Bookmarks (8126)

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: Amazon says Echo and Tile devices will become Bluetooth bridges for Sidewalk, its low-bandwidth, long-range wireless protocol, later this year  —  Last year, Amazon announced its Sidewalk network, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol it developed to help connect smart devices inside and …

David McCabe / New York Times: Trump says he would not approve a TikTok deal unless ByteDance ceded its control, after ByteDance said it would retain an 80% stake  —  President Trump on Monday said that he would not approve a deal for TikTok if its Chinese owner did not fully sell its interest in the product …

OneZero : Interviews with 36+ experts, insiders, and researchers: Facebook, Google, Lime, Zoom, and others fail to assess the risks of new products, focusing on profits  —  ne spring day in 2014, Susan Benesch arrived at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park and was ushered into a glass-walled conference room.

Ashley Carman / The Verge: Facebook says it will let people claim ownership of images and issue takedown requests across Facebook and Instagram, starting with select partners  —  The days of reposting images on Instagram might be over  —  Facebook is going to let people take more control over the images they own and where they end up.

Microsoft: Microsoft says it will acquire ZeniMax Media and its game publisher Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B in cash; Bethesda develops Fallout, DOOM, Quake, and others  —  Iconic games portfolio, publishing expertise, and world-class talent accelerates growth in Microsoft's Gaming business

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Mobile gaming startup Playco raises $100M Series A at a $1B+ valuation led by Josh Buckley and Sequoia Capital and will launch its first game later in 2020  —  Playco is a new mobile gaming startup created by Game Closure co-founder Michael Carter and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron …

Renée DiResta / The Atlantic: Disinformation campaigns require significant human effort but will soon be far easier and cheaper to undertake with AI tech like GPT-3  —  Someday soon, the reading public will miss the days when a bit of detective work could identify completely fictitious authors.  Consider the case of “Alice Donovan.”

Danny Crichton / TechCrunch: As the TikTok deal and Huawei imbroglio show, US is no longer on the leading edge of technology in many key strategic markets, and is falling further behind  —  It used to be “easy” to tell the American and Chinese economies apart.  One was innovative, one made clones.

Financial Times: ByteDance asserts it will maintain majority ownership and control over TikTok Global and will not transfer source code or technology to Oracle and Walmart  —  Chinese company contradicts assertions of Donald Trump, Oracle and Walmart  —  ByteDance said on Monday that it would maintain majority ownership …

Jay Peters / The Verge: Facebook estimates it has helped 2.5M people register to vote so far, up from 2M people in 2016 and 2018, as it pushes to register 4M people  —  The company's goal is to help 4 million people register to vote  —  Facebook estimates it has helped 2.5 million people register to vote …

Trefor Moss / Wall Street Journal: Alibaba and Tencent affiliates eye China's booming auto repair business by building brick-and-mortar garage chains that are linked to their e-commerce platforms  —  The country's vast fleet is aging.  The two Chinese tech superpowers, spying an industry ripe for disruption, are collecting local repair shops.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Indian mobile gaming and esports app Mobile Premier League raises $90M Series C, source says at a $375M-$400M valuation, bringing its total raise to $130.5M  —  Mobile Premier League (MPL) has raised $90 million in a new financing round as the two-year-old Bangalore-based esports …

Bloomberg: Trump says he wants the $5B pledged from the companies making the new US-based TikTok venture put toward teaching US children “the real history of our country”  —  President Donald Trump said Saturday he wants $5 billion from companies creating a new U.S.-based TikTok venture …

Frank Chaparro / The Block: Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken says it's launching a bank under a new regulatory framework in Wyoming, reducing its reliance on third-party providers  —  Uniswap has officially gone live with its governance token, dubbed UNI.  —  One billion tokens have been minted, according to a blog post …

Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: How Nvidia's bets on gaming and AI transformed it from a niche player in the high-end graphics market in the mid-90s into the most valuable US chip company  —  For Jensen Huang, the landmark bid for Arm cements his ambition to supplant Intel  —  In the midst of the pandemic …

CNBC: US judge in California issues a preliminary injunction halting Commerce Department's order banning downloads of WeChat from Sunday  —  A U.S. judge early Sunday blocked the Commerce Department from requiring Apple and Alphabet's Google to remove Tencent Holding's WeChat for downloads by late Sunday.

Asha Saluja / Slate: Behind the rise of viral earworms on TikTok, whose musical DNA and culture of repetition often leads to the same songs being reused again and again in videos  —  Gen Z's favorite video app is a blessing in a pandemic.  But why does so much of it sound the same?  —  I downloaded TikTok in April, a month into COVID isolation.

