Category: Uncategorized

These machines can learn and adapt, and then reproduce to generate better versions of themselves.

Russia has flooded social media with disinformation as part of its offensive on Ukraine, but unlike its previous campaigns to spread falsehoods, few people seem to be falling for it

Bitstamp, Europe’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, says it has handed over information on some of its customers to the UK’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6

Bloomberg: Nvidia confirms a cyber “incident” caused internal outages; source: it appears to be a minor ransomware attack that’s not connected to the Ukraine crisis  —  A cyber breach suffered by Nvidia Corp. in recent days appears to have been a ransomware attack that’s not connected …

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: Google is under pressure to remove or cut commercial ties with some prolific pro-Russian YouTube channels; pro-Kremlin broadcasters are popular on the platform  —  With sanctions on Russia ramping up following its invasion of Ukraine, Google’s YouTube is under pressure to remove …

Thomas Brewster / Forbes: A profile of Nebraska-based PenLink, a wiretapping company helping law enforcement like the FBI, DEA, and ICE collect data from Apple, Meta, Google, and others  —  A small Nebraska company is helping law enforcement around the world spy on users of Google, Facebook and other tech giants.

Politico: Russia-backed falsehoods and digital tricks related to its invasion of Ukraine are putting tech giants on the defensive over the spread of online disinformation  —  The world’s biggest social media companies are scrambling to combat a global barrage of Kremlin-backed falsehoods …

Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal: Vox Media, Complex Networks, and BDG are considering using their own mobile-optimized article pages instead of using Google’s AMP; WaPo dropped AMP last summer  —  Owners of the Verge and Bustle test alternatives to AMP framework, an effort they expect will generate more ad revenue

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Etsy beats with Q4 revenue of $717M, up 16.2% YoY, vs. $685M est., and 2021 revenue of $2.3B, up 35% YoY, with 96.3M active buyers, up 17.6% YoY; stock up 20%+  —  – Shares of Etsy soared as much as 24% in extended trading on Thursday.  — The company reported fourth-quarter […]

Russia, Ukraine and many of the latter’s Western allies have the ability to launch cyberattacks on other nations, and both sides seem ready for digital skirmishes

Machines that can mate and produce offspring can help us clean up nuclear sites, explore asteroids and terraform distant planets – but could they prove a threat, asks Emma Hart, who is helping develop them

Michael McSweeney / The Block: Block reports Q4 revenue of $4.08B, up 29% YoY, and $1.96B in Cash App bitcoin revenue, up 12% YoY; bitcoin revenue hit $10B in 2021, up 119%; stock is up 20%+  —  Quick Take  — Payments company Block, formerly known as Square, said Thursday that it made $1.96 billion in […]

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India-based Niyo, which provides digital savings accounts and other banking services, raises a $100M Series C led by Accel and Lightrock India  —  India’s Niyo has raised $100 million in a new financing round as the consumer-facing neobank platform looks to add lending and other features …

New York Times: Experts say Russia could use cryptocurrency to minimize the impact of US sanctions, including a forthcoming digital ruble and spoils from ransomware attacks  —  Russian companies have many cryptocurrency tools at their disposal to evade sanctions, including a so-called digital ruble and ransomware.

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: As Russia attacks Ukraine, Bitcoin falls 8% to a one-month low, Ether drops 12%, and others crash, wiping $150B off the crypto market in the last 24 hours  —  – Bitcoin fell to a one-month low on Thursday with other cryptocurrencies including ether plunged.

Joe Williams / Bloomberg: Cloudflare acquires email protection startup Area 1 Security for $162M in cash and stock; Cloudflare’s stock is down 55%+ from its November 2021 all-time high  —  Cloudflare Inc. said it has agreed to buy email protection provider Area 1 Security Inc. for $162 million, the security vendor’s …

Andy Maxwell / TorrentFreak: Reddit publishes its 2021 transparency report: 297M pieces of content were removed out of 5.8B total, 2,813 users and 2,625 subreddits were permanently banned  —  As one of the more popular user-submitted content sites on the internet today, Reddit and its community moderators have to work hard to keep the platform […]

