אסף מגידש - בשורה אחת

Facebook acquired AI startup Ozlo, which had raised $14M, to help Messenger build its personal assistant; Ozlo will shut down its enterprise API and app (Kurt Wagner/Recode) אסף מגידש

Pandora reports Q2 revenue up 10% YoY to $376.8M, vs. $368.9M est., total subs up 24% YoY to 4.86M, and ticketing service revenue up 31% YoY to $29.7M (Matthew Lynley/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Tech giants pass on invitation to testify on net neutrality before the House Energy and Commerce Committee; hearing date is pushed back indefinitely (Tony Romm/Recode) אסף מגידש

Sources: Spotify passes 60M paying customers, adding over 20M so far in 2017, as it plans for IPO on NYSE later this year (Anna Nicolaou/Financial Times) אסף מגידש

Reddit raised $200M in funding, is now valued at $1.8B, a16z and Sequoia among investors; sources: Condé Nast owner Advance Publications retains majority stake (Kurt Wagner/Recode) אסף מגידש

Hackers breach HBO's network and leak future episodes of Room 104 and Ballers, plus a script allegedly from next week's Game of Thrones episode (James Hibberd/EW.com) אסף מגידש

Microsoft shuts down its Word Flow keyboard for iOS, suggests downloading SwiftKey instead (Richard Devine/Windows Central) אסף מגידש

AMD unveils Radeon RX Vega GPUs for high-end gaming PCs launching August 14, the $499 RX Vega 64 and $399 RX Vega 56 (Ryan Smith/AnandTech) אסף מגידש

EPIC files suit with FTC over Google's opaque Store Sales Measurement plan to track shoppers' in-store purchases, saying users have no easy way to opt out (Washington Post) אסף מגידש

Inside "No More Ransom", a joint law enforcement and private industry effort to fight cybercrime, launched by Europol, Kaspersky, and others last year ( (Danny Palmer/ZDNet) אסף מגידש

UK's Callsign raises $35M Series A led by Accel for its AI-based adaptive authentication platform for enterprises (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Snapdeal to end all talks of a sale to Flipkart, and will pursue an independent path; Snapdeal's digital payments unit FreeCharge sold to Axis Bank for $60M (Reuters) אסף מגידש

HomePod firmware references new iPhone screen design that has notch cut out at the top, presumably for sensors; a face detection feature and an infrared sensor (Eric Slivka/MacRumors) אסף מגידש

German court rules that use of keylogger software to monitor employees is illegal, unless there is concrete suspicion of a criminal offense or breach of duties (The Local) אסף מגידש

Sources: Some directors worry Travis Kalanick is trying to game the outcome in favor of his return after he told several people he was "Steve Jobs-ing it" (Kara Swisher/Recode) אסף מגידש

eMarketer: Roku will have 38.9M MAUs in 2017, up 19% YoY, compared to 36.9M for Chromecast, 35.8M for Amazon Fire TV, and 21.3M for Apple TV (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Behind the chart-topping anonymous messaging app Sarahah, which gives message recipients no way to respond (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times) אסף מגידש

US court rules against a Virginia politician who banned access to her personal Facebook page, says it is a public forum that's protected by First Amendment (Joe Palazzolo/Wall Street Journal) אסף מגידש

By outsourcing IT services, Swedish agency gave foreigners in 13 countries access to classified info on people in military units, under witness protection, more (Catalin Cimpanu/BleepingComputer.com) אסף מגידש

Inside NATO's Locked Shields cybersecurity war games, where 19 teams practice defending national infrastructure from cyberattacks (Steve Ranger/TechRepublic) אסף מגידש

Source: Uber board was planning a vote to offer Whitman CEO job when she withdrew via tweet (Mike Isaac/New York Times) אסף מגידש

Putin signs laws banning VPNs in Russia from Nov. 1, and requiring instant messenger operators to establish the identities of users from Jan. 1 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) אסף מגידש

Global Voices pans Facebook's Free Basics after studying app in six markets, finding broad data collection and weaknesses in languages and local content (Olivia Solon/The Guardian) אסף מגידש

Former Lily employees and contractors shed light on the camera drone maker's downfall as it struggled to meet expectations set by its viral launch video (Jessica Pishko/Wired) אסף מגידש

