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Tel Aviv-based startup Factify emerged from stealth today with a $73 million seed round for an ambitious, yet quixotic mission: to bring digital documents beyond the standard formats most businesses use — .PDF, .docx, collaborative cloud files like Google Docs — and into the intelligence era. For Matan Gavish, Factify’s Founder and CEO, this isn't just a software upgrade—it is an inevitability he has been obsessed with for years. "The PDF was developed when I was in elementary school," Gavish told VentureBeat. "The bedrock of the software ecosystem hasn't really evolved... someone has to redesign the digital document itself." Gavish, a tenured professor of computer science and Stanford PhD, admits that his fixation on administrative file formats is an anomaly for someone with his credentials. "It's a very uncool problem to be obsessed with," he says. "Given the fact that my academic background is AI and machine learning, my mom wanted me to start an AI company because it's cool. I'm not sure why I'm obsessed and then possessed by documents." But that obsession has now attracted a sizeable seed round led by Valley Capital Partners and backed by AI heavyweights like former Google AI chief John Giannandrea. The bet is simple the static rigidity of most digital files has limited their utility, and a better, more intelligent document that actually shares its edit history and ownership with users as intended, is not only possible — it's a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. The history of digital documents To understand why a seed round would balloon to $73 million, you have to understand the scale of the trap businesses are in. There are currently an estimated three trillion PDFs in circulation. "Some people see the PDF more than they see their kids," Gavish jokes. The history of the digital document is not a linear progression where one format replaces another. Instead, it is a story of "speciation," where different formats evolved to fill distinct ecological niches: creation, distribution, and collaboration. The era of files: Microsoft Word (1980s–1990s) Digital documents began as isolated artifacts. In the 1980s, the "document" was inextricably linked to the hardware that created it. A file created in WordPerfect on a DOS machine was effectively gibberish to a Macintosh user. Microsoft Word, which traces its lineage to the pioneering WYSIWYG editors at Xerox PARC, changed this by leveraging the dominance of the Windows operating system. By the 1990s, the binary .doc format became the default container for editable professional documents. However, these files were structurally complex "memory dumps" designed for the limited hardware of the time, often leading to corruption or privacy leaks where deleted text remained hidden in the file's binary data. The era of digital 'stone': the PDF (1990s-2006) The PDF did not originate as a tool for writing; it was a tool for viewing. In 1991, Adobe co-founder John Warnock penned the "Camelot Project" white paper, envisioning a "digital envelope" that would look identical on any display or printer. Unlike Word files, which were malleable, PDFs were designed to be immutable. They used the PostScript imaging model to place characters at precise coordinates, ensuring visual fidelity. While adoption was initially slow, Adobe’s 1994 decision to release the Acrobat Reader for free established PDF as the global standard for "digital concrete"—the format of finality used for contracts, government forms, and archives. The collaborative cloud docs era (2006-present) In 2006, Google disrupted the model again by moving the document from the hard drive to the browser. Using "Operational Transformation" algorithms, Google Docs allowed multiple users to edit the same stream of text simultaneously. This shifted the paradigm from "sending a file" to "sharing a link." While Google Workspace now claims over 3 billion users (mostly consumers and education), it fundamentally changed how we work—turning documents into living, collaborative processes rather than static artifacts. The status quo: fragmentation Despite these advances, the business world remains fragmented. We draft in Google Docs (the "Digital Stream"), format in Word (the "Digital Clay"), and sign in PDF (the "Digital Stone"). But this fragmentation has a cost. "The problem is not the document. It is everything around it," the company notes. "Once a PDF leaves your system, control is gone. Versions drift. Access is unclear. Nothing is visible." Turning digital documents into intelligent infrastructure Factify’s wager is that in the age of AI, this fragmentation is no longer just annoying—it is a critical failure. AI models need structured, verifiable data to function. When an AI "reads" a PDF, it is essentially guessing, using optical character recognition to scrape text from what is effectively a digital photo. "What we're dealing with here is a megalomaniac vision, but it's at the same time probably something that is inevitable," Gavish says. Factify’s solution is to treat documents not as static files, but as intelligent infrastructure. In the "Factified" standard, a document carries its own brain. It possesses a unique identity, a live permission system, and an immutable audit log that travels with it. "We wrote a new document format that supplants the PostScript," Gavish explains. "We created a new data layer that supports the document as a first class citizen... and it's always available inside the organization and potentially outside." This distinction—between a File and an API—is the core of the company's pitch" Files are liabilities: They accumulate, get lost, and can be stolen. "It goes back to a brick status," Gavish says. "Files are liabilities, if anything, because they just accumulate there, you have to guard them." APIs are assets: A Factify document is an active object. You can ask it questions: "Who has seen you? When do you expire? Are you the most up-to-date version?" 