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Alex Jones’ Infowars gets banned from Apple’s App Store | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | |
Nima launches food sensor to detect peanuts | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | I’m deathly allergic to nuts, so I felt super excited when I heard about the Nima peanut sensor. I’ve ended up in the emergency room numerous times because there were nuts in something I thought did not contain nuts. With Nima, I could’ve tested those specific foods before consumption and probably avoided a trip to the ER. Nima, a TechCrunch Battlefield alum, launched a peanut sensor, its second product, on September 6. The sensor is able to detect even the tiniest trace (10 parts per million) of peanut protein. To use Nima, you insert the food into a disposable test capsule, which goes into the device to figure out if there’s any peanut protein in the food. In under five minutes, the Nima sensor will tell you if your food is peanut-free. The device connects to your phone via Bluetooth to enable the app to show your testing history, records of all the packaged foods yo’ve tried and a map of restaurants that Nima has tested for peanuts. To be clear, this sensor is just for peanuts. It does not test for all nuts, but Nima founder Shireen Yates told me the plan is to enable testing for additional nuts in the future. The idea with Nima is not to suddenly ditch your Epi-Pen, an epinephrine shot designed to treat anaphylactic allergic reactions, but to provide one extra way to be confident about what you’re eating before you eat it. Based on two rounds of internal testing, Nima says there is a 97.6 percent accuracy rate. Nima retails for $229 while the sensor plus 12 test capsules retails at $289. Nima launched its first product tested for gluten sensitivity. Check out the video at the top to learn more about Nima. |
Hate speech, collusion, and the constitution | Ziad Reslan | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | into their before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were asked about collaboration between social media companies. “Our collaboration has greatly increased,” Sandberg stated before turning to Dorsey and adding that Facebook has “always shared information with other companies.” Dorsey nodded in response, and noted for his part that he’s very open to establishing “a regular cadence with our industry peers.” Social media companies have established extensive policies on what constitutes “hate speech” on their platforms. But discrepancies between these policies open the possibility for propagators of hate to game the platforms and still get their vitriol out to a large audience. Collaboration of the kind Sandberg and Dorsey discussed can lead to a more consistent approach to hate speech that will prevent the gaming of platforms’ policies. But collaboration between competitors as dominant as Facebook and Twitter are in social media poses an important question: would antitrust or other laws make their coordination illegal? |
What you need to know ahead of the EU copyright vote | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | European Union lawmakers are facing a major vote on digital copyright reform proposals on Wednesday — a process that has set the Internet’s hair fully on fire. Here’s a run down of the issues and what’s at stake… The most controversial component of the proposals concerns user-generated content platforms such as YouTube, and the idea they should be made liable for copyright infringements committed by their users — instead of the current regime of takedowns after the fact (which locks rights holders into having to constantly monitor and report violations — y’know, at the same time as Alphabet’s ad business continues to roll around in dollars and eyeballs). Critics of the proposal argue that shifting the burden of rights liability onto platforms will flip them from champions to chillers of free speech, making them reconfigure their systems to accommodate the new level of business risk. More specifically they suggest it will encourage platforms into algorithmically pre-filtering all user uploads — aka #censorshipmachines — and then blinkered AIs will end up blocking fair use content, cool satire, funny memes etc etc, and the free Internet as we know it will cease to exist. Backers of the proposal see it differently, of course. These people tend to be creatives whose professional existence depends upon being paid for the sharable content they create, such as musicians, authors, filmmakers and so on. Their counter argument is that, as it stands, their hard work is being ripped off because they are not being fairly recompensed for it. Consumers may be the ones technically freeloading by uploading and consuming others’ works without paying to do so but creative industries point out it’s the tech giants that are gaining the most money from this exploitation of the current rights rules — because they’re the only ones making fat profits off of other people’s acts of expression. (Alphabet, Google’s ad giant parent, made alone, for example.) YouTube has been a prime target for musicians’ ire — who contend that the royalties the company pays them for streaming their content recompense. The second controversy attached to the copyright reform concerns the use of snippets of news content. European lawmakers want to extend digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because, again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others’ professional work without paying them to do so. And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content. The reforms would seek to compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being ‘paid’ in traffic (i.e. by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet’s aggregators). Critics don’t see it that way of course. They see it as an imposition on digital sharing — branding the proposal a “link tax” and arguing it will have a wider chilling effect of interfering with the sharing of hyperlinks. They argue that because links can also contain words of the content being linked to. And much debate has raged over on how the law would (or could) define what is and isn’t a protected text snippet. They also claim the auxiliary copyright idea hasn’t worked where it’s already been tried (in Germany and Spain). Google just closed its News aggregator in the latter market, for example. Though at the pan-EU level it would have to at least pause before taking a unilateral decision to shutter an entire product. Germany’s influential media industry is a major force behind Article 11. But in Germany a local version of a snippet law that was passed in ended up being watered down — so news aggregators were not forced to pay for using snippets, as had originally been floated. Without mandatory payment (as is the case in Spain) the law has essentially pitted publishers against each other. This is because Google said it would not pay and also changed how it indexes content for Google News in Germany to . That means any local publishers that don’t agree to zero-license their snippets to Google risk losing visibility to rivals that do. So major German publishers have continued to hand their snippets over to Google. But they appear to believe a pan-EU law might manage to tip the balance of power. Hence Article 11. For critics of the reforms, who often sit on the nerdier side of the spectrum, their reaction can be summed up by a screamed refrain that IT’S THE END OF THE FREE WEB AS WE KNOW IT. that the reform threatens the “vibrant free web”. A coalition of original Internet architects, computer scientists, academics and others — including the likes of world wide web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, security veteran Bruce Schneier, Google chief evangelist Vint Cerf, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and entrepreneur Mitch Kapor — also penned an to the European Parliament’s president to oppose Article 13. In it they wrote that while “well-intended” the push towards automatic pre-filtering of users uploads “takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users”. There is more than a little irony there, though, given that (for example) Google’s ad business conducts automated surveillance of the users of its various platforms for ad targeting purposes — and through that process it’s hoping to control the buying behavior of the individuals it tracks. At the same time as so much sound and fury has been directed at attacking the copyright reform plans, another very irate, very motivated group of people have been lustily bellowing that content creators need paying for all the free lunches that tech giants (and others) have been helping themselves to. But the death of memes! The end of fair digital use! The demise of online satire! The smothering of Internet expression! Hideously crushed and disfigured under the jackboot of the EU’s evil Filternet! And so on and on it has gone. (For just one e.g., see the below video — which was actually made by an Australian satirical film and media company that usually spends its time spoofing its own government’s initiatives but evidently saw richly viral pickings here… ) For a counter example, to set against the less than nuanced yet highly sharable satire-as-hyperbole on show in that video, is the — which has written a 12-point breakdown defending the actual substance of the reform (at least as it sees it). A topline point to make right off the bat is it’s hardly a fair fight to set words against a virally sharable satirical video fronted by a young lady sporting very pink lipstick. But, nonetheless, debunk the denouncers these authors valiantly attempt to. To wit: They reject claims the reforms will kill hyperlinking or knife sharing in the back; or do for online encyclopedias like Wikimedia; or make snuff out of memes; or strangle free expression — pointing out that explicit exceptions that have been written in to qualify what it would (and would not) target and how it’s intended to operate in practice. Wikipedia, for example, has been explicitly stated as being excluded from the proposals. But they are still pushing water uphill — against the tsunami of DEATH OF THE MEMES memes pouring the other way. Russian state propaganda mouthpiece RT has even joined in the fun, because of course Putin is no fan of EU… Death of memes? EU advances copyright controls — RT (@RT_com) The Society of Authors makes the very pertinent point that tech giants have spent millions lobbying against the reforms. They also argue this campaign has been characterised by “a loop of misinformation and scaremongering”. So, basically, Google et al stand accused of spreading (even more) fake news with a self-interested flavor. Who’d have thunk it?! Dollar bills standing on a table in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images) The EU’s (voluntary) records directly spending between $6M and $6.4M on regional lobbying activities in 2016 alone. (Although that covers not just copyright related lobbying but a full laundry list of “fields of interest” its team of 14 smooth-talking staffers apply their Little Fingers to.) But the company also seeks to exert influence on EU political opinion via membership of additional lobbying organizations. And the register lists a full TWENTY-FOUR organizations that Google is therefore also speaking through (by contrast, Facebook is merely a member of eleven bodies) — from the American chamber of Commerce to the EU to dry-sounding thinktanks, such as the Center for European Policy Studies and the European Policy Center. It is also embedded in startup associations, like Allied for Startups. And various startup angles have been argued by critics of the copyright reforms — claiming Europe is going to saddle local entrepreneurs with extra bureaucracy. Google’s dense web of presence across tech policy influencers and associations amplifies the company’s regional lobbying spend to as much as $36M, music industry bosses contend. Though again that dollar value would be spread across multiple GOOG interests — so it’s hard to sum the specific copyright lobbying bill. (We asked Google — it didn’t answer). Multiple millions looks undeniable though. Of course the music industry and publishers have been lobbying too. But probably not at such a high dollar value. Though Europe’s creative industries have the local contacts and cultural connections to bend EU politicians’ ears. (As, well, they probably should.) Seasoned European commissioners have professed themselves at the level of lobbying — and that really is saying something. Returning to the Society of Authors, here’s the bottom third of their points — which focus on countering the copyright reform critics’ counterarguments: The proposals aren’t : that’s the very opposite of what most journalists, authors, photographers, film-makers and many other creators devote their lives to. Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to the Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to Stopping the directive would be a at the expense of all those who make, enjoy and enjoy using creative works. Certainly some food for thought there. But as entrenched, opposing positions go, it’s hard to find two more perfect examples. And with such violently opposed and motivated interest groups attached to the copyright reform issue there hasn’t really been much in the way of considered debate or nuanced consideration on show publicly. But being exposed to endless DEATH OF THE INTERNET memes does tend to have that effect. There is also debate about Article 3 of the copyright reform plan — which concerns text and data-mining. (Or TDM as the Commission sexily conflates it.) The original TDM proposal, which was rejected by MEPs, would have limited data mining to research organisations for the purposes of scientific research (though Member States would have been able to choose to allow other groups if they wished). This portion of the reforms has attracted less attention (butm again, it’s difficult to be heard above screams about dead memes). Though there have been concerns raised from certain quarters that it could impact startup innovation — by throwing up barriers to training and developing AIs by putting rights blocks around (otherwise public) data-sets that could (otherwise) be ingested and used to foster algorithms. Or that “without an effective data mining policy, startups and innovators in Europe will run dry”, as a recent piece of sponsored content inserted into put it. That paid for content was written by — you guessed it! — Allied for Startups. Aka the organization that counts Google as a member… The most fervent critics of the copyright reform proposals — i.e. those who would prefer to see a pro-Internet-freedoms overhaul of digital copyright rules — support a ‘right to read is the right to mine’ style approach on this front. So basically a free for all — to turn almost any data into algorithmic insights. (Presumably these folks would agree with .) Middle ground positions which are among the potential amendments now being considered by MEPs would support some free text and data mining — but, where legal restrictions exist, then there would be licenses allowing for extractions and reproductions. The whole charged copyright saga has delivered one bit of political drama already — when the European Parliament voted in to block proposals agreed only by the legal affairs committee, thereby reopening the text for amendments and fresh votes. So MEPs now have the chance to refine the parliament’s position via supporting select amendments — with that vote taking place next week. And boy have the flooded in. There are 252 in all! Which just goes to show how gloriously messy the democratic process is. It also suggests the copyright reform could get entirely stuck — if parliamentarians can’t agree on a compromise position which can then be put to the European Council and go on to secure final pan-EU agreement. MEP Julia Reda, a member of The Greens–European Free Alliance, who as (also) a Pirate Party member is very firmly opposed to the copyright reform text as was voted in July (she ), has created this tabled by MEPs — seen through her lens of promoting Internet freedoms over rights extensions. So, for example, she argues that amendments to add limited exceptions for platform liability would still constitute “upload filters” (and therefore “censorship machines”). Her preference would be deleting the article entirely and making no change to the current law. (Albeit that’s not likely to be a majority position, given how many MEPs backed the original Juri text of the copyright reform proposals 278 voted in favor, losing out to .) But she concedes that limiting the scope of liability to only music and video hosting platforms would be “a step in the right direction, saving a lot of other platforms (forums, public chats, source code repositories, etc.) from negative consequences”. She also flags an interesting suggestion — via another tabled amendment — of “outsourcing” the inspection of published content to rightholders via an API”. “With a fair process in place [it] is an interesting idea, and certainly much better than general liability. However, it would still be ,” she adds. Reda has also tabled a series of additional amendments to try to roll back what she characterizes as “some bad decisions narrowly made by the Legal Affairs Committee” — including adding a copyright exception for user generated content (which would essentially get platforms off the hook insofar as rights infringements by web users are concerned); adding an exception for freedom of panorama (aka the taking and sharing of photos in public places, which is currently not allowed in all EU Member States); and another removing a proposed extra copyright added by the Juri committee to cover sports events — which she contends would “ “. MEP Catherine Stihler, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, who also voted in July to reopen debate over the reforms reckons nearly every parliamentary group is split — ergo the vote is hard to call. “It is going to be an interesting vote,” she tells TechCrunch. “We will see if any possible compromise at the last minute can be reached but in the end parliament will decide which direction the future of not just copyright but how EU citizens will use the internet and their rights on-line. “Make no mistake, this vote affects each one of us. I do hope that balance will be struck and EU citizens fundamental rights protected.” So that sort of sounds like a ‘maybe the Internet as you know it will change’ then. Other views are available, though, depending on the MEP you ask. We reached out to Axel Voss, who led the copyright reform process for the Juri committee, and is a big proponent of Article 13, Article 11 (and the rest), to ask if he sees value in the debate having been reopened rather than fast-tracked into EU law — to have a chance for parliamentarians to achieve a more balanced compromise. At the time of writing Voss hadn’t responded. A spokesman for the MEP has now sent us this statement: “Mr Voss hopes for a fruitful debate. The EPP amendment now only refers to platforms liability and does not foresee any obligation to take measures. That should be supportable for all MEPs who see the need to strengthen our European Creative Industry and as such constitute a good compromise.” Voting to reopen the debate in July, Stihler argued there are “real concerns” about the impact of Article 13 on freedom of expression, as well as flagging the degree of consumer concern parliamentarians had been seeing over the issue (doubtless helped by all those memes + petitions), adding: “We owe it to the experts, stakeholders and citizens to give this directive the full debate necessary to achieve broad support.” MEP Marietje Schaake, a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, was willing to hazard a politician’s prediction that the proposals will be improved via the democratic process — albeit, what would constitute an improvement here of course depends on which side of the argument you stand. But she’s routing for exceptions for user generated content and additional refinements to the three debated articles to narrow their scope. Her spokesman told us: “I think we’ll end up with new exceptions on user generated content and freedom of panorama, as well as better wording for article 3 on text and data mining. We’ll end up probably with better versions of articles 11 and 13, the extent of the improvement will depend on the final vote.” The vote will be held during an afternoon plenary session on . So yes there’s still time to call your MEP. |
Only 48 hours left to apply for Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 | Samantha Stein | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | It’s go-time people. As in go apply right now to compete in — do it now because in 48 short hours, the application window slams shut for good. Think you have the best early-stage startup in Sub-Saharan Africa? Do you dream on a global scale? Then come to Lagos, Nigeria on December 11 and launch your business to the world in front of the influential people who help make big dreams come true. no later than . Up to 15 of the best pre-Series A startups across Sub-Saharan Africa will compete head-to-head for the Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 championship, $25,000 in non-equity cash plus a trip for two to compete in Startup Battlefield in San Francisco at TechCrunch Disrupt 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time). One of the great things about is that all participants — win or lose — benefit from broad exposure to investor love, media attention and access to an incredible network of influential technologists and entrepreneurs. That network, our Startup Battlefield alumni community, consists of more than 750 companies — including names like Dropbox, Mint, Vurb and many more — that have competed and gone on to collectively raise more than $8 billion in funds and generate 102 exits. The experience and advice these folks bring to bear can be invaluable. Clearly our editors have a knack for picking winning startups, and they’ll scrutinize every eligible application. The chosen founders will all receive extensive, expert pitch coaching to prepare them for the six minutes they’ll have onstage to present a live demo to a panel of distinguished judges — and then answer all questions the judges throw at them. Five teams will move on to a second round of pitching and inquisition in front of a fresh set of judges. Ultimately, one winner will rise above the rest to be Sub-Saharan Africa’s best startup. Will it be yours? The first step — before you apply — is to check whether you’re eligible to compete. Startups should: Pretty standard stuff, right? So now that you’ve got that detail out of the way, don’t waste another moment. We want to see you strut your startup stuff in Lagos, Nigeria on December 11. to compete in Startup Battlefield Africa 2018. The application window closes on . |
A year later, Equifax lost your data but faced little fallout | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 8 | change in a year. Not when you’re Equifax. The credit rating giant, one of the largest in the world, was trusted with some of the most sensitive data used by banks and financiers to determine who can be lent money. But the it knew was vulnerable for months, which let hackers crash the servers and steal data on 147 million consumers. Names, addresses, Social Security numbers and more — and were stolen in the breach. Millions of British and Canadian nationals were also affected, sparking a global response to the breach. It was “one of the most egregious examples of corporate malfeasance since Enron,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at the time. Yet, a year on from following the devastating hack that left the company reeling from a breach of almost every American adult, the company has faced little to no action or repercussions. In the aftermath, the company’s response to the breach was chaotic, sending consumers if they were affected but were instead that was . And when consumers were looking for answers, Equifax’s own Twitter account sent concerned users to a site that had it not been for a good samaritan. Yet, the company went unpunished. In the end, Equifax was in law as much a victim as the 147 million Americans. “There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, in a call with TechCrunch. Warner, who serves Virginia, was one of the first lawmakers to file new legislation after the breach. Alongside his Democratic colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two senators said their bill, if passed, would for data breaches. “With Equifax, they knew for months before they reported, so at what point is that violating securities laws by not having that notice?,” said Warner. “The message sent to the market is ‘if you can endure some media blowback, you can get through this without serious long-term ramifications’, and that’s totally unacceptable,” he said. Lawmakers held hearings and grilled the company’s former chief executive, Richard Smith, who retired with , adding insult to injury. Equifax further shuffled its executive suite, including the hiring of a new chief information security officer Jamil Farshchi and former lawyer turned “chief transformation officer” Julia Houston to oversee “the company’s response to the cybersecurity incident.” Equifax declined to make either executive available for interview or comment when reached by TechCrunch, but Equifax spokesperson Wyatt Jefferies said protecting customer data is the company’s “top priority.” But there’s not much to show for it beyond superficial gestures of free credit monitoring — provided by Equifax, no less — and a credit locking app which, unsurprisingly, . In the year since, the company has — some $50 million was covered by cyber-insurance. That’s a drop in the ocean to more than $3 billion in revenue in the year since, according to quarterly earnings filings — or more than $500 million in profits. And although Equifax’s stock price initially collapsed in the weeks following, the price bounced back. Financially, the company looks almost as healthy as it’s ever been. But that may change. Former Equifax chief executive Richard Smith prepares to testify before the lawmakers. Smith later retired after hackers broke into the credit reporting agency and made off with the personal information of nearly 145 million Americans. Earlier this year, the company asked a federal judge to reject claims from dozens of banks and credit unions for costs taken to prevent fraud following the data breach. The claims, if accepted, could force Equifax to shell out tens of millions of dollars — perhaps more. The hundreds of class action suits filed to date have yet to hit the courts, but historically even the largest class action cases have for the individuals affected. And when the credit agent giant isn’t fighting the courts, federal regulators have shown little interest in pursuit of legal action. An investigation launched by a former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, responsible for protecting consumers from fraud, sputtered after the company. And, although the company is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for , fines are likely to be limited — if levied at all. Warren Thursday to the heads of both agencies lamenting their lack of action. “Companies like Equifax do not ask the American people before they collect their most sensitive information,” said Warren. “This information can determine their ability to access credit, obtain a job, secure a home loan, purchase a car, and make dozens of other transactions that are critical to their personal financial security.” “The American people deserve an update on your investigations,” she said. To date, only the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought charges — not for the breach itself, but against three former staffers for allegedly insider trading. Escaping any local action, Equifax agreed with eight states, and California, to take further cybersecurity steps and measures to prevent another breach, escaping any fines or financial penalties. Warner blamed much of the inaction to the patchwork of data breach laws that vary by state. “We’ve got different laws and you don’t have any standard, and part of the challenge around the data breach is that every industry wants to be exempted,” said Warner. It’s not a partisan issue, he said, but one where every industry — from telecoms to retail — wants to be exempt from the law. “If we really want to improve our business cyber-hygiene, you have got to have consequences for failing to keep up those cyber-hygiene standards,” he said. It’s a tough sell to posit Equifax, which fluffed almost every step of the breach process, before and after its disclosure, as a victim. While the millions affected can take solace in the beating Equifax got in the press, those demanding regulatory action might be in for a disappointingly long wait. |
