' Hey, Linas here! Welcome back to a ' weekly free edition ' of my daily newsletter. Each day I focus on 3 stories that are making a difference in the financial technology space. Coupled with things worth watching & most important money movements, it's the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Tech. Apple Card Savings account rate dips for first time since launch ' [what it means for Apple & why it's brilliant news for Robinhood + a deeper dive into the stock trading FinTech giant & a holistic look at the Apple Card over the last 5 years] As for today, here are the 2 fascinating FinTech stories that were reshaping the world of financial technology as we know it. This is one of the most interesting and rewarding weeks this year thus far, so make sure to check all the above stories. Following the money ' After a challenging year for startups in 2023, the first quarter of 2024 showed some signs of improvement in the venture capital market, although investors still remain cautious....

Since the 1970s, modern antibiotic discovery has been experiencing a lull. Now the World Health Organization has declared the antimicrobial resistance crisis as one of the top 10 global public health threats. When an infection is treated repeatedly, clinicians run the risk of bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics. But why would an infection return after proper antibiotic treatment' One well-documented possibility is that the bacteria are becoming metabolically inert, escaping detection of traditional antibiotics that only respond to metabolic activity. When the danger has passed, the bacteria return to life and the infection reappears. 'Resistance is happening more over time, and recurring infections are due to this dormancy,' says Jackie Valeri, a former MIT-Takeda Fellow (centered within the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health) who recently earned her PhD in biological engineering from the Collins Lab. Valeri is the first author of a new paper published in this month's print issue of Cell Chemical Biology that demonstrates how machine learning could help screen compounds that are lethal to dormant bacteria....

The tech giants have overthrown capitalism. That's the argument of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who became famous trying to defend debt-laden Greece from its German creditors. Varoufakis has never quite regained the notoriety of 2015. But he has remained a prominent left-wing voice. After a failed campaign for a seat in the European Parliament in 2019, he plans to run again this June. This time, his adversary isn't Berlin or the banks. It's the tech companies he accuses of warping the economy while turning people against one other. Varoufakis is also a prolific author; his 17th book, written as a letter to his techno-curious father, chronicles the evolution of capitalism from the 1960s advertising boom, through Wall Street in the 1980s, to the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. In its most compelling stretches, Technofeudalism argues that Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have changed the economy so much that it now resembles Europe's medieval feudal system. The tech giants are the lords, while everyone else is a peasant, working their land for not much in return....

Google's Cloud Next 2024 event takes place in Las Vegas through Thursday, and that means lots of new cloud-focused news on everything from Gemini, Google's AI-powered chatbot, to AI to devops and security. Last year's event was the first in-person Cloud Next since 2019, and Google took to the stage to show off its ongoing dedication to AI with its Duet AI for Gmail and many other debuts, expansion of generative AI to its security product line in addition to other enterprise-focused updates and debuts. Leveraging AI to help customers develop creative content is something Big Tech is looking for, and Tuesday, Google introduced its version. Google Vids, a new AI-fueled video creation tool, is the latest feature added to the Google Workspace. Here's how it works: Google claims users can make videos alongside other Workspace tools like Docs and Sheets. The editing, writing and production is all there. You can also collaborate with colleagues in real time within Google Vids. Read more 'Vertex AI Agent Builder allows people to very easily and quickly build conversational agents,' Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said. 'You can build and deploy production-ready, generative AI-powered conversational agents and instruct and guide them the same way that you do humans to improve the quality and correctness of answers from models.'...