Network Support Blog

Ana Swanson / New York Times: Sources: Apple suggested edits to a draft of Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, extending some deadlines, limiting release of some info to the public, and more  —  Business groups and major companies like Apple have been pressing Congress to alter legislation cracking down on imports of goods … https://bit.ly/3qhZ0Zy

Wall Street Journal: Facebook to Acquire Startup Valued at $1 Billion  —  The target is Kustomer, which specializes in customer-service platforms and chatbots  —  Facebook Inc. said it would buy Kustomer, a startup that specializes in customer-service platforms and chatbots, part of an effort by the social-media giant … https://bit.ly/36p5NbQ

Shakeel Hashim / Protocol: Q&A with CEO of Ocado Solutions on selling its grocery delivery tech to retailers like Kroger, the pandemic's impact on Ocado, plans for robotic pickers, more  —  The British grocery logistics company is expanding around the world and continues to invest in robotics, aiming to have robotic pickers within three years. https://bit.ly/3o5hVVx

Zoe Schiffer / The Verge: Experts say Facebook's implementation of its ban on selling historical artifacts eliminates evidence of crimes and hinders the tracking of art traffickers  —  A ban on selling stolen artifacts is having unintended consequences  —  On October 24th, 2020, an art trafficker in Darnah, Libya posted a series of unusual ads. https://bit.ly/39q6HH5

Nikkei Asia: Report: China accounted for 23% of cross-border data flows in 2019, nearly twice the share of the US, which ranked second with 12%, followed by the UK and India  —  Asian ‘data sphere’ gives the country twice the information flows of the US  —  People view laptop computers from Chinese tech firm Huawei at an expo in Beijing. https://bit.ly/39naWTP

Anna Kramer / Protocol: Profile of Christine Su, Twitter's senior PM for conversational safety, who is a queer Asian-American “activist-entrepreneur” with an MBA and MA in agriculture  —  About six months ago, Twitter quietly hired someone to become the head of product for conversational safety on the platform. https://bit.ly/37mesLk

Peter Steinberger / steipete's blog: Most developer tools aren't ready yet for M1 Macs, but next gen Mx Macs should be fully capable main development machines when Apple launches them next year  —  The excitement around Apple's new M1 chip is everywhere.  I bought a MacBook Air 16GB M1 to see how viable it is as main development machine … https://bit.ly/33oqBOE

Mallory Hackett / MobiHealthNews: Well Health, which lets health care organizations connect with patients over SMS, email, phone or live chat, raises $45M Series C, bringing total raised to $75M  —  With these funds, Well Health has now raised $75 million since its founding in 2015.  —  This week, the patient communication hub … https://bit.ly/3fLTfyg

Katie Abel / Footwear News: Zappos co-founder Tony Hsieh, who stepped down as CEO earlier this year, has died at age 46  —  Tony Hsieh, the brilliant and big-hearted Zappos.com luminary who revolutionized the shoe business and built one of the most innovative companies in modern history, has died.  He was 46. https://bit.ly/3mfPK5z

Georgia Wells / Wall Street Journal: A look inside ByteDance's legal strategy against the US TikTok ban, which sources say included orchestrating parallel lawsuits with star creators as plaintiffs  —  A lawsuit looked like a grass-roots effort, but was orchestrated by TikTok and parent company ByteDance, according to people familiar with the effort https://bit.ly/33pHsAS

Jack Stubbs / Reuters: Sources: suspected North Korean hackers have targeted COVID-19 vaccine maker AstraZeneca in recent weeks, posing as recruiters on LinkedIn and WhatsApp  —  LONDON (Reuters) - Suspected North Korean hackers have tried to break into the systems of British drugmaker AstraZeneca in recent weeks … https://bit.ly/39j6m92

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Over 16 million COVID-19 patients in Brazil, including President Bolsonaro, had their info leaked on a spreadsheet uploaded to GitHub by a hospital employee  —  Among those affected by the leak are Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, seven ministers, and 17 provincial governors. https://bit.ly/3mc1Wo9

New York Times: Staff and patients at the University of Vermont Medical Center describe devastating effects of treatment and test delays after a TrickBot ransomware attack  —  A wave of damaging attacks on hospitals upended the lives of patients with cancer and other ailments.  “I have no idea what to do,” one said. https://bit.ly/2KNO8m1

