Category: Uncategorized

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: An analysis of 19.3M NFTs across ~8,400 collections: one in three have little or no trading activity, and another third trade below their original minting cost  —  For every Bored Ape and CryptoPunk there is a Baby Baller, one of the thousands of NFT projects that have faltered not long after […]

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: Leapsome, a Berlin-based startup helping HR teams automate employee feedback and training processes, raises a $60M Series A led by Insight Partners  —  Bootstrapped since 2016, Berllin-based “People Enablement” platform Leapsome has raised $60 million in a Series A round as it sets out to dominate the American market.

Megha Paul / Tech.eu: Paris-based Lucca, which provides SMBs with tools to automate HR and administrative tasks, raises €65M from One Peak Partners, after 20 years of self-financing  —  The new funding will enable the platform to build its product portfolio further and expand internationally in Spain and Switzerland

Will Oremus / Washington Post: Social media platforms are hastily rewriting rules on hate and propaganda amid the war on Ukraine, setting precedents that may haunt them in the future  —  A month ago, praising a neo-Nazi militia or calling for violence against Russians could get you suspended from Facebook in Ukraine.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: health startups Cerebral and Done pressured clinicians to use looser pandemic rules and prescribe stimulants, often via 30 minute online consultations  —  Digital companies such as Cerebral and Done seized on looser pandemic rules for prescribing ADHD drugs like Adderall.

FinSMEs: Data Vault Holdings, which lets businesses monetize their data assets through its cloud-based exchange, raises a $30.5M Series A from undisclosed investors  —  Data Vault Holdings, a New York-based provider of a cloud-based platform for the delivery of branded data-backed cryptocurrencies, raised $30.5M in Series A funding.

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Google releases a Chrome update for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix a high-severity zero-day exploited in the wild, the second such patch for Chrome in 2022  —  Google has released Chrome 99.0.4844.84 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users to address a high-severity zero-day bug exploited in the wild.

Adi Robertson / The Verge: Ukraine will start selling 54 NFTs next week chronicling the war’s first three days to support its army and civilians, replacing a canceled crypto airdrop plan  —  Proceeds will go toward Ukraine’s army and civilians  —  Ukraine’s government is raising funds by selling non-fungible tokens …

Ann-Marie Alcántara / Wall Street Journal: Brands including Forever 21, DKNY, and Estée Lauder have joined the first Metaverse Fashion Week, which began on Thursday and runs until Sunday in Decentraland  —  Brands including Forever 21, DKNY and Estée Lauder are using the digital event in part to study how consumers will shop in virtual […]

Miles Kruppa / Financial Times: As some crypto startups seek to avoid oversight, VCs are passing on board seats to win deals; investors in FTX, which has raised $1.8B+, have no board seats  —  Founders of digital asset groups seek to avoid investor oversight in new Silicon Valley trend  —  Jack Lu received eight proposals […]

FinSMEs: Ohio-based Triple Whale, an analytics platform for Shopify customers, raises a $27.7M extended Series A led by Elephant VC  —  Triple Whale, a Columbus, Ohio – based operating system for Shopify brands, raised $27.7M in an extended Series A funding.  —  Triple Whale’s latest funding round consists …

Reuters: The US FCC adds Kaspersky Lab, China Telecom Americas, and China Mobile International USA to its national security threat list, barring them from its USF funds  —  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday added Russia’s AO Kaspersky Lab, China Telecom (Americas) Corp (0728.HK) …

The TickleFoot device stimulates the most ticklish spots of the human foot. Researchers hope it could help beat stress by inducing uncontrolled laughter

The TickleFoot device stimulates the most ticklish spots of the human foot – for women it was found to be the centre of the arch, while for men it is slightly closer to the toes

Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE: A unit of 12 Google Fiber workers in Kansas City, Missouri, becomes the first NLRB-recognized bargaining unit of the Alphabet Workers Union, a branch of the CWA  —  “We’re really hoping that we’re the first in a line of dominos.”  —  Lauren Kaori Gurley  —  Google Fiber workers in Kansas […]

The European Union is close to agreeing the Digital Markets Act, which would require big tech firms to open up their services to wider competition

Daniel Michaels / Wall Street Journal: The EU and US announce a preliminary transatlantic data pact bur reveal few details, after the EU declared the previous pact illegal in 2020  —  Agreement could assuage concerns of companies with operations on both sides of the Atlantic  —  BRUSSELS—The U.S. and the European Union reached …

Jane Zhang / Bloomberg: Meituan reports Q4 revenue of $7.78B, up 31% YoY, and a net loss of $830M, amid weakening Chinese consumer spending and regulatory pressures  —  Meituan’s revenue slowed for the third straight quarter after weakening Chinese consumer spending and regulatory pressures constrained its online food and travel businesses.

