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1. Apple Music launches a public beta on the web
While this is the first time Apple has made its music service available on the web, the recent popularity of an unofficial website suggested that there’s some pent-up demand here.
The beta website includes most of Apple Music’s core features, but if you’re a new user looking to sign up, you’ll have to do that elsewhere, through the mobile or desktop app, for now.
2. NY attorney general will lead antitrust investigation into Facebook
In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said her team “will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”
3. Alibaba acquires NetEase Kaola in deal worth $2 billion
Alibaba-owned Tmall Global and Kaola are China’s largest and second-largest cross-border e-commerce platforms, respectively, and as a result of the deal, Kaola will be integrated into Tmall.
4. Xiaomi has shipped 100 million smartphones in India
The Chinese giant, which has held the top smartphone vendor position in India for eight straight quarters, said budget smartphone series Redmi and Redmi Note have been its top selling lineups in the nation.
5. Facebook is making its own deepfakes and offering prizes for detecting them
Facebook, Microsoft and many others are banding together to help make machine learning capable of detecting deepfakes — and they want you to help.
6. YouTube launches a dedicated Fashion vertical
The new vertical, YouTube.com/Fashion, will attempt to better organize some of the video platform’s fashion content, including style videos from top creators, industry collaborations, live streams from the runway, inside looks into the fashion industry, behind-the-scenes video and vlogs from fashion icons.
7. How early-stage startups can use data effectively
Koen Bok outlines what he’s learned from his experience using data to take design software company Framer from seed round to Series B. (Extra Crunch membership required.)