Used car site Vroom is raising $70M six months after a big round of layoffs | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | null |
It’s time for Facebook and Twitter to coordinate efforts on hate speech | Ziad Reslan | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | of Donald Trump in 2016, there has been burgeoning awareness of the hate speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. While activists have pressured these companies to improve their content moderation, few groups ( ) have outright sued the platforms for their actions. That’s because of a legal distinction between media publications and media platforms that has made solving hate speech online a vexing problem. Take, for instance, an op-ed published in the New York Times calling for the slaughter of an entire minority group. The Times would likely be sued for publishing hate speech, and the plaintiffs may well be victorious in their case. Yet, if that op-ed were published in a Facebook post, a suit against Facebook would likely fail. |
Uber’s chief diversity officer is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2018 | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | At TechCrunch Disrupt 2018, Uber’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Bo Young Lee will be joining us to talk about the ride-sharing company’s efforts to put detoxify its corporate culture and promote a more inclusive environment for employees. Lee was hired as the company’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer this past January, after leaving insurance company Marsh LLC where she held a similar role. Uber has obviously had its fair share of issues with fostering an inclusive culture, they’ve made some public efforts to showcase that the company was making active efforts to promote internal change and they seem to at least be having a more peaceful 2018 than 2017 — in terms of news surrounding the company’s culture. Nevertheless, there has still been plenty of movement surrounding diversity at the company even after Lee’s hire. In April, the company released its under new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi showing some slight improvements with the percentage of female employees (38 percent) at the company, while there was a slight drop in black representation and a bump in Latinx representation. In June, the company’s Chief Brand Officer Bozoma Saint John left the company, noting that Uber had made some improvements but still had work to do. “I’m not saying the corporate culture has righted itself 100 percent,” John said. “Or it’s where it needs to be today. It isn’t. There’s still a lot to be done in that regard.” In July, the company’s Chief People Officer Liane Hornsey, whom Lee reported to, following a racial discrimination investigation that targeted how the executive was handling complaints. There’s obviously plenty to talk about in terms of the company’s own diversity efforts, we’re also looking forward to picking Lee’s brain about broader trends around inclusion in the tech industry and where her cautious optimism lies. Disrupt SF will take place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center West from September 5 to 7. The full agenda is , and you can still buy tickets . |
This is the GoPro Hero 7 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | null |
Alexa now works with 20,000 devices | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | Alexa confirmed the number with TechCrunch, noting that Alexa works with “20k+ devices you can control with Alexa, from 3500+ brands.” The story has been updated to clarify how the assistant works with third party devices. |
Payday startups are increasing access to wages, but is “make any day payday” the right choice? | Kristen Berman | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | Imagine you get a monthly paycheck on the 15th of the month but your bills come in on the 1st of the month. Between the 15th and 1st you must set a portion of your check aside to pay bills. This becomes a complicated budgeting equation. How much can I spend today vs how much do I need to set aside? In a perfectly rational world people would reduce their consumption by the amount needed to afford their bills and have money left over to make it to the next payday. Sadly, this isn’t what happens. When income and bills are farther apart, we struggle to make the math work. found that financial shortfalls – payday loans and bank overdrafts – happen 18% more when there is a greater mismatch between the timing of someone’s income and the bills they owe. We come up short. Baugh offers some reasoning: When we get paid, we spend money. More money than usual. Research from supports this. They find that both poor and rich households respond to the receipt of income, with the poorest households spending 70 percent more when they get paid than they would on an average day and the richest households spending 40 percent more. This inclination to spend more on payday makes the monthly budget harder to balance – and sometimes makes it unable to balance at all. Many fintech companies are starting to address pay period timing, in hopes they can close the gap between income and consumption needs. Apps like Even, Earnin and PayActive provide people with instant access to their paycheck. Gig economy employers like Uber and Lyft have features that allow drivers to cash out immediately after they drive. For people who would otherwise get paid on a monthly schedule, this is critical. Jesse Shapiro of Harvard the week before food stamps are disbursed. Even a few days matter. In Baugh’s study, the difference between a paycheck period of 35 days vs a paycheck period of 28 days resulted in 9% more instances of financial distress. The question we should be asking now is what is the optimal timing for pay periods? Too long between checks causes hardship, but how short should pay periods become? These fintech companies are offering to “Make Any Day Payday” with promises that people can “Get your paycheck anytime you want.” While this smooths the gap between pay periods, given Olassof’s research, it may also serve to increase spending if everyday is payday. To dive deeper into this problem, our team sought to understand what employees preferred. As a reminder, our preferences don’t always represent what’s best for us. You may want to eat that chocolate cake, but that doesn’t mean it will help you with your summer dieting goals. However, we were curious: do people have the intuition that more frequent pay periods are better, and how frequent is optimal? To do this we asked 384 people making less than median income ($30,000 a year) to tell us their preferred pay schedule. Using Google Consumer Surveys, we gave them six payment schedules to choose from: Annual, Monthly, Bi-weekly, Weekly, Daily or Hourly. What people say? If everyone acts rationally, we would expect people to say they want to get paid hourly – immediately after working. It’s their money and they would be best off with unfettered access to it. This is not what we found. Instead, people prefer to get paid on a bi-weekly or weekly schedule. Aggregating everyone’s responses, people preferred bi-weekly (37.2%), followed by weekly (26.6%). Why aren’t more people choosing hourly or daily? While we can’t be sure, one guess is that Baugh’s findings ring true. Weekly and biweekly paychecks can act as a self control device for spending. If paydays were every day, they may be more tempted to spend on non-critical items, leaving less money for bills. Weekly and biweekly paychecks also serve as a way to fix the misalignment of income and bills that Baugh cites drives overdrafts and payday loans. Our team interviewed 40 people in Fresno, California and found this to be a popular budgeting strategy – one paycheck is used for the family car payment and one is used for rent. When we break out responses by income, we find some correlational differences across income groups. People reporting less than $6,000 income (50% below poverty line) are more likely to opt for an immediate pay schedule. As people’s income level rises above poverty (or part time status), the preference for weekly and bi-weekly pay schedules increases. We also asked people to tell us how they would describe their personal need for money when paying their bills over the past year. No surprise, but the more people felt they needed money for immediate bills (or feeling scarce) the higher the demand for more frequent paychecks (hourly or weekly). More research is needed to determine the effects of the growing trend to offer instant access to your paycheck. These apps can bridge critical gaps for people living paycheck to paycheck, but they may also have some detrimental effects if Baugh and Olafsson’s findings hold. If apps help people make everyday payday, and each payday results in higher spending, the end of the month may be much harder to get to. |
An ode to Apple’s awful MacBook keyboard | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | Yes I am very late to this. But I am also very annoyed so I am adding my voice to the now sustained chorus of complaints about Apple’s redesigned Mac keyboard: How very much it sucks. This is the keyboard that Apple “completely redesigned” in 2015, in its quest for size zero hardware, switching from a scissor mechanism for the keys to what it described then as the “new Apple-designed butterfly mechanism” — touting this as 40% thinner and 4x more stable. Reader, there is nothing remotely beautiful and butterfly-esque about the experience of depressing these keys. Scattershot staccato clattering, as your fingers are simultaneously sucked in and involuntarily hammer out a grapeshot of key strikes, is what actually happens. It’s brutalist and unforgiving. Most egregiously it’s not reliably functional. The redesigned mechanism has resulted in keys that not only feel different when pressed vs the prior MacBook keyboard — which was more spongey for sure but that meant keys were at reduced risk of generating accidental strikes vs their barely-there trigger-sensitive replacements (which feel like they have a 40% smaller margin for keystrike error) — but have also turned out to be fail prone, as particles of dust can find their way in between the keys, as dust is wont to do, and mess with the smooth functioning of key presses — requiring an official Apple repair. Yes, just a bit of dust! Move over ‘the princess and the pea’: Apple and the dust mote is here! ‘Just use it in a vacuum’ shouldn’t be an acceptable usability requirement for a very expensive laptop. Apple has also had to make these keyboards quieter. Because, as I say, the act of using the keyboard results in audible clackclackery. It’s like mobile phone keyclicks suddenly got dizzingly back in fashion. (Or, well, Apple designers got to overindulge their blue-sky thinking around the idea that ‘in space no one can hear you type’.) Several colleagues have garnered dagger glances and been told to dial it down at conferences on account of all the key clattering as they worked. Yet a keyboard is made for working. It’s a writing tool. Or it should be. Instead, Apple has made a keyboard for making audible typos. It’s shockingly bad. As design snafus go, this is up there with antenna-gate. Except actually it’s much worse. You can’t not ‘hold it in that way’. You can’t press keys on a keyboard radically differently. I guess you could type slowly to try to avoid making all these high-speed typos. But that would have an obvious impact on your ability to work by slowing down your ability to write. So, again, an abject mess. I’ve only had this Oath-issued 2017 MacBook Pro (in long-held-off exchange for my trusty MacBook Air, whose admittedly grimy and paint-worn keys were nonetheless 100% functional after years of writerly service) for about a month but the keys appear to have a will of their own, whipping themselves into a possessive frenzy almost every time they’re pressed, and spewing out all manner of odd typos, mis-strikes and mistakes. This demonic keyboard has summoned Siri unasked. (Thanks stupidly pointless Touch Bar!) It has also somehow nearly delivered an ‘I’m not interested’ auto-response to a stranger who wrote me at length on LinkedIn to thoughtfully thank me for an earlier article. (Fortunately I didn’t have auto-send enabled so I could catch that unintended slapdown in the act before it was delivered. No thanks to the technologies involved.) At the same time Caps Lock routinely fails to engage when pressed, as if it’s practising for when it’ll be broken. It equally countlessly fails to engage when re-pressed. ‘Craps Out Lock’ more like. I fear it’s beset by dust motes already. Which is hard to avoid because, y’know, The keyboard also frustrates because of the jarring juxtaposition of having individual keys that depress too willingly, seeming to suck the typos from your fingers as letters get snatched out of sequence (and even whole words coaxed out of line), coupled with a backspace key that refuses to perform quickly enough (I’ve had to crank it right up to the very fastest setting) so it can’t gobble up the multiple erroneous strikes quickly enough to edit out all the BS the keyboard is continually spewing. The result? A laptop that’s lightning quick at creating a typo-ridden mess, and slow as hell to clean it up. In short, it’s a mess. A horrible mess that makes a mockery of the Apple catchphrase of yore (‘it just works’) by actively degrading the productivity of writing — interrupting your work with pointless sound and an alphabetic soup of fury. The redesigned keyboard has been denounced by Apple loyalists such as John Gruber — who in April called it “ “. He precision-hammered his point home with this second economical sentence: “Everyone who buys a MacBook depends upon the keyboard and this keyboard is undependable.” Though it was Casey Johnson, writing for , who raised the profile of the problem last year, kicking up a major stink over her MacBook keys acting up (or dead) after a brush with invisible dust. Since then keyboard-related problems have garnered Apple at least one . Meanwhile, the company has responded to this hardware headache of its own design like the proverbial thief in the night, quietly fiddling with the internals when no one was looking. Most notably it slotted in a repair earlier this year, when it added a sort of silicon gum shield to wrap the offending butterfly mechanism, which is presumably supposed to prevent dust from wreaking its terribly quotidian havoc. (Though it’s no use to me, right here, right now, with my corporate provisioned 2017 MBP.) We know this thanks to the excellent work done by , when it took apart one of Apple’s redesigned redesigned keyboards and found a thin rubberized film had been added under the keycaps. (Looking at this translucent addition, I am reminded of designer HR Giger’s biomechanical concoctions. And of Ash’s robotic hard-on for poking around inside the disemboweled facehugger. But I digress.) Shamelessly Apple tried to sell this tweak to journalists as . iFixit was not at all convinced. “This flexible enclosure is quite obviously an ingress-proofing measure to cover up the mechanism from the daily onslaught of microscopic dust. Not — to our eyes — a silencing measure,” it wrote in July. “In fact, Apple has a designed to “prevent and/or alleviate contaminant ingress.” And the date on Apple’s ingress-proofing key-cap condom patent? September 8, 2016. Read that and weep, MacBook Pro second-half 2016, 2017 and first half 2018 owners. So if, like me, you’re saddled with a 2017 (or earlier) MBP there’s sweet F.A. you can do about this fatal design flaw in the core interfacing mechanism you must daily touch. Abstention is not an option. We must typo and wait for the inexorable, dust-based doom to strike the space bar or the ‘E’ key — which will then make the typing experience even more miserable (and require a trip to an Apple store to swaddle the misbehaving keys in rubber — leaving us computerless, most probably, in the meanwhile). There is an entire novel written without the letter E. I propose that Apple’s failed keyboard redesign be christened the ‘ ‘ in its honor — because, ye gads, it’s awful. This is especially, frustrating because the MacBook Air keyboard was so very, good. Not good — it was great. It was as close to typing perfection I’ve come across in a computer. And I’ve been typing on keyboards for a very long time. Why mess with such a good thing?! Marginally thinner than what was already exceptionally thin hardware is hardly something consumers clamour for. People are far more interested in having the thing they bought and/or use actually doing the job they need it for. And definitely not letting them down. (Or “defienmtely nort letting them down” as the keyboard just reworked the line. I really should have saved every typo and posted a mutant mirror text beneath this one, containing all the thousands of organic instances of ‘found poetry’ churned out by the keyboard’s inner life/poet/drunk.) If shaving 40% off the profile of the key mechanism transforms an incredible reliable keyboard into a dust-prone, typo-spewing monster that’s not progress; it’s folly of the highest order. Offering , as Apple finally did in June, doesn’t even begin to fix this fuck up. Not least because that’s only a fix for dust-based death; There isn’t a rubber film in the universe that could make typing on these keys a pleasing experience. What does it tell us when a company starts making the quality of its premium products worse? Especially a company famed for high-end design and high quality hardware? (Moreover, a company now worth a staggering ?) It smacks of complacency, misaligned priorities and worrying blindspots — at the very least, if not a wider lack of perspective outside the donut-shaped mothership. (Perhaps there’s been a little too much gathering around indoors in Cupertino lately, and not enough looking out critically at a flaking user experience… ) Or else, well, it smacks of cynical profiteering. Clearly it’s not a good look. Apple’s reputation rests in large part on its hardware being perceived as reliable. On the famous Steve Jobs’ sales pitch that ‘it just works’. So Apple designing a keyboard that’s great at breaking for no reason at all and lighting fast at churning out typos is a truly epic fail. Of course consumer electronic designs won’t always work out. Some failure is to be expected — and will be understood. But what makes the keyboard situation is Apple’s failure to recognise and accept the problem so that it could promptly clean up the mess. Its apparent inability (for so long) to acknowledge there even was a problem is a particularly worrying sign. Having to sneak in a late fix because you didn’t have the courage to publicly admit you screwed up is not a good look for any company — let alone a company with such a long, rich and storied history as Apple. More cynical folks out there might whisper it’s ; A strategic fault-line intended to push users towards an upgrade faster than they might have otherwise have unzipped their wallets. Though Apple offering free keyboard repairs (also, albeit, tardily) contradicts that conspiracy theory. Yet the notion of ‘built in obsolescence’ persists where consumer computing hardware is concerned, given how corporate profits do tend to be locked to upgrade cycles. In Apple’s case it’s an easy charge to level at the company given its business model is still, in very large part, driven by hardware sales. So Apple doing anything that risks encouraging consumers to feel it’s intentionally making its products worse is also folly of the highest order. Apple does have some active accusations to deal with on that front too. For example, a consumer group filed a complaint of planned obsolescence in France late last year — on account of Apple — something the company has faced multiple complaints over and some regulatory scrutiny. So again, it really needs to tread carefully. Tim Cook’s Apple cannot afford to be slipshod in its designs nor its communication. Jobs got more latitude on the latter front because he was such a charismatic persona. Cook is lots of good things but he’s not that; he’s closer to ‘safe pair of hands’ — so company comms should really reflect that. Apple may be richer than Croesus and king of the premium heap but it can’t risk tarnishing the brand. The mobile space is littered with the toppled monuments of past giants. And the markets where Apple plays are increasingly fiercely fought. Chinese device makers especially are building momentum with lower priced and highly capable consumer hardware. ( in the global smartphone rankings in Q2, for example). Apple’s rivals have mercilessly cloned its slender laptop designs and copypasted the look and feel of the iPhone. Reliability and usability are the bedrock of the price premium its brand commands, with privacy a more recent bolt-on. So failing on those fundamentals would be beyond foolish, with so many rivals now pushing cheaper priced yet very similarly packaged (and shiny) alternatives at consumers — which also often offer equal or even greater feature utility for less money (assuming you’re willing to compromise on privacy). When it comes to the Mac specifically, it clearly has not been Apple’s priority for a long time. The iPhone has been its star performer of the past decade, while growing its services business is the fresh focus for Cook. Yet when Cook’s Apple has paid a little attention to the Mac category it’s often been to fiddle unnecessarily — such as by clumsily reworking a great keyboard for purely cosmetic reasons, or to add a silly strip of touchscreen that’s at best distracting and (in my experience) just serves up even more unwanted keystrikes. So thrice blighted and the opposite of useful: A fiddly gimmick. This is worrying. Apple is a company founded with the word ‘Computer’ in its name. Computing its DNA. And, even now, while smartphones and tablets are great for lots of things they are not great for sustained writing. For writing — and indeed working — at any length a laptop remains the perfect tool. There’s no touchscreen in the world that can beat a well-designed keyboard for speed, comfort and typing convenience. To a writer, using a great keyboard almost feels like flying. You wouldn’t have had to explain that to Jobs. He honed his Mac sales pitch to the point of poetry — famously dubbing the Mac a ‘bicycle for the mind’. Now, sadly, saddled with this flatfooted and frustratingly flawed mechanic, it’s like Apple shipped a bicycle with a pair of needles where the pedals should be. Not so much thinking different as failing to understand what the machine is for. |
Getting personal: Funding rises for software-driven tastemakers | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | |
Paul Graham on why he doesn’t like seeing college-age and younger founders | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | Yesterday, as part of some of its programming for startup founders, the startup incubator posted a new interview with its widely revered founder Paul Graham. The apparent idea was for Graham to share some deep thoughts about startups with fellow founder and current YC partner Geoff Ralston, though in the video, the two spend much of the (entertaining) interview discussing Graham’s formative career and his cofounders in his early startup . (One of them is famous hacker Robert Morris, who became the first person convicted under the then-new Much of the advice that Graham does eventually dispense to the founders in the audience is interesting, however. Graham talks, for example, about his views on competition, which can essentially be boiled down to the idea that companies fail owing to poor execution, not because of me-too startups. In fact, says Graham, though companies worry about competitors, YC’s dataset suggests that “maybe one out of 1,900” of its portfolio companies has been killed by a rival that’s tackling the same problem. Graham also repeats another point that we’ve heard him make in the past, which is that determination is far more important than intelligence when it comes to becoming a successful startup founder. Take away determination bit by bit, and you have “this ineffectual but brilliant person,” says Graham. But subtract out intelligence bit by bit and “eventually you get to some guy who owns a bunch of taxi medallions but he’s still rich. Or [who has] a trash hauling business, or something like that. You can take away a lot of smart.” Yet our favorite part of the sit-down centers on the audience’s questions. One of these is a question about how founders deal with the varying commitment levels of their cofounders, which often change over time based on how the company is faring, as well as external events. Graham’s answer is simply for founders to ask themselves: “Would I rather have 30 percent of this [one] person, or 100 percent of another person?” (He says in the case of Morris, he would have taken 10 percent of him over 100 percent of another individual.) Asked about the right founder DNA, Graham also offers up an unsurprising insight but one we personally hadn’t heard him say before, which is that YC isn’t so crazy about funding people who’ve worked at “certain” large companies for long periods, as it has learned over the years that they aren’t natural founders. He doesn’t specify what the tipping point is for YC, but he offers that “if you’ve worked for a large company for 20 years, you might not be a founder, unless you were forced to [stay there] for visa reasons. Because if you were the kind of person who would make a good founder, you wouldn’t be able to stand working for a large company for 20 years.” Related to this same question, Graham is asked about the trend in Silicon Valley to employ — and fund — ever-younger individuals. It’s clearly a trend that Graham finds objectionable. Noting that he doesn’t “think on behalf of YC anymore” — not since to President Sam Altman in early 2014 — he says YC “better not be [funding high school students], because that would be an evil thing to do, There are plenty of high school students who could start successful startups,” he says, “but they shouldn’t . . . Because if you start a successful startup, like, the footloose and fancy-free days of your life are over. You’re working for that company.” At this point, Ralson pipes in to say that YC “funded high school students,” adding that it isn’t actively encouraging teen founders but has funded them “only because they are already going” with their companies. That doesn’t stop Graham from warning that people who start companies at too young an age are engaging in “premature optimization. When you’re in high school and even in college, you should be figuring out what the options are, not picking one option and running with it . . . it’s good to mess around with a whole bunch of things in your early 20s, whether this messing around takes the form of college or something else.” It’s not just a matter of losing out on precious time that could be better spent on exploration, he suggests. The real risk in taking the leap too soon is that it could work. “Starting a startup is like catching a dragon by the tail if it works. Be careful at what point you do that.” You can check out the full interview here. |
The Amazonization of Whole Foods, one year in | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | new tech into the relationship with Whole Foods after putting a one year ago. So how did that promise shake out? At the time, Amazon said the goal was to make “high-quality, natural and organic food affordable for everyone.” Bananas, avocados and even tilapia was going to be cheaper than before. Prime members would receive increased benefits with discount rewards and Amazon drones would be delivering packages right to your door. Okay, that last bit was not promised — though to speculate on that possibility in the future. A bunch of other Amazon offerings involving delivery options were also mentioned, including the getting of Whole Food groceries through a then new Amazon Fresh grocery delivery program and Whole Foods private label products would be made available through Prime Now and Prime Pantry. Further, Amazon lockers would be showing up at select stores to make pick ups and returns easier for Amazon customers. And, of course, new jobs would be created to handle all the new infusion of technology. Soon customers started to see Amazon Echo devices , urging people to install them in their home for easier grocery ordering through voice command. Echo dots lined the walls and could be found surrounded by produce. Amazon promised to deliver more devices to try in-store ahead of purchase as time went on. Since the launch, “customers have already saved hundreds of millions of dollars,” Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey. “So whether it’s better prices on your weekly shop, saving time through delivery from Prime Now or taking advantage of incredible weekly deals for Prime members, the overall customer experience is richer and more seamless than it’s ever been,” he continued. I’m not sure the average customer would see the experience as “richer and more seamless” but the changes are noticeable. Walking into my local Whole Foods, the Amazon branding is everywhere from the deep orange lockers off to the side, the large, green Amazon Fresh coolers greeting me at the entrance to the parking lot and rows of bags ready for pickup and delivery via Amazon workers. A large “Prime Member Deal” sign hangs down from the ceiling, greeting me at the front of the store. Beyond, there’s the produce, once fresh and free of rot with all organic labeling. Now? It’s unclear. I used to argue the “whole paycheck” prices were worth it for the better quality produce. Lately, I’ve had to throw a bunch of stuff out because it just doesn’t last as long or look as good. Not everything is organic. Other shoppers have the same dip in quality across the U.S., along with missing products or a lot of out of stock items they’d been buying for years at their grocery store. It’s been called the “ ” of Whole Foods by Wall Street investment bank Barclays, which also noted there had been some comments from Mackey about cultural “clashes” during his appearance at the American Production and Inventory Control society’s annual conference. On the flip, Amazon has managed to add some nifty integrations for Prime members including club member style sales prices and five percent cash back for those purchasing groceries with their Prime Visa card. You want to do one better, just download the Amazon app to your smartphone, use the code given and then purchase with Apple pay using your Amazon Prime credit card for maximum benefits. Of course, that’s only for those all in with the system. Adding to that, there’s the super fast two-hour delivery option (in 20 cities for now, with more to come this year, according to Amazon) and grocery pickup so you don’t even have to wander through the store to get everything you need (although, I am one of those who likes picking out my own produce and wandering through the store sometimes), I’ve also enjoyed using the integrated partnership to order Whole Foods items straight from my Amazon Fresh account (a lifesaver in those early days of postpartum when it was impossible to get out of the house). Before the integration I could use Instacart but had to order from each store separately in different orders. With Amazon, I can order from various stores, including Whole Foods through my Amazon Fresh account all in one order and then choose a time for delivery. There’s still some bumps with that process — you can’t order every item available in Whole Foods, just what Fresh offers that week through the Amazon platform. The bags are also large and often don’t fill up to their full potential, leaving a lot of waste. But that’s like complaining you can’t get good WiFi on an airplane. It’s frustrating but you are flying through the sky and messaging people on the ground. Similar, you are ordering food through the air waves and it shows up at your door step. In the grand scheme, it’s amazing! Anyway, yes, there are more conveniences for Amazon Prime members and further integrations with technology to make the shopping experience easier. It does also seem Amazon has hired more workers to fulfill the needs this technology creates. At my own market it seems tough to tell who is an Amazon worker rummaging through the aisles for listed items and who’s just shopping for themselves these days. Is the marriage working? Tough to tell at this point. Those promised changes may seem exciting for both parties but between disappointed shoppers and a “clash” in culture it may not have been what Whole Foods faithful wanted. Still, at least some vendors have said they’ve seen of products sold since the acquisition, despite the drop in prices. And Mackey, comparing his love for his wife with the relationship said in a recent interview “I don’t love absolutely everything about my wife, either, but on balance I love, like, 98%. That’s a pretty good ratio, based on my previous relationships.” It might not even matter what loyal Whole Foods customers think. The acquisition gives Amazon an opportunity to introduce its 100 million Prime members to the grocery store it envisions — one that could drop organic, fossil fuel free groceries via drone at their doorstep in the future. While it’s hard to know how the partnership has impacted Amazon’s bottom line overall, we do know sales going up and to the right is a good thing. We still need to see how this relationship performs over time but one year in looks promising. |
DJI Mavic 2 review | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 1 | was a revelation. It wasn’t a perfect product, to be sure, but it represented a new paradigm for DJI and the consumer drone industry in general. It was compact, folding up into a nice, portable package, while still being portable enough to shove into a backpack. It was also the beginning of a new line for the company, paving the way for the and — both even more portable than their predecessor. In the two years since it was introduced, however, the company hasn’t touched the flagship product. That changed early this month, when the company revealed the Mavic 2 at an event in Brooklyn. Even more so than the original, is focused on imagining. In fact, the camera is so central to the update that the company actually split the product into two SKUs — the Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom. The front-facing camera is the only real distinction between the two devices. It’s a bit of confusing branding, perhaps — especially in a line that already contains several different models. More to to the point, it’s a bit disappointing after the initial round of rumors suggested that the company might be introducing a drone with a modular gimbal. Imagine the possibilities of swappable cameras for photography professions. That, sadly, will have to wait for a future update. Beyond the camera, the update over its predecessor is fairly minimal given the two-year gap. In fact, I’d like to say upfront that this isn’t really enough to justify a purchase for those who own the first version — unless, of course, you’ve crashed it into . Of course, drones are not smartphones, and as such, they really shouldn’t be held to the same standards. And really, just about all of the upgrades are welcome here. If there’s one nit to pick, it’s that the new Mavic is notably larger than the original. It’s a surprising move, given how essential size and portability are to the whole enterprise. This is due, in part, to the fact that the company has made some aesthetic changes in the name of making the thing more aerodynamic. The upshot of that is faster speeds. The Mavic 2 is capable of traveling up to 44 miles an hour — pretty zippy for a mainstream consumer drone of its size. Of course, in order to support a heavier drone, you need a heavier battery, which in turn makes the whole thing heavier. You see where I’m going with this. The other downside: The new drone doesn’t work with the old one’s batteries. Even so, the company’s managed to squeeze more life out of the thing, upping life from 28 to 31 minutes. Not a lot, sure, but when it comes to these devices, every minute counts. And given the fact that the last drown I flew was the 18-minute Mavic Air, that addition makes all the difference in the world. When you’re running low on juice, the app will notify you, loudly. If you want more time, the batteries are swappable, and the company has made it possible to purchase its Fly More Combo (two batteries, a multi-battery charger and extra propellers, among others) at any time for $319. There are other tweaks here and there. Raked tips on the propellers and an adjusted motor means things run more quietly. You likely won’t notice a huge difference there, and it still sounds a bit like a lawnmower, but every little bit counts. The on-board tracking and obstacle avoidance systems have been adjusted, as well. The latter is pretty impressive for the most part, coming to a stop in the air when it spots something in its path. I’m going to be honest, this is my favorite part of testing these things. I did, however, manage to nick a tree, once the drone was out of my line of sight, sending it spiraling to the ground below. On the upshot, this was the ideal opportunity to test the tracking. I was able to find the drone pretty quickly using the app. Also, while there was a superficial scratch on the side of the drone, it was otherwise unscathed. I was able to get it back into the air quickly with no issues. The cameras on the product are impressive, as promised. The Mavic 2 Pro is the first product from the company to sport a Hasselblad-branded camera since DJI bought a massive chunk of the legendary Swedish camera maker, though I suspect there’s going to be a lot more where that came from. The camera has a 20-megapixel 1-inch sensor like the one found on the Phantom 4 Pro. Frankly, the device makes that model somewhat redundant, though the company tells me it’s sticking around. Unlike some of Hasselblad’s standalone cameras, there’s little lag in processing. And the pictures are great, as advertised. Our video producer Veanne described the output as “sharp” and “clear,” with an “epic” wide angle. This is a solid selection for those who want nice videos/still, without having to cart around a massive device. The Zoom’s camera is a bit of a step down, but the 2x optical (24-48mm) and 2x digital zoom are able to simulate the effect of a 96mm lens. Honestly, that’s going to be a much more valuable tool for many videographers than the Hassleblad — particularly for those instances when it’s hard to get close in on an object for any number of reasons. At $1,249, the Zoom is also $200 less than the Pro. I’d lean pretty heavily in that direction if I were agonizing over which model to purchase. There’s also the added bonus of Dolly Zoom, an extremely cool new mode that zooms into an object while the drone flies in the opposite direction, causing a disorienting effect similar to the one heavily used by Hitchcock in films like Vertigo. The new drones also feature some cool new hyperlapse effects, as follows: Unsurprisingly, those require several minutes to get good shots. Don’t try them once the battery warning starts beeping. The app will still attempt it and then emergency land the drone before completing. Control is pretty similar to the other models. The controller works well with both Apple and Android handsets, though larger ones like the Galaxy Note 9 are a bit awkwardly large to slot in. While actually getting off the ground for the first time is a bit of a chore, flying is surprisingly intuitive, once you get the hang of the two different joysticks. All in all, it’s actually not a bad starter drone, if you can afford it. With a starting price of $1,249, it’s not the cheapest on the market, but in terms of class, the Mavic products continue to be unmatched. DJI Mavic 2 initial impressions. — Brian Heater (@bheater) |
Pretty art screen startup Meural gets acquired by ugly wifi router company | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | The startup behind the art frame has been acquired by Netgear. The deal was announced during the router company’s analyst day and was confirmed to TechCrunch by a Meural spokesperson. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Netgear may feel like an odd suitor for this consumer hardware startup, but they were an early investor in them and the buy is certainly no more strange than the last exit in this smart art space, when , torched the hardware business and made the subscription content free to existing users. Meural has built some very nice hardware. At $595 the company’s art frames are a bit pricier than other products in the market, though its $40 annual subscription to its art network is much more palatable. The device’s gesture controls also offer some quality controls beyond the mobile app. Netgear seems to have some real interest in bringing the Meural hardware into its plans to hide wifi routers in plain sight in people’s homes, an analyst at the event noted in . It’s certainly an interesting prospect, this seems like an odd product to exercise this strategy with though. Smart art frames are at their ugliest when the power cord can’t be hidden and it’s probably going to be a tad difficult for you to hide ethernet cords on your wall unless you’re hiding them in the wall which doesn’t work great when so many smart home hubs need a direct connection to your router. Meural raised $9.3 million in funding from investors including Corigin Ventures, Bolt, Forefront Ventures, Firstrock Capital and Netgear. |
Goldman CFO: the story about us dropping Bitcoin trading was ‘fake news’ | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | It sometimes feels like the price of Bitcoin rises and falls on the turn of a speculative dime, and yesterday we saw one such moment come to pass, when was planning to drop a plan to build a Bitcoin trading platform, causing the price of the cryptocurrency to crash. But today, at , the CFO of Goldman Sachs described the story as “fake news,” and said that in fact the bank is still considering how to offer services that involved physical Bitcoin, but that it has not yet set a timeline for it. “I was in New York yesterday and I was co-chairing our risk committee, and I saw the news article,” said CFO Marty Chavez, referring to the report yesterday. “It wasn’t like we announced anything or that anything had changed for us… I never thought I’d hear myself actually use this term, but I’d really have to describe that as fake news.” As Chavez described it, Goldman Sachs had been building a Bitcoin trading platform modelled on a commodities futures trading platform, where there is never any Bitcoin traded, but more the promise of how the currency might move. “Our institutional clients said, ‘We would love for you to clear these new Bitcoin-linked futures contracts offered by the exchanges,’ so we’ve been doing that, and then clients since May [started to ask], ‘We would like for you also to provide us liquidity and trade the principal as principal the futures contracts, not just clear them,’ and so we’ve been doing that, the next stage of the exploration, what we call ‘non-deliverable forwards.’ “These are derivatives, over the counter derivatives,” he continued. “They’re settled in U.S. dollars and the reference price is the Bitcoin U.S. dollar price established by a set of exchanges, the same one that’s referenced in the futures contracts, and we’re working on that now because the clients wanted physical Bitcoin — something tremendously interesting and tremendously challenging. From the perspective of custody, we don’t yet see an institutional grade custody cases custodian solution for Bitcoin.” While companies like Coinbase are trying to tap into that demand by , but Goldman itself still has no timeline for when its own offering might be ready. “We’re interested in having that exist, and it’s a long road and so I would just be speculating. Maybe someone who was thinking about our activities here got very excited that we would be making markets as principal and physical Bitcoin, and as they got into realizing that that’s part of the evolution but it’s not here yet.” Bitcoin — and the crypto market generally — this week off the back of reports of Goldman’s aborted plans, but that wasn’t the sole trigger. that EU is looking into regulating crypto and is preparing a report that proposes to regulate exchanges and ICOs. Bitcoin hit a record valuation of nearly $20,000 in January, and it has struggled to return to those highs during the rest of this year. The cryptocurrency was priced at $6,536 at the time of writing, some way short of a months-long high of $8,266 on July 26, . |
Meet the five Startup Battlefield finalists at Disrupt SF 2018 | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Over the past two days, 21 companies have taken the stage at the Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield. We’ve now taken the feedback from all our expert judges and chosen five teams to compete in the finals. These teams will all take the stage again tomorrow afternoon to present in front of a new set of judges and answer even more in-depth questions. Then one startup will be chosen as the winner of the Battlefield Cup — and they’ll also take home $100,000. Here are the finalists. The competition will be livestreamed on TechCrunch starting at 1:35pm Pacific on Friday. CB Therapeutics is a new biotech company that aims to change the game with cannabinoids produced cleanly and cheaply in the lab, out of sugar. What it’s done is bioengineer microorganisms — specifically yeast — to manufacture cannabinoids out of plain-old sugars. . has a modern vision for enterprise search that uses AI to surface the content that matters most in the context of work. Its first use case involves customer service, but it has a broader ambition to work across the enterprise. . Mira is a new device that aims to help women who are struggling to conceive. The Mira Fertility system offers personalized cycle prediction by measuring fertility hormone concentrations in urine samples, telling women which days they’re fertile. . wants to bring voice assistants right to your ear without requiring you to wear a device like a Bluetooth headset or Apple AirPods. Instead, the startup is using a ring on your finger combined with bone conduction technology to allow you to use your smartphone’s built-in assistant – whether that’s Google Assistant or Siri – in an all-new way. . makes fashion-forward vibrators, and their latest is the Palma. The new device masquerades as a ring, offers multiple speeds, and is completely waterproof. And the team plans to add accelerometer features. . |
Vtrus launches drones to inspect and protect your warehouses and factories | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Knowing what’s going on in your warehouses and facilities is of course critical to many industries, but regular inspections take time, money, and personnel. Why not use drones? uses computer vision to let a compact drone not just safely navigate indoor environments but create detailed 3D maps of them for inspectors and workers to consult, autonomously and in real time. Vtrus showed off its hardware platform — currently a prototype — and its proprietary SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping) software at TechCrunch Disrupt SF as a Startup Battlefield Wildcard company. There are already some drone-based services for the likes of security and exterior imaging, but Vtrus CTO Jonathan Lenoff told me that those are only practical because they operate with a large margin for error. If you’re searching for open doors or intruders beyond the fence, it doesn’t matter if you’re at 25 feet up or 26. But inside a warehouse or production line every inch counts and imaging has to be carried out at a much finer scale. As a result, dangerous and tedious inspections, such as checking the wiring on lighting or looking for rust under an elevated walkway, have to be done by people. Vtrus wouldn’t put those people out of work, but it might take them out of danger. [gallery ids="1707207,1707205,1707204,1707202,1707209,1707002,1707003"] The drone, called the ABI Zero for now, is equipped with a suite of sensors, from ordinary RGB cameras to 360 ones and a structured-light depth sensor. As soon as it takes off, it begins mapping its environment in great detail: it takes in 300,000 depth points 30 times per second, combining that with its other cameras to produce a detailed map of its surroundings. It uses this information to get around, of course, but the data is also streamed over wi-fi in real time to the base station and Vtrus’s own cloud service, through which operators and inspectors can access it. The SLAM technique they use was developed in-house; CEO Renato Moreno built and sold a company (to Facebook/Oculus) using some of the principles, but improvements to imaging and processing power have made it possible to do it faster and in greater detail than before. Not to mention on a drone that’s flying around an indoor space full of people and valuable inventory. On a full charge, ABI can fly for about 10 minutes. That doesn’t sound very impressive, but the important thing isn’t staying aloft for a long time — few drones can do that to begin with — but how quickly it can get back up there. That’s where the special docking and charging mechanism comes in. The Vtrus drone lives on and returns to a little box, which when a tapped-out craft touches down, sets off a patented high-speed charging process. It’s contact-based, not wireless, and happens automatically. The drone can then get back in the air perhaps half an hour or so later, meaning the craft can actually be in the air for as much as six hours a day total. Probably anyone who has had to inspect or maintain any kind of building or space bigger than a studio apartment can see the value in getting frequent, high-precision updates on everything in that space, from storage shelving to heavy machinery. You’d put in an ABI for every X square feet depending on what you need it to do; they can access each other’s data and combine it as well. This frequency and the detail which which the drone can inspect and navigate means maintenance can become proactive rather than reactive — you see rust on a pipe or a hot spot on a machine during the drone’s hourly pass rather than days later when the part fails. And if you don’t have an expert on site, the full 3D map and even manual drone control can be handed over to your HVAC guy or union rep. You can see lots more examples of ABI in action . Way too many to embed here. Lenoff, Moreno, and third co-founder Carlos Sanchez, who brings the industrial expertise to the mix, explained that their secret sauce is really the software — the drone itself is pretty much off the shelf stuff right now, tweaked to their requirements. (The base is an original creation, of course.) But the software is all custom built to handle not just high-resolution 3D mapping in real time but the means to stream and record it as well. They’ve hired experts to build those systems as well — the 6-person team already sounds like a powerhouse. The whole operation is self-funded right now, and the team is seeking investment. But that doesn’t mean they’re idle: they’re working with major companies already and operating a “pilotless” program (get it?). The team has been traveling the country visiting facilities, showing how the system works, and collecting feedback and requests. It’s hard to imagine they won’t have big clients soon. |