David Gilbert / VICE: A look at Lantern, an app backed by the US’ Open Technology Fund that has spent the last two years building a peer-to-peer network to bypass Russian censorship  —  Backed with funding from the U.S. government’s Open Technology Fund, Lantern has spent two years building a peer-to-peer network inside Russia.

Samuel Stolton / Politico: EU lawmakers reach a provisional agreement on the DMA, which will mandate messaging service interoperability, prohibit self-preferencing practices, and more  —  The European Union today adopted landmark rules clamping down on anti-competitive abuses by the world’s largest technology platforms …

Kellen Browning / New York Times: Netflix says it is buying Boss Fight Entertainment, a mobile game developer with 130 employees; it is Netflix’s third studio purchase since last summer  —  The acquisition is the company’s third since it announced plans to move into video games last summer.

Adi Robertson / The Verge: The DOJ arrest and charge two men with wire fraud and money laundering over a $1.1M NFT rug pull scheme for their collection named “Frosties”  —  They’d already announced a follow-up series  —  US government prosecutors have charged two men with fraud and money laundering over a cryptocurrency “rug pull” […]

Handling soft fruit is challenging for robots, but a machine-learning system was able to conquer the task by imitating how a person does it

A robot trained by machine learning that imitates a human demonstrator can successfully peel a banana without smashing it to smithereens

Existing flexible screens are either too power-hungry, fragile or expensive to be used in most electronic devices, but a new material could enable more practical versions

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: French startup Weglot, a website translation tool that is compatible with major CMSes and platforms, raises a €45M Series A from Partech  —  French startup Weglot has closed a $50 million Series A funding round (€45 million) from Partech.  The company has built a translation solution for websites.

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: TikTok creators say a glitch in the registration process for TikTok’s creator fund has prevented sign-ups for weeks; the fund started at $200M in 2020  —  Many rising TikTok stars who recently qualified to be paid for their popular videos have been shut out of the registration system …

Mehul Srivastava / Financial Times: An inside look at Ukrainian efforts to repel Russian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, as some worry that early success might be unwound over time  —  As Russian troops massed on the border on January 14, dozens of Ukrainian government websites were defaced with the words “be afraid and wait for […]

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead creators of the GIF, has died at 74; Wilhite worked on the GIF while employed by CompuServe in the 1980s  —  It’s pronounced ‘jif’  —  Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead inventors of the GIF, died last week from COVID at the age of […]

Dave Lee / Financial Times: Instacart will build micro-fulfillment warehouses for grocery retailers to support 15-minute deliveries, launching in the “coming months” starting with Publix  —  Company embarks on ‘new trajectory’ with grocery retailers as it seeks to fend off fierce competition

Paresh Dave / Reuters: Google says it will bar ads from appearing next to websites, apps, and YouTube channels that exploit, dismiss, or condone the Russia-Ukraine war  —  Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O) Google will not help websites, apps and YouTube channels sell ads alongside content that it deems exploits …

An attack on a Ukrainian chemical plant released toxic ammonia, forcing locals to stay indoors. Analysts suggest Russia may carry out more such attacks as a form of chemical warfare, and could escalate to deploying chemical weapons

Rita Liao / TechCrunch: Chinese AR startup Rokid raises a $160M Series C, following a $100M raise in 2018, bringing its total funding to $378M  —  Chinese startup Rokid has been through a few stages of transformation over its eight years of existence, and it’s recently raised some new funding to stay afloat.

