After White House meeting, Google will spend $10B over five years and train 100K IT and data workers, Apple pledges supply chain security improvements, and more
- The White House hosted a cybersecurity summit with CEOs in sectors ranging from tech to insurance.
Biden meets with CEOs from Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and others to discuss cybersecurity, says private sector must do more to protect infrastructure
Washington Post :
YouTube says it has removed over 1M videos related to COVID misinformation since Feb. 2020 and removes 10M videos per quarter, most of which have <10 views
But the 1 million coronavirus-related takedowns since the start of the pandemic are difficult to put in context, because of YouTube's gigantic scale. Source: YouTube Official Blog .
UK government says it will move away from EU's GDPR after Brexit, including possibly ending cookie consent popups, and names John Edwards as preferred ICO head
Culture secretary says move could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests online Source: GOV.UK .
Microsoft has promoted Chief Product Officer Panos Panay to executive vice president role and has added him to its senior leadership team
Microsoft Corp. promoted Chief Product Officer Panos Panay to the role of executive vice president and added him to the senior leadership team …
Sources: TSMC plans to increase prices by ~10% for advanced chips and ~20% for less advanced chips, starting later this year or early next
TSMC to increase prices of most advanced chips by roughly 10%; less advanced chips will cost about 20% more — The world's largest contract chip maker …
Microsoft says it will quadruple cybersecurity spending to $20B over five years, spend $150M to help federal, state, and local governments improve security
Todd Bishop / GeekWire :
A history of Google's messaging apps and how a lack of any kind of top-down messaging leadership has led to a decade and a half of failed messaging platforms
Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess. — Google Talk, Google's first-ever instant messaging platform …
In an abrupt reversal, OnlyFans suspends its October 1 policy change banning porn after securing “assurances” and aims to provide “a home for all creators”
- OnlyFans is reversing its recent decision to ban porn. — It had planned to prohibit sexually explicit … Source: @onlyfans .
Adam Mosseri says Instagram plans to more prominently feature photos and videos in search results in the future along with traditional accounts and hashtags
How search works and what it will be able to do next — Instagram plans to more prominently feature photos and videos in search results … Source: Instagram .
DOJ and SEC charged ex-HeadSpin CEO Manish Lachwani with allegedly defrauding investors out of $80M from 2018 to 2020 in an effort to boost HeadSpin's valuation
U.S. authorities on Wednesday charged a co-founder and former chief executive of HeadSpin with defrauding investors …
Apple launches News Partner Program, which lowers commissions on in-app purchases to 15% for news publishers who participate in Apple News
Apple today is launching a new program that will allow subscription news organizations that participate in the Apple News app and meet certain requirements …
Internal corporate directory shows Microsoft has hired 15-year AWS veteran Charlie Bell as a corporate VP
- Charlie Bell is listed as a corporate vice president under Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's human-resources chief — Bell left Amazon recently after 15 years in a top leadership position at Amazon Web Se...
Sources: Facebook has approached experts about forming an advisory body for how it handles global election matters, including political ads and misinformation
The social network has contacted academics to create a group to advise it on thorny election-related decisions, said people with knowledge of the matter.
Alphabet's Wing nears 100K drone deliveries two years after Logan, Australia launch; the drones fly up to six miles and deliver items weighing up to 3 pounds
In a blog post this morning, Alphabet drone delivery company Wing announced that it is set to hit 100,000 customer deliveries over the weekend. Source: Wing Blog .
Researchers say YouTube, which attracts less scrutiny than Facebook or Twitter, is a hard platform to study because video is so difficult to analyze in bulk
YouTube's penchant for going conveniently overlooked whenever there's a big content-policy debate involving Facebook and Twitter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... See also Mediagazer
A look at China's evolving approach to state-sponsored hacking, which borrows from Russia and Iran and increasingly relies on private sector hackers
The state security ministry is recruiting from a vast pool of private-sector hackers who often have their own agendas and sometimes use … Tweets: @bhweingarten , @alfonslopeztena , @timothys , @aadilb...
A look at the small team behind @twitter and its 200+ corporate accounts, who adopted a more informal tone in late 2018 and use a Google doc with 300 drafts
The tweeters — When Twitter employee Ashley Tyra first heard from a colleague that the company was planning to shutter Fleets …
Court filing: a glitch in Palantir's tools let at least four unauthorized FBI employees access data on accused hacker Virgil Griffith from May 2020 to Aug. 2021
A computer glitch in a secretive software program used by the FBI allowed some unauthorized employees to access private data …
Study: lobbying dollars spent by US tech companies have increased with market concentration; the pattern is similar to pharmaceutical and oil & gas industries
- Pattern is similar to pharma and oil and gas industries — Study says antitrust laws should consider impact on democracy Source: American Economic Liberties Project .
Q&A with John Binns, a 21-year-old American living in Turkey, who claims responsibility for the recent T-Mobile hack and says its security is “awful”
A 21-year-old American said he used an unprotected router to access millions of customer records in the mobile carrier's latest breach Tweets: @drewfitzgerald , @chrisbhoffman , @marcelolprince , @tec...
