Author: uzair

Financial Times:Profile of Tether CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde, who previously ran a company in China that faced lawsuits over unpaid bills and fines for late tax paymentsJean-Louis van der Velde’s career offered few clues that he would become a key figure in fast-growing industry Click here to read full news..

Lora Kolodny / CNBC:NTSB sent a letter to the NHTSA asking for stricter standards on automated vehicle tech, citing Tesla’s Level 2 Autopilot system tests as needing more oversight- The National Transportation Safety Board is calling on its sister agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Click here to read full news..

Mars W. Mosqueda Jr / DealStreetAsia:Netstars, a payments aggregator and fintech company, raises $60.6M led by KKR; Netstars’ StarPay is used by 280K+ merchants in JapanNetstars Co Ltd, the operator of Japan’s largest QR code payment gateway, has raised 6.6 billion yen ($60.6 million) in its latest funding round led Click here to read full news..

Ashley Carman / The Verge:Recent deals like the iHeart Media’s purchase of Triton Digital suggest that ad tech will be key to the long term success in podcasting, not exclusive contentiHeart Media acquires Triton Digital for $230 millioniHeartMedia, the company behind podcasts like Stuff You Should Know and hundreds Click here to read full news..

Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230, an effort that will likely doom both pieces of legislation in the Senate. Click here to read full news..

Amazon has announced that it has discontinued its Amazon Pantry services (originally known as Prime Pantry), instead rolling those household goods and shelf-stable pantry items into the main Amazon website where they can be ordered alongside the rest of Amazon’s products. From a report: Originally launched back in 2014, Pantry worked differently from most Amazon orders. Instead of following the usual Amazon delivery rules, Pantry orders charged customers a flat $5.99 shipping fee per box of groceries, which could be filled with up to 45 pounds of products or up to four cubic feet of stuff (whichever limit customers reached…

Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo:Apple’s app tracking transparency pushes publishers like Zynga to build their own ad tech creating closed, first party walled gardens that Apple can’t touch, Apple is diminishing the ability for advertising to be personalized by limiting the use of third-party data for that purpose. Click here to read full news..

The Information:Sources: VCs have approached Clubhouse about investing in its next round at ~$1B valuation, a 10X increase from the previous round; a16z is expected to leadThe race to invest in social audio app Clubhouse is on again. Venture capital firms have approached the startup’s founders Click here to read full news..

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:Chinese driverless car startup WeRide raises $310M led by commercial vehicle manufacturer Yutong Group- Chinese driverless car start-up WeRide has raised $310 million in a new round of funding as it pushes to commercialize its technology.Tony Han, CEO of WeRide said the funding Click here to read full news..

sciencehabit writes: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has, for more than 20 years, pioneered collecting spectra from millions of astronomical objects, from nearby stars to supermassive black holes. But this year, the survey is making a change: Instead of employing a small team of technicians for the daily chore of plugging optical fibers into preprepared plates so that — when placed in the telescope — they collect light from exactly the right position in the sky, the SDSS is going robotic. For the project’s upcoming fifth set of surveys, plug plates are being replaced by 500 tiny robot arms,…