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IRS can do more to protect against tax fraudsters, watchdog says | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | A government watchdog has said that the Internal Revenue Service could do more to prevent tax fraud if it invested more money in ensuring that the identities of taxpayers are properly verified. From the IRS’s own data, fraudsters scammed the agency out of at least $1.6 billion in tax refunds during the 2016 tax season that belonged to taxpayers. That’s a drop in the ocean to the $383 billion paid out in legitimate tax returns. But by the Government Accountability Office said that the IRS still has a way to go to prevent further fraudulent activity. “While IRS regularly assesses risks to and monitors its online authentication applications, it has not established equally rigorous internal controls for its telephone, in-person, and correspondence channels, including mechanisms to collect reliable, useful data to monitor authentication outcomes,” said the report. “As a result, IRS may not identify current or emerging threats to the tax system.” In other words, the IRS can’t always guarantee that it’s you calling up about your tax affairs or logging in to the website. That’s a problem because around tax season, scammers — through leaks or breaches — and use that information to impersonate taxpayers. By filing fake tax returns before the legitimate taxpayer does, the scammer can collect the fraudulently obtained return. These breaches aren’t helping matters, said IRS chief information officer Gina Garza at on Thursday. Indeed, the IRS had to clean up after , in which 100,000 taxpayers had their tax information stolen — just two years after affected 300,000 taxpayers. Although the government watchdog said that the IRS has made some steps to improve its taxpayer verification efforts, the agency “does not have clear plans and timelines” to implement guidance provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that would properly authenticate taxpayers. One of the ideas was to notify taxpayers when a tax return had been filed in their name, which would help get ahead of scammers trying to cash in on fraudulent returns. But the watchdog said that the IRS hasn’t found the funding to roll out notifications. Some of the measures could still take between six months and three years to complete, the report said, leaving millions of taxpayers to defend themselves against the ongoing threat of tax fraud. The IRS accepted all of GAO’s 11 recommendations. IRS spokesperson Cecilia Barreda declined to comment further. |
Compound launches easy way to short cryptocurrencies | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | Think Ethereum and other crypto coins are overvalued? Now you can make money when their prices fall via Compound, which is launching its money market protocol for shorting cryptocurrencies today. The opens its allowing users to borrow and short Ethereum, 0x’s ZRX, Brave’s BAT, and Augur’s REP token, or lend them through Compound to earn interest. Compound’s protocol isn’t just useful for crypto haters, or HODLers who want to generate interest instead of just having their coins gathering dust in a wallet. “If/when scales, this will lead to some really interesting improvements in market structure, namely, fairer prices” Compound CEO Robert Leshner tells me. The startup spent the summer completing a security audit by Trail Of Bits and adding who will trade with Compound, offering liquidity to independent investors looking to be matched with borrowers or lenders. Next, the startup wants to offer a stablecoin on its protocol, bring in big financial institutions to add even more liquidity, and partner with a wallet provider to make signup faster. Compound users through a Web3 browser such as MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet and enter their Ethereum price. They can then view the interest rates for borrowing and shorting or lending and earning interest for each of the supported tokens. Compound’s secret sauce is that those interest rates are set algorithmically based on demand, though eventually it wants a community governance body to oversee this process. “I To make sure no one thinks they’re getting scammed, Compound is also releasing a users can view to check up on all the assets moving through the protocol and see what Compound is earning. It charges 10 percent of what borrowers pay in interest, with the rest going to the lender. That margin is what attracted the $8.2 seed round for Compound that also included Polychain Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. It could also make crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Robinhood less attractive to users because leaving their coins there comes with the opportunity cost of not lending them for profit. Meanwhile, shorts could pop the volatile crypto bubble and push prices to more sensible and stable levels. That’s market health is a critical precursor to big banks and traditional investors diving into crypto. |
Google launches new travel-planning tools | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | Slowly but surely, Google is expanding its portfolio of travel offerings that now range from hotel- and flight-booking services to trip planning tools. Today, it’s launching yet another set of new travel features that focus on travel planning and hotel bookings. Maybe the most interesting new tool, especially if you are planning to travel over the holidays, is a new that shows you when to best book your flights ahead of Thanksgiving, the December holidays and New Year’s based on 2017’s price changes. The tool is a bit limited in the number of city pairs it supports, but if you plan to fly on one of the 25 supported routes, then it could definitely save you a few dollars (assuming this year’s price trends are comparable to last year’s). The same page will also show you hotel deals, though that’s more of a lead-generation tool for Google Maps’ hotel search feature, which many people probably don’t yet know about. Once you have decided on a destination, Google’s new hotel location score can then help you find the neighborhood that’s best for you. The score summarizes information like nearby bars, landmarks and access to public transportation based on data from Google Maps. It’ll also tell you how to get to and from the airport, which is a smart addition. Come October, Google will also launch , a new feature that’ll help you organize your travel plans. Your Trips is not a new feature, but when this update goes live, it’ll collect all of your flight price tracking, hotel research and everything else you may have saved about a potential trip in one place. It’s a bit like Inbox’s ( ) trip bundles, but for trips that you are still planning. And finally, if you perform a regular search for a popular travel destination in Google Search, the result page will automatically highlight these trip-planning features, including day plans and articles about the destination. Once you start booking a trip, these results will also include information about your bookings and additional information based on this data. |
May Mobility puts autonomous shuttles on the streets of Columbus, Ohio | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | This December a set of autonomous vehicles will start roaming the streets of Columbus, Ohio, in an effort to turn this bustling Midwestern community into the first smart city. The project, which is part of the Smart Columbus and DriveOhio initiatives, is the first step in launching a fully autonomous shuttle route in the city. “We’re proud to have the first self-driving shuttle in Ohio being tested on the streets of Columbus,” said Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. “This pilot will shape future uses of this emerging technology in Columbus and the nation. Residents win when we add more mobility options to our transportation ecosystem – making it easier to get to work, school or local attractions.” Michigan-based provided the shuttles and the team is training the autonomous vehicles to navigate Columbus streets. May Mobility already launched their vehicles in Detroit and this is the second full implementation of the tech. The six-seater electric shuttles will follow a 3 mile route through downtown Columbus and the vehicles will start picking up passengers on December 1. Rides are free. May Mobility has already performed over 10,000 successful trips in Detroit. In Columbus the shuttles will drive the Scioto Mile loop, a scenic route through the city and by the Ohio River. A large digital display will show system information and there will be a single operator to oversee the trip and take control in case of emergency. Founder Edwin Olson is a robotics professor at the University of Michigan and his team won the MAGIC competition in 2010. “Cities are seeking cost-effective transportation services that will improve congestion in urban cores, and self-driving shuttles can offer a huge relief,” he said. “As we work toward a future where people can drive less and live more, we’re thrilled to be working with partners from Columbus to provide a new transportation experience that will make traveling through Columbus safe, reliable and personal.” Columbus won the $40 million Smart City Challenge in June 2016 to test and implement smart city tech. |
Microsoft will end support for Skype Classic in November | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | null |
Fund raises $200 million to lend cash to startup employees whose liquidity is locked up in equity | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 27 | has closed its $200 million fund to provide loans to startup employees whose liquidity is locked up in company stock. The fund, backed by the multi-billion-dollar private equity giant Oaktree Capital, is the latest investment vehicle from , a four-year-old venture firm founded by MySpace co-founder Troy Capital Partners has roughly $140 million under management in a $20 million early-stage fund and a $120 million growth stage fund, according to Berman. This is the firm’s first foray into the lending business. The new fund represents a brand new business opportunity for Oaktree, which manages $100 billion and invests heavily in credit and lending vehicles. “We think equity compensation is a bit broken as companies stay private longer,” says fund principal Anthony Tucker. The problem for employees is that a lot of their net worth is locked up in stock that is illiquid except through secondary offerings, which requires them to relinquish their shares. The lending product that Troy Capital offers comes with a 7 percent interest rate and means that employees don’t have to let go of their shares should they want to get some liquidity for their efforts. They simply take out a loan and get to keep the shares that could potentially be worth billions. For Troy, not only do the fund managers get access to a potentially lucrative new investment market, but they also gain a new pipeline for potential dealflow with the engineers and executives who may one day become founders in their own right. According to Tucker, the market for this kind of product is in the tens of billions of dollars. “SoftBank did a tender with Uber and it was a $9 billion tender, which was oversubscribed two times.” That means there was an additional $9 billion of demand for that transaction alone, he said. |
The Family raises $17.4 million to support European startups | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | has always been an ambitious startup accelerator. But it has always felt like the company never had enough money to grow as quickly as it wanted. The Family is raising a new $17.4 million funding round (€15 million). Private banking and asset management group is leading the round, with , , and others also participating. “It’s the first time an investor understands The Family’s business model. It’s the first time an investor isn’t trying to turn us into a VC fund,” The Family co-founder Oussama Ammar told me. According to him, The Family is basically going to do more of the same. Except that this funding round “makes [The Family] virtually immortal.” The Family had to double-check its bank account many, many times to make sure that there was enough money to pay all its employees. This funding round should let the company catch its breath. The Family has fine-tuned its fellowship program over the years. Here’s how it works today. Every quarter, around 20 startups join The Family. They will attend onboarding sessions in Paris, Berlin and London. In Paris, The Family’s team is focused on product and engineering. In London, The Family can help you raise money. And in Berlin, The Family’s team is all about operations and execution. After the onboarding stuff, companies can still seek for advice and connections. There’s no demo day and end of batch. The Family plans to support startups when it comes to funding, product, hiring and more. Being part of The Family is not free of course. Startups need to be willing to give away 5 percent of their equity in exchange of this support system. This isn’t for everyone and many entrepreneurs are already surrounded by a supportive ecosystem. So if you don’t think you’re getting enough value, you can ask for your shares back within a year. I’ve covered some of The Family’s startups over the years, such as , , , , , , , , , , , and more. With today’s funding round, The Family plans to invest in every funding round after a startup joins the fellowship. As a startup, if you can find a lead investor, The Family will automatically join the round with the same valuation and conditions. But the fellowship is just one side of the story. “Our goal with the fellowship is that we never exit because we want to maximize the returns on investment,” Ammar said. In order to support a staff of 60 people around 3 countries, The Family had to find a way to make money before those long-term exits. That’s why the company has launched other products. For instance, helps big companies become digital companies, educates startup employees and sells startup sweatshirts. The Family has spun off all those products into their own companies. They all have a dedicated CEO and team, but The Family retains at least 60 percent of the shares. And The Family wants to create more side businesses like those. It seems like The Family is leveraging this model to finance all the fellowship activities. Eventually, The Family’s dream is to be able to follow portfolio companies at every step of the way. It’s clear that you don’t need as much external support if you’re a Series C company. But The Family wants to become an infrastructure company that lets you build European tech giants. |
Deliveroo will enter Taiwan, its fourth market in the Asia-Pacific so far | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Food delivery service is making headway in its Asian expansion strategy. The London-based company announced today that it will launch in Taiwan in the coming weeks, starting with Taipei, the country’s capital, before heading to other cities. This marks Deliveroo’s fourth market in the Asia-Pacific region (the others are Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore) and is also a launch with personal significance for founder and CEO Will Shu, whose family is Taiwanese. In a press statement, Shu said “Our launch in Taiwan is also a personal milestone for me, my parents were born in Taiwan and much of my family still lives in Taipei. Taiwan is the market with my favourite food in the world—my personal favourite is a big bowl of 牛肉麵 [beef noodle soup] and a huge piece of 炸雞排 [fried chicken]. From a personal standpoint, It’s an amazing feeling to launch Deliveroo in Taiwan.” Once its Taiwan business starts, Deliveroo, which is reportedly , will operate in a total of 13 markets around the world. The company already faces stiff competition in Taipei, however, where its rivals will include Foodpanda, Uber Eats and Honestbee. Foodpanda was the first, , but Uber Eats quickly became a formidable rival when it entered Taiwan in 2016. Honestbee, a grocery and food delivery service, is also popular, and during lunch and dinner times riders carrying these services’ cooler bags on the backs of their scooters are a ubiquitous sight on Taipei’s streets. Like other food delivery startups, all three offer costly incentives like discount codes, flash sales and free delivery to entice customers. The resulting war of attrition has forced food delivery services in other markets to withdraw or consolidate. For example, Foodpanda sold off its Vietnam and Indonesia operations, before the company itself was . Deliveroo has the advantage of a large war chest, however, and its funding (its raised about $480 million at a valuation of more than $2 billion) will help it with the high cost of competition as it expands into new markets. |
Chinese Tesla rival Nio trims IPO target: now aims to raise up to $1.5B | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | The U.S. IPO window may be wide open for Chinese tech firms, but electric vehicle maker Nio has conservatively cut the target for its NYSE listing to $1.5 billion after a price range for its shares. The company plans to sell 184 million shares between $6.25-$8.25. That range would yield a total raise of $1.518 billion, which is down from . The range is, of course, subject to change and it doesn’t include income from the green shoe option — which allows underwriters to take an additional allocation of shares — but nevertheless, it is a notable development. Nio also revealed in its newest filing that its existing investors have committed to investing $250 million into the IPO which, at the middle of the range, would account for 22 percent of the allocation. There are plenty of possible explanation as to why Nio has cut its overall fundraise estimate. The most fundamental may be around sales. The company has only just begun to generate revenue. It but it only began shipping in June. So, thus far, it has fulfilled just 481 orders but it does claims that there are 17,000 customers who reserved a model and are waiting in the wings to purchase it. That’s meant that the company has recorded hefty losses — a negative $759 million in 2017 and minus $503 million this year to date — as it went pedal to the metal on R&D and preparation. Just a month of revenue makes it hard to gauge that potential, even though Nio has plans to scale up and open its own manufacturing plants. Also, however, it may also be related to general concerns around China. Nio is an international firm which develops technology in Silicon Valley and has design teams in Germany and the UK, but China is the only market it is focused on for sales. That makes a lot of sense since China is the world’s largest market for consumer EV sales, but there is, of course, a disconnect between the country and U.S. IPO investors. While Chinese firms have performed well on U.S. public markets — and for Chinese tech companies right now — but EVs still remain a new concept, even in the world of technology. Then there’s also the ongoing issue of politics. In particular, there’s President’s Trump continued trade war with China — — and some concern around with China’s top technology companies. Tencent, the $500 billion giant, on account of government interference in some of its core business, while arch-rival about the way it dressed up its latest financials, . Indeed, both companies — which are China’s top tech firms — have seen their share prices drop: Alibaba’s current price is down by 15 percent from what it was on January 1, while Tencent is down by 25 percent. All those concerns gathered together have likely caused Nio to price more conservatively, but we’ll have to wait for the list price to know for sure. Still, we’re looking at a billion-dollar IPO for the company which is seen by many as the closest competitor to Tesla — even if it currently has no U.S. sale plans. You can read more about the Nio business from our original story on the IPO filing below. |
I watched HBO’s Tinder-shaming doc ‘Swiped’ so you don’t have to | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Have you ever wanted to see one of your “hate-reads” stretched out to feature-film length? If so, you’ll want to watch HBO’s new documentary, “ ,” which takes a depressing, trigger-inducing and damning look at online dating culture, and specifically Tinder’s outsized influence in the dating app business. The film evolved from journalist Nancy Jo Sales’ 2015 Vanity Fair piece, entitled which was criticized at the time for its narrow focus on 20-something, largely heterosexual women in an urban setting. The piece had extrapolated out their personal dating struggles and turned them into a condemnation of the entire online dating market. But the VF piece was actually more memorable for Tinder’s . The company – well, . In (that’s still some of the best of the internet, mind you), the company lost its ever-lovin’ mind on both Vanity Fair and Nancy Jo Sales alike. One sample tweet from the Tinder meltdown: Ah, take that! Right?! Despite the complete PR , Tinder had a point. The VF piece wasn’t representative of Tinder’s larger user base, only a sliver. And the complaints from a few users couldn’t be used to make a point about the entire industry. Besides, what exactly was unique about those complaints? Was it truly to blame for the mistakes made in dating and sexual experimentation, when you’re young? Don’t you at least once or twice have to choose the wrong person, so you can begin to triangulate on what’s right? Unfortunately, the film doesn’t fully correct the article’s problem in terms of its demographic samplings. It still mostly relies on anecdotes told by (usually drunk) 20-somethings, which are then spliced up by the occasional expert commentary. And the subjects are often really, drunk. There’s one scene where a young woman is so wasted, it’s hard to believe she gave the filmmaker informed consent to use her footage. Meanwhile, the expert commentary has its highlights, too. There’s one expert – April Alliston, a Princeton professor – who breastfeeds her baby on camera while giving her commentary on pornography. (Oh yes, please discuss rape porn while the baby suckles your breast, thank you very much.) is the unspoken subtext, even as the film continues to subtly vilify casual sex among young adults, or act as if Tinder itself is somehow entirely responsible for the callous behavior of its users. Unlike the magazine article, the film does slightly expand its cast of characters to include gender non-conforming and other LGBTQ people, more people of color, and – – a couple interested in threesomes. But the general slice of the Tinder user base interviewed remains young, urban, and, in some cases, fairly vapid. As for “Swiped’s” milieu, much of its action is in the city. Specifically, scene after scene in the film is labeled, as if the experiences of people in this competitive and unique market – a place where leveling up to something better is a way of life – could somehow represent a universal truth applicable to all of Tinder’s estimated 50 million users. The film does, however, cover nearly everything that’s awful about dating apps – from young men ordering girls to their door as if it’s a meal from Seamless, to the overwhelming sense of dread and the depression that results from being on dating apps – or really, the internet itself – for too long. There are also scenes touching nearly every Tinder trope: The sending of dick pics; men posing with fish in their profile photos; that supposedly happy couple “looking for a third” (spoiler alert: they’re happy and are broken up by end of film); the “DTF?” come-ons; and basically every other reason people delete these apps in the first place. Where the film is somewhat stronger is when it talks about the very real psychological tricks Tinder and other dating apps have adopted to keep users engaged and addicted to swiping. Tinder, it’s pointed out, uses gamification techniques: Brain tricks like intermittent variable rewards that are proven to work on pigeons, no less! You see, if you don’t know when you’re getting the reward – a treat, a match, etc. – you end up playing the game more often, the psychologists explain. One of the better quotes on this topic comes from Tinder co-founder and CSO Jonathan Badeen, where he essentially compares the act of using Tinder to doing drugs or gambling. “We have some of these game-like elements, where you almost feel like you’re being rewarded,” says Baden. “It kinda works like a slot machine, where you’re excited to see who the next person is, or, hopefully, you’re excited to see ‘did I get the match?’ and get that screen? It’s a nice little rush,” he enthuses. Yeah. Yikes. Of course, these are concerns that extend beyond the online dating app industry. Social media apps, in general, have been more recently called out for similar behaviors – to addict their users in unhealthy ways. The are only in fact. and , for example, have just launched screen time controls aimed at giving us a chance at fighting back at the dangerous dark patterns and brain hacks these apps use. (Apple’s toolset is only arriving in iOS 12 – which is just now getting to the public.) It’s certainly fair to criticize companies like Tinder and Bumble for bringing these gamification tricks into delicate areas like those where the focus is supposedly on forming real human connections or “finding love.” But it’s disingenuous to act as if this is something unique to Tinder (et al) and not just, generally, the god-awful state of the tech industry as a whole at present. The only other worthwhile part to “Swiped” is where the film points out that Dating app companies don’t have any data on how many lasting relationships result from their app’s usage, “Swiped” finds. It’s odd, as tech companies are usually data hungry beasts. And success rates would seemingly be the exact kind of metric a company claiming to solve issues around relationship-finding would want to track. Though everyone today seems to know someone who “met on an app,” it’s unclear what portion of the user base is actually finding long-term success with those relationships. The dating app companies have no idea, either, the film proclaims. Asked how many people who met on Tinder got married or ended up in committed relationships, Jessica Carbino, a sociologist at Tinder, tells the filmmaker: “we do not have that information available.” She then adds she’s “inundated with emails” from Tinder users getting married and having babies. (She also hilariously defends casual hookups as something that , too, so don’t blame Tinder for that! I mean, sometimes this film is just comedy gold, I swear.) Of course, with a user base in the tens of millions, a good handful of happy emails should be expected. It’s definitely not evidence that Tinder is any better than the alternative – bars, blind dates, introductions through friends, etc. The film then drives this particular point home by citing user studies by both Tinder and the more relationship-focused dating app Hinge, which seem indicate that swiped-based dating doesn’t work. says one Tinder survey. The text then fades, and the next statistic, this time from Hinge, appears. it says. By the end of the film, it’s clear you’re expected to delete Tinder and all the other dating apps off your phone and get on with your life. However, as with Facebook and social media, backlash doesn’t mean abandonment. Tinder’s swipe culture is the new normal. It’s right to hold it accountable in areas it can do better – reporting and abuse, for example – but it’s not going away anytime soon. |
Walmart is now selling bitcoins for $1 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Walmart is now selling bitcoin for $1. But in a new spin on the volatile and ever-changing world of cryptocurrency, this digital currency is made of chocolate. , are 1.42 ounces of milk chocolate wrapped in gold-colored foil made by Frankford Candy. They’re reminiscent of the regular old foil-wrapped milk chocolate coins of yesteryear. But of course, entirely different because they’re called bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital decentralized currency that’s created and then held electronically. Frankford just added the milk chocolate. Lots of Milk Chocolate + Bitcoins = Pure happiness. — Frankford Candy (@frankfordcandy) Frankford Candy, which has been in business since 1947, is hardly the first company to see opportunity in the rise of cryptocurrencies. Who can forget Long Island Iced Tea Corp, the non-alcoholic beverage company, that saw its shares rise six-fold after rebranding itself Long Blockchain Corp? (Nasdaq delisted the stock earlier this year because the company’s market capitalization was too low.) Or a , In this case, Frankford’s bitcoin is more affordable. The price of bitcoin, which surpassed $20,000 in December before plummeting, now trades at about $6,240. |
Comma.ai’s George Hotz ousts George Hotz as CEO | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | founder George Hotz is the only member, is making changes at the autonomous driving startup: Hotz is no longer CEO of the company. A new CEO, who Hotz declined to name, is expected to be announced Friday via the . He confirmed that the CEO is indeed a human and a “very talented one,” Hotz told TechCrunch. Hotz, who gained worldwide fame under the hacker alias “geohot” when he cracked the iPhone and PlayStation 3 as a teenager, isn’t leaving the company he founded. Instead, Hotz and two others are part of a new division called Comma.ai research that will focus on building out behavioral models that can drive cars. Comma.ai found the “right product market fit” during his three-year tenure as CEO, Hotz said. “We have very good growth numbers, now it’s time to get the slope on growth even higher,” said Hotz, who is the company’s majority shareholder. “It’s much more of an execution problem now than a vision problem. And perhaps I’m not the best executor.” Hotz said the company needed someone to scale the team from the 15 people who are there now to the “50 required to put out a real consumer product,” as well as work on reducing cost of the product and deal with regulators. Hotz may be out as CEO, but he insists the fundamental ethos of the company won’t change. “We’ve always been the North Korea of self-driving companies; we are driven by nobody else’s agenda,” he said. “That’s not going to change.” And he’s still interested in self-driving cars. “Eventually, what I want to do with my life is I want to solve AI,” Hotz said. “And I think that self-driving cars are still the coolest applied AI problem today.” Comma.ai initially aimed to sell a $999 aftermarket self-driving car kit that would give certain vehicle models highway-driving assistance abilities similar to Tesla’s Autopilot feature. Hotz in October 2016 after receiving a letter from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. Five weeks later, Comma.ai released its self-driving software to the world. All of the code, as well as plans for the hardware, was posted on . Today, Comma.ai has an ecosystem of products — the Eon, Panda and Giraffe — all aimed at bringing semi-autonomous driving capabilities to cars. Drivers who buy and install them in their cars can bypass the driver-assistance systems in specific vehicles — right now late-model Hondas and Toyotas — and run Comma.ai’s open-source driving software instead. The Eon is a dashcam dev kit based on Android that can run Waze, Spotify and Comma.ai’s open-source dashcam app , which lets car owners record and review their drives. The Panda is a $99 universal car interface that plugs into a vehicle’s OBD-II port and gives users access to the internal communications networks (known as a vehicle bus) that interconnects components in a vehicle. The Giraffe is an adapter board that gives users access to other CAN buses not exposed on the main OBD-II connector. This allows commands to be issued to the car via software. Pull all of these together and a vehicle has Comma.ai’s version of lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. TechCrunch rode in one of these Comma.ai-equipped vehicles in July. More than 500 cars are now using either open pilot or chffr, Hotz said, adding that this fleet is sending data back to Comma.ai. The company has collected more than 5 million miles of driving data. “We’re using all of that data to create behavioral models of human driving,” Hotz said. “We’re now very good at localizing that driving data, figuring out exactly where the car actually went. So from that and the data, how do we actually train models to drive like humans.” |
What not to expect from Apple’s hardware event | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | null |
Lively raises $6.5M to bring its comfortable and inclusive lingerie to brick-and-mortar stores | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | |
Amazon will start selling real, large Christmas trees | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | null |
What would a blockchain patent war look like? | Jed Grant | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Blockchain is perhaps the most hyped technology of the past five years. The technology that allows us to create trustless immutable shared ledgers promises to bring transparency and honesty to commerce by disintermediating and decentralizing functions that rely on trusted third parties today. The promise and the potential are almost as big as the hype. While still the early days, there are several applications that have already launched on blockchains — the first being the Bitcoin cryptocurrency payment protocol. Bitcoin is just a unit of account on blockchain. And more recently, with the implementation of smart contracts, code that is shared across the whole blockchain to execute conditionally with irrefutable results, we have the possibility to tokenize many new financial constructs on blockchains. This has given rise to the , a token-generation event whereby tokens are sold in order to raise financing for a blockchain project in which the tokens will serve some purpose. This innovation in finance changed the way startups raised funds in 2016, 2017 and 2018, with more than $18 billion dollars of funds pouring into blockchain startups in 2018 alone. What has all this got to do with a patent war? Everything. At the same time that the hype around blockchain has been growing, the number of patents filed has been growing, as well. What’s makes this technology different from past innovation explosions is that the startups are better funded than ever before. Another very new factor is the ideology behind this innovation wave. A majority of these startups are founded on the basis of decentralization and open-source principals, meaning their code is open and they release it under the Apache 2.0 or similar open-source license. Philosophically, many project leaders are opposed to the very idea of intellectual property ownership such as patents. This has several implications. First, there are many technology startups working on cutting-edge innovations that are taking no precautions other than Apache Open Source licensing to protect their innovation. Many of these same startups have carried out ICOs and are now exceptionally well-funded with cash treasuries ranging from $10 million to $4 billion. There are several hundred young startup companies sitting on an average $25 million treasury that they are using to fund their development of open and freely accessible innovation. Second, there is a small concentration of such well-funded startups that are patenting blockchain technology. That may be a precursor of future patent assertion entities (PAEs), commonly known as “patent trolls.” Effectively, the modus operandi of some of these entities could be called “patent hoarding,” filing patents on any patentable aspect of blockchain that they can with the intent to become “patent trolls” in the future. Increasingly, large corporations are also patenting blockchain technology, although their patents tend to revolve around their core businesses; for example Visa, has filed patents on blockchain technologies related to payment services as they would relate to credit card usage, and UPS has filed patents for blockchain technology in shipping. Finally, putting these together we have a very interesting shaping up. There are large corporations that will defend their core business by asserting their patents against challengers who threaten their revenue streams. This is typical behavior and is often derided as the reason patents can hold back innovation. The more interesting players are the new ones. On the one hand you have very well-funded startups that have taken little to no precaution to protect their innovation. On the other hand you have very clever and agile PAEs, patent trolls, that are also well-funded and will use these resources to attack any startup that could be remotely considered to be infringing on their patent portfolio. There has never been a case of so much free-floating cash being readily available in startups just waiting to be attacked. This could become a boon for the PAEs, a slaughter for the idealistic and well-funded startups and result in a massive transfer of funds from startups to PAEs in the coming years. This would be a very sad outcome for innovation. Everyone is, of course, entitled to their own views on the value of patents and whether their company should file for them. But regardless of your position, we, as a community, must acknowledge that there are others in this world who are obtaining blockchain patents purely for their own profit motives. For example, Erich Spangenberg of IPwe has stated publicly, “… It is a curious path how a collection of misfit trolls, geeks and wonks ended up here — but we are going to crush it and make a fortune…” You can read more about Erich’s intentions . Because of this, it is important to take intellectual property very seriously. Make an effort to identify and patent your innovations. To that end you can join , a nonprofit founded to allow patent holders to jointly protect each other from the eventuality that their operating patents will fall into the hands of a PAE. This will improve your protection and help protect fellow network members from PAEs. Think of it as your “patent troll flu shot.” The more blockchain innovators join together to protect and nurture our innovation, the better for our ecosystem. We all agree that patents in the wrong hands will hurt our industry and the speed at which others embrace blockchain. We all must take responsibility and be good corporate citizens when it comes to IP. By removing the uncertainty that comes from PAEs, we can avoid the turmoil and costly litigation we saw play out in the smartphone and semiconductor industries. If we remove friction, we can accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology. This tide will raise all boats. Whether you are an investor or an entrepreneur in blockchain projects, you should strongly consider the manner by which your projects handle their intellectual property and do careful diligence to ensure that your interests are not threatened by a potential patent battle. |
