Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

President Trump follows through on his threat to challenge the legal protections enjoyed by social media and internet companies, Magic Leap’s CEO is stepping down and China sees its biggest autonomous driving round yet.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 29, 2020.

Trump signs an executive order taking direct aim at social media companies

Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content. Next, we’ll almost certainly see a court battle over whether the order is legal and enforceable.

While Trump and Attorney General William Barr have expressed interest in undermining Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act before, this week’s action was prompted by Twitter’s decision to add a fact-checking link to the president’s tweet about voting by mail. That conflict isn’t going away either, with Twitter adding a “public interest notice” to another of Trump’s tweets for glorifying violence.

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Text messaging – the new driving force behind e-commerce sales

Sponsored by Attentive

Text messaging has quickly become a top revenue channel for brands who want to connect with mobile shoppers. See how 8 leading brands use SMS to engage subscribers, boost sales and increase brand awareness.

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Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz is out

Magic Leap founder and CEO Rony Abrovitz announced that the company has secured a new bout of funding — but that Magic will be attempting a major turnaround without him at the helm.

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SoftBank led $500M investment in Didi in China's biggest autonomous driving round

As China's largest ride-hailing provider with mountains of traffic data, Didi clearly has an upper hand in developing robotaxis, which could help address driver shortages in the long term. But it was relatively late to the field.

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Cisco to acquire internet monitoring solution ThousandEyes

Cisco's Todd Nightingale, writing in a blog post announcing the deal, said that the kind of data that ThousandEyes provides around internet user experience is more important than ever as internet connections have come under tremendous pressure.

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Fintech regulations in Latin America could fuel growth or freeze out startups

Promoteo co-founder Ximena Aleman looks at what impact regulation has had so far in Latin America, and what needs to happen to strike a balance between sector growth and public trust. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Uber UK launches Work Hub for drivers to find other gig jobs during COVID-19

The ride-hailing giant rolled out a similar feature in the U.S. back in April, offering drivers the ability to respond to job postings from around a dozen other companies, as well as the ability to receive orders through other Uber units: Eats, Freight and Works.

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Join us June 3 for a contact-tracing and exposure-notification app development and deployment forum

We’re working with the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, as well as Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, NYU's Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Betaworks Studios and Hangar. We'll be playing host to their live-streamed discussion around contact-tracing and exposure-notification applications, including demonstrations of some of the cutting-edge products that will be available in the U.S. to tackle these challenging, but crucial, tasks.

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• Senior Systems & Network Administrator at New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology (Socorro, NM, USA)
• Full Stack Developer at The Wally Shop (Anywhere)
• Director, Web Development at Unbridled (Denver, CO, USA)
• Senior Enterprise Application Analyst at Local Government Federal Credit Union (Raleigh, NC, USA)
• Growth Marketer for Rapidly Growing SaaS Company at Simplero (Anywhere)

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Tensions escalate between President Trump and his favorite social media platform, Google and Microsoft considering investing in the Indian telecom market and the Raspberry Pi foundation announces a new Raspberry Pi.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 28, 2020.

Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump's false voting claims

After Twitter flagged a pair of President Trump's tweets with a fact-checking label on Tuesday, White House officials denounced a specific Twitter employee and said that the president will soon sign an executive order “pertaining to social media.”

Meanwhile, in a series of tweets, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resisted the idea that the platform is becoming an “arbiter of truth” and instead said, “Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves.” He also said, “There is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me. Please leave our employees out of this.”

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Free report: 5 Key Areas for Tech Leaders to Watch in 2020

Sponsored by O'Reilly

The annual analysis of O'Reilly online learning reveals some interesting insights into what you need to know in the year ahead—including Python's continued dominance and important shifts in infrastructure, AI/ML, cloud and security. Read a thorough breakdown of it in this free report.

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Google and Microsoft reportedly considering stakes in telecom firms in India after Facebook deal

Weeks after Facebook acquired a 9.9% stake in India's Reliance Jio Platforms, two more American firms are reportedly interested in the Indian telecom market. Google is considering buying a stake of about 5% in Vodafone Idea, the second largest telecom operator in India, according to Financial Times. Separately, Microsoft is in talks to invest up to $2 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, Indian newspaper Mint reported Friday.

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Raspberry Pi Foundation announces Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM

As always, you get a single-board computer that is the size of a deck of cards. It has an ARM-based CPU, many ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a big community of computer enthusiasts. The 8GB model costs $75, which makes it the most expensive Raspberry Pi out there.

