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To get a roundup of Tausi Insider’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Hello, and happy Wednesday! As I write this, I am also enjoying a virtual “holiyay” celebration with my fellow TechCrunchers. Haje is leaving on a jet plane, but he’ll be back tomorrow. Let’s dive into the news. — Christine The Tausi Insider Top 3 You can’t handle the jet : Elon Musk stated that he was going to protect free speech, even for the person behind Elon Jet, the Twitter account tracking his flights, but alas the account has been permanently suspended. Amanda has more. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em : It used to be that Apple fought what they call “sideloading” alternative app stores on the iPhone, but in order to comply with European laws, the consumer tech giant is now reportedly looking at allowing them with iOS 17, which will come out next year, Ivan reports. Cash flow conundrum : Mary Ann ...

I think about Wordle  way too much. My two-step strategy of starting with TRAIN and then trying CLOSE as my second word got me to a near-100 winning streak before I blew it a month back. I guessed VAULT instead of FAULT. Oops. My FAULT. So I went back to the Wordle drawing board, deciding I needed to try a three-starter-word strategy. Usually guessing TRAIN and CLOSE as my first two words gives me a decent number of accurate letters that I just need to shuffle into the right spots. But sometimes it doesn't. Then I'm staring blankly at a grid, with four guesses remaining a...

Two weeks ago , the password manager giant LastPass disclosed its systems were compromised for a second time this year. Back in August, LastPass found that an employee’s work account was compromised to gain unauthorized access to the company’s development environment, which stores some of LastPass’ source code. LastPass CEO Karim Toubba said the hacker’s activity was limited and contained, and told customers that there was no action they needed to take. Fast-forward to the end of November, and LastPass confirmed a second compromise that it said was related to its first. This time around, LastPass wasn’t as lucky. The intruder had gained access to customer information. In a brief blog post, Toubba said information obtained in the August incident was used to access a third-party cloud storage service that LastPass uses to store customer data, as well as customer data for its parent company GoTo, which also owns LogMeIn and GoToMyPC. But since then, we’ve heard nothing new...

Bell Media, which accounts for a fraction of BCE Inc.'s revenue, has proven to be a distraction, as evidenced by the recent Lisa LaFlamme controversy. Fernando Morales/Tausi Insider Dvai Ghose is principal at Ghose Investment Corp. His clients include Telus Communications Inc. He is the former head of global research and strategic development for Canaccord Genuity Group. Despite significant opposition, the market seems to be confident that the proposed Rogers-Shaw telecommunications merger will be approved. A seismic shift in industry dynamics looms. What should Rogers’s and Shaw’s rivals do in response? Well, BCE Inc. BCE-T, for one, should use this as a catalyst to refocus on its core telecom operations, invest in IT growth – and shed legacy assets such as Bell Media, which has proven to be a distraction, as evidenced by the recent Lisa LaFlamme controversy. If the market is right, Rogers will create a coast-to-coast broadband carrier with unprecedented scale to complement Cana...

Twitter has suspended several accounts on the site that use publicly available flight information to track the location of private jets, including the plane used by Twitter owner Elon Musk. The account @ElonJet was created in 2020 by Florida college student Jack Sweeney to track the takeoffs and landings of Musk's private jet . Musk wasn't happy with the account but said in November that he wouldn't ban it, citing his commitment to free speech. But on Wednesday, the account suddenly disappeared from the servi...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As economists continue to debate whether or not a recession is in fact going to happen, many companies are busy developing strategic plans should this come to fruition, taking the "hurry up and wait" mentality and focusing efforts on becoming more efficient with their dollars. The past few years have been transformative for many, and hopefully, your business has implemented some customer experience and digital transformation initiatives. Maybe you were already ahead of the curve or in more cases than not, the pandemic lit a fire under your organization as it did for many others. But if not, the good news is that it's not too late to get started and with the economic uncertainty, now is a perfect time. The first step? Giving your customers what they really want with self-service options, which in turn will help you operate more efficiently from a digital perspective and more importantly,...