Plex Cloud will shut down November 30 due to technical challenges | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Plex today announced it’s shutting down its troubled Plex Cloud service, via that hasn’t found its way over to the company’s official blog — likely a choice the company made in order to downplay the news, or avoid media scrutiny. Plex Cloud, in fall 2016, was meant to serve as a way for Plex customers to save their files to online storage services like OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, instead of having to host their saved files locally on their own machines or network-attached storage devices. But now that will no longer be an option, as the service will stop functioning on November 30, 2018, Plex says. Plex Cloud had struggled from the beginning with technical issues. Almost immediately, its debut launch partner, Amazon, with Plex Cloud. Users were complaining that Amazon Drive files couldn’t be accessed and wondered if Amazon was imposing upload limits. There were also concerns that Plex Cloud users whose libraries included pirated movies and TV shows could be by publishing those files to the cloud. Unlike Plex’s Cloud Sync, which syncs select local media to the cloud to access when the local server was offline, Plex Cloud is a full-fledged Plex Media Server in the cloud. That meant the media was hosted independently of local storage, and was transcoded for compatibility with Plex player apps, as needed. This led to some technical challenges Plex hasn’t been able to overcome, though it what exact challenges Plex Cloud was facing. The company the problems it was having were very difficult. “It’s definitely not a trivial thing to take the best media server on the planet and make it work seamlessly as a scalable cloud service, load-balanced and clustered across multiple geographic regions. It turns out a lot can go wrong,” a blog post then admitted. In February 2018, Plex it would disable new server creation for Plex Cloud users — something it said it had to do while “working to address challenges with performance, quality, and overall user experience inherent with cloud provider integrations.” At the time, it said it would “evaluate the long-term plan for the service.” The subtext, of course, was that Plex Cloud may be shut down if Plex couldn’t figure out how to overcome the technical issues. Today’s that day, unfortunately. Plex says it tried to address the issues that came up while keeping costs under control, but hasn’t found a solution. The announcement states: We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Plex Cloud service on November 30th, 2018. As you may know, we haven’t allowed any new Plex Cloud servers since February of this year, and since then we’ve been actively working on ways to address various issues while keeping costs under control. We hold ourselves to a high standard, and unfortunately, after a lot of investigation and thought, we haven’t found a solution capable of delivering a truly first class Plex experience to Plex Cloud users at a reasonable cost. While we are super bummed about the impact this will have on our happy Cloud users, ending support for it will allow us to focus on improving core functionality, adding new features and content, and delivering on our mission to provide a world-class product that we can all rely on and enjoy. On November 30, 2018, Plex Cloud users will no longer be able to access their cloud server. That means customers who want to continue to stream those files through Plex will need to download them locally on a media server or NAS device on their local network. Plex, of course, will not delete the files you’ve uploaded to cloud services, like Dropbox or Google Drive. They will remain there as long as you have a subscription to those services. While the loss of Plex Cloud will be upsetting to Plex users who were happily enjoying the service without issues, the company’s decision to shutter instead of solve the problems is indicative of the new direction Plex has been headed in recent months. Originally a software application designed for hosting users’ personal media collections, Plex has since launched its own tools for watching an antenna and in an effort to attract the growing number of cord cutters. It has also launched and rolled out personalized apps in order to bring in more mobile users. It’s unclear how well Plex’s shifts have been working to attract new users and paying subscribers, as the company doesn’t break out the latter figure. As of May, Plex said it had 15 million registered users. |
Safe artificial intelligence requires cultural intelligence | Gillian Hadfield | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there’s a norm against putting it in a fruit salad. Any kind of artificial intelligence clearly needs to possess great knowledge. But if we are going to deploy AI agents widely in society at large — on our highways, in our nursing homes and schools, in our businesses and governments — we will need machines to be wise as well as smart. Researchers who focus on a problem known as AI safety or AI alignment define as machines that can meet or beat human performance at a specific cognitive task. Today’s self-driving cars and facial recognition algorithms fall into this narrow type of AI. But some researchers are working to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — machines that can outperform humans at cognitive task. We don’t know yet when or even if AGI will be achieved, but it’s clear that the research path is leading to ever more powerful and autonomous AI systems performing more and more tasks in our economies and societies. Building machines that can perform any cognitive task means figuring out how to build AI that can not only learn about things like the biology of tomatoes but also about our highly variable and changing systems of norms about things like what we do with tomatoes. Humans live lives populated by a multitude of norms, from how we eat, dress and speak to how we share information, treat one another and pursue our goals. For AI to be truly powerful will require machines to comprehend that norms can vary tremendously from group to group, making them seem unnecessary, yet it can be critical to follow them in a given community. Tomatoes in fruit salads may seem odd to the Brits for whom Kington was writing, but they are perfectly fine if you are cooking for or a member of the culinary . And while it may seem minor, serving them the wrong way to a particular guest can cause confusion, disgust, even anger. That’s not a recipe for healthy future relationships. Norms concern things not only as apparently minor as what foods to combine but also things that communities consider tremendously consequential: who can marry whom, how children are to be treated, who is entitled to hold power, how businesses make and price their goods and services, when and how criticism can be shared publicly. Image courtesy of Successful and safe AI that achieves our goals within the limits of socially accepted norms requires an understanding of not only how our physical systems behave, but also how human normative systems behave. Norms are not just fixed features of the environment, like the biology of a plant. They are dynamic and responsive structures that we make and remake on a daily basis, as we decide whether or when to let someone know that “this” is the way “we” do things around here. These normative systems are the systems on which we rely to solve the challenge of ensuring that people behave the way we want them to in our communities, workplaces and social environments. Only with confidence about how everyone around us is likely to behave are we all willing to trust and live and invest with one another. Ensuring that powerful AIs behave the way we want them to will not be so terribly different. Just as we need to raise our children to be competent participants in our systems of norms, we will need to train our machines to be similarly competent. It is not enough to be extremely knowledgeable about the facts of the universe; extreme competence also requires wisdom enough to know that there may be a rule here, in this group but not in that group. And that ignoring that rule may not just annoy the group; it may lead them to fear or reject the machine in their midst. Ultimately, then, the success of depends on our ability to understand Life 1.0. And that is where we may face the greatest challenge in AI research. |
Gawker is relaunching in early 2019 | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | After a two-year hiatus, Gawker is coming back. Peter Thiel, be damned. Bustle-owner Bryan Goldberg, who paid $1.35 million for rights to the defunct gossip site in a bankruptcy auction in July, wrote in a memo to Bustle staff Tuesday that Gawker would relaunch next year with Amanda Hale, the former chief revenue officer of The Outline, as its publisher. A spokesperson for Bustle confirmed the hiring and upcoming launch to TechCrunch, adding that Hale “will be responsible for building out the sales and marketing teams, and developing the overall strategy for the brand. Her first project will be to solidify a plan to ensure the Gawker archives have a safe and permanent home. We will be investing significant resources in this relaunch, and we will continue to make further announcements as plans progress.” According to the memo, the new Gawker will take advantage of Bustle’s resources, technology and business platform. “We won’t recreate Gawker exactly as it was, but we will build upon Gawker’s legacy and triumphs — and learn from its missteps,” Goldberg wrote. “In so doing, we aim to create something new, vibrant, highly relevant, and worth visiting daily … completely distinct from our other properties and sit within a separate corporate subsidiary,” Here’s the full memo, obtained by The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Mullin: Full memo from Bryan Goldberg: “We won't recreate Gawker exactly as it was, but we will build upon Gawker’s legacy and triumphs — and learn from its missteps.” — Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) Goldberg, a man, is the founder of Bustle, a site that creates content for millennial women. He’s raised some for the site, which appears to have found its footing after a rough start. In 2014, one year after Bustle’s launch, Goldberg penned a painfully tone-deaf blog post announcing a $6.5 million round: “Isn’t it time for a women’s publication that puts world news and politics alongside beauty tips?” he wrote. “What about a site that takes an introspective look at the celebrity world, while also having a lot of fun covering it? How about a site that offers career advice and book reviews, while also reporting on fashion trends and popular memes?” for ethical reasons following the blog post. Goldberg went on to ink deals with several VCs, including GGV, General Catalyst, Saban Capital Group and Social Capital. As for Hale, she left The Outline in May amid struggles at the digital media startup. Just last week, The Outline announced it was laying off its remaining staff writers and would rely solely on freelancers. It’s likely nearing a shutdown, despite having raised $5 million in venture capital funding earlier this year. The Outline’s reported struggles don’t hold a candle to Gawker’s tumultuous past. Gawker parent company Gawker Media was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection when a Florida court ordered it to pay $140 million in damages to Hulk Hogan, who had sued Gawker for publishing his sex tape. The lawsuit, and two others against Gawker, was bankrolled by Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley billionaire had a long-standing vendetta against the site since it reported that he was gay before he had come out publicly. In its heyday, Gawker attracted 23 million visits in a month, according to Wikipedia. Based in New York and founded in 2003, Gawker Media also ran , , and — all of which were acquired by Univision for $135 million following the infamous lawsuit. |
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Apple’s autonomous vehicle fleet swells 27% in four months | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Apple keeps adding autonomous vehicles to its test fleet in California, boosting its ranks 27 percent since May, according to records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The company now has 70 autonomous vehicles permitted to test on public roads, . The permits, which are issued by CA DMV, require a safety driver to be behind the wheel. Over the past 18 months, Apple has gone from just three autonomous vehicles to , 55 by May and now 70. GM Cruise has the most permitted autonomous test vehicles at 175, followed by Waymo with 88. Apple has the third-largest fleet. The number of permitted test vehicles is one of the only ways to track what Apple is up to. The company doesn’t talk about its self-driving vehicle program. The tech company’s permit with the CA DMV, the agency responsible for monitoring AVs in the state, is the only official acknowledgment that it even has a program. Apple’s self-driving program has been considered an open secret in Silicon Valley. CEO has more recently made references to the company’s interest in autonomous systems. Last month, the company , according to a report filed with the CA DMV. The low-speed accident occurred August 24. The number of accidents involving autonomous vehicles have become more common as companies put more of these self-driving cars on public roads. The vast majority are minor, low-speed incidents. There was just one accident involving a self-driving vehicle (that one was owned by Delphi) reported to the DMV in 2014. So far this year, there have been more than reported to CA DMV. |
Ebay’s HeadGaze lets motor-impaired users navigate the site with head movements | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | The sophisticated head-tracking system like the one built into the iPhone X may have been intended for AR and security purposes, but it may also turn out to be very useful for people with disabilities. A proof of concept app from an eBay intern shows how someone with very little motor function can navigate the site with nothing but head movements. Muratcan Çiçek is one such person, and relies on assistive technology every day to read, work and get around. This year he was interning at eBay and decided to create a tool that would help people with motor impairments like his to shop online. Turns out there are lots of general-purpose tools for accessibility, like letting a user control a cursor with their eyes or a joystick, but nothing made just for navigating a site like eBay or Amazon. , relies on the iPhone X’s front-facing sensor array (via ARKit) to track the user’s head movements. Different movements correspond to different actions in a demonstration app that shows the online retailer’s daily deals: navigate through categories and products by tilting your head all the way in various directions, or tilt partway down to buy, save or share. You can see it in action in the short video below: It’s not that this is some huge revolution in interface — there are some apps and services that do this, though perhaps not in such a straightforward and extensible way as this. But it’s easy to underestimate the cognitive load created when someone has to navigate a UI that’s designed around senses or limbs they don’t have. To create something like this isn’t necessarily simple, but it’s useful and relatively straightforward, and the benefits to a person like Çiçek are substantial. That’s probably why he made the HeadGaze project open source — ; it’s all in Swift and currently only works on the iPhone X, but it’s a start. Considering this was a summer project by an intern, there’s not much of an excuse for companies with thousands of developers to not have something like it available for their apps or storefronts. And it’s not like you couldn’t think of other ways to use it. As Çiçek writes: HeadGaze enables you to scroll and interact on your phone with only subtle head movements. Think of all the ways that this could be brought to life. Tired of trying to scroll through a recipe on your phone screen with greasy fingers while cooking? Too messy to follow the how-to manual on your cell phone while you’re tinkering with the car engine under the hood? Too cold to remove your gloves to use your phone? He and his colleagues are also looking into actual gaze-tracking to augment the head movements, but that’s still a ways off. Maybe you can help. |
Twilio’s contact center products just got more analytical with Ytica acquisition | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | , a company best known for supplying communications APIs for developers has a for building sophisticated customer service applications on top of Twilio’s APIs. Today, it announced it was acquiring (pronounced Why-tica) to provide an operational and analytical layer on top of the customer service solution. The companies would not discuss the purchase price, but Twilio indicated it does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its “results, operations or financial condition.” In other words, it probably didn’t cost much. Ytica, which is based in Prague, has actually been a partner with Twilio for some time, so coming together in this fashion really made a lot of sense, especially as Twilio has been developing Flex. Twilio Flex is an app platform for contact centers, which offers a full stack of applications and allows users to deliver customer support over multiple channels, Al Cook, general manager of Twilio Flex explained. “Flex deploys like SaaS, but because it’s built on top of APIs, you can reach in and change how Flex works,” he said. That is very appealing, especially for larger operations looking for a flexible, cloud-based solution without the baggage of on-prem legacy products. What the product was lacking, however, was a native way to manage customer service representatives from within the application, and understand through analytics and dashboards, how well or poorly the team was doing. Having that ability to measure the effectiveness of the team becomes even more critical the larger the group becomes, and Cook indicated some Flex users are managing enormous groups with 10,000-20,000 employees. Ytica provides a way to measure the performance of customer service staff, allowing management to monitor and intervene and coach when necessary. “It made so much sense to join together as one team. They have huge experience in the contact center, and a similar philosophy to build something customizable and programmable in the cloud,” Cook said. While Ytica works with other vendors beyond Twilio, CEO Simon Vostrý says that they will continue to support those customers, even as they join the Twilio family. “We can run Flex and can continue to run this separately. We have customers running on other SaaS platforms, and we will continue to support them,” he said. The company will remain in Prague and become a Twilio satellite office. All 14 employees are expected to join the Twilio team and Cook says plans are already in the works to expand the Prague team. |
The best security and privacy features in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | September is Apple hardware season, where we expect new iPhones, a new Apple Watch and more. But what makes the good stuff run is the software within. First revealed earlier this year at the , iOS 12 and macOS Mojave focus on a running theme: security and privacy for the masses. Ahead of Wednesday big reveal, here’s all the good stuff to look out for. macOS Mojave will be of the Mac operating system, named after a location in California where Apple is based. It comes with . Safari will to prevent advertisers from following you from site to site. Even social networks like Facebook know which sites you visit because so many embed Facebook’s tools — like the comments section or the “Like” button. Tracking prevention will prevent ad firms from building a unique “fingerprint” of your browser, making it difficult to serve you targeted ads — even when you’re in incognito mode or private browsing. That’s an automatic boost for personal privacy as these companies will find it more difficult to build up profiles on you. Just like when an app asks you for access to your contacts and calendar, now Mojave will ask for permission before an app can access your FaceTime camera and microphone, as well as location data, backups and more. By expanding this feature, it’s much more difficult for apps to switch on your camera without warning or record from your microphone without you noticing. That’s going to and surveillance by malware . But also asking permission for access to your backups — often unencrypted — will prevent malware or hackers from quietly stealing your data. iOS 12 lands on more recent iPhones and iPads, but will bring to older supported devices, , . iOS 12’s in-built password manager, which stores all your passwords for easy access, will now tell if you’re using the same password across different sites and apps. Password reuse is a real problem. If you use the same password on every site, it only takes one site breach to grab your password for every other site you use. iOS 12 will let you know if you’re using a weak password or the same password on different sites. Your passwords are easily accessible with your fingerprint or your passcode. When you are sent a two-factor code — such as a text message or a push notification — iOS 12 will take that code and automatically enter it into the login box. Two-factor authentication is good for security — it adds an extra layer of protection on top of your username and password. But adoption is low because two-factor is cumbersome and frustrating. This feature keeps the feature security intact while making it more seamless and less annoying. This will lock any accessories out of your device — including USB cables and headphones — when your iPhone or iPad has been locked for more than an hour. This is an optional feature — first added to iOS 11.4.1 but likely to be widely adopted with iOS 12 — will make it more difficult for law enforcement (and hackers) to plug in your device and steal your sensitive data. Because your device is encrypted, not even Apple can get your data, but some devices — — can brute-force your password. This feature will render these devices largely ineffective. Apple’s event starts Wednesday at 10am PT (1pm ET). |
This tech (scarily) lets video change reality | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a method to turn one video into the style of another. While this might be a little unclear at first, take a look at the video below. In it, the researchers have taken an entire clip from John Oliver and made it look like Stephen Colbert said it. Further, they were able to mimic the motion of a flower opening with another flower. In short, they can make anyone (or anything) look like they are doing something they never did. “I think there are a lot of stories to be told,” said CMU Ph.D. student Aayush Bansal. He and the team created the tool to make it easier to shoot complex films, perhaps by replacing the motion in simple, well-lit scenes and copying it into an entirely different style or environment. “It’s a tool for the artist that gives them an initial model that they can then improve,” he said. The system uses something called generative adversarial networks (GANs) to move one style of image onto another without much matching data. GANs, however, create many artifacts that can mess up the video as it is played. In a GAN, two models are created: a discriminator that learns to detect what is consistent with the style of one image or video, and a generator that learns how to create images or videos that match a certain style. When the two work competitively — the generator trying to trick the discriminator and the discriminator scoring the effectiveness of the generator — the system eventually learns how content can be transformed into a certain style. The researchers created something called that reduces the imperfections by “not only spatial, but temporal information.” “This additional information, accounting for changes over time, further constrains the process and produces better results,” wrote the researchers. Recycle-GAN can obviously be used to create so-called Deepfakes, allowing for nefarious folks to simulate someone saying or doing something they never did. Bansal and his team are aware of the problem. “It was an eye opener to all of us in the field that such fakes would be created and have such an impact. Finding ways to detect them will be important moving forward,” said Bansal. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehD3C60i6lw&feature=youtu.be] |
Ne-Yo wants to make Silicon Valley more diverse, one investment at a time | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | Dressed in a t-shirt and a hat emblazoned with the phrase “lone wolf,” Ne-Yo slouches over in a chair inside a classroom. The Grammy-winning recording artist is struggling to remember the name of “that actor,” the one who’s had a successful career in both the entertainment industry and tech investing. “I learned about all the things he was doing and I thought it was great for him,” Ne-Yo told TechCrunch. “But I didn’t really know what my place in tech would be.” It turns out “that actor” is Ashton Kutcher, widely known in Hollywood and beyond for his role in several blockbusters and the TV sitcom and via Sound Ventures and A-Grade in Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Bird and several others. Ne-Yo, for his part, is known for a string of R&B hits including , and His latest album, came out in June. Ne-Yo, like Kutcher, is interested in pursuing a side gig in investing but he doesn’t want to waste time chasing down the next big thing. His goal, he explained, is to use his wealth to encourage people like him to view software engineering and other technical careers as viable options. “Little black kids growing up don’t say things like ‘I want to be a coder when I grow up,’ because it’s not real to them, they don’t see people that look like me doing it,” Ne-Yo said. “But tech is changing the world, like literally by the day, by the second, so I feel like it just makes the most sense to have it accessible to everyone.” Last year, Ne-Yo finally made the leap into venture capital investing: his first deal, an investment in , a two-year coding academy founded by and that trains full-stack engineers. The singer returned to San Francisco earlier this month for the grand opening of Holberton’s remodeled headquarters on Mission Street in the city’s SoMa neighborhood. [gallery ids="1722954,1722952,1722953,1722955"] Holberton, a proposed alternative to a computer science degree, is free to students until they graduate and land a job, at which point they are asked to pay 17 percent of their salaries during their first three years in the workforce. It has a different teaching philosophy than your average coding academy or four-year university. It relies on project-based and peer learning, i.e. students helping and teaching each other; there are no formal teachers or lecturers. The concept appears to be working. Holberton says their former students are now employed at Apple, NASA, LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox and Tesla. Ne-Yo participated in Holberton’s $2.3 million round in February 2017 alongside Reach Capital and Insight Venture Partners co-founder Jerry Murdock, as well as Trinity Ventures, the VC firm that introduced Ne-Yo to the edtech startup. Holberton has since from existing and new investors like Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang and Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle. Holberton has used that capital to A school in New Haven, Conn., where the company hopes to reach students who can’t afford to live in tech’s hubs, is in development. The startup’s emphasis on diversity is what attracted Ne-Yo to the project and why he signed on as a member of the board of trustees. More than half of Holberton’s students are people of color and 35 percent are women. Since Ne-Yo got involved, the number of African American applicants has doubled from roughly 5 percent to 11.5 percent. Before Ne-Yo’s preliminary meetings with Holberton’s founders, he says he wasn’t aware of “When it was brought to my attention, I was like ‘ok, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed,'” he said. “It makes no sense that this thing that affects us all isn’t available to us all. If you don’t have the money or you don’t have the schooling, it’s not available to you, however, it’s affecting their lives the same way it’s affecting the rich guys’ lives.” Holberton’s founders joked with TechCrunch that Ne-Yo has actually been more supportive and helpful in the last year than many of the venture capitalists who back Holberton. He’s very “hands-on,” they said. Despite the fact that he’s balancing a successful music career and doesn’t exactly have a lot of free time, he’s made sure to attend events at Holberton, like the recent grand opening, and will Skype with students occasionally. Ne-Yo was very careful to explain that he didn’t put money in Holberton for the good optics. “This isn’t something I just wanted to put my name on,” he said. “I wanted to make sure [the founders] knew this was something I was going to be serious about and not just do the celebrity thing. I wanted it to be grassroots and authentic so we dropped whatever we were doing and came down, met these guys, hung out with the students and hung out at the school to see what it’s really about.” What’s next for Ne-Yo? A career in venture capital, perhaps? He’s definitely interested and will be making more investments soon, but a full pivot into VC is unlikely. At the end of the day, Silicon Valley doesn’t need more people with fat wallets and a hankering for the billionaire lifestyle. What it needs are people who have the money and resources necessary to bolster the right businesses and who care enough to prioritize diversity and inclusivity over yet another payday. “Not to toot the horn or brag, but I’m not missing any meals,” Ne-Yo said. “So, if I’m going to do it, let it mean something.” |
Dropbox may be adding an e-signature feature, user survey indicates | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | A recent user survey sent out by Dropbox confirms the company is considering the addition of an electronic signature feature to its Dropbox Professional product, which it refers to simply as “E-Signature from Dropbox.” The point of the survey is to solicit feedback about how likely users are to use such a product, how often, and if they believe it would add value to the Dropbox experience, among other things. While a survey alone doesn’t confirm the feature is in the works, it does indicate how Dropbox is thinking about its professional product. According to the company’s description of E-Signature, the feature would offer “a simple, intuitive electronic signature experience for you and your clients” where documents could be sent to others to sign in “just a few clicks.” The clients also wouldn’t have to be Dropbox users to sign, the survey notes. And the product would offer updates on every step of the signature workflow, including notifications and alerts about the document being opened, whether the client had questions, and when the document was signed. After the signed document is returned, the user would receive the executed copy saved right in their Dropbox account for easy access, the company says. In addition to soliciting general feedback about the product, Dropbox also asked survey respondents about their usage of other e-signature brands, like Adobe e-Sign, DocuSign, HelloSign, and PandaDoc, as well as their usage other more traditional methods, like in-person signing and documents sent over mail. Given the numerous choices on the market today, it’s unclear if Dropbox will choose to move forward and launch such a product. However, if it did, the benefit of having its own E-Signature service would be its ability to be more tightly integrated into Dropbox’s overall product experience. It could also push more business users to upgrade from a basic consumer account to the Professional tier. This kind of direct integration would make sense in the context of Dropbox’s business workflows. If, for instance, a company is working on a contract workflow, being able to move to the signature phase without changing context (or to share with a user who doesn’t use Dropbox) could add tremendous value over and above simply storing the document. Companies like Dropbox have been looking for ways to move beyond pure storage to give customers the ability to collaborate and share that content, particularly without forcing them to leave the application to complete a job. This ability to do work without task switching is something that Dropbox has been working on . While it remains to be seen how they would implement such a solution, it might be a case where it would make more sense to partner with existing vendors or buy a smaller player than it would be build such functionality from scratch — although it’s not clear from a simple survey what their ultimate goal would be at this point. Reached for comment, a Dropbox spokesperson said the following: “We’re constantly experimenting with new features and asking our users for feedback to make sure we’re building product experience that they love. This study was part of those efforts.” |
Solve, MIT’s take on social innovation challenges, may be different enough to work | Ziad Reslan | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | a report on nearly a decade ago, an entire industry has grown around social innovation challenges. The formula for these “save the world” competitions has become standard. Drum up a lot of buzz around an award. Partner with big names to get funding and high-profile judges. Try and get as many submissions as possible from across the world. Whittle down the submissions and come up with a list of finalists that get to pitch at a glitzy event with a lot of media attention. On the final stage, based on pitches that last mere minutes, pick a winner that can get upwards of millions in prize funding. Don’t have a software platform to run a challenge of this kind? No worries, have sprung up that can do all the work for you—for anywhere from ten to a few hundred thousand dollars. The growth has been so exponential that prizes awarded through competitions has grown from less than $20 million in 1970 to a just four decades later. |
Elon Musk agrees to resign as Tesla chairman in settlement with SEC | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | Tesla CEO Elon Musk will step down as chairman of the electric automaker and pay a $20 million fine under a settlement reached with the U.S Securities and Exchange commission. Musk will remain CEO and he will still keep a seat on the board, just not as chairman. The agreement settles what could have turned into a bitter and potentially damaging fight for Musk, the company, and Tesla shareholders. Musk will resign from his role as chairman of the Tesla board within 45 days of the agreement, which was filed Saturday. He has agreed to not seek reelection or accept an appointment as chairman for three years. An independent chairman will be appointed, under the settlement agreement. Tesla will pay a separate $20 million penalty, according to the SEC. The SEC said the charge and fine against Tesla is for failing to require disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets. Musk doesn’t have to admit or deny the SEC’s allegations as part of the agreement. Tesla has also agreed to appoint two new independent directors to its board and establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications, according to the SEC. This likely means that Musk, who frequently turns to Twitter to unveils new products, features and updates on his multiple companies, will be more restricted moving forward. At least when it comes to his tweets about Tesla. “The resolution is intended to prevent further market disruption and harm to Tesla’s shareholders,” Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division said in a statement. The agreement marks the beginning of a new era of corporate governance for Tesla, which some shareholders have argued is too tightly controlled by Musk and others closely aligned to him such as his brother Kimbal Musk. Investor and founding board member Steve Jurvetson is still on leave. In 2017, Tesla diversified its board and added Ira Ehrenpreis, one of longest-serving board members who joined in 2007. The Thursday in federal district court alleged that Musk lied when he tweeted on August 7 that he had “funding secured” for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share. Federal securities regulators reportedly just a week after the tweet. Investigations can take years before any action is taken, if at all. In this case, charges were filed just six weeks later. The SEC said in the complaint that Musk violated anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The commission has asked the court to fine Musk and bar the billionaire entrepreneur from serving as an officer or director of a public company. Musk described that has left him “deeply saddened and disappointed.” Tesla and the board later issued a joint statement supporting Musk. The complaint contains a number of , including that he had talked to the board about an offer to take Tesla private as early as August 2 when he sent to Tesla’s board of directors, chief financial officer and general counsel an email with the subject, “Offer to Take Tesla Private at $420.” |