'People don't change', but formats do History is littered with formats that tried to replace the PDF (like Microsoft’s XPS). They failed because they demanded too much behavioral change from users. Gavish is keenly aware of this trap. "When I talk to enterprise software entrepreneurs, I tell them the two laws to know about starting a company in enterprise software is that people don't care, and no one changes," he says. To skirt this, Factify has built deep backwards compatibility. A Factified document can look exactly like a PDF, complete with page breaks and margins. Users don't need to learn a new interface to get value; they just need to solve a specific pain point—like an executive who wants to ensure an investment memo can’t be forwarded. "All they have to tell their team is, 'Dear Chief of Staff, employment agreements and investment memoranda... are going to be Factified. The rest carry on,'" Gavish says. "They see immediate benefit... but then they discover that they've crossed the Rubicon." What's next for Factify? The capital from this round will be used to deepen the platform's core engineering—which Gavish describes as a "heavy engineering lift" requiring them to rebuild the document format, data layer, and application layer from scratch. The company is also establishing a major operational hub in Pittsburgh to support its U.S. expansion. Ultimately, Factify isn't trying to build another collaboration tool like Google Docs. They are trying to build the immutable record of the future—the standard for "truth" in a digital world. "The PDF... became a standard meaning I cannot file my taxes using any other format. This is how victory looks like," Gavish says. "We are creating a document standard that is not specific for health care or for insurance, but is just document as such." For the three trillion static files currently sitting in cloud storage, the writing may finally be on the wall.
When deciding which video game to buy, "Is it fun?" is no longer the only consideration. Given the state of the industry, "Do I want to support this company?" is arguably more important. Take, for example, Ubisoft, where things seem to unravel more each day. After the floundering publisher floated even more layoffs this week, workers at its Paris headquarters said, "Enough is enough." They're now calling for a three-day strike. Unions representing Ubisoft employees plan to strike from February 10 to 12. "With management being stubbornly entrenched in its authoritarian ways, we are calling Ubisoft employees across France to join this strike, along with the five unions present within the company," The Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (Video Game Worker's Union) wrote in a statement . The strike follows a series of heavy-handed cost-cutting moves at Ubisoft. It recently shut down its Halifax studio just 16 days after employees unionized . Last week, it closed its Stockholm studio and announced additional restructuring efforts worldwide. It also canceled six games and delayed seven others . Then, earlier this week, the Assassin's Creed publisher proposed cutting 200 jobs at its Paris headquarters . Under French labor law, the company would organize the cuts through the nation's Rupture Conventionnelle Collective (RCC) process. It would require a mutual agreement between the company and the labor union. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot ROBYN BECK via Getty Images Adding even more fuel to the fire, Ubisoft will now require workers to return to the office five days each week. (The company had previously agreed to two work-from-home days per week.) Although Ubisoft framed the mandate as being about efficiency and collaboration, it's easy to view this as a cudgel to further reduce its headcount. One Ubisoft developer, who hinted as much while voicing his opposition to the mandate on LinkedIn, said he was suspended without pay for three days as a punitive measure. The workers' union saw all of this and decided it was time to act. "We're calling for a HALT to management's obsession with penny-pinching and worsening our working conditions," the Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo wrote. "It's time for a real accountability from company executives, starting from the top! Without the workers, and generous public funding, Ubisoft would never have been able to grow this much. WE are Ubisoft, and WE are shutting it down February 10th to 12th!" This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-173241918.html?src=rss
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30-person startup Arcee AI has released a 400B model called Trinity, which it says is one of the biggest open source foundation models from a US company.
