Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
A new Golang-based worm has been actively dropping XMRig cryptocurrency malware on Windows and Linux servers since early December, mining Monero — A newly discovered and self-spreading Golang-based malware has been actively dropping XMRig cryptocurrency miners on Windows and Linux servers since early December.
Sony said on Friday that it will launch the PlayStation 5 in India on February 2, suggesting improvements in the supply chain network that has been severely throttled by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Japanese firm said it will begin taking pre-order requests for the new gaming console in India, the world’s second largest internet market, on January 12. The console will be available for pre-order from a number of retailers including Amazon India, Flipkart, Croma, Reliance Digital, Games the Shop, Sony Center, and Vijay Sales, the company said.
The PlayStation 5 is priced at Indian rupees 49,990 ($685), while the digital edition of the console will sell at Indian rupees 39,990 ($550). Xbox Series X is priced at $685 in India, and Xbox Series S sells at $480. Like elsewhere in the world, Microsoft has been struggling to meet the demand for the new Xbox consoles in India. The Xbox Series X is facing so much shortage in the country that it’s not even easy to locate its page on Amazon India.
The announcement today should allay concerns of loyal PlayStation fans, some of whom — including, of course, yours truly — secured a unit from the gray market at a premium in recent months after India was not included in the first wave of nations for the PS5. Fans have also been frustrated at Sony and its affiliated partners for not offering clarification or providing conflicting accounts about the probable launch of the new gaming console in recent months.
In November, Sony suggested that it had delayed the launch of the PS5 in India due to local import regulations. Game news site The Mako Reactor reported earlier this week that Sony is unlikely to offer warranty and after-sales support for PlayStation 5 accessories in India — as has been the case for several previous generations.
India is not yet a big market for full-fledged gaming consoles yet. According to industry estimates, Sony and Microsoft sold only a few hundred thousand units of their previous generation consoles in the country. Thanks to the proliferation of affordable Android smartphones and world’s cheapest mobile data tariffs, tens of millions of Indians have embraced mobile gaming in recent years.
Rita Liao / TechCrunch:
Flexiv, a Chinese startup that makes general-purpose adaptive robots powered by computer vision and AI, raises $100M+ Series B from investors including Meituan — As businesses around the world look to automate production lines and supply chains, companies making the robots are attracting great investor interest.
Max Zimmerman / Bloomberg:
NYSE says it will delist three Chinese companies, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, on January 7 to comply with a US EO imposing restrictions — The New York Stock Exchange said it will delist three Chinese companies to comply with a U.S. executive order that imposed restrictions …
Ari Levy / CNBC:
7 most valuable US tech companies added a combined $3.4T in market cap in 2020: Apple gained ~$1T, Amazon $710B, Microsoft $480B, Alphabet $268B, Facebook $193B — - Apple's market cap jumped by almost $1 trillion this year, followed by Amazon, which increased by over $700 billion.
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Alphabet's Wing says new FAA drone rules mandating radio-frequency broadcasts for remote identification will erode privacy, suggests internet-based tracking — Alphabet Inc's drone delivery unit Wing criticized Trump administration rules issued this week mandating broadcast-based remote identification …
When Salesforce acquired Quip in 2016 for $750 million, it gained CEO and co-founder Bret Taylor as part of the deal. Taylor has since risen quickly through the ranks of the software giant to become president and COO, second in command behind CEO Marc Benioff. Taylor’s experience shows that startup founders can sometimes play a key role in the companies that acquire them.
Benioff, 56, has been running Salesforce since its founding more than 20 years ago. While he hasn’t given any public hints that he intends to leave anytime soon, if he wanted to step back from the day-to-day running of the company or even job share the role, he has a deep bench of executive talent including many experienced CEOs, who like Taylor came to the company via acquisition.
One way to step back from the enormous responsibility of running Salesforce would be by sharing the role.
He and his wife Lynne have been active in charitable giving and in 2016 signed The Giving Pledge, an initiative from the The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to give a majority of their wealth to philanthropy. One could see him wanting to put more time into pursuing these charitable endeavors just as Gates did 20 years ago. As a means of comparison, Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 and stayed for 25 years until he left in 2000 to run his charitable foundation full time.
