Network Support Blog

Reuters: Sources: Cybereason, which offers endpoint detection and response services, has confidentially filed for a US IPO that could value it at more than $5B  —  Cybereason, a security startup backed by SoftBank's (9984.T) Vision Fund 2 and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google Cloud unit … https://bit.ly/3ANnS0M

Jonathan Greig / ZDNet: Education publisher Pearson acquires Credly, which helps businesses issue digital credentials to certify workers' skills, for $140M; Credly has 2,000+ customers  —  Pearson already owned a 20% stake in the digital workforce credentialing platform worth about $40 million but is now buying the entire company. https://bit.ly/3sa6Cik

Samuel Stolton / Politico: Doc: the US is pressing EU officials to revise the Digital Markets Act to focus less on tech giants and ensure that the act covers tech firms outside of the US  —  The United States is pressing the EU to revise rules targeting digital giants to make them focus less on American companies … https://bit.ly/3GiSatA

Wall Street Journal: Antenna: Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, and others struggle to retain US subscribers who joined to watch a hit show; some subscribers only stay for a few months  —  Roughly half of U.S. viewers who joined right after ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ were gone in six months, data show https://bit.ly/3KZk6Gd

Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters: Meta plans to break out the results of its AR and VR hardware unit, Reality Labs, for the first time when it reports Q4 results on February 2  —  Since October, Facebook has renamed the company, articulated a vision of the internet where people can digitally connect through virtual-reality avatars … https://bit.ly/33YF9bz

Sam Byford / The Verge: In an Instagram video, Joe Rogan defends his decision to book contentious guests, apologizes to Spotify for the backlash, and details how the podcast may change  —  'I'm very sorry that this is happening to them.'  —  Joe Rogan has issued a response to the ongoing controversy … https://bit.ly/35q8H1V

Bloomberg: A profile of Celsius Network, which has been valued at ~$3B and promises up to an 18% annual interest on cryptocurrency deposits, as it attracts SEC scrutiny  —  Every Friday, Alex Mashinsky sits in front of a video camera and livestreams for more than an hour with a sales pitch for his crypto company, Celsius Network LLC. https://bit.ly/34oFp36

Wall Street Journal: Gartner: global chip sales rose 25% YoY in 2021 to a record $583.5B and are projected to grow by 9% this year; capital expenditures grew to at least $146B  —  After posting record sales in 2021, semiconductor makers prepare for historic expansion to boost capacity https://bit.ly/3s5iPVr

Daniel Ek / Spotify: Spotify publishes its long-standing Platform Rules and says it is working to add a content advisory to podcast episodes that include a discussion about COVID-19  —  A decade ago, we created Spotify to enable the work of creators around the world to be heard and enjoyed by listeners around the world. https://bit.ly/3Hh7oR8

Bloomberg: Many China-based sellers who were kicked off Amazon for rule violations have turned to Walmart's online marketplace to reach US consumers  —  Ever since Amazon.com Inc. began kicking tens of thousands of Chinese merchants off its platform last April for faking customer reviews … https://bit.ly/3ASjjCA

Zack Seward / CoinDesk: Blockdaemon, which provides blockchain infrastructure for node management and staking, raises a $207M Series C at a $3.25B post-money valuation  —  Sapphire and Tiger Global led the latest round, which follows a $155 million Series B last September.  —  The unicorn valuations are still … https://bit.ly/32GNOyu

Brian Fung / CNN: Filings and interviews with decision makers and legal experts reveal bureaucracy with competing mandates at the FAA and FCC caused the 5G launch blowup  —  Emirates president blasts 5G rollout: ‘Utterly irresponsible’  —  (CNN)From canceled flights to dire warnings of a stalled shipping economy … https://bit.ly/340trNm

Emma Roth / The Verge: FCC announces $1.2B in funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to expand broadband services across 32 states, provided by 23 telecom companies  —  The FCC plans to deploy broadband service in one million new areas  —  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) … https://bit.ly/3IRkd58

