Monday, August 12, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're paying tribute to 20 years of OpenStreetMap; contemplating how laundromats get hacked; and taking bets on how much more trouble X will get into in Europe. We're also looking at how a huge conglomerate waded into startup M&A; BT's new majority stakeholder; yet more fake news on TikTok; and CrowdStrike getting the Most Epic Fail award. Let's dive in! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

OpenStreetMap's founder, Steve Coast. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons

1. Long live OpenStreetMap: Steve Coast started OpenStreetMap 20 years ago to build an open-source map of the world that wasn't owned by any one company. Today, the collaborative effort provides geographic data and maps to thousands of companies and software developers that don't want to rely solely on Google. Paul Sawers took a look at the far-reaching influence of OpenStreetMap on its 20th anniversary. Read More

2. I'll stick with quarters at the laundromat: Laundry giant CSC ServiceWorks suffered a data breach in 2023 that resulted in tens of thousands of people's personal data being stolen. The company provides over a million internet-connected laundry machines to residential buildings, hotels and universities. The stolen data includes DOBs, Social Security and driver's license numbers, financial information and even health insurance information. Read More

3. X has been hit with nine privacy complaints in the EU after the platform was caught grabbing users' data for training its AI models without asking for consent. Data protection authorities across Europe filed complaints, alleging X breached Europe's GDPR regulations. Read More

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

🤝 A black belt in M&A: Heavy equipment manufacturer CNH Industrial has long indulged in M&A to expand and add capabilities, but it had little exposure to startups. So it turned to one of its veterans, Michele Lombardi, who put together a strategy that resulted in a pipeline of successful deals. How did he do it? He started by talking and making connections. Read More

☎️ India's Bharti picks up a stake in BT: The U.K.'s former incumbent telecoms carrier is selling a 24.5% stake that's currently owned by Altice to Bharti, the operator of Indian telco Airtel. BT's current market cap of around $16 billion values that stake at about $4 billion. Read More

💶 The 10 largest GDPR fines on Big Tech: Europe began applying GDPR regulation in May 2018, but Big Tech firms have consistently tried to sidestep compliance. And they've been doing it so often that we decided to rank the biggest fines issued to date: Meta accounts for both the biggest fine so far (around $1.31 billion) and for the majority of the penalties (six or more!). Others on the list include Amazon, ByteDance and Alphabet. Read More

🖥️ Tesla's Dojo, a timeline: A couple weeks ago, I published a long-form piece on Tesla Dojo to explain what this supercomputer promises to be, and why it's important to the automaker's mission. This weekend, I've put together a neat timeline of the supercomputer to keep track of the promises made by Tesla and Elon Musk. Read More

🪦 RIP Susan Wojcicki: Wojcicki was a longtime Googler who spent a decade as the CEO of YouTube. She passed away on Friday after a two-year battle with lung cancer. The Silicon Valley veteran was the one who famously rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin as they started up Google. The tech world mourns her loss. Read More

A Message from Daniel P McLaughlin & Co. Auctioneers

Public Auction on August 20

You're invited to join a public auction for the business assets of InvestFin, a former fintech startup based in Delaware. Assets include finserv software and various intellectual property. The auction takes place on Tuesday, August 20, in New York City at the offices of Feuerstein Kulick LLP. Bid in person or by teleconference.

Learn More

Around the Web

🌊 TikTok's been sending fake news alerts: It's scary to think that Gen Z are getting their news from TikTok. The Financial Times reports that the app has been pushing out fake news and other misleading information in news-style notifications. Some of these include a weeks-old tsunami warning, and one that states Taylor Swift has canceled her tour in Florida. Read More

🚕 The autonomous threat to Chinese cab drivers: China leads the world in AV testing and deployment, with robotaxis and robobuses being tested at least 19 cities. But all that AV activity has ride-hail drivers in the country nervous that their jobs may be at risk, reports Fast Company. Read More

👀 Our increasingly surveilled society: Have you ever thought about how many cameras you encounter everyday? And who has access to those cameras? RNZ's analysis points to a laundry list of such places in New Zealand, some of which are quite well hidden — apparently Wellington's transit authority installed large digital billboards at railway stations with no knowledge of the cameras embedded in them. Read More

Before you go

Image Credits: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch

🥳 CrowdStrike gets Most Epic Fail award: Just a few weeks after its software update brought half the world to a halt, CrowdStrike is taking its massive snafu in stride. The company's president, Michael Sentonas, took the stage to accept the award for the Most Epic Fail of the year, at the Pwnie Awards, held at Def Con in Las Vegas. Sentonas said, "Our goal is to protect people, and we got this wrong, and I want to make sure everybody understands these things can't happen." Read More