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February 12, 2020, 1:42 PM
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| 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, Thurrott, 9to5Google, The Verge, 9to5Google, Android Police, and Engadget
Tweets: @hunterwalk, @mgsiegler, @danprimack, @stevekovach, and @s_m_i
| 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.
More:
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
| 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 …
More:
About Facebook, Washington Post, CyberScoop, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, The Hill, and Mashable
Tweets: @fireeye, @robinwauters, @johnreedwrites, @daveyalba, @mshannahmurphy, @tonyromm, @janelytv, 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.
More:
Wall Street Journal, 9to5Google, XDA Developers, Android Police, Thurrott, The Verge, VentureBeat, CNET, The Next Web, 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, Ofcom, The Hill, 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
| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
GSMA says it has canceled Mobile World Congress after the coronavirus made it “impossible” to hold the event — MWC 2020 is no more — The world's biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress, is no longer taking place this year. After coronavirus threatened to throw MWC into chaos … | Bloomberg: |
More:
HMD Global, Nokia, TechCrunch, Android Police, Input, VentureBeat, Android Central, 9to5Google, MSPoweruser, Wccftech, Silicon Republic, Associated Press, Mashable, SiliconANGLE, and CNET
Tweets: @ingridlunden, @nokiamobile, @fredericl, @cloudexpo, @business, @nicfildes, @markgurman, and @falconejp
| 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.
More:
CNN, Reuters, and Wall Street Journal
Tweets: @martinsfp, @moonalice, @jamestitcomb, @adrianweckler, @adrianweckler, @parmy, and @parmy
| 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.
More:
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
| 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 … | 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.
More:
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 … | 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.| 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
| 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 … | 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.
More:
ZDNet
| 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.
More:
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
| Sam Nussey / Reuters: |
SoftBank's Vision Fund posts an operating loss of $2.05B in Q4 compared to a $1.6B profit a year earlier; Vision Fund invested $74.6B in 88 companies as of Q4 — TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's SoftBank Group Corp said on Wednesday its third-quarter operating profit fell 99%, well short of analyst estimates … | 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, Wall Street Journal, Politico, SiliconANGLE, CNBC, Morning Brew, OnMSFT.com, coinspeaker.com, MediaNama, The Overspill, 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 … | Andrew Morse / CNET: |
Flipboard launches Flipboard TV, an in-app feature that offers professional short-form video, for $2.99/mo; will be a Galaxy S20 exclusive for first 3 months — Flipboard , the popular news aggregator app, is introducing a new subscription video service. Called Flipboard TV …
More:
Flipboard, T-Mobile, Decrypt, AT&T, Android Police, PR Newswire, 9to5Google, South China Morning Post, Android Headlines, WebProNews, Engadget, Digital Trends, NBC Bay Area, Input, and Wired
Tweets: @mathewi, @markham, @wired, @harrymccracken, @caseynewton, @thekenyeung, @andrewmartonik, and @pierce
| 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 … | 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
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