Techmeme: Edge Case Research, which is developing AI-based safety assessment tech for autonomous vehicles, raises $7M seed round led by Aurora CEO Chris Urmson and ANSYS (Junko Yoshida/EE Times)

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June 16, 2019, 3:31 AM

Top News

New York Times:

Sources: US Cyber Command is deploying offensive malware in Russia's power grid, using powers granted in 2018 by Congress and a secret presidential directive — WASHINGTON — The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin …

More: CNET, NullTX, The Verge, Engadget, Gizmodo, Slate, Tehrani.com, Politico, Newser, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @realdonaldtrump, @nicoleperlroth, @yashar, @davidfrum, @olivia_gazis, @cnetnews, @yashar, @maxboot, @babykitty40, @nytimespr, @vessonsecurity, @peterbakernyt, and @realdonaldtrump

Eric Berger / Ars Technica:

NIST study: a widespread GPS outage would have an estimated $1B/day impact on the US economy; 90% of GPS' financial impact has come since 2010 — 90 percent of the technology's financial impact has come since just 2010. — Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology …

More: RTI International, TechSpot, and BGR

Tweets: @johnwilson and @justinckasper

Matthew Hughes / The Next Web:

Jack Dorsey on plans to hire a team of five engineers and one designer, reporting directly to him at Square, to work on contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem — NO JERKS ALLOWED. — Square is a company best known for its disruptive card payment technology.

More: Quartz, NewsBTC, Cointelegraph, Messari Crypto, BitcoinExchangeGuide, Anycoin.news, ETHNews, Bitcoinist.com, and CoinDesk

Tweets: @lightcoin and @jtseo9. Thanks:@matthewhughes

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Farming-as-a-service startup Infarm raises $100M Series B for its remotely operated modular farms placed in grocery stores, restaurants, other urban locations — Infarm, the Berlin-based startup that has developed vertical farming tech for grocery stores and restaurants, is disclosing $100 million in in Series B investment.

Tweets: @tomfgoodwin and @balderton. Thanks:@sohear

Lauren Goode / Wired:

Developers say they have mixed feelings about the “Sign In With Apple” button and Apple's decision to make it mandatory for apps with other sign-in systems — APPLE ISN'T ALWAYS the first company to introduce a particular product or service. But when it does finally decide …

More: Michael Tsai

Parmy Olson / Wall Street Journal:

The holding company that owns the dating apps Bumble, Lumen, and Chappy has been renamed as Magic Lab, says it will spend $100M on an array of new dating apps — 'We're looking for the big, big monsters who can partner with me,' billionaire behind Bumble says in an interview

More: Reuters. Tweets: @venkatananth and @wsj

Fabiola Moura / Bloomberg:

SoftBank is leading a $300M investment in Gympass, a fitness app giving employees at 2,000+ companies access to ~47K partner gyms worldwide, at a $1B+ valuation — - Brazilian fitness startup makes gym workouts more accessible — SoftBank wants to build global champions out of Latin America

More: PR Newswire, Nikkei Asian Review, PitchBook, CityAM, Business Insider, and MobiHealthNews

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Lemonade, the digital insurance company that has raised $480M, is expanding into Europe, with its first launch in Germany — Lemonade, the insurance company that's raised $480 million, is today expanding into Europe with the launch of Lemonade in Germany. — As part of the launch …

Sarah Dai / South China Morning Post:

Waterdrop, a Tencent-backed Chinese online health care platform, raises a Series C of over $145M led by private equity firm Boyu Capital — Funding will go toward building a professional team in health care insurance and adopting AI in its products China is home to the world's third largest insurance market …

Tweets: @rahul_j_mathur

Junko Yoshida / EE Times:

Edge Case Research, which is developing AI-based safety assessment tech for autonomous vehicles, raises $7M seed round led by Aurora CEO Chris Urmson and ANSYS — Chris Urmson and ANSYS to invest in Edge Case Research — “Making autonomy safe” is perhaps one of the hardest nuts for designers …

