Adam Mosseri says Instagram plans to test video more broadly, calls TikTok and YouTube competitors, and says Instagram is “no longer a photo-sharing app”
- Facebook's head of Instagram said the service plans to start showing users full-screen, recommended videos in their feeds.
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking Florida's Stop Social Media Censorship Act from going into effect, which was scheduled for Thursday
A federal judge Wednesday put on hold a first-of-its-kind law in Florida that authorized the state to penalize social media companies …
Documents and interviews detail how a junior Microsoft engineer exploited a bug to generate Xbox gift card codes worth $10.1M+ before his arrest in Nov. 2020
The Xbox gift card came with a string of 25 letters and numbers. The digits, known as a 5x5 code, were sent in an email …
Maine enacts the strongest statewide facial recognition law in the US, prohibiting the use of facial recognition tech in public schools and most police work
AUGUSTA, Maine - Maine has enacted the country's strongest statewide facial recognition law. Maine's law prohibits the use …
Google updates its Passes API to let users store COVID vaccine cards on Android devices, starting in the US, and says it won't keep a copy of user's information
Google has announced today that Google Pay is now capable of saving and displaying COVID-19 vaccination cards on Android …
TikTok is rolling out longer videos of up to three minutes, up from one minute, to all users over the coming weeks, after testing them since December
Now up to three minutes — TikToks are about to get longer. The app is now rolling out the ability for everyone to publish videos …
NSA, FBI, and others say Russian hacking group Fancy Bear has been using Kubernetes to run brute force attacks on US and foreign organizations since mid-2019
US and UK cybersecurity agencies said today that a Russian military cyber unit has been behind a series of brute-force attacks …
A look at link rot, and projects like Perma, which are trying to give authors of enduring documents like scholarly papers a way to preserve links permanently
Sixty years ago the futurist Arthur C. Clarke observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Tweets: @lanceulanoff , @ethanz , @heghoulian , @drewsthatdude , @samv...
Around 130 countries, including all G20 nations, agree to a global tax deal, aimed at world's 100 biggest companies and setting minimum corporate rates at 15%
Major economies like France and the US signed up, while low-tax regimes including Ireland and Barbados balked.
CISA releases a new self-assessment tool to help organizations understand how well they are equipped to defend against and recover from ransomware attacks
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released the Ransomware Readiness Assessment (RRA), a new module for its Cyber Security Evaluation Tool (CSET).
Articulate, which offers SaaS products that Amazon and other companies use to create training courses for employees, raises $1.5B Series A at a $3.75B valuation
Where does your enterprise stand on the AI adoption curve? Take our AI survey to find out.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok sign up to pledge led by WWWF, to overhaul their moderation systems to tackle the abuse of women on their platforms
Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok commit to overhaul their platform's moderation systems — Four of the world's largest social networks …
Brazil's largest crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin raises $200M Series B from SoftBank Latin America Fund, valuing its parent company 2TM Group at $2.1B
I cover cryptocurrencies and other applications of blockchain — Brazil's leading cryptocurrency exchange, Mercado Bitcoin raised $200 million …
Sources: IBM's company-wide email migration, 18 months in the making, has left many employees unable to use email or schedule calendar events for several days
IBM's planned company-wide email migration has gone off the rails, leaving many employees unable to use email or schedule calendar events. Tweets: @markham , @jalajboy , @kebelledonne , @benedictevans...
As iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 public betas arrive, an in-depth look at Focus, Safari's revamped UI, iPad multitasking, SharePlay, and other new features
Federico Viticci / MacStories :
Zebra Technologies acquires Fetch Robotics, which builds autonomous industrial robots powered by cloud-based software, for $290M
Fetch Robotics, a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for logistics, has been acquired by Lincolnshire, Ill.-based Zebra Technologies for $290 million.
Tim Berners-Lee sells an NFT for $5.4M that represents time-stamped files of the source code for the world wide web and other items, via a Sotheby's auction
but contains errors (lol) New York Times : The World Wide Web sells for $5.4 million. Kate Knibbs / Wired : The Code That Built the Web Is Now a $5 Million NFT Kimberly Chin / Wall Street Journal : In...
Amazon says it is seeking the recusal of FTC chair Lina Khan from matters related to the company, citing her history of criticism and antitrust arguments
at least in part—meant to deter people who might enter public service from making public statements criticizing unrepentant monopolists. Do not be deterred. https://twitter.com/... April Glaser / @apr...
Sources: Amazon is discussing forming a “Rebel Alliance” with Slack and other companies to challenge Microsoft's dominance of the work-productivity app market
- Amazon has discussed creating a software bundle with other companies to compete with Microsoft.
Micron announces that it has agreed to sell its 3D XPoint fab in Utah to Texas Instruments for $900M in cash
Micron announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Lehi, Utah fab to Texas Instruments for $900 million in cash.
Singularity 6, which is developing an MMO community sim game called Palia, raises $30M Series B led by FunPlus Ventures, with a16z and others participating
‘Palia’ is a massively-multiplayer simulation game designed for players to build friendships and community.
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fines Robinhood $70M for misleading customers and system outages, the biggest fine it has ever imposed
the largest fine the agency has ever imposed — over systems outages and customers being approved to trade options when it was not “appropriate” for them to do so. https://www.nytimes.com/... @kslinves...
