The Morning After: Uber sets its sights on Postmates
It's expensive to win the food delivery fight.
Food fight! The battle for the future of food delivery continues to deepen, with yet another merger. Reports over the weekend suggest that Uber will pick up Postmates for a cool $2.65 billion. (Update 8:40AM ET: And now it’s official.)
The deal will push Uber into second place in the food-delivery wars, just behind food-delivery giant DoorDash. It’s a consolation prize of sorts for Uber after it failed to acquire GrubHub earlier this year.
That might seem like a lot of money, but it gets even more confusing when you take a look at how both companies have fared, shedding cash through the COVID-19 crisis. Uber lost $2.9 billion — more than this acquisition costs. The company must have a lot of faith in the future of food delivery. And even more cash to see it through.
— Mat
Chrome update may extend your laptop's battery life by up to 2 hours
Tabs might not hog so much energy in the background.
Chrome can really ding your battery life. Now, its makers are trying to fix it a bit, with a new experimental feature that would nix unnecessary JavaScript timers and trackers at work in tabs in the background. Reports suggest it could save a substantial chunk of battery life, especially if you use Chrome with a heavy dose of tabs. That is definitely my MO. Continue reading.
Two Nigerians face US charges over online fraud worth 'hundreds of millions'
They allegedly used email to rip off companies for millions.
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The United Arab Emirates has sent the US two Nigerian nationals, Ramon Olorunwa Abbas and Olakean Jacob Ponle, to face charges relating to large “business email compromise” scams. Abbas faces charges of money laundering in schemes meant to pull in “hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to the Justice Department. This included a plan to launder $14.7 million stolen from a “foreign financial institution,” taking nearly $923,000 from a New York law firm and involvement in a plot to steal roughly $124 million from an English Premier League club.
Ponle, meanwhile, allegedly participated in several 2019 fraud campaigns worth “tens of millions of dollars.” One company, alone, sent a total of $15.2 million. Both could serve up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Continue reading.
What to expect from the next version of 5G
More bandwidth, better battery life.
5G coverage may still be sparse, and the world is still trying to understand how it works or affects us, but the people that define networking standards won’t stop working on it. The 3GPP, a group of organizations that develop protocols for mobile telecoms, just announced Phase 2 for 5G, which will expand the use of networks by vehicles and IoT devices and tap into unlicensed spectrum as well. Cherlynn Low outlines what you can expect. Continue reading.
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Rocket Lab mission fails shortly after launch
The rocket and its payloads were lost.
Rocket Lab’s 13th Electron launch has ended in disaster. The company reported that its “Pics Or It Didn’t Happen” mission failed during the second stage burn about four minutes into the flight, resulting in the loss of both the rocket as well as the seven satellites aboard.
Crucially, that includes the payloads from paying customers, most notably Canon. It was supposed to be demonstrating an Earth imaging camera system ahead of plans for mass production. Continue reading.
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