The 2019 BMW i3 now has 153 miles of range thanks to a bigger battery | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | The BMW i3 is getting an upgraded battery — plus a bunch of other improvements —that will give the 2019 model about 153 miles of range. That’s roughly a 30% improvement from the previous model. The boost in range is noteworthy, yet it still lags behind the Chevy Bolt and the Tesla Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles. And it’s only a smidge better than the much cheaper Nissan Leaf. The upshot: it’s a steady improvement that expresses some continued investment and interest in the i3 brand. But will it be enough to keep this ? When the BMW i3 first went into production in 2013 it had a 22.6-kilowatt hour battery pack containing 60 ampere hours (Ah) batteries. That first i3 had range of 81 miles, according to EPA estimates. The company’s second-generation battery, introduced in 2016, grew to 33 kwh of gross energy (94 amp hours) and had a range of about 115 miles under the EPA cycle. Now the 2019 model, which will comes with 120 Ah batteries in a 42.2-kWh-battery pack, will be able to travel about 153 miles on a single charge, BMW said. The upgraded battery will be available in both the i3 and the i3s. Pricing was not announced. Previous i3 model year is priced at about $45,000 for the base model. Power hasn’t changed in the new 2019 models, which will go into production this November. The standard i3 comes with a 170-horsepower electric motor that will take it from zero to 60 miles per hour in 7.2 seconds. The will have a 181-horsepower motor that can go from zero to 60 in 6.8 seconds. The automaker is giving the i3 a few other improvements as well, including a new exterior color called Jucaro Beige metallic and adaptive LED headlights with automatic high beams. The exterior paint finishes Mineral Grey metallic, Imperial Blue metallic, Melbourne Red metallic, Capparis White and Fluid Black are still available. Wireless charging and a Wi-Fi hotspot that can accommodate up to 10 devices will also be available for the BMW i3 and BMW i3s, the company said. Customers will also new options for the sports package, which will include black wheel arch surrounds and a suspension with specific dampers, springs and stabilizers, lowered suspension, a widened track and 20-inch light alloy wheels. |
Best Buy stocked an unannounced Chromecast ahead of Google’s hardware event | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | Google’s big hardware event, , is expected to feature the new Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones. But now we know that Google will probably reveal a third-generation model of Chromecast, thanks to one recent Best Buy customer who discovered the device on store shelves. Whoops. detailed his experience on a Reddit post entitled “I think I bought the 3rd gen Chromecast too early.” According to the Reddit post, the customer went to Best Buy earlier to pick up a Chromecast for a new TV. That’s when “GroveStreetHomie” noticed the packaging and design was different from an earlier version. The cashier wasn’t able to scan the item because it wasn’t in the system yet. The release date was labeled October 9 — the same day as the 2018 Google hardware event. “But since I already had it in my hand and was the same price as the 2nd generation Chromecast, they let me have it under the old SKU,” the post read. This new unannounced Chromecast is apparently thicker than the second-generation model. The Chrome logo has been replaced with Google one. The new device still has a micro-USB. The HDMI connector on the tip and base has been removed, according to the user. |
Autonomous shuttle startup May Mobility expands to a third U.S. city | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | May Mobility launched its first low-speed autonomous shuttle service in Detroit this summer. By March, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company will be operating in at least three U.S. cities. The company, which just announced plans to , is planning to add another route in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s a rapid acceleration for a company that was founded less than two years ago. May Mobility is different from other companies racing to deploy autonomous vehicles at a commercial scale. The startup, which was , has developed low-speed autonomous shuttles that are designed to run along a specific route in business districts or corporate and college campuses. The company said it will bring four of its six-seat electric shuttles to Grand Rapids. The one-year pilot will begin March 2019. This latest shuttle launch is part of a broader effort called the Grand Rapids Autonomous Mobility Initiative, a coalition of companies that includes Consumers Energy, French automotive supplier Faurecia, Gentex, Rockford Construction, Seamless and furniture maker Steelcase. The aim of the program is to study how mobility impacts city infrastructure and prepare the community for autonomous vehicles. The program will also focus on how these autonomous vehicles improve or affect the mobility of elderly and disabled people. The fleet will operate on a 3.2-mile section of an existing bus route that provides access to downtown and two of the city’s business districts. The route includes 22 stops, 30 traffic lights and 12 turns, including three left turns, according to the initiative. Shuttles, which will be free for riders, will run complementary to the city’s existing DASH transportation fleet. Fleet operations for the May Mobility vehicles will be housed at Rockford Construction’s
West Side offices within Circuit West, an area that boasts an innovative electric generation and distribution system. in seed funding in 2018 from BMW iVentures, Toyota AI and others. Trucks, Maven Venture and Tandem Ventures are also investors in the company. |
Bots replacing office workers drive big valuations | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | A lot of people still get paid to sit in offices and do repetitive tasks. In recent years, however, employers have been pushing harder to find ways to outsource that work to machines. Venture and growth investors are doing a lot to speed up the rise of these worker-bots. So far this year, they’ve poured hundreds of millions into developers of robotic process automation technology, the term to describe software used for performing a series of tasks previously carried out by humans. Process automation funding activity spiked last week with round for one of the category leaders, New York-based . and led the financing, which brings total capital raised by the 13-year-old company to more than $400 million, with a most recent valuation of $3 billion. A Crunchbase News analysis of funding for startups and growth companies involved in robotic process automation indicates this has been a busy year overall for the space, with more than $600 million in aggregate investment across at least seven sizable deals. Below, we spotlight some of the largest 2018 rounds in the space: UiPath, for its part, has a grand vision and an impressive growth rate. Its broad goal, laid out to incoming employees, involves “liberating the human workforce from tedious, repetitive tasks.” And employers are willing to pay handsomely to liberate their employees. UiPath said that in one 21-month period, it went from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue, an absolutely astounding growth rate for an enterprise software company. The other big unicorn in the process automation space, , is also in rapid expansion mode. The company said customers have been using its tools across a broad range of industries for tasks including integrating data in electronic medical records, streamlining mortgage applications and completing complex purchase orders. One might ask: What are employees to do all day now that the bots have freed them of their tiresome tasks? The general refrain from UiPath and others in the process automation space is that their software doesn’t eliminate jobs so much as it gives workers time to focus on higher-value projects. That may be broadly true, but there is a significant body of employment trend forecasting that widespread job losses stemming from this kind of automation. It could take the form of layoffs, or it might not. Companies may indeed transition bot-displaced existing employees to other, higher-value roles. Even if they do that, however, process automation could enable reduced hiring for future jobs. That said, there’s plenty of funding and hiring happening at the handful of high-growth companies that could determine whether the rest of us have a job in our futures. |
Two weeks with a $16,000 Hasselblad kit | Veanne Cao | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | [gallery type="slideshow" link="none" columns="1" size="full" ids="1722181,1722182,1722183,1722184,1722185,1722186,1722187,1722188,1722201"] [gallery type="slideshow" link="none" columns="1" size="full" ids="1722796,1722784,1722775"] [gallery type="slideshow" link="none" columns="1" size="full" ids="1722190,1722191,1722489,1722490"] [gallery type="slideshow" link="none" columns="1" size="full" ids="1722193,1722194,1722195,1722196"] |
Facebook is weaponizing security to erode privacy | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | hearing this week in which US lawmakers quizzed tech giants on how they should go about drawing up comprehensive Federal consumer privacy protection legislation, Apple’s VP of software technology described privacy as a “core value” for the company. “We want your device to know everything about you but we don’t think we should,” Bud Tribble told them in his opening remarks. Facebook was not at the commerce committee hearing which, as well as Apple, included reps from Amazon, AT&T, Charter Communications, Google and Twitter. But the company could hardly have made such a claim had it been in the room, given that its business is based on trying to know everything about you in order to dart you with ads. You could say Facebook has ‘ ‘ as a core value. Earlier this year one US senator wondered of Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook could run its service given it doesn’t charge users for access. “ ,” was the almost startled response, as if the Facebook founder couldn’t believe his luck at the not-even-surface-level political probing his platform was getting. But there have been tougher moments of scrutiny for Zuckerberg and his company in 2018, as public awareness about how people’s data is being ceaselessly sucked out of platforms and passed around in the background, as fuel for a certain slice of the digital economy, has grown and grown — fuelled by a steady parade of data breaches and privacy scandals which provide a glimpse behind the curtain. On the data scandal front Facebook has reigned supreme, whether it’s as an ‘oops we just didn’t think of that’ (sometimes with roubles!); or as a carefree host for third party apps to party at its users’ expense by . Facebook’s response to the Cambridge Analytica debacle was to loudly claim it was ‘ ‘. And try to — to avoid the obvious and awkward fact that its own business functions in much the same way. The DCMS committee wanted Zuckerberg to testify to unpick how Facebook’s platform contributes to the spread of disinformation online. The company sent various reps to face questions ( ) — but (not even via video link). And committee chair Damian Collins was withering and public in his criticism of Facebook sidestepping close questioning — saying the company had displayed a , and “an unwillingness to engage, and a desire to hold onto information and not disclose it.” As a result, Zuckerberg’s tally of public appearances before lawmakers this year stands at just two domestic hearings, in the US Senate and Congress, and one at a meeting of the EU parliament’s conference of presidents (which switched from a to being streamed online after a ) — and where he was . But three sessions in a handful of months is still a lot more political grillings than Zuckerberg has ever faced before. He’s going to need to get used to awkward questions now that to the power and risk of his platform. What has become increasingly clear from the growing sound and fury over privacy and Facebook (and Facebook and privacy), is that a key plank of the company’s strategy to fight against the rise of consumer privacy as a mainstream concern is misdirection and cynical exploitation of valid security concerns. Simply put, Facebook is weaponizing security to shield its erosion of privacy. Privacy legislation is perhaps the only thing that could pose an existential threat to a business that’s entirely powered by watching and recording what people do at vast scale. And relying on that scale (and its own ) to manipulate consent flows to acquire the private data it needs to profit. Only robust privacy laws could bring Facebook’s self-serving house of cards tumbling down. but the company has shown itself very adept at picking up (and ) potential competitors — too. In Europe lawmakers have already tightened privacy oversight on digital businesses and massively beefed up penalties for data misuse. Under the region’s new GDPR framework compliance violations can attract fines as high as 4% of a company’s global annual turnover. Which would mean billions of dollars in Facebook’s case — vs the for data abuse up to now. Though fines aren’t the real point; if Facebook is forced to change its , so how it harvests and mines people’s data, that could knock a major, major hole right through its profit-center. Hence the existential nature of the threat. The GDPR came into force in May and multiple investigations are already underway. This summer the EU’s data protection supervisor, , told the to expect the first results by the end of the year. Which means 2018 could result in some very well known tech giants being hit with major fines. And — more interestingly — being forced to change how they approach privacy. One target for GDPR complainants is so-called ‘ ‘ — where consumers are told by platforms leveraging powerful network effects that they must accept giving up their privacy as the ‘take it or leave it’ price of accessing the service. Which doesn’t exactly smell like the ‘free choice’ EU law actually requires. It’s not just Europe, either. Regulators are paying greater attention than ever to the use and abuse of people’s data. And also, therefore, to Facebook’s business — which profits, so very handsomely, by exploiting privacy to build profiles on literally billions of people in order to dart them with ads. US lawmakers are now directly asking tech firms whether they should implement GDPR style legislation at home. Unsurprisingly, tech giants are not at all keen — arguing, as they did at this week’s hearing, for the need to “balance” individual privacy rights against “freedom to innovate”. So a lobbying joint-front to try to water down any US privacy clampdown is in full effect. (Though also asked this week whether they would leave Europe or California as a result of tougher-than-they’d-like privacy laws none of the tech giants said they would.) The state of California passed its own robust privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act, this summer, which is due to come into force in 2020. And the tech industry is not a fan. So its engagement with federal lawmakers now is a clear attempt to secure a weaker federal framework to ride over any more stringent state laws. Europe and its GDPR obviously can’t be rolled over like that, though. Even as tech giants like Facebook have certainly been — to force a expensive and time-consuming legal fight. While ‘innovation’ is one oft-trotted angle tech firms use to argue against consumer privacy protections, Facebook included, the company has another tactic too: Deploying the ‘S’ word — security — both to fend off increasingly tricky questions from lawmakers, as they finally get up to speed and start to grapple with what it’s actually doing; and — more broadly — to keep its people-mining, ad-targeting business steamrollering on by greasing the pipe that keeps the personal data flowing in. In recent years multiple major data misuse scandals have undoubtedly raised consumer awareness about privacy, and put greater emphasis on the value of robustly securing personal data. Scandals that even seem to have . So the risks for its business are clear. Part of its strategic response, then, looks like an attempt to collapse the distinction between security and privacy — by using security concerns to shield privacy hostile practices from critical scrutiny, specifically by chain-linking its data-harvesting activities to some vaguely invoked “security purposes”, whether that’s security for all Facebook users against malicious non-users trying to hack them; or, wider still, for every engaged citizen who wants democracy to be protected from fake accounts spreading malicious propaganda. So the game Facebook is here playing is to use security as a very broad-brush to try to defang legislation that could radically shrink its access to people’s data. Here, for example, is in the EU parliament asking for answers on so-called ‘shadow profiles’ (aka the personal data the company collects on non-users) — emphasis mine: It’s very important that we don’t have people who aren’t Facebook users that are coming to our service and . And one of the ways that we do that is people use our service and even if they’re not signed in we need to understand how they’re using the service to prevent . At this point in the meeting Zuckerberg also suggestively referenced MEPs’ concerns about election interference — to better play on a security fear that’s inexorably close to their hearts. (With the spectre of re-election looming next spring.) So he’s making good use of his psychology major. “On the security side we think it’s important to keep it to protect people in our community,” he also said when pressed by MEPs to answer how a person who isn’t a Facebook user could delete its shadow profile of them. He was also by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April. And used the same security justification for harvesting data on people who aren’t Facebook users. “Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers],” he said. “In order to prevent people from scraping public information… we need to know when someone is repeatedly trying to access our services.” He claimed not to know “off the top of my head” how many data points Facebook holds on non-users (nor even on users, which the congressman had also asked for, for comparative purposes). These sorts of exchanges are very telling because for years Facebook has relied upon people not knowing or really understanding how its platform works to keep what are clearly ethically practices from closer scrutiny. But, as political attention has dialled up around privacy, and its become harder for the company to simply deny or fog what it’s actually doing, Facebook appears to be evolving its defence strategy — by defiantly arguing it security. No matter this is the same company which, despite maintaining all those shadow profiles on its servers, famously failed to spot Kremlin election interference going on at massive scale in its own back yard — and thus failed to protect its users from malicious propaganda. TechCrunch/Bryce Durbin Nor was Facebook capable of preventing its platform from being repurposed as in a country such as Myanmar — with some truly tragic consequences. Yet it must, presumably, hold shadow profiles on non-users there too. Yet was seemingly unable (or unwilling) to use that intelligence to help protect actual lives… So when Zuckerberg invokes overarching “security purposes” as a justification for violating people’s privacy en masse it pays to ask critical questions about what kind of security it’s actually purporting to be able deliver. Beyond, y’know, continued security for its own business model as it comes under increasing attack. What Facebook indisputably does do with ‘shadow contact information’, acquired about people via other means than the person themselves handing it over, is to use it to target people with ads. So it uses intelligence harvested without consent to make money. Facebook confirmed as much this week, when asked it to respond to a study by some US academics that showed how a piece of personal data that had never been knowingly provided to Facebook by its owner could still be used to target an ad at that person. Responding to the study, Facebook admitted it was “likely” the academic had been shown the ad “because someone else uploaded his contact information via contact importer”. “People own their address books. We understand that in some cases this may mean that another person may not be able to control the contact information someone else uploads about them,” it told Gizmodo. So essentially Facebook has finally admitted that consentless scraped contact information is a core part of its ad targeting apparatus. Safe to say, that’s not going to play in Europe. Basically Facebook is saying you own and control your personal data until it can acquire it from someone else — and then, er, nope! Yet given the reach of its network, the chances of your data sitting on its servers somewhere seems very, very slim. So Facebook is essentially invading the privacy of pretty much everyone in the world who has ever used a mobile phone. (Something like then.) In other contexts this would be called spying — or, well, ‘mass surveillance’. It’s also how Facebook makes money. And yet when called in front of lawmakers to asking about the ethics of spying on the majority of the people on the planet, the company seeks to justify this supermassive privacy intrusion by suggesting that gathering data about every phone user without their consent is necessary for some fuzzily-defined “security purposes” — even as its own record on security . WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. This is the second day of testimony before Congress by Zuckerberg, 33, after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) It’s as if Facebook is trying to lift a page out of national intelligence agency playbooks — when governments claim ‘mass surveillance’ of populations is necessary for security purposes like counterterrorism. Except Facebook is a commercial company, not the NSA. So it’s only fighting to keep being able to carpet-bomb the planet with ads. Another example of Facebook weaponizing security to erode privacy was also confirmed via Gizmodo’s reportage. The same academics found the company uses phone numbers provided to it by users for the specific (security) purpose of enabling two-factor authentication, which is a technique intended to make it harder for a hacker to take over an account, . In a nutshell, Facebook is exploiting its users’ valid security fears about being hacked in order to make itself more money. Any security expert worth their salt will have spent long years encouraging web users to turn on two factor authentication for as many of their accounts as possible in order to reduce the risk of being hacked. So Facebook exploiting that security vector to boost its profits is truly awful. Because it works against those valiant infosec efforts — so risks eroding users’ security as well as trampling all over their privacy. It’s just a double whammy of awful, awful behavior. I spend a lot of time trying to convince people to lock down their social media accounts with 2FA. Boy does this undermine my efforts. — Eva (@evacide) And of course, there’s more. A third example of how Facebook seeks to play on people’s security fears to enable deeper privacy intrusion comes by way of the recent rollout of its facial recognition technology in Europe. In this region the company had previously been after being leaned on by privacy conscious regulators. But after having to redesign its consent flows to come up with its version of ‘GDPR compliance’ in time for May 25, Facebook used this opportunity to revisit a rollout of the technology on Europeans — by asking users there to consent to switching it on. Now you might think that asking for consent sounds okay on the surface. But it pays to remember that Facebook is a master of dark pattern design. Which means it’s expert at extracting outcomes from people by applying these manipulative dark arts. (Don’t forget, it has even .) So can it be a free consent if ‘individual choice’ is set against a powerful technology platform that’s both in charge of the consent wording, button placement and button design, and which can also data-mine the behavior of its 2BN+ users to further inform and tweak (via A/B testing) the design of the aforementioned ‘consent flow’? (Or, to put it another way, is it still ‘yes’ if the tiny greyscale ‘no’ button fades away when your cursor approaches while the big ‘YES’ button pops and blinks suggestively?) In the case of facial recognition, Facebook used a manipulative consent flow that included a couple of self-serving ‘examples’ — selling the ‘benefits’ of the technology to users before they landed on the screen where they could choose either yes switch it on, or no leave it off. One of which — by suggesting that without the technology enabled users were at risk of being impersonated by strangers. Whereas, by agreeing to do what Facebook wanted you to do, Facebook said it would help “protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you”… Sure , I'll take a milisecond to consider whether you want me to enable for my own protection or your business model. pricks! — Jennifer Baker (@BrusselsGeek) That example shows the company is not above actively jerking on the chain of people’s security fears, as well as passively exploiting similar security worries when it jerkily repurposes 2FA digits for ad targeting. There’s even more too; Facebook has been positioning itself to pull off what is arguably the greatest (in the ‘largest’ sense of the word) appropriation of security concerns yet to shield its behind-the-scenes trampling of user privacy — when, from next year, it will begin injecting ads into the WhatsApp messaging platform. These will be targeted ads, because Facebook has to link Facebook and WhatsApp accounts — via phone number matching and other technical means that enable it to connect distinct accounts across two otherwise entirely separate social services. Thing is, WhatsApp got fat on its founders promise of 100% ad-free messaging. The founders were also privacy and security champions, pushing to — even after selling their app to the adtech giant in 2014. WhatsApp’s robust e2e encryption means Facebook literally cannot read the messages users are sending each other. But that does not mean Facebook is respecting WhatsApp users’ privacy. On the contrary; The company has given itself broader rights to user data by changing the WhatsApp T&Cs and by matching accounts. So, really, it’s all just one big Facebook profile now — whichever of its products you do (or don’t) use. This means that even without literally reading your WhatsApps, Facebook can still know plenty about a WhatsApp user, thanks to any other Facebook Group profiles they have ever had and any shadow profiles it maintains in parallel. WhatsApp users will soon become bullseyes for yet more creepily intrusive Facebook ads to seek their target. No private spaces, then, in Facebook’s empire as the company capitalizes on people’s fears to shift the debate away from personal privacy and onto the self-serving notion of ‘secured by Facebook spaces’ — in order that it can keep sucking up people’s personal data. Yet this is a very , though. Because if Facebook can’t even deliver , thereby undermining those “security purposes” it keeps banging on about, it might find it difficult to sell the world on going naked just so Facebook Inc can keep turning a profit. What’s the best security practice of all? That’s super simple: Not holding data in the first place. |
What each cloud company could bring to the Pentagon’s $10 B JEDI cloud contract | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 9 | 29 | The Pentagon is going to make one cloud vendor exceedingly happy when it chooses the winner of the dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (or JEDI for short). The contract is designed to establish the cloud technology strategy for the military over the next 10 years as it begins to take advantage of current trends like Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and big data. Ten billion dollars spread out over ten years may not entirely alter a market that’s a year very soon, but it is substantial enough give a lesser vendor much greater visibility, and possibly deeper entree into other government and private sector business. The cloud companies . Photo: Glowimages/Getty Images That could explain why they to change the contract dynamics, insisting, maybe rightly, that a multi-vendor approach would make more sense. One look at , which has dozens of documents outlining various criteria from security to training to the specification of the single award itself, shows the sheer complexity of this proposal. At the heart of it is a package of classified and unclassified infrastructure, platform and support services with other components around portability. Each of the main cloud vendors we’ll explore here offers these services. They are not unusual in themselves, but they do each bring a different set of skills and experiences to bear on a project like this. It’s worth noting that it’s not just interested in technical chops, the DOD is also looking closely at pricing and has explicitly asked for specific discounts that would be applied to each component. The RFP process closes on October 12th and the winner is expected to be chosen next April. What can you say about Amazon? They are by far . They have the advantage of having scored a large government contract in the past when in 2013, earning $600 million for their troubles. It offers , which is the product that came out of this project designed to host sensitive data. Jeff Bezos, Chairman and founder of Amazon.com. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Many of the other vendors worry that gives them a leg up on this deal. While five years is a long time, especially in technology terms, if anything, Amazon has tightened control of the market. Heck, most of the other players were just beginning to establish their cloud business in 2013. Amazon, which , has maturity the others lack and they are still innovating, every year. That makes them difficult to compete with, but even the biggest player can be taken down with the right game plan. If anyone can take Amazon on, it’s Microsoft. While they were somewhat late the cloud they have more than made up for it over the last several years. , yet are in terms of pure market share. Still, they have a lot to offer the Pentagon including a combination of Azure, their cloud platform and Office 365, the popular business suite that includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook email. What’s more they have a fat contract , signed in 2016 for Windows and related hardware. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images is particularly well suited to a military scenario. It’s a private cloud you can stand up and have a mini private version of the Azure public cloud. It’s fully compatible with Azure’s public cloud in terms of APIs and tools. The company also , which is certified for use by many of the U.S. government’s branches, . Microsoft brings a lot of experience working inside large enterprises and government clients over the years, meaning it knows how to manage a large contract like this. When we talk about the cloud, we tend to think of the Big Three. The third member of that group is Google. They have been working hard to establish their enterprise cloud business since 2015 when to reorganize the cloud unit and give them some enterprise cred. They still have a relatively small share of the market, but they are taking the long view, knowing that there is plenty of market left to conquer. Head of Google Cloud, Diane Greene Photo: TechCrunch They have taken a lot of the tools they used in-house, then offering cloud versions of those same services, arguing that who knows better how to manage large-scale operations than they do. They have a point, and that could play well in a bid for this contract, but they also stepped away from an artificial intelligence contract when a group of their employees objected. It’s not clear if that would be held against them or not in the bidding process here. IBM has been using its checkbook to build a broad platform of cloud services since 2013 when to give it infrastructure services, while adding software and development tools over the years, and emphasizing AI, big data, security, blockchain and other services. All the while, it has been trying to take full advantage of their artificial intelligence engine, Watson. IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Romett Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images As one of the primary technology brands of the 20th century, the company has vast experience working with contracts of this scope and with large enterprise clients and governments. It’s not clear if this translates to its more recently developed cloud services, or if it has the cloud maturity of the others, especially Microsoft and Amazon. In that light, it would have its work cut out for it to win a contract like this. Oracle has been to anyone who will listen, , that the JEDI RFP is unfairly written to favor Amazon, a charge that DOD firmly denies. They have even against the process itself. That could be a smoke screen because , took years to take it seriously as a concept, today in terms of market share. What it does bring to the table is broad enterprise experience over decades and one of the most popular enterprise databases in the last 40 years. Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images It recently began that could prove attractive to DOD, but whether its other offerings are enough to help it win this contract remains to be to be seen. |
Marc and Lynne Benioff will buy Time magazine from Meredith for $190M | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | Another tech billionaire will scoop up a major news outlet. Meredith Corporation, which acquired Time Inc. in January, today that it has agreed to sell its eponymous magazine to Salesforce.com co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne Benioff for $190 million in cash. Meredith said in March that it as part of its goal to save $400 million to $500 million over the next two years and increase the profitability of its remaining portfolio of publications. In its announcement today, the company said it will use proceeds from the sale of to pay off debt and expects to reduce its debt by $1 billion during fiscal 2019. Other tech billionaires who have purchased major publications include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who and Laurene Powell Jobs, whose philanthropic organization, Emerson Collective, . (While Jack Ma , that acquisition was made by the company, not Ma.) Despite being one of the most famous and iconic news brands in the U.S., has (like other print publications) as it invests digital properties. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the magazine’s editor in chief, Edward Felsenthal, said “we’ve done a lot to transform this brand over the last few years so that it is far beyond a weekly magazine” and added that its business is “solidly profitable.” |
