Techmeme River

July 14, 2020, 1:45 AM

July 13, 2020

11:30 PM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: MGM's 2019 data breach may have affected 142M+ guests, not 10.6M as first reported, according to dark web marketplace; data includes contact details and DoB
7:55 PM •	Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE: An Israeli court rules that NSO Group can keep exporting its tools as plaintiff Amnesty International failed to prove staff spying by a NSO customer
7:05 PM •	Wall Street Journal: Sources: SoftBank is exploring a full/partial sale or public offering of Arm; SoftBank bought Arm for $32B four years ago
6:45 PM •	Bloomberg: Facebook-provided data shows Trump's campaign micro-targets its ads more than Biden's; 68% of Trump's ads are seen fewer than 1,000 times vs 34% for Biden's
4:35 PM •	Sarah Ponczek / Bloomberg: According to Robintrack.net, during a four-hour span today almost 40,000 Robinhood accounts added Tesla stock, which hit $1,794.99 before closing at $1,497.06
4:20 PM •	Emily Birnbaum / Protocol: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, others back Harvard and MIT's suit against ICE directive that will send international students home if classes are online
4:05 PM •	Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple pushes retail workers to begin working from home, says full return to offices won't happen in 2020 and it's shipping employees COVID-19 test kits
1:55 PM •	Sahil Patel / Wall Street Journal: Mediaocean, which provides TV advertising software, to acquire 4C Insights, which offers ad tools for streaming video and social media, source says for $150M+
1:25 PM •	Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge: Twitch restores President Trump's account after a two-week suspension for “hateful conduct”
1:00 PM •	Paddy Baker / CoinDesk: Crypto app Abra and partner company Plutus settle charges from SEC and CFTC for $300K after allegedly facilitating unregistered security-based swap transactions
12:05 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Autonomous drone startup Skydio raises $100M Series C and announces X2, a new commercial drone lineup coming in Q4 with optional aftermarket software upgrades
11:33 AM •	Lucinda Shen / Fortune: Robinhood says it has raised $320M in new funding that values it at $8.6B, following its $280M Series F in May, which valued it at $8.3B
11:25 AM •	Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet: HPE announces it plans to buy Silver Peak, which makes SD-WAN tools for securely connecting edge networks to any cloud, for $925M
10:30 AM •	Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: Sources detail issues faced by Black and brown tech employees when reporting incidents to HR departments, which often work only to protect company interests
10:05 AM •	New York Times: As US COVID-19 cases surge, public health officials are battling broken, fragmented data systems, some relying on fax, that are seriously impeding progress
9:55 AM •	Gerrit De Vynck / Bloomberg: Sources, publishers, and advertisers say Google's 2015 decision to add a fourth ad atop Search negatively impacted results, decreasing organic website traffic
9:20 AM •	David McCabe / New York Times: In a May filing to Australia's antitrust regulator, Google said it doesn't control enough of the digital ad market to overcharge customers or block competitors
9:05 AM •	Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Inside Facebook's clubby network of invitation-only advertiser groups, called client councils, which use a mix of perks and pressure to keep brands close
8:55 AM •	Rita Liao / TechCrunch: Microsoft says it is spinning out five-year-old Chinese social chatbot Xiaoice into an independent entity; Microsoft will retain its stakes in the new company
8:45 AM •	Todd Spangler / Variety: SiriusXM will buy E.W. Scripps' podcast network and producer unit Stitcher for $325M; Scripps says Stitcher had $72.5M in 2019 revenue
8:35 AM •	Apple: Apple allocates $400M+ for affordable housing projects and homeowner assistance programs in California, as part of its $2.5B commitment for CA's housing crisis
8:15 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Paige, a computational pathology startup targeting cancer, raises an additional $20M to close its Series B at $70M, bringing its total raised to $95M+
7:50 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: UiPath, which makes software to automate repetitive tasks, raises $225M Series E led by Alkeon Capital Management at a $10.2B valuation
7:30 AM •	Donie O'Sullivan / CNN: Both the DNC and RNC have asked campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices
7:05 AM •	Sundar Pichai / The Keyword: Google unveils the Google for India Digitization Fund, pledging ~$10B over seven years toward a mix of equity investments, ecosystem investments, and more
6:25 AM •	Subrat Patnaik / Reuters: US semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices says it will buy rival Maxim Integrated for $20B+ in an all-stock deal
5:45 AM •	The Independent Global Source …: Liquid Wire, which makes pliable electronic circuits that can be printed on plastic and textile substrates for wearables, raises $10M Series A
1:55 AM •	Bloomberg: Total value of digital payment transactions in India reached an all-time high in June, as people avoid handling banknotes amid the coronavirus pandemic

