iCloud News: YouTube continues to dominate

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Hello, and welcome to TechCrunch PM, your place to get the best in startup, venture capital and Big Tech news. Big Tech dominated the day, so enjoy some stories on cutting car prices, a U.S. sanction, another view on what's going on at MariaDB and Signal embracing usernames. Let's go!

— Christine

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TechCrunch PM Top 3

YouTube gets another gold streaming crown: YouTube is once again the overall top streaming service in the U.S., according to new figures out from Nielsen. Other streaming services are trying to match it, with Netflix coming in pretty close when it comes to television. No surprise here, TikTok dominates mobile.

If you like Mustangs: And want to give an electric vehicle a try, Ford is cutting the price on its all-electric Mustang Mach-E by as much as $8,000.

U.S. sanctions LockBit members: The government sanctioned two members of the Russian-speaking hacking and extortion gang LockBit, which is accused of launching ransomware attacks against victims in the U.S. and internationally. The new sanctions will make it far more difficult for individual hackers to profit from ransomware rather than targeting groups that can rebrand or change names to skirt sanctions.

Image Credits: Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu / Getty Images

More top reads

Florida man cuts into Cake: While electric motorbike startup Cake figures out a new life after bankruptcy, Michael Joyce decided it was a good time to make a big purchase in hopes of keeping the Swedish brand alive.

Signal launches usernames: In order to use Signal, and keep your phone number private, you had to get another number. Now you can happily keep your number private and still use Signal. The end-to-end encrypted messaging app lets you create a unique username that you can give out instead.

MariaDB and the SPAC: Yesterday, we told you that MariaDB had a potential take-private deal in the works. Today, Alex looks at the company's SPAC merger, what happened after and why it could be considered a sign of SPAC's failure to hold.

Replay as many times as you want: Apple Music now has a monthly version of its Replay experience. That's a user's yearly recap that shows users their top songs, artists, albums and more. Only now you can see how many times you hit repeat on your favorite song each month.

No one is immune, not even the fediverse: An ongoing spam attack impacted open source social websites, including Mastodon and Misskey, highlighting that even the decentralized social web is not without its challenges.

Lots of acquisitions: First, 1Password acquires Kolide to get its hands on a unique kind of device security enabling companies to secure access to their applications and data living on their employee's devices. Next, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart considers buying Dunzo, a hyperlocal delivery startup backed by Reliance Retail. Ironing out a deal is proving more complex than Flipkart probably thought. And, geospatial technology startup Nuview acquires Astraea, an analytics platform, to begin providing intelligence on a wide variety of satellite, aerial and drone data.

Funding the future of food: Bluestein Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, closed on $45 million in capital commitments for its Fund III. This is the firm's first fund with external investors and will invest across the food supply chain like health and wellness, proprietary food tech, commerce and digital technology.

Before you go: Early Disrupt birds get the worm. Secure your 2-for-1 pass now and unlock savings of over $1,000 on select passes. Act fast, as this offer expires on Friday, February 23, at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Image Credits: Michael Joyce

On the pods

Today on Equity, Alex is back on the mic and talking through the weekend and ahead to the week, including the latest for stocks and crypto, Planity’s hefty Series C, TikTok in trouble (again), and a slew of M&A in startup land. Listen here.