What is the meaning of LinkedIn? | Jon Evans | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | Thanks to John Biggs for inspiring this piece; I cosign most of what he says . I have long been mystified by LinkedIn, because of its spectacular uselessness (for me) as a professional social network. But I also assumed it was useful for . Now, though, I’m beginning to wonder if the emperor is naked after all, and LinkedIn is purely a fantasy social network for people cosplaying that game called success. Let me hasten to stress that LinkedIn isn’t useless full stop. It’s a very good CV repository, and, I am given to understand, a very good recruiting site. (And per Biggs’s post, about as good a content site as most recruiting sites, which is to say, bad.) But it’s supposed to be much more than just a fancied-up Hired or Indeed, right? It’s supposed to be “the professional social network.” So I’ve long been baffled: why have I never even of anyone I know deriving any professional benefit from it whatsoever? Ironically I have actually had reason to be grateful for LinkedIn fairly recently: it was the sole remaining connection between me and a long-ago ex, and after she sent me a LinkedIn message out of the blue, we re-established a warm and cordial friendship. However this heartwarming tale a) is the complete antithesis of the professionalism that LinkedIn is supposed to be all about b) happened because neither of us cared enough about LinkedIn to bother severing that connection after our bad breakup. I was a fairly early adopter, but LinkedIn was useless to me when I returned to tech after my detour as a full-time novelist, useless to me in the subsequent years, and now it is useless to me as a CTO. I would estimate fully half of the connection requests / messages I get are from people trying to sell to the exact services we offer. Most of the rest are from cryptocurrency people who never say anything again, which is fine by me. My LinkedIn policy for the last few years has been to accept all connection requests and respond to any messages which actually seem interesting, i.e. never. But just because it’s useless to me doesn’t mean it’s useless. I always imagined the existence of LinkedIn People, who used it, somehow, to make connections which led to sales and jobs, to advance their careers, to turn chance conference meetings into partnerships and employment. That’s how it’s supposed to work, right? I imagined them being very … enterprise-y. Very buttoned-down, and driven, and goal-oriented, but not in a startup way, more in a big-business, office-politics, get-that-promotion way. People who climbed into upper-middle-management positions using LinkedIn as a vital tool. Except I’ve never even heard of any of that actually happening. I keep encountering more and more successful people, and see more people from my own social cohort achieving success … and as far as I can tell LinkedIn was not a remotely relevant factor in the careers of even a single one of them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, of course. Maybe LinkedIn People are real after all, just cut off from my own world due to a profound mismatch of taste and priorities. But maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re as mythical as elves. Maybe LinkedIn users collect contacts in the same way that pathological hoarders collect newspapers; not because they’re useful, but because they can’t let go of the notion that maybe is the one that be useful … one day. Maybe LinkedIn is really a fantasy social network for people cosplaying the game of success. Nothing wrong with cosplay. I’m sure it’s rewarding in its own way. But confusing it with reality is unfortunate at best. |
Uber’s complex relationship with diversity | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | came to Uber as CEO about a year ago, there has certainly been less drama, but drama remains. Over the last few months, there were reports of Uber COO Barney Harford making insensitive comments about women and racial minorities, as well as Uber’s now-former Chief People Officer Liane Hornsey making denigrating comments toward Uber’s global diversity and inclusion lead Bernard Coleman and Bozoma Saint John, . At TechCrunch Disrupt SF earlier this month, I sat down with both Khosrowshahi and Uber’s new, first-ever Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee, who . Believe it or not, there are still bad actors at the company, so Uber still has work to do. What surprised me, however, was Khosrowshahi’s defense of Harford, not only saying that he’s “an incredible person” but that he’s also “one of the good people” as it relates to diversity and inclusion. “This is an issue that everyone is fighting, and I will tell you Barney takes it personally,” Khosrowshahi told me. “And he is a champion and he will be a champion as it relates to these matters. He’s one of the good people.” Lee, when I asked her if she agreed with Khosrowshahi, said at Disrupt, “absolutely, 100 percent.” Lee, on a call ahead of Disrupt, described the importance of internal diversity champions who find ways to bake diversity and inclusion into their everyday workflow. Onstage, Lee described how she had been aware of the allegations against Harford and had already been working with him around inclusion. In fact, she said, Harford had reached out to her, admitting that he knew there’s a lot to learn and that he’d like for her to help him. Harford also wrote, in Khosrowshahi’s words, “a really heartfelt apology letter to the company,” but it’s still hard for me to get on board with the idea that Harford is one of the “good” ones. This is not to say people can’t be imperfect and can’t change — an idea Khosrowshahi made quite clear, and one that I generally believe as well — but I would just hope that there are some better “good” ones out there. him.” Khosrowshahi described how he’s also made mistakes, and how that doesn’t mean he should be marked by those mistakes. He went on to describe how at his last job, Expedia, he would usually grab a beer with “one of the guys and, because I was comfortable because it was you know, a person who looked like me, a person with whom I could be more casual and I could have a conversation.” He added how these people got “access to me that was not fair, and that could have shown up in a New York Times article and that could have marked me,” he said. “That’s not who I am. You know, I learned, I corrected, I’m aware. And the question is, what do you do?” During my conversation with Khosrowshahi, we also chatted about the hiring of Lee as CDO, as opposed to promoting Coleman, and the fact that she doesn’t report directly to the CEO — . Though, it’s worth noting those suggestions were directed toward now-former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Khosrowshahi said Lee is the right person for the job and he thinks it’ll become clear that she is the right person for the job. Regarding why Lee doesn’t report directly to Khosrowshahi and instead, to a yet-to-be-hired new chief people officer, he said, “diversity and inclusion have to be a core part of everything that the company does, has to be a core part of your people strategy.” “And I want Bo and my chief people officer working together fundamentally not just on the diversity of the company, but also on the core culture,” he added. “Like, we’re really trying to shift the culture of the company going forward. So Bo is going to report into our chief people officer. And she and I more than monthly, are constantly having exchanges on how things are going. And I think that’s the optimal structure, which is open — open communication with me working directly with the CEO but part of the core strategy of the company because I do think that this is one of the things that we have to execute on.” In conversation with Lee, she spoke about the task she has at hand, as well as some strategies she has implemented, and plans to implement in order to get Uber to where it needs to be. One of those initiatives involves creating a pipeline around Uber drivers, which consists of a couple million people around the world. Lee described to me how it would be “amazing to create a pipeline to hire some of those driver partners,” whether into customer service, community operations or “maybe there’s great tech talent in there that we don’t even know about.” That’s an area where Lee is working with recruiters to better identify ways to source that talent. Lee is also working on ensuring Uber’s new cultural norms actually get baked into the company. Last November, Khosrowshahi , which include values like “We build globally, we live locally” and “We do the right thing. Period.” Before, Uber’s values were indisputably much more aggressive. “You can put out new cultural norms, you can put out new cultural values but it’s not until those values are built into our systems, our performance management, our organizational design — the way that we even think about product design, you’re not going to see the full manifestation of it,” Lee said. “And as an organization is going through culture change, that can be very unmooring for people and that can actually make people feel very psychologically unsafe. And what I find at Uber right now is a lot of people who are trying to — within this culture that is shifting, that is changing for the better — trying to find their footing somewhere along those lines.” Part of what’s hard right now, she said, is getting Uber employees to the point where they “feel like they can trust that the system will work.” Regarding the allegations about Harford, Lee said that she was aware of them and looking into them, but didn’t resolve them by the time the NYT piece came out. “But I would say that when the news did break in that public way, I was, more than anything, just really sad about this because what it told me was that we still have a culture where people aren’t sure they can trust that things are going to get fixed and things are going to get done,” she said. “And so they felt that they needed to go outside to find remediation for some of that.” Lee also told me, ahead of Disrupt, that she’s exploring the idea of what fewer levels of hierarchy at the company would look like. “It’s hard to speculate what the changes would look like,” she said. “I ideally would love to see the number of levels possibly changing. More importantly, what I would love to see beyond levels, is the power distance between those levels decline.” |
Uber fires up its own traffic estimates to fuel demand beyond cars | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating. This week TechCrunch spotted Uber overlaying blue, yellow and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Responding to TechCrunch’s inquiry, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing for riders on Android over the past few months and the pilot program recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. It’s already live for all drivers. The congestion indicators are based on Uber’s own traffic information pulled from its historic trip data about 10 billion rides plus real-time data from its drivers’ phones, rather than estimates from Google that already power Uber’s maps. If traffic estimates do roll out, they could make users more tolerant of longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing app since they’ll know their driver might take longer to pick them up because congestion is to blame rather than Uber’s algorithm. During the ride they might be more patient amidst the clogged streets. Uber’s research into traffic in India But most interestingly, seeing traffic conditions could help users choose when it’s time to take one of Uber’s non-car choices. They could sail past traffic on one of , or thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to New York’s MTA, plus buses and trains in other cities. Cheaper and less labor-intensive for Uber, these options make more sense to riders the more traffic there is. It’s to the company’s advantage to steer users toward the most satisfying mode of transportation, and traffic info could point them in the right direction. Through a program called , the company began sharing its traffic data with city governments early last year. The goal was to give urban planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long claimed that it can help reduce traffic by getting people into shared rides and eliminating circling in search of parking. But a showed that for each mile of personal driving Uber and Lyft eliminated, they added 2.8 miles of professional driving — for an 180 percent increase in total traffic. Uber is still learning whether users find traffic estimates helpful before it considers rolling them out permanently to everyone. Right now they only appear to a small percentage of users on unshared UberX, Black, XL, SUV and Taxi routes before you hail. But Uber’s spokesperson verified that the company’s long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the cheapest way to get there is option X, the quickest is option Y and the most comfortable is option Z. Traffic estimates are key to that. And now that it’s had so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals necessary to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be jammed at a given hour. For years, Uber called itself a logistics company, not a ridesharing company. Most people gave it a knowing wink. Every Silicon Valley company tries to trump up its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with the advent of personal transportation modes like on-demand bikes and scooters, Uber is poised to earn the title by getting us from point A to point B, however we prefer. |
null | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 9 | 11 | null |
In Bad Blood, a pedestrian tale of heuristics and lies | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | In a world where thousands and thousands of startups are started in the Bay Area every year, becoming a name that everyone recognizes is no small feat. Theranos reached that summit, and it all came crashing down. The story of the fraudulent rise and precipitous fall of the company and its entrepreneur, Elizabeth Holmes, is also the singular story of the journalist who chronicled the company. John Carreyrou’s tenacious and intrepid reporting at the Wall Street Journal would ultimately expose one of the largest frauds ever perpetrated in Silicon Valley. is the culmination of that investigative reporting. The swift decline of Theranos and its protective legal apparatus has done this story a lot of good: many of the anonymous sources that underpinned Carreyrou’s WSJ coverage are now public and visible, allowing the author to weave together the various articles he published into a holistic and complete story. And yet, what I found in the book was not all that thrilling or shocking, but rather astonishingly pedestrian. Part of the challenge is Carreyrou’s laconic WSJ tone, with its “just the facts” attitude that is punctuated only occasionally by brief interludes on the motivations and psychology of its characters. That style is appreciated by this subscriber of the paper daily, but the book-length treatment suffers a bit from a lack of charisma. The real challenge though is that the raw story — for all of its fraud — lacks the sort of verve that makes business thrillers like or so engaging. The characters that Carreyrou has to work with just aren’t all that interesting. One could argue that perhaps the book is too early — , we may well learn much more about the conspiracy and its participants. But I don’t think so, mostly because the fraud seems so simple in its premise. At the heart of this story is the use of heuristics by investors and customers to make their largest decisions. Theranos is a story of the snowball effect blown up to an avalanche: a retired and successful venture capitalist seeds the company, leading to other investors to see that name and invest, and onwards and upwards for more than a decade, eventually collecting a cast of characters around the table that includes James Mattis, the current Secretary of Defense, and Henry Kissinger. Take Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of News Corporation (and by extension the Wall Street Journal), who invested $125 million into Theranos near the end of the company’s story. He met Holmes at a dinner in Silicon Valley: During the dinner, Holmes came over to Murdoch’s table, introduced herself, and chatted him up. The strong first impression she made on him was bolstered by [Yuri] Milner, who sang her praises when Murdoch later asked him what he thought of the young woman. …. But unlike the big venture capital firms, he did no due diligence to speak of. The eighty-four-year-old mogul tended to just follow his gut, an approach that had served him well … He made one call before investing $125 million. To some readers, that might be a breathtaking sum, but it really is something of a pittance for Murdoch, . In the denouement of the Theranos story, Carreyrou notes that, “The media mogul sold his stock back to Theranos for one dollar so he could claim a big tax write-off on his other earnings. With a fortune estimated at $12 billion, Murdoch could afford to lose more than $100 million on a bad investment.” For Murdoch, a bad heuristic around the company cost him roughly 1% of his net wealth, and with the tax loss, may not have cost him much of anything at all. That’s the challenge of the book: for all the fraud committed by Theranos and its founder, its financial losses were ultimately borne by the ultra-rich. This is not the 2008 Financial Crisis, where millions of people are thrown out of their homes due to the chicanery of Wall Street fat cats. If there is a lesson in all of this, it is that the right heuristics would have helped these investors to an extraordinarily degree. Take for example the rapid turnover of Theranos’ workforce, which could have been checked on LinkedIn in minutes and would have signaled something deeply wrong with the company’s culture and leadership. It doesn’t take many questions to discover the fraud here if they are the right questions. Beyond the investors and workers though, the harm is even hard to track to patients. There are perhaps no more serious consequences around Theranos’ fraud than for patients, who took tests on the company’s proprietary Edison machines and received inaccurate and at times faked results. Yet, Carreyrou strangely hasn’t compiled a compelling set of patients for whom Theranos caused morbidity. If any industry comes out positively in this book, it is the doctors of patients who reorder tests and ask additional questions when results didn’t make sense. Ultimately, is a complete book about an important story. I’m reminded a bit of the 2012 documentary , in which the filmmakers travel to Indonesia to have the killers of the 1965 communist genocide recreate the murders they perpetrated. The director’s cut is long and at times remarkably tedious, and yet, that is in many ways precisely the point. As a viewer, you become inured to the murder, bereft of emotion while waiting for the ending credits to roll. is the same: its direct, to the point, and relatively sparing in any deep thrills. And that is its point. The book gives us a pinprick in our belief that Silicon Valley’s vaunted investors and founders are immune to stupidity. If you didn’t already know that before, you certainly now have a one-word household name of a startup to reference. |
The 21-day bitcoin challenge | Joyce Yang | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | series currently airing on , so t |
Facebook is hiring a director of human rights policy to work on “conflict prevention” and “peace-building” | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | Facebook is advertising for a to join its business, located either at its Menlo Park HQ or in Washington DC — with “conflict prevention” and “peace-building” among the listed responsibilities. In the job ad, Facebook writes that as the reach and impact of its various products continues to grow “so does the responsibility we have to respect the individual and human rights of the members of our diverse global community”, saying it’s: … looking for a Director of Human Rights Policy to coordinate our company-wide effort to address human rights abuses, including by both state and non-state actors. This role will be responsible for: (1) Working with product teams to ensure that Facebook is a positive force for human rights and apply the lessons we learn from our investigations, (2) representing Facebook with key stakeholders in civil society, government, international institutions, and industry, (3) driving our investigations into and disruptions of human rights abusers on our platforms, and (4) crafting policies to counteract bad actors and help us ensure that we continue to operate our platforms consistent with human rights principles. Among the minimum requirements for the role, Facebook lists experience “working in developing nations and with governments and civil society organizations around the world”. It adds that “global travel to support our international teams is expected”. The company has faced in recent years over its failure to take greater responsibility for the spread of disinformation and hate speech on its platform. Especially in international markets it has targeted for business growth via its Internet.org initiative which seeks to get more people ‘connected’ to the Internet (and thus to Facebook). More connections means more users for Facebook’s business and growth for its shareholders. But the costs of that growth have been cast into sharp relief over the past several years as the human impact of handing millions of people lacking in digital literacy some very powerful social sharing tools — without a commensurately large investment in local education programs (or even in moderating and policing Facebook’s own platform) — has become all too clear. In Facebook’s tools have been used to spread hate and accelerate ethic cleansing and/or the targeting of political critics of authoritarian governments — earning the company widespread condemnation, including a rebuke from the UN which blamed the platform for accelerating ethnic violence against Myanmar’s Muslim minority. In the Facebook also played a pivotal role in the election of president Rodrigo Duterte — who now stands accused of plunging the country into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 80s. While in India the popularity of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging platform has been blamed for accelerating the spread of misinformation — leading to mob violence and the . Facebook famously failed even to spot — when in 2016 Kremlin-backed disinformation agents injected masses of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump propaganda into its platform and garnered hundreds of millions of American voters’ eyeballs at a bargain basement price. So it’s hardly surprising the company has been equally naive in markets it understands far less. Though also hardly excusable — given all the signals it has access to. In Myanmar, for example, local organizations that are sensitive to the cultural context repeatedly complained to Facebook that it lacked Burmese-speaking staff — complaints that apparently for the longest time. The cost to American society of social media enabled political manipulation and increased social division is certainly very high. The costs of the weaponization of digital information in markets such as Myanmar looks incalculable. In the Philippines Facebook also indirectly has blood on its hands — having provided services to the Duterte government to help it make more effective use of its tools. This same government is now waging a bloody ‘war on drugs’ that says has claimed the lives of around 12,000 people, including children. Facebook’s job ad for a human rights policy director includes the pledge that “we’re just getting started” — referring to its stated mission of helping people “build stronger communities”. But when you consider the impact its business decisions have already had in certain corners of the world it’s hard not to read that line with a shudder. Citing the (and “our commitments as a member of the Global Network Initiative”), Facebook writes that its product policy team is dedicated to “understanding the human rights impacts of our platform and to crafting policies that allow us both to act against those who would use Facebook to enable harm, stifle expression, and undermine human rights, and to support those who seek to advance rights, promote peace, and build strong communities”. Clearly it has an awful lot of “understanding” to do on this front. And hopefully it will now move fast to understand the impact of its own platform, circa fifteen years into its great ‘society reshaping experience’, and prevent Facebook from being repeatedly used to trash human rights. As well as representing the company in meetings with politicians, policymakers, NGOs and civil society groups, Facebook says the new human rights director will work on The director will also work with internal public policy, community ops and security teams to try to spot and disrupt “actors that seek to misuse our platforms and target our users” — while also working to support “those using our platforms to foster peace-building and enable transitional justice”. So you have to wonder how, for example, on Facebook will square with that stated mission for the human rights policy director. At the same time, Facebook is currently hiring for a in Francophone, Africa — who it writes can “combine a passion for technology’s potential to create opportunity and to make Africa more open and connected, with deep knowledge of the political and regulatory dynamics across key Francophone countries in Africa”. That job ad does not explicitly reference human rights — talking only about “interesting public policy challenges… including privacy, safety and security, freedom of expression, Internet shutdowns, the impact of the Internet on economic growth, and new opportunities for democratic engagement”. As well as “new opportunities for democratic engagement”, among the role’s other listed responsibilities is working with Facebook’s Politics & Government team to “promote the use of Facebook as a platform for citizen and voter engagement to policymakers and NGOs and other political influencers”. So here, in a second policy job, Facebook looks to be continuing its ‘business as usual’ strategy of pushing for more political activity to take place on Facebook. And if Facebook wants an accelerated understanding of human rights issues around the world it might be better advised to take a more joined up approach to human rights across its own policy staff board, and at least include it among the listed responsibilities of all the policy shapers it’s looking to hire. |
What Instagram users need to know about Facebook’s security breach | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Even if you never log into Facebook itself these days, the other apps and services you use might be impacted by Facebook’s latest big, bad news. In a follow-up call on Friday’s revelation that Facebook has suffered a security breach , the company clarified that Instagram users were not out of the woods — nor were any other third-party services that utilized Facebook Login. Facebook Login is the tool that allows users to sign in with a Facebook account instead of traditional login credentials and many users choose it as a convenient way to sign into a variety of apps and services. Due to the nature of the hack, Facebook cannot rule out the fact that attackers may have also accessed any Instagram account linked to an affected Facebook account through Facebook Login. Still, it’s worth remembering that while Facebook can’t rule it out, the company has no evidence (yet) of this kind of activity. “So the vulnerability was on Facebook, but these access tokens enable someone to use [a connected account] as if they were the account holder themselves — this does mean they could have access other third party apps that were using Facebook login,” Facebook Vice President of Product Management Guy Rosen explained on the call. “Now that we have reset all of those access tokens as part of protecting the security of people’s accounts, developers who use Facebook login will be able to detect that those access tokens has been reset, identify those users and as a user, you will simply have to log in again into those third party apps.” Rosen reiterated that there is plenty Facebook does not know about the hack, including the extent to which attackers manipulated the three security bugs in question to obtain access to external accounts through Facebook Login. “The vulnerability was on Facebook itself and we’ve yet to determine, given the investigation is really early, [what was] the exact nature of misuse and whether there was any access to Instagram accounts, for example,” Rosen said. Anyone with a Facebook account affected by the breach — you should have been automatically logged out and will receive a notification — will need to unlink and relink their Instagram account to Facebook in order to continue cross-posting content to Facebook. To do relink your Instagram account to Facebook, if you choose to, open Instagram Settings > Linked Accounts and select the checkbox next to Facebook. Click Unlink and confirm your selection. If you’d like to reconnect Instagram with Facebook, you’ll need to select Facebook in the Linked Accounts menu and login with your credentials like normal. If you know your Facebook account was affected by the breach, it’s wise to check for suspicious activity on your account. You can do this on Facebook through the . There, you’ll want to browse the activity listed to make sure you don’t see anything that doesn’t look like you — logins from other countries, for example. If you’re concerned or just want to play it safe, you can always find the link to “Log Out Of All Sessions” by scrolling toward the bottom of the page. While we know a little bit more now about Facebook’s biggest security breach to date, there’s still a lot that we don’t. Expect plenty of additional information in the coming days and weeks as Facebook surveys the damage and passes that information along to its users. We’ll do the same. |
Facebook blocked users from posting some stories about its security breach | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Some users are reporting that they are unable to post today’s big story about a . The issue appears to only affect particular stories from certain outlets, at this time one story from and one from the , both reputable press outlets. Facebook is preventing users from posting The Guardian's report on the Facebook data breach. Ouch. — Jed Bracy (@JedBracy) When going to share the story to their news feed, some users, including members of the staff here at TechCrunch who were able to replicate the bug, were met with the following error message which prevented them from sharing the story. According to the message, Facebook is flagging the stories as spam due to how widely they are being shared or as the message puts it, the system’s observation that “a lot of people are posting the same content.” To be clear, this isn’t one Facebook content moderator sitting behind a screen rejecting the link somewhere or the company conspiring against users spreading damning news. The situation is another example of Facebook’s automated content flagging tools marking legitimate content as illegitimate, in this case calling it spam. Still, it’s strange and difficult to understand why such a bug wouldn’t affect many other stories that regularly go viral on the social platform. This instance is by no means a first for Facebook. The platform’s automated tools — which operate at unprecedented scale for a social network — are well known for at times censoring legitimate posts and while failing to detect harassment and hate speech. We’ve reached out to Facebook for details about how this kind of thing happens but the company appears to have its hands full with the bigger news of the day. While the incident is nothing particularly new, it’s an odd quirk — and in this instance quite a bad look given that the bad news affects Facebook itself. |
African experiments with drone technologies could leapfrog decades of infrastructure neglect | Samantha Stein | 2,018 | 9 | 16 | Jake Bright is a writer, author and advisor with a focus on global business, politics, and technology. From 2017 to 2020, he was a contributing writer and advisor at TechCrunch where he published on Africa, mobility and politics. Bright helped spearhead consistent Africa coverage and co-produce the first Startup Battlefield competitions in Africa and Africa focused programming on the Disrupt San Francisco mainstage. Bright’s first book, (Macmillan 2015), forecast the rise of Africa’s venture backed startup scene. Prior to this he worked in international finance and as a speechwriter in Washington, DC. Bright continues to contribute occasional guest pieces at TechCrunch. A drone revolution is coming to sub-Saharan Africa. Countries across the continent are experimenting with this 21st century technology as a way to leapfrog decades of neglect of 20th century infrastructure. Zipline demonstration |
Betterment keeps growing as fintech competitors rise | Gregg Schoenberg | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | recently the largest independent online financial adviser, is betting that the future of online investing includes a blend of robot and human advisers. And the plan is working, according to chief executive Jon Stein. However, incumbents like Vanguard have leveraged existing strengths to move in to the market, and other startups like Robinhood have carved out swathes of the fast-growing market. In response, Betterment has a series of new high-touch features on the platform, including “advice packages” that its users can buy to receive one-time advice from professional human experts. In the interview below, Stein shares new details on the company’s growth, its plans to fend off the rise of commission-free trading, an eventual bear market and the many other challenges in the space, and eventually going public. |
Everything you need to know about Facebook’s data breach affecting 50M users | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Facebook is cleaning up after a major security incident exposed the account data of millions of users. What’s already been a rocky year after , the company is scrambling to regain its users trust after another security incident exposed user data. Here’s everything you need to know so far. Facebook says at least 50 million users’ data were confirmed at risk after attackers exploited a vulnerability that allowed them access to personal data. The company also preventively secure 40 million additional accounts out of an abundance of caution. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company has not seen any accounts compromised and improperly accessed — although it’s early days and that may change. But Zuckerberg said that the attackers were using Facebook developer APIs to obtain some information, like “name, gender, and hometowns” that’s linked to a user’s profile page. Facebook said that it looks unlikely that private messages were accessed. No credit card information was taken in the breach, Facebook said. Again, that may change as the company’s investigation continues. When you enter your username and password on most sites and apps, including Facebook, your browser or device is set an access tokens. This keeps you logged in, without you having to enter your credentials every time you log in. But the token doesn’t store your password — so there’s no need to change your password. Yes, Facebook says it reset the access tokens of all users affected. That means some 90 million users will have been logged out of their account — either on their phone or computer — in the past day. This also includes users on Facebook Messenger. The vulnerability was introduced on the site in July 2017, but Facebook didn’t know about it until this month, on September 16, 2018, when it spotted a spike in unusual activity. That means the hackers could have had access to user data for a long time, as Facebook is not sure right now when the attack began. Facebook doesn’t know who attacked the site, but the FBI is investigating, it says. However, Facebook has in the past found evidence of Russia’s to meddle in American democracy and — but it’s not to say that Russia is behind this new attack. Attribution is incredibly difficult and takes a lot of time and effort. It recently took the FBI more than that North Korea was behind the Sony hack in 2016 — so we might be in for a long wait. Not one, but three bugs led to the data exposure. In July 2017, Facebook inadvertently introduced three vulnerabilities in its video uploader, said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of product management, in a call with reporters. When using the “View As” feature to view your profile as someone else, the video uploader would occasionally appear when it shouldn’t display at all. When it appeared, it generated an access token using the person who the profile page was being viewed as. If that token was obtained, an attacker could log into the account of the other person. Facebook says it fixed the vulnerability on September 27, and then began resetting the access tokens of people to protect the security of their accounts. Facebook said that it’s not yet sure if Instagram accounts are affected, but were automatically secured once Facebook access tokens were revoked. Affected Instagram users will have to unlink and relink their Facebook accounts in Instagram in order to cross post to Facebook. On a call with reporters, Facebook said there is no impact on WhatsApp users at all. If an attacker obtained your Facebook access token, it not only gives them access to your Facebook account as if they were you, but any other site that you’ve used Facebook to login with, like dating apps, games, or streaming services. If Facebook is found to have breached European data protection rules — the newly implemented General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — the company can face fines of up to four percent of its global revenue. However, that fine can’t be levied until Facebook knows more about the nature of the breach and the risk to users. Another data breach of this scale – especially coming in the wake of the and – has some in Congress . Sen. (D-VA) a stern reprimand to Facebook over today’s news, and again pushed his proposal for regulating companies holding large data sets as ““information fiduciaries” with additional consequences for improper security. FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra also that “I want answers” regarding the Facebook hack. It’s reasonable to assume that there could be investigators in both the U.S. and Europe to figure out what happened. You can. Once you log back into your Facebook account, you can go to , which lets you see where you’ve logged in. If you had your access tokens revoked and had to log in again, you should see only the devices that you logged back in with. That’s up to you! But you may want to take some precautions like changing your password and , if you haven’t done so already. If you’re weren’t impacted by this, you may want to take the time to delete some of the personal information you’ve shared to Facebook to reduce your risk of exposure in future attacks, if they were to occur. |