Wingly is carpooling for private planes | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Don’t call Wingly the “Uber of the Sky” — Wingly co-fonder Emeric de Waziers would like to nip that little misinterpretation in the bud as the French startup looks to expand into the U.S. If anything, the startup’s mission is more akin to carpooling for small aircrafts, helping pilots fill up empty seats in small passenger planes. The distinction is an important one, with regard to the company’s ability to operate. After all, allowing private pilots to turn a profit changes the math significantly, both with regard to specific licenses and the company’s ability to operate inside different countries. Ninety-five percent of pilots who use the service don’t have a commercial license. “What often happens with hobby pilots is they set a budget for the year. They’re going to fly as many times as they can with this money. If they can fly four times cheaper, they can fly four times more. We have many pilots posting what we call ‘flexible flights,’ saying, ‘hey, I’m available for a roundtrip from San Francisco to Tahoe.’ The passenger says they’re interested and they book the flight.” [gallery ids="1707186,1707183,1707184,1707180"] Founded in July 2015, the company faced regulatory challenges early on in its native France. It was enough to cause Wingly to relocate operations, setting up shop in Germany in February of the following year. That launch was a sort of a proof of concept for the novel flight booking app. It was successful enough to convince Wingly to take on its home country again, pushing back against French regulatory bodies. These days, it operates in Germany, France and the UK, with those markets composing 45, 30 and 20 percent of the company’s business, respectively (with the other five percent belonging to various parts of Europe). Wingly’s flight matching service currently hosts around 2,000 passengers a month, with each flight averaging about 1.8 passengers. It’s not a huge number, but, then, these aren’t huge planes, with the prop and twin-engine crafts sporting between two and six seats each. Profitability for Wingly means pushing into high volume numbers, but the current pace has been successful enough for the startup to begin pursuing the U.S. as its next major market — a move the company plans to begin in earnest as a Battlefield contestant at Disrupt today in San Francisco. Currently, Wingly takes a 15-percent commission on each flight, along with a €5 charge. The company has also raised €2.5 million including a €2 million seed round back in December. It’s been enough funding to help the company thrive in Europe, but coming to the States will require additional cash, particularly its current launch time frame of early 2019. From there, Wingly hopes to reach numbers comparable to the business it’s doing in Europe by August/September of next year. |
Kinta AI uses artificial intelligence to make factories more efficient | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | aims to make manufacturers smarter about how they deploy their equipment and other factory resources. The company, which is presenting today at TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in San Francisco, was founded by a team with plenty of experience in finance, tech and AI. CEO Steven Glinert has held management and AI roles at fintech startups, CTO Rob Donnelly is studying the intersection of machine learning and economics as a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford and VP of Engineering Ben Zax has worked at both Facebook and Google. Glinert told me that when factory owners are making production decisions, they’re usually relying on “dumb software” to decide which machines should be used when, which can result in machines being deployed at the wrong time or in the wrong sequence, or sitting idle when they shouldn’t be. As a result, he said that scheduling errors account for 45 percent of late manufacturing orders. So Kinta AI tries to solve this problem with artificial intelligence, specifically . Glinert said the company will run “millions and millions of factory simulations,” where the system gains “a statistical understanding of how your factory works and learning what actions you do to get what result” — and it can then use those simulations to choose the best schedule. “We run through, not every possible scenario, but we try to go through some of those,” he said. Glinert added that Kinta AI works with its customers to understand the nuances of each factory. He also compared the technology to and — except that instead of using AI to play Go or Dota 2, Gilnert said Kinta AI is utilizing it “to do these detailed production planning decisions that are being made on the factory floor.” “Not all factories are that dissimilar from each other,” he said — similar to how “if you learned how to play Go, you can easily teach that neural net how to play chess or other game of that type.” And Kinta AI already has some customers, including chemical manufacturer and a medical device manufacturer. Ultimately, Glinert said Kinta AI could become a crucial part of the manufacturing process. He predicted that “in the factory of the future, there will be fewer people and more automation, with a vast environment of Internet of Things devices.” In that environment, he wants Kinta AI to be “the manufacturer execution system.” |
Google’s newest app Blog Compass helps bloggers in India manage their sites | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Google has been heavily focused on serving the needs of Indian web users with the recent launch of apps like , , , data-friendly versions of apps like and and . Now, the company is launching an app to serve the need of Indian bloggers with an app called “Blog Compass.” The new app, now in beta, quietly popped up in the Google Play Store this week with a note that’s it’s “only available in India.” According to its Play Store description, Blog Compass helps bloggers manage their sites and find topics to write about based on Google’s trending topics. These suggestions will also be based on the bloggers’ interests and posting history, it says. The app also helps bloggers manage their sites by tracking their site stats, approving comments and reading through tips for how to make their blogs more successful. It works with both Google’s own Blogger.com blogs as well as with WordPress sites. These are two of the largest platforms used by bloggers around the world. WordPress alone powers of websites, in fact. Blog Compass feels something like an introductory app for those who aren’t as familiar with how the web or blogging works. That may be appropriate for an emerging market like India, where many are coming online for the first time by way of mobile devices, having skipped the PC era of internet connectivity. However, as any old-school blogger would tell you, writing posts simply to cater to whatever is currently trending on Google is something of a traffic hack — and not necessarily how you want to build an audience for your site. Sure, it may bring you clicks as you chase one hot topic after another — but it’s better to develop your own voice and write what you’re passionate about if you really want to develop a relationship with readers. On the , screenshots show some of the sample teachings the app will contain. These include courses on things like getting started with SEO and analytics, for example. And, of course, getting your website listed on Google. The app is simply designed, with navigation via tabs at the bottom of the screen for moving through sections like Home, Activity, Topics and Badges. It seems the idea is to centralize a lot of the topic research and blog management overhead in a central place — something you can’t necessarily do with WordPress or own mobile apps, where the focus is more on using those apps’ publishing tools. We’ve reached out to Google to ask for more information about its intentions with Blog Compass, including whether it intends to roll it out to more markets in the future, or if it’s been developed specifically for India. |
Mira launches a device for more accurate fertility testing in the home | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Mira, launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, is a new device that aims to help women who are struggling to conceive. The Mira Fertility system offers personalized cycle prediction by measuring fertility hormone concentrations in urine samples, telling women which days they’re fertile. The system is more advanced and accurate than the existing home test kits, the company claims, which can be hard to read and aren’t personalized to the individual. The company behind Mira, , was founded in late 2015 by a group of scientists, engineers, OBGYN doctors, and business execs to solve the problem of the unavailability of advanced home health testing. “I have a lot of friends who, like me, [prioritized] their career advancement and higher education, and they tended to delay their maternal age,” explains Mira co-founder and CEO Sylvia Kang. “But there’s no education for them about when to try for a baby, and they have no awareness about their fertility health,” she says. Kang received an MBA at Cornell Johnson, went to Columbia for an MS in Biomedical engineering and received at PhD in Biophysics from University of Pittsburgh, before working as a Business Director at Corning where she was responsible for $100 million in global P&L, which she left to start Mira. She says that women’s hormones are changing daily, and everyone’s profiles differ due to their lifestyle, stress levels and other factors. The only way to accurately track fertile days, then, is through continuous testing – something that’s been difficult to do at home. To solve this problem, the team worked to develop the Mira system, which includes a small home analyzer, urine test strips, and an accompanying mobile application. The home analyzer miniaturizes lab equipment for home use, and brings down the cost. To use the system, the woman places the test strip into the device which then uses immunofluorescence technology to read the results. Currently, the device tests for the presence of luteinizing hormone (LH), which is an indicator of ovulation. However, the company has already has plans to update the device so it can test for other hormones in the near future. (It’s FDA-cleared to detect estrogen, for example, but that won’t be available at launch.) The system instead is $199 and ships with 10 test strips. After analyzing the strip, information about the hormone levels is displayed on the screen and sent to the Mira app via Bluetooth. [gallery ids="1707151,1707152,1707150,1707149,1703272,1703255,1703270,1703268"] The app offers women more information about what this data means – like whether they should attempt to conceive today or wait. A subscription service will also offer them access to doctors so they can ask questions, but this will be free at launch. “This technology is completely different from all the test strips on the market. It’s more accurate, but more importantly, this one is quantitative – that means we give you your actual, formal concentrations,” says Kang. “The [existing] tests strips only give you positive or negative. Since we have your numbers, our A.I. can do pattern recognition. Our algorithm prediction is based on your pattern specifically, not the average of all the population.” What this means, in practice, is that women struggling to conceive will have more accurate, more actionable, and more personalized results with Mira. During a clinical trial with 400 patient samples, Mira reached 99 percent accuracy, compared with lab equipment, the company says. They also have 18 IPs covering hardware, software, database management and more, including utility patents and models, design patents, trademarks and copyrights. The company is now working on a portal for doctors, so they could access their own patients’ data for further analysis. Mira may also eventually make its collected data, once anonymized, available to researchers, as well. But Kang says no formal decisions have been made on that front yet. Longer-term, Kang explains that the same system can be adapted to track pregnancy and menopause, and eventually similar technology could be put to use for analyzing other conditions, like those related to kidney problems or the thyroid. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company, is currently a team of 36 and has raised $4.5 million from investors including Gopher Ventures, and two other cross-border investors Mira doesn’t want to disclose publicly. At Disrupt, the company announced the Mira device is now available for pre-order and will begin shipping in October 2018. It’s sold online via the Mira website, but is in discussions with doctors and retailers to broaden its availability going forward. |
Slack is having connection issues again (Update: It’s back) | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | We're very sorry for the interruption. We're currently investigating connectivity problems, and we're working as quickly as we can to get everything back to normal. Thanks for bearing with us. — Slack (@SlackHQ) Seems things are back to normal, at least according to Slack’s internal monitors. Still. we’ll see if we can get more information about what’s been making the chat service unreliable of late. Here’s what Slack has to say, Things should be back to normal now. Thanks for your patience, and we’re extremely sorry for the disruption to your day. Our team is continuing to investigate this issue to ensure it doesn’t happen again. |
Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | UL, the company behind the tablet and phone performance benchmark app 3DMark, has delisted new Huawei phones from its “Best Smartphone” leaderboard after discovered the phone maker was boosting its performance to ace the app’s test. The phones delisted were the P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3 and the Honor Play. “After testing the devices in our own lab and confirming that they breach our rules, we have decided to delist the affected models and remove them from our performance rankings,” the company . For the Huawei case, the rules are actually a little fuzzy. Phones are permitted to adjust performance based on workload, which results in peaks or dips in performance for different apps, but they are not permitted to hard-code peaks in performance specifically for the benchmark app. Huawei reportedly claimed that the peak in performance seen during the run of the benchmark app was an intuitive jump determined by AI; however, when an unlabeled version of the benchmark test was run, the phones were unable to recognize it and, as a result, displayed lower performances. In other words, the phones aren’t so smart after all. Huawei is not the first company caught overstepping these rules. Samsung , and ironically the results of these benchmark tests actually mean little in terms of overall general performance of the phone. While they can point to how a phone may perform during heavy stress, average performance is still best discovered through individual testing. Huawei did not immediately return a request for comment. In a comment late Thursday night, a Huawei spokesperson told TechCrunch: Huawei always prioritizes the user experience rather than pursuing high benchmark scores – especially since there isn’t a direct connection between smartphone benchmarks and user experiences. Huawei smartphones use advanced technologies such as AI to optimize the performance of hardware, including the CPU, GPU and NPU. In normal benchmarking scenarios, once Huawei’s software recognizes a benchmarking application, it intelligently adapts to “Performance Mode” and delivers optimum performance. Huawei is planning to provide users with access to “Performance Mode” so they can use the maximum power of their device when they need to. Huawei – as the industry leader – is willing to work with partners to find the best benchmarking standards that can accurately evaluate the user experience. |
Former Facebook security chief says creating election chaos is still easy | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | As someone who’s had a years-long front-row seat to Russia’s efforts to influence U.S. politics, former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos has a pretty solid read on what we can expect from the 2018 midterms. Stamos to work on cybersecurity education at Stanford. “If there’s no foreign interference during the midterms, it’s not because we did a great job,” Stamos said in an interview with TechCrunch at Disrupt SF on Thursday. “It’s because our adversaries decided to [show] a little forbearance, which is unfortunate.” As Stamos sees it, there is an alternative reality in which the U.S. electorate would be better off heading into its next major nationwide voting day, but critical steps haven’t been taken. “As a society, we have not responded to the 2016 election in the way that would’ve been necessary to have a more trustworthy midterms,” he said. “There have been positive changes, but overall security of campaigns [is] not that much better, and the actual election infrastructure isn’t much better.” Stamos believes that it’s important to remember that foreign adversaries can’t dictate the outcome of an election with any kind of guarantee. What they can do — and what he calls his “big fear” — is that they can still mess everything up in a way that calls the entire system into question. “In most cases, throwing an election one way or another is going to be very difficult for a foreign adversary, but throwing any election into chaos is totally doable right now,” he said. “That’s where we haven’t moved forwards. ” Stamos gave examples of attacks on voter registration sites that lose voter data or denial-of-service attacks on the day of elections. “With a disinformation campaign at the same time, you can make it so that you have half the country that thinks the election was thrown,” he said. To a foreign adversary seeking to undermine U.S. democracy, creating that kind of doubt isn’t very technically difficult. Even with no votes changed and no voting systems breached, a little doubt goes a very long way toward accomplishing the same goals as a more sophisticated hacking campaign. Stamos cites new ad funding disclosures as one substantive change that will help make U.S. democracy healthier, but more efforts need to be taken. “Russian interference or not, we do not want a future where campaigns and candidates are cutting up the electorate into smaller and smaller pieces — so I think ad transparency is the first step there,” he said. In some cases, those efforts will require a major shift in the way both the U.S. government and private social media companies have conducted themselves. For one, as the U.S. needs “an independent, defense-only cybersecurity agency with no intelligence, military or law enforcement responsibility” rather than a patchwork of agencies each partially responsible for cybersecurity defense. The news may not be great for 2018, but a strong dose of realism now will amplify the clarion call to do better before 2020. |
Crossing Minds would like to recommend a few entertainment options | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | , which is launching in our Disrupt SF 2018 Battlefield today, is an AI startup that focuses on recommendations. The company’s app, , provides you with a wide range of entertainment recommendations, including books, music, shows, video games and restaurants, based on the data it can gather about you from services like Spotify, Netflix, Hulu and your Xbox. The company’s Alexandre Robicquet (CEO) and Emile Contal (CTO) tell me that they want Hai, which is available for iOS and on the web, to become people’s central hub for their entertainment needs. Both founders have extensive experience in machine learning and also managed to bring Sebastian Thrun on as an advisor. The team describes Hai as the “first pure cross-domain recommendation engine truly focused on the user.” Ahead of its launch, Crossing Minds raised $3.5 million from Index Ventures, Sound Ventures and You & Mr Jones Brandtech Ventures. [gallery ids="1704571,1704572,1704569,1704573,1704574,1704568,1704575"] As the team told me, the idea for Crossing Minds and Hai came from their own need of wanting a smart recommendation engine that went beyond a single domain. To get started, they downloaded a few data sets and started experimenting. That was 2016. Those first experiments were successful, but to build a full-scale product, the team needed more data and cleaner data sets. That’s what Crossing Minds focused on over the course of the last year or so, which really isn’t a surprise, given that we’re dealing with rather messy data here, yet there’s no way to build a machine learning-based recommendation system without a lot of data. Then, using techniques like transfer learning and other modern machine learning approaches, the team is able to take what it knows about you and apply that to other domains as well. “For example, when you read a biography of a band’s member, we can extract information that we can then relate to a movie or restaurants and so on,” Contal explained. The app itself is organized around three tabs: A discovery tab that surfaces its recommendations; the “Ask me” tab for when you are looking for very specific recommendations (a movie on Netflix, maybe); and the training tab that allows you to train Hai’s algorithm. For movies and other content that’s immediately accessible on your phone or on the web, Hai will also show a “Watch Now” button. [gallery ids="1707130,1707128,1707129,1707131"] On the technical side, Crossing Minds uses all of the usual machine learning frameworks, but one interesting twist here is that the team decided to build its own hardware infrastructure with off-the-shelf GPUs to train its models and for inference. In part that’s because renting GPUs from a major cloud provider by the hour can quickly get expensive, but the team also noted that owning the hardware allows them to have full control over it and also offers security benefits (though I’m sure the cloud providers would disagree with that last part). Over the course of the last few months, the team tested Hai with about 1,000 beta testers. The company isn’t quite ready to launch Hai to everybody, but it’s now taking and plans to open the service to a wider audience over time. |
Unbound makes pleasure fashionable | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | founders Polly Rodriguez and Sarah Jayne Kinney have long and varied careers. Rodriguez worked for U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill on Capitol Hill before heading to Deloitte Consulting and dating startup Grouper. Kinney was a graduate of University of Cincinnati worked at Puma and then at Esquire and O, Oprah’s magazine. She worked shooting products for fashion houses in New York. The duo met in 2014. Now they make fashion-forward vibrators. Their latest, the , is the most fashion-forward yet and it just launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. “Unbound is closing the very real orgasm gap by putting knowledge and product in the hands of women all over the world,” said Rodriguez. “Unbound is the first brand taking sexual wellness mainstream through elevated design and accessible pricing.” The new device masquerades as a ring, offers multiple speeds, and is completely waterproof. It’s made of surgical grade steel and comes in silver or gold. Further, the team plans to add accelerometer features to the device. It will ship in 2019. The team has raised $3.3 million in seed funding to date and are on track to hit $4 million in revenue in 2018. They’ve been working on improving the state of the art when it comes to vibrators. They are, it seems, tired of the status quo. [gallery ids="1707119,1707121,1707123,1707117"] “It’s important to note that vibrators are used in one of the most absorbent parts of the body and not regulated by the FDA. The lack of regulation results in manufacturers using carcinogens in their materials like parabens and phthalates. Unbound only uses medical grade silicone,” said Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s message is simple: she wants to destroy the negative stereotypes around sex and health. And she has good reason. “Each of us is motivated to change the stigmas associated with sexual health for different reasons. For me, it was going through menopause at 21 as a result of radiation treatment for cancer and ending up at a seedy shop on the side of the highway trying to buy lube and a vibrator. My doctors didn’t tell me I was going through menopause, only that I wouldn’t have children. As I got older, I realized that had I been a man, that conversation would have gone very differently… because we view male sexuality has a health need and female sexuality as a vice,” she said. “To put it in perspective, think about the fact that Bob Dole, a former presidential candidate was the spokesperson for Viagra. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton being the spokesperson for a vibrator brand? That’s the difference in how we view male vs. female (cis, femme, non-gender identifying) sexuality.” “Our dream at Unbound is for female sexual health to be viewed through the same lens as male sexuality — as a part of our overall health that deserves a conversation, platform, and shopping experience that doesn’t feel like a flaming pile of garbage,” she said. |
JUST’s plant-based eggs are coming to a grocery store near you | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | JUST Egg will be available in Hy-Vee, Fresh Thyme, Gelson’s, Nugget, Mollie Stone’s, New Seasons, Lunardi’s, Mariano’s, Haggen, Metropolitan Market, Acme Fresh Markets and others. |