July 12, 2020

9:50 PM •	Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch: LA-based Kernel, which wants to offer “Neuroscience as a Service” that can provide clients access to its brain imaging devices, raises $53M Series C
7:50 PM •	Cara Lombardo / Wall Street Journal: Sources: semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices is in talks to buy rival Maxim Integrated for $17B+ in an all-stock deal
5:05 PM •	David Pierce / Protocol: Talkspace and other teletherapy companies are working to scale their businesses during the pandemic, including working with insurance companies and regulators
3:10 PM •	Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note: Apple Silicon could end Wintel by forcing Microsoft to take Windows on ARM seriously, causing PC OEMs to migrate to ARM and Intel to make ARM PC chips
1:30 PM •	Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: Profile of Ime Archibong, the Head of New Product Experimentation at Facebook and one of the most important voices in its efforts around diversity and equality
11:55 AM •	Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Qualcomm Ventures says it will invest $97M in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake
10:05 AM •	Nellie Bowles / New York Times: Chris Larsen, a co-founder of Ripple, is paying for the installation of a private network of over 1,000 security cameras across San Francisco to fight crime
6:00 AM •	Yogita Khatri / The Block: Public records show that the US Secret Service awarded a four-year contract in May to Coinbase to use its blockchain analytics software, worth $183,750 in total
1:55 AM •	Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: An overview of how data-driven tech and analytics are reshaping Hollywood's creative development process and market research during the pandemic
1:15 AM •	Jake Slobe / Clay and Milk: Iowa-based Growers Edge, which provides a range of data-driven fintech and analytics tools for the agricultural industry, has closed $40M Series B
1:00 AM •	Aroon Deep / MediaNama: Zomato says its FY 2020 revenue was $394M, up 105% YoY, and EBITDA loss reached $293M vs. $277M in FY 2019, as Zomato Gold/Pro had 1.7M subscribers as of March
12:45 AM •	Elise Reuter / MedCity News: Evidation Health, whose tech helps aggregate health data from wearables and other sources for virtual clinical trials, raises $45M Series D led by B Capital
12:15 AM •	Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: China's biggest chipmaker SMIC, a key player in the country's semiconductor ambitions, kicked off a $6.6B share sale on Tuesday in Shanghai

July 11, 2020

11:50 PM •	Ian Walker / Kotaku: Ubisoft announces multiple senior executive departures, including its chief creative officer and Canadian studios head, amid company-wide misconduct allegations
10:55 PM •	Leah Rosenbaum / Forbes: Telemedicine service Doctor on Demand raises $75M Series D led by General Atlantic, bringing the total raised to $240M
7:50 PM •	Jason Koebler / VICE: A look at the gray market around repairing ventilators, where technicians use homemade dongles and software secretly shared within the community
4:45 PM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Mozilla suspends Firefox Send file-sharing service after reports malware operators use it to host and send links with malicious payloads to potential victims
2:40 PM •	Christopher Dring / GamesIndustry.biz: Microsoft's Phil Spencer claims asking studios to make games for Xbox Series X that will also work on Xbox One at launch won't hinder the potential of Series X
1:05 PM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Linux team approves new terminology to replace terms like “master/slave” and “blacklist/whitelist” for new Linux kernel source code and associated documentation
11:15 AM •	Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE: Signal's new feature that allows users to store certain data on their servers for recovery purposes has some security experts threatening to stop using the app
8:10 AM •	Sarah Emerson / OneZero : Pinterest's moderation approach, which blocks content at the search query level, rather than removing it entirely, lets some objectionable content remain
5:05 AM •	Song Jingli / KrASIA: China-based Kuaidian, a storytelling app that lets users read novels in text message format and watch visual dramas, raises ~$100M Series C led by Sequoia China
2:00 AM •	Casey Newton / The Verge: Clubhouse is the latest social network to neglect moderation until it becomes a crisis and why its creators shouldn't treat trust and safety as an afterthought
12:40 AM •	Tom Simonite / Wired: Pupils and teachers question the new grading algorithm used by the IB Diploma Programme to predict student scores after it canceled in-person tests this spring