Financial Times: 200+ Chinese apps are now blocked in India after the government banned another 43 apps on Tuesday, leaving Chinese tech companies facing huge losses  —  Five months after his business was banned in India, Aaron Li has resigned himself to being locked out of the country forever. https://bit.ly/2V886JO

The Coinbase Blog: Coinbase shares an internal email on an upcoming NYT story alleging several Black employees had negative experiences, says it “will paint an inaccurate picture”  —  In the spirit of transparency, we're sharing an internal email that was sent to our employees earlier today: … All, https://bit.ly/364JsQK

Thomas Seal / Bloomberg: UK government says it will spend £250M to help carriers replace Huawei 5G tech by 2027, including around £50M in 2021  —  The U.K. will spend 250 million pounds ($333 million) to diversify its sources of 5G wireless equipment after banning China's Huawei Technologies Co. from supplying the next-generation technology. https://bit.ly/3q39VGs

Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica: Apple stands by head of global security Thomas Moyer, indicted on bribery charges: “We conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing”  —  Sheriff's office allegedly sought 200 iPads in trade for concealed carry permits.  —  A grand jury in California's … https://bit.ly/39fGwm9

Ilya Khrennikov / Bloomberg: Russia's second-largest e-commerce company Ozon raises $990M in US IPO after pricing its shares at $30, 10% higher than initially planned  —  - Company sells shares for $30 each, above initial price range  — Ozon is the largest Russian company to list since EN+ in 2017 https://bit.ly/364et7l

Tiernan Ray / ZDNet: HP reports Q4 net revenue of $15.26B, down 1% YoY, vs. $14.71B est., with sales of notebooks up 18% YoY to $7.4B while desktops dropped by 28% YoY; stock up 5%+  —  Results were buoyed by an 18% surge in notebook revenue, especially sales of higher-end systems and Chromebooks. https://bit.ly/33f5zSx

Sara Fischer / Axios: Sources: WaPo is nearing 3M digital subscribers, up 50% YoY; NYT has tripled digital-only subscribers since 2016 to 6.1M  —  The New York Times and The Washington Post have very different strategies for building the subscription news company of the future.  —  The big picture … https://bit.ly/3l2vYcu

Rachel Monroe / The Atlantic: Behind the rise of TikTok's teen stars, content houses, and the D'Amelios, who this year have focused on establishing themselves as the first family of TikTok  —  Collab day at Clubhouse Beverly Hills was scheduled to start at 2 p.m., but that time came and went and the mansion was still as sleepy as a college dorm on Saturday morning. https://bit.ly/3fuQdhL

Janko Roettgers / Protocol: Last month Intel quietly shut down Intel Studios, its 10,000-square-foot AR/VR volumetric capture stage in LA that opened in 2018  —  Intel has pulled the plug on one of its most ambitious AR/VR projects to date: The company quietly shut down Intel Studios, a 10,000-square-foot volumetric capture stage in Los Angeles, last month. https://bit.ly/3fsb8lC

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: Sydney-based Metigy, which helps SMBs automate online ad campaigns, raises ~$14.6M led by Cygnet Capital and says it has 26,000 businesses on board  —  Metigy, a marketing platform created to help small businesses automate more of the decision making in their online ad campaigns … https://bit.ly/2J3x2jd

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch: Forto, a Berlin-based freight forwarder service, raises $50M Series C led by Inven Capital, bringing its total raised to $103M  —  Forto, a digital freight forwarder which has experienced a boom during the pandemic, has raised another $50 million in funding. https://bit.ly/376S1tM

Will Oremus / OneZero : Twitter, which played a central role in Trump's presidency, is attempting to redefine itself for a post-Trump future through the launch of features like Fleets  —  New product features are rolling out to broaden the platform's appeal.  Will they work?  —  It's easy to forget now … https://bit.ly/3pUhKy4

Julie Jargon / Wall Street Journal: Teachers say they are spending hours reviewing tests that were scored incorrectly by auto-grading bots, which try to match a student's response to an answer key  —  Auto-grading software often marks answers incorrect when they are right, giving teachers and families more remote-school headaches https://bit.ly/35UhOGb

