Thursday, September 10, 2020
Redmi Note 9 Pro, Mi TV 4A Horizon Edition (32-Inch) to Go on Sale Today
Fortnite Creator Epic Games Says Players Can Use Apple Sign-In System
Trump Says There Will Be No Extension of TikTok Sale Deadline
Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro’s flash sale via Amazon at 12pm today: Price and specs
Twitter expands misinformation rules ahead of U.S. election
NGOs urge Facebook to ensure fair audit of India content issue
Trump vows not to extend TikTok deadline beyond September 15
Enlarge / Trump speaks at Andrews Air Force Base on September 10, 2020, before boarding a flight for a campaign rally in Michigan. (credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, is facing a looming September 15 deadline to sell its US operations or have them shut down by the Trump administration. On Thursday evening, President Trump told reporters that the deadline wouldn't be pushed back.
"We'll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it'll be sold," Trump said just before boarding a flight to Michigan. "I'm not extending deadlines. No. It's September 15. There will be no extension of the TikTok deadline."
Reports indicate that both Microsoft and Oracle have made offers for ByteDance's US operations. The problem is that the companies may not be able to appease the conflicting demands of the US and Chinese governments.
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Anduril launches a smarter drone and picks up more money to build a virtual border wall
The company building the virtual border wall has a new version of its stealthy fast-flying drones — and a fresh contract with Customs and Border Protection to match. Anduril, a young defense-friendly tech company from the founder of Oculus, received $36 million from Customs and Border Protection this month for its AI-powered autonomous surveillance towers.
Anduril has flourished over the course of its short Trump-era lifespan, attracting surprising interest from defense agencies considering that the company has only existed for three years. In July, CBP awarded Anduril $25 million for a previous set of surveillance towers. The agency plans to implement 200 towers by 2022 in an ongoing relationship with the contractor worth more than $200 million.
The unusual company is iterating on its hardware innovations quickly, which makes sense for a company founded by Palmer Luckey, the controversial figure who spearheaded consumer VR through Oculus. Luckey, a big Trump booster in tech, attracted plenty of talent from the now Facebook-owned VR company when he struck out with his new venture. The company has also collected a number of former employees from Peter Thiel-founded Palantir, which grew its own federal contract business and is in the process of going public.
While the company kept completely quiet in its early launch days, it’s opened up about its drone capabilities in particular over the last year. Anduril previously did a press push around the launch of a counter-UAS drone it calls “Anvil” that can identify a target and knock it out of the sky. (The company would prefer if you don’t call them “attack drones.”) Now, Anduril is launching the fourth iteration of its small, ultra-quiet “Ghost” drones, adding some key features.
Ghost drones are capable of staying aloft for long stretches and communicating what they sees to a central AI-powered nervous system. They combine data with Anduril’s sentry towers and any other hardware, relaying it back to the company’s Lattice software platform, which flags anything of interest. In the case of CBP, that looks like a system autonomously identifying someone crossing U.S. border and sending a push alert to border agents.
Ghost 4 is the latest version of the Ghost drone, boasting 100 minutes of flight time and a “near-silent acoustic signature” that makes it difficult to detect. The Ghost 4 drones now apparently pack Anduril’s Lattice AI software on board, which allows them to operate and identify potential targets in spots with low connectivity or “contested” areas. The new version of the Ghost drone also allows one operator to command a group of Ghost drones to form a swarm, collecting data across many devices.
According to the company, the Ghost 4 is designed for an array of mission types, including “aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cargo delivery, counter intrusion, signal intelligence and electronic warfare.” With the system’s modular, customizable design, Anduril continues to cast a wide net, though for now it’s mostly won contracts for perimeter and border surveillance.
The company began its work with CBP through pilot programs in Texas and San Diego starting in 2018. By the following year, Anduril had formalized its relationship on the U.S. southern border, with a number of its sentry towers operating in CBP’s San Diego sector, an order for more in Texas and a new pilot program testing a cold weather variation of its hardware at northern border sites in Montana and Vermont.
In July, Anduril announced that it had raised $200 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Thiel’s Founders Fund, bringing its valuation to around $2 billion three years in. “We founded Anduril because we believe there is value in Silicon Valley technology companies partnering with the Department of Defense,” Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf said at the time.
The Department of Defense was exploring use cases with a previous version of the Ghost drone, and it’s clear the company would like to expand that nascent business. It’s not that far off: Anduril landed a $13.5 million contract last year to surround Marine Corps bases in Arizona, Japan and Hawaii with a “virtual ‘digital fortress'” and has recruited talent specifically to liaise with the military. Now that the company’s work is established as a line item in the homeland security budget, the door is open for Anduril to seal the deal on even more lucrative defense work.