More: GlobeNewswire News Room and FinSMEs

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:

ADDI, a Colombia-based point-of-sale lending startup, reveals it had raised $12.5M Series A from a16z in April, following $3.8M in seed rounds since Sept. 2018 — Andreessen Horowitz <3 Latin American startups. — Latin America is the only region outside of the U.S. where the venture firm …

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Paris-based video game developer Novaquark, which had raised $11.4M on Kickstarter in 2018 for its Dual Universe MMO game, has raised $11.2M in VC funding — French video game developer Novaquark has raised $11.2 million in funding for its fan-created Dual Universe science fiction massively multiplayer online game.

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From Mediagazer

CNN:

A list of times the Trump administration tested the limits of the First Amendment during his second term, stoking alarm among civil rights experts and critics

Paul Glynn / BBC:

HarperCollins UK drops children's author and comedian David Walliams following allegations of inappropriate behavior toward young women

Robert D. McFadden / New York Times:

Lou Cannon, a veteran Washington Post reporter who wrote several influential biographies of Ronald Reagan, has died at 92

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Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Scoutbee, which develops and sells access to an AI-driven supplier discovery platform, raises $12M Series A, says its marketplace has more than 9.5M suppliers

Sarah Dai / South China Morning Post:

Alibaba partners with Audi, Renault, and Honda to offer a range of in-car voice services like finding restaurants using its AI platform Tmall Genie Auto

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

20 years since children's online protection law COPPA was passed, it has been weakened by court rulings, uneven enforcement, and relentless technological change

Tweets: @geoffreyfowler and @byheatherlong

Gregory Barber / Wired:

Wyoming's laws exempting some digital tokens from state securities rules, and cryptocurrency from state property taxes, spawned dozens of crypto LLCs there

More: CoinDesk and ETHNews

Tweets: @wired, @wired, and @nxthompson

The Citizen Lab:

An in-depth report on stalkerware apps: a technical assessment of their invasive surveillance capabilities, marketing for abusive spouses, security risks, more

Tweets: @adam_senft, @einsteinsattic, and @caparsons

Barclay Bram / Nautilus:

WeChat's data centralization has inextricably linked it to all aspects of daily life in China and made it a cornerstone of the government's social-credit system

Tweets: @narratively, @nautilusmag, and @hardmaru

Earlier Picks

New York Times:

Researchers find some sleep apps and trackers provide inaccurate data and can cause an increased fixation on sleep, which can worsen anxiety and insomnia

More: Engadget. Tweets: @drsepah, @rstephens, @nytimes, and @nytimesbusiness

Leigh Cuen / CoinDesk:

Sources: as Stellar and others refused to partner and MobileCoin refused to sell, Facebook hired several dozen blockchain experts for several million/year each

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Google's Chrome 76, now in beta, will block Flash by default; a Google employee claims Chrome 76 will prevent sites from detecting users in Incognito Mode

More: Android Police, CNET, Techdows, Chromium Blog, KnowTechie, The Verge, Android Authority, Android Central, and TechRepublic

Tweets: @paul_irish, @chronotope, @swodinsky, @jbenton, and @gopperman

Nolan O'Brien / Twitter:

Twitter says its official app will return to the Mac by using its existing iOS codebase through Project Catalyst, with full feature parity with other platforms

More: The Verge, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, and Cult of Mac

Tweets: @stroughtonsmith, @sarthakgh, @daniel_duan, @adamnash, and @mgsiegler

Amrita Khalid / Engadget:

Facebook releases AI Habitat, a platform to research embodied AI, which uses data from physical surroundings, and Replica, a dataset of sample spaces, on Github

More: Facebook Technology, Firstpost Tech, Digital Trends, UploadVR, Facebook AI, TechCrunch, TechSpot, and MIT Technology Review

Tweets: @marifes, @facebookai, @irenacronin, @simesgreen, @boztank, and @dhruvbatradb

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:

Huawei delays launch of its foldable Mate X phone from June to September, says it is doing extra tests after Samsung's troubles with the Galaxy Fold