David Pierce / Protocol: Inside YouTube Music's plans to compete with Spotify and others by putting the entire music business, including livestreams and tickets, onto a single platform  —  For the last eight months, musicians and bands haven't been able to tour, play festivals or go much of anywhere. https://bit.ly/3pTXf4i

Forbes: Profile of Vishal Garg, CEO of Better.com, who is fighting lawsuits that accuse him of fraud and misappropriation of funds at previous business ventures  —  The $4 billion fintech startup is hurtling towards an IPO.  But its volatile leader is fighting multiple lawsuits that could complicate his ambitions. https://bit.ly/395ykoI

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: A look at the growing world of virtual HQs on services like Branch, Gather, and Huddle, which are using spatial tech to create a metaverse dedicated to work  —  ‘The future of transportation is no transportation’  —  In retrospect, 2019 feels like the working world's last dance with spontaneity. https://bit.ly/2IWJdOU

Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab: Survey of post samples from 173 adult US Facebook users' feeds during October 2020 found that 54% of users saw no news within the first 10 posts of their feeds  —  What do people see in their Facebook feeds?  How much news do they encounter there — from legitimate outlets or from those known for sowing misinformation? https://bit.ly/35S502V

Samuel Axon / Ars Technica: Craig Federighi, Johny Srouji, and Greg Joswiak on how Apple designed M1, the importance of UMA, non-linear increase in performance at higher power levels, more  —  Craig Federighi, Johny Srouji, and Greg Joswiak tell us the Apple Silicon story.  —  Some time ago, in an Apple campus building, a group of engineers got together. https://bit.ly/2UKuIQm

Scott Stein / CNET: Apple's AR execs on how iPhones and iPads are becoming world-mapping, object-scanning tools that are laying the groundwork for the arrival of AR headsets  —  Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Apple will reportedly unveil an augmented- or mixed-reality headset.  Apple hasn't discussed any headgear yet. https://bit.ly/3fgc0K6

James Pearson / Reuters: Source: Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook inside the country if it does not censor more “anti-state” posts on the platform  —  HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor … https://bit.ly/36SdYN1

Dan Primack / Axios: Roblox files S-1 for its IPO, reports losses of $206M on $589M in revenue, 31.1M DAU, and 22.2B engaged hours, up 122% YoY, for the first nine months of 2020  —  Roblox, a Silicon Valley-based based social gaming platform for tweens and teens, on Thursday filed for a $1 billion initial public offering. https://bit.ly/2IXXKK0

Sheera Frenkel / New York Times: Report: election misinformation largely evaded YouTube's efforts to stop it, as 4,865 videos, viewed a combined 409M times, mentioned voter fraud  —  YouTube videos endorsing the false idea that there was widespread election fraud were viewed more than 138 million times on the week of Nov. 3 … https://bit.ly/3pNybfE

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Mati, which is creating digital reputation tools that build trust between online services and consumers, raised $13.5M Series A from Tribe Capital and others  —  Meet Mati, a startup that recently raised a $13.5 million Series A round to build a digital reputation API that could change the way you interact with online services. https://bit.ly/3faRTgk

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Nvidia beats with record Q3 revenue of $4.73B, up 57% YoY, gaming revenue of $2.27B, up 37% YoY, and data center revenue of $1.9B, up 162% YoY  —  - Nvidia reported earnings for its third fiscal quarter of 2021 on Wednesday.  — Nvidia beat analyst expectations on both earnings and revenue … https://bit.ly/2UFBOFT

Chris Welch / The Verge: Google rolls out update to Chrome, with pages now loading up to 7% faster, CPU usage reduced by up to 5x by throttling background tabs, and reduced usage of RAM  —  The last Chrome update for 2020 is all about efficiency  —  Google is wrapping up 2020 with what it claims … https://bit.ly/3kL2SxY

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: French social app Yubo, with 40M+ users, announces a $47.5M Series C led by existing and new investors including Iris Capital and Gaia Capital Partners  —  French startup Yubo is the biggest social media app you've never heard of — unless you're a teen.  With a focus on young people under 25 … https://bit.ly/3fcutaw