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: How Lina Khan's FTC is using the concept of “monopsony”, a market where one buyer is pre-eminent, to push for Big Tech antitrust regulation  —  Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan has developed an innovative way to frame the issue.  Whether she has the tools to see it through remains to be seen. https://bit.ly/3rcR9z1

Claire L. Evans / The Verge: Profile of Susan Headley, an influential hacker of the 1980s, who specialized in social engineering and now leads a quiet life in a large US Midwestern city  —  She was known, back then, as Susan Thunder.  For someone in the business of deception, she stood out: she was unusually tall … https://bit.ly/3o8D1Vk

Daniel Dale / CNN: Twitter stopped enforcing its “civic integrity policy” in March 2021 regarding lies about the 2020 US election  —  (CNN)Twitter quit taking action to try to limit the spread of lies about the 2020 election, the company said on Friday — a day after another social media platform … https://bit.ly/3rajHJd

Wall Street Journal: Crypto-rich buyers are shifting the luxury home market, as real-estate builders jump through hoops to accept crypto and sellers advertise accepting it  —  People who have made fortunes investing in digital currency, or who helped build the vast crypto industry, are the new darlings of the high-end residential property market https://bit.ly/3KVHyEw

Jonathan Browning / Bloomberg: The UK approves extraditing Autonomy founder Mike Lynch to the US to face criminal fraud charges, hours after he lost a court battle with HP; Lynch can appeal  —  The U.K. government approved the extradition of Mike Lynch to the U.S. to face criminal fraud charges, hours after a London judge ruled … https://bit.ly/3GcWSZL

Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg: France's top administrative court sides with privacy watchdog against Google, in an appeal over a €100M fine for placing cookies before getting user's consent  —  Google lost its bid to topple a record 100 million-euro ($112 million) fine from French privacy watchdogs over how it manages its cookies. https://bit.ly/3rbRBx6

Microsoft Azure Blog: Microsoft mitigated a 3.47 Tbps DDoS attack on an Azure customer in Asia in Nov. 2021; DDoS attacks in India rose from 2% of all attacks in H1 2021 to 23% in H2  —  This blog post was co-authored by Anupam Vij, Principal PM Manager, and Syed Pasha, Principal Network Engineer, Azure Networking https://bit.ly/3rWpK3u

P R Sanjai / Bloomberg: Google to invest $700M in Bharti Airtel, India's second largest telecom operator, for a 1.28% stake; an additional $300M will go to multiyear agreements  —  Google will invest as much as $1 billion in India's second-largest mobile phone operator, as firms race to offer inexpensive data … https://bit.ly/3IKUX02

Daren Fonda / Barron's Online: Source: White House is readying an executive action to task federal agencies with regulating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a matter of national security  —  The Biden administration is preparing to release an executive action that will task federal agencies with regulating digital assets … https://bit.ly/3ALq2xZ

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple says it now has over 1.8B active devices worldwide, up from 1.65B in January 2021 and 1.5B in January 2020  —  Apple now has over 1.8 billion active devices worldwide, a new record, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during today's earnings call covering the first fiscal quarter of 2022. https://bit.ly/3ABFvR8

Juli Clover / MacRumors: iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas add the long-delayed Universal Control, which lets users control nearby Macs and iPads with a single mouse or keyboard  —  The iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas that Apple released today introduce support for Universal Control … https://bit.ly/3H8m2Kd

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: France-based Sigfox, which raised $300M+ to build a global IoT communications network, files for bankruptcy, citing slow sales and an electronics shortage  —  We are continuing to see fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the tech industry, with one of the latest developments coming out from France. https://bit.ly/34jqUhm

Andy Greenberg / Wired: Signal quietly made its MobileCoin-based cryptocurrency payments feature available to all users globally in November 2021, after a UK beta test in the spring  —  A beta “payments” feature now lets some users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe. https://bit.ly/337TBgC

