Silicon Valley Tech News Roundup – July 4th
Sir Richard Branson to go into space on July 11th – 7/2
Sir Richard Branson announced the date for his space flight – July 11th. Virgin Galactic worked on the Unity rocket plane for two decades and the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company their commercial space license last week. Joining Branson on the flight are three more testers: Beth Moses (the Chief Astronaut Instructor of Virgin Galactic), Sirisha Bandla (the vice president of governmental affairs), and Colin Bennett (the lead operations engineer).
While Sir Richard Branson named the date for the flight as July 11th, it is the start of the “flight window.” Unfavorable weather conditions or potential technical issues can delay the flight. Unity rocket plane can achieve an altitude of 90 kms, and an estimated 600 people have already put down deposits to take a ride on the first commercial space flight. The tickets are in the price range of $250.000.
If Sir Richard Branson makes the flight on July 11th, he will be stealing Jeff Bezos’ thunder. Bezos scheduled his flight for July 20th.
Cristiano Ronaldo tops the Instagram rich list – 6/30
Cristiano Ronaldo made the top of the annual Instagram rich list and can ask as much as $1.6 million for a sponsored post on the platform. He is the most followed person on Instagram with over 300 million followers, while his following has grown by over 125 million since last year. Ronaldo is the first footballer to top the list and has a combined social media following of 550 million (including other platforms like Facebook). Some estimates have Ronaldo earning over $40 million per year from Instagram, which is more than the salary at his current club Juventus, the Italian Serie A club.
HopperHQ compiles the list of Instagram’s top earners. It takes into account several factors like the number of followers, engagement, and the frequency of the posts.
Other top earners in the list include:
2. Dwayne Johnson – $1.52m
3. Ariana Grande – $1.51m
4. Kylie Jenner – $1.49m
5. Selena Gomez – $1.46m
6. Kim Kardashian – $1.41m
7. Lionel Messi – $1.16m
8. Beyoncé Knowles – $1.14m
9. Justin Bieber – $1.1m
10. Kendall Jenner – $1.05m
Sir Tim Berners-Lee “NFT” fetches $5.4 million in Sotheby’s auction – 7/2
Sir Tim Berners-Lee “non-fungible token” (also known as NFT) titled “This Changed Everything” sold for $5.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. The auction house estimated it the most valuable piece of NFT ever sold.
“This Changed Everything” represents Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the web and includes a poster of some of the source code. His lot also included archived files of the WorldWideWeb browser, a letter written by Berners-Lee explaining his invention, and a 30-minute animation.
For comparison, a CyptoPunk sold for $11.8 million in Sotheby’s auction earlier this month. Two more (resembling a graphic of an old video game) sold for $7 million per piece. Meanwhile, in March, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, auctioned off “NFT” of his first tweet on the platform and got $2.4 million for it. Berners-Lee’s “NFT” also sold for more than original handwritten notes from Albert Einstein and Alan Turing.
Ransomware attack on IT company Kaseya impacts thousands of small businesses – 7/2
On Friday, Miami-based IT company Kaseya issued a notice they were victims of a “potential attack” and instructed its customers to stop using their product immediately. Due to the type of products the company provides, it is believed the ransomware attack impacted thousands of small businesses in the US and all over the world. Hackers time ransomware attacks to coincide with holidays or weekends. The hackers count on a smaller number of cybersecurity professionals available who can potentially stop the attack.
Kaseya’s customers are managed service providers companies (also known as MSPs). MSP companies provide remote IT services like software updates to smaller businesses without the resources to conduct these processes in-house. The work is done via VSP’s cloud platform.
Late on Friday, Kaseya disclosed almost 40 of their customers were hacked. But because their customers service thousands of small businesses, it is still unclear how many businesses were affected. On Saturday, due to the ransomware attack, the Swedish grocery chain Coop had to close almost 800 of their stores.
Cybersecurity company Huntress Labs is helping Kaseya with the response. John Hammond, a senior researcher at Huntress Labs, stated they believe REvil, a ransomware gang, is behind the attack.