Hepsiburada.com, one of Turkey's largest online shopping services, raises $470M in its Nasdaq IPO at a $3.9B valuation
- E-commerce platform gets $738 million from IPO of 20% stake — Franklin Resources still backs the firm even as it cuts stake — Hepsiburada.com was valued …
Goldman Sachs leads $32M Series A in Entera, a SaaS provider helping real estate investors find, buy, and manage single-family homes in 24 markets across the US
- Entera helps investors find, buy and renovate rental houses — Investors used software to acquire nearly $1 billion in homes Source: Business Wire Source: Business Wire : Entera Announces $32M Ser...
AT&T joins T-Mobile in making Google's Android Messages the default app for SMS and RCS services on Android phones; Verizon so far has not made the switch
Dieter Bohn / The Verge :
Days before Bezos steps aside, Amazon adds two points to its 14 corporate values, requiring staff to consider welfare of coworkers and society at large
- Workers now required to consider employee welfare, society — Employees are hired, evaluated on how they conform to list
Paper, which provides educational software to K-12 schools in the US and Canada, raises $100M Series C led by IVP
For edtech startups, it's always been easier to go direct-to-consumer than it is to sell into school districts. The latter has stodgy and strict sales cycles …
EU is rolling out its digital vaccine passport across all 27 member nations; it has a QR code and a signature key linking to an individual's vaccine info
Microsoft and AT&T say the carrier will run core parts of its 5G network on Azure; AT&T's newer networks rely more heavily on virtualization than hardware
Stephen Nellis / Reuters :
Twitter releases a set of seven NFTs, each available in 20 designs, and is auctioning them on marketplace Rarible
here's how to get one Jimmy Aki / BitcoinExchangeGuide : Jack Dorsey's Twitter Joins NFT Mania, But He Still Wants Nothing to Do With Ethereum Josiah Motley / KnowTechie : Twitter is giving 140 NFTs t...
Business management software company Intapp raised $273M in its Nasdaq IPO at a ~$1.6B valuation; its stock rose nearly 8% in its first day of trading
Intapp Inc. raised $273 million in an initial public offering that hit the middle of its price targets on Tuesday.
Shares of Didi Chuxing closed up 1% in its trading debut, giving it a market cap of $67.8B; stock spiked as much as 28.6% intraday
Pinterest updates its ad policies to prohibit ads containing weight loss language and imagery
David Cohen / Adweek :
Ghost Locomotion, which develops highway self-driving and crash prevention technology, raises $100M Series D led by Sutter Hill
Autonomous driving system developer Ghost Locomotion has raised a $100 million Series D funding round, led by Sutter Hill Ventures.
iPhone 12 series sales crossed 100M globally in April 2021, seven months after launch, two months faster than iPhone 11; iPhone 12 Pro Max had a 29% sales share
SentinelOne closed up 21% at $42.50 per share in its debut, valuing the company at $10B+; SentinelOne had the highest valued cybersecurity IPO in history
Riley de León / CNBC :
Group M: Google, Facebook, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Amazon claimed 46% of global ad revenues in 2020; in 2010, the then top 5, including News Corp, claimed 17%
Five tech companies today account for nearly half of the world's advertising revenue, a report has found. Tweets: @bluecandyboy , @rasmus_kleis , and @janebsinger See also Mediagazer Tweets: @bluecand...
Czech on-demand grocery delivery service Rohlik raises €100M Series C led by Index Ventures at a €1B valuation
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
TikTok says it removed 11M+ accounts during Q1 2021, including 7M+ for belonging to those under 13; around 62M videos were removed, or 1% of all uploaded
Dan Primack / Axios :
Slack releases Slack Huddles, an audio chat tool, and details new features, including video messages and an enhanced company directory
Amazon says it is setting up a new development center in Helsinki to support Amazon Scout, an autonomous delivery robot that the company is testing in the US
Sam Shead / CNBC :
Clearview AI data shows GAO's recent report on government use of facial recognition overlooked usage by five agencies, including IRS, TSA, and US Capitol Police
Sources: Indian crypto exchanges are scrambling to secure viable payment solutions after banks and payment gateways started cutting ties with them
Nupur Anand / Reuters :
Shares of LegalZoom, which helps customers create legal documents online, closed up ~35% at $37.85 in its trading debut, giving LegalZoom a market cap of $7.35B
Hands-on with Apple's watchOS 8 public beta: a welcome focus on helping users reduce stress induced by gadgets with a rebranded Mindfulness app, Focus, and more
Twitter and Facebook are fighting new Indian rules they say curtail privacy and free speech; the regulations include potential jail terms for executives
Shares of Xometry, a marketplace for on-demand manufacturing, closed up nearly 99% at $87.39 in trading debut, after raising $303.6M in its US IPO
Codat, which provides APIs to link financial software used by SMBs to external services, raises $40M round led by Tiger Global
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch :
Israel-based ironSource, provider of user acquisition tech for app devs, went public in the US on Tuesday via a SPAC merger that raised $2.15B at $11B valuation
Krystal Hu / Reuters :
Content recommendation company Taboola closed down 2% in its first day of trading after going public via merger with a SPAC
Megan Graham / CNBC : See also Mediagazer
Integral Ad Science, which helps keep digital ads non-fraudulent and “brand safe”, closes up 14% in its debut after its IPO, valuing the company at ~$3.3B
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.