Tips and tricks for all

Matt Richtel / New York Times : Members of rehab groups like Alcoholics Anonymous say moving meetings online was helpful due to the convenience of virtual sessions, which feel more intimate   —  It began as a stopgap way to get through the pandemic, but both participants and providers say virtual sessions have some clear advantages … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3g5k7tv

Theodoric Chew, co-founder and chief executive officer of mental health app Intellect Intellect , a Singapore-based startup that wants to lower barriers to mental health care in Asia, says it has reached more than one million users just six months after launching. Google also announced today that the startup’s consumer app, also called Intellect, is one of its picks for best personal growth apps of 2020 . The company recently closed an undisclosed seed round led by Insignia Ventures Partners. Angel investors including e-commerce platform Carousell co-founder and chief executive officer Quek Siu Rui; former Sequoia partner Tim Lee; and startup consultancy xto10x’s Southeast Asia CEO J.J. Chai also participated. In a statement, Insignia Ventures Partners principal Samir Chaibi said, “In Intellect, we see a fast-scaling platform addressing a pain that has become very obvious amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that pairing clinically-backed protocols with an efficient mobile-f

Nearly all of China’s largest internet firms have established a presence in online grocery. Just this week, news arrived that Alibaba co-led the $196 million C3 funding round of Nice Tuan , the two-year-old grocery group-buying firm’s fourth round year to date. People in China shop online for almost everything, including groceries. At first, grocery e-commerce appears to have caught on mainly among the digitally-savvy who have grown reliant on the convenience of e-commerce and don’t mind paying a bit more for delivery. Many elderly shoppers, on the other hand, still prefer visiting traditional wet markets where ingredients are generally cheaper. Now tech companies in China are scrambling to capture grocery shoppers of all ages. A new business model that’s getting a lot of funding is that of Nice Tuan, the so-called community group buying. In conventional grocery e-commerce, an intermediary platform like Alibaba normally connects individual shoppers to an array of merchants and offe

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch : Amazon launches EC2 Mac instances bringing the Intel-based Mac mini to its cloud for $1.083 per hour billed by the second   —  AWS today opened its re:Invent conference with a surprise announcement: the company is bringing the Mac mini to its cloud.  These new EC2 Mac instances, as AWS calls them, are now available in preview. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/39t1EWa

AWS today opened its re:Invent conference with a surprise announcement : the company is bringing the Mac mini to its cloud. These new EC2 Mac instances, as AWS calls them, are now available in preview. They won’t come cheap, though. The target audience here — and the only one AWS is targeting for now — is developers who want cloud-based build and testing environments for their Mac and iOS apps. But it’s worth noting that with remote access, you get a fully-featured Mac mini in the cloud, and I’m sure developers will find all kinds of other use cases for this as well. Given the recent launch of the M1 Mac minis , it’s worth pointing out that the hardware AWS is using — at least for the time being — are i7 machines with six physical and 12 logical cores and 32 GB of memory. Using the Mac’s built-in networking options, AWS connects them to its Nitro System for fast network and storage access. This means you’ll also be able to attach AWS block storage to these instances, for example. U

Nickie Louise / TechStartups.com : Totum Labs, which is developing low earth orbit nanosatellites for global IoT connectivity, raises $13M Series A led by Heroic Ventures and Space Capital   —  Totum Labs, a San Diego, CA-based tech startup that is revolutionalizing wireless technology by enabling low-cost, global … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/36mDfzE

Lee Clifford / Fortune : Mursion, which offers VR training to practice human skills, such as emotional intelligence, in the workplace, announces $20M Series B led by Leeds Illuminate   —  Hugo is furious.  —  He's sitting across from me, arms crossed, face scowling, exuding bad energy.  Sitting next to him is Maia. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3fUiuP4

The pandemic has made it all but impossible for a retail company without an online presence to survive. Yet while companies heavily dependent on foot traffic like J.Crew and Sur la Table have filed for bankruptcy this year, companies that are expert in e-commerce have thrived, including Target and Walmart. Amazon has gained perhaps the most steam in 2020, attracting roughly one quarter of all dollars spent online by U.S. shoppers throughout the year. Unfortunately, as more shopping moves online, fraud is exploding, too. The problem is such that startups working with enterprises on the problem — flagging transactions for banks, for example — are raising buckets of funding . Meanwhile, one New York-based startup, Fakespot , is taking a different approach. It’s using AI to notify online shoppers when the products they’re looking to buy are fake listings or when reviews they’re reading on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay are a fiction. We talked earlier today with founder and Kuwai

Wall Street Journal : S&P Global has agreed to acquire IHS Markit for about $44B in an all-stock deal, which would merge two of the largest providers of financial data and analysis   —  Landmark deal would combine two of the largest providers of data to Wall Street  —  S&P Global Inc. agreed to acquire IHS Markit Ltd … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2VkXxTT

Ari Levy / CNBC : Sources: Gitlab is letting employees sell equity in a secondary share sale that values the company over $6B, up from a valuation of $2.7B in September 2019   —  - GitLab competes with GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018 for $7.5 billion.  — The company had originally aimed to go public … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3mqpcih

Jim Waterson / The Guardian : Facebook to launch Facebook News in the UK in Jan. 2021, says it will pay publishers for news not already on its platform; most big UK publishers have signed up   —  Social network agrees deal with mainstream outlets in face of government crackdown on its dominance of advertising from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2VivnZB

Canadian electric truck and bus manufacturer The Lion Electric Company said Monday it plans to become a publicly traded company via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. The combined company, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, will have a valuation of $1.9 billion. The companies raised $200 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, and hold about $320 million in cash proceeds. The deal is the latest example of an electric automaker opting to go public via a SPAc merger in an aim to access the level of capital needed to become a high-volume vehicle manufacturer. Arrival, Canoo, Fisker, Lordstown Motors and Nikola Corp., have all announced SPAC mergers in 2020. Electric vehicle startup Canoo to go public via SPAC In Lion’s case, the combined net cash will be used to fund the company’s growth, notably the planned construction of a U.S.-based factory and to further develop its advanced battery systems