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February 11, 2021, 12:30 PM
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| Financial Times: |
Sources: Microsoft made an offer to acquire Pinterest in recent months; source says the talks are not active right now — Microsoft approached Pinterest in recent months about a potential deal to acquire the $51bn social media company popular with hobbyists posting home decor …
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The Verge, TechSpot, MUO, OnMSFT.com, Neowin, Insider, coinspeaker.com, PYMNTS.com, cloudpro.co.uk, MSPoweruser, and Windows Central
Tweets: @pandodaily, @counternotions, @spottedfirefly, @carlquintanilla, @shivsharma_5, @thekenyeung, @mgsiegler, @tomwarren, and @bdsams
| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Microsoft drops the price of foldable Surface Duo by $400 to $999 and says it will arrive in the UK, France, Germany, and Canada on Feb. 18, expanding beyond US — The first international release for Microsoft's dual-screen device — Microsoft is dropping the price of its foldable Surface Duo device …
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9to5Google, Engadget, Thurrott, Windows Central, SlashGear, OnMSFT.com, Android Central, and Neowin. Tweets: @tomwarren
| Sami Fathi / MacRumors: |
Starting with iOS 14.5, Apple will proxy the Safe Browsing service in Safari through its own servers instead of Google's to protect user data — Starting with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, Apple will proxy Google's “Safe Browsing” service used in Safari through its own servers instead of relying …
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The 8-Bit, appleosophy.com, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks, 9to5Mac, Ubergizmo, Firstpost Tech, iMore, Tom's Guide, and AppleInsider
Tweets: @othermaciej and @ourielohayon
| Daniel Goldblatt / The Wrap: |
Facebook says Instagram has removed Robert F Kennedy Jr's account for making false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines — Move comes as the company is expanding efforts to crack down on conspiracy theory content — Instagram removed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account on Wednesday …
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Wall Street Journal, Media Matters for America, Ars Technica, Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, and BBC
Tweets: @yashar, @brandyzadrozny, @brianschatz, @maggienyt, @mattgertz, @blakersdozen, @chelseaclinton, @camliveshere, and @getongab
| Mordechai Rorvig / VICE: |
Researchers unveil the Ramanujan Machine, a software-based automated conjecturing system that develops new formulas for universal constants in mathematics — Pushing the boundaries of math requires great minds to pose fascinating problems. What if a machine could do it? Now, scientists created one that can.| Dave Gershgorn / OneZero : |
CBP scanned 23M+ people with facial recognition tech at airports, seaports, and pedestrian crossings in 2020, and reveals it caught zero imposters at airports — U.S. Customs and Border Protection scanned more than 23 million people in public places with facial recognition technology in 2020
Source:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Tweets: @stilgherrian, @dlberes, @ozm, @freakonometrics, @davegershgorn, and @willoremus
| Katie Roof / Bloomberg: |
Modern Health, whose app helps employers provide digital mental health care to employees, raises $74M at a valuation of $1.17B, bringing total raised to $172M — Modern Health, a San Francisco-based mental health platform, says it has raised $74 million in a funding round that pushes its valuation to $1.17 billion.
