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February 12, 2020, 1:25 PM
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| John Detrixhe / Quartz: |
Research: Apple Pay makes up about 5% of global card transactions and is on pace to double that share by 2025 — Future of Finance — New technology is upending everything in finance. — Apple's mobile wallet is gobbling up a growing chunk of card payments around the world.
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Business Insider, CNET, 9to5Mac, The Next Web, MacDailyNews, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, MacRumors, iMore, iPhone in Canada Blog, and The Mac Observer
Tweets: @arnoldwh and @grady_booch
| Steven Levy / Wired: |
Book excerpt from Steven Levy's Facebook: The Inside Story, with a look at Zuckerberg's lost handwritten journal, in which he noted plans for world domination — In the early days of Facebook, Zuck kept his plans for world domination in handwritten journals. He destroyed them.
Tweets: @joshconstine, @nxthompson, @stevenlevy, @stevenlevy, @stevenlevy, and @stevenlevy
| New York Times: |
Andy Rubin's Essential Products, which raised $330M to build smartphones and was valued at $1B, says it is ceasing operations — The smartphone company founded by Mr. Rubin, a former Google executive, struggled to win over customers. — SAN FRANCISCO — Essential Products …
More:
Essential, The Verge, 9to5Google, and Android Police
Tweets: @hunterwalk, @mgsiegler, @danprimack, @stevekovach, and @s_m_i
| Financial Times: |
Facebook says it has banned a network of two dozen fake pages and accounts linked to two Southeast Asian telecoms for using disinformation against rivals — South-east Asian providers said to have used fake accounts to discredit rivals — Facebook has alleged that one of south-east Asia's …
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About Facebook, Washington Post, CyberScoop, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, and The Hill
Tweets: @fireeye, @daveyalba, @janelytv, @robinwauters, @johnreedwrites, @mshannahmurphy, @tonyromm, and @tonyromm
| Manish Singh / TechCrunch: |
WhatsApp says it now has 2B users worldwide, up from the 1.5B it announced two years ago — WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service, revealed today just how big it has become. The Facebook-owned app said it has amassed two billion users, up from 1.5 billion it revealed two years ago.
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Wall Street Journal, 9to5Google, XDA Developers, Android Police, Thurrott, The Verge, VentureBeat, The Next Web, CNET, About Facebook, Yahoo Finance, iPhone Hacks, Android Central, CNBC, and MSPoweruser
Tweets: @whatsapp, @whatsapp, @whatsapp, @kurtwagner8, @whatsapp, and @joshconstine
| Alex Hern / The Guardian: |
UK proposes plans to put media regulator Ofcom in charge of regulating social media, with a focus on removing illegal content and minimizing “harmful” content — Ministers unveil plans to block harmful content, while guaranteeing free speech — Ofcom will be put in charge …
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GOV.UK, BBC, New York Times, GOV.UK, Gizmodo, The Hill, Ofcom, The Independent, Sky News, TechCrunch, BetaNews, Neowin, Broadband TV News, Engadget, Yahoo Finance, and Mashable
Tweets: @nspcc, @markscott82, @iconews, @labourpress, @bbcr4today, @annelongfield, and @hadas_gold
| Data Protection Commission: |
Ireland's Data Protection Commission: Facebook has postponed launching Dating on Valentine's Day in Europe after DPC resorted to an inspection to procure docs — Facebook Ireland first contacted the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in relation to its intention to roll-out a new Dating feature in the EU on Monday 3 February.
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CNN, Reuters, and Wall Street Journal
Tweets: @martinsfp, @moonalice, @jamestitcomb, @adrianweckler, @adrianweckler, @parmy, and @parmy
| Bojan Pancevski / Wall Street Journal: |
US officials claim Huawei has, for over a decade, been able to covertly access mobile-phone networks globally through back doors designed for law enforcement — Trump administration ramps up push for allies to block Chinese company — U.S. officials say Huawei Technologies Co … | Jon Porter / The Verge: |
Google rolls out Emoji Kitchen, which mashes up two emojis into a sticker, for Gboard on Android — Compatible with WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and more — There are already hundreds of emoji available to cover every emotion from yawning to being a straight-up drunk weirdo.