Giles Turner / Bloomberg: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son says the company has $80B cash on hand, after announcing extensive stock buyback plans earlier this year  —  - Masayoshi Son praised Adam Neumann the founder of WeWork  — CEO declined to comment on plans to take SoftBank private https://bit.ly/2IMMyjl

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Klaviyo, a marketing automation startup that customizes messaging for better results, raises $200M Series C led by Accel on a $4.15B valuation  —  Boston-based marketing automation firm Klaviyo wants to change the way marketers interact with data, giving them direct access to their data and their customers. https://bit.ly/35ETLuz

Rita Liao / TechCrunch: China-based Zilliz, which builds open source software for processing unstructured data, raises $43M Series B led by Hillhouse Capital  —  For years, founders and investors in China had little interest in open-source software because it did not seem like the most viable business model. https://bit.ly/36JEA2v

Jeffrey Goldberg / The Atlantic: Barack Obama says today's online information ecosystem, which boosts conspiracy theories like QAnon, is “the single biggest threat to our democracy”  —  Barack Obama was describing to me the manner in which the Mongol emperor and war-crimes innovator Genghis Khan would besiege a town. https://bit.ly/3npAR0K

Ashley Carman / The Verge: Facebook now lets any page admin submit images and videos for rights protection, which helps creators monetize their content and may lead to more takedowns  —  The company opens its rights manager up to all page admins  —  More copyright takedown requests might be coming to Facebook and Instagram. https://bit.ly/3fcXrXK

Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note: It's hard to believe Craig Federighi's claim that Apple wasn't “remotely considering” touch for Macs, given Big Sur's large controls and iOS apps coming to Macs  —  Reviews of new Apple Silicon Macs are not out yet.  They're likely to be good.  But one small disappointment lingers … https://bit.ly/32PQCq2

FinSMEs: Thoughtexchange, which hosts large group conversations while shielding participants' identities to reduce gender and ethnicity biases, raises $34M Series B  —  Thoughtexchange, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based advanced platform for scaling conversations, received an investment from HarbourVest Partners. https://bit.ly/3f4w41U

Whitney Kimball / Gizmodo: Airbnb says 1.4M users have rejected its non-discrimination agreement, foregoing their use of the platform, since it implemented the policy in 2016  —  In the four years since it implemented an agreement to promote equitable treatment of its users, Airbnb claims that 1.4 million individuals … https://bit.ly/35zQFb2

Owen Hughes / TechRepublic: Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, who first began work on the language in 1979 and still remains very much involved in its development  —  Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it remains one of the most widely used programming languages today. https://bit.ly/35vueDV

Wall Street Journal: A look at Parler, a social network with little moderation, which is backed by Robert and Rebekah Mercer and saw its user base double to 10M in under a week  —  The libertarian-minded platform aims to challenge tech giants through a focus on free speech; surge in users since the election https://bit.ly/3nsPtN8

Tawnell D. Hobbs / Wall Street Journal: Analysis finds that nearly three dozen ransomware attacks have targeted US school districts educating 700,000+ students since the pandemic began in March  —  Districts around the U.S. are fighting a wave of increasingly aggressive hackers, who are publicly posting sensitive student information https://bit.ly/3pupkiF

Ken Shirriff / @kenshirriff: [Thread] A look at the first ARM processor ARM1, which was built in 1985 and had 25K transistors, next to Apple's M1 chip, which has 8 cores and 16B transistors  —  how it started: how it's going: https://twitter.com/... https://bit.ly/36DSoLM

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google says it will end support for Expeditions, its education-focused VR app, on June 30, 2021, and fold most of the existing tours into its Arts & Culture app  —  Almost every tech company was invested in virtual reality five years ago and saw it as the future. https://bit.ly/2IrXMKh

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Insurance software provider Vertafore discloses breach after data of 27.7M Texas drivers on an unsecured external storage service was accessed by external party  —  Vertafore blames incident on human error after user data was stored on an unsecured external storage service. https://bit.ly/32DxETt

Michael Waters / Digiday: Retailers are using employee influencers on TikTok to garner organic reach, compensating them according to leaderboards built into employee advocacy platforms  —  Brands and retailers are desperate to get their employees to post on TikTok.  —  Last week, GameStop encouraged store workers … https://bit.ly/36s1xao