Thoughts on Facebook’s 9 plans to curb election interference

 Election meddling is Facebook’s next adversary, and it’s got a plan to attack it just like it did with fake news. Solutions to both these scourges come too late to prevent tampering that may have aided Donald Trump winning the presidency — but at least Facebook is owning up to the problem, working with the government and starting to self-regulate. Read More

Facebook and Twitter play bigger role in Congressional election-hacking probe

 As Congressional investigations into Russia’s role in manipulating the election for U.S. president deepens, tech companies are assuming a more central role in the inquiries. Both Twitter and Facebook are stepping up their efforts to cooperate with Congressional investigations into Russian interference with last year’s presidential election. Read More

ipsy launches its beauty product e-commerce business Shopper as hit hits 3M subscribers

 ipsy, a subscription service that delivers a collection of products to its users every month, has spent the last six years building up a community with millions of people obsessed with beauty products. And now that the company has more than 3 million subscribers — with a $10 per month subscription cost — it’s ready to get a little bit more aggressive by getting directly… Read More

Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

 Flexport handles the boring logistics of a trillion-dollar business: the transport of shipping containers around the world. Because the work of freight forwarding seemed so bland, it was long ignored by the tech world. But digitizing the paperwork let Flexport speed up shipping so clients keep less inventory on hand while never running out. Read More

Google Cloud adds support for more powerful Nvidia GPUs

 Google Cloud Platform announced support for some powerful Nvidia GPUs on Google Compute Engine today. For starters, the company is making Nvidia K80 GPUs generally available. At the same time, it’s launching support for Nvidia P100 GPUs in Beta along with a new sustained pricing model. For companies working with machine learning workloads, having access to GPUs in the cloud provides… Read More

Bose debuts new Google Assistant-optimized noise cancelling headphones

 Bose’s rumored QC 35 II noise-cancelling headphones are rumored no more: Bose made them official today, revealing the update to the company’s popular QC 35 premium noise-cancelling cans.
Google worked with Bose to create the new headphones, the company explained in a new blog post, helping to “optimize” the audio accessory for Assistant, Google’s virtual helper… Read More

Instagram adds face filters to live video

 Instagram is making its face filters available for live video streaming through the app, the company announced today. Instagram had introduced face filters, which add visual effects to detected faces, back in May, but until now it was only available on video and images captured first and then posted to your Instagram Story after the fact. All existing face filters are now available for live… Read More

Google makes it easier for businesses to set up new phones for their employees

 Google is launching a new way for businesses to give new phones to their employees: zero-touch enrollment. Traditionally, when you want to give a new phone to an enterprise user, chances are some poor admin has to deal with ensuring that the device is configured correctly and that all the right policies are in place. As the name implies, the new zero-touch enrollment feature, however, takes… Read More

Activehours raises $39 million for its new take on cash advances

 Nine months after raising $22 million for its unique take on the cash-advance business, Activehours has gone back to the venture capital well and pulled out another $39 million in financing.
Led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from the company’s early-stage investors Matrix Partners, Ribbit Capital, and March Capital Partners, Activehours has managed to now raise nearly $65… Read More

Co-founder Brian Fenty becomes CEO at TodayTix

Brian Fenty, Merritt Baer There’s a new CEO at TodayTix, though he’s definitely not new to the company — Chairman Brian Fenty is becoming chief executive, while his co-founder (and the previous CEO) Merritt Baer is becoming the Head of Europe. TodayTix sells theater tickets in cities across the United States (including New York, Chicago and San Francisco), but its European presence is currently limited… Read More

Nvidia Shield TV gets a new, lower price ahead of Apple TV 4K launch

 Nvidia’s Shield TV, an Android TV-based device that’s currently the best option available for 4K streaming fans, is getting a price drop with a new package that leaves out the included video game controller. Bundled with just the remote, the 16GB Shield TV is now $179 – $20 cheaper than the Shield TV bundle that also includes the joypad, and in line with the pricing of the… Read More

Pinterest opens up more than 5,000 interests for advertiser targeting through its Taste Graph

 Pinterest builds itself around visual discovery — the idea that you can come to the site or app, see something you like, and immediately dive down a rabbit hole. The company has built an extensive suite of tools internally to figure out which rabbit hole to divert users to, and now it’s opening up some of that knowledge to advertisers. Pinterest said today that it’s… Read More