Less than two weeks after being spun off as a standalone business, Alphabet Inc.’s internet balloon company Loon LLC has landed its first paying customer: African mobile provider Telkom Kenya. Under the deal Loon, formerly a part Alphabet’s and before that Google LLC’s experimental X division, will deploy a system of balloons to beam high-speed ...

Two separate Congressional committees Wednesday got mixed messages on cryptocurrencies, hearing the full gamut of opinions ranging from banning them to embracing them with reasonable regulation. First up in the morning was a hearing of the House Committee on Agriculture on “Cryptocurrencies: Oversight of New Assets in the Digital Age,” with a variety of witnesses ...

Everybody hates robocalls. Now there’s a new reason to hate them, after one leading company exposed voter information online via an unprotected Amazon.com Inc. cloud storage instance. The latest entry in the cloud misconfiguration hall of shame comes via Kromtech Security’s Bob Diachenko, who discovered that Virginia-based political campaign and robocalling company RoboCent Inc. had exposed 2,594 ...

New reports are emerging about upcoming consumer devices from Samsung Electronic Co. Ltd. ahead of the expected release of the Galaxy Note 9 in August. In addition to the new Note, the phone giant said to be preparing to launch a smart speaker and a foldable phone early next year. Reports that Samsung was preparing ...

The U.S. Department of Justice is attempting to expedite its appeal against the court ruling that approved AT&T Inc.’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc. as the opportunity to unscramble the merger becomes harder with each passing day. In a filing lodged with Court of Appeals Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that the federal ...

Asset-linked cryptocurrency startup TrustToken Inc. today announced a new $61 million token sale backed by Andreessen Horowitz for its TrueUSD token as it seeks to replace Tether as the “stablecoin” of choice on cryptocurrency exchanges. Founded in 2017, the company is creating a platform for asset-backed cryptocurrencies known as stablecoins that are pegged to another stable ...

Cybersecurity monitoring startup Verodin Inc. Tuesday said it has raised $21 million in new funding to continue development of its Security Instrumentation Platform, increase hiring across all functional areas and expand its global sales reach. The Series B round was led by TenEleven Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, with Capital One Growth Ventures, Citi Ventures ...

A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to three charges relating to his development and sale of LuminosityLink, a remote access trojan virus that allowed hackers to gain access to personal computers for a variety of nefarious purposes. According to an indictment, 21-year-old Colton Ray Grubbs of Stanford, Kentucky, was alleged to have used the handle ...

German auto manufacturer BMW AG is the new surprise entry to the ride-hailing market as the company launched a luxury car service in Seattle today that competes directly with Uber Black and Lyft Lux. The service, bundled as part of BMW’s ReachNow car sharing program — which in turn allows users to rent a car ...

Less than a week after Microsoft Corp. announced a free version of its Teams service, Slack Technologies Inc. today said it has acquired an app that allows its users to build tools to automate simple routines without code. The move is an effort by the team software communications startup to keep ahead of its most ...