The department issued a request for proposal for consulting services related to technologies including stablecoins, decentralized finance and central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDCs). Politico first reported the RFP. (The Logic, Politico)
Sudbury-based Verv is developing home blood-testing kits that would let people measure anything from cholesterol to hormone levels. Randox Laboratories, an international vitro diagnostics company based in the U.K., led the round. (The Logic)
The Chinese e-commerce company wanted Alibaba.com, its B2B website, to sign up more than one million local businesses after launching in the U.S. three years ago, but people familiar with their operations said it has had to re-adjust those plans to just 2,000 businesses a year. (Financial Times)
Meta said the leap second—an extra second added to coordinated universal time to keep it synchronized with astronomical time, which is based on the Earth’s rotation—"could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers." Some 27 leap seconds have been added since 1972, but Meta engineers fear the outcome should a negative leap second occur. (The Logic)
Customers had previously been able to sell or withdraw—but not buy—the asset through the Toronto-based fintech’s platform. The company told clients in an email Monday that it would stop supporting the cryptocurrency permanently as of Aug. 31. (The Logic)
“It’s a low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue,” the bankrupt crypto-lending firm wrote in a court filing. (The Logic)
The Tesla CEO denied allegations that he had an affair last fall with Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan, that ended the tech entrepreneurs’ friendship. “Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!” Musk said on Twitter. “I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Brin told advisers to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies. (The Wall Street Journal)
Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon and Twitter have signed the “Aotearoa New Zealand Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms,” a code of practice that obligates the companies to reduce harmful content on their platforms and services in the country. (The Logic)
Blake Lemoine violated “employment and data security policies,” Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel told The Washington Post. In June, Lemoine told the publication that he believed LaMDA, the company’s chatbot generator, had achieved sentience. (Washington Post)
The funds, paid to Elon Musk’s low-orbit satellite company over three years, will bring the cost of internet down by $40 a month per household using the SpaceX service, according to executive council spokesperson Cynthia Boissonneault. The $21.6-million payment is part of the government’s “Opération haute vitesse” to bring fast internet to all Quebec households by September 2022. Quebec has already paid $89 million to SpaceX. (Le Journal de Montréal, The Logic)