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Hackers are said to have broken into the networks of U.S. space agency NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration as part of a wider espionage campaign targeting U.S. government agencies and private companies.
The two agencies were named by the Washington Post on Tuesday, hours ahead of a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing tasked with investigating the widespread cyberattack, which the previous Trump administration said was “likely Russian in origin.”
Spokespeople for the agencies did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but did not deny the breach in remarks to the Post.
It’s believed NASA and the FAA are the two remaining unnamed agencies of the nine government agencies confirmed to have been breached by the attack. The other seven include the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, and State, the Treasury, and the National Institutes of Health, though it’s not believed the attackers breached their classified networks.
FireEye, Microsoft, and Malwarebytes were among a number of cybersecurity companies also breached as part of the attacks.
The Biden administration is reportedly preparing sanctions against Russia, in large part because of the hacking campaign, the Post also reported.
The attacks were discovered last year after FireEye raised the alarm about the hacking campaign after its own network was breached. Each victim was a customer of the U.S. software firm SolarWinds, whose network management tools are used across the federal government and Fortune 500 companies. The hackers broke into SolarWinds’ network, planted a backdoor in its software, and pushed the backdoor to customer networks with a tainted software update.
It wasn’t the only way in. The hackers are also said to have targeted other companies by breaking into other devices and appliances on their victims’ networks, as well as targeting Microsoft vendors to breach other customers’ networks.
Last week, Anne Neuberger, the former NSA cybersecurity director who last month was elevated to the White House’s National Security Council to serve as the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said that the attack took “months to plan and execute,” and will “take us some time to uncover this layer by layer.”
A number of online creators and influencers have adopted mobile-friendly “link in bio” websites, like Linktree, to point their fans to their social profiles or other content they want to promote. Today, live streaming software company Streamlabs launched its own product in this market with its new mobile website builder Willow. Its tool differentiates itself from others in this space by integrating a tipping feature directly on the landing page.
“Link in bio” websites have grown in popularity because social platforms like TikTok and Instagram only allow users to feature one main URL on user profiles. But online creators and influencers often have a presence on multiple sites they want their fans to know about. That’s where these custom websites come in.
Like most “link in bio” website builders, Willow offers a simple way to add a list of links to a customized, mobile-optimized webpage.
The product itself is somewhat basic compared to those being offered by newer startups — like Beacons, for example, which lets users add links for donations, affiliate shopping, paid downloads, and more. In Willow’s case, you just enter a URL and it appears on your website. You can also pick from a handful of colorful designs, each with their own style and font.
The online website builder lets you view your site in progress as you add links or update the design, and you can preview how it looks on mobile, tablet and desktop by clicking a button.
But Willow’s more interesting feature is the ability to add tipping to your website.
To do so, you’ll just toggle on the Tips feature from the website builder interface and then connect your PayPal account to Willow. This places a “Donate!” button at the top of your link list, so you can encourage fans to leave a tip.
Image Credits: Streamlabs
This feature will be the new website builder’s key selling point, given that today, creators who receive tips through social and streaming platforms often have to share the revenue from those transactions back with the platform itself. Tips through PayPal will be a more direct form of payment between fans and creators, beyond any applicable PayPal fees.
Streamlabs tells us it doesn’t keep any of the tip money — everything goes to the creator.
However, it does plan to soon monetize the new product in a different way. In a few weeks’ time, the company will introduce a paid version for $5 per month that will include enhanced analytics like click-through rates and which days see the most clicks and views. The pro version will also include more custom themes.
Image Credits: screenshot of Willow
Because Willow only launched today, it doesn’t have a large number of users at this time. However, a top streamer FaZe Mew has already signed up, per the short Willow link (wlo.link) found on his various social media bios.
“Our experience building tools for live streamers inspired us to build products that cater to the greater content creator ecosystem,” said George Kurdin, Streamlabs GM. “To deliver on this mission and grow our business, we are building products that cater to more brands, businesses, and individuals,” he said.
Mark your calendar for TechCrunch’s annual celebration of the startup community — TC Disrupt 2021 returns this September 21-23! At Disrupt, you’ll rub virtual elbows with the thousands of startup founders, investors and innovators building cutting-edge products and companies. Disrupt will be all-virtual, allowing more builders from around the world to share in the learning, growth, connection and excitement that you can only experience with TechCrunch.