5 takeaways on the state of AI from Disrupt SF | Taylor Nakagawa | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | intelligence is immense, but the roadmap to achieving those goals still remains unclear. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, some of AI’s leading minds shared their thoughts on current competition in the market, how to ensure algorithms don’t perpetuate racism and the future of human-machine interaction. Here are five takeaways on the state of AI from Disrupt SF 2018: Sinnovation CEO Kai-Fu Lee (Photo: TechCrunch/Devin Coldewey) The meteoric rise in China’s focus on AI has been well-documented and has become impossible to ignore these days. With mega companies like Alibaba and Tencent pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into home-grown businesses, American companies are finding less and less room to navigate and expand in China. AI investor and Sinnovation CEO Kai-Fu Lee described China as living in a to the U.S. when it comes to AI development. Sinovation Chairman & CEO Kai-FU Lee says China has surpassed the U.S. in terms of AI capabilities — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) “We should think of it as electricity,” explained Lee, who led Google’s entrance into China. “Thomas Edison and the AI deep learning inventors — who were American — they invented this stuff and then they generously shared it. Now, China, as the largest marketplace with the largest amount of data, is really using AI to find every way to add value to traditional businesses, to internet, to all kinds of spaces.” “The Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem is huge, so today the most valuable AI companies in computer vision, speech recognition, drones are all Chinese companies.” SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 07: (L-R) UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, Google AI research scientist Timnit Gebru, UCOT founder and CEO Chris Ategeka and moderator Devin Coldewey speak onstage during Day 3 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 7, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch) AI promises to increase human productivity and efficiency by taking the grunt work out of many processes. But the data used to train many AI systems often falls victim to the same biases of humans and, if unchecked, can further marginalize communities caught up in systemic issues like income disparity and racism. “People in lower socio-economic statuses are under more surveillance and go through algorithms more,” said Google AI’s Timnit Gebru. “So if they apply for a job that’s lower status they are likely to go through automated tools. We’re right now in a stage where these algorithms are being used in different places and we’re not event checking if they’re breaking existing laws like the Equal Opportunity Act.” Algorithmic bias is a new face of an old problem rooted in income disparity and racism. Timnit Gebru (Google AI), Ken Goldberg (UC Berkeley) and Chris Ategeka (UCOT) outline steps to build more objective algorithms in the future. — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) A potential solution to prevent the spread of toxic algorithms was outlined by UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg who cited the concept of , which involves multiple algorithms with various classifiers working together to produce a single result. But how do we know if the solution to inadequate tech is more tech? Goldberg says this is where having individuals from multiple backgrounds, both in and outside the world of AI, is vital to developing just algorithms. “It’s very relevant to think about both machine intelligence and human intelligence,” explained Goldberg. “Having people with different viewpoints is extremely valuable and I think that’s starting to be recognized by people in business… it’s not because of PR, it’s actually because it will give you better decisions if you get people with different cognitive, diverse viewpoints.” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (Photo: TechCrunch/Devin Coldewey) Transportation companies often paint a flowery picture of the near future where mobility will become so automated that human intervention will be detrimental to the process. That’s not the case, according to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. In an era that’s racing to put humans on the sidelines, Khosrowshahi says humans and machines working hand-in-hand is the real thing. “People and computers actually work better than each of them work on a standalone basis and we are having the capability of bringing in autonomous technology, third-party technology, Lime, our own product all together to create a hybrid,” said Khosrowshahi. The future of autonomous travel will rely on people and computers working together, says Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) Khosrowshahi ultimately envisions the future of Uber being made up of engineers monitoring routes that present the least amount of danger for riders and selecting optimal autonomous routes for passengers. The combination of these two systems will be vital in the maturation of autonomous travel, while also keeping passengers safe in the process. SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 07: Human Rights Data Analysis Group lead statistician Kristian Lum speaks onstage during Day 3 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 7, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Last July, a report highlighting how machine learning can falsely develop its own biases. The investigation examined an AI system used in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that falsely flagged black defendants as future criminals at a rate twice that of white defendants. These landmark findings set off a wave of conversation on the ingredients needed to build fair algorithms. One year later AI experts still don’t have the recipe fully developed, but many agree a contextual approach that combines mathematics and an understanding of human subjects in an algorithm is the best path forward. How can we create fair algorithms? Kristian Lum (Human Rights Data Analysis Group) says there’s no clear answer, but it depends on the contextual data training the AI — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) “Unfortunately there is not a universally agreed upon definition of what fairness looks like,” said Kristian Lum, lead statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. “How you slice and dice the data can determine whether you ultimately decide the algorithm is unfair.” Lum goes on to explain that research in the past few years has revolved around exploring the mathematical definition of fairness, but this approach is often incompatible to the moral outlook on AI. “What makes an algorithm fair is highly contextually dependent, and it’s going to depend so much on the training data that’s going into it,” said Lum. “You’re going to have to understand a lot about the problem, you’re going to have to understand a lot about the data, and even when that happens there will still be disagreements on the mathematical definitions of fairness.” SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 06: (l-R) Duo VP of Security Mike Hanley, Okta executive director of Cybersecurity Marc Rogers and moderator Mike Butcher speak onstage during Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 6, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch) If previous elections have taught us anything it’s that security systems are in dire need of improvement to protect personal data, financial assets and the foundation of democracy itself. Facebook’s ex-chief security officer on the current state of politics and cybersecurity at Disrupt SF, stating the security infrastructure for the upcoming Midterm elections than it was in 2016. So how effective will AI be in improving these systems? Marc Rogers of Okta and Mike Hanley of Duo Security believe the combination of AI and a security model called , which cuts off all users from accessing a system until they can prove themselves, are the key to developing security systems that actively fight off breaches without the assistance of humans. Marc Rodgers (Okta) and Mike Hanley (Duo) outline how AI and Zero Trust will work hand-in-hand to build future security systems — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) “AI and Zero Trust are a marriage made in heaven because the whole idea behind Zero Trust is you design policies that sit inside your network,” said Rogers. “AI is great at doing human decisions much faster than a human ever can and I have great hope that as Zero Trust evolves, we’re going to see AI baked into the new Zero Trust platforms.” By handing much of the heavy lifting to machines, cybersecurity professionals will also have the opportunity to solve another pressing issue: being able to staff qualified security experts to manage these systems. “There’s also a substantial labor shortage of qualified security professionals that can actually do the work needed to be done,” said Hanley. “That creates a tremendous opportunity for security vendors to figure out what are those jobs that need to be done, and there are many unsolved challenges in that space. Policy engines are one of the more interesting ones.” |
Pulling back the curtain on how SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund works — including just how big a check it can write | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Picture it. The scene is Silicon Valley. Suddenly an investment firm materializes on the scene and starts writing checks bigger than anyone is accustomed to seeing. Fellow investors start to privately complain. Its partners are poseurs, they say. The firm is driving up valuations, they continue. It’s going to ruin venture capital, they conclude. It was said of Andreessen Horowitz when it burst onto the scene in 2009. (Remember its then jaw-dropping decision to hand GitHub a check in 2012?) Today, it’s being said even more widely about the SoftBank Vision Fund, and little wonder, given that SoftBank is fast plowing $100 billion into mostly venture-backed companies and that, according to its CEO, Masayoshi Son, are coming soon. Just this week, the firm led a in the India-based hotel chain and room aggregator Oyo. It also participated in two other enormous deals, leading a for the real estate tech platform Compass, which creates tools for residential real estate agents and more recently launched a commercial brokerage division. Separately, it led a in the home-buying startup Opendoor. What might be the longer-term impact of so much capital getting jammed into still private companies? How does SoftBank decide who to fund, and who to steer around? On Tuesday night, at a event in San Francisco, we had the chance to talk with two of its investors, Vision Fund Managing Director Jeff Housenbold and Anna Lo, a director with SoftBank Investment Advisors, to learn more about how the whole thing works — and to run past them some of the criticisms that their fellow investors have been whispering to us. In addition to some basic stats (SoftBank’s Vision Fund is run by 86 people, including nine managing directors, across offices in Tokyo, London, and San Carlos, Ca.; it has a 14-year investing period), you’ll learn what SoftBank won’t touch, how big a check it can write before asking for permission from its own investors, and what happens to companies that say they are in talks with the Vision Fund when they are not. Also, spoiler alert: the Vision Fund has vice clauses that prevent it from funding tobacco, firearms and certain other companies, as do most venture firms. (We’d asked in the context of discussing whether SoftBank might ever fund the e-cig company Juul, which .) You can watch the chat for yourself below. In the meantime, some outtakes from that conversation follow, edited lightly for length: AL: Definitely leaders in their respective markets and geographies. Excellent, rock star teams. We are very friendly and collaborative with our founders, so we need to see eye to eye on their vision. The criteria isn’t so different from a lot of VCs here in the audience. JH: In the continuum of venture capital, we’re late-stage growth. Our minimum check size is $100 million. We’re looking for product-market fit [meaning] some revenue and some traction before we typically come into a deal. It depends on which industry and which company. It could be GMV. It could be revenue. If it’s in enterprise software, it could be how many clients do they have and the diversification of the revenue and what the repeats and retention rates [are]. But we’re looking for companies that are growing very quickly and could deploy a lot of capital in a differentiated way to either capture new customers, market share, enter into new geographies, expand their product portfolio, or move into adjacent markets. JH: First, we’ll do landscape studies, and have strategic hypotheses around certain sectors and how technology is impacting that sector and driving innovation. So, let’s say, in the real estate sector: we took a scan and looked at over 80 different companies across different aspects of the value chain. So we’ve already mapped out which are the incumbents, who are the up-and-coming startups, who is differentiating themselves, who’s getting traction. And then we have a thesis [about] where can money be made in those value chains. And then we go and approach those companies. The other thing, often the phone rings when you have a large fund. People call us opportunistically. So sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, you know, we looked at that eight months ago; maybe we should take another look.’ Because now a new player entered, or this company has gotten more traction, or they completed that merger they told us about, where they move from $20 million in [annual recurring revenue] to now $100 million. And we’ll come back to that because they called us. So it’s a combination. AL: We’re also looking for successful e-commerce models in emerging markets that are beginning to display characteristics such as in China in terms of rising income and the adoption of mobile internet. JH: Also, half of what you read in the press, as you can imagine, is fake news. So companies are now using our name to create competitive tension in a term sheet, where we’ve never even met with the company. So I’ll read in the press, ‘Oh, we’re investing a billion in so and so company,’ and I log in and has ever met the company. JH: It doesn’t go [over] well internally. JH: So, for example, my team looks after consumer and real estate [opportunities], so if it’s a deal in consumer and we’re intrigued by it, we’ll do a bunch of work. We’ll meet with the management team. We’ll do some outside-in and inside-out research, and we’ll come up with an investment thesis. If we have conviction internally, we then take it to managing partners and we ask the management team to come back and meet all of us. If there are no major objections, then we bring [the deal] to a global deal call, where partners around the world come together once a week, and we walk through our investment case. And Masa is on that call often, and he’ll say, ‘I’m intrigued. Bring the entrepreneur to Japan.’ So Masa meets every single entrepreneur who we invest in, which is phenomenal because he’s brilliant . . . he has amazing pattern recognition. But what’s really amazing is, he’s fearless. He’ll sit with an entrepreneur and go, ‘I really love that concept. Have you thought about what if we remove barriers?’ Or, ‘What if capital wasn’t a restriction?’ Or, ‘What if we could land you a CFO, a CMO, and a CPO tomorrow. What would you do different?’ And it’s just fun to be in that environment. And so if Masa says, “Yes, I’m intrigued, move forward,’ then we go to our formal investment committee to do confirmatory due diligence, then we close the deal. AL: All companies still come through the wringer, [including] the due diligence process, the investment committee meeting, sometimes lots of follow-up questions, and regulatory approvals. JH: Sometimes where that changes is: we never bring a company to see Masa that we haven’t already kind of outlined what the deal terms will look like. But sometimes in that exploration, Masa says, ‘What if you went bigger, quicker, faster?’ Then instead of putting $300 million [into the company], he says, ‘Could you deploy $500 million? What would your business plan look like?’ And that’s where sometimes, the deal terms change. Because in the moment, he helps to think about, ‘Well, what if we bought your competitor and we move quickly in doing that? What if we took you to Japan quickly?’ And so the deal terms often change because of that more expansive worldview and the challenge to the management team of what they could do if we remove some of the perceived barriers to building a great franchise quickly. JH: Masa is a man of action. But he’s also a man of facts and wisdom. So I’ve had several deals where at first blush, he goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t really get it.’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, then I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining why we had such conviction around this investment.’ And so he’ll say, ‘Okay, come back. Take me through it so I can understand these aspects of it.’ Then there are instances where he says, ‘I was at this conference and met this entrepreneur and think they are really amazing. I want to invest in them.’ That’s not a mandate to go invest. That’s the permission to go explore. It’s our job to then go vet that [person’s company] and put it through the rigor and analytics and then come back to Masa. And there have been plenty examples where he was excited about something, and we say, ‘You know, the tech really doesn’t scale.’ Or sometimes it’s, ‘This is a great company and it’s number one, but we’ve found a much better, smaller company with better tech, a better management team, a better go-to-market strategy, better execution. We think we should [bet] on number two because they will pass number one in 14 months.’ And Masa if very open to [this]. If you know your stuff and it’s fact-based, he’s very open to changing his opinion. AL: It’s quite in line with how private equity gets deployed. If you think about the biggest venture and private equity ecosystems in the world, the two biggest being the U.S. and China, I think we do have 50-50 U.S and non-U.S investments across 30-plus companies. Based on what we’re seeing, I’d say Southeast Asia and the Middle East are next frontiers for us. But the check size would not be as large as in China, where it takes a lot more capital to build at scale. JH: We don’t have targets. We’re late stage, so we like to have meaning minority stakes . . . so we don’t go in [thinking] we have to have 15 or 20 [percent ownership] . . . [though] 20 percent to 35 percent [ownership], is what I’d say if there was a normal distribution. |
Y Combinator is changing up the way it invests | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | To keep up with the growing sizes of early-stage funding rounds, Y Combinator announced this morning that it will increase the size of its investments to $150,000 for 7 percent equity starting with its winter 2019 batch. Based in Mountain View, Calif., YC funds and mentors hundreds of startups per year through its 12-week program that culminates in a where founders pitch their companies to an audience of Silicon Valley’s top investors. Airbnb, Dropbox and Instacart are among its greatest successes. , YC has invested $120,000 for 7 percent equity in its companies. It has increased the size of its investment before — in 2007, a YC “standard deal” was just $20,000 — but the amount of equity the accelerator takes in exchange for the capital has been consistent. “We thought a $30K increase was necessary to help companies stay focused on building their product without worrying about fundraising too soon,” Y Combinator chief executive officer Michael Seibel wrote in a this morning. “Capital for startups has never been more abundant, and we’ll continue to focus on the things that remain hard to come by — community, simplicity, advice that’s systematic and personal, and above all, a great founder experience.” . Partner Sam Altman serves as YC’s president. YC is also changing the way it crafts its investments. It will now invest in startups on a post-money basis rather than on a pre-money safe. YC invented the fundraising mechanism, safe, in 2013. A safe, or a simple agreement for future equity, means an investor makes an investment in a company and receives the company stock at a later date — an alternative to a convertible note. A safe is a quicker and simpler way to get early money into a company and the idea was, according to YC, that holders of those safes would be early investors in the startup’s Series A or later priced equity rounds. In recent years, YC noticed that startups were raising much larger seed rounds than before and those safes were “really better considered as wholly separate financings, rather than ‘bridges’ into later priced rounds.” Founders, in the meantime, were struggling to determine how much they were being diluted. YC’s latest change, in short, will make it easier for founders to know exactly how much of their company they are selling off and will make math, which can be extremely grueling for founders, a whole lot easier. The pre-money safe has been criticized by founders and alike. Last year, a pair of venture capitalists who’d worked with YC companies, Dolby Family Partners’ Pascal Levensohn and Andrew Krowne, that the safe method was screwing over founders. “Entrepreneurs who don’t do the capitalization table math end up owning less of their company’s equity than they thought they did. And when an equity round is inevitably priced, entrepreneurs don’t like the founder dilution numbers at all. But they can’t blame the VC, they can’t blame the angels, so that means they can only blame… oops!” A transition to a post-money safe will eliminate that cap table math headache while still being simple and efficient. The trade-off, YC says, “is that each incremental dollar raised on post-money safes dilutes just the current stockholders, which is often the founders and early employees.” So it’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement. Recent YC grad Deepak Chhugani, , had a positive response to the changes and said either way, most of the resources provided by YC are priceless to a first-time founder, like himself. |
US government loses bid to force Facebook to wiretap Messenger calls | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | US government investigators have lost a case to force Facebook to wiretap calls made over its Messenger app. A joint federal and state law enforcement effort investigating the MS-13 gang had to hold the social networking giant in contempt of court for refusing to permit real-time listening in on voice calls. , the judge later ruled in Facebook’s favor — although, because the case remains under seal, it’s not known for what reason. The case, filed in a Fresno, Calif. district court, centers on alleged gang members accused of murder and other crimes. The government had been pushing to prosecute 16 suspected gang members, but are said to have leaned on Facebook to obtain further evidence. Reuters said that an affidavit submitted by an FBI agent said that “there is no practical method available by which law enforcement can monitor” calls on Facebook Messenger. Although Facebook-owned WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption to prevent eavesdroppers, not even the company can listen in — which law enforcement have long claimed that this hinders investigations. But Facebook Messenger doesn’t end-to-end encrypt voice calls, making real-time listening in on calls possible. Although phone companies and telcos are required under US law to allow police and federal agencies access to real-time phone calls with a court-signed wiretap order, internet companies like Facebook fall outside the scope of the law. Privacy advocates saw this case as a way to remove that exemption, accusing the government of trying to backdoor the encrypted app, just two years after the FBI sued Apple over a similar request to break into the encrypted iPhone belonging to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. FBI declined to comment. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. |
Online education unicorn Udacity has quietly laid off 5% of staff — at least 25 people — since August | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Online education is a industry today, but as it continues to mature, there are some inevitable ebbs and flows. In the latest development, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that — the startup co-founded by Sebastian Thrun that specialises in “nanodegrees” in tech subects that range from and coding through to the how-tos of digital marketing — has quietly cut about five percent of its staff since August across multiple offices globally. “Back in August, five percent of our global employees were laid off based on carefully considered, strategic business decisions,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. “We are supporting our former and current employees through the transition. Our business continues to grow, with offices in India, China, Germany, Brazil, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Silicon Valley. We continue to hire for key roles.” The company does not disclose an exact number of employees it has across globally, except to say that it is over 500, meaning that this change is affecting about 25 people — the same number that a source had originally give us. It’s not clear exactly what is going on at Udacity to prompt the layoffs, either in terms of the existing business or what it may have planned for the future. Udacity says that it has over 50,000 students enrolled in its six-12-month nanodegree programs, but that is a figure that it has not updated in almost a year, when it emerged that Shernaz Daver, the CMO who was credited for turning around the company, . Overall, Udacity says the number of registered students on the platform is higher than this, now at over 10 million — which also includes one-off free courses as well as partnerships with businesses. Udacity works with companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and others to develop its curriculum, and it counts Accenture, AT&T, Bank of America, GE and Ford among its . The company made $70 million 2017, but it has not provided guidance on how it is doing this year. (That $70 million figure was first released in this year, when Udacity’s CEO Vishal Makhijani hinted the company was eyeing up an IPO.) In terms of funding, Udacity has not raised any money since 2015 — when it led by publisher Bertelsmann that catapulted it to a $1 billion valuation. It’s raised $163 million to date, with other investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Ballie Gifford, Charles River Ventures, Cox Enterprises and GV. A rush of companies have entered the online education space — which has been around in one form or another since the start of the web, and indeed you could argue went hand-in-hand with some of the earliest intentions behind the internet. Offerings run the gamut of what “education” can entail: single courses, full degrees, professional development, casual hobbies, gamefied children’s education, and much more — using videos, mobile technology, VR, AI to tailor courses, curriculums approved by leading academics and educators, and much more to make the learning more sticky and effective. Udacity has competitors, effectively, from many parts of that spectrum, but some of the more notable include Coursera, Lynda (which is now part of LinkedIn and Microsoft) and Khan Academy. Sebastian Thrun (Udacity) at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 Since its launch in 2011, Udacity has played a few different roles within that evolution. The company initially started as one of the early providers of “MOOCs” (Massive Open Online Courses): Thrun (pictured above, who co-founded the company with David Stavens and Mike Sokolsky; neither are with the company anymore) left a position as a professor of AI at Stanford to start Udacity when for an open invite he made to take his class for free online. Higher educational institutions worked closely with Udacity in the early days, although the company appeared to move away from that focus that in 2013 after some hiccups, including San Jose State University after pass rates were deemed too low. Instead it started to work with a number of large tech players (where Thrun is credited with the company’s early work on building self-driving cars) to develop a new set of courses to target older people and those already in the workforce. That pivot appeared to turn the company at one point, as it expanded its sights to further markets like . Then, Thrun stepped away as the CEO (he’s now president) and the role was , who had been the COO. Under him, the company appeared to focus a little more: it looked set to build deeper coding experiences with its first acquisition, of ; and it spun out its self-driving car program, which was and is now building its own business. It’s likely that this latest turn is one more step in how Udacity is aiming to position for whatever comes next. |
Intel acknowledges supply issues, will prioritize premium chips | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | null |
As its own reports reveal the disaster of climate inaction, Trump proposes climate inaction | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | If the current presidential administration’s approach to climate change could be summarized in one sentence, it seems that sentence would be “smoke em if you got em.” By the administration’s own estimate, on its current course (if nations around the world do nothing more to respond to the climate change threat) the planet will warm by 7 degrees by the end of the century. It means, as one Twitter commentator pointed out, that climate change is not only real, but catastrophic… and the response is to burn more carbon because we’re all dead anyway. “Well, at least they finally admitted it was real,” said the man crawling out of the ensuing permanent desert hellstorm covering America into the more soothing environs of a 30 meter sea rise to quietly drown along with civilization as we know it… 😬 — Matthew Ocko (@mattocko) If global temperatures rise 7 degrees, much of coastal America will find itself underwater. Ocean acidification will dissolve coral reefs and the world can expect dramatically more powerful and more damaging storms and more severe droughts and heatwaves. However, , the dire assessment of the world’s climate situation wasn’t made with an eye toward trying to find solutions to the problem, merely to illustrate that the planet is already doomed. The revelations of our planet’s fate came buried in a 500-page report from the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration study that was meant to justify President Trump’s decision to drop fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks built after 2020. The administration’s argument is: if no one does anything more to combat climate change, then the world will be destroyed anyway, so there’s no point in doing anything to try and combat climate change. The (lack of) logic explains why the administration has rolled back emissions reduction requirements on methane (from oil and gas drilling and industrial animal farming), carbon dioxide (for coal fired power plants), and hydrofluorocarbons (used in refrigerators and air conditioners). The NTHSA report projects that global temperatures will rise by roughly 3.5 degrees above the last average temperature before climate change began to affect (the years between 1986 and 2005) whether or not the rules on fuel efficiency standards are enacted or not. The administration isn’t wrong in its assessment of where things stand now, but it is wrong in assuming that the current situation in any way reflects future realities. As the analysis states, the world will have to drastically slash carbon to avoid the kind of disastrous warming scenario. However, the assumption that the analysis reaches (as quoted by ), that reducing emissions “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible,” seems misplaced. It also flies in the face of repeated assertions by the President that climate change is a hoax. By acknowledging the existence of climate change and saying that nothing can be done to stop it, the new report provides a cover for all of the steps that have been taken by conservative lawmakers and the President’s cabinet to cut costs for industry. Meanwhile, the Carolinas from flooding brought on by Hurricane Florence ( ), and the continues to increase in the West. This is fine. |
This is the Razer Phone 2 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Enough politics for today. — Evan Blass (@evleaks) |
The 7 most eyebrow-raising details in the Elon Musk fraud complaint | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | The securities fraud complaint filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Tesla CEO Elon Musk contains an eye-opening view into the events leading up to the “funding secured” tweet heard round the internet. And luckily, TechCrunch has read through the document and highlighted the most compelling details, including new insights from the SEC’s investigation. But first, the nuts and bolts: The Thursday in federal district court alleging that Musk lied when he tweeted on August 7 that he had “funding secured” for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share. Federal securities regulators reportedly just a week after the tweet. Investigations can take years before any action is taken, if at all. In this case, the investigation, which regulators say is continuing, progressed to a complaint within six weeks. 2/2 . . . An officer’s celebrity status or reputation as a technological innovator does not give license to take those responsibilities lightly.” — SEC Enforcement (@SEC_Enforcement) The SEC alleges that Musk violated anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The commission has asked the court to fine Musk and bar the billionaire entrepreneur from serving as an officer or director of a public company. That’s a big deal, and one Musk will certainly fight. In a statement sent to TechCrunch, Musk described that has left him “deeply saddened and disappointed.” Here are some of the key takeaways and nuggets pulled from the complaint, which includes details of the SEC’s investigation: Musk met with representatives of a sovereign investment fund ( ) three or four times b After months without contact, Musk met with the fund’s lead representative on July 31. This is when he learns the fund has acquired almost 5 percent of Tesla’s common stock. According to the complaint, the representative expresses interest in taking Tesla private and asks about establishing a production facility in the Middle East. Musk said he was open to the idea, but did not make a commitment. The representative did tell Musk that as long as the terms were “reasonable,” the fund would be fine with them. However, the pair never discussed specific deal terms during the meeting or talked about what would or would not be “reasonable.” Nothing was exchanged in writing, and there was no discussion of confidentiality, according to the complaint. Musk did not communicate with representatives of the fund again about a going-private transaction until August 10, three days after his August 7 statements, the complaint states. The agreed in September to invest $1 billion into electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors. Some have speculated that Musk’s August 7 tweet was just a silly impulse, particularly because the proposed shared price was a reference to marijuana. But regulators show in the complaint that Musk was talking to the board about an offer to take Tesla private as early as August 2 when he sent to Tesla’s board of directors, chief financial officer and general counsel an email with the subject, “Offer to Take Tesla Private at $420.” The email laid out his reasons for wanting to take Tesla private, including that being public “[s]ubjects Tesla to constant defamatory attacks by the short-selling community, resulting in great harm to our valuable brand,” according to the complaint. According to the complaint, Musk calculated the $420 price per share based on a 20 percent premium over that day’s closing share price because he thought 20 percent was a “standard premium” in going-private transactions. This calculation resulted in a price of $419. Musk stated that he rounded the price up to $420 because he had recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture and thought his girlfriend “would find it funny, which admittedly is not a great reason to pick a price,” according to the complaint. Musk’s August 7 tweet indicated that funding had been secured. The complaint lays out a much different account. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Musk thought that there was “a lot of uncertainty” regarding a potential going-private transaction at the time of his August 2 email to Tesla’s board, “but it was worth investigating,” according to the complaint. He believed at the time that the likelihood of consummation of a transaction was about 50 percent, the complaint says. Musk had a call with the board on August 3, the day after he sent the email. He told the board he wanted to contact existing shareholders to assess their interest in participating in a going-private transaction, the complaint said. The board authorized him to contact certain investors and report back on those conversations. Musk never spoke to any shareholders. He had a conversation with a private equity fund representative about the process, according to the complaint. But he didn’t contact any additional potential strategic investors to assess their interest. He also did not provide the board with a specific proposal, contact existing shareholders to determine if they would remain invested in Tesla as a private company, retain any advisers or determine whether retail investors could remain invested in Tesla as a private company. Four days after the call he sent the tweet. During his conversation with a private equity fund partner, who had previous experience with such transactions, Musk said the number of Tesla shareholders needed to be below 300, according to the complaint. But here’s the problem. Tesla had more than 800 institutional shareholders and many more individual shareholders at the time. The private equity fund partner said the transaction structure that Musk was contemplating was “unprecedented” in his experience, according to the complaint. Musk’s August 7 tweet triggered a maelstrom of calls, emails and texts from the board, executive staff, analysts and press. Confusion was the theme early on. In one example, Tesla’s head of investor relations, Martin Viecha, sent a text to Musk’s chief of staff (Sam Teller) about 12 minutes after the initial tweet asking “Was this text legit?” Teller and Viecha would receive more communications from press and shareholders. One reporter emailed Musk asking “Are you just messing around?” The reporter wrote, “Reaching out to see what’s going on with your tweets about taking the company private? Is this just a 420 joke gone awry?” |
