David Pierce / Protocol:
A profile of Discord, which lies at the center of the gaming world with 100M+ MAUs, as it pushes to turn into a communication tool for everyone, not just gamers — Most longtime Discord users have a similar origin story. They liked playing video games, and liked playing with their friends …
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
Cloud video surveillance company Eagle Eye Networks raises $40M Series E from Accel to invest in new AI projects such as license plate recognition — Eagle Eye Networks, a cloud video surveillance company, raised $40 million in Series E funding from Accel to advance its platform.
Nick Greenhalgh / Denver Business Journal:
StackHawk, whose tech helps developers find application security vulnerabilities before they get into production, raises $10M Series A led by Sapphire Ventures — With a successful beta at its back and paying customers onboard, Denver application security startup StackHawk announced Tuesday …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Wise, a fintech startup that partners with other companies so that they can offer business bank accounts to their own customers, raises $12M Series A — Fintech startup Wise has raised a $12 million Series A round. The company offers business bank accounts with an interesting go-to-market strategy.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Skan, which helps enterprises automate repetitive business processes by combining data engineering with computer vision, raises $14M Series A — Skan.ai, an AI-enabled process discovery and operational intelligence platform, today closed $14 million in funding.
FinSMEs:
DriveWealth raises $56.7M Series C for its digital brokerage services that help broker-dealers and its global online partners access the US securities market — DriveWealth, LLC, a Chatam, N.J.-based global digital trading technology company, raised $56.7m in Series C funding.
Mark Graham / Internet Archive Blogs:
The Internet Archive starts adding banners on some Wayback Machine pages with links that provide contextual information from fact-checking organizations — Fact checking organizations and origin websites sometimes have information about pages archived in the Wayback Machine.
Nandita Mathur / Livemint:
Forty-six top US companies including Apple, Google, and Twitter have filed an amicus brief supporting a legal challenge to block Trump admin's H-1B visa changes — - The move comes in the wake of the US administration's proposal to scrap the computerized lottery system to grant H-1B work visas …
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
Odaseva, a France-based data protection services provider for large-scale Salesforce customers, raises $25M Series B led by Eight Roads Ventures — French SaaS company Odaseva has raised $25 million in Series B funding to continue growing its data governance platform for enterprise.
Elliott Ackerman / Wired:
Profile of Shield AI, which raised money from a16z and others to develop autonomous military drones that scan buildings to help soldiers clear them — On the battlefield, any doorway can be a death trap. A special ops vet, and his businessman brother, have built an AI to solve that problem.
Igor Bosilkovski / Forbes:
StrongDM, which grants and mediates user access to enterprise backend infrastructure and logs user actions in video replay, raises $17M Series A led by Sequoia — StrongDM, a single sign-on company for backend infrastructure, announced today that it has raised $17 million in Series A led by Sequoia Capital.
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Intel launches new Iris Xe Max discrete GPU, with first laptops now available from Acer, Dell, and Asus — Try out Intel's new discrete GPU — Earlier this month, the public got its first glimpse of Iris Xe Max, Intel's new discrete GPU for thin-and-light laptops, at an Acer press event.
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
How Trump's presidency has changed the internet, from fueling conspiracy theories to forcing social media platforms to reexamine their content policies — How the president changed life online—for better and for worse — Being online has changed Donald Trump.
Lara O'Reilly / Digiday:
Interview with Petra Wikström, director of public policy at Schibsted, on joining the Coalition for App Fairness to pressure app store owners to change rules — Nordic publishing giant Schibsted became one of 20 new members of the recently formed Coalition for App Fairness earlier this month.
New York Times:
Misinformation on social media, alongside Trump's lies, is overwhelming local election officials across the US as they shoot down rumors via phone and email — From Philadelphia to Sonoma County, Calif., election officials said they were working marathon hours to fight a flood of falsehoods.
Rest of World:
Filipino activists and journalists want Facebook to tackle deadly disinformation coming from the government, resulting in enemies being “red-tagged” and killed — Targeted by government misinformation, activists are asking Facebook to do more to tackle a deadly epidemic of “red-tagging.”
Friday, October 30, 2020
Joseph Marks / Washington Post:
A look at CISA's wide-ranging operation to secure the 2020 election against hacking, which includes the launch of a 24/7 virtual war room on Election Day — A 24/7 war room will operate from Election Day until local officials are confident in the results. It shows just how far DHS's cybersecurity agency has come since 2016.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
CISA, FBI say an Iran-linked APT targeted unsecured state election websites to harvest US voter info used to send threatening emails to some Democratic voters — DHS CISA and the FBI today shared more info on how an Iranian state-sponsored hacking group was able to harvest voter registration info …
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Hands-on with the Dash Cart at an Amazon Fresh store: cart sensors worked fine, but a two-bag limit, bag fill limit, and real-world hassles hinder experience — There were no lines outside Irvine, California's new Amazon Fresh grocery store on its opening day last week …
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Apple rejects an app designed to verify a person's ballot status in PA, says the app violates its guideline which forbids compiling user data without consent — Apple on Friday rejected an app designed to ensure ballots are being correctly counted in Pennsylvania, saying the software violates App Store privacy guidelines.
Reuters:
Sources: Italy's biggest payments company Nexi is leading negotiations to buy its Nordic rival Nets in an all-stock deal worth around $10B — LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Italian payments technology firm Nexi NEXII.MI is leading negotiations to buy Nordic rival Nets in an all-stock deal worth …
Bloomberg:
Texas jury rules that Apple must pay VirnetX $502.8M for patent infringement, the lastest verdict in a 10-year ongoing legal battle; Apple says it will appeal — - Verdict is part of 10-year fight over secure communications — Jury asked to determine damages on patent infringement