Windscribe isn't a VPN for everybody, and it's not trying to be. Despite its high-achieving free plan, it didn't quite make my list of the best VPNs , largely due to alienating interface choices and swingy download speeds. Its iconoclastic approach to everything from design to pricing to its online knowledge base will likely win some customers for life and turn others off. For those in the latter camp, I've written up this guide for cancelling Windscribe. Follow the instructions below to stop Windscribe from auto-renewing, cancel third-party subscriptions, delete your account altogether and get a refund. The most important thing to know before we start is that Windscribe's money-back guarantee only lasts seven days — if you paid for a subscription, you have to cancel before then to get a refund. It's a tighter period than most VPNs, so be ready to decide fast. How to stop your Windscribe Pro subscription renewing To cancel Windscribe Pro, simply stop your payment method from automatically renewing for the next subscription period. Once you've done this, you can continue using Windscribe Pro until the end of the current period, then you'll be downgraded to the free version. Here are the steps to follow. In your browser, navigate to windscribe.com . Click the words My Account at the top of the home page. Scroll down to the billing section . On the subscription line, click the button marked Cancel Subscription. You'll be taken to a new page. Enter your password in the Your Password field. Below, enter a reason for cancellation (this can be "none" or possibly "suck it," which Windscribe should approve of). Click the Cancel Subscriptions button at the bottom of the page to end automatic renewal on your account. You can reach this page by logging into your account on Windscribe.com. Sam Chapman for Engadget If your account also included a static IP subscription, there's no way to cancel that through the usual dashboard. You'll have to submit a support request by asking the Garry chatbot, which can be accessed by clicking the icon at the bottom-right corner of any page on windscribe.com . When you subscribe to an app through a third party like the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, that same third party also handles cancellations and refunds. Windscribe itself won't be able to do anything for you here. If you subscribed through Google Play on an Android phone, you can cancel by opening the Google Play Store app and tapping your profile icon at the top-right (a circle with the first letter of your username inside). Tap Payments & Subscriptions in the menu that appears, then subscriptions on the next page. Find your Windscribe subscription, tap it and click Cancel Subscription to end payments. If you went through the App Store on an Apple device, open the Settings app , then tap on your name at the top of the screen. Tap Subscriptions and scroll down to your Windscribe subscription. Tap it, then tap Cancel Subscription . How to delete your Windscribe account If you're certain you want to stop using Windscribe and never start up again, you can scrub your presence from its servers by deleting your account. To do this, go to windscribe.com and click the My Account button in the header bar. Scroll all the way to the bottom and click on the obnoxiously titled Give Up On Privacy button. This will show you the following image. I realize I'm harping on this, but Windscribe gets exceptionally punchable when you try to delete your account. Sam Chapman for Engadget You'll have to fight through several attempts at comedy to finish deleting your account. Click Yes or No when asked if you ever question your life choices. Enter your password, write whatever you want as a cancellation reason and check both of the boxes below the text field. The Delete Account button should finally be clickable; do it. Once you've pulled the trigger, you won't be able to use the same email address to sign up for another account. How to get a refund from Windscribe As I warned above, you can only get a refund from Windscribe for seven days after paying for a subscription. You also cannot get your money back if you've used more than 10GB of data since the start of the payment period. Finally, you can only get refunded on the first payment of each subscription — renewals are not eligible. If you're within those limits, you can request your money back by starting a conversation with the Garry chatbot. Click the chatbot icon at the bottom-right of the Windscribe website to start a chat. Be warned that you might have to stand firm through several attempts to fix your complaints before you can actually initiate the refund process. Best Windscribe alternatives Windscribe is a VPN with a lot of good points. That said, by the time you've waded through a swamp of dick jokes to complete the process, I wouldn't blame you for feeling validated in your decision to get rid of it. There are plenty of good VPNs that can replace Windscribe. My favorite is Proton VPN , which also has a free plan, though without the ability to select your own server. ExpressVPN is simple and powerful, if a little overpriced, while Surfshark is the fastest VPN overall. If you liked Windscribe for its non-VPN features, NordVPN has the best range of extra perks. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-to-cancel-windscribe-and-get-your-money-back-173000785.html?src=rss
The iPhone's always-on display feature is potentially useful, but it also drains battery, and if you have an Apple Watch you probably don't need it.
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Best Buy has refurbished first-generation Nintendo Switches, OLED Switches, and Switch Lites on sale. Prices start at just $179.99.
In August last year, Microsoft began testing a new feature that allows you to resume Android apps on your Windows PC . The example given at the time showed Spotify, but Microsoft has now announced with a preview build that more apps will be supported and that the feature—which is being called Cross-Device Resume—is nearing launch. In addition to resuming Spotify music playback from your Android device on your Windows PC, Microsoft writes that you’ll also be able to resume work on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, as well as web browsing from Android devices to Windows 11 devices. If you’re on an Android smartphone from Honor, Oppo, Samsung, Vivo, or Xiaomi, you’ll also be able to open cloud-stored files from the Copilot mobile app on your Windows 11 computer. The feature to resume Android apps on Windows 11 is now available to Windows Insiders on Builds 26100.7701 and 26200.7701 in the Release Preview channel. However, we don’t know when this feature will be officially launched to all Windows 11 users.
Sennheiser's new HD400U are cheap; they're cool; they're hi-fi. What more could you ask for?
Marie Woolf / Globe and Mail : Canada says it is talking to Meta to restore news to Facebook and Instagram as the Online News Act is put on the table as part of trade negotiations with the US — Save for later — Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. — Government officials are in talks …
Marie Woolf / Globe and Mail : Canada says it is talking to Meta to restore news to Facebook and Instagram as the Online News Act is put on the table as part of trade negotiations with the US — Save for later — Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. — Government officials are in talks …
Mark Zuckerberg's social media platforms are assisting the Trump administration.
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