Techmeme: Arcadia, an app that can help US consumers lower their electricity bills by connecting their accounts to clean energy options, raises $30M Series C led by G2VP (Michelai Graham/Technical.ly DC)

Top News

New Orleans declares state of emergency, shuts down its network after a ransomware attack on Friday, says it had found no signs that data was lost in the attack — Collin Arnold, the Director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, speaks during the press conference …

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:

Researchers claim they used 3D masks and photos to deceive facial recognition systems used by Alipay, WeChat Pay, Schiphol Airport, and train stations in China — Masks and simple photographs are enough to fool some facial recognition technology, highlighting a major shortcoming in what is billed as a more effective security tool.

More: The Verge, International Business Times, Gizmodo, and infosecurity-magazine.com

Tweets: @briansolis, @boycotthegemony, @privacyproject, @bruno_j_navarro, and @jeffjohnroberts

Brian Merchant / Harper's Magazine:

A look at the rise of murder-for-hire marketplaces on the dark web, the vast majority of which are schemes to pilfer money from gullible users — The dark world of online murder markets — On a sunny July day in 2018, Alexis Stern was sitting behind the wheel of the red Ford Fusion …

Tweets: @harpers, @craigmod, @bcmerchant, @davidparis, @codinghorror, and @adamshermanesq

Amy X. Wang / Rolling Stone:

Music streaming subscription prices have remained flat for a decade, amid competition from tech giants like Apple that can operate their music arms at a loss — The price of music streaming has stayed flat for a decade, but not because tech companies are generous

Tweets: @johnwilson, @brianmcc, @trengriffin, @paulkrugman, and @jessicalessin

Jonathan Vanian / Fortune:

Q&A with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins about its new business line - standalone networking chips to win big datacenter clients like Facebook and Microsoft — Cisco is best known for selling routers and switches, but now the networking giant is expanding into the highly-competitive business of selling computer chips.

More: Bloomberg, ZDNet, The Register, Wall Street Journal, TechRadar.com, Silicon Valley Business …, SiliconANGLE, Network World, East Bay Times, FierceTelecom, Forbes, Computer Business Review, and Coinspeaker. Tweets: @fortunemagazine

Zen Soo / South China Morning Post:

Grab says that food and financial services, which have better margins than ride-hailing, now generate more than 50% of its gross merchandise volume — Food and financial services now make up more than 50 per cent of Grab's gross merchandise volume, according to Lim Kell Jay …

More: Wall Street Journal

Alex Wellerstein / Restricted Data:

Creator of NUKEMAP, which lets users visualize effects of nuclear explosions, explains why it isn't using Google Maps anymore, citing API stagnation and pricing — When I created the NUKEMAP in 2012, the Google Maps API was amazing.1 It was the best thing in town for creating Javascript mapping mash-ups …

Tweets: @dancow and @wellerstein

Financial Times:

Fintech startups in Asia are proving to be formidable competitors to traditional banks, offering a slew of financial services, but many are bleeding cash — Rice Basket Queen is the name of a stall run by Ruri Ruhyaty in a bustling suburb of Jakarta. A year ago it was typical of thousands of others.

Tweets: @anandaramsanjay, @trengriffin, @mohossain, and @financialtimes

Business Wire:

Imply, a real-time analytics company, raises $30M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's Late Stage Venture Fund, bringing its total funding to $45.3M — Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm plans to aggressively expand as demand for Apache Druid (incubating) - based solution grows

More: Imply, SiliconANGLE, Business Insider, FinSMEs, and Pulse 2.0. Tweets: @implydata

Michelai Graham / Technical.ly DC:

Arcadia, an app that can help US consumers lower their electricity bills by connecting their accounts to clean energy options, raises $30M Series C led by G2VP — D.C.-based Arcadia has closed a $30 million Series C funding round. — The renewable energy tech company …

More: Greentech Media and FinSMEs

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Carsome, a Malaysia-based marketplace for trading used cars, raises $50M Series C from MUFG Innovation Partners and others to grow in Southeast Asian markets — Carsome, a Malaysia-based marketplace for trading used cars, has closed a new $50 million financing round to fend off its rivals …

More: KrASIA, NST Online, The Business Times, and DealStreetAsia

Anil Dash:

Instagram's limit of allowing one web link for users as a “Link in Bio” is a slow knife - a subtle, pervasive attempt to kill the open web — We don't even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It's a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware …

Tweets: @rdw0409 and @mimosaishere

Kane Wu / Reuters:

In China, investors and bankers say SoftBank's involvement, once a sign of promising prospects, is now viewed as a red flag that a company was likely overvalued — HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - For SoftBank Group Inc, financial technology firm OneConnect's IPO should have been a vindication of an aggressive China investing strategy.

Michael Hytha / Bloomberg:

Ping An's financial technology arm OneConnect closes flat on its first day of trading after raising $312M in its US IPO, which valued the company at $3.66B

More: Nasdaq, Financial Times, CNN, and Reuters. Tweets: @business

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