Facebook hack could hasten regulation as Sen. Warner says Congress must “step up” | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has a stern reprimand to Facebook over today’s that . “This is another sobering indicator that Congress needs to step up and take action to protect the privacy and security of social media users” Warner writes. As I’ve said before – the era of the Wild West in social media is over.” In July, Warner published an outlining where he believes regulation is necessary for social media companies. He proposes that companies holding large data sets be regulated as “information fiduciaries” with additional consequences for improper security. He suggests requirements for data portability and interoperability that would allow users to export their personal information and use it elsewhere if they were unsatisfied with their treatment by a social media giant. He also recommends applying similar rules in the US to Europe’s GDPR including a requirement that breaches be disclosed within 72 hours of discovery. Notably, Facebook did disclose this hack within that window. [Update: FTC Commisioner Rohit Chopra has now that “I want answers” regarding the Facebook hack, further strengthening the possibility that today’s problem will trigger more calls for regulation.] CEO Mark Zuckerberg today that “While I’m glad we found this, fixed the vulnerability, and secured the accounts that may be at risk, the reality is we need to continue developing new tools to prevent this from happening in the first place.” Facebook’s “View As” tool has been disabled following the hack. It let users see how their profile looked to a certain other user The breach saw sophisticated hackers combine three Facebook bugs in its video uploader, user profile, and “view as” privacy feature to generate and steal the access tokens that allow users to stay logged into Facebook between sessions. These could be potentially used to take over user accounts. Facebook says there’s no evidence that hackers accessed users’ private messages or posted on their behalf. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed on a call with reporters that before Facebook fixed the issue last night, hackers did try to query the Facebook API for users’ names, hometowns, genders, and possibly more. Facebook has reset the access tokens of the 50 million users impacted plus another 40 million who’d had their accounts viewed through the “view as” tool this year. That means they’ll have to log back into Facebook but won’t need to change their password. The bugs stem from code pushed back in July, but Facebook only discovered the issue Tuesday afternoon as the hackers tried to scale up the attack to steal more tokens. Facebook patched the issue last night and this morning announced it was investigating, though it currently doesn’t have enough information to determine the source of the attack. It’s already notifed the FBI, as well as the Irish Data Protection office since the breach has GDPR implications. On a call with reporters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly called the problem “serious”. But beyond recounting the steps Facebook is taking to address this breach, he didn’t have a good answer for why users should still trust Facebook with their data. Always quick to pounce on privacy issues, Warner has become one of the strongeest Democratic critics of the social network. He’s seemingly inherited the position of tech watchdog from former-Senator Al Franken. He’s weighed in on recent social media bias and election interference, Google’s plan to launch censored search in China, White House cybersecurity plans and more. With technology becoming an ever more important and dangerous part of people’s lives, Warner seems to see an opportunity to both protect his constituents and advance his career by demonstrating his expertise and ferocity. This hack could be by Warner as strong evidence that social media companies like Facebook are not voluntarily doing enough to protect uses’ security and privacy. If regulation around security, portability, and interoperability is enacted, it could cost Facebook money for compliance, slow dow the pace of engineering innovation at the company, and make it more vulnerable to competitors. Zuckerberg has countered that regulation could actually protect Facebook from disruption by making it tougher for new social networks to build up the data treasure trove it has. He also believes thereby giving Chinese alternatives an advatange as they battle for international markets like India and Brazil. Right now, it’s tough for users to easily switch from Facebook to another social network, which insulates Facebook from its PR problems becoming user growth problems. But if ditching Facebook for a competitor becomes simpler, it might force the company to treat its users better. WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, released the following statement on the announcement by Facebook that it discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts: “The news that at least 50 million Facebook users had their accounts compromised is deeply concerning. A full investigation should be swiftly conducted and made public so that we can understand more about what happened. “Today’s disclosure is a reminder about the dangers posed when a small number of companies like Facebook or the credit bureau Equifax are able to accumulate so much personal data about individual Americans without adequate security measures. “This is another sobering indicator that Congress needs to step up and take action to protect the privacy and security of social media users. As I’ve said before – the era of the Wild West in social media is over.” To kick start the debate around social media legislation, Sen. Warner in July released containing a suite of potential policy proposals for the regulation of social media. |
Blok.Party raises $10M, will adapt Settlers of Catan to its blockchain game console | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | , the company that built the upcoming PlayTable game console, announced today it raised $10 million in new funding. It’s also unveiling a big content partnership, where Blok.Party will create its own version of the . I first , when co-founder and CEO Jimmy Chen first laid out his vision to use blockchain technology to build a console that can recognize real-world objects (like figurines and cards), creating a hybrid between tabletop and video gaming. The idea may have sounded a little abstract at the time, but it got a lot clearer when Chen dropped by the TechCrunch New York office to play a couple rounds of Catan with me. I’ll admit that I hadn’t played in a while, but it was clear from the start that PlayTable saved us some setup time — instead of putting all the pieces of the physical board together, you play on a digital representation of the board. Most of the pieces are digitized too, and we used and traded our cards using smartphones. But there is a physical “robber” piece, because Chen said this allows the robber’s movement to remain “a very visceral experience … that a digital version can’t ever capture.” It may not be too long before you get to try this out for yourself, at least if you’re among the 10,000 pre-orders Blok.Party has received so far. Chen said the company will start shipping its first devices this fall. He added that Catan, like many of the other games built for PlayTable, will be priced at around $20. “For us, it’s not about trying to compete based on price,” Chen said. “We’re trying to compete based on experience.” The new funding comes from crypto fund JRR Capital and other investors. Chen said the company will use the money to continue scaling the product, including further software development and building out the library of games. At the same time, he emphasized that although Blok.Party is manufacturing the initial devices, his vision is to achieve real scale through partnerships with hardware manufacturers, who will build their own PlayTable consoles. Apparently, some of those discussions are already underway. “Our strategy is to always have [our own] hardware program running to continually do research,” Chen said. “What I’ve discovered is that keeping a hardware program running is not that expensive. The expensive part is when you try to scale the program.” |
Facebook says at least 50 million users affected by security breach | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Facebook has said at least 50 million user accounts may be at risk after hackers exploited a security vulnerability on the site. The company Friday that it discovered the bug earlier in the week. The bug is part of the site’s “View As” feature that lets a user see their profile as someone else. Facebook has switched off the “View As” feature in the meantime while it investigates the bug further. The bug allowed hackers to obtain account access tokens, which are used to keep users logged in when they enter their username and password. Stolen tokens can allow hackers to break into accounts. Facebook said that it has reset access tokens of all users affected, as well as an additional 40 million accounts out of an abundance of caution. That means some 90 million users will have been logged out of their account — either on their phone or computer — in the past day. Facebook also said that users will be notified of the security incident through a notification in their News Feed once they log back in. “We have yet to determine whether these accounts were misused or any information accessed,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of product management. “We also don’t know who’s behind these attacks or where they’re based.” Rosen said that Facebook spotted the attack because the hackers were automating their attack on a “large scale.” Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with reporters that the company doesn’t know if any accounts have been improperly accessed, though he said that the attackers tried to access account information by querying its developer APIs, which Facebook locked down last night. “So far our initial investigation has not shown that these tokens were used to access any private messages or posts or to post anything to these accounts,” Zuckerberg told reporters. “But this, of course, may change as we learn more. The attackers used our APIs to access profile information fields like name, gender, hometown, etc. But we do not yet know if any private information was accessed that way,” he said. The vulnerability, which was a result of three distinct bugs, was introduced in July 2017, when Facebook created a new video upload functionality on the service. On September 16, 2018, Facebook discovered unusual activity and launched an investigation that same week. On Tuesday, September 25, it uncovered the attack. It then notified law enforcement on Thursday, September 27, in the afternoon. On Thursday evening, it fixed the vulnerability and began resetting the access tokens of people to protect the security of their accounts. Facebook said the FBI is now investigating. Because users in Europe are also affected, the company said it has informed data protection authorities in Ireland — where the company’s European headquarters are located. The Irish Data Protection Commission has asked Facebook to clarify the breach “urgently.” If Facebook is found to have breached European data protection rules — the newly implemented General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — the company can face fines of up to four percent of its global revenue. Facebook data breach. The DPC is concerned that this breach was discovered on Tuesday & affects millions of users. At present Facebook is unable to clarify the nature of the breach & risk to users. We are pressing Facebook to urgently clarify these matters. — Data Protection Commission Ireland (@DPCIreland) Federal Trade Commission’s Rohit Chopra also tweeted, suggesting the government agency may investigate. I want answers. — Rohit Chopra (@chopraftc) “If we find more affected accounts, we will immediately reset their access tokens,” said Rosen. “This is a breach of trust and we take this very seriously.” “I’m glad that we that we found this and that we were able to fix the vulnerability and secure accounts,” Zuckerberg told reporters. “But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place. And I think this underscores the attacks that our community and our service face, and the need to keep on investing heavily in security and being more proactive about protecting our community. And we’re certainly committed to doing that,” he added. The attacks on Facebook have forced the company to rethink its overall development process. It has gone from a “move fast and break things” mentality to one of a slower and more cautious approach. Facebook has been without a chief security officer . The social network retired the position after Stamos left. But the company said that this year it’s growing the number of people working on safety and security from 10,000 to 20,000. Sen. Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned of the “dangers” posed by companies that are “able to accumulate so much personal data about individual Americans without adequate security measures.” The social network has 2.2 billion monthly active users as of its second quarter earnings. |
Chaos engineering service Gremlin raises $18M, launches new resiliency tools | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | “Slack is down.” It’s a headline we have had (mostly because we actually get work done when not distracted by a constant waterfall of GIFs). But Slack is not alone — issues with uptime and reliability plague modern web services, from to to . As any software engineer can attest, web application development is extraordinarily complicated. Databases, storage services and business logic all need to work together perfectly so that users can buy their goods or watch their films. But what happens when one piece of that application breaks down? Today, a small outage in one AWS availability zone could cascade and knock offline an entire service, . Today’s developer tools are decent at spotting bugs and other logic errors, but they don’t investigate applications systematically to ask how they can respond to various crises. That’s where comes in. The service, founded by CEO Kolton Andrus, who designed Netflix’s failure injection service and worked with CTO Matthew Fornaciari while at Amazon, is designed to throw a monkey wrench into any application, simulating faults like storage errors, database congestion and sudden spikes in latency. Its tagline is “break things on purpose” (something of a rift of Facebook’s “move fast and break things”). Resiliency is clearly on investors’ minds, since the startup announced this morning at its in SF that it has raised an $18 million Series B round led by Redpoint partner Tomasz Tunguz. That’s a follow-up to a $7.5 million series A led by Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, which was announced less than a year ago. In addition to announcing the funding today, the company unveiled its “Application Level Fault Injection” system — a mouthful of a name, but a feature that will help DevOps engineers test systems at the application level, including most importantly serverless environments. Andrus said in a note to TechCrunch that “This past year has been a whirlwind. We spent a lot of time educating everyone from engineers to CIOs about chaos engineering and building up the community.” He said the new funding will be used to further build out Gremlin’s engineering team. , Gremlin is pioneering a field of software development dubbed “chaos engineering.” Rather than using formal verification to test whether code is accurate and performant, chaos engineers throw deliberate and systematic errors at an application in an attempt to simulate various types of failure and find brittle parts of software programs. That sounds easy on the surface, but extremely complicated in practice: You want to simulate an outage without actually creating an outage on a mission-critical system. Netflix wants to test whether losing a database will cause video to stop playing, without physically pulling the plug on a database and seeing if your movie is still on the TV. Gremlin’s platform provides something of a sandbox for engineers to slowly ramp up errors, and then more importantly, ramp down errors if a breakage is detected. So a DevOps engineer can add a few milliseconds of latency to a program and see how it responds, and then add a few more. With the rise of serverless services like AWS Lambda, the complexity around applications gets even more challenging. Now, applications aren’t just on a single instance, but individual functions could be scattered across multiple instances and potentially multiple data centers. That can save developer time and reduce costs, but it also exponentially increases the risk of something going wrong and harming an application’s reliability. Gremlin’s new ALFI feature is designed to allow more fine-grain tuning of attacks, so that DevOps engineers can target just particular aspects of an application living in a serverless environment. It’s inspired by Andrus’ work at Netflix around , which was a sort of successor to the company’s earlier tools. Gremlin’s ALFI feature allows developers to simulate more fine-grained failures It’s these sorts of features that partly intrigued Tunguz at Redpoint, who is . He said in a note to TechCrunch that “In the modern cloud era — where systems are distributed, containerized, and highly ephemeral — it’s become nearly impossible to have a complete understanding of system behavior without doing the kind of proactive testing Gremlin offers.” Gremlin’s work is to not just sell a service, but to reshape how developers think about building and testing applications. Perhaps someday all of our web services will be reliable — and then how will we get work done? |
Spotify ends test that required family plan subscribers to share their GPS location | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Spotify has ended a test that required its family plan subscribers to verify their location, or risk losing accessing to its music streaming service. According to recent reports, the company sent out emails to its “Premium for Family” customers that asked them to confirm their locations using GPS. The idea here is that some customers may have been sharing Family Plans, even though they’re not related, as a means of paying less for Spotify by splitting the plan’s support for multiple users. And Spotify wanted to bust them. and first reported this news on Thursday. Of course, as these reports pointed out, asking users to confirm a GPS location is a poor means of verification. Families often have members who live or work outside the home — they may live abroad, have divorced or separated parents, have kids in college, travel for work or any other number of reasons. But technically, these sorts of situations are prohibited by Spotify’s family plan terms — the rules all members to share a physical address. That rule hadn’t really been as strictly enforced before, so many didn’t realize they had broken it when they added members who don’t live at home. Customers were also uncomfortable with how Spotify wanted to verify their location — instead of entering a mailing address for the main account, for instance, they were asked for their exact (GPS) location. The emails also threatened that failure to verify the account this way could cause them to lose access to the service. Family plans are often abused by those who use them as a loophole for paying full price. For example, a few years ago, Amazon decided to , because they found these were being broadly shared outside immediate families. In its case, it limited sharing to two adults who could both authorize and use the payment cards on file, and allowed them to create other, more limited profiles for the kids. Spotify could have done something similar. It could have asked Family Plan adult subscribers to re-enter their payment card information to confirm their account, or it could have designated select slots for child members with a different set of privileges to make sharing less appealing. Maybe it will now reconsider how verification works, given the customer backlash. We understand the verification emails were only a small-scale test of a new system, not something Spotify is rolling out to all users. The emails were sent out in only four of Spotify’s markets, including the U.S. And the test only ran for a short time before Spotify shut it down. Reached for comment, a Spotify spokesperson confirmed this, saying: “Spotify is currently testing improvements to the user experience of Premium for Family with small user groups in select markets. We are always testing new products and experiences at Spotify, but have no further news to share regarding this particular feature test at this time.” |
Last day to buy early-bird tickets for TC Sessions: AR/VR 2018 | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | Holy smokes, is less than a month away, and it’s going to be an epic, day-long event. But listen up tech fans, the following reality is neither augmented nor virtual: our $99 early-bird ticket price — a 50 percent savings — ends today. If you want to join us in Los Angeles on October 18 at the lowest possible price, . We’re also offering a special discount to students. You can . Looking to save even more money? Simply tweet your attendance through our ticketing platform, and you’ll save an extra 25 percent — for early-bird tickets — and 15 percent for student tickets. What can you expect at ? An excellent question! We partnered with UCLA’s Anderson Venture Accelerator for a program-packed day featuring some of the world’s brightest minds in AR/VR. You’ll have ample opportunity for hands-on demos, deep-dive conversations, in-depth workshops — and time to network with influential, ground-breaking leaders in all realities augmented and virtual. Here’s just a quick sampling of our speakers: , founder and CEO of ModiFace; , co-founder and CEO of TheWaveVR; and , a partner at Founders Fund. We have great presentations on tap, too. Hear (VNTANA), (Looking Glass Factory) and (Lightform) talk about using holograms to replace expensive headsets. AR and VR — it’s not all fun and games. (STRIVR), (DebiasVR) and (Vantage Point) will talk about ways business can use the technologies to train employees. (Anorak Ventures) and (Betaworks) will discuss how early-stage investors have changed their approach to funding new talent and suggest ways founders can grab their attention. That’s just a taste of what industry leaders, content creators and game changers will present. Take a gander at . Join us October 18 in Los Angeles at TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR for an incredible gathering of the augmented and virtual reality community. Our early-bird pricing ends today, so get real and .
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The new Wear OS starts hitting smartwatches | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | null |
Ola raises $50M at a $4.3B valuation from two Chinese funds | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | , the arch-rival of Uber in India, has raised $50 million at a valuation of about $4.3 billion from Sailing Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF), a state-backed Chinese fund. The funding was disclosed in regulatory documents . According to Mint, Sailing Capital and CEECF will hold a combined stake of more than 1% in Ola. An Ola spokesperson said the company has no comment. Ola’s , when it raised $1.1 billion (its largest funding round to date) from Tencent and returning investor SoftBank Group. Ola also said it planned to raise an additional $1 billion from other investors that would take the round’s final amount to about $2.1 billion. At the time, a source with knowledge of the deal told TechCrunch that Ola was headed toward a post-money valuation of $7 billion once the $2.1 bllion raise was finalized. So while the funding from Sailing Capital and CEECF brings it closer to its funding goal, the latest valuation of $4.3 billion is still lower than the projected amount. Ola needs plenty of cash to fuel its ambitious expansion both within and outside of India. In addition to ride hailing, Ola got back into the food delivery game at the end of last year by to compete with UberEats, Swiggy, Zomato and Google’s Areo. It was a bold move to make as , especially since Ola had previously launched a food delivery service that . To ensure the survival of Foodpanda, Ola poured $200 million into its new acquisition. A few months later after buying Foodpanda, Ola in an all-stock deal. Outside of India, Ola has been focused on a series of international launches. It announced today that it will , fast on the heels of launches in the and . |
Google partners with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi to put Android into millions of vehicles | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Google will partner with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the largest auto alliance in the world by vehicle sales, to put Android-based infotainment systems into millions of cars, the . The alliance’s next-generation infotainment system and dashboard displays will use Android and launch in 2021. Drivers will be able to access Google’s maps, app store and voice assistant from their vehicle’s dashboards. The new partnership is a giant step forward for Google’s ambitions to get its operating system into more cars (the in the first half of this year, putting it ahead of Volkswagen and Toyota Motor). The alliance’s executives told WSJ that they decided on the partnership because many of their customers are accustomed to using Google Maps and other apps and prefer sticking with them instead of using software developed by automakers when they drive. Auto executives have also become more comfortable with Google, which made its software open source in 2007. Kal Mos, the alliance’s vice president of connected vehicles, told the Wall Street Journal that “the trust was built in the last few years.” By partnering with Google, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi ups the ante on rival automakers to partner with tech companies instead of developing their own software ecosystems. While this may win customers over, it also means potentially ceding control over valuable user data to companies like Google and Apple. Mos told WSJ that Google will have access to data collected from its in-car apps, but must ask for user permission first. Other automakers include Volkswagen, which put Google Earth into the Audi’s in-car navigation system, and Volvo Cars, which said its next in-car infotainment system will run on Android. |
How the Audi e-tron compares to the Tesla Model X and Jaguar I-Pace | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Audi just announced its first production electric vehicle. Called the e-tron, the EV is a mid-size SUV loaded with technology with an unofficial range of over 300 miles. It’s nicely equipped, and with a starting price of $74,800, it sits between the Jaguar I-Pace and the Tesla Model X. The e-tron is most similar to the Jaguar I-Pace though the Audi is slightly better equipped. The e-tron packs a 95 kWh battery over the Jaguar’s 90 kWh battery. It’s also slightly larger and rated to tow 4,000 lbs. Comparing the e-tron to the Model X gets messy. Tesla sells the Model X in three flavors: mild, hot, and on fire. The mild version starts at $72,100 and packs a 75 kWh battery good for 237 miles. Spend $88,600 to get the 100D and its 100 kWh battery that’s rated for 295 miles. And for $125,800, buyers can get the P100D that’s good for 298 miles and a 0-60 time of 2.9 seconds. Autonomous driving modes are available for purchase on each version of the Model X. Audi and Jaguar do not offer autonomous driving on the e-tron or I-Pace. Spec for spec, the e-tron, I-Pace and Model X offer advantages over each other. Here are the most important technical specifications for each vehicle along with the Toyota RAV4, the top selling SUV in the United States. Here’s how I see each vehicle’s advantage: The e-tron hits the US market in the middle of 2019, and by then, there will be additional competitors to compare. |
Audi partners with Amazon and Electrify America to help kickstart its EV ecosystem | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Audi is partnering with e-commerce giant Amazon and VW Group unit Electrify America as the automaker prepares to deliver its first all-electric SUV to U.S. dealerships next year. The , which was unveiled Monday night in San Francisco, kicks off the German automaker’s electric vehicle ambitions. The e-tron is the first of three battery-electric vehicles that Audi plans to debut by 2020. The e-tron SUV joins a growing list of luxury electric vehicles trying to take aim at Tesla. The partnerships with Amazon, Electrify America and utility service Arcadia Power are meant to gird Audi’s bet on EVs. These days, it’s not enough to produce an all-electric vehicle, even a nice-looking one. Customers considering a switch from gas-powered to electric-powered vehicles or from their Tesla to, say an e-tron, will want access to a network of fast chargers and other conveniences. These partnerships are supposed to making owning an e-tron easier from setting up a home charger and to “fueling up” the electric vehicle when it’s on the road. The partnership with Amazon will give e-tron owners the option to use Amazon Home Services to prepare their homes for an installation of a home charger. This is Amazon Home Service’s first ever collaboration with an automaker to deliver turn-key in-home charging, according to Amazon. Amazon Home Services will provide Audi e-tron owners with a place (meaning online) to learn about EV home charging installation and equipment, pricing for electrical services and the ability to schedule an electrician to install an EV charger. Audi is also offering 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power to e-tron owners over four years through Electrify America’s chargers. By July 2019, this network will include 500 fast-charging sites (completed or under development) the 40 states and 17 metro areas, according to Audi. That’s still behind Tesla, which has 1,342 fast-charging stations with 11,013 superchargers. But it’s an important start for Audi if it hopes to compete. In a third partnership announced with Arcadia Power, the digital utility service will allow Audi e-tron owners offset their home electricity consumption with renewable energy. E-tron owners can connect their electricity bill to Arcadia Power and select a renewable energy project to support. Subscribers then receive savings their monthly electricity costs, depending on the project’s energy production, according to Audi. |
The Audi e-tron SUV is an electric shot at Tesla | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Audi e-tron. The electric SUV seats five and starts at $74,800. The e-tron will hit Audi dealerships in the middle of 2019, and prospective buyers can reserve one right now for $1,000. This is Audi’s first production electric vehicle and perhaps one of the most significant EVs to be announced since the Chevy Bolt. It has everything Audi buyers expect: Quattro AWD, technology-first cockpit, and a familiar fit and finish. The e-tron is launching to a market with few competitors. It’s most similar to the new Jaguar I-Pace. Both vehicles offer similar technology and creature comforts for a similar price. But in a way, the Audi is joining forces with the Jag to compete with Tesla. The e-tron is packed with a 95 kWh battery pack that powers electric motors on each axle. All-wheel drive is standard, and the vehicle packs two ways to recoup lost energy. Right now, at launch, Audi is not releasing official range numbers and the EPA has yet to certify and release its own numbers. Inside is reminiscent of current Audi SUVs. Drivers are presented with Audi’s virtual instrument panel and several touchscreens. The top center-mounted screen handles infotainment and navigation duty while the bottom is for climate control and text input. The cabin is equipped and outfitted similarly to the rest of Audi’s line, but the design language is unique to the e-tron. It’s clear Audi designed the e-tron to appeal to traditional buyers looking to jump into electric vehicles through familiar means. The e-tron looks and feels like the rest of Audi’s lineup. And that’s probably the point. The vehicle maker took its established formula and plugged it into electric vehicles. The result is something new yet familiar. [gallery ids="1714457,1714456,1714455,1714454,1714453,1714452,1714451,1714450,1714449"] The outside of the e-tron screams Audi. Sharp headlights, flowing body panels, and an angular, aggressive grill. It looks like a new version of Audi’s mid-size SUV, the Q5. The main design difference comes by way of four small accent lights on the side of the headlights and tail lights. They are designed to look like a battery meter, and the result is a clever, though subtle nod to the e-tron’s electric power plant. Clad in aluminum, the e-tron’s battery weighs about 700 kg (1,543.2 lb) and is comprised of 36 pouch-type cells, the same type of system Jaguar and Chevy use in their electric vehicles, while Tesla uses cylinder-type battery cells. Audi says e-tron’s battery can be recharged to 80% in 30 minutes using a 150 kW charger. The e-tron ships with a Level 2, 240-volt/40 amps residential charger that’s also compatible with 120-volt household outlets. Through a partnership, buyers will have the option to use Amazon Home Services to ready their homes with an installation of a home charger. E-tron buyers gain access to the nationwide charging network, “Electrify America” and can use up to 1,000 kWh of charge over four years. Audi says by 2019 this network will include five-hundred 350kW chargers throughout 40 states. An electric motor is mounted on each axle motor, though both are not used at all times. At moderate speeds, there is a bias to the rear motor. When the rear motor is unable to provide the vehicle with the desired powered, the front motor kicks on. The dual motors and single stage transmission work together to get the e-tron to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. The tow rating is set at 4,000 lbs which is good enough for a small U-Haul trailer or a couple of jet skis. Audi says official horsepower and torque numbers will be released at a later time. Like other electric vehicles, the e-tron recovers energy through braking and deceleration. But Audi took driving efficiency one step farther. Using navigation and radar and camera data, the e-tron can predictively prompt the driver to release the gas pedal at appropriate times. If the vehicle knows the driver should slow down, it will tell the driver in the name of efficiency. Power is returned to the battery from practically all braking situations whether through natural deceleration when the driver releases the accelerator or when the friction brake system is engaged. Audi says this system is responsible for up to 30 percent of the e-tron’s range. The brakes are electric. When the driver presses the brake pedal, a control unit computes how much pressure needs to be applied, and an electric motor supplies the appropriate pressure. Audi says this system is 30% lighter than traditional vacuum brakes. The amount of energy the e-tron can recover is selectable by the driver via a paddle on the steering wheel. There are three settings. In the highest setting, the e-tron aggressively recovers energy every time the driver releases the accelerator, which allows for one pedal driving. But in the lowest setting the e-tron coasts without any braking resistance. Drivers are presented with few traditional switches and buttons. Most of the controls are contained on two touchscreens. The top, center-mounted screen is 10.1-inches while the bottom is an 8.6-inch screen that’s mounted in a way that the driver can access it while their hand is resting on the gear selector. Both screens provide tactile and audio feedback. This dual screen setup is different from the single, massive screen found in Tesla’s electric vehicles. The top screen handles infotainment, navigation, telephone, and vehicle settings while the bottom is for climate control and entering text for navigation. This layout more closely matches the traditional placement found in other vehicles, which will likely reduce the learning curve often associated with getting in a vehicle with just touchscreens. This dual touchscreen system is not unique to the e-tron. It’s the same equipment Audi employs in its high-end sedans, and will likely trickle down to other Audi models in coming generations. The driver is presented with Audi’s digital instrument panel that the carmaker has been using for several vehicle generations. In this instance, the instrument cluster is presented on a 1,920×720 display with e-tron specific graphics. The driver can configure the screen to display the speedometer, power meter and infotainment screens in various fashions. Buyers can also opt for a heads up display. Audi built a companion app for the e-tron. Through the smartphone app, owners can input navigation destination, set battery charging times and schedule service with local dealers. [gallery ids="1714650,1714651,1714652,1714653,1714654,1714658,1714659,1714655"] The e-tron has few competitors but only one that matters: The Tesla Model X, long the lone option for buyers seeking an electric SUV. The Model X is slightly larger, a bit quicker and can be a lot more costly than the Audi e-tron. It also has less range than the unofficial numbers provided by Audi before the e-tron is certified by the EPA The Tesla is a head turner while the Audi looks like just another Audi. The Tesla packs autonomous driving modes while the Audi only has adaptive cruise control. The Tesla can seat up to seven while the Audi seats five. And the Tesla can beat exotic sports cars to 60 miles per hour. The Tesla Model X interior feels like something different while the Audi e-tron feels like a new take on something familiar. Both vehicles start out at similar prices. The Tesla Model X starts at $72,100 with a range of 239 miles. The Audi e-tron begins at $74,800 with an unofficial range of around 248 miles. However, to get the extra range in the Tesla, buyers have to opt for pricier packages. A Model X with a 295-mile range starts at $88,600, and the sports-car fast P100D begins at $125,800 — Tesla’s self-driving features cost an additional $5,000. In contrast, Audi offers the same powertrain and battery throughout the e-tron’s trim levels. For $81,700 buyers get the same range as the base model but gain additional creature comforts like a heads-up display, massaging seats and parking assist technology. For $86,700 buyers can opt for the First Edition package that includes larger, 21-inch wheels, limited paint, and interior trim and a night vision mode. The Audi e-tron closely matches up with the Jaguar I-Pace. Jaguar recently announced its electric crossover and is nearing delivery of the first vehicles. Compared to the e-tron, the I-Pace has a similar range, speed, and slightly less interior space. Pricing for the I-Pace starts at $69,500. The e-tron and I-Pace represent a new breed of electric vehicles even more so than a Tesla EV. Both of these vehicles come from corporations with massive manufacturing might and, while they look and feel futurist, they also look and feel mass produced. And that’s a good thing. If electric vehicles are to become mainstream, the automotive giants need to build them at the same level as traditional automobiles. The Audi e-tron will hit the United States in the middle of 2019. Buyers can reserve the vehicle starting today with a $1,000 refundable deposit. When the vehicle hits dealers, it will be Audi’s most expensive SUV and among the most expensive vehicles available from Audi. But compared to competitors, the e-tron is priced in the middle of the pack. The e-tron will hit the market at a pivotal time for electric vehicles. Automakers are just starting to stake their claims in the marketplace. Chevy went downmarket with the affordable Bolt. Jaguar is hitting the crossover market with the $69,000 I-Pace. Tesla is the premium player in the field with the Model X. The Audi e-tron sits in a sweet spot between the Jag and the Tesla. The pricing is slightly more than the Jag but is well equipped to stand tall against the larger and more expensive Model X. The e-tron’s success will likely come from consumer awareness. Car shoppers need to know Audi has a new electric vehicle, and Audi seems to understand this. Even before the car launched, the company started advertising the EV with a big-budget TV spot during the Emmys. Since the car doesn’t hit the market for nearly a year, Audi has plenty of time to get the word out. However, that also leaves plenty of time for new competitors to hit the market and for the landscape to shift. |
