Matthew Prince on PHP2Shell, iPhone Duo Early Reactions, Meta Unveils New Class C Stock | Matthew Prince, Kevin Weil, MC Lader, Dillon Baxter, Richard Starson, Brian Manning

Critical PHP Flaw Puts Much of the Web at Risk

Funding and deals

• Xona Space Systems. Builds a commercial satellite navigation service as an alternative to GPS, has launched six satellites, and announced a $250m round at a $2.45bn valuation.
• Warp Sciences. Builds AI-powered robotic drug discovery labs to reduce reliance on China and raised $215m in a round led by Lightspeed.
• PlantSwitch. The plant-based packaging maker raised an $8m Series B to fund a paper-coating line, working capital and a push into coffee cups.
• Stelius. Builds high power microwave systems to defeat drone swarms, raised a $5m pre-seed and holds a $2m pilot systems contract.

Guest interviews

• Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare. Prince says the PHP flaw, in software behind about 70 percent of the web, lets attackers take over servers, and attacks jumped from thousands to millions per minute after the patch. He calls AI the good guy for finding bugs that already existed and expects many more weeks like this over two years. He predicts agent traffic will reach a thousand times human traffic within five years, with micropayments as the likely business model.
• MC Lader, head of Cognition Industries. Cognition Industries builds industry-focused teams led by former founders across 14 industries. It starts with go to market work in sales and marketing before building industry-specific products. Lader plans to hire 12 to 14 people over six months.

News

• Meta issues nonvoting Class C shares, one per share. It is basically a two for one split, and Class C carries zero votes. Coogan and Hays argue Zuckerberg wants to keep voting control while selling his economic stake.
• Apple's iPhone Duo draws harsh early reviews. Tae Kim called it half baked and a very bad iPhone experience. The hosts say the launch was embarrassing because native apps were not optimized for the device.
• Weak passphrases led browsers to distrust root certificates. Several root key certificates used weak passwords, and one operator chose the number four instead of the required 328 bits. Browsers and operating systems distrusted the affected certificates.
• Milton claims nearly $1bn in jet orders. His company showed a full scale mock-up and says it has more than 50 orders or letters of intent. The hosts questioned his claim to have piloted a record setting flight.