Broward County Public Schools, the sixth largest school district in the United States, said Thursday it had been the target of a massive ransomware attack, according to AP.
Why it matters: In March, hackers encrypted some of the Fort Lauderdale-based district's data and demanded a $40 million cryptocurrency payment or they would erase the files and publish the personal information of students and employees online.
UnitedMasters, a music distribution platform that feels a little like Substack for singers, on Thursday raised $50 million from investors including Apple (which almost never invests in startups).
Axios Re:Cap talks with UnitedMasters CEOSteve Stoute, known for producing albums by artists like Nas and Mariah Carey, about his company, the uncertain future of record labels and why it's important for musicians to own their own music.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Facebook on Thursday, finding the company's text alerts used for suspicious logins do not qualify as illegal robocalls.
Why it matters: The ruling could be seen as a win for telemarketers, at a time when Americans get billions of robocalls every month.
Dish Network sent a letter to the FCC on Thursday, complaining that T-Mobile — its partner for wireless services — is rushing to shut down a network still used by millions of Dish's Boost Mobile customers.
Why it matters: T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint was only allowed after it agreed to sell a chunk of assets to Dish, including its Boost prepaid business. Plus, Dish is highly reliant on T-Mobile for network services as it builds out its own 5G network over the next several years.
Some of the shine might be coming off NFTs. The platforms selling them, however, fresh off of raising hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital, are likely to relish the challenge.
Driving the news: Daily volume has dropped to about $3 million, down from a peak of $19 million. Still, Dapper Labs managed to raise $305 million in its most recent round, at a valuation of $2.6 billion.
"Bro" culture, gender bias and micromanagement were top concerns among women in tech who were dissatisfied with their employers, according to a survey from Elpha, the results of which were shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Hiring bias is only one cause of tech's gender imbalance. Another problem is that women leave the industry because they find the environment works against their success.
Apple CEO Tim Cook,an Alabama native with a lifelong interest in civil rights, joins condemnations of Georgia's new voting law, in a statement provided first to Axios.
What he's saying: "The right to vote is fundamental in a democracy. American history is the story of expanding the right to vote to all citizens, and Black people, in particular, have had to march, struggle and even give their lives for more than a century to defend that right."
Big Tech dollars may be becoming toxic in Washington.
What's happening: The once lionized industry finds itself more and more cast as a pariah, with lawmakers comparing Big Tech to Big Tobacco during a hearing with tech CEOs last week and a key House Republican forswearing industry donations.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday warned that "cyberthreats are coming dangerously close to threatening our lives" as he announced a series of "sprints" designed to counter online attacks.
Why it matters: "Our government got hacked last year and we didn’t know about it for months," Mayorkas said. It wasn't until cybersecurity firm SolarWinds "got hacked itself and alerted the government" when federal officials learned the extent of the problem, he noted.
Microsoft on Wednesday was selected to manufacture 120,000 HoloLens augmented-reality helmets for the U.S. Army as part contract that could be worth up to $21.88 billion.
Why it matters: Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google are all delving into augmented-reality glasses in different ways, but the technology is likely still a few years off for mainstream consumers, Axios' chief technology correspondent Ina Fried writes.
Google told workers in an email Wednesday that it expects some U.S. employees to be able to return to the office in the coming month.
Why it matters: Tech companies, among the first to shut their offices a year ago, are largely shifting to hybrid work environments, allowing some employees to continue working remotely part or all of the week.
UnitedMasters, a music distribution platform that serves as a kind of Substack for musical artists, on Wednesday announced that it raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Apple.
Why it matters: Apple rarely participates in venture capital rounds, let alone leads them. In fact, the last one we can find was a 2017 investment in Didi Chuxing.
Trust in tech— including companies specializing in AI, VR, 5G and the internet of things — fell all around the world last year, the Edelman Trust Barometer found in a massive survey of 31,000 people in 27 countries.
Driving the news: The study, provided first to Axios, is a special tech edition of data collected for the annual Trust Barometer. All-time lows, going back to comparable Edelman polling in 2012, were hit in 17 of 27 countries, including the U.S., U.K., France, China, Japan, Thailand, Brazil and Mexico.
Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on one thing: Social media had at least some responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to new survey data from Harris Insights shared exclusively with Axios.
Why it matters: 71% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats say social media platforms bear responsibility for the Jan. 6 events — a stark sign of the growing animosity toward them from both sides of the aisle.
Facebook intends to provide users with new controls to directly personalize what items show up in their news feeds, the company’s VP of global policy Nick Clegg announced in an op-ed Wednesday.
What's happening: From the documentary "The Social Dilemma" to analysts of "surveillance capitalism" — both of which Clegg aims to rebut — Facebook's critics have zeroed in on the algorithms that shape users' experiences by selecting news feed content. With the company's new moves, it's trying to say to users, "You decide!"
Widely considered the Nobel Prize of computing, the Turing Award often goes to someone for a particular piece of work. This year, the Turing is going to two professors, Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman, for literally writing the book on how computers are programmed.
Why it matters: Aho and Ullman have influenced the industry both directly and through all those they have influenced, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, for whom Ullman served as Ph.D advisor.
