Monday, March 11, 2019

NVIDIA is buying Mellanox for $6.9B

THE DAILY CRUNCH
MONDAY, MARCH 11 2019 By Anthony Ha

NVIDIA is acquiring Mellanox, we get an in-depth preview of Niantic's Harry Potter game and misconfigured Box accounts put sensitive data at risk. Here's your Daily Crunch for March 11, 2019.

1. NVIDIA to buy supercomputer chipmaker Mellanox for $6.9B, beating out Intel and Microsoft

The news caps off what the media had reported as a bidding war between NVIDIA, Intel and Microsoft for the chipmaker now based out of San Jose but originally founded in Israel.

The deal underscores ongoing consolidation in the world of processors, and is a key move for NVIDIA to shore up its market share specifically in high-performance computing and powering supercomputers.

2. Niantic's Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation

Devin Coldewey spent some time playing the game at Niantic's office in San Francisco — enough to convince convince him that HP:WU will be a huge time sink for any Harry Potter fan, and will probably convert or cannibalize many players from GO.

3. Dozens of companies leaked sensitive data thanks to misconfigured Box accounts

Although data stored in Box enterprise accounts is private by default, users can share files and folders with anyone, making data publicly accessible with a single link. But cybersecurity firm Adversis said these secret links can be discovered by others.

4. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says labor should not fear automation

"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work," the congresswoman said at South by Southwest. "We should be excited by that."

5. Appen acquires Figure Eight for up to $300M, bringing two data annotation companies together

Both companies focus on using crowdsourced labor pools to annotate data, which in turn is used to train artificial intelligence and machine learning. Under the name CrowdFlower, Figure Eight launched on-stage at the TechCrunch50 conference nearly a decade ago.

6. Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence

In almost every instance that the school accused Tiffany Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere — with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account — without the laptop she's accused of using.

7. This week's TechCrunch podcast roundup

The team at Equity discusses leadership changes at Y Combinator, while over at Original Content, we review the true crime documentary "Murder Mountain."

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Friday, March 8, 2019

Airbnb is acquiring HotelTonight

THE DAILY CRUNCH
FRIDAY, MARCH 8 2019 By Anthony Ha

Airbnb moves into hotel bookings with its latest acquisition, Elizabeth Warren proposes a breakup of big tech and Y Combinator bets on a "flying motorcycle." Here's your Daily Crunch for March 8, 2019.

1. Airbnb agrees to acquire last-minute hotel-booking app HotelTonight

Once the deal is complete, the HotelTonight app and website will continue to operate independently, with co-founder and CEO Sam Shank reporting to Airbnb's president of homes, Greg Greeley.

"Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world's best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests," Shank said in a statement.

HotelTonight Crunchies

2. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Google, Amazon and Facebook

The Massachusetts senator and presidential hopeful is targeting what she characterizes as the consolidation of economic power in a few big tech companies. The key components of her plan include passing legislation that would designate certain companies as "platform utilities," prohibiting them from owning participants on their platforms.

3. YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K 'flying motorcycle'

Jetpack Aviation launched pre-orders this week for the moonshot of moonshots — the Speeder, a personal vertical take-off and landing vehicle with a svelte concept design that looks straight out of Star Wars or Halo.

4. Facebook will downrank anti-vax content on News Feed and hide it on Instagram

To achieve a reduction in the spread of anti-vax propaganda, Facebook will downrank groups and pages that spread this kind of content across both News Feed and its search function. Facebook will also reject ads promoting anti-vaccination misinformation.

5. Netflix star and tidying expert Marie Kondo is looking to raise $40M

Marie Kondo, the woman who stole millions of Netflix viewers hearts this year with her show, "Tidying Up," is in talks to raise up to $40 million in venture capital funding to scale KonMari, the business behind her personal brand, books and TV series.

6. Cookie walls don't comply with GDPR, says Dutch DPA

Cookie walls that demand a website visitor agrees to their Internet browsing being tracked for ad-targeting as the price of entry to the site are not compliant with European data protection law, according to the Dutch data protection agency.

7. Salesforce at 20 offers lessons for startup success

The company that was once a tiny irritant going after giants in the CRM market of the '90s has grown into full-fledged SaaS powerhouse, and it celebrates its 20th anniversary today.

Get more stories at techcrunch.com 

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