Techmeme: Interview with Rob Monster, CEO of Epik, on serving sites like Gab, why his company severed ties with 8chan and The Daily Stormer, Parler shutdown, and more (Bobby Allyn/NPR)

Top News

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 …

More: 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 …

More: 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 …

More: 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 …

More: 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.

More: Nature and Slashdot

Tweets: @shashib, @stevestuwill, @motherboard, and @sleepydisease

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.

More: GlobeNewswire. Tweets: @rochers

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 …

More: New York Post. Tweets: @hoofnagle, @richardturrin, and @financialtimes

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 …

More: The Economic Times, Tech in Asia, Entrackr, VCCircle, Inc42 Media, and MediaNama

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Europol, working with US, UK, and others, says 10 people have been arrested for allegedly stealing $100M in cryptocurrency from celebrities via SIM-swap attacks — Eight men were arrested in England and Scotland as part of an investigation into a series of SIM swapping attacks targeting US celebrities.

More: Europol, Threatpost, Engadget, Ars Technica, United States Secret Service, infosecurity-magazine.com, The Hacker News, U.S. Department of Justice, iTnews, HackRead, BleepingComputer, Finbold, CyberScoop, Engadget, and CoinDesk

Tweets: @usdoj_intl, @campuscodi, and @europol

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

More: Tech.eu and SamMobile

Tweets: @zschneeweiss, @cvkrishnan, and @francesca_bria

Bobby Allyn / NPR:

Interview with Rob Monster, CEO of Epik, on serving sites like Gab, why his company severed ties with 8chan and The Daily Stormer, Parler shutdown, and more — Toggle more options — When websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet …

Tweets: @bobbyallyn, @wexler, @kuow, @fark, and @npr

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 …

More: Silicon Republic, FinSMEs, Forbes, RTÉ, and The Irish Times

Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post:

Biden administration asks a federal appeals court to halt Trump's attempted WeChat ban pending a review, following a similar request involving TikTok — The move comes as conservatives raise questions about the new administration's policies toward China — The Biden administration Thursday asked …

More: CNN

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

Microsoft patches a 12-year-old Windows Defender bug that could potentially let an attacker run malicious code, after researchers discovered it last fall — Microsoft has finally patched the bug in its antivirus program after researchers spotted it last fall. — JUST BECAUSE A vulnerability is old doesn't mean it's not useful.

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 …

More: Silicon Canals

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

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

More: likeable.com. Tweets: @willoremus, @bdeskin, @pkafka, and @willoremus

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

More: Bloomberg, GlobeNewswire, Reuters, TechCrunch, and Investor's Business Daily

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, ZDNet, and The Overspill

Tweets: @rungrage, @sanjiva, @jacobian, @doctorow, @samnewman, @rdbinns, @benjaoming, @securestep9, @raredata, @knurd42, @youngnick, @adam_k_levin, and @weldpond

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