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The Keyword, Android Police, XDA Developers, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Finance, CNET, Android Authority, 9to5Google, Pocket-lint, Droid Life, Wccftech, and TechRadar.com
Tweets: @jenniferdaniel, @advil, and @lilnasx
| Josh Constine / TechCrunch: |
Reuters launches a new Reuters Fact Check business unit and blog and partners with Facebook to review news headlines, deepfakes, and user generated content — Eye-witness photos and videos distributed by news wire Reuters already go through an exhaustive media verification process.
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Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, Adweek, PR Newswire, Variety, and Reuters
Tweets: @nikkisunstrum and @joshconstine
| Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter: |
Profile of DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim who has been privately telling people to expect a criminal antitrust case in Silicon Valley in the next few months — As Hollywood scales up to battle big tech, Makan Delrahim, the nation's top antitrust regulator (and a former movie producer) … | Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: |
FBI says it received 467,361 cybercrime complaints in 2019, with attacks involving business email compromise causing about half of the estimated $3.5B in losses — Average loss per BEC scam amounted to nearly $75,000, per complaint, on average. — The FBI received 467,361 internet … | The Verge: |
A look at online coding program Lambda School, which lets students defer tuition payments until they have jobs, but that many say is costly and under-delivers — Students at Lambda School say the program hasn't delivered on its promise — Bethany Surber was sleeping on friends' couches … | Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: |
GitHub launches a subsidiary in India, saying it's home to its third-largest community of developers and it saw 22% growth there over the past year — GitHub has launched an Indian subsidiary as it looks to capitalize on recent growth in the country. — The code-hosting platform …
More:
The GitHub Blog, The Next Web, WinBuzzer, and MSPoweruser
| Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios: |
Meditation app maker Headspace raises $53M in equity, led by Blisce, and $40M in debt and will use the funds to build tools for users with chronic diseases — Meditation app maker Headspace has raised $53 million in new equity funding and another $40 million in debt.
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TechCrunch and Crunchbase News
| John Herrman / New York Times: |
Third-party sellers from China and other countries are flooding Amazon with thousands of new brands, overwhelming the USPTO as applications soar for trademarks — How Amazon is causing us to drown in trademarks. — Maybe it's cold, and you need some winter gloves.
Tweets: @abhabhattarai, @annehelen, and @profcarroll
| Hired: |
State of Software Engineers 2019: global demand for AR/VR engineers up by 1,400%, gaming developers up 146%, security engineers up 49% but slower than in 2018 — Overview — The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company.
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ZDNet
| Chris Velazco / Engadget: |
Hands-on with Samsung's new S20 lineup: 120Hz refresh rate makes the screens stand out, the Ultra is significantly bigger, and the cameras are ambitious — If you were planning to buy a premium Android smartphone this year, you can rest easy knowing they'll all come with more or less the same things.
