According to half a dozen sources, Accel, the global venture firm, is in advanced discussions to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Truemeds, an Indian online pharmacy that’s focused on providing customers with more affordable generic alternatives to costly branded medications.
The talks are currently centered on a proposed valuation of about $330 million for the six-year-old, Mumbai-headquartered startup, per these same sources, who requested anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private.
The deal hasn’t finalized, so it may still not materialize or the terms can change, the sources cautioned. Accel and Truemeds didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The potential round for Truemeds comes amid a period of consolidation and upheaval in the online pharmacy industry. Pharmeasy, backed by Prosus Ventures, has seen its valuation plummet from a peak of $5.6 billion to below $600 million after struggling to repay a loan to Goldman Sachs.
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Janus Henderson, the British American global asset firm, implied a valuation of about $458 million for Pharmeasy at the end of June, according to its most recent mutual fund disclosures. In 2021, Tata Digital acquired 1mg, another major player in the space.
Unlike its competitors, Truemeds is taking a slightly different approach. The startup aims to disrupt the supply chain of how medicine reaches customers, eliminating middlemen that inflate the final price. After customers upload their prescriptions, Truemeds doctors recommend generics with the same active ingredients, produced by Indian manufacturers. This service aims to reduce medication costs, particularly for those with chronic conditions requiring ongoing treatment.
The platform operates entirely online, with consultations, ordering, and delivery all handled digitally. This eliminates the need for patients to visit physical pharmacies and allows Truemeds to reach customers in remote areas.
If the new funding materializes, it would more than double Truemeds’ valuation, which was $132 million in an extended Series B round last year. The startup originally raised the Series B funding from investors including WestBridge Capital and Info Edge Ventures at a valuation of $76.7 million, according to Tracxn, a venture insight platform.
Instagram is launching several new features designed to protect teens from sextortion scams, which occur when scammers threaten to share intimate images of victims unless they receive a payment or more photos.
One guardrail that’s rolling out soon will prevent people from screenshotting or screen recording disappearing images or videos sent in a private message. If the sender enables replays of the image or video, Instagram will block people from opening them on the web. This won’t stop scammers from capturing the image or video by recording it with another device, however.
Starting today, Instagram will begin using certain indicators, like how new an account is, to detect scammy behavior as well. The platform will then prevent these accounts from sending follow requests to teens by blocking their request or moving it to the teen’s spam folder.
It’s also testing a safety notice in Instagram and Messenger that will alert teens if the person they’re talking to is located in a different country, as sextortion scammers often lie about their location.
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In addition, Instagram will now start blocking suspicious accounts from viewing the following or followers lists of their victims, which sextortion scammers can use for blackmail. Instagram will similarly prevent suspect accounts from seeing the lists of accounts that have liked a target’s posts, the photos they’re tagged in, and other users tagged in their photos.
To protect kids from viewing obscene photos, Instagram is launching a feature that will automatically detect and blur nude images for users under 18. Instagram started testing this filter in April, and it will be enabled for teens globally by default. Other safety measures coming to the platform include an option to chat with the Crisis Text Line in the US if users report sextortion or child safety issues. It will also show an educational video to teens in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia to spread awareness about sextortion scams, which are on the rise.
This suite of features comes as part of Meta’s broader efforts to make its platforms safer for kids. Last month, Instagram announced that it would start putting all teens into more private accounts with certain safety settings enabled by default, like restricted DMs and Sleep Mode to silence notifications at nighttime.
Independent power producers Vistra , Constellation Energy and Talen Energy are positioned to benefit from a “paradigm shift” in electric demand from artificial intelligence data centers, according JPMorgan. The investment bank initiated coverage of the stocks Thursday with overweight ratings. Shares of the three power companies are poised for more upside even after their tremendous rally this year, according to a team of analysts led by Jeremy Tonet. “We see structural tailwinds, including manufacturing onshoring, broader electrification trends (transportation, heating, and more), as well [as] data center development underpinning a paradigm shift in power demand,” Tonet and his team told clients in research report. Power supply in competitive electricity markets will not keep pace with demand, enabling the three companies “to capture outsized margins for an extend period of time,” the analysts wrote. Demand from tech companies for carbon-free power to drive their data centers will transform nuclear power and enable its owners to “command a substantial premium,” they wrote. Vistra is JPMorgan’s top pick with a price target of $178, suggesting upside of 31% from Wednesday’s close of $135.69 per share. The Texas-based power producer has already more than tripled this year, soaring 252%. Vistra can offer natural gas- and nuclear-fueled power to data center customers. With half of its gas generation in the Texas ERCOT grid, Vistra can also help fill a potential 40 gigawatt supply gap in the Lone Star State by 2030, according to JPMorgan. VST 1Y mountain Vistra shares over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Constellation’s industry leading nuclear fleet is well positioned to continue capturing long-term power contracts with data center developers at premium prices, according to JPMorgan. Its decision last month to restart Three Mile Island after signing a power purchase agreement with Microsoft was an industry milestone. The investment bank has a price target of $342 on Constellation, implying 22% upside from Wednesday’s close of $279.80 per share. Constellation’s stock has more than doubled this year. CEG 1Y mountain Constellation Energy shares over the past 12 months. Finally, Talen’s multi-decade agreement with Amazon Web Services to power a data center campus with electricity generated at the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania could help send the stock higher if it delivers the full 960 megawatts of power to AWS, according to JPMorgan. Susquehanna also offers additional power that can be contracted. JPMorgan has a price target of $268 on Talen shares, suggesting upside of nearly 57% from Wednesday’s close of $171.05. Talen’s stock, too, has more than doubled this year. TLN 1Y mountain Talen Energy stock over the past year
Unity has announced that Unity 6, the latest version of its cross-platform game engine, is now available worldwide.
