Stephen Warwick / iMore:Some M1 Mac owners report a worryingly large number of writes to their Macs’ SSDs, though in some cases it could be explained by faulty monitoring tools — “If this is accurate, some of these machines aren’t going to last half a year” … There are numerous reports from M1 Mac users…
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Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:Quill, a messaging app that raised its Index Ventures-led $12.5M Series A in 2019, quietly comes out of stealth to take on Slack — Slack took the workplace communications landscape by storm after it launched its integration-friendly, GIF-tastic chat platform in 2013.
The Information:Source: ~40%, or 40M, of Disney+ subscribers are in the US, and Disney has said 30% are in India, so Europe and LatAm seem to make up less than a third of subs — Disney’s flagship video-streaming service, Disney+, has quickly emerged as the only true competitor to Netflix …
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:Filing: Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116M to the financing event — Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116 million to the financing event, upping the round’s most recent total to $367 million, according to…
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Mathieu Rosemain / Reuters:A 93-page report from French antitrust investigators says Google breached government orders on how to negotiate with news publishers over copyright — PARIS (Reuters) – French antitrust investigators have accused Google of failing to comply with the state competition authority’s orders …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:Akamai finds a botnet using bitcoin transactions to put its control server’s IP address on the blockchain, making it basically impossible to fully take down — Wallet transactions camouflage the IP address of the botnet’s control server. — When hackers corral infected computers into a botnet …
Hirsh Chitkara / Protocol:Inside Chess.com’s streaming success, with Twitch users watching 18.3M hours of chess content in January, nearly as much as they consumed throughout all of 2019 — There’s something inherently perverse in calling chess “open source.” It’s a bit like saying France “pivoted” …
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:After delaying its plans, Roblox says it will go public via direct listing on March 10; in January, the company was valued at $29.5B after raising $500M+ — Direct listing comes after videogame company delayed IPO late last year and recast financial reports in response to SEC
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:Google announces new features for Android, including a way to schedule texts and a Password Checkup tool to notify users of compromised credentials — Google today announced the next set of features coming to Android, including a new password checkup tool, a way to schedule your texts …
Emma Pinedo / Reuters:Sources: Google is negotiating individual licensing deals with media outlets in Spain that may allow Google News to resume there after shutting down in 2014 — (This Feb. 22 story corrects to clarify Google’s position, paragraph 5) — MADRID (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google …