Mission Everywhere

Fintech startup Bnext has raised a $25 million funding round. The Spanish company is building a banking product and has managed to attract 300,000 active users. DN Capital, Redalpine and Speedinvest are leading today’s funding round. Existing investors Founders Future and Cometa are also participating. Other investors include Enern, USM and Conexo. When you open a Bnext account, you get a card and you can upload money to your account. Bnext accounts aren’t technically bank accounts — the company has an e-money license. You can then use your card and spend money anywhere around the world without any foreign transaction fee. You can also freeze and unfreeze your card from the app. “As of now we'll stick to the e-money license, as our international expansion plans complicate potential passporting of banking licenses. We will first need to understand in which countries makes more sense to get a banking license, and then we'll make a decision,” co-founder and CEO Guillermo Vica...

Berlin-based recruitment chatbot startup Jobpal has closed a €2.5 million (~$2.7M) seed round of funding from InReach Ventures and Acadian Ventures . The company, which was founded back in 2016, has built a cross-platform chatbot to automate candidate support and increase efficiency around hiring by applying machine learning and natural language processing for what it dubs “talent interaction”. The target customers are large enterprises with Jobpal offering the product as a managed service. For these employers the pitch is increased efficiency by being able to rapidly respond to and engage potential job applicants whenever they’re reaching out for more info via an always-on channel (i.e. the chatbot) which is primed to respond to common questions. Candidates can also apply for vacancies via the Jobpal chatbot by answering a series of questions in the familiar messaging thread format. Jobpal says its chatbot can also be used to screen applicants’ CVs and recommend the most promisi...

Manish Singh / TechCrunch : Khatabook, which helps small Indian businesses record financial transactions digitally, raises $25M Series A from investors including GGV Capital, Sequoia India   —  Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mtZvU9

Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : Uber is testing a safety feature to let passengers record and send audio to the company if they are “uncomfortable” during a ride   —  Uber is testing “Record Audio” in case the rider is uncomfortable with the ride https://twitter.com/... from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o9aPW7

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch : Dave, which offers money management tools to let its 4M users avoid overdraft fees, raises $50M, says it now has a valuation of $1B+   —  Two years after the Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave launched with a suite of money management tools to save consumers from overdraft fees … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o0XNu0

Adam Neumann’s fall from grace was astonishingly swift once his company, WeWork, filed to go public in August. Even while his spending was fairly well-documented across time (as were his apparent conflicts of interest ), he was humiliated for enriching himself, then ultimately kicked out of the corner office before the company, in the least surprising turn of events in recent weeks, today yanked its S-1 registration. Neumann never exactly hid who he is or how he operates, so what suddenly sparked the ire of reporters — and investors — around the world? What, exactly, in an ultimately unsurprising IPO filing had people coughing up their morning coffee? Boiled down to the worst offense (including selling his own company the trademark “We” for $5.9 million in stock ) was very likely the lock on control that Neumann had set up through a multi-class voting structure that aimed to cement his control. And by ‘cement,’ we mean he would enjoy overwhelming control for not just for 5 or 10 year...

Tom Warren / The Verge : What to expect from Microsoft's event on October 2: Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, an ARM-based Surface, and at least a teaser of a dual-screen device   —  Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, and some mysterious new hardware  —  Microsoft is holding a big Surface hardware event in New York City on Wednesday, October 2nd. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mwVZIO

Jon Fingas / Engadget : Twitter is rolling out a filter that moves unwanted DMs containing questionable language or spam to an “additional messages” folder on Android, iOS, and the web   —  Twitter is quickly acting on plans to filter potentially offensive direct messages.  It's rolling out the filter to all users on Android, iOS and the web. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2oJ9ENr

Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. A nine-month old startup that is helping them digitize their bookkeeping and accept online payments just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its operations. Khatabook , a Bangalore-based startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a new financing round. The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent, and Y Combinator. A clutch of high-profile angel investors including Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl, and Kunal Shah also participated in the round. The startup has raised $29 million to date. Khatabook operates an eponymous Android app that allows small and medium businesses to keep a log of their financial transac...

Nick Statt / The Verge : Leaked images reveal the upcoming Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 (13-inch and 15-inch), and an ARM-powered Surface 2-in-1 device   —  Well dang, there they are  —  Microsoft's new Surface lineup appears to have leaked almost in its entirety, thanks to product images obtained by journalist and leaker Evan Blass. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2oLjApL

Jules Wang / Android Police : Google confirms it is testing Duplex-powered Assistant for Chrome, initially with movie ticket booking websites like AMC and Fandango   —  Back at I/O, Google announced a major expansion to its Assistant-based concierge automation engine, Duplex.  Up until then, it would help people book restaurant tables … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2o0Tq1U

Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News : Twitter to leave up a tweet about a “full-blown “hot” civil war” by a far-right militia with almost 24,000 followers; the militia was quote-tweeting Trump   —  When is promoting violent extremism not promoting violent extremism?  When Twitter says so. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2nYigzC

Mehedi Hassan / Thurrott : Microsoft now lets OneDrive users expand 1TB storage in 200GB increments and launches OneDrive Personal Vault, to protect folders using 2FA, available globally   —  Microsoft announced two major features for OneDrive back in June: Personal Vault and expandable storage.  Both of the features are launching worldwide today. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2ndDV6E

Jason Torchinsky / Jalopnik : Videos of owners trying Tesla's new Smart Summon feature, which show Teslas autonomously driving to owners with varying degrees of success, go viral   —  Just a few days ago, Tesla announced their new Version 10 software update, which included such things as the ability to play Cuphead … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mmvipY

Advertisers are increasingly looking for ways to track reach and frequency across platforms and publishers, but media sellers struggle to share data with each other. Jonathan Steuer, chief research officer at Omnicom Media Group, said during an Advertising Week panel that blockchain-like technology could be a privacy-friendly way for marketers to analyze ad data. Brad Smallwood, Facebook's VP of marketing science, said such a tool could solve measurement challenges but stressed that it's only one solution and said that a coalition of advertisers is necessary to change how ads are measured. Click here for more BI Prime stories . Advertisers want the walled gardens to come down so that they can better measure how many consumers see their ads, and a top exec from Omnicom Media Group has an idea of how it could work. Jonathan Steuer, chief research officer at Omnicom Media Group, suggested during an Advertising Week panel that blockchain-like technology could help advertise...

Cameron Faulkner / The Verge : HP updates HP Spectre x360 13 with 10th-gen Intel CPUs, 4K OLED display, up to 22 hours battery life, optional LTE, available in October starting at $1,099   —  A smaller, faster 2-in-1 laptop  —  HP's Spectre x360 13 has undergone a fairly drastic makeover for 2019. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2mhKyo5

Nathaniel Mott / Tom's Hardware : After a September 24 Windows 10 update, Microsoft's BitLocker uses software encryption by default even for SSDs that offer their own hardware-based encryption   —  Windows ships with a full volume encryption tool called BitLocker.  The feature used to trust any SSD that claimed to offer … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2ou0rIK

Roku devices don't have built-in recording capabilities, but you can record on Roku through several streaming channels. Channels like YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Hulu with Live TV let you record live network television and watch it later, just like a DVR. All of these are premium Roku channels which require an additional subscription.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Roku devices don't have any built-in recording capabilities. But that doesn't mean you can't record video that you watch on Roku channels, though.  While no Roku devices have digital video recorder (DVR) features or built-in storage, a number of Roku streaming channels do offer "cloud DVR" services, which means you can record movies and TV shows, store the content online, and watch them on-demand — in many cases, even programming from live television.  Here are the Roku streaming channels that include recording capabilities. Check out the products mentioned i...