Unity 6 can be downloaded here, and is the company’s “most stable and best-performing version of Unity” yet that has been built, tested, and refined in partnership with game developers around the world.
According to Unity, the updated software will allow developers to create games much faster and more efficiently than ever before and comes with new features like end-to-end multiplayer workflows, tools that target the mobile web, alongside new graphics capabilities that move workloads from the CPU to the GPU, improving CPU performance by up to 4X in internal.
Unity has also shared its plans for the engine post-launch, confirming that it will be “dedicating long-term product and engineering resources to Unity 6” to enhance features and add new functionality, while continuing stability.
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“We are relentlessly focused on delivering tools to help game developers build games more quickly and efficiently while also facilitating innovation,” said Matt Bromberg, President and CEO of Unity. “We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that Unity 6 is at the heart of game development for years to come.”
Alongside the launch of Unity 6, the company has also introduced some brand-new learning resources for developers, like Time Ghost, the latest Unity Originals real-time cinematic demo which includes advancements in environment building and character design, as well as Megacity Metro, a demo that showcases how to build a 100+ player cross-platform multiplayer game.
“Unity 6 gives our global multi-functional team the stability and scalability we need. The improved performance combined with features like the new WebGPU graphics API and the seamless live services integration make our workflow much more efficient and our production quality top-tier,” said Josh Loveridge, managing director of Stratton Studios.
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“It’s been a game-changer while developing PGA TOUR Rise. We’ve truly been able to push the boundaries of creativity at every step of the development pipeline.”
The NSPCC said the moves by Instagram were a “step in the right direction”, but wanted preventative measures to be rolled out on WhatsApp too
Instagram will stop people from being able to screenshot or screen-record images and videos intended to be viewed once, as part of “ongoing efforts” to prevent sextortion on the platform.
Its parent company Meta announced features on Thursday aimed at protecting teens from being tricked into sending intimate images to scammers and blackmailed over them.
Previously tested tools that blur nude images in messages, and hiding the follower and following lists of users from potential sextortion accounts, will also be made permanent.
The NSPCC said the moves were a “step in the right direction”.
But Richard Collard, its associate head of child safety online policy, said that “questions remain as to why Meta are not rolling out similar protections on all their products, including on WhatsApp where grooming and sextortion also take place at scale”.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have reported a rise in the number of sextortion scams taking place across social media platforms, with these often targeting teenage boys.
The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation said in March that 91% of the sextortion reports it received in 2023 related to boys.
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New tools will include preventing the ability to screenshot images and videos sent in Instagram messages with its “view once” or “allow replay” mechanisms – which can be selected by users when sending an image or video in Direct Messages. This will also apply to the web version of Instagram.
Antigone Davis, Meta’s head of global safety, said a new Instagram campaign aims to give children and parents information about how to spot sextortion attempts in case perpetrators evade its tools for detecting them.
“We have put in built-in protections so that parents do not have to do a thing to try and protect their teens,” she told BBC News.
“That said, this is the kind of adversarial crime where whatever protections we put in place, these extortion scammers are going to try and get around them.”
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What is sextortion?
Sextortion, which sees scammers trick people into sending sexually explicit material before blackmailing them, has become a dominant form of intimate image abuse taking place online.
The shame, stress and isolation felt by victims of sextortion crimes, often harassed and told their images will be shared publicly if they do not pay blackmailers, has led some to take their own lives.
Ros Dowey, the mother of 16-year-old Murray Dowey, who took his own life in 2023 after being targeted by a sextortion gang on Instagram, previously told the BBC that Meta was not doing “nearly enough to safeguard and protect our children when they use their platforms”.
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‘Built-in protections’
Meta said its new safety features and campaign are designed to build on tools already available to teens and parents on the platform.
It will also hide people’s follower and following lists from potential sextortion accounts.
Sextortion expert Paul Raffile told the BBC in May that sextorters try to find teen accounts in following and follower lists after searching for high schools and youth sports teams on platforms.
But some parents and experts have said safety controls for teen accounts shift the responsibility of spotting and reporting potential threats onto them.
Dame Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of the regulator Ofcom, told the BBC said it was the responsibility of the firms – not parents or children – to make sure people were safe online ahead of the implementation of the Online Safety Act next year.
