Technology
- Fractal Analytics, which helps enterprises make decisions by using machine-learning algorithms, raises $200M from private equity firm Apax (Ryan Browne/CNBC)
- Veeam, which specializes in on-premises backup and recovery software for enterprises, raises $500M led by Insight Venture Partners (Larry Dignan/ZDNet)
- Fiserve is buying payments giant First Data in a $22B all-stock deal; Fiserve's CEO Jeffery Yabuki will become CEO of the combined entity (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- Bold Commerce, which builds apps for e-commerce platforms like Shopify, raises $22M Series A led by Whitecap Venture Partners and Round13 Capital (Douglas Soltys/BetaKit)
- A look at International Revenue Share Fraud, which centers on schemes exploiting premium phone numbers, as IRSF losses to telcos and consumers reach $4B-$6.1B (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
- Study finds that the top one percent of bug hunters found on average ~0.87 bugs per month, earning an average yearly salary of ~$34K (Trent Brunson/Trail of Bits Blog)
- How Facebook's #10YearChallenge meme generated a large data set of curated photos that could be used to train a facial recognition algorithm on aging (Kate O'Neill/Wired)
- CES 2019 was awash with devices supporting multiple voice assistant platforms, which shows the voice assistant ecosystem may never be a winner-take-all market (Bob O'Donnell/Tech.pinions)
- Summary of the first six days of the FTC vs Qualcomm trial, which saw witnesses from Apple, other companies, and IP experts from consultancies and universities (Shara Tibken/CNET)
- Tencent's Q3 profits grew 30% YoY on investment gains, offsetting slower growth in its gaming business; research: Tencent made 163+ investment deals in 2018 (Celia Chen/South China Morning Post)
- Roku says it is removing two Infowars channels on its platform after criticism from users and a rebuke from some Sandy Hook families (Rachel Yang/Variety)
- Data from Portland's 4-month scooter program, which capped the number of scooters to ~2K and recorded 700K+ rides, shows scooters often replaced short car trips (Kate Conger/New York Times)
- Sources: Bytedance reached the lower end of its ~$7.4B to ~$8.1B revenue target for 2018, the first time in years it hasn't beaten its forecast (Bloomberg)
- Evan Spiegel says Snap CFO Tim Stone, who joined the company from Amazon eight months ago, has resigned but will remain until February 5 to help with transition (Heather Kelly/CNN)
- Roku says it is removing two Infowars channels on its platform after criticism from users and a rebuke from some Sandy Hook families (Oliver Darcy/@oliverdarcy)
- Sources: PagerDuty, which makes performance monitoring tools for developers, has filed confidentially for an IPO; it was valued at more than $1B in September (Bloomberg)
- Nielsen: US homes receiving over-the-air broadcast channels without a traditional cable or satellite TV subscription increased 48% to 16M over the past 8 years (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- Researcher finds that Voipo, a communications provider based in Lake Forest, CA, left a server with millions of call logs, texts, and more exposed for months (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- YouTube updates its policies, says it prohibits harmful and dangerous challenges and pranks following stunts like the Bird Box and Tide Pod challenges (Julia Alexander/The Verge)
- AWS acquired TSO Logic, a Vancouver startup that helps customers determine how much it would cost to run their workloads in the cloud, on Dec. 22, 2018 (Tom Krazit/GeekWire)
- Ethereum's long-anticipated Constantinople fork has been delayed after an audit firm discovered a critical flaw in one of the planned changes (CoinDesk)
- SEC filing: Snap CFO Tim Stone, who joined from Amazon in May 2018, will resign, but his last day has not been determined; Snap's stock down 6%+ after hours (CNBC)
- Google says it has started rolling out Material Design to Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites on the web (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- Twitter launches the reverse-chronological feed as an option on Android (Dami Lee/The Verge)
- In statement regarding allowing Infowars on its platform, Roku says it does not censor based on viewpoint and it is not aware of Infowars violating its policies (Janko Roettgers/Variety)
- Apple launches $129 battery cases with Qi charging support for iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max (Juli Clover/MacRumors)
- Workforce management software provider Quinyx, whose customers include McDonalds, London City Airport, and Burger King, raises $25M and says it has ~500K users (Robin Wauters/Tech.eu)
- Investigation finds ads on Instagram for several services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
- The New York Times says it plans to build custom Alexa skills for advertisers for six figures through its 175-person branded content studio (Sara Fischer/Axios)
- Roku explains why it allowed Infowars on its platform (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)