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February 12, 2020, 11:55 AM
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| 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:
WhatsaApp Blog, Wall Street Journal, XDA Developers, Thurrott, The Verge, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Yahoo Finance, CNET, CNBC, MSPoweruser, and Seeking Alpha. Tweets: @joshconstine
| 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:
9to5Mac, The Next Web, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, MacRumors, iMore, iPhone in Canada Blog, and The Mac Observer
Tweets: @arnoldwh and @grady_booch
| 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 … | 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: @stevenlevy, @stevenlevy, @stevenlevy, and @stevenlevy
| Financial Times: |
Facebook says it has banned a network of two dozen fake pages and accounts linked to two South Asian telecom providers 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 …
More:
About Facebook, Washington Post, CyberScoop, Yahoo Finance, and The Hill
Tweets: @fireeye, @daveyalba, @janelytv, @johnreedwrites, @robinwauters, @tonyromm, @mshannahmurphy, and @tonyromm
| 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 …
More:
GOV.UK, BBC, New York Times, Gizmodo, GOV.UK, The Hill, Ofcom, BetaNews, Yahoo Finance, The Independent, Sky News, Neowin, Broadband TV News, Engadget, and Mashable
Tweets: @markscott82, @iconews, @labourpress, @bbcr4today, @annelongfield, and @hadas_gold
| 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:
Android Police, The Keyword, XDA Developers, Yahoo Finance, CNET, Android Authority, 9to5Google, Yahoo Finance, Wccftech, and TechRadar.com
Tweets: @jenniferdaniel, @advil, and @lilnasx
| 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.
More:
TizenHelp, Android Authority, 9to5Google, Android Police, The Verge, YTECHB, Digital Trends, South China Morning Post, PCWorld, Macworld, The Next Web, and NBC Bay Area
Tweets: @samitsarkar, @andrewmartonik, @geoffreyfowler, and @rdrv3
| Dieter Bohn / The Verge: |
More:
T-Mobile, Gizmodo, AT&T, Business Insider, SamMobile, 9to5Google, Engadget, Engadget, Android Police, Android Headlines, PhoneArena, and Engadget
Tweets: @joannastern, @joannastern, @rdrv3, @inafried, @chillmage, @joannastern, @pierce, @laurengoode, @laurengoode, @thekenyeung, and @starfire2258
| 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:
CNET, Flipboard, PR Newswire, WebProNews, Wired, and Input
Tweets: @mathewi, @markham, @harrymccracken, @wired, @caseynewton, and @thekenyeung
| 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
| 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.| 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 … | 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
| 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 …
More:
FinSMEs, Digital Commerce 360, Bloomberg, and Crunchbase News
| 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:
9to5Mac, The Register, Malwarebytes Press Center, OnMSFT.com, Softpedia News, TechSpot, SlashGear, ZDNet, PCMag, The Daily Swig, and AppleInsider
Tweets: @macrumors, @gizmodo, @buckwoodymsft, and @appleinsider
| 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 … | Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: |
Samsung announces Galaxy Z Flip with a foldable 6.7" FHD+ AMOLED display, 3,300 mAh battery, dual front-facing cameras, coming February 14 starting for $1,380 — Foldable phones still feel like a dream, but to kick off the 2020 smartphone season, Samsung is hoping to change that.
More:
The Verge, Samsung Global Newsroom, My Feed, ZDNet, The Verge, TechCrunch, International Business Times, Business Insider, The Jolly Teapot, Android Central, Reuters, Engadget, Wired, and MacRumors
Tweets: @modooborahae, @backlon, @caseynewton, @mkbhd, @patrickmoorhead, @joannastern, @stephennellis, @laurengoode, and @jessicanaziri
| 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, SiliconANGLE, CNBC, Morning Brew, Politico, OnMSFT.com, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, coinspeaker.com, The Overspill, MediaNama, South China Morning Post, and CNBC
Tweets: @chopraftc, @shiraovide, @paulvieira, @charlesfitz, @lizclaman, @chopraftc, @danielnewmanuv, @cswilsonftc, @jason_kint, @ingridlunden, @hshaban, @juddlegum, and @mikeisaac
| 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
| 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:
TechCrunch, CTech, Associated Press, VentureBeat, Globes Online, and The Times of Israel
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Nova Credit raises $50M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins to expand its service sourcing credit reports across borders — Around 70% of the world's population now has some form of bank account or — thanks to mobile phones — a facility to receive and send money virtually, according to the World Bank.
More:
FinSMEs, Barron's Online, and PR Newswire
| Sean Hollister / The Verge: |
Nvidia says that Activision Blizzard has removed its catalog of games like Overwatch, WoW, and Call of Duty from Nvidia's cloud gaming service GeForce Now — A bad precedent for cloud gaming — Nvidia's GeForce Now feels like one of the very best ways to get a free taste of cloud gaming …
More:
USgamer.net, Gamasutra, Softpedia News, Slashdot, and Blue's News
Tweets: @starfire2258, @verge, @matpiscatella, @videogamenews, and @spawnwavemedia
| 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 … Sponsor Posts
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Cloudflare:
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Zoho:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting — You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around. You could ask them to repeat it.
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting — You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around. You could ask them to repeat it.
IDrive:
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