As always, networking will be front and center. You’ll have the opportunity to make spontaneous connections, curated connections with CrunchMatch and chat with other attendees, all while watching sessions. Between the tools provided by our virtual event platform and curated matches, you’ll make valuable connections and expand your network.
Every year we iterate on the Disrupt experience to make sure the event includes more of what founders, investors and innovators want and need to be successful. This year, on the Disrupt Stage we’ll not only bring you the minds behind the headlines but also incorporate analysts’ viewpoints, and highlight emerging founders in Startup Alley in an engaging format geared toward helping you find solutions, build your business or expand your portfolio.
We’re also growing the Startup Battlefield cohort this year. Featuring more startups means more opportunity for founders. If you’re a founder or startup selected for Startup Battlefield, you’ll be able to pitch to a panel of renowned VCs for a chance to win $100,000 in equity-free prize money. Applications for Startup Battlefield will open Q2 2021.
Our Extra Crunch Stage will continue to be a valuable resource for entrepreneurs who are looking to tap the minds of experts and VCs across a variety of industries and categories. In highly interactive sessions, you’ll be able to get your questions answered live or have your pitch deck analyzed to help you refine your fundraising and business development strategies. Plus, all applicable passes will get a three-month membership to Extra Crunch, which gives you a library of insider analyst content that you can put into action at your company right away.
For those early-stage founders who are looking to get some extra exposure for their products and company, the Startup Alley experience is for you. The founders who are accepted into Startup Alley will get a dedicated listing at the virtual event, where they can hold live product demos, generate leads and chat with interested attendees. Founders in Startup Alley will also give a live 60-second elevator pitch to TechCrunch staff for feedback and there will be dedicated time for attendees to browse startups in each category during the Startup Alley Crawl. With a dedicated success manager in your corner providing you tips on how to use all of the items in your toolkit, this is a perfect opportunity to gain new customers, meet potential investors and expand your professional social graph.
From the Startup Alley exhibitors we will also select up to 50 founders to participate in Startup Alley+, which will give them access to a pre-Disrupt series of master classes to prep for the event, pitch-off opportunities at Extra Crunch Live and white-glove curated meetings with investors from the TechCrunch network.
There is much more happening behind the scenes to add to your TC Disrupt 2021 experience that we will be sharing with you over the coming weeks, but we know you’ll want to secure your spot at Disrupt now. Passes are now available at the lowest Super Early-Bird rate, with additional savings available on top of that for founders, students and employees of nonprofits and government organizations. These passes are your full-access ticket to everything Disrupt has to offer and more for under $100 — but only for a limited time. Be a part of the startup world’s annual rite of passage online this September 21-23 and register today!
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/23/registration-for-tc-disrupt-2021-is-now-open/
Building a front-end for business applications is often a matter of reinventing the wheel, but because every business’ needs are slightly different, it’s also hard to automate. Kleeen is the latest startup to attempt this, with a focus on building the user interface and experience for today’s data-centric applications. The service, which was founded by a team that previously ran a UI/UX studio in the Bay Area, uses a wizard-like interface to build the routine elements of the app and frees a company’s designers and developers to focus on the more custom elements of an application.
The company today announced that it has raised a $3.8 million seed round led by First Ray Venture Partners. Leslie Ventures, Silicon Valley Data Capital, WestWave Capital, Neotribe Ventures, AI Fund and a group of angel investors also participated in the round. Neotribe also led Kleeen’s $1.6 million pre-seed round, bringing the company’s total funding to $5.3 million.
Image Credits: Kleeen
After the startup he worked at sold, Kleeen co-founder, CPO and President Joshua Hailpern told me, he started his own B2B design studio, which focused on front-end design and engineering.
“What we ended up seeing was the same pattern that would happen over and over again,” he said. “We would go into a client, and they would be like: ‘we have the greatest idea ever. We want to do this, this, this and this.’ And they would tell us all these really cool things and we were: ‘hey, we want to be part of that.’ But then what we would end up doing was not that. Because when building products — there’s the showcase of the product and there’s all these parts that support that product that are necessary but you’re not going to win a deal because someone loved that config screen.”