Twitter brings Bookmarks to the web with a new design, now in testing | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Twitter is testing a new experience for web users, the company announced in a tweet on Thursday. A small number of Twitter users will see the updated version of Twitter for web, which will include access to Twitter’s Bookmarks feature, and scrolling through Twitter’s Explore section, the tweet said and a spokesperson confirmed. However, Business Insider screenshots of the opt-in pop-up that appears when you’re invited to test the revamped website, which promises other features like night mode, data saver and more. These are not necessarily “new” features though — The differences appear to be more subtle, as it turns out. For example, Night Mode is now a toggle switch, as is Data Saver, instead of an option to click on from your settings menu. Trends also shifted from one side of the home page to the other, underneath the “Who to follow” suggestions, which gives the interface a cleaner, more organized appearance. Love to use Bookmarks and want it on web? Into scrolling through Explore to see what's happening? We are testing out a new Twitter for web, which a small number of people will see today. Love it? Missing something? Reply and tell us. Don't have the new experience? Stay tuned. — Twitter (@Twitter) The “Compose Tweet” pop-up looks different as well. Instead of a boxed-in rectangular area to write in, it’s more of an open space with an underline. The “Location” button is missing on Compose, too, and the “Tweet” button has moved to the top. The addition of Bookmarks to the web client is the biggest and most welcome change. The feature publicly of this year on mobile platforms, but had not yet made it to the web. None of the other tweaks seem to be radical changes, though — not like the update that turned Twitter’s , for instance, or Twitter declined to say how many users were being opted in at present, or when the experience would roll out more broadly. But if you’re being offered the opt-in, you’ll see it. |
Look out US main-street banks, the Revolut is coming | Mike Butcher | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | , the new-generation smartphone-based bank which is blowing up Europe right now, has confirmed its intention launch in the United States and Canada later this year, taking its interesting combination of personal banking, crypto wallet and fee-free stocks trading app to main-street North America. Co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said the company now has a 60,000 person waiting list for U.S customers for when it launches. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco today Storonsky, said the startup, which has already passed the ‘unicorn’ stage of a billion dollar valuation, would be launching some time between October and December this year. Revolut’s app-based checking account and debit card offers customers payment notifications, built-in budgeting controls and the ability to spend and transfer money globally using the real exchange rate, thus bypassing forex fees. In the last six months, Revolut has launched a feature allowing customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies, although these are held within the app’s wallet, and can’t be traded on exchanges. The crypto currencies the company uses to provide this service is also held offline in ‘cold storage’, Storonsky told me on stage. He wouldn’t say where. Last week, the company launched a fully contactless metal card that gives customers up to 1% cashback on spending in either fiat or cryptocurrency, overseas travel insurance and a personal concierge for booking everything from restaurant tables to festival tickets. Revolut is also actively working on a commission-free trading platform. This will put it at logger-heads with the US-based , which bills itself as a disruptive force in the online brokerage industry, by allowing customers to buy and sell stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without paying a commission. Why? Because Robinhood has announced its intention to expanding into the personal banking space, while Revolut (a bank) is expanding into Robinhood’s space. It should make for an interesting battle-to-come. Launched three years ago, London-based Revolut has grown very quickly in Europe. The company has a total of three million customers and claims it is opening over 7,000 new accounts every day. Revolut has raised over $336 million in funding from VCs including Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and DST Global, and unusually originally crowd-funded its startup capital. Incumbent US banks would do well to sit up and take notice. They are about to have a very aggressive challenger bank appear on their doorstep which appeals to the many millennials who run their lives via a smartphone. |
Google’s Pixel 3 launch event will happen on October 9th | Greg Kumparak | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Google’s Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are hardly a secret at this point, having leaked out and over the last few weeks. But they’re still not official. The phones just took one big step closer to real, with Google sending out invites for a “Made By Google” event that will almost certainly focus on the phones. The invite itself doesn’t say much, besides that it’ll happen at 11 am on October 9th in New York. They also use a “3” (as in Pixel 3) to make a heart in “I <3 NY”, presumably no accident. The rumor mill, meanwhile, has said plenty. Like that the Pixel 3 will likely have a Snapdragon 845 processor, 4GB of ram and a 12.2 megapixel camera behind a 5.5″ display. The beefier Pixel 3 XL, meanwhile, is said to bump things up to a 6.71″ display (complete with the always controversial camera cutout) and 6GB of ram. |
Popbase helps YouTube stars build closer relationships with their fans | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Entertainment has changed. New platforms led by YouTube have emerged to change the dynamic of broadcast media — once dominated by the rigid programming of TV — while the internet has enabled new media stars to engage with their audiences in new, high-touch ways. Developments like live streaming, social media and more have made the stars of today more relatable and more easily reachable than those of yesteryear. The easiest example to grasp is arguably the Kardashian family. They dominate the media, have accrued millions of fans on social networks and have branched into retail, fashion, production and more. Their relationship with fans is 24/7 and, regardless of how you feel about the family, their popularity is a clear indicator of this new always-on connection between public figures and their fans. A new startup is seizing on an opportunity to help up-and-coming online entertainers take a leaf out of that book and grow their relationships with fans. is an app that operates almost like an interactive forum for new media. [gallery ids="1706929,1706930,1706927,1706928,1706931"] The app is designed to take the relationship beyond videos and encourage a more interactive experience. Initially, that means trivia quizzes, exclusive content and news snippets — i.e. exclusive content clips for members — but the plan to go beyond that and enable games, augmented reality, collectibles and more. While the primary goal is to help grow the fan-creator relationship, Popbase is also aimed at enabling YouTubers to monetize their brand through in-app purchases and advertising around content. Creators take a 60 percent cut of all revenue with the remainder going to Binary Bubbles, the Los Angeles-based startup behind the service. However, that revenue split can rise as high as 70 percent for creators when they “start doing really well,” according to Binary Bubbles CEO Lisa Wong. In addition, there are incentives for referring others to the platform. “YouTubers who aren’t as huge as PewDiePie [the star with 65 million subscribers] work very hard,” Wong told TechCrunch in an interview. “With Popbase, we are giving them a chance to gamify and monetize their YouTube content and personality.” If you recall — which was reportedly grossing $200 million per year — Popbase’s strategy is to allow influencers with a more modest budget to tap its platform and offer some of those customized experiences for their audiences. So far, Binary Bubbles has signed up five YouTubers — with a collective fan base of one million followers — and it is looking for more influencers with a following that sits between 10,000 and one million fans. Popbase users can watch content with a virtual avatar of the YouTube creator The startup has raised around $145,000 to date, and it is targeting a total pre-seed round of $500,000. |
Kadho debuts Kidsense A.I., offline speech-recognition tech that understand kids | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | Kadho, a company building automatic speech recognition technology to help children communicate with voice-powered devices, is officially exiting stealth today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 where it’s launching its new technology, The company claims its technology can better decode kids’ speech as it was built using speech data from 150,000 children’s voices. The COPPA-compliant solution, which is initially targeting the voice-enabled devices and voice-enabled toys market, is already being used by paying customers. As anyone with an Echo smart speaker or Google Home can tell you, today’s devices often struggle to understand children’s voices. That’s because current automatic speech recognition technology has been built for adults and was trained on adult voice data. Kidsense.ai, meanwhile, was built for kids using voices of children from different age groups and speaking different languages. By doing so, it believes it can outperform the big players in the market like Google, Samsung, Baidu, Amazon, and Microsoft, when it comes to understanding children’s speech, the company says. The company behind the Kidsense AI technology, Kadho, has been around since 2014, and was originally founded by PhDs with backgrounds in A.I. and neuroscience, Kaveh Azartash (CEO) and Dhonam Pemba (Chief Scientist). Chief Revenue Officer, Jock Thompson, is a third co-founder today. Initially, the company’s focus was on building conversational-based language learning applications for kids. “But the biggest pain point that we encountered…was that the devices that we were using or apps on – either mobile phones, tablets, robotics, or smart speakers – they’re not built to understand kids,” explains Azartash. He means the speech recognition technology wasn’t built on kids’ data. “They’re not designed to communicate or understand kids.” [gallery ids="1706877,1706881,1706883,1706878"] The team realized there was a bigger problem to solve. Teaching kids new language using conversational techniques couldn’t work until devices could actually understand the kids. The company shifted to focus instead on speech recognition technology, using a data set of kids voices (which it did with parents’ consent, we’re told), to build Kidsense. The initial product was a server-based solution called Kidsense cloud AI in late 2017. But more recently, it’s been working on an embedded version of the same platform, where no audio data from kids is collected, and no data is sent to cloud-based servers. This allows the solution to be both COPPA and GDPR-compliant. This also means it could address the needs of device makers who have been previously come under fire for their less than secure toys and robotics, like , or its The idea today is that toy makers, smart speaker manufacturers, and others catering to the kids’ market will need to be compliant with more stringent privacy laws and, to do so, the processing has to be done on the device, not the cloud. “All the decoding, all the processing is one on the device,” says Azartash. “So we’re able to offer better efficacy and better accuracy in converting speech to text…the technology does not send any speech data to the server.” “We’ve figured out how to put this all onto the device in an efficient way using minimal processing power,” adds Thompson. “And because we’re embedded we can charge a flat fee depending on the product anywhere to a subscription model.” For example, a toy company working with thin margins on a product with a really small lifespan might want a flat fee. But another company may have a product with a longer lifespan that they charge their own customers for on subscription. They may want to be able to update their product’s voice tech capabilities over-the-air. That’s also possible here. The company says its technology is in several toys, robotics, and A.I. speaker products around the world, but some of its customers are under NDA. It’s also testing its technology with chip makers and big-name kids’ brands here in the U.S. On stage, the company also showed off its latest development – dual language speech recognition technology. This is the first technology that can decode two languages in one sentence, when spoken by kids. This is an area smart speakers and their related voice technology are only now entering, within the adult market that is. For example, Google Assistant is preparing to in English, French and German this year. Currently, the company has approximately $1.2 million in revenue from customers on annual contracts and its SaaS model. It’s been operating in stealth mode, but is now preparing to reach more customers. To date, Kadho has raised $2.5 million from investors including Plug and Play Tech Center, Beam Capital, Skywood Capital, SFK Investment, Sparks Lab, and other angel investors. It’s preparing to raise an additional $3 million before moving to a Series A. |
Lori Systems is launching a service with the Kenyan government for last-mile haulage from railroads | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | For chief executive and co-founder Josh Sandler, deals like the one between his company and the Kenyan government to solve last-mile solutions around the national railroad are about far more than just logistics. Sandler, whose family battled apartheid in South Africa as social workers, township doctors and (more dangerously) as financiers for the Spear of the Nation (the armed wing of the African National Congress), looks at logistics as an economic cornerstone for building more stable and democratic societies in sub-Saharan Africa. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. in 1990 when Sandler was still a young child to escape the violence that accompanied the negotiations to dissolve South Africa’s apartheid state. Sandler’s father had worked as a doctor in township hospitals, while his mother was a social worker who was setting up a support network for abused children. “ But South Africa remained the touchstone for Sandler’s family life and he would often return to visit those activist relatives who remained to help shepherd the country through its early years as a democracy. It was during one visit to the country — when Sandler was working in a refugee camp — that the need for better economic solutions to the region’s problems became clear. In the aftermath of the economic collapse of Zimbabwe and the long-simmering civil war in the Congo in 2008, refugees from the region were flooding into South Africa — and it triggered a response in the country’s citizens. resulted in rioting, looting and the murder of immigrants at camps — and Sandler had gone to volunteer at the shelters that were caring for these refugees. “I had been d So Sandler studied development economics. His work focused on supply chains — specifically working with the Kenyan government to analyze what went into the dramatic cost increases that are attendant with the sale of every good and service in the country. “When you buy a mango on a farm, it’s half a penny and then in the supermarket it’s 80 cents,” said Sandler. From Kenya, Sandler moved to study Nigeria and worked on problems with supply chain management in pharmaceuticals. “I did a lot of trips and treks back to the continent and what I kept seeing is challenges in the supply chain — part of it is middlemen and part of it is haulage.” Sandler said. “ After seeing the elegance of the marketplace model that Uber had set up for ride-hailing and given the penetration of smart and feature phones in Africa, Sandler thought he could do something to create a marketplace for the trucking industry. Lori Systems first launched in Kenya and started working with a network of trucking companies. Around that time the company also came to the attention of TechCrunch. Yes, Lori Systems — as competitors (and eventual winners) of our inaugural TechCrunch Battlefield competition in Nairobi. Since appearing on stage at our Nairobi event, Lori has grown quickly. The company counts 70 employees on staff — up from 20 — and now has 70 cargo operators responsible for a network of 2,500 trucks using its service. The staffing changes at Lori include some big new executive hires, including Andrew Musoke, who has come on board as director of commercial products, and a former director of Maersk, Mehul Bhaat, who will be running operations in East Africa for Lori, Sandler says. Lori has also expanded internationally — working with fleets in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa while also increasing the types of cargo that its fleet operators are transporting. “We went from just doing grain and fertilizer to now we do all freight bulk,” says Sandler. Not everything about the TechCrunch experience was positive for Sandler and the company. After their victory, Lori, and Sandler, were subjected to criticism from some African press. “ The accusations aside, Sandler said the victory in the Startup Battlefield Africa competition validated the company with potential new hires. As for the opportunity, Sandler says there’s $180 billion in hauling income across the African continent, and very little of it has been optimized with software. Ultimately, if Lori succeeds it will mean lower prices and increased spending power for consumers across Africa. “If you’re earning a dollar a day and 40 percent or 60 percent is going to logistics that could be going somewhere else, that’s a problem,” Sandler said. It’s exactly the problem that Lori is setting out to solve. |
BlaBlaCar is on the path to profitability | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | French startup just released some interesting metrics. The company has reached profitability if you look at revenue between January 2018 and today. BlaBlaCar forecasts that 50 million people will book a ride on BlaBlaCar in 2018, which represents a 40 percent increase compared to 2017. BlaBlaCar is a marketplace for long-distance rides. People driving from point A to point B can find riders willing to go in the same direction to share the cost of the ride. A few years ago, when BlaBlaCar raised multiple , co-founder and now president Frédéric Mazzella told me that the company was at a crossroad and had to choose between growth first then profitability, or profitability then growth. It looks like the company has now completed its growth-then-profitability journey. There are now 65 million registered users on the platform, including 15 million users in France. The service is currently live in 22 countries. In France in particular, 40 percent of people aged between 18 and 35 are using BlaBlaCar. While the company is reaching market saturation on this segment, elderly people currently represent a growth opportunity. It is the fastest growing segment and the user base has doubled in six years when you look at this part of the user base in particular — I know, these are some soft metrics so it’s hard to understand if it’s going to impact the company’s bottom line. Foreign countries now represent 75 percent of BlaBlaCar’s activity. When it comes to features, BlaBlaCar started automatically matching people who are departing or arriving from a small city. Drivers don’t have to manually input a list of cities on the way. 20 percent of departure or arrival cities surface thanks to this new algorithm. One way of reaching profitability is by reducing costs. And it’s true that BlaBlaCar and is now a leaner company. Now, BlaBlaCar is in great shape for an acquisition or an IPO. But the company says that it’ll keep investing to innovate, diversify and open new markets. So all options are still on the table. |
Chinese electric scooter startup Niu files for $150M U.S. public offering | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Chinese electric scooter startup has filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq to raise up to $150 million. In its , Niu said it is “the largest lithium-ion battery-powered e-scooters company in China,” according to data from China Insights Consultancy, and also a market leader in Europe based on sales volume. Founded in 2014 and based in Beijing, Niu says it currently holds a market share of 26% in China based on sales volume. Niu’s debut will the latest in a string of recent Chinese tech IPOs, the most prominent of which include the recent and . Niu’s scooters connect with an app that give drivers maintenance and performance data and also delivers firmware updates. As of the end of June, Niu claims it had sold more than 431,500 smart electric scooters in China, Europe and other markets. According to the CIC’s data, China is the largest market for electric two-wheeled vehicles, with retail sales expected to increase to $13 million by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2017. Niu says its growth markets also include Southeast Asia and India, where scooters are a popular form of transportation. In its filing, Niu said its net revenue in 2017 was RMB 769.4 million ($116.2 million), an increase of 116.8% from RMB 354.8 million in 2016. Its net losses during that time decreased to RMB 184.7 million ($27.9 million) in 2017 from RMB 232.7 million in 2016. More recently, net revenue for the first six months of 2018 was RMB 557.1 million ($84.2 million), an increase of 95.4% from RMB 285.1 million the same period a year earlier. Net loss was RMB 314.9 million ($47.6 million) during that period, compared to RMB 96.6 million the year before. |
Google CEO Sundar Pichai will reportedly meet with Republican lawmakers this week | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Google CEO Sundar Pichai will meet in private with Republican lawmakers on Friday to discuss issues including its work in China and alleged political bias, . The meeting was organized by House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, who has accused Google of by boosting negative news stories about conservatives in its search results, despite the company’s denials. The WSJ reports that Pichai also plans to appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled to take place in November after the mid-term elections. Pichai told the newspaper that “I look forward to meeting with members on both sides of the aisle, answering a wide range of questions, and explaining our approach. These meetings will continue Google’s long history of engaging with Congress, including testifying seven times to Congress this year.” A , McCarthy that “an invite will be on its way” to Google, which he accused in the same tweet of making a “silent donation” to an unnamed left-wing group to stop Trump; working with Russia and China to censor the Internet even though it cancelled a U.S. military contract and ignoring a Senate hearing. McCarthy told the WSJ that “Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behavior and business dealings with repressive regimes like China.” As an example of what he claims to be Google’s anti-conservative bias, McCarthy previously that listed “Nazism” under the California Republican Party’s ideologies. Google blamed vandalism on Wikipedia for the descriptor, which appeared in an information box, and quickly removed it. Though McCarthy did not specify what contract he was referring to in his tweet, it may have been Project Maven, an aerial drone imaging program that provided artificial intelligence to the Department of Defense. Google because of ethical concerns and employee backlash. In August, however, sources that Google is working on a version of its search engine for China, code-named Project Dragonfly, that would adhere to the government’s censorship regulations. This prompted bipartisan outcry and more employee backlash, including Poulson told the Intercept that about five of Google’s employees have resigned over Project Dragonfly, which he says represents “the forfeiture of our public human rights commitments.” As part of the Republican Party’s onslaught against what it perceives to be political bias on social media, Attorney General Jeff Sessions to discuss social media’s . TechCrunch has contacted Google for comment. |