Amazon’s ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ wins big at the Emmys | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” dominated the comedy categories at tonight’s Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for outstanding comedy series, supporting actress in a comedy series (Alex Borstein), lead actress in a comedy series (Rachel Brosnahan), writing in a drama series (Amy Sherman-Palladino) and directing in a comedy series (Amy Sherman-Palladino). It’s an impressive showing for a freshman show, but long overdue recognition for Sherman-Palladino — who somehow was never nominated for “Gilmore Girls.” As of tonight, she’s the first woman to win the combination of best comedy writing and directing. It’s also amusing to see Amazon do so well at the awards after CEO Jeff Bezos that the streaming service shift its focus from critically acclaimed shows with a niche audience to big budget blockbusters like . (And yes, it’s embarrassing that I co-host and yet we’ve never reviewed “Mrs. Maisel” — we will absolutely have to rectify that.) Netflix, meanwhile, (beating HBO for the first time), and its shows took home plenty of awards, too. The streamer’s winners include “The Crown” (lead actress in a drama series, directing for a drama series) “Godless” (supporting actress and supporting actor in a limited series or movie), “Black Mirror” (writing in a limited series or movie), “Seven Seconds” (lead actress in a limited series or movie) and “John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City” (writing for a variety special). And while it’s not a streaming show, the wins for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (including outstanding limited series) probably make Netflix feel good, since executive producer Ryan Murphy recently with the service. Beyond the individual awards, streaming was a big theme throughout the ceremony, including a monologue that saw co-host Michael Che wondering where the heck , and concluding, “I think we can keep television going for another five, six years tops.” You can . |
Twitter is bringing back the chronological timeline | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Your Twitter prayers are answered! Well, maybe not the prayers about harassment or the ones about an edit tweet button, but your prayers. Today in a series of tweets, the company announced that it had heard the cries of its various disgruntled users and will bring back a form of the pure chronological timeline that users can opt into. Twitter first took an interest in a more algorithmic timeline and 4/ So, we’re working on providing you with an easily accessible way to switch between a timeline of Tweets that are most relevant for you and a timeline of the latest Tweets. You’ll see us test this in the coming weeks. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) Some users were under the impression that they were living that algo-free life already by toggling off the “Show the best Tweets first” option in the account settings menu. Unfortunately for all of us, unchecking this box didn’t revert Twitter to ye olde pure chronological timeline so much as it removed some of the more prominent algorithmic bits that would otherwise be served to users first thing. Users regularly observed non-chronological timeline behaviors even with the option toggled off. As Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour , “We’re working on making it easier for people to control their Twitter timeline, including providing an easy switch to see the most recent tweets.” Nostalgic users who want regular old Twitter back can expect to see the feature in testing “in the coming weeks.” We’re ready to pull the switch, just tell us when. |
Africa’s Jumo raises $52M led by Goldman to bring its fintech services to Asia | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Asia’s fintech scene is poised to get a little larger after , a company that offers loans to the unbanked in Africa, revealed plans to expand into the continent. To get the ball rolling, Jumo has opened an office in Singapore to lead the way and landed a massive $52 million investment led by banking giant Goldman Sachs to fuel the growth. The new round takes Jumo to $90 million raised from investors. While Goldman is the lead — and standout name — the round also saw participation from existing backers that include Proparco — which is attached to the French Development Agency — Finnfund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital, and LeapFrog Investments. Jumo launched in 2014 and it specializes in social impact financial products. That means loans and saving options for those who sit outside of the existing banking system, and particularly small businesses. To date, it claims to have helped nine million consumers across its six markets in Africa and originated over $700 million in loans. The company, which has some 350 staff across 10 offices in Africa, Europe and Asia, was part of Google’s Launchpad accelerator last year and it is led by CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball, who has close to two decades in finance and investing. Watkins-Ball told TechCrunch that he believes Jumo’s experience working in Africa sets it up perfectly to offer similar services in markets across Asia. “We grew up in a very tough play yard,” he said in an interview. “We built our initial success in Tanzania which is probably one of the hardest [financial] markets in the world. A lot of these environments [in Asia] look more attractive.” Unlike the West, where challengers are trying to unseat banks, fintech startups in emerging markets work with the existing system. That isn’t some cop-out, it actually makes perfect sense. Banks simply aren’t equipped to deal with customers seeking small loans in the hundreds of U.S. dollar bracket. Jumo CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball believes his company’s work in Africa is ideal preparation for its expansion into Asia Financially, the returns aren’t there from these customers and it doesn’t make sense for banks to invest resources sounding out a prospective loan. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t vet these would-be customers, though. Many emerging markets simply don’t have the formalized credit checking systems that exist in the West, while many of the unbanked (or ‘less banked’) consumers wouldn’t even show up if they did due to a range of factors. That’s where a new approach is needed. Fintech startups essentially act like a funnel. They manage the customer acquisition and retention, develop systems to assess credit based on alternative signals and, over time, build up a customer profile that reduces credit risk. That suits banks because they don’t need to handle the nitty-gritty and, when it works well, the startups bring them larger enough volumes of small loans that are a worthwhile opportunity for financial institutions. Just looking at recent funding deals, the model is evident in markets like India — — and Southeast Asia, where . Watkins-Ball said Jumo is aiming to do the same having already proven its model in Africa. He acknowledged that a number of startups are also tackling the problem and welcomed the increase competition and growth potential across the fintech and micro-financing space. “We’ve offered services to millions of new customers who weren’t part of the banking ecosystems,” he explained. “Essentially we grow the addressable market for banks.” Already, Jumo has begun offering services in Pakistan and it has plans to open up in more markets in Asia, although Watkins-Ball isn’t saying which ones or when right now. But, in addition to proving its model, he believes that Jumo has already shown it can adapt to new markets. “The differences between countries like Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia are as great as those between India, China and Indonesia,” he told TechCrunch. “So we’ve had to learn to use our platform, which we built to be flexible, and localize in order to fit the customer.” That’s backed up by Goldman Sachs executive director Jules Frebault, who said in a statement: “There’s an immense opportunity across Africa and beyond for Jumo to build on their successful track record developing digital marketplace infrastructure to offer mobile subscribers access to relevant financial products.” In addition to Asian expansions, Jumo’s new capital will also go towards expanding its current selection of productions in Africa. In particular, Watkins-Ball says the company is working to partner with more banks and it plans to introduce “new generations” of saving products. While it isn’t taking its foot off the pedal in Africa, he said Jumo will likely devote the majority of its resources to the Asia expansion plan. That’ll make Jumo a very notable addition to a fintech scene that is already showing significant potential across the Asian region. |
Meet Yusaku Maezawa, the first private passenger to take SpaceX’s BFR around the moon | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa will be the first private citizen to take a flight around the moon in SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket, a 240,000-mile journey slated for as early as 2023. In an emotional and jubilant speech during a SpaceX event Monday at the company’s headquarters in near Los Angeles, Maezawa exclaimed “I choose to go to the moon!” Hanging out with before the moon mission announcement — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) If SpaceX is successful in its testing and development of the BFR — which has a long road ahead — Maezawa will be the first passenger to travel to the moon since the 1972 Apollo mission conducted by the United States. Only 24 people have been to the moon. The journey will last about a week and come as close as 125 miles to the moon’s surface before completing lunar transit and returning back to Earth, according to SpaceX. “He is the best adventurer, I think,” Musk said of Maezawa during a Q&A with reporters after the announcement. “This is my life long dream,” he said. “Ever since I was a kid I loved the moon, just staring at the moon it filled my imagination. It’s always there and continues to inspire.” Maezawa said he wants to bring six to eight artists with him on flight so they’re inspired to create space and moon-inspired works that reflect their experience. He’s calling the project . “Their masterpieces will inspire the dreamer in all of us,” he said, adding he has not decided who should join him on the journey. He would like artists to be mix of musicians, photographers, painters and architects. Neither Maezawa or Musk would disclose how much he is paying. Although Musk called him the real deal and noted he was paying “a lot of money.” The BFR has not yet been built. Musk said the success of the project will depend on sources of revenue, including paying customers. The BFR could fit 100 people, but Musk said it makes sense to have about a dozen people on the first manned flight along with extra supplies. Musk teased the announcement — and a new-looking — , that it SpaceX had “signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle.” This is the third design that SpaceX has floated for BFR. This is “the final iteration in terms of broad architectural designs for BFR,” Musk said Monday night. Musk revealed a few more details about the BFR during the Monday night event. The BFR design shown Monday is 118 meter long two-stage reusable spaceship that will be capable of taking a 100-metric ton payload to Mars. SpaceX still plans to have “hopper” test flights of the BFR spaceship next year, followed by high-altitude, high-velocity flights in 2020. The BFR, meant to stand for Big Falcon Rocket or anything else that might spring to mind, is designed to be sustainable interplanetary spaceship. It will eventually replace SpaceX’s other rockets such as Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. |
null | Leslie Hitchcock | 2,018 | 9 | 28 | null |
Trump expands tariffs on China by another $200 billion, threatens more | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | By this point, you should . Another day, another massive tariff from the Trump administration. After rumors the past few weeks that the president was , the administration announced today that it would expand them merely to another $200 billion worth of goods, which has the convenience of being a nice round number. , the president announced a 10 percent tariff to be implemented by September 24, which will then increase to 25 percent at the start of the new year. “For months, we have urged China to change these unfair practices, and give fair and reciprocal treatment to American companies. We have been very clear about the type of changes that need to be made, and we have given China every opportunity to treat us more fairly. But, so far, China has been unwilling to change its practices,” the statement said. Furthermore, the president said that any retaliatory action by China would result in immediate tariffs action and an expansion of tariffs to $267 billion worth of Chinese goods. Among the options that Chinese policy circles have been mulling is , which could massively damage the ability of manufacturers and assemblers from building their products. China’s options for direct retaliation are limited, due to the sheer amount of exports China sends to the United States. China imports less from America than the value of goods included in these tariffs, and can no longer match them dollar-to-dollar. One major question at the heart of the tariffs is whether they will actually prove effective in making U.S. companies more competitive against their Chinese counterparts. , arguing that the tariffs are pushing China to move to more advanced industries faster — in effect encouraging China to be more competitive with the U.S., rather than less. The U.S. Trade Representative, whose office is in charge of determining precisely what products the tariffs will apply to, that will be hit by tariffs. Of the thousands originally listed in draft tariffs a few weeks ago, several hundred product categories were removed (which likely moved the final value figure lower). From a release by the office: “Included among the products removed from the proposed list are certain consumer electronics products such as smart watches and Bluetooth devices; certain chemical inputs for manufactured goods, textiles and agriculture; certain health and safety products such as bicycle helmets, and child safety furniture such as car seats and playpens.” So if you play in a playpen with an Apple Watch while wearing a bike helmet, you are likely in luck. U.S. to counter the tariffs in recent months, although those lobbying dollars don’t seem to be translating into a less heated set of policies. |
Elon Musk extends Tesla’s free supercharging for life offer | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | phasing out free unlimited access to its network of fast-chargers for a couple of years now. The last vestige of that program was a referral system that was supposed to expire at midnight Sunday. But it’s been given new life for at least one more day, and perhaps even longer to buyers in Europe. On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter that the referral program would be extended until Tuesday night after customers reported technical problems. The extension is just for new Model S, Model X and Model 3 Performance buyers who receive a referral from an existing owner. Due to some Tesla owners encountering system issues yesterday, the free Supercharging referral program will be extended until tomorrow night — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Tesla began phasing out free unlimited access to its supercharger network when it announced that customers who buy cars after January 1, 2017 will have 400 kilowatt-hours, or about 1,000 miles, of free charging every year. Once owners surpassed that amount, they would be charged a small fee. Tesla then narrowed the free unlimited access to superchargers through a referral program and only to buyers of performance versions of the Model S, Model X and Model 3. The free unlimited supercharger is now set to end September 18. However, it’s possible that Musk will extend the program to customers outside of North America. A Twitter follower of Musk’s wrote “It would be great if day 1 international reservations of the Model 3 performance could get a shot at this, though.” Musk said the company would see what it could do, before noting that the program needed to be brought to an end because it’s not sustainable long term. Will see what we can do. Really need to bring this program to an end while being as fair as possible. It’s not sustainable long-term. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Ending the free supercharging for life is the latest move by Tesla to cut costs and ultimately become a profitable company. The company recently removed two of its seven possible paint options to “simplify manufacturing,” Musk said in a tweet last week. Moving 2 of 7 Tesla colors off menu on Wednesday to simplify manufacturing. Obsidian Black & Metallic Silver will still be available as special request, but at higher price. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) That path to profitability also requires more people to buy Tesla vehicles. The company has sent emails in the past week to people who have reservations for the Model 3 offering small incentives in an effort to boost sales. For example, Tesla wrote in an email September 12 that Model 3 orders placed before the 14th in metallic silver or obsidian black metallic would be produced on an expedited basis. Another email sent out September 8 advertised that a limited number of Model 3 rear-wheel drive vehicles on display are available for immediate delivery. |
Apple’s iBooks revamp, Apple Books, is here | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Apple’s new and improved iBooks app, now called Apple Books, has popped up on iPhones across the world today with the release of iOS 12, the software update . The new app has five tabs: Reading Now, Library, Book Store, Search and, for the first time, a dedicated Audiobooks tab. Apple first in June. The company said its sleek new look was the “biggest books redesign ever.” Cleaner UI, coupled with larger images, gives the app a more modern feel and an overall better experience. More importantly, it sets up Apple to better compete with other audio/e-book apps, like the . In the Book Store, users can explore recently released titles and best-selling books, as well as curated collections and special offers; it’s available in 51 countries and free books for download are available in 155 countries. Apple Books is also a lot smarter than its predecessor. As you download titles and engage with the app, the app will send you personalized recommendations based on your activity. Indeed, it was time for an update. Audiobooks are more popular today than when Apple first launched iBooks in 2010 and are very much deserving of their own tab. Pew Research Center, one in five Americans regularly listens to them — a 28 percent increase from 2016. |
This is what Americans think about the state of election security right now | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | A wide-ranging new poll yields some useful insight into how worried the average American feels about election threats as the country barrels toward midterms. The survey, conducted by NPR and researchers with Marist College, in early September across regions of the country, contacting participants through both landlines and mobile devices. The results are a significant glimpse into current attitudes around the likelihood of foreign election interference, election security measures and how well social media companies have rebounded in the public eye. As the most recent dust settles around revelations that Russia ran influence campaigns targeting Americans on social media platforms, just how much do U.S. voters trust that Facebook and Twitter have cleaned up their acts? Well, they’re not convinced yet. In response to a question asking about how much those companies had done since 2016 “to make sure there is no interference from a foreign country” in the U.S. midterm elections, 24 percent of respondents believed that Facebook had done either “a great deal” or “a good amount,” while 62 percent believed the company had done “not very much” or “nothing at all.” When asked the same question about Twitter, only 19 percent thought that the company had made significant efforts, while 57 percent didn’t think the company had done much. Unlike nearly every other question in the broad-ranging survey, answers to this set of questions didn’t show a divide between Republicans and Democrats, making it clear that in 2018, disdain for social media companies is a rare bipartisan position. When it comes to believing what they read on Facebook, only 12 percent of voters had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence that content on the platform is true, while 79 percent expressed “not very much confidence” or none at all. Still, those numbers have perked up slightly from polling in 2018 that saw only 4 percent of those polled stating that they were confident in the veracity of content they encountered on Facebook. In response to the question “Do you think the U.S. is very prepared, prepared, not very prepared or not prepared at all to keep this fall’s midterm elections safe and secure?,” 53 percent of respondents felt that the U.S. is prepared while 39 percent believed that it is “not very prepared” or not prepared at all. Predictably, this question broke down along party lines, with 36 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans falling into the “prepared” camp (51 percent of independents felt the U.S. is prepared). An impressive 69 percent of voters believed that it was either very likely or likely that Russia would continue to “use social media to spread false information about candidates running for office” during the midterm elections, suggested that voters are moving into election season with a very skeptical eye turned toward the platforms they once trusted. When it came to hacking proper, 41 percent of respondents believed that it was very likely or likely that “a foreign country will hack into voter lists to cause confusion” over who can vote during midterm elections, while 55 percent of respondents said that hacked voter lists would be not very likely or not at all likely. A smaller but still quite significant 30 percent of those polled believed that it was likely or very likely that a foreign country would “tamper with the votes cast to change the results” of midterm elections. Political divides were surprisingly absent from some other questions around specific election security practices. Democrats, Republicans and independent voters all indicated that they had greater confidence in state and local officials to “protect the actual results” of the elections and trusted federal officials less, even as the Department of Homeland Security takes a more active role in providing resources to protect state and local elections. A few of the questions had a right answer, and happily most respondents did get a big one right. Overall, 55 percent of voters polled said that electronic voting systems made U.S. elections less safe from “interference or fraud” — a position largely backed by election security experts who advocate for low-tech options and paper trails over vulnerable digital systems. Only 31 percent of Democrats wrongly believed that electronic systems were safer, though 49 percent of Republicans trusted electronic systems more. When the question was framed a different (and clearer) way, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of paper ballots — a solution that experts widely agree would significantly secure elections. Indeed, 68 percent of voters thought that paper ballots would make elections “more safe” — an attitude that both Republican and Democratic Americans could get behind. Unfortunately, has continued to face political obstacles in contrast to the wide support observed in the present poll. On one last election security competence question, respondents again weighed in with the right answer. A whopping 89 percent of those polled correctly believed that online voting would be a death knell for U.S. election security — only 8 percent said, incorrectly, that connecting elections to the internet would make them more safe. For a much more granular look at these attitudes and many others, you can peruse the poll’s full results . For one, there’s more interesting stuff in there. For another, confidence — or the lack thereof — in U.S. voting systems could have a massive impact on voter turnout in one of the most consequential non-presidential elections the nation has ever faced. |
WHILL raises $45M to help people with disabilities get around airports and other large venues | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | , the startup known for creating sleek, high-tech personal mobility devices, announced today that it has closed a $45 million Series C. The funding will be used for expanding into new international markets, as well as developing new products for large venues, including airports and “last-mile” sidewalk transportation. The round’s lead investors were SBI Investment, Daiwa Securities Group and WHIZ Partners, with participation from returning investors INCJ, Eight Road Ventures, MSIVC, Nippon Venture Capital, DG Incubation and Mizuho Capital. This brings WHILL’s total funding so far to about $80 million. Founded in Tokyo in 2012, WHILL plans to open a branch in the European Union and enter 10 new European countries. It also plans to start working with partners on developing autonomous capabilities for its mobility devices, senior marketing manager Jeff Yoshioka told TechCrunch. The company will build its own sensors and cameras to use in its “mobility as a service” program, which allows users to control vehicles and call customer service through a mobile app. One of WHILL’s biggest projects is developing an autonomous personal mobility device system for airports. Yoshioka says that an estimated 20 million people request wheelchairs in U.S. airports each year. This means they need to wait for an airline employee to bring a wheelchair to them and then push them from check-in to their gates. At the same time, it doesn’t give users a lot of flexibility. The system that WHILL has in mind, on the other hand, would allow individuals to use an app to summon a mobility device over to them. Then they can go wherever they want — coffee shops, restrooms, shops — before heading to the gate without an assistant. Once they are done with the device, it will return to a docking station on its own. WHILL has already begun at Tokyo International Airport in partnership with Panasonic. Yoshioka says WHILL will most likely pursue distribution partnerships with U.S. airlines, which are responsible for supplying and maintaining the wheelchair systems in American airports, and airports to build the necessary infrastructure. Along with airports, WHILL wants to bring its technology to other large venues, including shopping malls and sports arenas, as well as create a system for last-mile transportation. Yoshioka notes that “there are already a lot of companies out there like LimeBike and MoBike that offer bikes and electric scooters, but there’s nothing out there for people with disabilities who can’t use those devices.” Instead, many rely on Ubers or public transportation even for short distances. Like the airport system, WHILL’s last-mile sidewalk system will use autonomous electric vehicles that can be called to users with an app. It faces unique challenges, however, because WHILL’s devices are larger and more expensive than bikes or electric scooters, so the company needs to find safe places to dock them that are still accessible to people with limited mobility. Yoshioka says WHILL likely will focus on partnering with commercial properties to create indoor docking stations. WHILL’s largest market is still Japan, where it has between 4,000 to 5,000 resellers. In its home market, WHILL’s devices are subsidized by the government and also available for rent. In the U.S., however, many customers need to purchase devices out-of-pocket. To make their products more accessible, WHILL launched the less expensive Model Ci (called the Model C in Europe and Japan) earlier this year. While there is still plenty of room for innovation in the wheelchair market, the Model Ci and other WHILL products compete with devices like the iBot, which can climb stairs, and the Trackchair, designed for off-road use. WHILL’s current products can’t climb stairs, but they do have the advantage of being designed for both indoor and outdoor use, giving users more flexibility, says Yoshioka. The company also expects demand for its products to grow thanks to a rapidly aging world population, citing statistics that show there are , up from about 900 million last year. “We don’t necessarily see [the other companies] as direct competitors. They definitely do impact sales, because people might want something that climbs stairs instead of having better outdoor capabilities, but I think overall it’s very beneficial for the industry,” Yoshioka adds. “As a company that’s trying to disrupt the industry, it’s nice to have them around because it pushes the industry forward and opens eyes for other manufacturers.” |
Congressional bill would improve startup valuations | Arman Tabatabai | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | would valuation startups acquisition committee While many startup founders would probably rather watch paint dry (or build their companies) than dive into complex tax code changes, (Yes, this is why you hire a tax attorney.) These changes have a number of benefits for startups. |
Mumford & Sons beware! An AI can now write indie music | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uT7m-XkIRM] A fascinating project called promises to out-Tay-Tay Tay Tay and out-Bon Bon Iver. The AI-based system uses data from previous musical hits to create entirely new compositions on the fly — and darn if these crazy robot-songs aren’t pretty good. The app, , creates song sketches in minutes, freeing you up to create beautiful lyrics and a bit of accordion accompaniment. The video above is a MIDI version of an AI-produced song and the video below shows the song full-produced using non-AI human musicians. The results, while a little odd, are very impressive. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35o20ISEetY] Jun Inoue, Gyo Kitagawa and Taishi Fukuyama created Amadeus Code and all have experience in music and music production. Inoue is a renowned Japanese music producer and he has sold 10 million singles. Fukuyama worked at Echo Next and launched the first Music Hack Day in Tokyo. Fukuyama is the director of the Hit Song Research Lab and went to Berklee College of Music. “We have analyzed decades of contemporary songs and classical music, songs of economic and/or social impact, and have created a proprietary songwriting technology that is specialized to create top line melodies of songs. We have recently released Harmony Library, which gives users direct access to the songs that power the songwriting AI for Amadeus Code,” said Inoue. “We uniquely specialize in creating top line melodies for songs that can be a source of high-quality inspiration for music professionals. We also do have plans that may overlap with other music AI companies in the market today in terms of offering hobbyists a service to quickly create completed audio tracks.” When asked if AI will ever replace his favorite musicians, folks like Michael and Janet Jackson or George Gershwin, Inoue laughed. “Absolutely not. This AI will not tell you about its struggles and illuminate your inner worlds through real human storytelling, which is ultimately what makes music so intimate and compelling. Similarly to how the sampler, drum machine, multitrack recorder and many other creative technologies have done in the past, we see AI to be a creative tool for artists to push the boundaries of popular music. When these AI tools eventually find their place in the right creative hands, it will have the potential to create a new entire economy of opportunities,” he said. |
Amazon reportedly has an Alexa microwave and more on the way | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | null |