July 10, 2020

11:10 PM •	Paul Thurrott / Thurrott: Microsoft details how it is collaborating with Google to help developers get their Progressive Web Apps into the Play Store
10:05 PM •	Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg: Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian indicted for allegedly hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox in 2012 resulting in ~117M stolen credentials, is found guilty by SF federal jury
9:55 PM •	Abhimanyu Sharma / Times Now: India's Supreme Court rules in favor of allowing summons and legal notices to be served via messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, as well as by email
9:00 PM •	Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: CBP says there is no practical way for Americans to avoid its license plate reader tracking, will use commercial database to pull private and public plate data
7:55 PM •	The Information: Wells Fargo tells employees to remove TikTok from corporate-owned devices due to privacy and security concerns, says devices are only for company business use
6:35 PM •	John Gruber / Daring Fireball: The App Store's primary purpose should be to steer third-party apps toward excellence; split screen multitasking in Gmail for iPad should't have taken 5 years
5:06 PM •	Makena Kelly / The Verge: Amazon says it will not ask employees to remove TikTok from their mobile devices, and an internal email asking them to delete the app was sent in error
4:45 PM •	Taylor Lorenz / New York Times: Young people, who found an outlet for creative expression in TikTok amid lockdown, say a US ban would be devastating, as some flock to YouTube and Byte
3:21 PM •	Bloomberg: Sources: Facebook is considering imposing a ban on political ads on its network in the days leading up to the US election in November
3:05 PM •	Joseph Marks / Washington Post: Biden campaign hires Chris DeRusha, who was a WH senior cybersecurity adviser and held a series of top cybersecurity jobs at DHS and at Ford, as its first CISO
3:00 PM •	Julia Alexander / The Verge: YouTube is finally letting creators know exactly how they're making money on YouTube, using a metric called RPM that shows total revenue, after YouTube's cut
2:30 PM •	Julie Steinberg / Wall Street Journal: Taulia, which facilitates payments between companies and their suppliers, raises $60M from China's Ping An, sources say at a valuation of about $400M
1:45 PM •	Reuters: Sources: Foxconn to invest up to $1B over the next three years in a factory near Chennai in India where it currently assembles iPhone XR
1:18 PM •	New York Times: Internal email: Amazon asks its employees to delete TikTok from any devices that “access Amazon email” by Friday, citing “security risks”
1:00 PM •	Rob Picheta / CNN: Instagram and Facebook ban all content promoting conversion therapy
12:20 PM •	Bharath Manjesh / Reuters: Rackspace, a cloud services company which went private in 2016 after a $4.3B buyout by Apollo Global, once again files for a US IPO
11:40 AM •	Eric Slivka / MacRumors: Report: Apple is making thousands of semitransparent lenses for its AR headset at a Foxconn factory as part of engineering validation test stage of the product
11:15 AM •	Anirban Sen / Reuters: Sources: Coinbase is exploring going public via a direct listing as early as this year; Coinbase was last valued at $8B+ in 2018
10:30 AM •	Graham Cluley: Google says it will ban stalkerware ads from August 11, but leaves a loophole for stalkerware vendors to get around the ban by posing as “family safety” apps
9:40 AM •	David Shepardson / Reuters: US is finalizing a federal contract ban for any company that uses products from Chinese companies Huawei, Hikvision, Hytera, Dahua, and ZTE
8:50 AM •	Politico: France to introduce a controversial nationwide age verification system for pornography websites
8:25 AM •	James Vincent / The Verge: An issue with Facebook SDK, which lasted for about 3 hours, crashed iOS apps for TikTok, Spotify, Tinder, Pinterest, and others that use Facebook Login
7:35 AM •	Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: Kuo: Apple Silicon Macs to include 13-inch MacBook Pro this year, MacBook Air this year or Q1 2021, and 14.1-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in 2021
7:05 AM •	Gideon Lewis-Kraus / New Yorker: A deep look at the rift between some prominent SV figures and the journalists increasingly critical of the tech industry, based on Slate Star Codex vs. The NYT
6:10 AM •	Bloomberg: A state appeals court ruled that Bitfinex must face lawsuit claims by New York state that it hid the loss of $800M commingled client and corporate funds
2:10 AM •	Bloomberg: The perception of the tech sector as a utility has insulated tech from downturns in the stock market, with investors viewing it as a defensive asset

