honors Ceremony, where IEEE celebrated medal laureates, including Jensen Huang, who received IEEE’s highest recognition, the IEEE Medal of Honor. Huang is a cofounder of Nvidia and its chief executive.

Advertisement

“IEEE has always been a home to those who see the future before others see it,” Mary Ellen Randall, IEEE president and CEO, said in her welcome speech.

Video highlights and photos from the event are available on the IEEE Awards website.

Exploring mission-driven tech and AI in art

Friday morning began with a conversation between Randall and Marian Croak, the recipient of this year’s IEEE Founders Medal. Croak was honored for “leadership in communication networks, including acceleration of digital equity, responsible artificial intelligence, and the promotion of diversity and inclusion.”

Croak, who serves as vice president of engineering at Google, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies. When a person speaks into a telephone, VoIP converts their voice into digital signals that are transmitted over the Internet rather than traditional phone lines. Her work enabled audio and video conferencing. She also developed text-to-donate technology to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. The technology enables customers to donate money to a charity via their mobile service provider, which then bills them.

Advertisement

“Empathy has always been a driving force in the engineering that I’ve done,” she said.

She shared advice on how to stay creative: “Get out of the office. Go to an art museum, exercise, or play with children.” Croak said her grandchildren inspire her.

The daytime program also spotlighted AI’s use in the visual arts. Kathleen Kramer, the 2025 IEEE president, interviewed artist Refik Anadol, who is scheduled to open an AI art museum on 20 June in Los Angeles. Dataland’s exhibits are powered by an open-access model developed by Anadol’s studio.

For the museum’s first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” the model collected visual data about the natural world from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, with their permission. The information, including up to a half billion images, will form the basis for a variety of AI-produced art, Anadol said.

Advertisement

Anadol said he was inspired to mix AI with art by the movie Blade Runner. He said he believes “machines can become collaborators,” as “data is a form of pigment.”

Data also plays an important role in the work of artist and author Giorgia Lupi. The artist is a partner at design firm Pentagram.

Lupi said she uses data to tell stories, including chronicling her struggles with a chronic illness.

“Data is an abstraction of our reality,” she said.

Advertisement

One of her recent projects, “A Data Love Letter to the Subway,” was shown last year in the Dey Street Passageway in New York City. The video was made using data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about each train line, including timetables, ridership, and people’s travel habits. Based on the information Lupi gathered, she documented how commuters traveling on different subway lines encountered one another without realizing it.

By exploring data on this year’s IEEE award recipients, she collaborated with IEEE to create an animated video illustrating the shared pathways and collaborations among the honorees. It debuted at the Honors Ceremony.

Honoring engineering giants

The Honors Ceremony, held at Cipriani 42nd Street, recognized more than 20 laureates and innovators.

More than 92 million selfies are taken worldwide every day, PhotoAiD estimates. A selfie wouldn’t be possible without Eric Fossum’s invention of the CMOS image sensor. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., the “camera on a chip” was intended for use in space, but it is now found in smartphones, medical devices, and vehicles. Fossum, an IEEE Life Fellow, received the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, which recognizes outstanding contributions to materials and device science and technology.

Advertisement

“Engineering is a pursuit of what must be possible. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our profession.” —Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia

The medal, he said, “is at the top of the IEEE staircase of being recognized by your peers.”

The IEEE Holonyak Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies went to Steven P. DenBaars, a professor of materials and electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. DenBaars was honored for his work in semiconductors, which laid the foundation for high-resolution LED and laser displays, modern solid-state lighting, and more.

“This work has always been a team effort…I’m excited and curious about the role gallium nitride micro LEDs will play in optical communications,” he said in his acceptance speech.

Advertisement

The ceremony ended with the Medal of Honor presentation to Huang, who received a standing ovation. He was recognized for his “leadership in the development of graphics processing units and their application to scientific computing and artificial intelligence.”

The IEEE honorary member donated his cash prize to IEEE TryEngineering, which provides teachers with a library of lesson plans and offers educational summer camps. The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation matched his gift, and the additional donation is destined to fund scholarships for new graduates.

“Engineering is a pursuit of what must be possible. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our profession,” Huang said.

From Your Site Articles

Advertisement

Related Articles Around the Web

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks

Published

on

In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.

Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at $10 billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.

“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”

TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.

Advertisement

The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just $400 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.

Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a $450 million valuation despite an announced $1 billion headline price.

Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.

“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”

Advertisement

Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.

Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.

That’s because the stock options granted to employees should theoretically be valued based on the blended price of all tranches, said Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino. Woo’s group provides the independent 409A valuations that startups use to price employee stock options. A 409A is an independent appraisal that’s supposed to set the fair market value of a private company’s shares — it’s the number that determines what employees actually pay for their options, regardless of what valuation gets announced in a press release.

There’s a catch, however: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because the 409A sets the strike price of employee options — and a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company — there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. Which means the independent appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range. Employees may not be paying the headline price for their options, but they may not be getting the full picture either.

Advertisement

The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.

The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).

The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”

Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Advertisement

— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2025