Why Instagram’s founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Facebook promised Instagram autonomy, but reduced it over time leading to today’s bombshell revelation. Eight years after launching Instagram and six years after selling it to Facebook, Instagram co-founders CEO Kevin Systrom and CTO Mike Krieger are leaving the company, according to . The founders apparently did not give a reason for their departure when they informed the company today that they’re resigning and that they’ll depart in the next few weeks. But according to TechCrunch’s sources, tension had mounted this year between Instagram and Facebook’s leadership regarding Instagram’s autonomy. Facebook had agreed to let it run independently as part of the acquisition deal. But in May, Instagram’s beloved VP of Product Kevin Weil moved to Facebook’s new blockchain team and was replaced by former VP of Facebook News Feed Adam Mosseri — a member of Zuckerberg’s inner circle. “Adam is a very strong-willed individual” said a source, and “Chris [Cox, Facebook’s Chief Product Officer] and Kevin never really got along.” Between the two, they could pressure Instagram to do more for Facebook — which was important given the impact of scandals and dwindling teen usage on Facebook’s brand. “ I saw that this guy [Systrom] is gonna get squeezed.” However, another source said Mosseri was well-received and productive since moving to Instagram in the middle of the year, and Cox has been cooperative with Systrom. Both are said to remain popular inside the company. Systrom and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg historically got along, but they had occasional diverging opinions. A source said that a few times a year they’d clash before resolving things. Those clashes included “Sharing back to Facebook. Kevin wanted to keep the sharing on Instagram but at some point Mark wanted content production on Instagram to flow to Facebook. But things got more heated lately. “Recently Mark decided to pull all of the links to Instagram from Facebook.” The evidence of that standoff can be seen in Facebook, which last year . That shortcut has since disappeared. This year, some Instagram users started getting both Facebook alerts inside their Instagram notifications tab, and seeing a Facebook button with red notification counts inside Instagram’s settings menu. Facebook removed the shortcut to Instagram from its bookmarks menu, as seen in the second line here The stress imposed by Facebook also manifested in other departures. Earlier this year, Instagram’s director of public policy And two weeks ago, Instagram’s COO Marne Levine who was known as a strong unifying force, went back to lead partnerships at Facebook. Without an immediate replacement named, Instagram started to look more like just a product division within Facebook. And without them, and with Facebook’s other top liutenants all under order, it’s unclear who’d be fit to lead Instagram other than Zuckerberg loyalist Mosseri. Our source says that “Mosseri was very disappointed that he didn’t get the ‘head of Facebook’ gig which went to Will Cathcart. VP Of Product at Instagram was kind of a consolation prize.” But they say his assignment to Instagram VP was Zuckerberg doing “succession planning for Kevin and Mike. Mark is a brilliant strategist and of course he’s going to want to install someone. Despite rumors about a potential departure, Instagram staffers were surprised and saddened to hear Systrom would leave. “Kevin left some big shoes to fill” a source says. “There’s some internal skepticism about whether Adam can fill the role.” However, overseeing Facebook’s anti-fake news changes since the 2016 election has likely taught Mosseri a ton about predicting consequences — a valuable skill to bring to Instagram as its influence on culture eclipses Facebook’s. I think he’d do fine. Facebook has begun invading Instagram with alerts in its settings sidebar (left) and notifications tab (right) After growing the app to 1 billion users, conquering its archrival Snapchat, turning it into a massive advertising business, Instagram’s founders may feel that they’ve done their duty and are ready to tackle different challenges. And rather than fight through Facebook’s impositions, they’d rather go build something new. (and ), Systrom and Krieger wrote that “We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.” Zuckerberg gave his own statement to TechCrunch, stating “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents. I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it. I wish them all the best and I’m looking forward to seeing what they build next.” CEO Kevin Systrom The pair, former Stanford classmates, originally built a social location app Burbn but discovered its photo filters were by far the most popular part of the app. By combining tools to make grainy photos from early smartphone look good with a social feed for sharing them, Instagram became perhaps the world’s most succesful mobile app. Deemed such a threat, Facebook spent $715 million to acquire the startup and its less-than 50 million monthly users. Supercharged by Facebook’s engineering team, Krieger could finally rest a little after spending years fighting server fires in attempts to manage Instagram’s meteoric growth. Sales, internationalization, anti-spam, and other resources from Facebook let Instagram fuel its growth and sprout an advertising business. The moment of truth for Instagram came in late 2016 with the launch of Stories, a clone of Snapchat’s trendy ephemeral sharing feature. At the time, Systrom admitted “they deserve all the credit”. But by jamming Stories atop the already-thriving Instagram feed, sorting them to show your best friends first unlike Snapchat, and focusing on performance in developing countries Snap neglected, the copycat soon surpassed the original. Instagram Stories now has 400 million daily users compared to 188 million on Snapchat’s whole app. During those six years, Instagram also had its share of troubles. Cyberbully became rampant, leading the company to eventually invest heavily in artificial intelligence and human moderators to keep the app clean. Russian military operatives spread misinformation and propaganda on Instagram that reached 20 million Americans, implicating the company in an election interference scandal that will continue through the upcoming mid-term elections. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event Facebook had largely allowed Instagram to run independently. Systrom and Zuckerberg worked closely, yet Instagram wasn’t forced to drown its users in cross-promotion for other Facebook products or make worrying privacy decisions. As Mosseri moved in and Facebook wanted Instagram to pull its weight, its autonomy was endangered, leading to disagreements between the two factions’ leaders. The departure follows fellow Facebook acquisition WhatsApp’s founders leaving under much more grim circumstances. Brian Acton cited Facebook privacy concerns amongst reasons for his departure, tweeting “Delete Facebook” amidst one of its recent scandals. Facebook has gradually moved to exert more control over all of its acquistions. Perhaps the strongest legacy of Systrom and Krieger will be how Instagram changed global culture. It made non-artists feel creative, and let people give friends a window into their world, engendering empathy and friendship. An early, heavily-filtered photo of the two founders At the same time, a desperate lust for Likes led many people to manicure their online image while hiding their sorrows and vulnerabilities. Instagram became the premier venue for success theater, where people engender health-harming envy in others by showing off just their most glamorous moments. And when Instagram launched Stories to try to get users to share more than just their life highlights, it ended up normalizing the behavior of interrupting every special moment with their smartphone camera. Systrom took a stand on the digital well-being issue, saying “We’re building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram – any time should be positive and intentional . . . Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it’s the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously.” Perhaps Systrom and Krieger’s next project will seek to offset some of the distortions to society caused by their creation. Or they could take another shot and bringing people together through the lens of art and self-expression. Instagram rose to dominance in part because they stuck around to keep its culture and product distinct from the company that bought it. Like their app encourages, Systrom and Krieger saw the potential for art where no one else did. |
Car-sharing network Turo expands service in UK | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Turo — the peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace sometimes referred to as the ‘Airbnb of cars’ — is expanding to the UK. And this time, everyday car owners can actually use it. The San Francisco-based company expanded to the UK once before in 2016. But at the time, the Turo platform was only offered to under its . Now, anyone who owns or leases a 2008 model-year or newer vehicle can list it on the Turo app. The company’s insurance partner Allianz covers all vehicles rented by its pre-approved users. Turo first launched in 2009 as Relay Rides and rebranded with a new name in 2015. Since then, the company has expanded to new markets, including Canada and . Turo now has 8 million users, a third of whom were added this year, according to the company. The UK is the company’s most-searched-for destination outside North America, according to Turo CEO Andre Haddad, who added that British guests in the U.S. and Canada represent its largest portion of international travelers. “This makes us confident that now is the right time to expand here,” Haddad said in a statement. Turo markets itself to car owners as a way to earn extra money and cover the cost of owning their vehicle. Although some of its customers have turned into power users, people who own a fleet of vehicles that are listed on Turo. Turo has received over $205 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, August Capital, Shasta Venture and Google Ventures, among others. The company closed a earlier this year, which included investment from Sumitomo Corporation and American Express Ventures. |
As English burns, Scrabble plays the fiddle adding 300 words like Bitcoin, botnet and emoji | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | OK may not be worth much, but bizjets could garner up to 120 points. Earlier this month, Merriam-Webster added , including ‘TL;DR,’ ‘instgramming,’ ‘fintech,’ ‘biohacking,’ ‘rando’ and ‘bingeable.’ |
After extradition to Texas, 3D-printed gunmaker Cody Wilson is out on bail | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Last week, after creator and Cody Wilson was charged with the sexual assault of a minor, he managed to evade arrest briefly in Taipei. On Friday, authorities successfully located Wilson and , booking him into a Harris County jail. Now, Wilson is out on a . Wilson’s arrest in a Taipei hotel on Friday was the result of a collaborative effort between the U.S. Marshals, Taiwan’s police force and the U.S. State Department. His charges stem from an August 22 incident during which Wilson allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old he found on SugarDaddyMeet.com, paying her $500 for sex in a North Austin hotel. The charges are corroborated by security footage showing Wilson himself and a car with a license plate registered to his business. The charges originated from a report by a counselor who had spoken with the 16-year-old girl who identified Wilson and described the alleged assault. Wilson lives in Austin where he owns and operates Defense Distributed, a defense company that conducts research and development “for the benefit of the American rifleman.” He reportedly fled to Taiwan after receiving a tip that authorities sought to arrest him. “This was a collaborative effort that demonstrates the dedication of local, state, federal and international officials working together to bring this fugitive to justice,” U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Texas Susan Pamerleau said of the arrest. In a , Wilson’s lawyer Samy Khalil announced Wilson’s intentions to fight the charges. “We are glad that Cody is back in Texas again where we can work with him on his case,” Khalil said. “That’s our focus right now, representing our client and preparing his defense.” |
TC Sessions: AR/VR early-bird sale extended to Friday | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | You heard it here first! Early-bird ticket sales are extended till September 28 for on October 18 at UCLA. Don’t miss out on the biggest savings for this event — book your $99 tickets . Students, get your tickets for just $45 when you book . What’s going to happen at TC Sessions: AR/VR you ask? You’re going to hear from today’s leading innovators, watch exclusive demos onstage and network with some of the world’s leading minds in augmented/virtual reality. Who wouldn’t want that? Onstage discussions include Augmenting the Office, Building Inclusive Worlds, Your Virtual Self, and Ditching Headsets for Holograms. And you’ll get to hear from leading industry minds, including: (VNTANA)
(Founders Fund)
(Oculus)
(Survios)
(Facebook)
(6D.AI)
(General Catalyst) When you tweet your attendance through our ticketing platform, you’ll save an additional 25 percent (for early-bird tickets) and 15 percent (for student tickets). Check out the full agenda and speaker list .
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MetroPCS is now Metro by T-Mobile | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | null |
You can play Alto’s Adventure on your Mac now | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Everyone’s favorite endless, serene snowboarding game just made the leap from mobile to the Mac App Store. , Alto’s Adventure for Mac is a desktop port of the side-scrolling snowscape game that’s won hearts and accolades since it first hit iOS in 2015. Earlier this year, the team behind Alto’s Adventure introduced a second game, , which trades the first game’s snowy terrain for sand and sun while maintaining its charm. If you’ve already spent some time with Alto’s Odyssey, the Mac version of the classic is a good reason to circle back. The game’s serene setting and blissed out music make Alto’s Adventure eminently replayable, even if you’ve already sunk tens of hours into lengthening your scarf in an infinite procedurally generated snowy world dotted with charming villages, dramatic slopes and many, many things to trip over. If you’ve yet to dive into Alto’s Adventure, and we really recommend that you do, the Mac version is probably a good starting place. For everyone else, progress in the game syncs across devices through iCloud, so it’s a good excuse to push a little further into one of the most thoughtful, pleasant mobile game experiences to date. And while you’re hanging out in the Mac App Store, don’t forget to — Apple’s latest desktop operating system is available now. |
Mike Curtis, Airbnb’s VP of engineering, is leaving | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Airbnb’s head of engineering will leave the company before the end of 2018 to pursue other projects and focus on his family. The news was first reported by and later confirmed to TechCrunch by Airbnb. Curtis joined the home-sharing platform in 2013 after about two years as the director of engineering at Facebook. Airbnb will work with Heidrick & Struggles to find his successor, who will be named chief technology officer, a title some at the company had expected Curtis to receive last year, per The Information. Airbnb has several other holes in its C-suite; it’s also in the process of hiring a chief marketing officer and a chief financial officer. “For a while, Mike has been thinking about making this change to take a long break,” an Airbnb spokesperson told TechCrunch. “After discussing this change with [CEO] Brian Chesky, they agreed that Mike would step down after helping the company choose his successor.” Curtis may be feeling the early-stage itch. When he joined Airbnb nearly six years ago, he was particularly excited about how early the company was: “the opportunity with where we can take it is limitless,” he said. But Airbnb is no longer a little startup, it’s one of the most valuable private tech companies in the world. In Curtis’ tenure alone, the engineering team grew from 40 people to more than 1,000 and the company raised more than $4 billion and . Now, |
The 7 most important announcements from Microsoft Ignite | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Microsoft is hosting its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida this week. And although Ignite isn’t the household name that Microsoft’s Build conference has become over the course of the last few years, it’s a massive event with over 30,000 attendees and plenty of news. Indeed, there was so much news this year that Microsoft provided the press with a with all of it. We wrote about of these today, but here are the most important announcements, including one that wasn’t in Microsoft’s booklet but was featured prominently on stage. Microsoft is teaming up with Adobe and SAP to create a single model for representing customer data that businesses will be able to move between systems. Moving customer data between different enterprise systems is hard, especially because there isn’t a standardized way to represent this information. Microsoft, Adobe and SAP say they want to make it easier for this data to flow between systems. But it’s also a shot across the bow of Salesforce, the leader in the CRM space. It also represents a chance for these three companies to enable new tools that can extract value from this data — and Microsoft obviously hopes that these businesses will choose its Azure platform for analyzing the data. Businesses that use Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) will now be able to use the Microsoft Authenticator app on iOS and Android in place of a password to log into their business applications. Passwords are annoying and they aren’t very secure. Many enterprises are starting to push their employees to use a second factor to authenticate. With this, Microsoft now replaces the password/second factor combination with a single tap on your phone — ideally without compromising security. Microsoft now lets businesses rent a virtual Windows 10 desktop in Azure. Until now, virtual Windows 10 desktops were the domain of third-party service providers. Now, Microsoft itself will offer these desktops. The company argues that this is the first time you can get a multiuser virtualized Windows 10 desktop in the cloud. As employees become more mobile and don’t necessarily always work from the same desktop or laptop, this virtualized solution will allow organizations to offer them a full Windows 10 desktop in the cloud, with all the Office apps they know, without the cost of having to provision and manage a physical machine. Microsoft is adding a number of new AI tools to its Office productivity suite. Those include Ideas, which aims to take some of the hassle out of using these tools. Ideas may suggest a layout for your PowerPoint presentation or help you find interesting data in your spreadsheets, for example. Excel is also getting a couple of new tools for pulling in rich data from third-party sources. Microsoft is also building a new unified search tool for finding data across an organization’s network. Microsoft Office remains the most widely used suite of productivity applications. That makes it the ideal surface for highlighting Microsoft’s AI chops, and anything that can improve employee productivity will surely drive a lot of value to businesses. If that means sitting through fewer badly designed PowerPoint slides, then this whole AI thing will have been worth it. The next version of the Surface Hub, Microsoft’s massive whiteboard displays, will launch in Q2 2019. The Surface Hub 2 is both lighter and thinner than the original version. Then, in 2020, an updated version, the Surface Hub 2X, will launch that will offer features like tiling and rotation. We’re talking about a 50-inch touchscreen display here. You probably won’t buy one, but you’ll want one. It’s a disappointment to hear that the Surface Hub 2 won’t launch into next year and that some of the advanced features most users are waiting for won’t arrive until the refresh in 2020. Microsoft Teams, its Slack competitor, can now blur the background when you are in a video meeting and it’ll automatically create transcripts of your meetings. Teams has emerged as a competent Slack competitor that’s quite popular with companies that are already betting on Microsoft’s productivity tools. Microsoft is now bringing many of its machine learning smarts to Teams to offer features that most of its competitors can’t match. Azure Digital Twins allows enterprises to model their real-world IoT deployments in the cloud. IoT presents a massive new market for cloud services like Azure. Many businesses were already building their own version of Digital Twins on top of Azure, but those homegrown solutions didn’t always scale. Now, Microsoft is offering this capability out of the box, and for many businesses, this may just be the killer feature that will make them decide on standardizing their IoT workloads on Azure. And as they use Azure Digital Twins, they’ll also want to use the rest of Azure’s many IoT tools. |
Zoho pulled offline after phishing complaints, CEO says | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Zoho.com was pulled offline on Monday after the company’s domain registrar received phishing complaints, the company’s chief executive said. The web-based office suite company, which also provides customer relationship and invoicing services to small businesses, that the site was “blocked” earlier in the day by TierraNet, which administers its domain name. In an email to TechCrunch, Zoho boss Sridhar Vembu said that TierraNet “took our domain down without any notice to us” after receiving complaints about phishing emails from Zoho-hosted email accounts. In doing so, thousands of businesses that rely on Zoho for their operations couldn’t access their email, documents and files, and other business-critical software during the day. Zoho counts Columbia University, Netflix, Citrix, Air Canada and the Los Angeles Times as customers. “They kept pointing us back to their legal, even when I tried to call their senior management,” said Vembu in the email. Zoho.com was back up and running hours later, but at the time of writing, service to the site is spotty — likely due to the slow nature of domain name resolving. It may take hours or days for the site to be fully restored across the globe. Yes a detailed explanation is coming, as we dig our way out of this. We are working to ensure that everyone is able to access and ensuring that this does not repeat ever again. We apologize. — Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) Vembu said that TierraNet received three complaints about Zoho-hosted email users in the past two months, which resulted in the domain blocking. He also to try to inform users of the domain blockage. “We resolved two of them by suspending the accounts, and one is under investigation,” he said. “We host tens of millions of accounts, and this is sad that our entire domain gets taken down for three complaints,” he said. “We are actively working to move our domain registration to another provider.” It’s not unusual for companies like Zoho, or rivals like Microsoft and Google, to be used by malicious actors to host phishing sites or send phishing emails to unsuspecting victims. But companies typically work to limit malicious use — even if it’s near impossible to stamp it out completely. TierraNet has so far remained silent on the issue. Several TierraNet customer support agents apparently confirming Vembu’s version of events. — Heather Jones (@HeatherJonesRS) We reached out to TierraNet for comment but didn’t hear back at the time of writing. If that changes, we’ll update. |
Technology doesn’t have to be disposable | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | old Bose 501 speakers. New devices are coming that will give traditional audio equipment a voice. Amazon recently and among the lot are several small, diminutive add-ons. These models did not have a smart speaker built into the devices but rather turned other speakers into smart speakers. Sonos has a similar device. Called the Sonos Amp, the device connects the Sonos service to audio receivers and can drive traditional speakers. There’s a new version coming out in 2019 that adds Alexa and AirPlay 2. This movement back towards traditional speaker systems could be a boon for audio companies reeling from the explosion of smart speakers. Suddenly, consumers do not have to choose between the ease of use in an inexpensive smart speaker and the vastly superior audio quality of a pair of high-end speakers. Consumers can have voice services and listen to Cake, too. Echo devices are everywhere in my house. They’re in three bedrooms, my office, our living room, my workshop and outside on the deck. But besides the Tap in the workshop and Echo in the kitchen, every Echo is connected to an amp and speakers. For instance, in my office, I have an Onkyo receiver and standalone Onkyo amp that powers a pair of Definitive Technology bookshelf speakers. The bedrooms have various speakers connected to older A/V receivers. Outside there’s a pair of Yamaha speakers powered by cheap mini-amp. Each system sounds dramatically better than any smart speaker available. There’s a quiet comfort in building an audio system: To pick out each piece and connect everything; to solder banana clips to speaker wire and ensure the proper power is flowing to each speaker. Amazon and Google built one of the best interfaces for audio in Alexa and Google Assistant. But that could change in the future. In the end, Alexa and Google Assistant are just another component in an audio stack, and to some consumers, it makes sense to treat them as a turntable or equalizer — a part that can be swapped out in the future. The world of consumer electronics survives because of the disposable nature of gadgets. There’s always something better coming soon. Cell phones last a couple of years and TVs last a few years longer. But bookshelf speakers purchased today will still sound great in 20 years. There’s a thriving secondary market for vintage audio equipment, and unlike old computer equipment, buyers want this gear actually to use it. If you see a pair of giant Bose speakers at a garage sale, buy them and use them. Look at the prices for used Bose 901 speakers: they’re the cost of three Apple HomePods. Look at ShopGoodwill.com — Goodwill’s fantastic auction site. It’s filled with vintage audio equipment with some pieces going for multiple thousands of dollars. Last year’s smart speakers are on there, too, available for pennies on the dollar. For the most part, audio equipment will last generations. Speakers can blow and wear out. Amps can get hit by surges and components can randomly fail. It happens, but most of the time, speakers survive. This is where Amazon and Sonos come in. Besides selling standalone speakers, both companies have products available that adds services to independent speaker systems. A person doesn’t have to ditch their Pioneer stack to gain access to Alexa. They have to plug in a new component, and in the future, if something better is available, that component can be swapped out for something else. Amazon first introduced this ability in the little Echo Dot. The $50 speaker has a 3.5mm output that makes it easy to add to a speaker system. A $35 version is coming soon that lacks the speaker found in the Dot and features a 3.5mm output. It’s set to be the easiest and cheapest way to add voice services to speakers. Amazon and Sonos also have higher-end components nearing release. The Amazon Echo Link features digital and discrete audio outputs that should result in improved audio. The Amazon Echo Amp adds an amplifier to power a set of passive speakers directly. Sonos offers something similar in the upcoming Sonos Amp with 125 watts per channel and HDMI to allow it to be connected to a TV. These add-on products give consumers dramatically more options than a handful of plastic smart speakers. There are several ways to take advantage of these components. The easiest is to look at powered speakers. These speakers have built-in amplifiers and unlike traditional speakers, plug into an outlet for power. Look at models from Edifier, Klipsch or Yamaha. Buyers just need to connect a few cables to have superior sound to most smart speakers. Another option is to piece together a component system. Pick any A/V receiver and add a couple of speakers and a subwoofer. This doesn’t have to be expensive. Small $30 amps like from Lepy or Pyle can drive a set of speakers — that’s what I use to drive outdoor speakers. Or, look at Onkyo or Denon A/V surround sound receivers and build a home theater system and throw in an Amazon Echo Link on top. As for speakers Polk, Klipsch, Definitive Technology, KEF, B&W, and many more produce fantastic speakers that will still work years after Amazon stops making Echo devices. Best of all, both options are modular and allows owners to modify the system overtime. Want to add a turntable? Just plug it in. That’s not possible with a Google Home. Technology doesn’t have to be disposable. These add-on products offer the same solution as Roku or Fire TV devices — just plug in this device to add new tricks to old gear. When it gets old, don’t throw out the TV (or in this case speakers), just plug in the latest dongle. Sure, it’s easy to buy a Google Home Max, and the speaker sounds great, too. For some people, it’s the perfect way to get Spotify in their living space. It’s never been easier to listen to music or NPR. There are a few great options for smart speakers. The $350 Apple HomePod sounds glorious though Siri lacks a lot of smarts of Alexa or Google Assistant. I love the Echo Dot for its utility and price point, and in a small space, it sounds okay. For my money, the best smart speaker is the Sonos One. It sounds great, is priced right, and Sonos has the best ecosystem available. I’m excited about Amazon’s Echo and Sub bundle. For $249, buyers get two Echos and the new Echo Sub. The software forces the two Echos to work in stereo while the new subwoofer supplements the low-end. I haven’t heard the system yet, but I expect it to sound as good as the Google Home Max or Apple HomePod and the separate component operation should help the audio fill larger spaces. Sonos has similar systems available. The fantastic Sonos One speaker can be used as a standalone speaker, part of a multiroom system, or as a surround speaker with other Sonos One speakers and the Sonos Beam audio bar. To me, Sonos is compelling because of their ecosystem and tendency to have a longer product refresh cycle. In the past, Sonos has been much slower to roll out new products but instead added services to existing products. The company seems to respect the owners of its products rather than forcing them to buy new products to gain new abilities. In the end, though, smart speakers from Apple, Sonos, Google or Amazon will stop working. Eventually, the company will stop supporting the services powering the speakers and owners will throw the speakers in the trash. It’s depressing in the same way Spotify is depressing. Your grandkids are not going to dig through your digital Spotify milk crate. When the service is gone, the playlists are gone. That’s the draw of component audio equipment. A turntable purchased in the ’70s could still work today. Speakers bought during the first dot-com boom will still pound when the cryptocurrency bubble pops. As for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, to me, it makes sense to treat it as another component in a larger system and enjoy it while it lasts. |
