Technology
- Uber and GM's Cruise open source their self-driving car visualization software, a rare move in the hyper-competitive autonomous world (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)
- Strategy Analytics: in Q4 2018, shipments of smart speakers grew 95% from 22.6M units in Q3 to 38.5M units, with Amazon shipping 13.7M units and Google 11.5M (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- For YouTube, curbing misinformation on its platform may mean punishing some of its stars, a step it's not shown it can broadly take, despite recent policy shift (Kevin Roose/New York Times)
- House Committee on Energy and Commerce asks in open letter whether Facebook users were misled about what personal data could be leaked by joining closed groups (Colin Lecher/The Verge)
- Hands-on with Varjo VR-1 headset, out now for $6K with $995/year service fee, which uses 3,000 pixel/inch resolution and dual screens to fix "screen door" issue (Peter Bright/Ars Technica)
- YouTube updates community guidelines with a new system for rule-breaking channels, which now get a consequence-free, one-time warning for their first violation (Chaim Gartenberg/The Verge)
- Google announces plans to acquire cloud migration startup Alooma, which has raised around $15M to date (Lauren Feiner/CNBC)
- Loom, which equips enterprises with instant video messaging tools, raises $11M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, says it's signed up 1.1M users from 18,000 firms (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
- Samsung's One UI is thoughtfully designed and the best software Samsung's ever put on a smartphone, but getting major software updates quickly is still doubtful (Dieter Bohn/The Verge)
- Walmart reports US e-commerce sales rose 43% YoY in Q4, thanks to its growing online grocery business, including the expansion of grocery pickups and deliveries (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- SendBird, which helps developers integrate chat and messaging features in their apps, raises $52M Series B led by Iconiq Capital (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)
- Palo Alto Networks is buying Demisto, an Israeli firm that provides an automated incident response platform, for ~$560M; Demisto had raised $69M to date (Shoshanna Solomon/The Times of Israel)
- Twitter expands its policy for political ad transparency to the EU, India, and Australia, will show billing information, ad spend, impressions per tweet, more (Twitter)
- Redis Labs, which offers commercial services around the Redis in-memory data store, raises $60M Series E led by private equity firm Francisco Partners (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- Sources: Bitmain posts a net loss of ~$500M in the third quarter of 2018; the company had disclosed profits of $1B in the first half of 2018 (Wolfie Zhao/CoinDesk)
- NsKnox, which provides real-time payment fraud detection services, raises $15M Series A co-led by Viola Ventures and Microsoft's M12 (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Coinbase buys Neutrino, which helps monitor, analyze, and track cryptocurrency flows, for an undisclosed sum (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)
- Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon X55, its second generation 5G modem, with a maximum download speed of 7 Gbps, up 40% from the X50's 5 Gbps (Jon Porter/The Verge)
- Q&A with Chris Lattner, developer of Swift, on its origins and evolution, the original team, Craig Federighi, and community feedback (Ole Begemann)
- Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei says there is "no way the US can crush us" and that "our company will never undertake any spying activities" (BBC)
- Q&A with Amazon Studios Chief Jennifer Salke on her content acquisition strategy, potentially broadcasting a ceremony such as the Oscars one day, and more (Rebecca Keegan/Hollywood Reporter)
- As emoji become a critical part of communication, unprepared courts are increasingly having to interpret their myriad meanings in criminal cases (Dami Lee/The Verge)
- A deep dive on the widespread and ongoing DNS hijacking attacks, which the DHS issued an emergency directive about last month (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)
- The Pentagon needs Silicon Valley's brightest minds to work on AI but struggles to attract them because of job instability, poor compensation, and more (Amy Webb/Wired)
- Sources: Saudi Arabia PIF and Mubadala, the biggest outside investors in SoftBank's Vision Fund, have complained about high valuations paid for tech companies (Wall Street Journal)
- Google publishes 30-page paper on how it combats disinformation across YouTube, Search, News, Ads: product improvements, experience with spam, context for users (Abner Li/9to5Google)
- Berlin-based Mambu raises €30M Series C for its SaaS banking platform used by banking and financial services startups, such as N26 and OakNorth, in 50 countries (Mary Loritz/EU-Startups)
- Code and imagery found in Instagram's Android app reveal Fundraiser stickers for Instagram Stories; Facebook says they are coming later this year (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
- Behind the scenes at Mithril Capital, Peter Thiel's other fund, primarily run by Ajay Royan, which sources describe as an investment firm in disarray (Theodore Schleifer/Recode)
- Voicebot: the number of Google Assistant Actions in the US reached 4,253 in January 2019, up 2.5X YoY, trailing Amazon, which has touted 56,750 US Alexa skills (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)