Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Welcome to TC PM! Today we're looking at hacking group Volt Typhoon targeting U.S. internet service providers; we dive into GrubMarket's latest acquisition; and we dig into what the social media companies are up to. Let's do it!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Andrey Rudkov/Bloomberg / Getty Images

⚡ Volt Typhoon strikes again: Security researchers recently discovered that hacking group Volt Typhoon, which is believed to be working with the Chinese government, targeted U.S. internet service providers. Why must all the hacker groups have such fun names? Read more

🍜 Grub-a-dub-dub: Food tech unicorn GrubMarket continues its shopping spree. This week it acquired FreshGoGo, a B2C platform that sells Asian groceries. Earlier this month, it also acquired Good Eggs, a fresh food delivery startup. Read more

📱 No more spark: Meta announced today that it will shut down its third-party augmented reality effects platform, Meta Spark, early next year. This has angered many of the users of this platform, with some people saying this decision will put them out of work. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: NASA

📸 Mini moneymakers: Mavely, a social commerce app for influencers, reports that it is seeing strong year-over-year growth. The secret to Mavely's success may lie in the fact that the company doesn't have a follower count requirement for people to join, unlike some of its competitors. Read more

🔊 Space jam: Space is loud, apparently. Whisper Aero is building quieter tech and just landed a new NASA contract to make the International Space Station a little quieter. Read more

🖥️ X is calling: X is building a videoconference tool. There is no official rollout or release date yet, but the company has started testing internal calls in the program. I think we should all be spending less time, not more, on X during work. Read more

📳 Tablet time: Snapchat now has an iPad-native app. Users have always been able to download Snapchat on their iPad and just use a slightly larger version of the traditional mobile app, but now there is an app made for the tablet. What took them so long? Read more

🪖 Operation advertisement: The U.S. military released psychological operations ads — ads meant to influence a targeted group — warning Lebanon not to attack the U.S. or its allies. Some of these ads ended up on Tinder. The dating app removed them. Read more

🎧 Career lessons: LinkedIn co-founder Eric Ly has been in Silicon Valley since childhood and a startup founder since the 1990s. Ly came on TechCrunch's Found podcast to talk about his lessons learned and what's changed in the startup and venture markets over the last few decades. Listen here

🚗 Verification: Lyft announced today that it is rolling out a rider verification pilot program. This is meant to help drivers identify who they are picking up for increased security. The pilot program will start in nine cities; there is no word on when or where it might expand. Read more

🤑 What's for sale? A lot of consumers in LatAm like to shop through WhatsApp, but brands aren't well-equipped to do so. Mercately is building the back-end software to make it easier for companies to land sales in the messaging platform. It just raised $2.6 million. Read more

Before you go

🍓 Strawberry stumper: How many times does the letter "r" appear in "strawberry"? While the answer is three, AI models will say two. Amanda Silberling dives into why AI models can solve complex math equations and write essays but still can't get nuances like spelling and syllables. Read more