The GitHub Sanctions

TechCrunch is reporting that GitHub (owned by Microsoft) has officially confirmed it is blocking developers in Iran, Syria, N. Korea, Cuba, and the Crimea from accessing private repos and paid accounts due to sanctions.

Hello, world.

Over the weekend, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote on Twitter that like any other “company that does business in the US,” GitHub is required to comply with the U.S. export law. The confirmation comes months after work collaboration service Slack, too, enforced similar restrictions on its platform.

Public repos will apparently remain available to everyone.

On the funding front…Sales enablement platform MindTickle gets a $40M Series C led by Norwest Venture partners…On demand transport app Grab will invest $2B in Indonesia over the next five years…and the U.K.’s Just Eat is merging with Dutch rival Takeaway.com in a £9B deal that will see the creation of one of the world’s biggest online food delivery companies.

And finally…on the Chimerica front, Chinese social media ByteDance said today that it is developing a smartphone, as part of its deal with device maker Smartisan Technology.

Who needs an Android when ya gotta ByteDance?