Technology
- Microsoft launches public preview of Azure Bastion, a service for remotely accessing virtual machines more securely (Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet)
- The Facebook-backed Libra Association contains no major banks in its initially announced group of partners (Mike Dudas/The Block)
- In watchOS 6, many built-in apps will have their own App Store listings, letting Apple Watch users delete and redownload some currently unremovable apps (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- Microsoft and Salesforce have joined the Hyperledger blockchain consortium, an umbrella project for various business blockchains run by the Linux Foundation (Anna Baydakova/CoinDesk)
- YouTube unveils AR Beauty Try-On, which lets viewers virtually try on makeup while watching beauty tutorials, currently in testing, coming in summer (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- GitHub acquires code review company Pull Panda, makes subscriptions free for Pull Reminders and two other services but will discontinue enterprise subscriptions (Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet)
- While Facebook's Libra plays at decentralization, it is still entrenched in Facebook, and using it means trusting Facebook, which is a hard sell in 2019 (Russell Brandom/The Verge)
- Food ordering app EatStreet discloses breach; hacker Gnosticplayers, who has stolen 1B+ user records from 45 companies this year, claims 6M+ were from EatStreet (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
- Sources: Samsung will launch the Galaxy Note 10 on August 7 at an Unpacked event in New York City (Shara Tibken/CNET)
- Inside Facebook's ambitious plan to make Libra accepted as a global currency, especially for those underserved by banks, despite Facebook's tarnished reputation (Wired)
- Paris-based Meero says it has raised $230M for its AI-driven photography platform, giving it a $1B+ valuation; it raised $45M in July and has raised $300M total (Chris O'Brien/VentureBeat)
- Chair of the House Financial Services Committee says Facebook should halt development of Libra until Congress investigates, calls on Facebook execs to testify (Makena Kelly/The Verge)
- Google's Safe Browsing service gets its own Chrome extension, which notifies users of deceptive URLs and lets users report suspicious sites (Emil Protalinski/VentureBeat)
- In response to claims Google lifted lyrics from Genius, Google has asked its lyrics partner to investigate, will soon include 3rd-party attribution on lyrics (Corinne Reichert/CNET)
- Adobe beats with Q2 revenue of $2.74B, up 25% YoY, and Digital Media revenue, which includes Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, of $1.89B, up 22% YoY (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
- Mozilla patches a Firefox zero-day exploit that was discovered by Google's Project Zero and Coinbase's security teams, and it says was being abused in the wild (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
- Sources: Dish may make a $6B+ deal this week for T-Mobile and Sprint assets including spectrum and Sprint's Boost Mobile as the carriers try to get DOJ approval (Bloomberg)
- GoTenna, a mobile mesh networking platform using long range, low bandwidth radio frequencies, raises $24M Series C led by Founders Fund (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)
- Hazelcast, which is developing a speedy in-memory computing platform, raises $21M Series C led by new investor C5 Capital (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- California has teamed up with startups Mindstrong and 7 Cups to help mentally ill patients before and during crises, putting $100M over 5 years toward the cause (Benedict Carey/New York Times)
- CEO of parenting support app Cleo, which raised its $27.5M Series B in May, has resigned after it came to light that her resume contained falsehoods (Biz Carson/Forbes)
- Google says it will help build 20,000 homes in the Bay Area over the next ten years by putting $1B toward the goal, repurposing some of its land as residential (The Keyword)
- Apple adds a feature in iOS 13 beta 2 that tells users about ongoing subscriptions for apps they are about to delete (Jon Porter/The Verge)
- An in-depth first look at Facebook's new Libra cryptocurrency, due to be rolled out in the next 18 months, and its impact on the broader crypto ecosystem (Binance Info)
- MongoDB announces Atlas Data Lake, which lets users query data of any format, and gives its newly-acquired mobile database, Realm, Atlas cloud sync integration (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- French Finance Minister calls on the Group of Seven central bank governors to review Facebook's Libra, citing concerns it may become a "sovereign currency" (Alastair Marsh/Bloomberg)
- Amazon leases 15 more Boeing planes to expand its air cargo network by more than a quarter to 70 planes by 2021 (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)
- Optimizely, which offers tools for A/B testing and personalization on the web and in mobile apps, raises $50M Series D led by Goldman Sachs Private Capital (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- Token, an open banking and digital money platform that enables lower cost instant payments, raises $16.5M from Opera Tech Ventures, Octopus Ventures, others (FinSMEs)
- Amazon's Twitch has acquired social networking platform Bebo, source says for $25M, to bolster its esports business (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)