Global Tech Roundup: Phones Can Tell if You are Drunk, SpaceX Rakes in $1.9 Billion Funding

Hi Guys! It’s the end of another busy week in the global tech space. Many interesting things happened in the space across the week. From stories of acquisitions to the launch of new products, fundraising and expansions.

Here is a quick roundup of some of the major stories around the globe you might have missed during the week.

SpaceX raises Record $1.9 billion in funding round

SpaceX has raised $1.9 billion funding in its biggest round yet. The funding round was disclosed in an SEC filing on Tuesday. The new funding doesn’t come as a surprise as the earlier funding process pegged the post-money valuation of SpaceX at $46 billion.

This comes after the Elon Musk-led private launch company successfully completed the first-ever private human spaceflight mission to take off in the US.

SpaceX is better positioned than ever to seek significant resources from investors given the string of high-profile successes it has recorded recently. The new funding would help fuel its capital-intensive process of deploying its massive Starlink satellite constellation.

Internet explorer is finally Dying

After years of operation, the iconic days of the Iconic Internet Explorer is slowly coming to an end. Microsoft has released a timeline detailing when the browser will no longer be supported by its most popular apps.

According to the tech giants, from November 30, 2020, the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11 and from August 17, 2021, the remaining Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11.

The reason for discontinuing the browser is to encourage people to move over to Microsoft Edge, it’s new and constantly updating browser. However, Microsoft has affirmed that Internet Explorer isn’t being killed. Iterating that it will work, but will simply stop getting updated features and support.

Smartphones can detect if you are drunk

Apparently, Smartphones can detect when you are drunk. According to a study by a group of researchers, sensors in smartphones can detect when you’ve had too much to drink by monitoring how you walk.

The researchers added that the data can be used to determine when someone is over the legal driving limit. Experimentation by the University of Pittsburgh showed that with about 90% accuracy, phones were able to detect alcohol level after users walked just 10 steps.

Scientists hope the discovery can be used to develop device alerts, such as asking people not to drive while drunk.

235 million IG, TikTok and YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak 

About 235 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube user-profiles have been exposed online in a massive data leak. the discovery was made by the security research team at Comparitech.

The exposed data was spread across several datasets, the most significant being two coming in at just under 100 million each and containing profile records apparently scraped from Instagram. The third-largest was a dataset of some 42 million TikTok users, followed by just under 4 million YouTube user profiles.

Based on the samples it collected, Comparitech revealed that one in five records contained either a telephone number or email address. It added that records also included at least some, sometimes all, of the following information: profile name, full real name, profile photo, and account description.

Aside from personal info, statistics like follower engagement, number of followers, engagement rate, follower growth rate, audience gender, audience age, audience location and likes were also exposed.

The data appeared to have originated from a company called Deep Social, which was banned by both Facebook and Instagram in 2018 after scraping user profile data. The database was shut down about three hours after the researchers’ notified concerned parties.

Apple Hits $2 trillion Valuation

Apple has become the first US company to hit the landmark milestone of $2 trillion market valuation. This comes less than two months after the tech giants crossed the $1.5trn market valuation mark.

The company crossed the landmark after its share price rose to $473.10 at the close of business on Thursday, 20 August. Since the beginning of the year, Apple’s share price is up around 59%.

In 2018, the iPhone maker made history by exceeding a trillion-dollar valuation after its stock price skyrocketed due to its 17% revenue growth year-over-year.

This week, Apple’s strong market performance pushes it across another threshold. This is especially impressive due to the economic situation caused by the pandemic.