Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Daily Crunch - VMware completes Pivotal acquisition

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Monday, December 30, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Monday

VMware finishes a crucial acquisition, Spotify says it will pause political advertising and “The Mandalorian” will return next fall. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 30, 2019.

Also, Darrell Etherington is writing the newsletter tomorrow, so I’ll see you all in 2020!

VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition

VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained myself from using a “pivotal” pun here. You’re welcome.)

The acquisition — first announced in August — helps the company in its transformation from a pure virtual machine supplier into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside the acquisitions of Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year.

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VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition image

Image Credits: Pivotal

Spotify to 'pause' running political ads, citing lack of proper review

The company told us that starting early next year, it will stop selling political ads: “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”

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'The Mandalorian' returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020

The last episode of the first season of “The Mandalorian” went live on Disney+ on Friday, and showrunner Jon Favreau wasted very little time confirming when we can expect season two of the smash hit to land: next fall.

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'The Mandalorian' returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020 image

2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital

The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Here's an overview of the 2019 market events that capped off a decade in African tech.

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Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million

Maxar's goal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDA's Canadian operations — responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, respectively.

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Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million image

Image Credits: NASA

Cloud gaming is the future of game monetization, not gameplay

Lucas Matney argues that as is so often the case with the next big thing in tech, cloud streaming is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform, rather than the entire platform itself. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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This week's TechCrunch podcasts

Equity took the week off, but we kept Original Content going with a review of Netflix’s new fantasy show “The Witcher.”

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Saturday, December 28, 2019

Daily Crunch - The startups we lost in 2019

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Friday, December 27, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Friday

We round up the startups that failed in 2019, new details are revealed about Huawei’s support from the Chinese government and Russia is testing a separate internet of its very own. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 27, 2019.

Remembering the startups we lost in 2019

This year's batch doesn't include any story quite as spectacular as last year's big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.

And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn't make it to the finish line.

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Remembering the startups we lost in 2019 image

Startup on the right foot

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Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government

For those following Huawei's substantial rise over the past several years, it'll come as no surprise that the Chinese government played an important role in fostering the hardware maker. Even so, the actual numbers behind the ascent are still a bit jaw-dropping — at least according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.

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Russia starts testing its own internal internet

Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, however.

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Russia starts testing its own internal internet image

Image Credits: Max Ryazanov

Fintech's next decade will look radically different

Nik Milanovic argues that in the next 10 years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous, as it both moves into the background and creates a centralized place where our money is managed for us.

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Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India's proposed intermediary liability rules

Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that operates Wikipedia, is urging the Indian government to rethink proposed changes to the nation's intermediary liability rules. Under the proposal, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT requires "intermediary" apps — a category that includes any service with more than 5 million users — to set up a local office and have a senior executive in the nation who can be held responsible for any legal issues.

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Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India's proposed intermediary liability rules image

Image Credits: Anindito Mukherjee / Bloomberg / Getty Images

The FAA proposes remote ID technology for drones

According to the FAA, the "next exciting step in safe drone integration" aims to offer a kind of license plate analog to identify the approximately 1.5 million drones currently registered with the governmental body.

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The year of the gig worker uprising

2019 was a momentous year for gig workers. While the likes of Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash rely on these workers for their respective core services, the pay does not match how much those workers are worth — which is a lot. It's this issue that lies at the root of gig workers' demands. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Daily Crunch - Travis Kalanick is leaving Uber's board

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Tuesday, December 24, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Tuesday

Uber’s controversial former CEO is severing his ties with the company, Plenty of Fish makes a security fix and DraftKings looks to go public. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 24, 2019.

Also: We’ll be taking tomorrow off. If you celebrate, have a Merry Christmas!

Uber founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the company's board of directors

Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick will officially resign from the board as of December 31, to "focus on his new business and philanthropic endeavors," according to a company press release.

Kalanick, who was forced out as Uber CEO and eventually replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi, has been in the process of selling off his considerable ownership stake in the company. In fact, it looks like Kalanick has now sold all his remaining stock.

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Uber founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the company's board of directors image

Image Credits: Elijah Nouvelage / Stringer / Getty Images

Plenty of Fish app was leaking users' hidden names and postal codes

Dating app Plenty of Fish has pushed out a fix for its app after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users had set to "private" on their profiles. Before the fix, the app was silently returning users' first names and postal ZIP codes, according to The App Analyst.

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As DraftKings finds an exit, a reminder of what could have been

DraftKings, a betting service focused on fantasy sports, will go public via a reverse merger. Not too long ago DraftKings and its erstwhile rival FanDuel were ubiquitous on television; now the two companies are fractions of what they once were. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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As DraftKings finds an exit, a reminder of what could have been image

Gift Guide: 13 last-minute subscription gifts for the people you totally didn't forget

It's too late to order things online, and brick-and-mortar stores are either closed for the week or absolutely slammed. So what can you do? Subscriptions!

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Fyre Festival meets Mr. Bone Saw

Connie Loizos looks at the controversy around the three-day-long MDL Beast Festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event, promoted by a number of celebrities and social media influencers, aimed to promote the efforts of its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS).

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Fyre Festival meets Mr. Bone Saw image

Image Credits: FETHI BELAID/AFP / Getty Images

A false start for foldables in 2019

A year from now, the Samsung Galaxy Fold's turbulent takeoff may well be a footnote in the largest story of foldables. For now, however, it's an important caveat that will come up in every conversation about the nascent product category. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Micro-angelo? This 3D-printed 'David' is just one millimeter tall

3D printing has proven itself useful in so many industries that it's no longer necessary to show off, but some people just can't help themselves. Case in point: this millimeter-tall rendition of Michelangelo's famous "David" printed with copper using a newly developed technique.

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