PerimeterX raises $23M Series B for its tech to fight bot-powered attacks like account takeovers, ad fraud, scalping, and carding for online retailers (Patrick Howell O'Neill/Cyberscoop) אסף מגידש

Oculus' Michael Abrash on how vagaries of human visual, auditory perception can cause issues for VR development, and the tech advances needed to overcome issues (Michael Abrash/Oculus) אסף מגידש

Current and former SoundCloud employees describe the factors leading to its decline, including its attempt to compete head-on with music streaming giants (Ryan Mac/BuzzFeed) אסף מגידש

Some Bitcoin backers plan to launch a competing version called Bitcoin Cash on August 1, with support for more transactions per block (Nathaniel Popper/New York Times) אסף מגידש

A now-patched flaw in Broadcom WiFi chips opened 1B iPhones and Android devices to a fully remote worm attack (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica) אסף מגידש

HTC teases a standalone Vive VR headset for China (Lucas Matney/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Apple removes all major VPN apps from the App Store in China; the apps allowed users to bypass China's internet censorship (Jon Russell/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Toast, developer of cloud-based software including mobile PoS and other functions for managing restaurants, cafes, bars, and nightclubs, raises $101M Series C (Jeff Engel/Xconomy) אסף מגידש

Inside China's government-led plans to conquer the semiconductor industry, which could cost around $150B, worrying US government and analysts (Wall Street Journal) אסף מגידש

GM's Cruise Automation hires Didi's Charlie Miller and Uber's Chris Valasek, the security researchers who had previously hacked into moving jeeps (Johana Bhuiyan/Recode) אסף מגידש

Source: Charter Communications rebuffs SoftBank's proposal for merger with Sprint (Alex Sherman/Bloomberg) אסף מגידש

Sources: Sprint has proposed a merger with Charter Communications; proposal calls for new publicly traded entity that would be controlled by SoftBank (Wall Street Journal) אסף מגידש

Katie Couric is ending her Yahoo show and departing Oath, but will work with Oath case-by-case for projects (Kara Swisher/Recode) אסף מגידש

Baidu reports Q2 profits of $654M, up 83.5% YoY on about $3.1B revenue, as Chinese search firm recovers from advertising restrictions and trims expenses (Cate Cadell/Reuters) אסף מגידש

Redfin closes at $21.70, up 44%+ on its first day of trading, after raising $138M in an IPO (Kevin Kelleher/VentureBeat) אסף מגידש

Anonymous social app Whisper lays off 14 of its 74 employees; source says revenues were $1.3M in June, firm will have $100K in free cash flow in August (Josh Constine/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

US House committee asks 22 US agencies for documents about Kaspersky Lab dating from 2013, including risk assessments, names of contractors, subcontractors (Dustin Volz/Reuters) אסף מגידש

Amazon reportedly acquired GameSparks, a startup that helps developers add cloud-based features to games, for $10M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch) אסף מגידש

Huawei CEO confirms full-screen display on upcoming Mate 10, as company reports Q2 results, and says it is giving up on very low-end devices (Bloomberg) אסף מגידש

Amazon quarterly profit fell 77% last quarter despite sales growth as it spent on new warehouses, delivery capacity, data centers, and hiring (Laura Stevens/Wall Street Journal) אסף מגידש

With revenues of $15.8B from semiconductor unit, Samsung becomes the biggest chip maker in the world, topping Intel, which brought in $14.B in sales in Q2 (Jonathan Vanian/Fortune) אסף מגידש

Twitter is testing a subscription service that automatically promotes advertisers' profiles and up to first 10 tweets a day for $99 per month (Tim Peterson/Marketing Land) אסף מגידש

iRobot clarifies CEO's comments, says it never intended to sell Roomba data, will only share data with other smart home devices with customer's permission (David Gewirtz/ZDNet) אסף מגידש

Twitter is testing an advertising subscription service that automatically promotes advertisers' tweets for $99 per month (Alex Kantrowitz/BuzzFeed) אסף מגידש

Redfin opens up 30%+ on its first day of trading, after pricing IPO at $15 per share and raising $138M at a valuation of $1.2B (Nat Levy/GeekWire) אסף מגידש

As part of patent settlement, Nokia received upfront cash payment of €1.7B from Apple, Finnish company discloses during the earnings call (Stipe/Nokiamob) אסף מגידש