Fiserv, LG back Korea Credit Data as the SME-focused fintech startup raises another $24.7M

In South Korea, there are about 7.3 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — defined as firms with less than 250 employees. Their workforces combined make up 83.1% of all corporation employees in the country, totaling about 17.1 million people, according to OECD data. To help meet SMEs’ financial needs in the country, Seoul-based fintech … Read more

Halo Car’s teleoperated car-sharing service to roll out this year with no one behind the wheel

Halo Car, a Las Vegas-based startup that combines teleoperations and car sharing, said it will remove the human safety operator from behind the wheel later this year — the last hurdle before its commercial launch. The milestone would mean Halo Car will use humans to remotely control vehicles through public streets and deliver them to … Read more

SpaceX notches eighth human spaceflight mission with Crew-5

SpaceX successfully launched another batch of astronauts to the International Space Station Wednesday, part of an ongoing astronaut transportation contract with NASA. Like the company’s seven other human spaceflight missions, it was completely routine — and that’s what made it so remarkable. The Crew-5 mission (so named because it’s SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission with NASA’s … Read more

Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China

Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country’s quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries’ politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China … Read more