Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Happy Friday

IBM faces a big leadership change, Apple’s new Maps app rolls out across the U.S. and a social media service exposes thousands of Instagram passwords. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 31, 2020.

Arvind Krishna will replace Ginni Rometty as IBM CEO in April

Krishna, IBM’s senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software, will take over on April 6 after a couple months of transition. Rometty will remain with the company as chairman of the board.

Krishna reportedly drove the massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat at the end of 2018, and there was some speculation at the time that Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst was the heir apparent. Instead, the board went with a more seasoned IBM insider for the job, while naming Whitehurst as president.

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Apple's redesigned Maps app is available across the US, adds real-time transit for Miami

The redesigned app will include more accurate information overall as well as comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and other public places. It will also bring Look Around to more cities and real-time transit to Miami.

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Social media boosting service exposed thousands of Instagram passwords

The company, Social Captain, says it helps thousands of users to grow their Instagram follower counts by connecting their accounts to its platform. But TechCrunch learned this week Social Captain was storing the passwords of linked Instagram accounts in unencrypted plaintext.

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Elon Musk just dropped an EDM track on SoundCloud

That is a real headline and I probably don’t need to say much else. Listen to the track, or don’t.

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Being a child actress prepared me for a career in venture capital

Crystal McKellar played Becky Slater on “The Wonder Years,” and she writes about how that experience prepared her to be a managing partner at Anathem Ventures. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Moda Operandi, an online marketplace for high-end fashion, raises $100M led by NEA and Apax

High-end fashion might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about online shopping, but it has actually been a ripe market for the e-commerce industry.

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Why Sony's PlayStation Vue failed

Vue launched in March 2015, offering live and on-demand content from more than 85 channels, including many local broadcast stations. But it failed to catch on with a broader audience, despite — or perhaps, because of — its integration with Sony's PS3 and PS4 devices, and it shut down this week. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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• Senior Data Center Infrastructure Engineer at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States)
• Senior Sales Engineer, Team Leader at Globalscape (San Antonio, TX, USA)
• Senior SAP Developer at Edward Don & Company (Woodridge, IL, USA)
• Senior Associate, HRIS at The Pew Charitable Trusts (Washington D.C., DC, USA)
• Web Product Manager at The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)

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Facebook hits 2.5B users in Q4 but shares sink from slow profits

In its latest quarterly earnings report, Facebook said it now reaches 2.5 billion monthly users, up 2% from Q3 2019. And it brought in $21.08 billion in revenue, up 25% year-over-year.

But profits aren’t growing as quickly as Wall Street would like. One big source of those expenses? Headcount grew 26% year-over-year to 44,942, and Facebook now has over 1,000 engineers working on privacy.

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Avast shuts down marketing analytics subsidiary Jumpshot amid controversy over selling user data

It was recently revealed that the Czech-based cybersecurity specialist was cultivating another controversial revenue stream: harvesting and selling user data, some of it amassed by way of its security tools.

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Bring the 4th LVMH Innovation Award home

Sponsored by LVMH

The world's #1 Luxury Group is looking for the most disruptive startups dedicated to "Crafting the Customer Experience of Tomorrow". The 30 finalists will get to showcase their solutions at the VivaTech event in Paris, France, June 11-13, 2020. Apply now.

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Study of YouTube comments finds evidence of radicalization effect

The study, carried out by researchers at Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, found evidence that users who engaged with “Alt-lite”/”Intellectual Dark Web” right-wing content migrated to commenting on the most fringe far-right content.

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Microsoft shares rise after it beats revenue, profit expectations, Azure posts 62% growth

Microsoft reported its fiscal 2020 second quarter (calendar Q4 2019) results yesterday, including revenue of $36.9 billion (up 14%), net income of $11.6 billion (up 38%) and diluted earnings per share of $1.51.

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Snapchat launches Bitmoji TV: zany 4-min cartoons of your avatar

Snapchat is betting that narcissism will drive viewership for its new weekly videos that put you and your friends' customizable Bitmoji avatars into a flurry of silly animated situations. Bitmoji TV will premiere on Saturday morning.