Tom Warren / The Verge: Sony releases PS4 and PS5 updates; the PS5 will gain Variable Refresh Rate in the coming months, syncing a display’s refresh rate to the PS5’s graphical output  —  Sony says VRR will be available in the coming months on the PS5  —  Sony is planning to release a Variable Refresh […]

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: Sources: Spotify will rename its live conversation product, from Greenroom to Spotify Live, and plans to integrate the content into its main app in Q2  —  Spotify Technology SA is renaming its live conversation product and integrating the content into its main streaming app to make the service …

The Verge: Microsoft confirms Lapsus$ compromised “a single account” with “limited access” and exfiltrated portions of source code for some of its products  —  Lapsus$ says it has accessed data from Okta, Nvidia, Samsung, and Ubisoft  —  The hacking group Lapsus$ …

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: DevOps startup Lightlytics, which makes SaaS tools to help model cloud infrastructure, raises a $26M Series A led by EIP  —  DevOps startup Lightlytics Ltd. said today it’s looking to expand its go-to-market strategy after raising $26 million in a new round of funding.

The Information: Sources: Sam Altman’s Worldcoin is raising $100M in a token sale from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, a previous backer, and Khosla, at a $3B valuation  —  Worldcoin, the cryptocurrency startup co-founded by former Y Combinator president Sam Altman, is raising $100 million …

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: The Lapsus$ group releases ~37GB of alleged source code from Microsoft, covering Bing, Cortana, and other services; Microsoft says it is investigating  —  The Lapsus$ hacking group claims to have leaked the source code for Bing, Cortana, and other projects stolen from Microsoft’s internal Azure DevOps server.

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: Alibaba increases its share buyback program from $15B to $25B, sending its Hong Kong-listed shares up by 11%+; Alibaba has so far purchased ~$9.2B in shares  —  – Alibaba said on Tuesday it will increase the size of its share buyback program from $15 billion to $25 billion, effective for a […]

Associated Press: Rights group Global Witness says Facebook approved eight paid ads that it submitted containing hate speech inciting violence and genocide against the Rohingya  —  JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence …

Brandy Betz / CoinDesk: Digital banking app Dave raises $100M in a convertible note from FTX Ventures; FTX US will be the exclusive partner for any crypto offerings by Dave  —  FTX US will serve as the exclusive partner for any crypto offerings offered by Dave.  —  Dave (DAVE), a publicly-traded banking app …

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: A malicious cartoon rendering Android app that steals Facebook credentials has been downloaded 100K times and is still available on the Google Play Store  —  A malicious Android app that steals Facebook credentials has been installed over 100,000 times via the Google Play Store, with the app still available to download.

CTech: Application layer security startup Bionic raises a $65M Series B led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $83M  —  The Israeli startup’s platform automatically reverse engineers applications, delivering a comprehensive inventory with architecture and dataflows …

Financial Times: The CEO of lithography machine maker ASML says chipmakers’ expansion plans will be constrained by a shortage of its critical equipment over the next two years  —  Intel admits expansion to be restricted as it works with ASML to boost capacity  —  Chipmakers’ multibillion-dollar expansion plans …

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Cascade, which offers a single tool to centralize project management, KPIs, and outcome tracking, raises a $29M Series A led by Telescope Partners  —  Cascade, a strategy execution platform used by companies such as Johnson & Johnson, American Express, and AstraZeneca, has raised $29 million in a series A round of […]

Sebastian Sinclair / Blockworks: FTX launches crypto exchange services in Australia, including crypto derivatives and spot market offerings, operating out of a Sydney headquarters  —  FTX is hoping to get ahead of the regulatory curve by appeasing policymakers and working “proactively” with regulators

Adi Robertson / The Verge: Q&A with Margrethe Vestager on EU’s cases against Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon, how the planned Digital Markets Act may help with antitrust enforcement, more  —  Margrethe Vestager is one of the driving forces behind tech regulation worldwide.  Appointed as the European Commission’s commissioner …

New York Times: Brazil’s Supreme Court reverses its decision to ban Telegram, which it had ordered on Friday, after Telegram suddenly worked to comply with the court’s orders  —  Brazil’s Supreme Court blocked Telegram on Friday.  The messaging app then responded with measures to fight misinformation, and the court quickly lifted its ban.

Alex Sherman / CNBC: A look at the fallout between Bob Chapek and Bob Iger as Disney restructures for a world where streaming dominates and legacy distribution models fade away  —  Bob Iger, left, and Bob Chapek of Disney  —  April 12, 2020.  That’s the day former Disney CEO Bob Iger’s relationship …