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December 16, 2020, 10:15 AM
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| Washington Post: |
SolarWinds' top investors Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold a combined $286M worth of stock in the company on Dec. 7, six days before the hack was made public — The timing of the trades raises questions about whether major shareholders used inside information to avoid stark losses after the attack.
More:
Washington Post, Axios, and ZDNet
Tweets: @senblumenthal, @jasonhowell, @shashj, @drewharwell, @mollywood, @campuscodi, and @biannagolodryga
| Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: |
Sources: Microsoft and industry partners seize key command and control domain used in SolarWinds hack — By seizing the domain, Microsoft and its partners hope to identify all victims, but are also preventing attackers from escalating intrusions in currently infected networks.
More:
Microsoft Security, SaveBreach, CNN, Techdirt, Wall Street Journal, TechRadar, Beyond Search, WinBuzzer, Help Net Security, SecurityWeek, Reuters, Newsweek, infosecurity-magazine.com, Security Affairs, SiliconANGLE, Dark Reading, BBC, iTnews, and Federal Computer Week
Tweets: @msftsecintel, @chicagocyber, @ravivtamir, and @campuscodi
| Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet: |
Microsoft is rolling out native M1 support for many Microsoft 365 Mac apps, iCloud account integration in Outlook, and updated collaboration tools — Microsoft's new ‘Universal’ Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps for Mac will work on both Apple's M1 Arm silicon and Intel processors.
More:
Microsoft 365 Blog, TechRepublic, iMore, MacRumors, MakeUseOf, and Slashdot
Tweets: @sushubh and @reneritchie
| Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: |
Mozilla releases Firefox 84 with native support for Apple M1 Macs, saying the browser launches over 2.5 times faster and web apps are now twice as responsive — Mozilla today released Firefox version 84 with native support for Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 chip, touting …
More:
Mozilla, Engadget, ZDNet, Laptop Mag, Android Headlines, Wccftech, AppleInsider, MSPoweruser, Thurrott, XDA Developers, and Neowin
Tweets: @mkennedy, @chrismessina, @alternativeto, and @jamescridland
| Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: |
Facebook attacks Apple in full-page newspaper ads, claiming upcoming iOS 14 changes that limit data gathering and targeted ads are bad for small businesses — - Ads criticize Apple's plan to restrict some data gathering — Facebook placed ads in the NYT, WSJ and Washington Post
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The Verge, MacRumors, CNBC, Reuters, Forbes, CNET, ZDNet, Engadget, 9to5Mac, iMore, AppleInsider, CNBC, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, Apple Terminal, and Fast Company
Tweets: @nekkasmith, @shawnhawaii, @leaksapplepro, @arekfurt, @rardk64, @hypervisible, @mattnavarra, @flyosity, and @mattnavarra
| Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News: |
Facebook is working on an AI tool called TLDR, which would summarize articles in bullet points and which was announced in an end-of-year, company-wide meeting — Facebook told employees on Tuesday that it's developing a tool to summarize news articles so users won't have to read them.
More:
Business Insider, KnowTechie, Medianama, and The Next Web
Tweets: @rmac18, @stephaniemlee, @rmac18, @dlind, @jetjocko, @hypervisible, @maghielse, @craigawelch, @briannawu, @mslopatto, @walldo, @anthropunk, @buzzfeednews, @rmac18, @heyheyesj, @kevinroose, @vogon, @number5, @fwd, @mccarthyryanj, @inafried, @charles_gaba, @joshconstine, @_richardhall, @brooklynmarie, @audreyhasnews, @shortformernie, @mg, @kevin_church, @sciliz, @bendreyfuss, @kenlymcg, and @rands
| Periscope: |
Twitter says it will discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021, saying it's brought most of the core capabilities of Periscope into Twitter — Today, we're sharing that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021.