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Providing card services to fintech companies around the world gives Marqeta a $4.3 billion valuation

This could have been Marqeta's year to list as a public company on a major American stock exchange. Instead, in the wake of an American economy pushed over the edge by a global pandemic, the company has turned to an undisclosed financial services firm for another $150 million in equity funding.

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Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg shares his COVID-19 strategy and tactics

Hans Vestberg, CEO of TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon, joined us for an episode of Extra Crunch Live. In our discussion, he spoke about how he's managing the organization during this global crisis, his thoughts on work-from-home, acquisition strategy and the ways in which 5G will change the way we work and live. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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SpaceX's first astronaut launch is scrubbed due to weather – next attempt set for Saturday

SpaceX and NASA made the call to scrub the launch since there were a couple of weather issues that prevented the attempt from taking place. The next window for the launch is Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 PM EDT.

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Netflix, Disney+ or HBO Max? The best streaming service for your watching habits

Don’t waste any time arguing! These recommendations are 100% objectively correct.

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• Senior Systems & Network Administrator at New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology (Socorro, NM, USA)
• Full Stack Developer at The Wally Shop (Anywhere)
• Director, Web Development at Unbridled (Denver, CO, USA)
• Senior Enterprise Application Analyst at Local Government Federal Credit Union (Raleigh, NC, USA)
• Growth Marketer for Rapidly Growing SaaS Company at Simplero (Anywhere)

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WarnerMedia unveils its new streaming service, Donald Trump is mad at Twitter and GE Lighting has a new owner.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 27, 2020.

HBO Max launches today, here's what you need to know

At $14.99 per month, the service — initially available to subscribers in the United States — is more expensive than competing offerings like Netflix and Disney+. But from another angle, it's still a pretty sweet deal, since you're getting HBO, plus a whole bunch of extra content, for the exact same price as an HBO subscription.

Subscribers to HBO's standalone streaming service HBO Now should be able to update their app to HBO Max today. The app is currently available for a range of devices including Android phones and tablets, Android TV, Apple TV, Chromebooks, Chromecasts, iPhones, iPads, PlayStation 4, Samsung TV and Xbox One — but not yet for Roku or Fire TV.

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Stay connected to your customers with Zendesk

Sponsored by Zendesk for Startups

Get a taste of customer satisfaction with the right support solution. Apply to the Zendesk for Startups program and try our products free for 6 months, along with expert advice and hands-on support to get up and running in no time.

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After Twitter fact-check, Trump threatens to regulate or close down social media platforms

After Twitter added a fact-checking warning label to the president’s misleading tweet about mail-in ballots, Donald Trump took to the platform to denounce it. In what may be his strongest words yet against a service that has largely given him free rein, he tweeted, “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

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Smart home company Savant set to acquire GE Lighting

The division has existed as part of General Electric since 1911, with its origins reaching back even further to Thomas Edison's work in the space. Today the GE Lighting portfolio still largely revolves around bulbs, but it’s also the home to C by GE, a series of smart home products.

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Google removes millions of negative TikTok reviews amid backlash in India

Hashtags such as BanTikTok, DeleteTikTok and BlockTikTok have trended on Twitter in India in the past three weeks after users unearthed recent videos that appeared to promote domestic violence, animal cruelty, racism, child abuse and objectification of women.

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What should startup founders know before negotiating with corporate VCs?

For startups, taking funding from corporate venture capitalists can come with many benefits, including new opportunities for marketing, partnerships and sales channels. Still, no founder should consider a corporate investor "just another VC." CVCs come with their own set of priorities, strategic objectives and rules. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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How do several local news stations air virtually identical Amazon COVID-19 segments?

The company has been on the offensive in recent weeks when it comes to how it has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon's offered all sorts of blog posts, public statements and made the subject a centerpiece of its recent shareholder letter and earnings report. It also went ahead and uploaded a suggested news segment to BusinessWire, complete with warehouse footage and a script for news anchors.

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YouTube Kids app is now available for Apple TV

YouTube Kids is meant to give children a safer alternative to YouTube, where even Restricted Mode can let through violent content and other things parents and caretakers don't want kids to see.

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• Full Stack Developer at The Wally Shop (Anywhere)
• Director, Web Development at Unbridled (Denver, CO, USA)
• Senior Enterprise Application Analyst at Local Government Federal Credit Union (Raleigh, NC, USA)
• Growth Marketer for Rapidly Growing SaaS Company at Simplero (Anywhere)
• Digital Ads Associate at PLUS Communications (Arlington, VA, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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