Shannon McGregor / Wired: Facebook and Twitter fail to differentiate “coordinated behavior” from standard political campaign practices, leading to unclear and inconsistent moderation  —  No one knows, not even the policy writers or enforcers.  And the ambiguity is exacerbating threats to our electoral process.

Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic: A look at teen TikTok stars like “Mooptopia”, who achieved sudden viral fame and found it hard to contend with the devotion and nonstop attention of fans  —  Teens are making it big overnight, but that kind of fame can be a mixed bag.  —  A girl sits alone on an ugly couch …

Clive Thompson / Wired: YouTube taught its recommendation system how to recognize and demote conspiratorial videos, but organic link-sharing and bot promotion are thwarting its efforts  —  From flat-earthers to QAnon to Covid quackery, the video giant is awash in misinformation.  Can AI keep the lunatic fringe from going viral?

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Starting Oct. 1, all new source code repositories on GitHub will be named “main” instead of “master” as part the company's effort to abandon non-inclusive terms  —  All new Git repositories on GitHub will be named “main” instead of “master” starting October 1, 2020.

Sophia Kunthara / Crunchbase News: At Snowflake's IPO price, Sutter Hill Ventures' stake was worth $5.9B, Altimeter Capital's ~$4.4B, ICONIQ Capital's $4B+, Redpoint's $2.6B, and Sequoia's ~$2.5B  —  Data warehousing company Snowflake went public on Wednesday in the largest software IPO ever, raising nearly $3.4 billion and valuing the company at $33.2 billion.

Peter Clarke / eeNews Europe: French startup Antaios raises $11M for developing SOT-MRAM that can potentially replace embedded non-volatile memory and SRAM cache in microprocessors and SoCs  —  Antaios SA (Grenoble, France), a 2017 startup working on spin-orbit-torque (SOT) MRAM has secured US$11 million in funding.

Tammy Lovell / MobiHealthNews: Sweden-based Joint Health raises $23M Series B for its app that connects patients with chronic hip and knee pain with physical therapists  —  Funding will enable the company to expand its app for chronic joint pain to the US and further across Europe.  —  Swedish firm Joint Academy …

Reuters: ByteDance says that it is not aware of the news that TikTok is setting up a $5B education fund in the US as part of a deal to continue operating in the US  —  NINGBO, China (Reuters) - TikTok owner Bytedance said in a social media post on Sunday that it was the first time it had heard …

PYMNTS.com: LA-based Boosted Commerce, which is building a portfolio of e-commerce brands, raises $87M and announces the acquisition of six Amazon fulfillment companies  —  As it aims to develop an online shopping portfolio, Boosted Commerce said it has notched $87 million in investment and has purchased six Amazon fulfillment (FBA) firms.

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch: US delays TikTok ban by a week, as company says Oracle and Walmart may take 20% stake in TikTok Global's pre-IPO round, host US user data and computer systems  —  Well... that was pointless.  —  After debasing the idea of free commerce in the U.S in the name of a misplaced security concern …

Fred Pennic / HIT Consultant: Medigate, a provider of IoT and medical device security and asset management, raises $30M Series B led by Partech, bringing its total raised to $50M  —  What You Should Know:  — Medigate announced $30M in Series B financing to expand its medical and IoT device security solution to ensure patient privacy and safety.

Bloomberg: Trump says he has approved Oracle's bid for the US operations of TikTok “in concept”  —  - TikTok app store ban put on hold for a week after Trump nod  — New TikTok Global to donate $5 billion to education foundation  —  Donald Trump gave his blessing to Oracle Corp.'s bid …

Chip Cutter / Wall Street Journal: Companies like IBM and ADP are developing tools to automate decision making, reduce risks and frictions of bringing employees back to the office  —  Employers use algorithms and dashboards as they navigate liability concerns and bruised egos  —  Companies reopening their workplaces …

Zac Bowden / Windows Central: An inside look at how Microsoft tried and failed in creating a version of Windows for dual-screen devices like Surface Duo, and eventually picked Android  —  Curious what Surface Duo was like when it was a Windows device?  Wonder no more.  —  Here at Windows Central …

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Alibaba unveils Xunxi, a pilot factory it has been operating for three years for developing tech aimed at helping manufacturers adapt quickly to consumer demand  —  - Daniel Zhang is spearheading a drive into new manufacturing  — Company wants to provide back-end technology to manufacturers

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Check Point: Iranian hacker group Rampant Kitten, which has been active for 6+ years, has developed an Android malware capable of stealing 2FA SMS codes  —  The malware could steal 2FA SMS codes for Google accounts.  Also contained vague functionality to do the same for Telegram and various social networks.