Where to watch tonight’s Emmy Awards online | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | It’s the biggest night for television and streaming media services tonight as the stars are gathering to celebrate themselves at the . Tonight’s event at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles promises to be a big one for streaming media services like Netflix (with 122 nominations), Hulu (with 20 — thanks mainly to the amazing The Handmaid’s Tale), and Amazon (which nabbed 22 nominations, mainly on the strength of the marvelous The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Netflix’s dominance at the awards show marks the ascent of streaming as the biggest thing in new media — but the traditional networks, premium and basic cable, aren’t giving up without a fight. Emceeing tonight’s festivities are hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost. The two are coming off an incredibly popular run which saw both comedians continuing the tradition of being one of the consistent highlights of the SNL sketch comedy juggernaut. If you’re a cord-cutter who won’t be watching the show on television, NBC will be streaming the broadcast from 8PM Eastern both on the and in its For those of us who don’t have cable, there’re a slew of other options available through streaming services, including: , , , , and While NBC isn’t available on these services in all areas, check and make sure that your provider of choice has the network should a viewer want to tune in. Importantly for those cheapskates among you, there’re trial subscriptions available for all of these services, so you can sign up for free and try ’em out just to watch the big show. |
Stripe moves into brick-and-mortar payments with Terminal | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | is expanding beyond online payments with the launch of a new product for in-person payments at brick-and-mortar stores, called . The company said Terminal has three main components — there’s hardware, namely card readers built by Stripe partners BBPOS and Verifone, but also SDKs and APIs for customizing checkout experiences, as well as software for managing connected devices. Stripe’s co-founder and president John Collison discussed the launch at the Code Commerce conference today. Interviewer Jason Del Rey brought up Square, which seems like the obvious point of comparison, and Collison acknowledged there will probably be areas where the companies will compete. However, he argued that Stripe and Square are largely targeting different customers — where Square built a card reader for businesses like coffee shops and restaurants, Stripe is aimed at more tech-savvy businesses. Its initial Terminal customers include Warby Parker and Glossier, and it’s also being used by software platforms like Mindbody, Zenoti, AtVenu and Universe. As Collison put it, Stripe is built for companies “who will geek out about APIs with us.” And that applies to Terminal as well, which Collison said is specifically built for online businesses that are moving into brick-and-mortar stores. The goal here is to help them unify their online and offline customer data and experiences. And while there’s been some debate about whether most web-based, direct-to-consumer businesses are true tech companies, he argued, “All of them value technology and fundamentally, their assets are not the retail distribution they have or anything like that.” “We will happily work with all manner of companies, but the kinds of customers we get excited about, the kinds of customers we are designing for, are the ones who are moving very quickly,” he added. |
Facebook pilots new political campaign security tools — just 50 days before Election Day | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 17 | Facebook has rolled out a “pilot” program of new security tools for political campaigns — just weeks before millions of Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections. The social networking giant said it’s targeting campaigns that “may be particularly vulnerable to targeting by hackers and foreign adversaries.” Once enrolled, Facebook said it’ll help campaigns adopt stronger security protections, “like two-factor authentication and monitor for potential hacking threats,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, in . Facebook’s chief Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the company “didn’t do enough” in the 2016 presidential election to prevent meddling and spreading misinformation, yet took a lashing from lawmakers for failing to step up in the midterms. A former Obama campaign official told TechCrunch that the offering was important — but late. “Fifty days is an eternity in campaign time,” said Harper Reed, who served as President Obama’s chief technology officer during the 2012 re-election campaign. “At this point, if [a campaign] has made gross security problems, they’ve already made them.” But he questioned if now equipping campaigns with security tools will “actually solve the problem, or if it just solves Facebook’s PR problem.” Facebook — like other tech giants — has been under the microscope in recent years after the social networking giant failed to prevent foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election, in which adversaries — typically Russia — used the platform to spread disinformation. The company’s done more to crack down after facing . But ahead of the midterms, even the company’s former chief security officer was critical of Facebook. In , Alex Stamos said that critical steps to protect the midterms hadn’t been taken in time. “If there’s no foreign interference during the midterms, it’s not because we did a great job. It’s because our adversaries decided to [show] a little forbearance, which is unfortunate,” said Stamos. Facebook, for its part, said its latest rollout of security tools “might be expanded to future elections and other users” beyond the midterms. “Hacking is a part of elections,” said Reed. But with just two months to go before voters go to the polls, campaigns “have to just keep doing what they’re doing,” he said. |
Chipmaker Renesas goes deeper into autonomous vehicles with $6.7B acquisition | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | Japan-based semiconductor firm Renesas — one of the world’s largest supplier of chips for the automotive industry — is scooping up U.S. chip company IDT in that increases its focus on self-driving technology. Renesas produces microprocessor and circuits that power devices, and automotive is its core focus. It is second only to NXP on supply, and more than half of its revenue comes from automotive. IDT, meanwhile, includes power management and memory among its products, which focus on wireless networks and the converting and storing of data. Those are two areas that are increasingly important with the growth of connected devices and particularly vehicles which demand high levels of data streaming and interaction. The acquisition of IDT — which is being made at a 29.5 percent premium to its share price as of August 30 — is set to expand Renesas’ expertise on autonomous vehicles. The firm said it would also broaden its business into the “data economy” space, such as robotics, data centers and other types of connected devices. Renesas has already demoed self-driving car tech, which puts it into direct competition with the likes of Intel. Last year, to buy up Intersil, which develops technology for controlling battery voltage in hybrid and electric vehicles, and IDT deal pushes it further in that direction. “There’s little overlap between their product portfolios, so it’s a strategically sound move for Renesas. But it does seem like the price is a little high,” . The IDT deal has been on the table for a couple of weeks after its interest in an acquisition last month. It is expected to close in the first half of 2019 following relevant approvals. |
Investors are waking up to the emotional struggle of startup founders | Mahendra Ramsinghani | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | As the Gartner Hype Curve goes, from the peak of inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment, so goes the founder’s emotional journey. Most founders hit the trough sooner or later, the proverbial nadir of their startup life. The company’s business model undergoes the dreaded pivot. Teams dissipate and the foundation starts to fall apart. Startups die. Investors cut their losses and move on to the rosier pastures of their portfolio. And what is often left is a depressed broken founder, dealing with the consequences of ‘crushing it’. But too often, its the founders psyche that gets crushed. Not much can be done about it but that’s changing. Gartner Hype Curve: No emotional support needed Several venture capitalists have now stepped in to address this challenge. The Felicis Ventures founders development is a start. has been writing about his journey for years. Former investor to find a way to help founders establish their own path of radical self inquiry. When I reached Jerry to discuss founders emotional challenges, he invoked the compassionate kindness of a zen monk who has been dealing with wayward children for way too long. “A lot can be done but we need to start with changing the language around this subject,” he said. A prominent VC told me that “we are a blend of the dark and the light’ and we need to respect both parts. I was not quite sure what he meant till I dug around and found the works of . Jung describes these are forces inside us – the light being the benevolent and the dark forces of greed, arrogance, self-delusion and hubris. Jung pointed out that “the word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” As we are forced to face our dark side, we begin to come to terms with our challenges. And it’s only then we can build our own compassion. Those who have experienced the dark nights are able to emotionally empathize with founders, and help them become resilient. Just as a founder who has taken a company public can help a startup scale their business. Because Jung correctly said that “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” This man of matter ……rose up too far in the world….(image and caption by Carl Jung. Source: “The Red Book”, circa 1930) When we start to change the language around this subject, it can become safer and easier for founders to discuss their situation. Instead of saying “I am depressed” a different way could yet be “I’m facing dark times”. The goal is to not trivialize the magnitude of the problem, but to make it gentler in self expression and social acceptance. We are too sold on sunshine, but that’s only half of the equation. With co-author (and friend) Brad Feld’s guidance, I am working on my third book tentatively titled “Depression: A Founders Companion” and am looking at ways of how (a) founders reflect and identify their dark nights (b) how founders endure these times and (c) how can society respond and serve them when they are at their emotional nadir. Only if we understand these issues can we can serve each other well. If you know any founders who can share their anonymized insights with dark nights, . It will take less than 10 minutes and can help us to collectively address these challenges. So far, several founders have shared that the primary cause of concern is social stigma. VCs will abandon the investment, team members will see the CEO as a weak person or worse, they will try to behave differently. Even if someone musters up the courage to discuss their mental health, we as a society do not know how to handle this information. We run, hide or escape. Often, we try to cheer up people with lame sentences or hijack the conversations by discussing our own stories. (Hint: Neither of these are effective). Not only do we need a new language, we need a new social framework. In this case, the overused VC cliche of “how can I help” is like a doctor asking the wounded patient, “so how can I treat you today”. I’ll let you guess how effective that approach can be. Catherine Shu that asking for help when you are depressed is one of the bravest things you can do. Asking for help makes you vulnerable, but it does not mean you are weak. It does not mean you are deficient. Brad Feld “I encourage you to let yourself feel the emotions you are feeling.” It’s a line his wife Amy uses with him all the time: “Brad, feel your emotions. Don’t suppress them. Just feel them. Process them. And then reflect on what you are feeling. Any, more importantly, explore why you felt them. It’s probably uncomfortable. But it’s part of being human. And, while tragic, we can learn from it to help ourselves, and help others.” And Sam Altman, the former head of Y Combinator writing: “… a lot of founders end up pretty depressed at one point or another, and they generally don’t talk to anyone about it. Often companies don’t survive these dark times. Failing sucks—there is no way to sugarcoat that. But startups are not life-and-death matters—it’s just work. Most of the founders I know have had seriously dark times, and usually felt like there was no one they could turn to. For whatever it’s worth, you’re not alone, and you shouldn’t be ashamed. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel just by talking to people about the struggles you’re facing instead of saying “we’re crushing it”. You’ll also be surprised how much you find other founders are willing to listen.” These struggles are not unique, but they are individual. That said, the best way to overcome them is as a community and these early steps from investors should go a long way toward building that community. |
Apple and Google Pay are finally coming to 7-Eleven this month | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | CEO Tim Cook announced that arrival at 7-Elevens was imminent, along with the CVS pharmacy chain. |
Instacart’s chief growth officer Elliot Shmukler is leaving | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | According to his LinkedIn profile, he helped expand the company’s subscription delivery program, called Instacart Express. He helped transform Instacart’s geographic expansion strategy, which resulted in the company making its service And he helped the brand secure several of its key grocery partnerships, including with Kroger, Albertsons and ALDI. |
Impossible Aerospace raises $9.4M to sell drones stuffed with battery cells | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | Much like smartphone manufacturers, drone companies have been adding to devices plenty of features over the past several years while making only modest improvements to battery life. But while your phone may boast “all-day” usage, a lot of the top drones only register flight times between 20-35 minutes. is looking to change up that equation, at least when it comes to commercial drones, with a dense design that is basically all battery. The company shared launch details of its US-1 drone today, and announced that it had closed a $9.4 million Series A from Bessemer Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures and Airbus Ventures. Its first product is a drone that can most notably stay airborne for about 120 minutes in optimal flying conditions, with a 75km (over 46 miles) straight-line range. It can carry 2.9 pounds of payload, but that drops the total flight time to 78 minutes. For commercial customers, the added flight time can dramatically free up use cases, changing the mindset of operation from mission-based to much more exploratory. The company’s website has an almost comical X-ray diagram of the US-1’s battery makeup showcasing a design that just looks like a big “X” of battery cells. Around 70 percent of the 15-pound drone’s weight is lithium-ion batteries, the company tells me. This is a design built for old-school drone pilots; in order to achieve their lengthy flight time they had to ditch some additional components, the most controversial choice probably being the lack of any onboard obstacle-avoidance sensors. “Every aircraft design is a compromise,” Impossible Aerospace CEO Spencer Gore told TechCrunch in an interview. “There’s nothing that’s harder than to figure out what features you will include for some users that hurts the performance for everybody else that’s not going to use them.” Gore said there were certain features the startup knew it wanted to drill down with its first drone and that the company had an “exciting product roadmap” of designs that made some different choices. The US-1 starts at $7,500 and will ship in Q4 of this year. |
SETI neural networks spot dozens of new mysterious signals emanating from distant galaxy | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | The perennial optimists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, have joined the rest of the world in — and their efforts almost instantly bore fruit. Seventy-two new “fast radio bursts” from a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3 billion miles away were discovered in previously analyzed data by using a custom machine learning model. To be clear, this isn’t Morse code or encrypted instructions to build a teleporter, à la Contact, or at least not that we know of. But these fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are poorly understood and may very well represent, at the very least, some hitherto unobserved cosmic phenomenon. FRB 121102 is the only stellar object known to give off the signals regularly, and so is the target of continued observation. The data comes from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia (above), which was pointed toward this source of fast and bright (hence the name) bursts for five hours in August of 2017. Believe it or not, that five-hour session yielded 400 of transmission data. Initial “standard” algorithms identified 21 FRBs, all happening in one hour’s worth of the observations. But Gerry Zhang, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and part of the Breakthrough Listen project, created a convolutional neural network system that would theoretically scour the data set more effectively. Sure enough, the machine learning model picked out more FRBs in the same period. A Berkeley GIF visualizing the data of a series of bursts. That’s quite an improvement, though it’s worth noting that without manual and traditional methods to find an initial set of interesting data, we would have little with which to train such neural networks. They’re complementary tools; one is not necessarily succeeding the other. The paper on the discoveries, co-authored by Cal postdoc Vishal Gajjar, is due to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Breakthrough Listen is funded by billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner, of mail.ru and DST fame. The organization for the work. The new data suggests that the signals are not being received in any kind of pattern we can determine, at least no pattern longer than 10 milliseconds. That may sound discouraging, but it’s just as important to rule things out as it is to find something new. “Gerry’s work is exciting not just because it helps us understand the dynamic behavior of FRBs in more detail, but also because of the promise it shows for using machine learning to detect signals missed by classical algorithms,” explained Berkeley’s Andrew Siemion, who leads the SETI research center there and is principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen. And if we’re being imaginative, there’s no reason some hyper-advanced civilization couldn’t cram a bunch of interesting info into such short bursts, or use a pattern we haven’t yet grokked. We don’t know what we don’t know, after all. Whatever the case, SETI and Breakthrough will continue to keep their antennas fastened on FRB 121102. Even if they don’t turn out to be alien SOS signals, it’s good solid science. You can keep up with the Berkeley SETI center’s work . |
Adobe supercharges Photoshop’s content-aware fill so you have more options, fewer AI fails | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | Everyone went nuts for Adobe’s “content-aware fill” in Photoshop when it came out. The boring-sounding feature is in fact an incredibly useful tool, essentially an AI-powered clone stamp that intelligently brought in other pieces of the image to replace your selection. But it still failed in hilarious ways that only an AI is capable of. That should happen a lot less with the hot new tools Adobe is shipping soon. , the new content-aware fill has a ton of new settings that shooters will love playing with. Photographers love tweaking things — that’s just a fact — and the more things they have to tweak, the better. So, what used to look like this… …and would occasionally produce results like this… …now has a whole right-hand menu full of lovely options to choose from. The most important difference is certainly the ability to choose which parts of the image the filling agent samples when it’s looking for stuff to put inside your lassoed area. If, as in the fail above, it decides to fill the field in with horse parts, you just exclude the horse from the agent’s consideration with a few brush strokes. No need to be exact — the algorithm is smart enough to work without the handful of pixels that are casualties of overeager mousing. The improved algorithm also lets you tell the algo that it should be liberal with rotation and scaling of the elements it uses, or that it should mirror-image the content it finds to make it fit better. Lastly, you can output the fill to a new layer — non-destructive editing is critical to any digital artist’s workflow. I can’t imagine why this wasn’t the case before. Okay, so maybe some purists will scoff at those who use such heavy-handed means to fix a shot. But sometimes you have to go with the shot you’ve got, and sometimes there’s one too many cows in it. So I at least appreciate the option to do some major alterations without the hassle of manual clone-stamping and other techniques. The new updates are “coming soon,” so keep an eye out for updates to your client. |
Samsung launches an LTE-enabled Tile competitor | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | null |
At Sounding Board, an executive coaching startup, the coaches get coaching, too | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | Everyone could use an executive coach — even executive coaches. Such is the thinking of Christine Tao and Lori Mazan, co-founders of , a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace focused on leadership coaching that has so far raised $1 million in seed funding led by Bloomberg Beta, with participation from Precursor Ventures and numerous angel investors. Some of these investors are people Tao met while an SVP at the mobile advertising startup TapJoy. TapJoy is also where Tao met Mazan, who has been helping companies develop their talent for more than 20 years. “Lori started out coaching our CEO, then coached me when I got promoted into the executive management team,” says Tao. In fact, Mazan is continuing to coach some of the roughly 30 executive coaches who work with Sounding Board as contractors, and she isn’t alone, says Tao, noting that many of the startup’s senior coaches work with more junior coaches. (Sounding Board’s eight full-time employees also receive coaching.) “We definitely walk the walk,” says Mazan. They also talk the talk, as we discovered in chatting with Tao and Mazan earlier today about the importance of coaching — and why more employers would be silly not to take advantage of it to help a range of people within their organizations. CT: We combine best-in-class coaches with a tech platform that’s scalable and affordable and outcome-oriented. It’s also a lot more cost-effective compared with other coaching platforms. CT: A weekend of traditional executive coaching in the Bay Area costs between $25,000 and $30,000. We’re about a tenth of that price, and instead of sending someone to a workshop for a couple of days, you pay the same for six months of training with us. LM: We’re modeled after traditional coaching engagements, including at Chevron, Genentech and a lot of other big oil and manufacturing and biotech companies where I’ve worked over the years. What we’ve done is take what worked at the top of the house and just bring it down to lower managers and senior leaders. CT: Hah. Both venture-backed companies and bigger enterprises go through huge periods of growth and they elevate folks into leadership roles in which they don’t have experience. High-growth startups innately feel the pain of having talented folks in roles for which they have no skills. On the other hand, public companies often are easier, given that they have a budget and they’re used to investing in training and developing employees. CT: We typically teach a cohort over a six-month period, where the employees are meeting with a coach who has been chosen based on their particular needs and learning styles and [with whom they interact] via video or phone and who they engage any time through Slack or email. When a company on-boards with us, we collect a lot of data around key leadership values and goals, including from managers — they let us know what goals they have in mind for a person’s leadership development. And that person [who will be coached] provides us insights into their personal goals as well. LM: We have 12 developmental areas, and each is personalized for an individual. One of the most popular has to do with managing up and across an organization, meaning we work with people wanting to have influence with their manager and their peers and maybe even their manager’s peers across the organization. Every approach will be different, including based on whether the person is working in a very high-pressure, fast-paced environment or a more slow-paced and amiable one. It’s also very different if you’re in engineering versus sales, for example. Let’s say you’re in sales and you want to influence your boss. You might need to paint a bigger picture and give examples around how your vision will improve the quota you need to make. On the engineering side, it’s likely that you’ll have to be very detailed. CT: When Lori coached me, we worked on language I used when talking with one of my CEOs, down to incredibly minute details around the order in which I presented ideas. It made a huge difference. Whereas the feedback was that this person felt like I would dump my problems on him, by instead providing recommendations up front to him and offering many fewer details, he thought I was being more “solutions oriented.” The reality was that I was mostly sharing the same things. |
Joe Biden is headed to IGTV | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | A post shared by (@attndotcom) on |
Zendesk expands into CRM with Base acquisition | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | has mostly confined itself to customer service scenarios, but it seems that’s not enough anymore. If you want to truly know the customer behind the interaction, you need a customer system of record to go with the customer service component. To fill that need, Zendesk announced it was acquiring , a startup that has raised over $50 million. The companies did not share the purchase price, but Zendesk did report that the acquisition should not have a significant impact on revenue. While Base might not be as well known as Salesforce, Microsoft or Oracle in the CRM game, it has created a sophisticated sales force automation platform, complete with its own artificial intelligence underpinnings. CEO Uzi Shmilovici claimed his company’s AI could compete with its more well-heeled competitors to provide salespeople with meaningful prescriptive advice on how to be more successful. Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane certainly sees the value of adding a company like Base to his platform. “We want to do for sales what Zendesk has already done for customer service: give salespeople tools built around them and the customers they serve,” he said in a statement. If the core of customer data includes customer service, CRM and marketing, Base gives Zendesk one more of those missing components, says Brent Leary, owner at CRM Essentials, a firm that keeps close watch on this market. “Zendesk has a great position in customer service, but now to strengthen their position with midmarket/enterprise customers looking for integrated platforms, Base adds a strong mobile sales force automation piece to their puzzle,” Leary told TechCrunch. As he points out, we have seen HubSpot make a similar move with HubSpot Apps, while SugarCRM, which , could be shopping too, with its new owner’s deeper pockets. “This is almost like a CRM enterprise software Hunger Games going on,” he joked. But he indicates that we should be expecting more consolidation here as these companies try to acquire missing pieces of their platforms to offer more complete solutions. Matt Price, who previously had the title of senior vice president for product portfolio at Zendesk will lead the Base team moving forward. Base was founded in 2009 and boasts more than 5,000 customers. It’s worth pointing out that Base was already available for sale in the company app marketplace, so there was some overlap here, but the company intends to try to move existing customers to Base, of course. Zendesk has indicated it will continue to support all Base customers. In addition, Base’s 125 employees have been invited to join Zendesk, so there will be no blood-letting here. |
Fortnite Monopoly and Nerf Blasters are coming soon | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | null |
Hoodline raises $10M for its hyper-local, automated data newswire | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | While many the of local news, a small army of tech startups has been developing a new set of tools to figure out how to save it. In one of the latest developments, — which has built a platform to ingest and analyse hundreds of terabytes of data to find and then write local news stories — has raised $10 million in a Series A round to help take its effort nationwide. “We want to cover the news deserts that no one else is covering,” said Hoodline’s founder and CEO Hovaghimian. “It’s filling a gap. It’s filling a need.” The San Francisco startup had once been called Ripple News (in reference to the news that “ripples out” from one event) but then took the name of a hyperlocal news blog network (cofounded by Eric Eldon, formerly of TechCrunch) that it after began to make waves. It is currently generating stories in 20 cities, with ABC, MSN, Yahoo, Hearst and CBS among the publishers that are partnering with Hoodline to use its content. This latest Series A round was led by Neoteny, a seed and early stage investment firm out of Boston whose founder and lead partner, MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito, is also joining Hoodline’s board. Sound Ventures, Dentsu Ventures and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors also participated, among other investors who asked not to be named. Hoodline had been a part of Disney’s accelerator in 2017, so it too has backed the company, as has Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce behemoth that , the crowdsourced online video subtitling startup Viki. Hoodline is not disclosing its valuation, but from what we understand, it’s around $75 million and a bump up from its previous valuation. Hoodline’s platform today has two parts: a producing local news stories; and a that is somewhat similar to the likes of Outbrain and Taboola. Rather than recirculating stories from a wider network of clickable sites, however, it suggests stories from Hoodline’s inventory, alongside a publication’s own articles, to keep people engaged on a site for longer. Hoodline inks free partnerships with media platforms to supply content for the first part; the second part has ads running alongside the recommended articles. One of the big issues with local news and its decline is that, as more traditional publishers have moved to the internet to cut the costs of producing printed newspapers, they’ve found that the revenues and margins that they generated from the older activities have not translated to the newer medium. Moreover, the issues of slim margins on ads that even exist for large, world-famous publications are only compounded for smaller ones: they have a hard time getting the economies of scale needed to make the ad-based model work. And then, even if they club together, they have to contend with the fact that their readerships have moved on to other forms of infotainment. But as it turns out, there is still an appetite for local information. “There are so many good stories that go uncovered,” Hovaghimian said. “Plus, forty percent of all searches have local intent.” Facebook’s and Google’s aren’t simple good-will attempts at fostering more community; they reflect interests that these companies have observed among their user bases. So now, while tech has arguably “killed” the local news business, it’s also been trying to save it — namely, in the form of providing more intelligent ways to run the news business, from the advertising technology and/or paywalls to fund it, through to disrupting and improving the means of producing it. Hoodline is part of the new guard of media tech companies that has been looking at how the rise of technologies like AI and big data analytics can be used to help with the latter of these. “Hoodline is bringing pioneering technology to the world of hyper-local news and content, while layering in editorial expertise and perspective. This uniquely allows them to craft dynamic stories across a wide range of verticals and outlets,” said Ito in a statement. “We’re incredibly excited to be partnering with Hoodline and as they continue to deliver consumers content that they want, but was previously not available to them.” Hoodline is not the only one exploring how to tap into big data to build stories; there are many. Among them, in the UK, the Press Association is to develop AI systems that can help surface interesting stories for (human) journalists to write. In the US, has been developing to cover local sports and quarterly earnings beats. Other efforts like is also tackling a trove of publicly available information — in its case civic data — to visualise and shape narratives from it, products that potentially also make their way into the news. Hovaghimian said that Hoodline’s system ingests around 250 terabytes of data from a pretty diverse range of sources, spanning from hyperlocal listings services like Yelp and Foursquare through to things like feeds of local high school football sports results. This is organised and passed through algorithms to surface interesting items that can be used in stories. Editors, meanwhile, write templates that can be used for different types of stories, such as , , or . One person at the company described these templates as “advanced Madlibs.” And for now, it’s as basic as this, too. Hoodline has written by journalists, but the content that is bylined to Hoodline is created by the company’s big data platform. Those articles, it has to be said, are more anodyne than earth-shattering. But Hovaghimian says this is almost intentional, it’s to clear the way for more serious work. “We are filling a gap and covering news that is not being covered, even if it’s just to test what audiences want to read,” he said. “This frees up resources for more journalistic pursuits.” Whether or not publications dedicate resources to more journalistic pursuits to complement the Hoodline work, of course, is another matter. Meanwhile, Hoodline also has journalists working on original content and to build these templates. The company currently has a ratio of around two engineers to one editor, Hovaghimian said, but believes that as it scales it will be bringing in fewer editors and more engineers: “At this point, it’s about growth now that we have figured out what our bottlenecks are,” he said. As for what comes next, Hovaghimian said that the ambition is to bring this to more than just the US eventually, and to work with different kinds of partners beyond news organizations. Facebook and Google’s own interests in this area haven’t gone unnoticed and the company has thought about how it could partner with them, too. |
Not hog dog? PixFood lets you shoot and identify food | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 10 | What happens when you add AI to food? Surprisingly, you don’t get a hungry robot. Instead you get something like . PixFood lets you take pictures of food, identify available ingredients, and, at this stage, find out recipes you can make from your larder. It is privately funded. “There are tons of recipe apps out there, but all they give you is, well, recipes,” said Tonnesson. “On the other hand, PixFood has the ability to help users get the right recipe for them at that particular moment. There are apps that cover some of the mentioned, but it’s still an exhausting process – since you have to fill in a 50-question quiz so it can understand what you like.” They launched in August and currently have 3,000 monthly active users from 10,000 downloads. They’re working on perfecting the system for their first users. “PixFood is AI-driven food app with advanced photo recognition. The user experience is quite simple: it all starts with users taking a photo of any ingredient they would like to cook with, in the kitchen or in the supermarket,” said Tonnesson. “Why did we do it like this? Because it’s personalized. After you take a photo, the app instantly sends you tailored recipe suggestions! At first, they are more or le ss the same for everyone, but as you continue using it, it starts to learn what you precisely like, by connecting patterns and taking into consideration different behaviors.” In my rudimentary tests the AI worked acceptably well and did not encourage me to eat a monkey. While the app begs the obvious question – why not just type in “corn?” – it’s an interesting use of vision technology that is definitely a step in the right direction. Tonnesson expects the AI to start connecting you with other players in the food space, allowing you to order corn (but not a monkey) from a number of providers. “Users should also expect partnerships with restaurants, grocery, meal-kit, and other food delivery services will be part of the future experiences,” he said. |
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