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Practice Fusion, once backed by top VCs, pushed doctors to prescribe opioids in kickback scheme

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Practice Fusion solicited and received pay from an (unnamed for now) major opioid company in exchange for using its EHR software to influence doctors in the act of prescribing opioid pain medications.

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Where top VCs are investing in travel, tourism and hospitality tech

To get a temperature check on the state of the travel market, the outlook for fundraising and which sub-sectors might present the most attractive opportunities for startups today, we asked five leading VCs at firms spanning early to growth stages to share what's exciting them most and where they see opportunity in travel, tourism and hospitality tech. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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• Senior SAP Developer at Edward Don & Company (Woodridge, IL, USA)
• Senior Associate, HRIS at The Pew Charitable Trusts (Washington D.C., DC, USA)
• Web Product Manager at The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
• Principal Associate, Systems Engineering at The Pew Charitable Trusts (Washington D.C., DC, USA)
• Test Analyst at Globalscape (San Antonio, TX, USA)

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Happy Wednesday

Apple reports better-than-expected earnings, SpaceX launches another batch of satellites and a mobile messaging startup raises $70 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 29, 2020.

Apple shares rise after company reports better-than-expected revenue of $91.8B

Apple has worked in recent years to lessen its dependence on the iPhone, in part through services and smaller electronics. This is doubly true as the company posted a year-over-year decline in Mac revenue.

In its latest earnings report, the company highlighted its smaller-device and home category, with CEO Tim Cook saying his company posted "all-time records for Services and Wearables."

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Onboarding, customer service, engagement and retention: Infobip does it all

Sponsored by Infobip

In the age of digital connectedness, consumers expect efficient and personalized interactions with brands. First impressions matter. Infobip has an in-house cloud communications platform designed for companies with consumer-facing needs.

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SpaceX successfully launches 60 more satellites for its Starlink satellite internet constellation

SpaceX has launched yet another batch of 60 Starlink satellites — its third production batch of the orbital communication spacecraft, and its second batch this year alone. After the last batch went up in early January, SpaceX became the largest private satellite operator in the world, and now it's just extending its lead.

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Mobile messaging startup Attentive raises another $70M

It’s been less than six months since Attentive raised a $40 million Series B. CEO Brian Long told me that he wasn't planning to raise money again so soon, but things were going even better than expected, with a client list that has grown to more than 750 businesses.

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For alternative meat manufacturer Beyond Meat, fast food chains giveth and taketh away

On the same day that the Tim Horton's restaurant chain is dropping Beyond Meat products from its menus, Beyond Meat and KFC announced the expansion of a pilot run at new stores in Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte, N.C. and across Kentucky.

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A conversation with 'the most ambitious female VC in Europe'

We talk to Ophelia Brown, whose Blossom Capital just raised a new $185 million fund. The interview covers topics like her investment thesis, why Europe is at an "inflection point," diversity in the investor community and the increasing money coming into Europe from American VCs. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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No pan-EU Huawei ban as Commission endorses 5G risk mitigation plan

The move is another blow for the Trump administration’s efforts to demolish trust in Chinese-made technology, with the U.K. government also announcing yesterday that it would not be banning so-called "high risk" providers from supplying 5G networks.

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Kenshō Healthcare publicly launches its 'antithesis of Goop'

While Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand startup serves up a heady mix of unverified pseudo-scientific claims alongside long-standing holistic practices, the founders of Kenshō Healthcare say they’re focused on the verified and verifiable claims coming out of the medical community.

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• Test Analyst at Globalscape (San Antonio, TX, USA)
• Senior Software Engineer at Proton AI (Cambridge, MA, USA)
• Senior Full Stack Developer (PHP) at University of Maryland (College Park, MD, USA)
• Marketing Specialist at Globalscape (San Antonio, TX, USA)
• Associate Director, Growth Marketing at Axios (New York, NY, USA)

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