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: Tencent's WeChat will add support for China's digital yuan, e-CNY, to WeChat Pay  —  - Tencent-owned WeChat, China's largest messaging app and one of the country's biggest payment services, will begin supporting the digital yuan.  — The People's Bank of China, which issues … https://bit.ly/3q06emH

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Bengaluru-based Dunzo, which operates a hyperlocal delivery service in seven Indian cities, raises $240M led by Reliance Retail at a $775M valuation  —  Reliance Retail has led a $240 million funding round in Google-backed hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo as the largest Indian retail chain aggressively expands its offerings. https://bit.ly/3zyo1EY

NetBlocks: Kazakhstan faces internet disruptions and a subsequent nationwide shutdown since Tuesday evening, amid protests against energy price increases  —  Network data from NetBlocks confirm a significant disruption to internet service in Kazakhstan from the evening of Tuesday 4 January 2022 … https://bit.ly/3zslwnv

Brave Browser: Brave reports 15.5M+ DAUs and 50M+ MAUs at the end of 2021, up from 24M MAUs at the end of 2020, 10M+ mobile downloads in 2021, and Brave Ads revenue up 4x YoY  —  Brave Search now at 2.3 billion annualized queries  — Key new products from Brave this year included Brave Search … https://bit.ly/3F2GoTk

Monica Chin / The Verge: Asus unveils the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED with a 17.3" foldable screen, Intel's 12th-gen CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD, and more, coming in Q2 for a TBD price  —  There's a more traditional 14-inch OLED Zenbook coming as well  —  Each year, it seems that more companies are trying out devices with foldable screens. https://bit.ly/3HCZx02

Todd Spangler / Variety: Amazon says it has sold over 150M Fire TV devices worldwide  —  Amazon is touting a major milestone for Fire TV, claiming it has sold more than 150 million of the streaming devices worldwide.  And it announced deals with Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis to bring Fire TV to the automakers' in-car entertainment systems. https://bit.ly/3ESzAaN

Rebecca Feng / Wall Street Journal: China Mobile shares closed at ~$9.06, slightly above their Shanghai offering price, after raising $9B in its IPO  —  Cellphone carrier was booted from the New York Stock Exchange after it was added to U.S. investment blacklist  —  Eight months after China Mobile Ltd. was booted … https://bit.ly/3FTzyRo

Ben Winslow / KSTU: Property management software company Entrata cuts ties with its co-founder and former CEO after he sent an anti-Semitic email to Utah tech and political leaders  —  SALT LAKE CITY — The founder and chair of Entrata, a Silcon Slopes tech firm, has resigned his position after sending an email … https://bit.ly/3eTzrcA

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: TikTok is testing a Repost button that lets users repost videos from their For You feed to mutual friends' For You feeds  —  TikTok is testing its own version of Twitter's retweet with the addition of a new “Repost” button that allows users to amplify videos on the platform by sharing them with their own followers. https://bit.ly/3EPS7op

Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech: Intel announces a line up of 12th Gen Core Alder Lake processors including 22 new desktop CPUs and 8 new H-Series laptop CPUs  —  When Intel launched its 12th Generation Core family of processors late last year, it was only a small set of overclockable parts for desktops that came to market. https://bit.ly/3eSb4fq

Allison Johnson / The Verge: TCL unveils second-gen NxtWear Air wearable secondary display with two 1080p OLED screens, no AR/VR features, and lighter design, coming in Q1 with pricing TBC  —  They're 30 percent lighter and come with swappable magnetic front plates  —  TCL is preparing to launch a second iteration … https://bit.ly/3HBlk88

Park Jae-hyuk / The Korea Times: South Korea's ruling party announces an NFT presidential election fundraiser; Lee Jae-myung, the DPK's presidential nominee, supports NFTs in gaming  —  The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is set to become the world's first political party to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) … https://bit.ly/3ERjfmP