Canalys: US PC sales in Q2 2021 up 17% YoY, with 36.8M total units sold, notebooks up 27%, desktops up 23%, tablets down 1%; HP leads with 21.9% of market share
Canalys released its quarterly U.S. PC sales today, and while the news was quite good with sales overall up 17% YoY … Source: Canalys.com .
Long-Term Stock Exchange, a Silicon Valley-based rival to NYSE, says Twilio and Asana will list their shares Thursday, the first companies to do so
- Twilio, Asana shares to trade on Long-Term Stock Exchange — CEO Ries says new exchange offers ‘access to ESG investors’ Source: Long-Term Stock Exchange .
Sources: Western Digital is in advanced talks to merge with Kioxia, the chipmaker spun out of Toshiba in 2018, in a deal that could be valued at more than $20B
Microsoft says it will no longer support Android Office apps on Chromebooks from September 18, saying users will be transitioned to the web versions thereafter
Here's why Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet : Microsoft will no longer allow Chromebook users to install native Android Office apps Daniel Golightly / Android Headlines : Microsoft Will Kill Off Its Office Apps ...
Copenhagen-based Leapwork, which offers no-code process automation tools for enterprise, raises $62M Series B led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures
Copenhagen-based process automation platform Leapwork has snagged Denmark's largest ever Series B funding round, announcing a $62 million raise co-led …
Investigation finds underage users can easily evade age limits on ~80 apps on Apple's App Store, such as dating, sex, and gambling apps restricted to ages 17+
Facebook adds features to Messenger on its 10-year anniversary, including word effects, contact sharing, and birthday gifting via Facebook Pay
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch : Source: About Facebook .
GAO: 19 of 24 US government agencies surveyed use facial recognition in some capacity; DoD and DHS both have in-house systems, while 4 had used Clearview AI
Russell Brandom / The Verge :
Netflix is testing games in its Android app in Poland, starting with two existing Stranger Things games
Joan E. Solsman / CNET :
Razer, which is headquartered in the US but is listed in Hong Kong, says it is considering a secondary listing in the US; Razer revenues grew 68% to $752M in H1
- Razer, which makes laptops, PC peripherals and other products for gamers, is currently listed in Hong Kong. Tweets: @ryan_browne_ Tweets: Ryan Browne / @ryan_browne_ : Latest from me: Razer, the Hon...
Meditation app Headspace unveils plans to merge with Ginger, an on-demand mental health service, in a deal valuing the combined company at $3B
Salesforce beats in Q2 with revenue of $6.34B, up 23% YoY, Platform and Other revenue of $1.88B, up 24% YoY, and Sales Cloud revenue of $1.48B, up 15% YoY
Jordan Novet / CNBC :
Documents show DHS uses ATLAS to scan for derogatory information on immigrants; critics say ATLAS is used to create a pretext to strip citizenship
The Intercept : Tweets: @samfbiddle and @samfbiddle Tweets: Sam Biddle / @samfbiddle : Not only can the Amazon-powered algorithm trigger denaturalization proceedings, DHS explicitly reserves the righ...
Apple Watch active user base crossed 100M globally in Q2, as the smartwatch market grew 27% YoY and the sub-$100 segment grew 547% YoY
Sujeong Lim / Counterpoint Research :
Mexico City-based neobank Flink raises $57M Series B led by Lightspeed
Picsart, which makes image and video editing tools, raises $130M Series C led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, sources say at a valuation of around $1.5B
Steven Bertoni / Forbes :
Box reports Q2 revenue of $214.5M, up 12% YoY, vs. $211.7M est., and billings of $213M, up 13% YoY, ahead of investor vote on its strategy and management team
Robert Hof / SiliconANGLE :
Regulatory docs show Facebook's Project Aria hardware is called Gemini, runs on customized Android, and uses the same camera sensor as the Oculus Quest 2
Janko Roettgers / Protocol :
Snowflake beats in Q2 with revenue of $272.2M, up 104% YoY, 4,990 total customers, up 60% YoY, and losses of $189.7M vs. $77.6M in Q2 2020
Eric J. Savitz / Barron's Online :
A look at farmer-specific e-commerce and food distribution services, including GrazeCart, Farmdrop, Farmigo, and GrownBy, which took off during the pandemic
a huge help particularly during the pandemic https://www.theverge.com/... S. E. Smith / @sesmith : An interesting read on taking the farmers' market online, but what about farmers and ranchers who lac...
Utah-based Aumni, which provides a data analytics service for private capital investors, raises $50M Series B led by JP Morgan
Berlin-based elopage, which offers tools for the creator economy and has 3M customers, raises €32M Series A led by Target Global and plans a UK expansion
Dan Taylor / Tech.eu :
China's XD, which offers an app store for games with no commissions on in-app sales, plans to expand globally, as Apple and Google's commissions draw criticism
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg : Tweets: @pingroma Tweets: Zheping Huang / @pingroma : China's biggest indie game distributor XD aims to introduce its novel zero-commission app store model to global users...
Trove, which helps build online resale marketplaces for brands like Lululemon and Patagonia, raises $77.5M Series D, bringing its total funding to $122.5M
Atheneum, which offers enterprise tools to conduct research through interviews and surveys, raises $150M and says it has about 500 large customers
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
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.