Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I noted some challenges plaguing mental health tech startups. Before that, I wrote about Zoom and Superhuman’s PR disasters. Remember, you…
Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! Let’s be honest, if you’re gonna buy the best smartwatch on the market, it’s got to be the Apple Watch. I’ve tried a fair number of wrist-wearables in my time, and although some are good (Fitbits in particular are…
Attacks on at least three school districts and likely others have prompted the state’s first emergency due to cyberattack.
Jessica spends 12 hours a day on the internet managing security for web assets and loves her macha tea
FeaturePeek, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 cohort, wants to change the way companies review front-end interfaces. Instead of kludging together reviews with screenshots or involving product managers and marketing people at the last minute, they want to make it easy to carry out reviews throughout the development cycle. “FeaturePeek allows product teams…
The president of the United States called out two of the nation’s largest tech firms in a pair of tweets this morning. Google was the first target. The statement follows weeks of suggested investigations of the tech giant over a supposed relationship with China. There may or may not be National Security concerns with regard…
The U.S. Department of Justice this morning gave the green light to T-Mobile US and Sprint for their proposed $26 billion merger. The deal, which would combine the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers (by subscriber number) has been green lit on the condition that Sprint sell its prepaid assets (including Boost Mobile) to Dish…
Marcus Hutchins, the malware researcher who became known as an “accidental hero” for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, has been sentenced to supervised release for one year on charges of making and selling the Kronos banking malware. Presiding Judge J. P. Stadtmueller described Hutchins, 25, as a “talented” but “youthful offender” in remarks…
Genetic testing used to be something that happened in a specialist clinic for those few families that had serious inherited conditions, like Huntington’s Disease or rare cancers. Now, new genetic tests called “polygenic risk scores” have increased access to genetic risk information for a wide range of conditions. With a few clicks of a mouse…
An Irish national has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for his role as one of the administrators and forum moderators who helped run now-defunct dark web marketplace “Silk Road.” Gary Davis, 31, of Wicklow, Ireland, was known as ‘Libertas’ on the Silk Road website, then-largest underground black marketplace on the Internet used by thousands of…
After a hearing this week, members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform said that Juul, the ultra-popular e-cigarette brand, may have intentionally targeted teens in schools and online. Based on 55,000 non-public documents out of Juul Labs, the subcommittee said that Juul’s Youth Prevention Plan recruited schools into a program that put…