The idea behind Kleeen is that you can essentially tell the system what you are trying to do and what the users need to be able to accomplish — because at the end of the day, there are some variations in what companies need from these basic building blocks, but not a ton. Kleeen can then generate this user interface and workflow for you — and generate the sample data to make this mock-up come to life.
Once that work is done, likely after a few iterations, Kleeen can generate React code, which development teams can then take and work with directly.
Image Credits: Kleeen
As Kleeen co-founder and CEO Matt Fox noted, the platform explicitly doesn’t want to be everything to everybody.
“In the no-code space, to say that you can build any app probably means that you’re not building any app very well if you’re just going to cover every use case. If someone wants to build a Bumble-style phone app where they swipe right and swipe left and find their next mate, we’re not the application platform for you. We’re focused on really data-intensive workflows.” He noted that Kleeen is at its best when developers use it to build applications that help a company analyze and monitor information and, crucially, take action on that information within the app. It’s this last part that also clearly sets it apart from a standard business intelligence platform.
Hundreds of millions of users, especially in developing markets, don’t own high-end smartphones and can’t afford fast data plans to enjoy much of anything on the web.
Google has been exploring multiple ways to better serve this segment of the user base. It has tried partnerships to make the internet more affordable to tens of millions of users. It has worked with smartphone makers to bring reliable Android experience to cheap smartphones. In fact, it’s currently working on a project with telecom operator Jio Platforms in India to further lower the price point for decent Android experience.
For mobile games, however, Google has a slightly different idea to reach users. Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, last year launched GameSnacks. It’s an HTML5 gaming platform, where titles are bite-sized and they load much faster and consume far less resources because of the way they have been designed.
And that idea appears to be working.
Google said on Tuesday that over the past year it has made inroads with GameSnacks, and is now ready to scale the platform and test monetization models to make it worthwhile for game developers.
In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, Ani Mohan, General Manager of GameSnacks, said the platform has amassed over 100 titles and millions of users.
“HTML5 gaming has been growing, especially outside of the United States. HTML5 is a great way to get games to users who have just come online and probably haven’t played games online before. These games are cross-device, work on low-bandwidth connection, and are instantly playable as they don’t require users to install any files,” he said.
These single-player games, that work on any device with as low RAM as 1GB and 2G to 3G data connection, are available to users through GameSnacks website. They can be played on desktop as well as Chrome on an iPhone or iPad (if you wanted to give it a whirl.)
Now the company is using its scale to expand the reach and discoverability of GameSnacks. Mohan said in recent weeks GameSnacks games have been made available from the New Tab page in Chrome for users in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Kenya.
In India, Google’s biggest market by users, GameSnacks games are also arriving to Google Pay. The company is also experimenting with bringing GameSnacks games to Discover feed.
Mohan said the company is starting these integrations is select countries because that’s where many users face the challenges the platform is trying to address. “We view this as an early stage of experimentation. If it goes well, we will love to expand it,” he said.
Additionally, Mohan said the company is experimenting with bringing GameSnacks games to the Google Assistant.
“Now that few of these integrations are live, one of things we are hoping to do is talk to developers, and tell them that there is an easy way to get on Google,” he said.
Developers on GameSnacks currently monetize their games via a licensing or a contracting model where they sell some or all of their game rights to the company. Mohan said the team, which comprises six people (though more people from Google contribute to it), is working on helping these developers monetize their games using next-generation AdSense for Games ad formats.
“We want to help them build viable businesses over time so we’re going to start experimenting with advertising on the platform,” he said. However, this will be for a select number of GameSnacks games for now.
Emerging markets such as Africa and Asia are not new to the world of HTML games. In India, for instance, a gaming platform called Gamezop raised $4.2 million last year to expand its HTML5 games to reach more developers and embed them into over 1,000 apps.
In 2018, South African telco, MTN Group, launched the Bonus Bucks HTML5 game portal for its subscribers in the Southern African country. Facebook operated HTML5 Instant Games on Messenger for years until taking it off the messaging service. A quick search on our own archive returns scores of firms that work on HTML5 games in the past, though we have seen fewer examples in recent years.
Mohan remains bullish that there is a big opportunity for HTML games and this extends beyond Africa and Asia. “We don’t see these markets as our only option. These are just the markets we’re starting with because the need for HTML5 games… is especially compelling. We think the market size for this is much broader because HTML has users all around the world,” he said.