Tweets: @rochers
| Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
Labelbox, which develops data annotation and labeling software, raises $40M Series C led by B Capital Group, bringing its total raised to $79M — Labelbox, a startup developing a data annotation and labeling platform, today announced that it's raised $40 million, bringing its total raised to $79 million.| Manish Singh / TechCrunch: |
India's BharatPe, which helps offline merchants accept digital payments, raises $108M Series D, at a $900M valuation, led by Coatue Management — India may soon have another fintech unicorn. BharatPe said on Thursday it has raised $108 million in a financing round that valued …
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The Economic Times, Tech in Asia, Entrackr, VCCircle, Inc42 Media, and MediaNama
| Financial Times: |
Banks hope to persuade Biden admin that Big Tech and fintech startups should not be able to offer services that compete with banks without facing the same rules — Banks see a chance to direct tougher regulation against Facebook, Google and fintechs — Wall Street executives see the prospect …
Tweets: @hoofnagle, @richardturrin, and @financialtimes
| Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch: |
Sweden-based digital bank Northmill raises $30M led by M2 Asset Management — Northmill Bank, the Sweden-based challenger that has around 200,000 customers across three European countries, has raised around $30 million in new funding. — Leading the round is M2 Asset Management …
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Silicon Canals
| Amy Lewin / Sifted: |
Dublin-based food ordering service Flipdish raises €40M round from Tiger Global Management — Pre-Covid, says McCarthy, lots of restaurants relied on platforms like Deliveroo for a small portion of orders, but when everything moved online, “they realised they weren't making a whole load …
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Silicon Republic, FinSMEs, Forbes, RTÉ, and The Irish Times
| Kevin McLaughlin / The Information: |
Source: Amazon Connect, its cloud call center software, had $175M in sales during 2020, up ~150% YoY, and the company expects $1B annual sales by 2022 — A few years ago, Amazon released a cloud service that used some of the same software smarts behind Alexa—its voice assistant …
Tweets: @jerrycap
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: EU is considering a deal with TSMC or Samsung to build an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe in an attempt to avoid relying on the US and Asia — - EU wants to boost semiconductor production in the region — Goal is to reduce reliance on Taiwan for cutting-edge chips| Will Oremus / OneZero : |
Clubhouse employs an unusually aggressive user onboarding process, pressuring users to upload contacts before ranking those contacts based on total connections — The app pressures you to upload your phone's contacts — and makes them visible in surprising ways| Bloomberg: |
Ahead of its debut Thursday, Bumble raises $2.15B in its IPO with shares priced at $43 each, up from the previous range of $37-39 — - Listing upsized, priced above already elevated range — Wolfe Herd is youngest female CEO to take big U.S. firm public
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Bloomberg, GlobeNewswire, Reuters, TechCrunch, and Investor's Business Daily
| Elena Schneider / Politico: |
Political campaigns are shifting marketing dollars after ad bans by Facebook and Google, with email lists, influencers, and other ad platforms on the rise — Renting, swapping and selling campaign email lists to new candidates and causes is a booming political business, but it comes with risks.
Tweets: @davidsiders, @josh_nelson, @ec_schneider, @opensecretsdc, @juliarosen, @sticka, and @politico
| Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer: |
A researcher was able to breach 35+ companies, including Microsoft and Apple, using a software supply chain attack that leveraged an open source ecosystem flaw — A researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies' internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix …
Source:
Alex Birsan. More:
Laptop Mag, WinBuzzer, Threatpost, Sonatype Blog, SiliconANGLE, BGR, Gizmodo, The Verge, MacRumors, Insider, Security Boulevard, TechRadar, AppleInsider, SecurityWeek, 9to5Mac, MacDailyNews, The Hacker News, and The Overspill
Tweets: @rungrage, @sanjiva, @jacobian, @doctorow, @samnewman, @rdbinns, @benjaoming, @securestep9, @raredata, @knurd42, @youngnick, @adam_k_levin, and @weldpond
| Naman Ramachandran / Variety: |
HBO Max to launch in Latin America and the Caribbean in June; existing HBO-branded streaming services in Europe will shift to HBO Max later this year — WarnerMedia's streamer HBO Max is set to launch across 39 Latin American and Caribbean territories in June.| Justine Calma / The Verge: |
Tesla's $1.5B bitcoin purchase conflicts with its environmental goals, as mining the cryptocurrency consumes massive amounts of energy by design — Tesla's banking on a cryptocurrency that's inherently inefficient — Tesla just gave bitcoin a big boost that's likely to result … | Varsha Bansal / MIT Technology Review: |
Instead of using its successful door-to-door vaccination approach, India is scaling up a glitchy biometric software system, hampering its vaccination goals — Instead of using its successful door-to-door approach, it's scaling up a new system linked to fingerprints and iris scans. — hide
Tweets: @charlottejee, @varshaabansal, @engagemedia, and @techreview
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