Techmeme
February 4, 2019, 1:55 PM

Top News

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Crypto exchange Kraken acquires British trading startup Crypto Facilities in a deal worth at least $100M, says it is raising $100M from its largest customers  —  The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken says it has paid “nine figures” to acquire Crypto Facilities, a British trading firm that specializes in derivatives.
Nat Levy / GeekWire:
New filing: Amazon spent $1.65B on acquisitions in 2018, headlined by Ring and PillPack deals  —  Amazon spent $1.65 billion on acquisitions in 2018, according to a new regulatory filing from the company.  That makes it the second most acquisitive year in the company's history by dollar volume …
More: TechCrunchTweets: @jasonlkThanks:@toddbishop
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Periscope says users can now add up to three guests as voice call-ins to a stream, “like a talkshow”, and is working on letting the guests share video  —  Periscope is paving the way for broadcasters to host talk shows and invite viewers to go beyond comments and hearts by joining the conversation with their voices.
New York Times:
The Instagram egg account, with 10M+ followers, was started by an advertising professional; a Hulu ad based on the egg debuted Sunday promoting mental health  —  He works in advertising.  —  When Chris Godfrey learned in early January that the record for “likes” on an Instagram post was held …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Chicago-based Robotics Process Automation startup Catalytic raises $30M Series B, bringing its total raised to almost $42M  —  Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is as hot as any enterprise technology at the moment, as companies look for ways to marry their legacy systems with a more modern flavor of automation.
More: VentureBeat and FinSMEs
Aaron van Wirdum / Bitcoin Magazine:
Chainalysis: two hacker groups are responsible for almost 60% of publicly reported cryptocurrency hacks and stole around $1B to date  —  Two “prominent professional hacking groups” are responsible for the majority of publicly reported hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges and other cryptocurrency organizations …
More: ZDNet
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Microsoft will announce Xbox Live SDK, which will enable cross-platform play on iOS, Android, Switch, Xbox, and Windows PCs, at GDC 2019  —  At GDC 2019, Microsoft is set to debut a new cross-platform development platform with the goal of bringing Xbox Live support to games on Android, iOS …
Jonathan M. Gitlin / Ars Technica:
From Alexa and Nuance to personal assistants that learn your moods, an overview of the AI-driven features that major auto companies plan to roll out soon  —  From Alexa and Nuance to personal AI helpers that learn your moods, it's happening.  —  LAS VEGAS—Like it or not …
Aaron Pressman / Fortune:
Profile of Intel's new CEO Bob Swan, who joined the company in 2016 as CFO, after stints as finance chief at GE divisions, COO and CEO of Webvan, and eBay's CFO  —  Intel spent seven months searching for a new chief executive only to end the process right where it had started.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / Motherboard:
A college student who stole $5M+ in cryptocurrency via SIM hijacking gets 10 years in prison and is the first person in the US to be sentenced for such a crime  —  A 20-year-old college student who was accused of stealing more than $5 million in cryptocurrency in a slew of SIM hijacking attacks …

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