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: The UK and US say they have identified “Cyclops Blink”, new botnet malware linked to Russian-backed Sandworm hacking group, which appears to replace VPNFilter  —  The Russian government’s Sandworm group uses previously unseen Cyclops Blink.  —  Hackers for one of Russia’s …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Sources: Mark Cuban’s live video and audio app Fireside is in talks to raise a $25M Series A at a $125M valuation and plans NFTs and metaverse tools in Q2  —  Mark Cuban’s interactive platform Fireside, which helps creators reach audiences through live and virtual shows …

Drew Harwell / Washington Post: Trump’s Truth Social has been almost entirely inaccessible in its first days due to technical glitches, a 13-hour outage, and 300,000-person waitlist  —  Former president Donald Trump, a longtime critic of how Democrats debuted Healthcare.gov, is facing a bungled website launch of his own.

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Canada-based eSentire, which provides a managed threat detection and response service, raises $325M at a $1B+ valuation, bringing its total funding to $411.2M  —  Canadian managed detection and response startup eSentire Inc. today said it has raised $325 million in new funding to invest in research and development and hire more […]

Ben Thompson / Stratechery: With Meta handicapped by Apple’s ATT, Shopify should build an advertising business to complement Shop Pay and the Shopify Fulfillment Network  —  Tobi Lütke, who famously started Shopify when he realized that the software he built to run his snowboard shop was a much bigger opportunity …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Berlin-based Zenjob, which offers a marketplace that connects students looking for a side job with over 2,500 companies, raises a $50M Series D led by Aragon  —  More money for casual job-matching in Europe: Zenjob, a marketplace platform that targets students looking for side jobs in sectors like retail …

PYMNTS.com: London-based fintech Weavr, which offers online businesses preconfigured financial service APIs, raises a $40M Series A led by Tiger Global  —  Embedded finance startup Weavr raised $40 million in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Mubadala Capital, Latitude Fund, QED Investors, Anthemis and Seedcamp.

Peter Rudegeair / Wall Street Journal: SoFi will acquire Technisys, which makes tools for banks, for around $1.1B in an all-stock deal; after going public via SPAC, SoFi’s stock is down 28% in 2022  —  The all-stock deal is CEO Anthony Noto’s latest move to make the onetime student lender into a full-service bank

Kul Bhushan / Tech in Asia: Facilio, which uses AI to help companies manage real estate, raises a $35M Series B led by Dragoneer, following a $6.4M Series A in 2018  —  Facilio, an AI-driven proptech platform, has raised US$35 million in a series B funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group.

Social media profiles with deepfake photos and AI-generated text fooled most participants in a study, even when there were obvious errors

Deepsekhar Choudhury / Business Standard: Indian online healthcare service MediBuddy, which offers doctor video calls and more, raises a $125M Series C led by Quadria Capital and Lightrock India  —  MediBuddy, an online healthcare company, has raised $125 million in funding from Quadria Capital and Lightrock India, along with participation from existing investors.

The Guardian: An investigation shows how vigilantes use Facebook to incite ethnic killings in Ethiopia, accusing Meta of inaction on hate speech and misinformation  —  Social media giant accused of inaction after users post ‘horrifying and hateful content’ Civilians walk past an abandoned tank …

Alan Rappeport / New York Times: IRS says taxpayers wanting to access their accounts online will not be subjected to facial recognition if they choose to ID themselves in “a virtual interview”  —  The agency, dealing with controversy over its decision to use facial recognition software, said it would allow taxpayers …

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Despite billions spent over 15 years, Amazon’s grocery strategy is unprofitable and incoherent; Numerator: Amazon and Whole Foods had 2.4% US share in December  —  – Amazon’s grocery endeavors have cost many billions of dollars over the past 15 years but have yet to yield a coherent strategy.