More:
The Verge, help.twitter.com, Axios, Digital Trends, phonearena.com, ZDNet, Variety, Newser, SlashGear, The Economic Times, Social Media Today, Android Police, Mashable, and Tubefilter
| Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: |
Australian regulator sues Facebook for allegedly using its Onavo VPN app to spy on users for commercial purposes in 2016 and 2017 — Yet more trouble brewing for Facebook: Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing the tech giant over its use, in 2016 and 2017 …
More:
Australian Competition …, Sydney Morning Herald, Reuters, Tech Xplore, Axios, AdNews, Mumbrella, news.com.au, Channel News, ABC, and ZDNet
Tweets: @acccgovau, @joshbutler, and @martinsfp
| Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: |
Facebook is building a video product called Super that will let people pay content creators or celebrities to interact with them during a live broadcast — - New product ‘Super’ is still being tested at social network — Facebook is developing more video features during the pandemic
More:
Social Media Today, Input, PYMNTS.com, and CNET
| Matt Marshall / VentureBeat: |
Vercel, which provides a platform to build front-end applications using open source Next.js, raises $40M Series B led by GV, bringing its total raises to $61M — Vercel, which provides a platform for building front-end applications, today announced an additional $40 million in series B funding …
More:
Vercel News, Crunchbase News, and DevOps.com
| Joseph Menn / Reuters: |
Facebook will shift its UK users into user agreements with its HQ in California, instead of its Irish unit, moving them out of reach of EU's privacy laws — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will shift all its users in the United Kingdom into user agreements with the corporate headquarters …
More:
BBC, Business Insider, TechCrunch, The Irish Times, Medianama, The Verge, Telegraph, and Financial Times
Tweets: @openrightsgroup, @sarahludford, @jason_kint, @dhh, @paulnemitz, @adrianweckler, @vilpponen, @razhael, and @martinsfp
| Chris Welch / The Verge: |
Apple AirPods Max review: high-luxury design, terrific sound quality, and very effective noise cancellation, but they are heavy and the case is an abomination — Apple's over-ear headphones have tremendous build quality and sound, but there's no denying they're expensive| CoinDesk: |
Bitcoin crosses $20K to reach an all-time high after doubling in the past three months — After testing investor patience for three weeks, bitcoin has finally crossed above $20,000 to reach fresh all-time highs. — The number one cryptocurrency by market value jumped …
More:
Bloomberg, Forbes, coinspeaker.com, Mashable, and CNBC
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Google Photos expands Memories, adding new collage designs and 3D Cinematic photos that simulate depth in a scene by adding a smooth panning effect — Google Photos is rolling out a series of updates to its Memories feature, which surfaces your best photos from years past.| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Neverware, which helps schools and enterprises resurrect old PCs with its Chromium-based CloudReady OS, gets acquired by Google, which invested in its Series B — Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS.
More:
cloudreadykb.neverware.com, ZDNet, Computerworld, XDA Developers, Ubergizmo, and SlashGear
Tweets: @neverware, @mishaalrahman, @chromeunboxed, @frankcatalano, and @kevinctofel. Thanks:@technacity
| Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: |
Zoomin, which unifies the manuals and other technical documentation of companies to make them more accessible to their employees and customers, raises $21M — Zoomin, a so-called “knowledge orchestration” platform that helps users extract answers from enterprise documentation …
More:
TechCrunch, TechCrunch, and Tech.eu
| The Verge: |
Google has restored service after a significant number of Gmail users saw “error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior” for a few hours — Stadia was experiencing issues, too — Google says that a “significant subset” of Gmail users ran into errors with the service Tuesday afternoon.
More:
TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CNN, BleepingComputer, phonearena.com, Chrome Unboxed, Forbes, The Hill, CRN, 9to5Google, and Android Authority
Tweets: @chrismessina, @ediggs, @meganmorrone, @thegautamkamath, @tracyalloway, @trevorbattle, and @mslopatto
| Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: |
AWS launches CloudShell, a fully featured web-based shell, based on Amazon Linux 2, for command-line access to AWS — AWS today launched CloudShell, a new, fully featured web-based shell environment, based on Amazon Linux 2, for developers who want to be able to use some of their favorite command-line tools … | Ben Thompson / Stratechery: |
Facebook and Twitter represent v1 of social networking, a bad copy of the analog world, whereas v2 is something unique to digital and a lot more promising — Manage your Stratechery subscription. — It's a rather motley crew. One is a nurse, another a lawyer, a third an investment adviser.
Tweets: @blaine, @rossgarber, @damanr, @blaine, @modestproposal1, and @stratechery
| Leah Nylen / Politico: |
Sources: a coalition of US states are expected to file antitrust lawsuit against Google as soon as Thursday, alleging it altered design of search to hurt rivals — A coalition of states is finishing an antitrust lawsuit against Google focused on its power in the online search market … | Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Coalition for App Fairness says Digital Content Next, representing NYT, NPR, WaPo, and others, has joined; the coalition calls for the regulation of app stores — A group of major U.S. news publishers have joined the Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), the advocacy group pushing …
More:
PR Newswire
| Jay Peters / The Verge: |
Amazon's cloud gaming service Luna is now available on Android for US users, with initial support on some Pixel, Samsung, and OnePlus devices running Chrome 86+ — It works on some Pixel, Samsung, and OnePlus devices — Amazon's cloud gaming service, Luna, is now available on Android, Amazon announced on Tuesday.
More:
Thurrott, 9to5Google, Engadget, XDA Developers, Android Police, MakeUseOf, Pocket-lint, and Android Authority
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Bolt, the Estonia-based on-demand transport network covering 200 cities in 40 countries, raises €150M led by D1 Capital Partners — In the midst of a major second wave of coronavirus infections across Europe, an Estonian startup that's building an on-demand network to move food …
More:
Crunchbase News, CNBC, Forbes, coinspeaker.com, DealStreetAsia, and EU-Startups
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