Sleep Cycle adds ‘snore detection’ to its sleep-tracking Android app | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Sleep-tracking app is bringing a new feature to its Android app to help snoring users track the sleep effects of their rather loud ailment. Sleep Cycle is a great little app that helps you learn about your quality of sleep and helps wake you up at a time where you’re more likely to wake up feeling refreshed than groggy. There are a lot of smart home sleep trackers that do something similar with a linked pillow sensor, but Sleep Cycle just opts to use your phone’s sensors to gather data, which proves similarly robust. How snore data will integrate into the app’s dashboard Basically it seems the app pairs the sound measurements with the accelerometer data from the phone placed on your bed and determines how closely tied your snoring is to restless movement, rolling that to help determine its “sleep score” metric. If you don’t actually know if you’re snoring, the app will clue you into that as well with the feature enabled. You’ll be able to see how many minutes you snored, and listen to it as well. The new feature is available now for the app’s |
iPhone XS Max is reportedly dramatically outselling the XS | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | null |
Alaska Airlines is trying to make VR part of its first-class experience | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | When it comes to public areas where you are most free to surrender self-awareness and self-consciousness, lounging on a multi-hour airline flight is probably prime territory. Coincidentally, it’s also a venue where virtual reality companies see an opportunity to open people to a world of VR content. Today, Alaska Airlines announced that it will be partnering with to bring the startup’s latest hardware to a couple of its routes in a pilot (ha) program. Skylights a couple of years ago with the focus of making VR the go-to entertainment choice for airline passengers. This is the startup’s first partnership with an airline in the U.S.; they’ve preciously worked with European airlines including Emirates and XL Airways. If you’re sitting in coach, sadly the good virtual life is out of reach, as the service is only being rolled out to first-class passengers seated on Alaska Airlines’ Seattle-Boston and Boston-San Diego routes. The new “Allosky” hardware is pretty compact. It’s designed for watching 2D and 3D movies mostly, though you’ll also be able to watch some 360 content. It’s pretty slick for mobile VR hardware even if it’s still pretty conspicuous. While the last generation looked like a pretty standard Gear VR, the new generation leans into the sunglasses style even if they still fall a bit short of that size. Just as Bose headphones became a go-to for isolating people from the noise of airplanes, Skylights is hoping its VR hardware can be the go-to for isolating passengers from the sights. |
BloomThat pauses on-demand flower services | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Following earlier this year for a reportedly small amount of cash, “to figure out how to best integrate BloomThat as part of the FTD portfolio of brands,” the founders wrote to its customers a few days ago. “Before we go, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of our loyal bloomers,” the founders wrote. “Over the last five years, you’ve brightened many lives with a simple, thoughtful gesture. Thank you for entrusting us with your most important moments – we’re honored to have been a part of a truly special movement.” , launched its flower delivery service nationwide. But instead of offering delivery within a couple of hours, BloomThat guaranteed next-day delivery, which effectively moved the startup into the territory of 1-800-FLOWERS and FTD. BloomThat will continue to fulfill orders through September 28, 2018. Those who are interested in continuing to buy flowers after the end of this month are being directed to FTD or ProFlowers.com. Prior to the acquisition, BloomThat had raised $7.5 million from investors like Rothenberg Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Sherpa Capital and others, with the most recent round in April 2015. I’ve reached out to BloomThat and will update this story if I hear back. |
Here’s everything Google announced today at its “Future of Search” event | Greg Kumparak | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | Google has changed a lot in 20 years. What started as an index of “just” a few million pages is now reaching into the hundreds of billions; what was once a relatively simple (if very clever!) search engine is now an impossibly complex brew of machine learning, computer vision, and data science that finds its way into the daily lives of most of the planet. Google held a small press event in San Francisco today to discuss what’s next, and what it saw as the “Future of Search”. The famously minimalist Google.com homepage is about to get a bit more crowded (at least on mobile.) Google says that 1 in 8 queries in a given month are repeats — a user returning to search on a topic they care about. With that in mind, it’s going to start highlighting these topics for you before you start your search. Google Feed (the content discovery news feed it’s been building out in the dedicated Google App and on the Android home screen) is being rebranded as “Discover” and will now live underneath the Google.com search bar on all mobile browsers. Discover will highlight news, video, and information about topics Google thinks you care about — like, say, hiking, or soccer, or the NBA. If you want a certain topic to show up more or less, there’s a slider to adjust accordingly. It’ll start rolling out “in the next few weeks” In the same vein: Google will now learn to recognize when you’re returning to a topic you’ve searched for before, and try to start back up where you left off. When returning to a search topic, you’ll now see a card at the top of the results that’ll offer up a list of the pages you clicked through to before, and relevant follow-up queries people tend to search for next. While Google keeping track of what you searched for is nothing new, finding that info generally meant digging through settings pages to find your history. With this, Google is attempting to play something that otherwise seems a bit creepy into a front page feature. (And to answer what I imagine will be just about everyone’s first question: Google’s Nick Fox says you can remove the card, or “opt out of seeing it all together”.) Trillions of searches later, Google knows what you’re probably looking for, and what you’ll be looking for next. And they can get pretty specific about it. To use their example: if you’re searching for “Pug”, you’re probably looking for characteristics of the breed, or for images of well-known pugs. People searching for a longer haired breed like a Yorkshire Terrier, meanwhile, are often interested in things like grooming details — even if it’s not the first thing they search for. With this in mind, Google’s knowledge graph will now dynamically generate cards for a given topic and present them at the top of the results page — basically, an all-in-one info packet of everything it thinks you’re looking for, or might look for next. In a move that feels pretty Pinteresty, you’ll now be able to save search results into “collections” for later perusal. Google will look for patterns in your collections, and toss up suggested pages when it finds an overlap. Snapchat has its stories. Facebook has stories. Instagram? Stories. Even Skype Now Google is “doubling down” (their words) on stories. AI will generate stories built up from articles, images, and videos on a search topic (starting with notable people “like celebrities and athletes) and incorporate them into search results. Google Images is picking up support for Google Lens — the company’s computer vision-heavy solution for figuring out exactly what is within an image. Their example: in a search result for “nursery”, Google Lens could help to identify a specific type of crib or bookcase that you’ve highlighted in an image. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 6 | null |
China splits the internet while the U.S. dithers | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | There are few stories as important right now as the internet being ripped asunder by the increasing animosity between the U.S. and China. Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet, that “I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America.” He should know: Alphabet and its Google subsidiary are on the front lines of that split, experiencing a massive furor over the company’s Project Dragonfly to . It’s hardly alone though, with and . At the heart of this split is the death of the internet as we once knew it: a unified layer for the transfer of human knowledge. As the internet has gained more and more power over society and our everyday lives, the need by governments worldwide to tame its engineering to political and moral ends has increased dramatically. About four years ago, I wrote a piece called “ ” in which I argued that this sort of split was obvious. As I wrote at the time: “Across the world, it is becoming abundantly clear that the internet is no longer the independent and self-reliant sphere it once was, immune to the peculiarities of individual countries and their laws. Rather, the internet is firmly under the control of every government, simultaneously.” Yet, the rules that countries like Spain put in place around media and news didn’t split the internet as I had predicted. The economic power of the U.S. and China did. , but their combined market caps is still in the trillions of dollars. WeChat, which is owned by Tencent, , and while only 10% of its user base is estimated to be outside China, the ties are growing as more countries build economic bridges with the mainland. Sometimes, those bridges are quite literal. Through and fledgling institutions like the , China has provided massive outlays to other nations primarily around infrastructure, building partnerships and deepening economic ties. China and the U.S. are increasingly fighting a global battle for tech legitimacy (Photo by Jason Lee / AFP / Getty Images) That infrastructure is sometimes roads, but it can also be in . Huawei has made , and in core infrastructure. Chinese-owned Transsion, which most Westerners have probably never heard of, is . Chinese-made telecom infrastructure. Chinese handsets. Increasingly Chinese apps. For all of the concerns of Congress and national security officials about or markets, the real fight for the future of the internet is going to be in precisely these developing regions which have no incumbent technology. That’s what has made the Trump administration’s strategy toward trade negotiations with China so miserable to watch. The focus has been on that will ensure that Chinese goods — particularly in high-tech industries — are more expensive to American consumers, allowing domestic manufacturers to better compete. Yet, the policies have done nothing to ensure that American values around the internet are exported to continents like Africa or South America, or that Cisco’s equipment will be chosen over Huawei’s. That might be changing at long last. that the Trump administration is preparing to double down on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which offers commercial lending facilities to developing countries. It would be merged into another agency and given a much more rich budget (as high as $60 billion) to go and compete with Chinese financing around the world. Maybe that measure will be successful in closing the strategic distance between the two countries. Maybe rumors that the administration is going to will lead to a much more comprehensive set of policies. But along the way, regardless of what happens, these skirmishes will lead to a fracturing of the internet, and along with it, the death of the internet as a bastion and voice of freedom and knowledge for all people everywhere. |
Uber and Grab hit with $9.5M in fines over ‘anti-competitive’ merger | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | Uber and Grab have been hit with combined fines of $9.5 million after their merger deal was found to have violated Singapore’s anti-competition laws. (and then merged/closed) Uber’s Southeast Asia business in March, but the Competition Commission of Singapore today declared the deal is “anti-competitive” following a months-long investigation into its impact on Singapore. The CCCS levied an SG$6,582,055 (US$4.8 million) fine on Uber and an SG$6,419,647 (US$4.7 million) fine on Grab, but it won’t unwind the deal, . The fines relate only to the businesses in Singapore, which is just one of eight markets where Uber and Grab competed. from investors so it shouldn’t have an issue paying that back. Chiefly, the CCCS found that Grab had raised prices by 10-15 percent following the deal, whilst its market share grew to 80 percent. That’s despite across Southeast Asia. “At the conclusion of its investigation, CCCS has found that the Transaction is anti-competitive, having been carried into effect, and has infringed section 54 of the Competition Act by substantially lessening competition in the ride-hailing platform market in Singapore,” . Grab, which is and is ,’ wasn’t legally compelled to notify the CCCS of its deal with Uber. But the commission does warn companies to consider reaching out it if the deal in question leaves the merged entity with upwards of 40 percent market share, or the post-merger combined market share of the three largest firms is 70 percent or higher. Grab contacted the CCCS only after the deal was announced. It’s worth noting that the Philippines, the only other Southeast Asia country to launch an investigation into the deal, last month. Through its investigation, the CCCS engaged with Grab to make a number of requests on its business, they included restoring its pre-deal pricing and commission rates, cutting exclusivity agreements with taxi operators, and removing lock-in for drivers that use its rental partners or Uber’s Lion City Rentals business. Those are broadly the same again — . “Mergers that substantially lessen competition are prohibited and CCCS has taken action against the Grab-Uber merger because it removed Grab’s closest rival, to the detriment of Singapore drivers and riders. Companies can continue to innovate in this market, through means other than anti-competitive mergers,” CCCS chief executive Toh Han Li said in a statement. In keeping with recent traditional around CCCS statements, Grab produced a lengthy response of its own. One part to highlight is its apparent insistence that the merger deal did not significantly impact competition. “Grab had, with its advisers, assessed that the transaction would not result in a substantial lessening of competition,” so said Daren Shiau, who is co-head of s Competition & Antitrust practice, one of the firm’s that Grab retained. Shiau’s statement is something that the 80 percent market share stat suggests is untrue. No doubt many consumers and drivers, who today have fewer options, will also disagree. Here’s Grab’s full statement in all of its glory: We have been working with the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) during its review over the past few months. Today, we are glad that the CCCS has completed its investigations on the Grab-Uber transaction and did not require the transaction to be unwound. Grab completed the Transaction within its legal rights, and still maintains we did not intentionally or negligently breach competition laws. Grab agrees that keeping the market open and contestable is best for consumers and drivers, and we will abide by the remedies set out by the CCCS. However, it is unfortunate that the CCCS is taking a very narrow market definition in arriving at its conclusion that the Transaction has led to a substantial lessening of competition. Commuters are free to choose between street-hail taxis and private hire cars, and it is a fact that private-hire car drivers’ incomes are directly impacted by intense competition with street-hail taxis. We recognise that the CCCS’s position on non-exclusivity arrangements is to set the right tone for the transport industry. Grab agrees with, and has long advocated for, industry-wide regulations that allow drivers to freely choose which platform or operator they wish to drive with. For drivers to have full maximum choice, all transport players, including taxi operators, should also be subjected to nonexclusivity conditions. Grab should not be the only transport player subjected to non-exclusivity conditions. This is inconsistent with taxi industry practices and we will continue our dialogue with the CCCS and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to create a level playing field for all. In this respect, we welcome CCCS’s willingness to review the remedial measures as market conditions change. We also note that the LTA is reviewing the regulatory framework for the point-to-point transportation sector, which we hope will address non-exclusivity across the industry. Grab is committed to fair pricing and has not raised fares since the Transaction. Grab will continue to adhere to our pre-transaction pricing model, pricing policies and driver commissions. We have been and will continue to submit weekly pricing data to the CCCS for monitoring. Grab is making every effort to serve our customers better and we are adding more app features that will improve the user experience for customers and drivers. We want to contribute meaningfully to Singapore’s solutions to enhance urban liveability. For example, we are studying data and vehiclesharing services to play our part to optimise Singapore’s overall transport network. As one of the biggest tech employers in the country, Grab is making significant contributions to Singapore’s economic development and we will continue to develop Singapore’s talent in product development and design, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and engineering. Grab is heartened to receive the support of governments across Southeast Asia to enable us to serve Southeast Asians better. The recent decisions by Philippine Competition Commission and CCCS in not pursuing the route of unwinding the Transaction demonstrate a deeper appreciation of Grab’s potential to serve the region. |
It sounds like Apple’s original content is going to be really, really bad | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | Last year, an investor projected that Apple would be spending on original content by 2022, but if the reports coming out now about what that content will look like are correct, the company may want its money back. A highlights some of the tensions that Apple faces as it looks to create a streaming media service in the age of , , , and even . To set the table, walked readers through some of the issues Tim Cook apparently had with , a title the company had acquired loosely based on the biography of rap legend (and former head of the billion dollar Apple acquisition, Beats) Dr. Dre. Reportedly, after Cook saw scenes including a mansion orgy, , and drawn guns the Apple chief put the kibosh on the whole production saying it was too violent and not something that Apple can air. For Apple’s content business, gratuitous profanity, sex or violence are all verboten as the company tries to thread the needle between being a widely beloved producer of high quality consumer goods and purveyor of paid entertainment to a public that’s increasingly enthralled with blood and gore at its circuses. In other words, Apple’s . There’s a problem for Apple as it tries to stitch together a studio while limiting itself to the entertainment equivalent of cream of wheat. Plenty of other other technology companies are gunning for that number one slot and studios are fighting for their very survival. Money may talk in Hollywood, but creative control, ensuring an audience for a show, and the continued viability of programming also have their place. Creators may find that they’re far more comfortable wrapped in a quilt that has more varied programming where their shows may be buoyed by the success of other, darker programming that appeals to a broader audience. If Apple’s aversion to potentially scandalous storylines is as extreme as article makes it seem — requesting the removal of crucifixes from a set to avoid offending religious sensibilities in an M. Night Shyamalan drama; parting ways with show-runners because of the “dark tone” they were taking in a reboot of Steven Spielberg’s the big budget vehicle for Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon; spiking the Dr. Dre show entirely — it may not even be able to field series as enjoyable as reported Cook favorite (which featured teenage sex, underage drinking, abortion, and extreme religiosity alongside the familial and football foibles of Eric and Tammy Taylor). Apple’s ambitions to be the go to spot for family friendly fare also risks being thwarted by the only studio that’s managed to fend off the tech giants encroaching on the entertainment world — Disney. The mighty mouse house has plans for its own streaming service (and already has a place for more mature content to reside). A could be an unbeatable option for would-be subscribers — and makes up for the fact that won’t have R-rated films. With competition so fierce it doesn’t make much sense for Apple to box its own content service into a corner just as it’s struggling to get its footing the ring. All that said, having a roughly $200 billion pile of cash sitting in the corner definitely gives Apple’s streaming contender a fighting chance. The question is whether an audience will stick around to watch what’s likely to be a bloodless fight. |
The Markup, a tech-focused investigative news site, raises $20 million from Craigslist founder | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | Celebrated former investigative journalists Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson are launching their newest venture, the investigative nonprofit news organization called The Markup, with help from some big donors including founder, Craig Newmark. The Markup co-founders Angwin, Larson and executive director Sue Gardner (the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation), are backed by a $20 million donation from Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies; $2 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and additional support from the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, according to a statement. The project was incubated with an investment from the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative and news of the new media venture was . “In a healthy society, there’s an ongoing conversation about what’s in the public interest—a debate that includes legislators, regulators, the institutions of civil society, the private sector, and the general public,” said Gardner, in a statement. “We aren’t having that debate right now about new technologies because the level of understanding of their effects is too low. That’s the problem that The Markup aims to fix, and I am delighted to have Craig Newmark, and some of the United States’ most prominent private foundations, join us to do this.” Newmark has been engaged in many philanthropic projects. He’s put $500,000 of his money toward and to Angwin and Larson’s old bosses at ProPublica. “I’m proud to back The Markup and support people whose work I’ve followed and admired for a long time,” Newmark said. “As a news consumer, I look for journalism that I can trust, and by producing data-driven, rigorously fact-checked reporting on the effects of technology on society, The Markup is helping to fill a largely unmet need.” Gardner previously ran the , the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize winner who p worked at and and Larson, a data journalist, has won the prestigious Peabody Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He used to work at . At the duo’s scoops of at Facebook; used in bail, sentencing and parole decisions; in car insurance rates; and , the Mar-A-Lago country club. “I’m excited to build a team with deep expertise that can really scale up and advance the work Jeff and I began at ProPublica,” Angwin said, in a statement. “We see The Markup as a new kind of news organization, staffed with journalists who know how to investigate the uses of new technologies and make their effects understandable to non-experts.” The Markup is looking to staff up with 24 journalists for its New York office and is hoping to launch in the early part of 2019.
