Tips and tricks for all

Manish Singh / TechCrunch : Khatabook, which helps small Indian businesses record financial transactions digitally, raises $25M Series A from investors including GGV Capital, Sequoia India   —  Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mtZvU9

Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : Uber is testing a safety feature to let passengers record and send audio to the company if they are “uncomfortable” during a ride   —  Uber is testing “Record Audio” in case the rider is uncomfortable with the ride https://twitter.com/... from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o9aPW7

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch : Dave, which offers money management tools to let its 4M users avoid overdraft fees, raises $50M, says it now has a valuation of $1B+   —  Two years after the Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave launched with a suite of money management tools to save consumers from overdraft fees … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o0XNu0

Adam Neumann’s fall from grace was astonishingly swift once his company, WeWork, filed to go public in August. Even while his spending was fairly well-documented across time (as were his apparent conflicts of interest ), he was humiliated for enriching himself, then ultimately kicked out of the corner office before the company, in the least surprising turn of events in recent weeks, today yanked its S-1 registration. Neumann never exactly hid who he is or how he operates, so what suddenly sparked the ire of reporters — and investors — around the world? What, exactly, in an ultimately unsurprising IPO filing had people coughing up their morning coffee? Boiled down to the worst offense (including selling his own company the trademark “We” for $5.9 million in stock ) was very likely the lock on control that Neumann had set up through a multi-class voting structure that aimed to cement his control. And by ‘cement,’ we mean he would enjoy overwhelming control for not just for 5 or 10 year...

Tom Warren / The Verge : What to expect from Microsoft's event on October 2: Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, an ARM-based Surface, and at least a teaser of a dual-screen device   —  Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, and some mysterious new hardware  —  Microsoft is holding a big Surface hardware event in New York City on Wednesday, October 2nd. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mwVZIO

Jon Fingas / Engadget : Twitter is rolling out a filter that moves unwanted DMs containing questionable language or spam to an “additional messages” folder on Android, iOS, and the web   —  Twitter is quickly acting on plans to filter potentially offensive direct messages.  It's rolling out the filter to all users on Android, iOS and the web. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2oJ9ENr

Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. A nine-month old startup which is digitizing the bookkeeping and allowing merchants to accept online payments just raised a significant amount of capital. Khatabook , a Bangalore-based startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a new financing round. The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent, and Y Combinator. A clutch of high-profile angel investors including Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl, and Kunal Shah also participated in the round. The startup has raised $29 million to date. Khatabook operates an eponymous Android app that allows small and medium businesses to keep a log of their financial transactions and accep...

Nick Statt / The Verge : Leaked images reveal the upcoming Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 (13-inch and 15-inch), and an ARM-powered Surface 2-in-1 device   —  Well dang, there they are  —  Microsoft's new Surface lineup appears to have leaked almost in its entirety, thanks to product images obtained by journalist and leaker Evan Blass. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2oLjApL

Jules Wang / Android Police : Google confirms it is testing Duplex-powered Assistant for Chrome, initially with movie ticket booking websites like AMC and Fandango   —  Back at I/O, Google announced a major expansion to its Assistant-based concierge automation engine, Duplex.  Up until then, it would help people book restaurant tables … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o0Tq1U

Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News : Twitter to leave up a tweet about a “full-blown “hot” civil war” by a far-right militia with almost 24,000 followers; the militia was quote-tweeting Trump   —  When is promoting violent extremism not promoting violent extremism?  When Twitter says so. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2nYigzC

All around the world, cities, and municipalities are clamoring to make infrastructure plans designed to support the 5G. The infrastructure plans will also help other high-speed data networks that will enable the IoT future. They’re building because they know the opportunity for economic growth that will come along with the next generation of IoT technology . The UK has been impressive in its preparation in IoT needs for next-generation infrastructure. Substantial growth has always been worth a fortune to whichever locality becomes a hub for future IoT development. The economic prize is significant, with experts predicting that spending in the IoT market will grow to $520 billion per year by 2021 . Although the necessary 5G wireless networks are already being rolled out in various places around the world, it’s something of an open secret. The real hurdle facing many areas is a shortage of available fiber-optic infrastructure to form the backhaul networks. The available fiber-optic ...

Mehedi Hassan / Thurrott : Microsoft now lets OneDrive users expand 1TB storage in 200GB increments and launches OneDrive Personal Vault, to protect folders using 2FA, available globally   —  Microsoft announced two major features for OneDrive back in June: Personal Vault and expandable storage.  Both of the features are launching worldwide today. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2ndDV6E

Jason Torchinsky / Jalopnik : Videos of owners trying Tesla's new Smart Summon feature, which show Teslas autonomously driving to owners with varying degrees of success, go viral   —  Just a few days ago, Tesla announced their new Version 10 software update, which included such things as the ability to play Cuphead … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mmvipY

WeWork’s parent organization The We Company just  announced  that it’s withdrawing the S-1 filing for its IPO . The coworking company has had a turbulent month since the filing went public, around both the general state of its finances and the behavior of co-founder/CEO Adam Neumann . As a result, Neumann stepped down down as CEO last week (he will continue to serve as non-executive chairman). In addition, the company is looking to focus on its core co-working business, which means it’s  planning major layoffs and even reportedly looking to sell some of the companies it acquired over the last couple years — namely Managed by Q, Conductor and Meetup. So it was widely expected that The We Company would delay its IPO Today, it made things official with the release of a statement from new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham: We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong. We are as committed ...

CNBC : WeWork says it will withdraw its S-1 filing as it seeks to postpone its IPO   —  This is breaking news.  Please check back for updates.  —  TRENDING NOW  —  Subscribe to CNBC PRO Licensing & Reprints Join the CNBC Panel Supply Chain Values Advertise With Us Closed Captioning Digital Products Privacy Policy Internships from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2nQyBX5

When Confluent launched a cloud service in 2017, it was trying to reduce some of the complexity related to running a Kafka streaming data application. Today, it introduced a free tier to that cloud service. The company hopes to expand its market beyond large technology company customers, and the free tier should make it easier for smaller companies to get started. The new tier provides up to $50 of service a month for up to three months. Company CEO Jay Kreps says that while $50 might not sound like much, it’s actually hundreds of gigabytes of throughput and makes it easy to get started with the tool. “We felt like we can make this technology really accessible. We can make it as easy as we can. We want to make it something where you can just get going in seconds, and not have to pay anything to start building an application that uses real time streams of data,” Kreps said. Kafka has been available as an open source product since 2011, so it’s been free to download, install and buil...