Technology
- Palantir's revenue from US government contracts under Trump surpassed its total under Obama's second term, as sources describe staff debates about work with ICE (Washington Post)
- Krishna Bharat, who led the team that built Google News, returns to the company as a distinguished research scientist after a four-year hiatus (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
- Interviews with 36+ DOD and tech officials shed light on tech giants' fight for $10B Pentagon JEDI cloud contract using backdoor lobbying and an advisory board (ProPublica)
- DOJ says it has indicted 80 individuals, many based in Nigeria, as part of a massive business email scam and money laundering scheme (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- AT&T, Comcast, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and seven other US carriers announce an agreement with 51 attorneys general to implement new tech to block robocalls (Tony Romm/Washington Post)
- Bose announces the $349 Portable Home Speaker with WiFi and Bluetooth and support for Google Assistant, Alexa, AirPlay 2, and Spotify Connect (Chaim Gartenberg/The Verge)
- Overstock CEO Partick Byrne has resigned from the e-commerce company after his comments about being involved in a "Deep State" investigation of 2016 election (CNBC)
- Google is rolling out its face-grouping feature in Google Photos, first introduced in 2015, across Europe (Georgina Torbet/Engadget)
- Knotel, a WeWork rival that uses blockchain to make acquisition decisions, raises $400M Series C at a $1B+ valuation, bringing its total raised to $560M (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)
- A look at Oculus Insight, Facebook's technology that makes inside-out VR tracking on Oculus Quest and Rift S headsets possible (Facebook Technology)
- Shanghai-based The CareVoice, which is building an end-to-end mobile platform for insurers to integrate their existing solutions, raises $10M Series A (Catherine Shu/TechCrunch)
- Users whose accounts have been disabled by Facebook say the opaque review process, the endless wait, and the inability to contact an employee can be maddening (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)
- Samsung Galaxy Note10+ review: the screen is beautiful and handwriting recognition with S Pen is neat but software backslides into confusion and DeX is a mess (Dieter Bohn/The Verge)
- SpotHero, which allows users to buy and sell parking spaces, raises $50M Series D led by Macquarie Capital, bringing its total raised to $118M (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Google proposes new privacy and anti-fingerprinting controls aimed at making it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track users across the web (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- Remediant, which develops privileged account management software, raises $15M Series A led by Dell Technologies Capital and ForgePoint Capital (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Google stops using dessert-themed names for Android to better worldwide accessibility and names Android Q Android 10, refreshes Android brand logo and color (Sameer Samat/The Keyword)
- Assessing the impact of telecoms' poor privacy practices through the story of a woman stalked by a man who obtained her real-time location data from T-Mobile (Joseph Cox/VICE)
- Zenoti, which develops booking software for spas and salons, raises $20M from Steadview Capital, bringing its total raised to ~$100M (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Investigation reveals popular on-demand massage app Zeel repeatedly ignored therapists' complaints about sexual harassment and inappropriate client behavior (Brian Merchant/Gizmodo)
- Numbrs, an app that enables users to manage existing bank accounts in one place, raises $40M at a $1B+ valuation, bringing its total raised to ~$200M (Stephan Kahl/Bloomberg)
- Drop, which scans users' credit card purchases and offers personalized rewards, raises $44M Series B led by HOF Capital (Danny Crichton/TechCrunch)
- Amazon is bringing its online grocery store, Amazon Fresh, which will offer two-hour delivery, to India, starting with Bengaluru on August 23 (Alnoor Peermohamed/The Economic Times)
- The European Commission is planning regulation to impose strict limits on the use of facial recognition technology by companies and public authorities (Mehreen Khan/Financial Times)
- Sources: Apple is planning to launch Pro iPhones with three-sensor camera systems for better low-light photos and video recording, new iPads, larger MacBook Pro (Bloomberg)
- The definition of hacking under US federal law needs to evolve to account for new technological developments such as adversarial machine learning (Ryan Calo/OneZero)
- A snapshot of Amazon's financial history and why free cash flow, which Bezos called Amazon's "ultimate financial measure", is always higher than its profits (Rani Molla/Vox)
- Berlin-based Mister Spex, an online store selling various brands of prescription glasses and contact lenses, raises €65M for store and international expansion (Ana Wolsztajn/Tech.eu)
- Fitbit wins a Singapore government contract to provide fitness trackers for free for up to a million citizens who subscribe to the $10/month premium service (Christina Farr/CNBC)
- Wireless giant SoftBank Corp's brokerage unit, One Tap BUY, will allow individuals in Japan to participate in IPOs for as little as $10, starting next year (Takahiko Hyuga/Bloomberg)