Source: Treasury's hackers used a flaw in a SolarWinds product; SolarWinds, which touts 300K+ customers, says the flaw was the result of a “supply chain attack”
Russia's foreign intelligence service is suspected of being behind effort to breach government networks
Google says Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs, and other Google services suffered a worldwide outage for about an hour for a majority of users on Monday
Update: It looks like services are slowly starting to come back again. We've contacted Google for a statement about what happened.
Sources: state sponsored hackers monitored internal emails at US Treasury and broke into National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Office 365
Christopher Bing / Reuters :
Reddit announces it has acquired short-form video app and TikTok rival Dubsmash
Reddit is where passionate communities come together for authentic exchanges about the topics that matter to them. Video is increasingly core to how people want to connect, and as we continue to grow...
Pornhub says it has removed all videos from unverified accounts from its platform; the number of hosted videos dropped from 13.5M to 7.2M
After changing its policies to ban unverified uploaders and Mastercard and Visa's decision to drop the platform entirely, Pornhub announced that it has removed all unverified videos.
Sources: Apple TV+ was making Scraper, a show about Gawker Media, with several episodes written, then Tim Cook sent an email about it and the project was killed
Big tech companies now exert huge influence over what stories get told. The message is clear: Be careful who you offend.
Sources: state-backed Russian hacking group APT29, or Cozy Bear, is behind the hacks of US Treasury, NTIA, and FireEye
The Russian government hackers who breached a top cybersecurity firm are behind a global espionage campaign that also compromised the Treasury and Commerce departments …
Internal memo: Google now plans to have employees return to office in September 2021 and is testing a flexible model of three days in office, two days WFH
The Silicon Valley company now plans to have employees return to the office in September. It will be different when they get there.
EA says it has agreed to buy British racing game developer Codemasters for $1.2B, outbidding Take-Two, which had agreed on a $971M acquisition last month
- The deal upstaged a previous transaction agreed between rival publisher Take-Two Interactive and Codemasters.
Review of Apple's Fitness+ subscription service: a relatively good deal compared to rivals, with plenty of workouts, but requiring a Watch might put people off
The $10-a-month app takes on at-home fitness for a competitive price but with an expensive catch
In H1 2020, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft spent ~$23M on EU lobbying, equal to what they declared for all of 2019 and up from ~$8.3M in 2014
Silicon Valley is building a powerful influence industry in Brussels, which has “never seen this kind of money” spent this way.
Amazon's Zoox unveils an autonomous electric robotaxi that can hold four passengers and run for a claimed 16 hours on a single charge, with a launch date TBC
- Vehicle seats four and can run for 16 hours before recharging — CEO says Zoox may eventually build package delivery vehicles
Apple updates Shazam with a new Apple Music-like design, web browser support in beta, and more, one month after saying Shazam has 200M MAUs
Apple today overhauled the Shazam iOS app with a new look, modernizing the user interface and bringing the design language in line with recent UI updates to Apple Music.
Leaked doc: EU could fine tech giants like Google and Amazon as much as 10% of annual revenue for failing to comply with data usage rules to be unveiled Tuesday
Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg :
Violent unrest erupts at Wistron's iPhone manufacturing plant near Bengaluru in India, sources say over the company's failure to pay promised wages
NPD Group: US game console sales were $1.4B in November, up 58% YoY, as PS5 and Nintendo Switch led, as year-to-date sales reached $4B, up 34%
Providing data, analytics, and expertise for: — No longer just an … Tom Ivan / Reviews - VGC : Switch outperforms PS5 and Xbox Series X to top US console sales for 24th consecutive month Cal Jeffrey...
China's antitrust watchdog fined Alibaba and Tencent ~$76.6K each over a pair of years-old acquisitions and said it's reviewing an impending Tencent-led merger
Bloomberg :
COVID-19 health pass apps could help reopen businesses by showing if users are vaccinated but could also unfairly exclude people from travel and offices
Covid-19 health pass apps could help reopen businesses and restore the economy. They could also unfairly exclude people from travel and workplaces. Tweets: @nytimes , @lollardfish , and @nytimestech ...
TikTok says it has partnered with Samsung to launch TikTok on TVs from 2018 or later in Europe, starting with the UK
Chris Stokel-Walker / Business Insider :
Inside Big Tech's EU lobbying efforts ahead of new rules: Google had the most meetings, CEOs led lobbying, and focus shifted from hate speech to antitrust rules
Big Tech pivoted away from content moderation rules to #antitrust proposals in the summer b/c Digital Markets Act represented a greater near-term threat Laura Kayali / @laukaya : Take-aways from 2 yea...
German Bionic raises $20M Series A co-led by Samsung Catalyst Fund and MIG AG for its exoskeleton tech targeted at industrial applications
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
Snap launches Bitmoji Paint for Snapchat, a massively multiplayer online painting game and the second title from its internal game studio
Bijan Stephen / The Verge :
Facebook launches Collab, a TikTok-inspired music making app, on iOS in the US, after announcing a beta version in May
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
Sources: Facebook fears cracking down on Hindu extremist groups in India because of the likelihood that it could lead to violence toward its staff
Wall Street Journal :
Sources detail a cyberattack against an Israeli software company that led to an attack on some of the country's largest in the logistics and importing sectors
Vista Equity Partners announces it is acquiring Utah-based IT training and workforce development company Pluralsight for $3.5B
GlobeNewswire :
A look at the murky world of moderation on Clubhouse, which has become a haven for the powerful to flirt with misogyny and racism
Tatiana Walk-Morris / Vanity Fair : Tweets: @robinwauters Tweets: Robin Wauters / @robinwauters : “In the bubble that is Clubhouse, pseudo-intellectual monologues from powerful users can go unchecked...
Marketing materials on a Huawei website detailed surveillance tech to detect people's ethnicity and help suppress protests, co-created with partners like Megvii
Washington Post : Tweets: @evadou Tweets: Eva Dou / @evadou : New: Huawei worked w partner co.'s on multiple surveillance systems that can track ethnicity, as well as technologies to help prevent pol...
Poshmark's product design choices around social sharing, like encouraging sellers to reshare their listings daily, wastes sellers' time and reduces their profit
Alden Wicker / Wired : Tweets: @vintagedamage Tweets: @vintagedamage : @Techmeme @AldenWicker it's a lot of work to sell vintage clothes anyway but the mindless busywork on poshmark made me quit
Modal, which provides ecommerce services for automotive dealers and brands, raises $15M Series A led by American Honda, bringing its total raised to ~$20M
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News :
Nēsos, which is developing a noninvasive, drug-free method to treat rheumatoid arthritis using a wearable earbud, comes out of stealth with $16.5M in funding
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News :
EU funded security research has distributed €1.15B and funded 714 projects but scrutiny and criticism appears to be sidelined in the quest for new tech
How US FinCEN became a honeypot for sensitive personal data, a situation made worse by the banking industry's defensive filing of suspicious activity reports
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
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.