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TizenHelp, T-Mobile, Decrypt, AT&T, Yahoo Finance, Android Authority, YTECHB, Android Police, 9to5Google, Gotta Be Mobile, The Verge, Digital Trends, Android Headlines, The Next Web, Macworld, South China Morning Post, Engadget, The Verge, and NBC Bay Area
Tweets: @samitsarkar, @joannastern, @andrewmartonik, @geoffreyfowler, @joannastern, @pierce, @laurengoode, @laurengoode, and @rdrv3
| Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
Radar, a location data startup that positions itself as privacy-focused, raises $20M Series B led by Accel to build out its platform — Pick any app on your phone, and there's a greater than average chance that it's tracking your location right now. — Sometimes, they don't even tell you.| Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: |
Battery Ventures closes on $2B in commitments across two funds, a $1.2B flagship and another $800M companion vehicle, two years after its last fundraise — Battery Ventures, the now 37-year-old investment firm, just closed on two new funds that — at $2 billion in capital commitments …
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FinSMEs, Digital Commerce 360, Bloomberg, and Crunchbase News
| Kadhim Shubber / Financial Times: |
The FTC is asking Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft about acquisitions from the past decade that were small enough to not be reported to the gov't — FTC to review acquisitions made by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — The Federal Trade Commission …
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Federal Trade Commission, Stratechery, Politico, SiliconANGLE, CNBC, Morning Brew, OnMSFT.com, The Overspill, coinspeaker.com, MediaNama, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, South China Morning Post, Music Ally, and CNBC
Tweets: @chopraftc, @shiraovide, @paulvieira, @charlesfitz, @lizclaman, @chopraftc, @danielnewmanuv, @cswilsonftc, @jason_kint, @ingridlunden, @hshaban, @juddlegum, and @mikeisaac
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Irish startup Fenergo, whose platform helps financial institutions onboard customers, meet compliance, and more, raises $80M at an $800M post-money valuation — Europe has emerged as a key region for hatching and scaling fintech companies, and today one of the bigger hopefuls is announcing … | Jem Aswad / Variety: |
Research: over the past year, 95M people in the US used a major streaming service, 25M had a family plan, 13M had a free trial, and 10M+ were sharing a login — Over the past year, 95 million people in the U.S. used a major streaming service, 68 million were self-paying … | Nilay Patel / The Verge: |
Judge in the Sprint merger trial decided T-Mobile would stay aggressive due to its public image, despite execs speaking of the merger in terms of raising prices — Judge Victor Marrero thinks John Legere is just the coolest — After a lengthy trial, a federal court ruled in favor … | Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
Boston- and DC-based Carbon Relay raises $63M led by Insight Partners to automate Kubernetes app deployment, bringing its total raised to roughly $70M — Four out of 10 enterprises report that they're using Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration framework for automating app deployment …
More:
AmericanInno and PR Newswire
| Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: |
Deep Instinct, which has developed a threat detection platform that uses deep learning, raises $43M Series C led by Millennium New Horizons — Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct Ltd. is hoping to make a name for itself after raising an impressive $43 million in a funding round led by Millennium New Horizons.
More:
CTech, Associated Press, VentureBeat, Globes Online, and The Times of Israel
| David Gelles / New York Times: |
Profile of Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, who has led it through several crises since 2014, including Broadcom's failed takeover and a vicious spat with Apple — After a career spent working on “very important backup plans,” Steve Mollenkopf has steered Qualcomm through one rough patch after another.| Bloomberg: |
The number of companies skipping MWC over coronavirus keeps rising, with Facebook, AT&T, Cisco, Sony, Intel, Amazon, Nvidia, and MediaTek among those missing it — - Organizers meet Friday to discuss situation and plan response — Event draws more than 100,000 visitors from across the world
More:
HMD Global, Nokia, TechCrunch, Android Police, VentureBeat, Input, Android Central, Silicon Republic, 9to5Google, MSPoweruser, Wccftech, Associated Press, Mashable, SiliconANGLE, and CNET
Tweets: @ingridlunden, @nokiamobile, @fredericl, @cloudexpo, @business, @nicfildes, @markgurman, and @falconejp
| Juli Clover / MacRumors: |
Malwarebytes detected 11 threats per endpoint for its Mac users in 2019, up from 4.8 threats per endpoint in 2018, while PCs saw 5.8 threats per endpoint — Antivirus software developer Malwarebytes today shared its State of Malware Report for 2020 [PDF], which suggests that Mac malware is growing much more common.
More:
The Register, Malwarebytes Press Center, Mashable, 9to5Mac, OnMSFT.com, Softpedia News, TechSpot, and SlashGear
Tweets: @macrumors, @gizmodo, @buckwoodymsft, and @appleinsider
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Update on Node.js vulnerabilities CVE-2026-111497, CVE-2026-105482, CVE-2026-105483 and CVE-2026-106069 — Overview On October 21, 2026, Node.js announced security releases for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines to fix multiple vulnerabilities.
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