July 9, 2020

10:45 PM •	Asraa / Chicago Reporter: Chicago PD shuts down its arrest API, used by journalists to access arrest data, after Chicago Reporter used it to reveal that CPD had inflated looting claims
9:00 PM •	Reuters: Documents show Amazon plans to create at least $100M in stock awards to retain Zoox talent and can abandon deal to acquire Zoox if a majority reject job offers
7:24 PM •	Rebecca Heilweil / Vox: Facebook audit shows holding Trump to a different standard than other users sets a troubling precedent, valuing free speech above all else impedes civil rights
6:10 PM •	Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: Gartner and IDC see YoY growth in Q2 PC shipments, 2.8% and 11.2% respectively, with both firms seeing the gains as short-term, driven by work-from-home demands
6:00 PM •	John Hendel / Politico: As his chairmanship hits its fourth year, Ajit Pai has alienated the auto industry, lawmakers, and Trump allies, with decisions like opening 6GHz for Wi-Fi
5:30 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Amazon announced the general availability of AWS IoT SiteWise, its managed IoT monitoring service for industrial customers, including VW and Bayer
4:20 PM •	Wall Street Journal: Sources: DOJ is examining whether Wirecard played a critical role in an alleged $100M bank fraud conspiracy connected to an online marijuana marketplace
3:20 PM •	Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google says Android 10 reached 100M devices just five months after launch, which is 28% faster than Android Pie
3:15 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: App Annie: mobile app usage grew 40% YoY globally in Q2, hitting an all-time high of over 200B hours during April, amid stay-at-home measures
2:45 PM •	Sam Biddle / The Intercept: Sources: Dataminr, an official Twitter partner, relayed tweets and other social media posts about BLM protesters directly to police, contrary to earlier claims
2:30 PM •	Alfred Ng / CNET: UK and Australian data privacy offices say they are opening a joint investigation of Clearview AI
2:12 PM •	Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Sony invests $250M in Epic Games for a 1.4% stake, bringing the total raised by the maker of Fortnite to $1.83B
1:55 PM •	Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News: Amid India-China tensions, Zoom fights xenophobic rumors on social media that it is Chinese-owned, scrambling to remind Indian users that it is a US company
1:30 PM •	Dieter Bohn / The Verge: Hands-on with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 as they launch in public beta with a new home screen with widgets on the iPhone, a Scribble feature for Apple Pencil, more
12:35 PM •	Nico Grant / Bloomberg: Google scrapped a campus security system asking employees to check each other's badges, sources say after complaints Black and Latinx workers were singled out
12:05 PM •	Jon Porter / The Verge: Epic Games releases an iOS app, called Live Link Face, enabling the recording of facial expressions directly into the Unreal Engine
11:50 AM •	Andy Maxwell / TorrentFreak: EU court rules that online platforms like YouTube need not hand over to rights holders the email or IP addresses of users who upload pirated content
11:45 AM •	Mengqi Sun / Wall Street Journal: US Treasury Department says Amazon settled allegations that it violated US sanctions, primarily due to flaws in its automatic screening process, for $135,000
11:10 AM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Microsoft details Kernel Data Protection, upcoming Windows 10 tech that it says blocks malware from modifying OS memory by making parts of the kernel read-only
10:45 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Open source database startup MariaDB adds $25M extension to its $27M Series C, bringing total raised to $125M+, says it's doubled its last valuation of ~$354M
10:35 AM •	Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge: TikTok says it took down 49M+ videos globally for content violations during H2 2019 and again claims it received no takedown requests from China
9:50 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: XM Cyber, which develops simulation and remediation software to expose cyberattack vectors, raises $17M Series B, bringing its total raised to $49M
9:30 AM •	Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk: In a first, the CENTRE Consortium has blocked an Ethereum address holding $100K USDC stablecoin in response to a law enforcement request
9:15 AM •	Noel Randewich / Reuters: Nvidia surpasses Intel as the most valuable US chipmaker, with a market cap of $248B+ as its stock has surged 68% in 2020
8:45 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: WhatsApp Business adds support for QR codes, allows businesses to create and share links to their catalogs to post elsewhere, and says it has 50M MAUs globally
8:30 AM •	Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer: Study finds 15B credentials in circulation on hacker forums with 5B+ of them unique; average price of logins for banking and other financial services is $70.91
7:45 AM •	Joseph Cox / VICE: Police are buying access to hacked data, including passwords, IP addresses, and more to help with investigations in an end-run around the usual legal processes
7:20 AM •	Bloomberg: Elon Musk claims Tesla is “very close” to developing fully autonomous vehicles despite Tesla's “Full Self Driving” feature not living up to its name since 2016
6:45 AM •	Sue Halpern / New Yorker: An in-depth look at Microsoft's ElectionGuard voting software, led by cryptographer Josh Benaloh, which aims to check whether election results are accurate
2:50 AM •	Selin Bucak / Private Equity News: Silver Lake buys French company Silae, which offers cloud-based payroll and HR software to 550K+ customers, reportedly for €500M+

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