October is finally here, which means horror lovers can rejoice in everything that spooky season will bring. Luckily for them, there’s no shortage of content available to stream. The best horror movies on Hulu, Netflix, and pretty much every other major service will offer more than enough chills to satisfy those well-versed in the intricacies of the genre and those who are only looking to experience it because of the season.
However, while watching more mainstream offerings is perfectly OK, October also offers the chance to watch other, more underappreciated efforts. From genuinely terrifying tales of dread to more psychological series that favor atmosphere and gloom, these underrated horror gems will be perfect to watch in the days leading up to Halloween. So grab your popcorn and put on your witch hat because these movies call for it.
Horror legend Vincent Price stars in the 1968 seminal folk horror film Witchfinder General. Based on the eponymous 1966 novel and set during the English Civil War, the film follows the exploits of infamous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins, who brags about receiving the title of “witchfinder general” despite never receiving an appointment from Parliament. After Hopkins targets the wrong woman, he becomes the subject of a young soldier’s wrath.
Witchfinder General‘s importance to horror is impossible to ignore. Quite possibly the first folk horror film in history, Witchfinder General, which was later retitled to The Conqueror Worm in the U.S., finds terror in the very real danger of fanaticism and weaponized hysteria. The film preys on very real fears to craft a tale of paranoia, power lust, and indoctrination, using the mighty Vincent Price to deliver its message.
Witchfinder General – Vincent Price (1968) – Official Trailer
The actor was seldom better than he’s here as Matthew Hopkins, an utterly despicable and truly chilling figure that ranks among his finest on-screen creations. The ending will surely haunt audiences’ nightmares for days, making Witchfinder General a perfect watch for horror fans.
When one thinks of the fantasy genre, chances are that images of knights, dragons, and wizards come to mind. Hardly anyone would expect one of the best fantasy movies to be a dark and dreadful fairy tale, yet that’s exactly what Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves is. This gothic tale, inspired by the classic Little Red Riding Hood, follows young Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who dreams of traversing a wolf-infested forest to reunite with her grandmother. When she meets a mysterious hunter in the woods, her life changes for good.
The Company of Wolves is an exquisite and lush Gothic story that shows a new side to horror. Blending disturbing scenes with straight-up body horror and fantasy sensibilities, the film offers a thoughtful and oneiric tale of sexual awakening, self-discovery, and the treacherous, ever-changing human nature that drives our actions.
The Company of Wolves (1984) – Official Trailer
Equal parts traditional fairy tale and off-putting and occasionally revolting horror story, The Company of Wolves is packed with meaning in every shot, brought to life by an absorbing production design that brings a dark yet alluring forest to unbelievable life.
Stories about witches are at the very foundation of the horror genre; luckily, modern cinema keeps delivering new and incredible versions of a well-known tale — for example, 2022’s You Won’t Be Alone. Starring an ensemble cast, including Noomi Rapace and Alice Englert, the film follows Nevena, a mute girl in 19th-century Macedonia who is captured by a witch and transformed into a shapeshifting witch herself. Alone in the world, Nevena adopts new identities on her way to discovering everything life has to offer.
You Won’t Be Alone is light on jump scares, preferring instead to build an atmosphere of mystery, anxiousness, and fear that dominates every scene. Like the best horror movies, it uses traditional horror and supernatural settings to tell a deeply humane story about self-discovery and the complicated, winding, and painful road to maturity, both physical and emotional.
YOU WON’T BE ALONE – Official Trailer [HD] – Only in Theaters April 1
Nevena’s tale is universal yet still profoundly intimate, brought to life by an excellent collection of actors who act as observers of the human condition. Silent but packed with meaning, You Won’t Be Alone is a thoughtful and thought-provoking entry into the so-called elevated horror movement.
The main difference between them comes to thermal imaging tech. The ‘T’ version has thermal imaging tech, while the other phone does not. It tries to compensate for that with an infrared camera, though.
The Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro & Mini 20T Pro go through several performance tests
Ulefone ran AnTuTu, Geekbench 6, 3D Mark, and Speedtest tests on the devices. The two phones have the same performance-related specs and software, so the results should be identical, which is why only one is shown in the video below.
The Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro series managed to reach 434,964 points on the AnTuTu benchmark. Speaking of which, the phone is fueled by the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoCo. It also comes with 8GB of RAM; which can be expanded to 16GB via virtual RAM.
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In regards to the Geekbench 6 score, the device managed to reach 791 points in the single-core test, and 2,102 in the multi-core test. That’s per course for the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor.
In the 3DMark Wild Life test, the phone score 1,379 points. The only test that remained is the 5G Speed Test, that one will depend on the 5G speeds in your area, and with your carrier, of course. Ulefone managed to reach 192Mbps download, and 25.7Mbps upload speeds, though.
These phones use a tiny display, and a large battery
It’s also worth noting that both of these smartphones are IP68/IP69K and MIL-STD-810H certified. They’re rugged phones with a large battery (considering their size). They include a 4.7-inch display and a 6,200mAh battery pack.
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