Donald Trump pardons ex-Waymo and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski; Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey were among those supporting a pardon for Levandowski
Last year Anthony Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google, where he was an engineer for its self-driving car efforts …
Netflix reports Q4 revenue of $6.64B vs. $6.63B est., up 21.5% YoY, and global streaming paid memberships of 203.7M, up 8.5M vs. 6.5M est.; stock up 12%+
- Netflix reported fourth quarter 2020 earnings Tuesday that beat analyst expectations on revenue and net subscriber additions but fell below EPS estimates.
Malwarebytes says it was hacked by group that breached SolarWinds, via Azure and Office 365 exploits, but attackers only accessed a subset of internal emails
Malwarebytes becomes fourth major security firm targeted by attackers after Microsoft, FireEye, and CrowdStrike.
Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, addressing teachers on an online conference, quashing intense speculation about his fate
Alibaba and Ant co-founder Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, quashing intense speculation about the plight …
Brave becomes the first major browser to natively support IPFS protocol, useful for accessing censored content; Wikipedia and other sites offer IPFS versions
Brave users will now be able to seamlessly access ipfs:// links. — With the release of Brave 1.19 today …
Netflix says its “Shuffle Play” feature, which lets Netflix's algorithm choose what you watch next, will roll out globally to all users in H1 2021
Netflix is always in search of a better way to instantly connect users to something to watch, instead of having them waste …
Data from Facebook users: 12 political groups were in the top 100 recommended in Jan.; FB said it would not recommend “political content or social issue groups”
According to Citizen Browser data, the platform especially peppered Trump voters with political grouprecommendations
Google is investigating why Margaret Mitchell, who helps lead its ethical AI team, downloaded and shared a large number of files with people outside the company
Google is investigating recent actions by Margaret Mitchell, who helps lead the company's ethical AI team, Axios has confirmed.
Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8M for restricting cross-border game sales in EU's Digital Single Market
ZeniMax, Capcom, and Bandai Namco were among the publishers fined — Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8 million …
Trump signs an executive order that seeks to thwart foreign use of cloud computing products or services for malicious cyber operations against the US
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Outgoing President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at thwarting foreign use of cloud computing products … Source: The White House .
Sources: Andreessen Horowitz to launch an opinion section on its website that will publish articles related to technology and business from outside contributors
Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, which once courted attention from the news media, is ramping up its own media efforts. Tweets: @amir , @nxthompson , @s_m_i , @quinnypig , @alexisoh...
A look at a16z's communication efforts over the years, as the firm expands its own media operations and has largely stopped cooperating with reporters
Why media whisperer Margit Wennmachers is going direct. — Benedict Evans, Andreessen Horowitz's former in-house analyst … Tweets: @mdudas , @ajs , @jason , @jeffjohnroberts , @ajs , @sarthakgh , @sa...
People's Bank of China outlines draft rules to curb monopolistic practices in online payments, saying firms with >50% of the market could face anti-trust probes
Bloomberg :
Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 870 with a similar design to the 865 and 865 Plus, clocked at 3.2GHz, making it about 10% faster than the 865
What we know Qualcomm : Snapdragon 870 5G Mobile Platform Qualcomm : Qualcomm Announces Boosted Snapdragon 870 5G Mobile Platform Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech : Qualcomm Revamps Snapdragon 865 Again, Ca...
YouTube says it will extend its suspension of Trump's channel for another week over “ongoing potential for violence”
Richard Nieva / CNET :
Aurora partners with truck maker PACCAR to develop self-driving big rig trucks “in the next several years”, as it closes the deal for Uber's self-driving unit
Jennifer Smith / Wall Street Journal :
Biden picks former CFTC chairman Gary Gensler, who taught courses on cryptocurrencies and blockchain at MIT, to head the SEC
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios :
Sources: Facebook has no plans to lift Trump's indefinite suspension following his departure from the White House
Facebook has no plan in place to lift the indefinite suspension on President Donald Trump's Facebook account following his departure from the White House on Wednesday, sources familiar with the compan...
Interview with Ajit Pai, who outlasted many senior officials in the Trump administration, on 5G, internet access, and FCC's independence over his tenure
Ajit Pai says he focused on fostering investment while maintaining independence — Ajit Pai's four years atop the Federal Communications …
Opera acquires YoYo Games for $10M and launches Opera Gaming division to monetize its gaming efforts; Opera GX gaming browser had 7M MAUs in Dec., up 350% YoY
Web browser maker Opera has acquired YoYo Games, maker of the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine, for $10 million, and it has also launched its Opera Gaming division.
Electric autonomous vehicle startup Cruise raises $2B at a $30B valuation from Microsoft, GM, Honda, and others
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch :
FireEye releases a free tool that audits networks to determine whether certain techniques, known to be employed by SolarWinds hackers, were used
Focusing on UNC2452 TTPs Lily Hay Newman / Wired : The SolarWinds Hackers Used Tactics Other Groups Will Copy Zeljka Zorz / Help Net Security : Malwarebytes was breached by the SolarWinds attackers Al...
Researchers detail seven flaws in Dnsmasq, a popular open-source DNS forwarding and management suite; 1M+ networking devices are exposed online, patch available
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer :
South Korean search engine company Naver Corp. has acquired online self-publishing platform Wattpad for an estimated ~$600M
Wattpad, one of the last of the late 00s / early 2010 publishing startups finds an exit: https://betakit.com/... @betakit : Naver company is the country's largest online search engine, operating a mob...
Spanish delivery app Glovo raises $121M from Swiss real estate firm Stoneweg to build out delivery-only convenience stores for sub-30 minute delivery times
Macarena Munoz Montijano / Bloomberg :
Intel is in more danger than its profits suggest and should spin off its manufacturing business unless the US can subsidize it, ideally with purchase guarantees
Ben Thompson / Stratechery :
Q&A with Instagram head Adam Mosseri on keeping users safe at scale, content moderation, Facebook's actions against Trump, future regulation, Reels, and more
Nilay Patel / The Verge :
Douyin, ByteDance's Chinese version of TikTok, has launched e-wallet “Douyin Pay” to compete with China's dominant e-payment services WeChat Pay and Alipay
Rita Liao / TechCrunch :
A look at obscure defense startup Rebellion Defense, which works to create AI and infosec applications for the US government and is backed by Eric Schmidt
Jonathan Guyer / American Prospect :
A look at the aggressive recovery methods used by dodgy loan apps plaguing the Play Store in India; Google doesn't say how many apps it recently removed
where 800 such apps shutdown & now it's India. https://twitter.com/... Varsha Bansal / @varshaabansal : Finding these apps isn't hard. A search of instant loan on Play Store will pull up 100s of optio...
ByteDance says it has suspended development of its own smartphone under Smartisan, and will fold Smartisan's R&D team into ByteDance's educational hardware unit
Tracy Qu / South China Morning Post :
Interview with Drupal founder Dries Buytaert as it marks 20 years, on importance of user experience, open source, API first approach, JavaScript bloat, and more
Tim Anderson / The Register : Tweets: @brideoflinux Tweets: Christine Hall / @brideoflinux : 20 years ago I was using an open source CMS I really liked, Post Nuke, which eventually pretty much commit...
WeChat says it facilitated ~$250B in annual transactions through its third-party “mini programs”, double the value of transactions in 2019
Rita Liao / TechCrunch :
Bold Commerce, which offers tools for e-commerce including checkout, subscriptions, and more, raises $27M Series B led by OMERS Ventures
Forbes will launch a newsletter service, initially hiring 20-30 journalists to start paid newsletters, splitting revenue 50/50 and giving salaries and benefits
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.