Tatiana Bautzer / Reuters: Brazil-based Sólides, which offers HR management software to over 12,000 Brazilian businesses, raises $100M from Warburg Pincus  —  Private equity firm Warburg Pincus has invested $100 million in Brazilian human resources startup Solides for an undisclosed minority stake …

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes: Check, which provides payroll digitization software, raises a $75M Series C led by Stripe, bringing its total funding to $119M and valuing the startup at $725M  —  As startups increasingly embed payroll into their software products, Check, a three-year-old startup that provides software tools …

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: Philippines-based PayMongo, which enables merchants to accept digital payments, raises a $31M Series B, following a $12M Series A in 2020 led by Stripe  —  Philippines-based fintech PayMongo, which enables merchants to accept digital payments, announced today it has raised $31 million …

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the company’s strategy after its failed Arm bid, Omniverse’s progress, and its bet on self-driving cars  —  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t get to fulfill his dream of acquiring Arm for $80 billion.  Regulators held the deal up and Huang called off the deal […]

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Tropic, which helps enterprises buy and manage software as well as to identify cost savings on purchases, raises a $40M Series B led by Insight Partners  —  Global spend on enterprise software was expected to reach $599 billion by the end of 2021, and new forecasts say it is now projected […]

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Expected Mac 2022 lineup: Mac mini with M1 Pro and M2; 13″ MacBook Pro, 24″ iMac, and MacBook Air with M2; iMac Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max; a half-sized Mac Pro  —  As Apple gears up for its first product launch event of the year, the spotlight turns to […]

New York Times: A look at challenges facing Trump’s upcoming Truth Social app, including finding users willing to leave mainstream apps, competition from Gettr and Parler, more  —  Truth Social, the former president’s hard-right alternative to Twitter, could open its doors next month.

Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss / Reuters: Cryptocurrency infrastructure provider Fireblocks buys First Digital, a stablecoin and digital asset payments technology service, sources say for $100M  —  Fireblocks, an infrastructure provider for cryptocurrencies, has acquired First Digital, a stablecoin and digital asset payments technology platform.

Nikkei Asia: HR experts, industry execs, and government officials in Taiwan say the current shortage of chip talent on the island is the most serious they have ever seen  —  Semiconductor giants hike salaries to lure island’s dwindling number of graduates  —  TAIPEI/HSINCHU, Taiwan …

Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech: Q&A with Intel EVP Dr. Ann Kelleher on lessons learned from the company’s misadventures with 10nm process nodes, its vision for Foundry Services, and more  —  It’s somewhat of an understatement to say that Intel’s future roadmap on its process node development is one of the most aggressive in the […]

Steven Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet: Project Zero: Linux developers patch security holes faster than anyone else, in an average of 25 days vs Google in 44 days, Apple in 69, and Microsoft in 83  —  Linux programmers do a better job of patching security holes than programmers at Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Scott Galloway / No Mercy / No Malice: How Apple may get to $1T in revenue by 2030, from $366B in 2021, using its hardware expertise, high consumer trust, and capital reserves to enter new markets  —  Round numbers have no inherent meaning — they’re a consequence of 10 fingers.  But they provide a benchmark, […]

Wired: A look at Microsoft’s AI system in Argentina’s Salta province to predict teenage pregnancies, which faced pushback from activists for being invasive and opaque  —  A government leader in Argentina hailed the AI, which was fed invasive data about girls.  The feminist pushback could inform the future of health tech.

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Convictional, which offers a one-stop shop for retailers to source, onboard, integrate, and trade with suppliers, raises a $40M Series B led by YC Continuity  —  Retailers have traditionally onboarded their drop-ship, marketplace and wholesale suppliers using electronic data interchange …

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Kubecost, whose open source tools helps businesses monitor, manage, and optimize Kubernetes spend at scale, raises a $25M Series A led by Coatue Management  —  In the past year, Kubernetes adoption exploded, with over 5.6 million developers using the cloud-native tools — an increase of 67% from the year prior.

Andy Bounds / Financial Times: The EU files a WTO case against China, alleging Chinese courts lowered global tech licensing fees, leading to billions in losses for Ericsson, Nokia, and others  —  Legal challenge at WTO alleges patent infringements are costing European manufacturers billions of euros

Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day: A look at the decline of MySpace, which flailed around for over a year as it was overtaken by Facebook, and parallels with Meta as TikTok surges  —  Read to the end for the anti-NFT anthem  —  I want to open today’s email with an apology!!  I wrote about the […]

James Hibberd / The Hollywood Reporter: Netflix announces four comedy specials to be hosted and produced by Dave Chappelle; the comedian’s last special led to Netflix employee protests  —  The controversial comic will host and produce four comedy specials focusing on other veteran comedians.

As more money pours into cryptocurrency crimes and scams, government agencies are increasingly cracking down, as the launch of dedicated Department of Justice and FBI enforcement teams demonstrates