House votes 256 to 164 to extend Section 702 FISA warrantless surveillance program for six years with minimal changes; bill now proceeds to the Senate
WASHINGTON — A yearslong effort by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant new privacy limits on the National Security …
Intel releases breakdown of performance slowdown on Windows 10 PCs after Spectre and Meltdown patches: ~6% for 8th-gen CPUs, ~7% for 7th-gen, ~8% for 6-gen
Your personal computers will be less than 10 percent slower after you install the Spectre/Meltdown fix, Intel has revealed in a blog post.
macOS versions after 10.12.6 include flaw that unlocks system preferences App Store menu with any password, if locked by admin; fix coming in macOS 10.13.3
which lets a logged-in admin user change App Store preferences by entering any random or no password at all. Here's the details. http://openradar.appspot.com/ ... http://twitter.com/...
Sources: in 2015-2016 Uber used “Ripley” tool to remotely shut down the company's devices and shield files and data from police raids in foreign countries
At least two dozen times, the San Francisco headquarters locked down equipment in foreign offices to shield files from police raids.
Filings show Google quietly bought UK sound tech startup Redux that turns surfaces like phone displays into speakers
Alphabet Inc.'s Google has quietly acquired a U.K. startup focused on technology that turns surfaces such as phone displays into speakers.
Apple's China iCloud data migration includes international users whose country setting is set to China, raising concerns among users living temporarily in China
Apple's plan to migrate China-based iCloud user accounts to a local host on Chinese soil is already running into controversy …
South Korea says it is considering a ban on domestic cryptocurrency trading, as authorities raid local exchanges like Coinone, Bithumb for alleged tax evasion
Ripple partners with global payment company MoneyGram to pilot the use of XRP tokens on MoneyGram's network using Ripple's xRapid service
Ripple, a blockchain company and rival to bitcoin, on Thursday announced a tie-up with Dallas-based money transfer giant MoneyGram.
More than 100 CEOs and company executives including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos sign open letter urging Congress to protect DACA
More than a hundred prominent chief executives are urging Congress to pass legislation to protect the young undocumented immigrants …
YouTube says it is putting original projects with Logan Paul on hold and removes him from Google Preferred ad program after his video showing suicide victim
unfortunately it took a nuclear warhead of negative PR to make it happen. http://twitter.com/... Mike Cernovich / @cernovich : He showed a dead body, which media does. Media even shows dead children, ...
Report: US VC funding hit $84B in 2017, most since the dotcom boom, across 8,076 deals, fewest since 2012; unicorns accounted for 23% of funding, 0.9% of deals
Venture capitalists were busy in 2017, pouring $84 billion into 8,035 companies across the U.S..
Amazon announces the Virtual Dash Button Service, a developer kit that lets third parties create virtual Dash buttons for their own devices
First Amazon announced physical Dash buttons to make it easy for consumers to reorder their favorite products. Then it launched virtual versions …
Kodak now is not Kodak we knew, it's a shell of a bankrupt company that was worth $135M before blockchain announcements like KODAKCoin and KashMiner this week
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed :
Experts dispute WhatsApp's “end-to-end encryption” claim, saying confidentiality of group chat could be broken if servers were compromised
but Facebook says it's not a problem Swapna Krishna / Engadget : Whatsapp servers can be compromised to add people to private groups Sidney Fussell / Gizmodo : WhatsApp Security Design Could Let an In...
Marlin Equity Partners acquires Luxembourg-based social listening platform Talkwalker; terms of the deal were not disclosed
Talkwalker, a cloud-based social media listening platform, announced today that it has been acquired by private equity firm, Marlin Equity Partners.
Sources: Dropbox has confidentially filed for an IPO, with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan leading the listing; Dropbox was valued at $10B in 2014
File-sharing company valued privately at $10 billion — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan are said to lead potential listing
A deep learning project to turn website design mockups into actual code shows how deep learning could change front-end development, increase prototyping speed
Within three years deep learning will change front-end development. It will increase prototyping speed and lower the barrier for building software. Tweets: @emilwallner , @fchollet , @stevesi , @feld...
Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Thune sends Apple letter asking about iPhone performance throttling as Paris prosecutor's office confirms investigation
Wall Street Journal :
Confide unveils ScreenShield, a new anti-screenshot feature for its iOS app, says it will make the technology available to third-party developers
iOS Screenshot-Prevention for Confide, and Beyond Christopher Baugh / iPhone in Canada Blog : Confide Adds New Feature Preventing Users From Taking Screenshots Juli Clover / MacRumors : Confide Introd...
EU plans to spend €1B by 2020 on supercomputing, aims for an exascale system based on EU tech by 2022; uncertainty over Brexit may result in UK missing out
Bloomberg :
Self-driving car startup Voyage says it will launch a taxi fleet in Florida's The Villages, a 125K-person retirement community, after $20M Series A in 2017
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge :
Facebook tests local news feature called Today In across six US cities, combining human curation and AI to surface news, events, and announcements in its app
Report: Bitcoin mining is so profitable in China that miners will make money as long as bitcoin is worth more than $6,925
Dan Murtaugh / Bloomberg :
Facebook brings Messenger Kids to Amazon Fire tablets in the US, following iOS launch in early December
Available instantly — This app needs permission to access: Rob LeFebvre / Engadget : Facebook's Messenger Kids app arrives on Amazon Fire tablets Brenda Stolyar / Digital Trends : Facebook's Messeng...
Jimmy Iovine casts doubt on earlier report that he planned to leave in August: “I am committed to doing whatever Eddy (Cue), Tim (Cook) and Apple need me to do”
Bugsnag, which makes an automated error monitoring platform for developers, says it raised $9M Series B in Feb. 2017 from GV, Benchmark Capital, Matrix Partners
Nvidia CEO says its GPUs “immune” to flaws from Spectre threat, but Nvidia is updating software drivers because they interact with potentially vulnerable CPUs
NVIDIA takes security concerns seriously … Greg Synek / TechSpot : Nvidia's latest drivers help to mitigate CPU flaws, but GPU hardware is not vulnerable Eduard Kovacs / SecurityWeek : NVIDIA Updates ...
Microsoft and Qualcomm announce new additions to list of major carriers supporting upcoming ARM “Always Connected” PCs running Windows 10, bringing total to 18
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet :
Samsung spent $44B on capital expenditures in 2017, topping world's publicly traded companies for the first time, nearly doubling its investment in facilities
Twitter's ad “transparency center”, announced before Congressional hearings in October, slated at the time to debut in “the coming weeks”, has yet to launch
Netflix, Amazon, and major studios sue Dragon Box, alleging it facilitates piracy with its $350 streaming box that offers easy access to illegal movies and TV
Gene Maddaus / Variety : Tweets: @dangillmor See also Mediagazer Tweets: Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : A reminder that Amazon and Netflix are Hollywood, and vice versa. http://variety.com/... See also ...
Comcast says it will let US Xfinity customers control certain connected home products using its apps and hardware starting in the first half of 2018
Sources: EU set to approve Qualcomm's $47B acquisition of NXP next week, after the companies address regulator's concerns about competition
Rochelle Toplensky / Financial Times :
Canada-based Igloo Software, which makes a platform that integrates enterprise software, raises $47M Series C led by Frontier Capital
UK's information regulator fines Carphone Warehouse £400K over preventable 2015 breach that exposed 3M+ customer details
AI-powered law for startups
Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better. We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts. Join the waitlist for early access!
Zoho CRM Plus in 2025: A year of thoughtful CX improvements
2025 marked 11 years of building a customer experience platform designed to support organizations as customer expectations, channels …
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.