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1. NVIDIA to buy supercomputer chipmaker Mellanox for $6.9B, beating out Intel and Microsoft
The news caps off what the media had reported as a bidding war between NVIDIA, Intel and Microsoft for the chipmaker now based out of San Jose but originally founded in Israel.
The deal underscores ongoing consolidation in the world of processors, and is a key move for NVIDIA to shore up its market share, specifically in high-performance computing and powering supercomputers.
2. Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation
Devin Coldewey spent some time playing the game at Niantic’s office in San Francisco — enough to convince him that HP:WU will be a huge time-sink for any Harry Potter fan, and will probably convert or cannibalize many players from GO.
3. Dozens of companies leaked sensitive data thanks to misconfigured Box accounts
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Although data stored in Box enterprise accounts is private by default, users can share files and folders with anyone, making data publicly accessible with a single link. But cybersecurity firm Adversis said these secret links can be discovered by others.
4. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says labor should not fear automation
“We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work,” the congresswoman said at South by Southwest. “We should be excited by that.”
5. Appen acquires Figure Eight for up to $300M, bringing two data annotation companies together
Both companies focus on using crowdsourced labor pools to annotate data, which in turn is used to train artificial intelligence and machine learning. Under the name CrowdFlower, Figure Eight launched onstage at the TechCrunch50 conference nearly a decade ago.
6. Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence
In almost every instance that the school accused Tiffany Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere — with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account — without the laptop she’s accused of using.
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcast roundup
The team at Equity discusses leadership changes at Y Combinator, while over at Original Content, we review the true crime documentary “Murder Mountain.”