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: A look at iOS 14's privacy-centric features including mic and camera access notifications, local network access control, compromised password warnings, and more  —  Behold: The useful and not-so-useful privacy features you've been waiting for.  —  Eleven months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared privacy a “fundamental human right.”

Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat: Report: France's centralized StopCovid tracing app only has ~2.4M downloads, with ~700,000 users having uninstalled it and under 200 notifications sent so far  —  When the pandemic was raging across Europe last spring, many politicians and health experts were optimistic that a new generation …

Nick Bastone / The Information: Sources: Google's pro-privacy plan to block online ad trackers has boosted the US' antitrust probe, as publishers argue it would create an unfair playing field  —  Google has taken a lot of heat for violating people's privacy.  Now it could get in trouble for trying to protect it.

Sean Szymkowski / CNET: Tesla wins lawsuit against former employee Martin Tripp, accused of hacking Tesla and supplying sensitive info to unnamed 3rd parties; court will seal case  —  The automaker won its case against an ex-employee who sought whistleblower protections and was accused of hacking Tesla's Gigafactory.

Gerry Smith / Bloomberg: Comcast reaches a deal with Roku to ensure NBCU's Peacock service is carried on Roku devices, after NBCU threatened to pull its TV Everywhere channels  —  - Agreement ensures Peacock is carried on streaming platform  — NBC's threat came amid dispute with Roku over advertising

Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC: Unity raises $1.3B in its IPO, closing up 31.44% in first day of trading, giving the company a market cap of around $17B  —  - Shares of Unity, a video game software developer, jumped 31.44% in its market debut Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.  — The stock priced late Thursday at $52 a share.

New York Times: In August Facebook said it would crack down on QAnon, but analysis shows QAnon is flourishing on the site, at times aided by Facebook's recommendation engine  —  The social network tried cracking down on the spread of the conspiracy theory and other extremist material.  But QAnon groups are still flourishing on the site.

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: Outschool, a marketplace for online classes, raises $45M Series B, says bookings grew 2,000%+ between Aug. 2019 and Aug. 2020 and it turned profitable this year  —  Outschool, which started in 2015 as a platform for homeschooled students to bolster their extracurricular activities …

Annie Palmer / CNBC: DOJ charges six people who allegedly bribed Amazon employees and contractors since at least 2017 in a scheme to benefit some third-party sellers  —  - The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday charged six individuals who allegedly bribed Amazon employees and contractors …

Katie Roof / Bloomberg: Sources: mobile game maker Scopely is in discussions to raise at least $200M at a valuation of around $3B, up from a valuation of $1.9B in March  —  - Valuation would be an increase from $1.9 billion this year  — NewView and Wellington expected to lead the funding round

Tim Baysinger / The Wrap: WarnerMedia's streaming service DC Universe to rebrand as DC Universe Infinite and become a comics hub, with its scripted original series moving to HBO Max  —  “Harley Quinn” renewed for Season 3 as DC Universe transitions into a comic-book subscription service

Bevin Fletcher / FierceWireless: Ericsson acquires Cradlepoint, a wireless wide area network gear maker, for $1.1B  —  Swedish telecom equipment giant Ericsson is acquiring U.S.-based Cradlepoint for $1.1 billion, as it looks to expand its presence and accelerate 5G adoption in the enterprise market.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Interview with Ilkka Paananen, CEO of mobile game maker Supercell, on Tencent's majority stake, attempting to create another hit franchise, and team building  —  Mobile games maker Supercell has been one of the great, understated, breakthroughs of the European startup world.

Steve Kovach / CNBC: Commerce Department announces that it will ban US downloads of and business transactions with TikTok and WeChat on Sunday  —  - The Commerce Department announced Friday morning that it would ban U.S. business transactions with China-owned social apps WeChat and TikTok on Sunday.

Bloomberg: EU is considering new rules that would likely require Apple to give competitors access to the NFC tech used for payments in its iPhones  —  - EU antitrust authorities are already investigating NFC access  — Statement part of EU digital finance package to come next week

Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times: Source: TikTok and WeChat will be removed from Apple and Google's app stores in the US from Sunday to implement Trump's executive orders  —  Trump executive orders also require removal of social media app WeChat from Apple and Google's app stores in US  —  TikTok will be removed …

Lily Hay Newman / Wired: Internet Archive says it is using Cloudflare's reconfigured Always On caching tools to improve its Wayback Machine archiving  —  The Internet Archive and the infrastructure company are teaming up to make sure sites never fully go down.  —  The web is decentralized and fluid by design …