Maria Deutscher
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Facebook debuts new Messenger tools for businesses, updated user experience
Facebook Inc.’s Messenger service is a focal point of its social network with more than 1.3 billion monthly active users globally. Today, the company introduced new tools aimed at enabling businesses to engage that massive audience more effectively. The first addition is a chatbotlike tool that can automate the first few questions in a customer ...
Microsoft brings its ubiquitous exFAT file system to Linux
In its latest gesture to the open-source community, Microsoft Corp. today pledged to make its widely used exFAT file system available on Linux. The software, which is also known as the Extended File Allocation Table, is one of the foundational but mostly invisible components underpinning the consumer technology ecosystem. It’s a data management layer that runs inside Windows ...
Apple apologizes for human reviews of Siri conversations, will make program opt-in
Apple Inc. said today that it will overhaul its controversial practice of listening in to Siri conversations to provide more privacy for users. Until recently, the iPhone maker had a team of contractors that manually reviewed Siri conversations to help improve the virtual assistant’s responses. The most important change to the program Apple announced today is ...
Report: Google is ‘aggressively’ shifting smartphone production out of China
Tariffs and rising labor costs in China are prompting Google LLC to shake up its smartphone supply chain, Nikkei reported today. The financial paper spoke to two sources who said that the company is “aggressively” shifting production of its Pixel handsets from China to Vietnam. Specifically, Google is said to have selected a former Nokia Corp. ...
ThoughtSpot snags $248M at $1.95B valuation to automate business analytics
ThoughtSpot Inc., an analytics startup led by former Nutanix Inc. executives, today announced that it has landed a $248 million funding round at a $1.95 billion valuation. The investment was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Silver Lake Waterman and existing backers. It marks the fifth time ThoughtSpot has taken in outside capital ...
Former Waymo lidar lead Anthony Levandowski charged with stealing trade secrets
Federal prosecutors have filed trade secret theft charges against Anthony Levandowski, a prominent autonomous driving engineer who sparked a lawsuit between Uber Technologies Inc. and Google LLC. The criminal complaint was released today by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. The government is charging Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and ...
WeWork acquires startup rival Spacious to boost co-working business
WeWork Cos. today announced its first acquisition since filing to go public: a New York-based startup called Spacious Inc. that provides co-working spaces. Spacious has come up with a creative new spin on the traditional shared office. The startup partners with upscale restaurants that open in the evening and turns their dining rooms into coworking spaces during ...
Axonius locks down $20M to secure enterprises’ shadow devices
A modern corporate network might connect tens of thousands of systems, from employee laptops to cloud instances, and at least some are bound to go unnoticed by the information technology department. That presents a cybersecurity problem: Companies can’t protect devices they don’t know exist. Enter Axonius Inc., a New York-based startup tackling this visibility gap ...
Cisco acquires Microsoft-backed customer analytics startup CloudCherry
Though best known for its networking and data center gear, Cisco Systems Inc. is also a major player in the contact center technology business. The company’s products support more than 3 million customer service agents worldwide, a market presence it hopes to further strengthen with the newly announced purchase of Customer Analytics Technologies Inc., better known ...
GlobalFoundries fires off barrage of patent lawsuits at Apple chip supplier TSMC
Chipmaker GlobalFoundries Inc. is suing rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. for allegedly infringing 16 of its semiconductor patents. Santa Clara, California-based GlobalFoundries disclosed today that it has launched no fewer than 25 lawsuits against the company in the U.S. and Germany. The chipmaker is seeking “significant” damages from TSMC as well as an import ...