Bloomberg: Real estate investment trust Digital Realty agrees to acquire a majority stake in Africa's largest data center operator Teraco at a ~$3.5B valuation  —  Digital Realty Trust Inc. said it agreed to acquire a majority stake in Teraco Data Environments Pty, Africa's largest data-center operator … https://bit.ly/3eSDaqM

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Twitter completes its $1.05B sale of MoPub to AppLovin, which expects its unified platform with MoPub to process $15B+ of annualized advertiser spend by 2023  —  Twitter announced today it has completed the sale of its mobile ad platform, MoPub, to the mobile game maker and marketing software … https://bit.ly/3EPHIJm

Lananh Nguyen / New York Times: Big US banks are slowly embracing cloud services like AWS, after years of hesitancy due to tight regulation, cyberattack worries, and old infrastructure  —  Cloud computing is slowly changing how Wall Street banks handle their business, but concerns with security remain. https://bit.ly/3sUdh2n

Sami Fathi / MacRumors: Verizon and T-Mobile discontinue their iPad rebate programs, offered in partnership with Apple, following customer complaints  —  Verizon and T-Mobile have discontinued their iPad rebate program in partnership with Apple following widespread customer complaints that the program was ineffective, flawed, and rarely worked as intended. https://bit.ly/3sR6Rki

Financial Times: Chainalysis: users spent nearly $41B on NFTs in 2021, with https://bit.ly/3mQnKI6

Stephanie Yang / Wall Street Journal: The chip industry faces a recruitment gap, as plans for new fabs in the US will require an estimated 70K to 90K more workers by 2025 compared to 2020 levels  —  Limited supply of qualified workers poses challenge as facilities are built to bolster global supply of semiconductors https://bit.ly/3qHg0th

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: Microsoft releases an emergency fix for a Y2K22 bug in its FIP-FS anti-malware scanning engine that stops Exchange on-premise servers from delivering email  —  Microsoft has released an emergency fix for a year 2022 bug that is breaking email delivery on on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers. https://bit.ly/3qIayWX

Hartley Charlton / MacRumors: Kuo: second-generation AirPods Pro will have lossless audio support and a charging case that can emit a sound for location tracking purposes  —  Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro will feature support for Lossless audio and a charging case that can emit a sound for location tracking purposes, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. https://bit.ly/3HovMzG

Donie O'Sullivan / CNN: Twitter permanently suspends one of Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's accounts for repeated violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy  —  (CNN)Twitter has permanently suspended Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Twitter account @mtgreenee, the company confirmed to CNN Sunday morning. https://bit.ly/3JA484Y

Josh Ye / South China Morning Post: Report: Chinese regulators have not approved any new video games since July, resulting in about 140K gaming-related companies shutting down in the country  —  Regulators have not released a list of approved new video game titles since the end of July, marking the longest suspension since … https://bit.ly/3eOLHel

Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal: IDC estimates global desktop shipments rose 7% YoY in 2021 after dropping sharply in 2020, as some remote workers who started on laptops switched to desktops  —  Computing performance, screen size and price have proved to be the machine's enduring benefits  —  The desktop computer is making a comeback. https://bit.ly/3FH5Oal

David Shepardson / Reuters: US Transportation Secretary and head of FAA ask AT&T and Verizon to delay new 5G deployments, planned for January 5, over aviation safety concerns  —  U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday asked AT&T (T.N) … https://bit.ly/3JAObLw

Amitoj Singh / CoinDesk: Sources: tax authorities searched some of India's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges after detecting tax evasion of around $6M at Binance's WazirX  —  India's tax authorities have conducted searches at some of India's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges including “Coinswitch Kuber, CoinDCX … https://bit.ly/3FNvZMG

Jennifer Smith / Wall Street Journal: PitchBook: supply-chain tech startups raised $24.3B in venture funding in the first three quarters of 2021, 58% more than all of 2020  —  A flood of big money is pumping up valuations of logistics startups as global bottlenecks raise the profile of a once-overlooked sector https://bit.ly/3JK9ACr