The birds painted in the facsimile are rock pigeons, which can still be found year-round in Egypt. (Image credit: Public Domain; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Antiquity Publications Ltd.) An ancient Egyptian "masterpiece" painting of birds flying and perching within a verdant marsh is so detailed, modern researchers can tell exactly which species artisans illustrated more than 3,300 years ago. The painting was discovered about a century ago on the walls of the palace at Amarna, an ancient Egyptian capital located about 186 miles (300 kilometers) south of Cairo. Although previous research has examined the mural's wildlife, the new study is the first to take a deep dive into the identity of all of the birds, some of which have unnatural markings. Many of the birds depicted are rock pigeons ( Columba livia ), but there are also images showing a pied kingfisher ( Ceryle rudis ), a red-backed shrike ( Lanius collurio ) and a white wagtail ( Motacilla alba ),...

As if parenting isn't hard enough already, here's another thing to worry about. If your teens join TikTok, they could be served damaging content about self-harm, suicidal ideation and eating disorders within minutes, according to a report released Wednesday. Researchers working for the Center for Countering Digital Hate posed as 13-year-olds who were establishing new accounts on the platform and they recorded the first 30 minutes of content that TikTok's For You Page -- a home feed that quickly learns and adapts to your content preferences -...

There’s a crisis in cybersecurity right now, with a rise in attacks coupled with a shortage of talent. Handout Yogen Appalraju is a partner and the Canadian cybersecurity leader at EY Canada. If the digitization of businesses has taught us anything, it’s that cybersecurity is much more than simply a technology risk, it’s also a very serious business risk. A recent report from Statistics Canada showed that 18 per cent of Canadian businesses were affected by cybersecurity incidents last year, including 37 per cent of large businesses. By not giving the required attention to cybersecurity, businesses open themselves up to a plethora of risks, including effects on their operations, which will drive losses of revenue and profits. In fact, last year Canadian businesses spent $600-million on recovery efforts after cybersecurity incidents, a figure which doesn’t account for the reputational effect and subsequent loss of customers that a data breach can have on a business. Much of the increas...

HSBC's decision to stop financing new oil and gas fields extends to infrastructure projects and oil- and gas-fired power plants across the bank's global operations, except for its Canadian unit, which is in the process of being sold to RBC. Duane Cole/Tausi Insider HSBC Bank Canada is not adopting its parent company’s sweeping move to cease financing for many oil and gas projects as Royal Bank of Canada RY-T works on closing a deal to acquire the London-based bank’s Canadian unit. HSBC Holdings is the latest bank to restrict financing for fossil-fuel industries as pressure mounts for lenders to ditch projects associated with climate-change risks. Weeks ago, RBC announced plans to acquire the bank’s Canadian division. HSBC announced Wednesday that it will stop financing new oil and gas fields, related infrastructure projects and oil- and gas-fired power plants. The policy extends across HSBC’s global footprint, with the exception of its Canadian unit. “During the sale process,...

The LNG Canada industrial energy project under construction in Kitimat, B.C., on Sept. 28. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press An industry group formed eight years ago to promote the promise of abundant Canadian exports of liquefied natural gas faces an uncertain future after its leader resigned and the number of LNG proposals shrank. Bryan Cox has left the Canadian LNG Alliance after nearly four years as the group’s president and chief executive officer. He recently joined Calgary-based Petronas Energy Canada Ltd. as the company’s director of external affairs and policy. When the alliance launched in 2014, it focused on touting more than 20 LNG proposals in British Columbia. But most proponents gradually dropped out in the subsequent years, saying that they were unable to make the economics work, and that regulatory delays were hurting them. The alliance has four remaining members: LNG Canada, Woodfibre LNG, Enbridge Inc. ENB-T and FortisBC. FTS-T Teresa Waddington, LNG Canada’s vice-pre...