India's Times Internet reports 67B page views, up from 47B last year, says it has 557M MAUs and 111M+ DAUs, with MX Player at 200M+ MAUs and Gaana at 185M MAUs (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
India's Times Internet reports 67B page views, up from 47B last year, says it has 557M MAUs and 111M+ DAUs, with MX Player at 200M+ MAUs and Gaana at 185M MAUs — Times Internet said on Thursday it reaches more than 557 million active users in India each month and over 111 million users …
Report: One of Social Capital’s newest blank-check companies is looking to reverse merge with Opendoor
Some people may have slowed down in 2020, amid a pandemic that has shut down much of the world. Not Chamath Palihapitiya.
According to a new report in Bloomberg, Opendoor, the San Francisco-based company that aims to help people buy and sell homes with the “push of a button,” is in advanced talks to go public through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. II.
The outlet says the blank-check company, which raised $360 million in April and is led by Palihapitiya, is “discussing raising fresh equity to help fund the transaction with prospective investors” and that the combined company would be valued at around $5 billion in the deal.
It adds that nothing has been finalized and that the deal could still fall apart.
We reached out to both Opendoor CEO Eric Wu and to Palihapitiya for comment. An Opendoor spokeswoman said the company has no comment; we have yet to hear back from Palihapitiya but will update this story if we do.
Assuming the deal is fairly far along, and at a $5 billion valuation, one could see the appeal for Opendoor, which was last valued by private investors at $3.8 billion and which, like many other venture-backed outfits, has had a topsy turvy 2020.
In April, it laid off 600 employees, or 35% of workforce at the time, citing the “unforeseen impact on public health, the U.S. economy, and housing,” prompted by COVID-19.
In recent months, however, home sales around the country have been brisk, spurred by low mortgage rates and a heightened appetite for more space, particularly outside of crowded cities.
According to a late-August report by the National Association of Realtors, U.S. home sales rose an unprecedented 24.7% in July, up 8.7% from the same time last year. Home sales rose 20.7% in June, too (which was a record at the time).
Opendoor is also a brand that many retail investors already know and can easily understand. In fact, its consumer appeal isn’t so unlike that of the space tourism company Virgin Galactic, which Palihapitiya’s first blank-check company ultimately went on to acquire after it raised $600 million in 2017.
The combined outfit went public last October with a $2.3 billion market capitalization; its market cap is now above $4 billion.
As for what Palihapitiya might do with a third special purpose acquisition vehicle — it raised $720 million, also in April of this year — stay tuned. The company has said it will use those IPO proceeds to buy a company in the tech sector, primarily outside of the United States.
In the meantime, Palihapitiya is separately investing in Desktop Metal, a Burlington, Ma., company set to go public via a separate SPAC. Specifically, Desktop disclosed plans last week to list on the New York Stock Exchange by merging with Trine Acquisition Corp, a blank check company that raised $261 million in March of last year.
Palihapitiya helped lead a $275 million PIPE (for private investment in a public equity) investment to finance the deal.
Replicant, a customer service platform that uses text-based chatbots and AI assistants to help human reps, raises $27M Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners (Kenrick Cai/Forbes)
Replicant, a customer service platform that uses text-based chatbots and AI assistants to help human reps, raises $27M Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners — Hundreds of millions of consumers use voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa or Apple's Siri for simple tasks in their daily lives.
Times Internet revenues up 24% to Rs 1,625 crore in FY20
Coin Metrics: Coinbase-backed stablecoin USDC's supply has grown more than 250% this year to reach $1.8B, while Binance's BUSD offerings grew 725% to $255M (Alexander Behrens/Decrypt)
Coin Metrics: Coinbase-backed stablecoin USDC's supply has grown more than 250% this year to reach $1.8B, while Binance's BUSD offerings grew 725% to $255M — Supply of USDC, the Coinbase-backed stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, has grown 80% since July and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Trump says there will be no extension of TikTok deadline
Taiwan's National Security Bureau says daily average cyberattacks on government departments doubled in 2024 vs. 2023 to 2.4M, mostly from Chinese cyber forces (Yimou Lee/Reuters)
Yimou Lee / Reuters : Taiwan's National Security Bureau says daily average cyberattacks on government departments doubled in 2024 vs....
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Lorena O'Neil / Rolling Stone : A look at the years of warnings about AI from researchers, including several women of color, who say ...