Even if this remains purely speculative for the moment, there is a group of people behind him with deep industry experience, who could be well-suited to take over should the time ever come.
One way to step back from the enormous responsibility of running Salesforce would be by sharing the role. In fact, for more than a year starting in 2018, Benioff actually shared the top job with Keith Block until his departure last year. When they worked together, the arrangement seemed to work out just fine with Block dealing with many larger customers and helping the software giant reach its $20 billion revenue goal.
Before Block became co-CEO, he had a myriad other high-level titles including co-chairman, president and COO — two of which, by the way, Taylor has today. That was a lot of responsibility for one person inside a company the size of Salesforce, but promoting him to co-CEO from COO gave the company a way to reward his hard work and help keep him from jumping ship (he eventually did anyway).
As Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research points out, the co-CEO concept has worked out well at major enterprise companies that have tried it in the past, and it helped with continuity. “Salesforce, SAP and Oracle all didn’t miss a beat really with the co-CEO departures,” he said.
If Benioff wanted to go back to the shared responsibility model and take some work off his plate, making Taylor (or someone else) co-CEO would be one way to achieve that. Certainly, Brent Leary, lead analyst at CRM Essentials sees Taylor gaining increasing responsibility as time goes along, giving credence to the idea.
“Ever since Quip was acquired Taylor seemed to be on the fast track, becoming president and chief product officer less than a year-and-a-half after the acquisition, and then two years later being promoted to chief operating officer,” Leary said.
While Taylor isn’t the only person who could step into Benioff’s shoes, he looks like he has the best shot at the moment, especially in light of the $27.7 billion Slack deal he helped deliver earlier this month.
“Taylor being publicly praised by Benioff for playing a significant role in the Slack acquisition, Salesforce’s largest acquisition to date, shows how much he has solidified his place at the highest levels of influence and decision-making in the organization,” Leary pointed out.
But Mueller posits that his rapid promotions could also show something might be lacking with internal options, especially around product. “Taylor is a great, smart guy, but his rise shows more the product organization bench depth challenges that Salesforce has,” he said.
What could go wrong?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As you can see, this is our yearly predictions episode. Our behind-the-scenes guru Chris Gates joins us on the mic, we take shots at our prior prognostications, and nosh on what we feel is positively persaged.
As always, this episode is in good fun. If you don’t agree with we think is up ahead, that’s fine. You’re probably right. But we’re nothing if not up for a challenge, so we kept the tradition alive this year.
This is the last Equity episode of 2020. While we can’t tell you yet what our plans are for 2021, we can say — nay, project — that there are a lot of fun and big things coming for Equity. We’re planning our busiest year ever, by far.
And with that, we’re out of here. Thanks for several million downloads this year, our biggest annum to date.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:
Microsoft says SolarWinds hackers were able to view some of its source code by hacking into an employee account but were unable to modify code or access emails — The hackers gained more access than the company previously revealed, though the attackers were unable to modify code or access emails.
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Report: 10 ex-members of Apple's supplier responsibility team say it avoids or delays removing suppliers guilty of labor violations when doing so hurts business — A new report today claims that Apple is reluctant to ban suppliers found guilty of labor violations, and can take years to do so, even in the most serious of cases.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Ticketmaster agrees to pay a $10M fine after admitting to hiring an ex-CrowdSurge staffer and using his credentials to access the rival ticket seller's systems — It used stolen login credentials at a company summit — Ticketmaster has agreed to pay $10 million for breaking into a competitors' network.
Pei Li / Reuters:
Report: Apple removed 46K+ apps, including 39K games from its China store on Thursday, as it set a year-end deadline for game publishers to obtain a license — HONG KONG (Reuters) - Apple removed 39,000 game apps on its China store Thursday, the biggest removal ever in a single day …
Gamesage:
Study finds no correlation between growing up playing violent video games and increased levels of aggression 10 years later — A ten-year longitudinal study published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking on a group in early adolescence from as young as ten years old …