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Ride-hailing startup Shohoz raises $15M to build the Grab of Bangladesh | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | Uber may be global but it is very much the alternative in some parts of the world. One such place is Bangladesh — the South Asian country that’s home to 160 million people — where local rival Pathao is backed by Go-Jek and . Now Pathao’s closest rival, , has also pulled in investment after it closed a $15 million funding round. Shohoz — which means ‘easy’ in Bengali — started in 2014 offering online bus ticket sales before expanding into other tickets like ferries. The startup moved into on-demand services in January when it added motorbikes and then it recently introduced private cars. CEO Maliha Quadir told TechCrunch that it is now registering one million completed rides per month as it bids to “simplify” life in capital city Dhaka, which houses over 18 million people and offers limited transport options. “Bus tickets will remain an important part of our business, [there’s] lots of synergy with ride-sharing,” she explained in an interview. “Dhaka has a super dense population with bad infrastructure, if anything there’s a better case for ride-sharing than Indonesia… there’s no subway and transport is a horrid nightmare.” Singapore-based Golden Gate Ventures — — led the new Shohoz round. Linear VC of China, 500 Startups and Singaporean-based angel investor Koh Boon Hwee also took part. The Shohoz ride-hailing app launched in January 2018 Quadir, who graduated from Havard and spent time working in finance in the U.S. and Singapore, told TechCrunch that Shohoz plans to double down on its ride-sharing business with the new round. In particular, the plan is to expand beyond Dhaka soon. Then it is also eyeing up services that’ll take it beyond point-to-point transportation and into ‘super app’ territory in the style of Go-Jek and Grab, the two Southeast Asia-based unicorns. For Shohoz, that’ll initially include food delivery, but there are also plans to add on-demand services — Go-Jek, for example, offers services like groceries, hairdressers or massages on demand. Ultimately, Quadir plans to add financial services, too, which could mean payments and financial products in the future. While the super apps of Southeast Asia have all expanded beyond their home markets, Shohoz isn’t looking to go international quite yet. “It’s in my mind but there’s so much to do in Bangladesh,” Quadir explained. “In Bangladesh, you can really make an impact — it’s a green field.” As for Uber, Quadir acknowledged that the U.S. firm has done a good job on private car vehicles but she said its Uber Moto service is dwarfed by local alternatives. It appears that Shohoz’s bet on becoming a super app is aimed at emulating the likes of Didi Chuxing in China and Grab in Southeast Asia that ultimately beat Uber using a localized strategy that went well beyond rides. Given that Pathao is pursuing the same strategy, three might well be a crowd in Bangladesh and that could spell difficulty for Uber. |
Our Precious | Jon Evans | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | I’ve long theorized that one’s moral character is inversely proportional to the number of syllables in one’s Starbucks order. (Yes, this is a tech column. We’ll get to that. Have faith.) To which a friend pointed out that what Starbucks offers is our drink, exactly how you want it — and the smaller and pettier your life outside the coffee shop, the more control you want. Meanwhile, yesterday on Twitter I encountered what was, for a bred-in-the-bone Tolkien fan like me, : Rereading Lord of the Rings 10 years later, only to realize that the Ring is my smartphone. — the artistic side of Somesanity (@flysanityfly) Yeah. “It has been so growing on my mind lately. Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me. And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don’t you know; or wondering if it is safe, and pulling it out to make sure. I tried locking it up, but I found I couldn’t rest without it in my pocket.” The One Ring of Sauron … or your smartphone? Let’s not start handwringing about technology changing culture. That is both welcome and inevitable. There is nothing intrinsically creepy about carrying a supercomputer in your pocket with immediate access to sizable fractions of both the rest of humanity and all human knowledge. That part is intrinsically wonderful. It’s the way we use them; more specifically, the way we’re enticed to use them. Dopamine hits. Dark patterns, Nudges. Badging. Notifications. Amplifying outrage, heightening drama, maximizing uncertainty, and feelings of incompletion, until nerves shriek. Weaponizing and monetizing the animal instincts lurking inside our cortexes, our automatic responses to social stress, hints of danger, suggestions of collapse, spectacular faraway warnings. The neurological equivalent of constant smoke from distant but raging wildfires. (As an aside: please please stop marking yourself safe on Facebook if/when something bad happens in your town. When you do so you are making this all even worse.) I think people are beginning to realize that our phones have been compromised. And I don’t mean in that the-NSA-is-spying-on-you way, although “sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me” sure keeps on resonating, doesn’t it? I mean that our perfectly healthy and natural desire to keep up with our friends, acquaintances, localities, communities, and world have been hijacked by attention oligarchs seeking to keep us glued to their offerings, for as long as possible, by any means necessary. Oh, sure, lip service is paid to doing otherwise. “You’re all caught up!” Instagram cheerfully informs you. (And indeed Instagram still seems the most pleasant, least harmful head of the Facebook hydra.) Mark Zuckerberg knows there’s a problem, and says he wants to help “ .” This is admirable. But it is also a mission to Facebook’s mission to show as many ads as possible to as many closely targeted people as possible. Those two objectives are not orthogonal; they are opposites. This is anecdotal, but I see more and more people stepping away from Facebook, or Twitter, or social media entirely. I have certainly seen far more “this is my final Facebook post” posts this year than in all previous years combined. Others take breaks. Others delete the apps, but still use the web sites. Let’s not confuse this with some kind of useful periodic digital detox. Every time someone does anything like that, they are tacitly saying: It wasn’t always like this. I was a big Facebook fan as recently as a few years ago. Most people were. (But no longer: studies show Facebook’s net favorability has .) Certainly the polarized, hate-filled politics of the last few years are a major contributing factor … but then, you can make a pretty excellent case that Facebook and Twitter were major contributing factors to the polarizing, hate-filled politics of the last few years. It’s more than just the politics, though. It’s the way that every negativity is amplified to eleven, because that’s how you get reach, and attention, and resharing. It’s Orwell’s Two-Minute Hates, whether provoked by politics, culture, or anything else, except hourly instead of daily. Again, I don’t think this is intrinsic to increased human connectivity. I don’t even think this is intrinsic to social media. But I think it is intrinsic to social media which is strongly incentivized to amplify outrage in order to maximize attention and emotional intensity. Starbucks attracts a lot of hate too, for reasons I’ve never understood; all it does is sell overpriced coffee in pleasant surroundings … along with that aforementioned moment of absolute control. My testable hypothesis is that the average complexity of Starbucks orders has increased over time, and will keep increasing, as people try to use the crutch of control over their coffees to counteract the sense of chaos induced by the phones in their pockets; the feeling that our world is careening out of control, which in turn provokes the need to stay always connected, always informed, lest we miss the hour the barbarians actually arrive at the gate. Perhaps, though, we actually missed that warning bell some time ago. Perhaps, as Walt Kelly once said, we have already met the enemy, and they are us. |
The New York Times sues the FCC to investigate Russian interference in net neutrality decision | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | The ongoing saga over the FCC’s handling of public comments to its net neutrality proposal continues after The New York Times sued the organization for withholding of information that it believes could prove there was Russian interference. The Times has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for data on the comments since July 2017, and now, after reducing the scope of its requests significantly was rejected, it is taking the FCC to court in a bid to get the information. The FCC’s comment system keeled over in May 2017 over during the public feedback period as more than 22 million comments were posted. Plenty of those were suspected of using repeated phrases, fake email addresses and . The FCC initially falsely claimed the outage was because it was hacked — it wasn’t — it seems instead that its system was unable to handle the volume of comments, with . The New York Times, meanwhile, has been looking into whether Russia was involved. from FCC member Jessica Rosenworcel published earlier this year suggested that as many as 500,000 comments came from Russian email addresses, with an estimated eight million comments sent by throw-away email accounts created via . In addition, between emails mentioned in the Mueller Report and those used to provide comment on net neutrality. Since the actual events are unclear — for more than a year the FCC allowed people to incorrectly believe it was hacked — an FOIA request could provide a clearer insight into whether there was overseas interference. Problem: the FCC itself won’t budge, as the suit ( ) explains: The request at issue in this litigation involves records that will shed light on the extent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian government have interfered with the agency notice-and-comment process about a topic of extensive public interest: the government’s decision to abandon “net neutrality.” Release of these records will help broaden the public’s understanding of the scope of Russian interference in the American democratic system. Despite the clear public importance of the requested records, the FCC has thrown up a series of roadblocks, preventing The Times from obtaining the documents. Repeatedly, The Times has narrowed its request in the hopes of expediting release of the records so it could explore whether the FCC and the American public had been the victim of orchestrated campaign by the Russians to corrupt the notice-and-comment process and undermine an important step in the democratic process of rule-making. The original FOIA request lodged in June 2017 from the Times requested “IP addresses, timestamps, and comments, among other data” which included web server data. The FCC initially bulked and declined on the basis that doing so would compromise its IT systems and security ( ), while it also cited privacy concerns for the commenters. Over the proceeding months, which included dialogue between both parties, the Times pared back the scope of its request considerably. By 31 August 2018, it was only seeking a list of originating IP addresses and timestamps for comments, and a list of user-agent headers (which show a user’s browser type and other diagnostic details) and timestamps. The requested lists were separated to address security concerns. However, the FCC declined again, and now the Times believes it has “exhausted all administrative remedies.” “The FCC has no lawful basis for declining to release the records requested,” it added. Not so, according to the FCC, which released . “We are disappointed that The New York Times has filed suit to collect the Commission’s internal Web server logs, logs whose disclosure would put at jeopardy the Commission’s IT security practices for its Electronic Comment Filing System,” a spokesperson said. The organization cited earlier this month which it claimed found that “the FCC need not turn over these same web server logs under the Freedom of Information Act.” But that is a simplistic read on the case. While the judge did rule against turning over server logs, he ordered the FCC to provide email addresses for those that had provided comment via its .CSV file template, and the files themselves. That’s a decent precedent for the New York Times, which has a far narrow scope with its request. |
Happy 10th anniversary, Android | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | since Google took the wraps off the G1, the first Android phone. Since that time the OS has grown from buggy, nerdy iPhone alternative to arguably the most popular (or at least popul ) computing platform in the world. But it sure as heck didn’t get there without hitting a few bumps along the road. Join us for a brief retrospective on the last decade of Android devices: the good, the bad, and the Nexus Q. This is the one that started it all, and I have in my heart for the old thing. Also known as the HTC Dream — this was back when we had an HTC, you see — the G1 was about as as you can imagine. Its full keyboard, trackball, slightly janky slide-up screen (crooked even in official photos), and considerable girth marked it from the outset as a phone only a real geek could love. Compared to the iPhone, it was like a poorly dressed whale. But in time its half-baked software matured and its idiosyncrasies became apparent for the smart touches they were. To this day I occasionally long for a trackball or full keyboard, and while the G1 wasn’t pretty, it was tough as hell. Of course, most people didn’t give Android a second look until Moto came out with the Droid, a slicker, thinner device from the maker of the famed RAZR. In retrospect, the Droid wasn’t much better or different than the G1, but it was thinner, had a better screen, and had the benefit of an enormous from Motorola and Verizon. (Disclosure: Verizon owns Oath, which owns TechCrunch, but this doesn’t affect our coverage in any way.) For many, the Droid and its immediate descendants were the first Android phones they had — something new and interesting that blew the likes of Palm out of the water, but also happened to be a lot cheaper than an iPhone. This was the fruit of the continued collaboration between Google and HTC, and the first phone Google branded and sold itself. was meant to be the slick, high-quality device that would finally compete toe-to-toe with the iPhone. It ditched the keyboard, got a , and had a lovely smooth design. Unfortunately it ran into two problems. First, the Android ecosystem was beginning to get crowded. People had lots of choices and could pick up phones for cheap that would do the basics. Why lay the cash out for a fancy new one? And second, Apple would shortly release the iPhone 4, which — and I was an Android fanboy at the time — objectively blew the Nexus One and everything else out of the water. Apple had brought a gun to a knife fight. Another HTC? Well, this was prime time for the . They were taking risks no one else would, and the Evo 4G was no exception. It was, for the time, : the iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen, and most Android devices weren’t much bigger, if they weren’t smaller. somehow survived our criticism (our alarm now seems extremely quaint, given the size of the average phone now) and was a reasonably popular phone, but ultimately is notable not for breaking sales records but breaking the seal on the idea that a phone could be big and still make sense. (Honorable mention goes to the Droid X.) Samsung’s big debut made a hell of a splash, with custom versions of the phone appearing in the stores of practically every carrier, each with their own name and design: the AT&T Captivate, T-Mobile Vibrant, Verizon Fascinate, and Sprint Epic 4G. As if the Android lineup wasn’t confusing enough already at the time! Though the S was a solid phone, it wasn’t without its flaws, and the iPhone 4 made for very tough competition. But strong sales reinforced Samsung’s commitment to the platform, and the Galaxy series is still going strong today. This was an era in which Android devices were responding to Apple, and not vice versa as we find today. So it’s no surprise that hot on the heels of the original iPad we found Google pushing a tablet-focused version of Android with its partner Motorola, which volunteered to be the guinea pig with its short-lived Xoom tablet. Although there are still Android tablets on sale today, the Xoom represented a dead end in development — an attempt to carve a piece out of a market Apple had essentially invented and soon dominated. Android tablets from Motorola, HTC, Samsung and others were rarely anything more than adequate, though they . This illustrated the impossibility of “leading from behind” and prompted device makers to specialize rather than participate in a commodity hardware melee. And who better to illustrate than Amazon? Its contribution to the Android world was the , which differentiated themselves from the rest by being extremely cheap and directly focused on consuming digital media. Just $200 at launch and far less later, the Fire devices catered to the regular Amazon customer whose kids were pestering them about getting a tablet on which to play or , but who didn’t want to shell out for an iPad. Turns out this was a wise strategy, and of course one Amazon was uniquely positioned to do with its huge presence in online retail and the ability to subsidize the price out of the reach of competition. Fire tablets were never particularly good, but they were good , and for the price you paid, that was kind of a miracle. Sony has always had a hard time with Android. Its Xperia line of phones for years were considered competent — I owned a few myself — and arguably industry-leading in the camera department. But no one bought them. And the one they bought the least of, or at least proportional to the hype it got, has to be . This thing was supposed to be a mobile gaming platform, and the idea of a slide-out keyboard is great — but the whole thing basically cratered. What Sony had illustrated was that you couldn’t just piggyback on the popularity and diversity of Android and launch whatever the hell you wanted. Phones didn’t sell themselves, and although the idea of playing Playstation games on your phone might have sounded cool to a few nerds, it was never going to be enough to make it a million-seller. And increasingly that’s what phones needed to be. As a sort of natural climax to the swelling phone trend, Samsung went all out with the first true “phablet,” and despite groans of protest the phone not only sold well but became a staple of the Galaxy series. In fact, it wouldn’t be long before Apple would follow on and produce a Plus-sized phone of its own. The Note also represented a step towards using a phone for serious productivity, not just everyday smartphone stuff. It wasn’t entirely successful — Android just wasn’t ready to be highly productive — but in retrospect it was forward thinking of Samsung to make a go at it and begin to establish productivity as a core competence of the Galaxy series. This abortive effort by Google to spread Android out into a platform was part of a number of ill-considered choices at the time. , apparently at Google or anywhere elsewhere in the world, what this thing was supposed to do. I still don’t. As we wrote at the time: Here’s the problem with the it’s a stunningly beautiful piece of hardware that’s being let down by the software that’s supposed to control it. It was made, or rather made in the USA, though, so it had that going for it. The First got dealt a bad hand. The phone itself was a lovely piece of hardware with an understated design and bold colors that stuck out. But its default launcher, the doomed Facebook Home, was hopelessly bad. How bad? in April, in May. I remember visiting an AT&T store during that brief period and even then the staff had been instructed in how to disable Facebook’s launcher and reveal the perfectly good phone beneath. The good news was that there were so few of these phones sold new that the entire stock started selling for peanuts on Ebay and the like. I bought two and used them for my early experiments in ROMs. No regrets. This was the beginning of the end for HTC, but their last few years saw them update their design language to something that actually rivaled Apple. were good phones, though HTC oversold the “Ultrapixel” camera, which turned out to not be that good, let alone iPhone-beating. As Samsung increasingly dominated, Sony plugged away, and LG and Chinese companies increasingly entered the fray, HTC was under assault and even a solid phone series like the One couldn’t compete. 2014 was a transition period with old manufacturers dying out and the dominant ones taking over, eventually leading to the market we have today. This was the line that brought Google into the hardware race in earnest. After the bungled Nexus Q launch, Google needed to come out swinging, and they did that by marrying their more pedestrian hardware with some software that truly zinged. Android 5 was a dream to use, Marshmallow had features that we loved … and the phones became objects that we adored. . This was when Google took its phones to the next level and never looked back. If the Nexus was, in earnest, the starting gun for Google’s entry into the hardware race, the line could be its victory lap. It’s an honest-to-god competitor to the Apple phone. Gone are the days when Google is playing catch-up on features to Apple, instead, Google’s a contender in its own right. The phone’s camera is amazing. The software works relatively seamlessly (bring back guest mode!), and phone’s size and power are everything anyone could ask for. The sticker price, like Apple’s newest iPhones, is still a bit of a shock, but this phone is the teleological endpoint in the Android quest to rival its famous, fruitful, contender. In 2017 Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, debuted the first fruits of his new hardware startup studio, Digital Playground, with the launch of . The company to bring the phone to market, and — as the first hardware device to come to market from Android’s creator — it was being heralded as the next new thing in hardware. Here at TechCrunch, the phone received mixed reviews. Some on staff hailed the phone as — to , while others on staff found the device… . Ultimately, the market seemed to agree. Four months ago plans for a second Essential phone , while the company and pursued other projects. There’s been little update since. In the ten years since its launch, Android has become the most widely used operating system for hardware. Some version of its software can be found in roughly and its powering a technology revolution in countries like India and China — where mobile operating systems and access are the default. As it enters its second decade, there’s no sign that anything is going to slow its growth (or dominance) as the operating system for much of the world. |
Beau Willimon shows us the path to Mars in ‘The First’ | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | screenwriter and playwright who created Netflix’s “House of Cards”, has turned his attention from Washington, D.C. to outer space in his latest series “The First”. The shows have more in common than I expected. Sure, “The First” is about a future expedition to Mars, not present day political machinations. And instead of the fourth wall-breaking monologues that “House of Cards” was known for, the new series relies on long, nearly silent sequences where characters ponder their decisions and brood over the past. But “The First” (which launched all eight episodes of its first season on September 14) isn’t an outer space adventure filled with special effects. In fact, most of the story takes place in New Orleans, focusing on the political, financial and technical challenges that the team (led by Tom Hagerty, the astronaut played by Sean Penn) faces before it can even take off. When I interviewed Willimon and executive producer Jordan Tappis, I suggested that the show seemed to be more about Earth than Mars — but Willimon didn’t quite agree. “I actually think it’s completely about Mars,” he said. For one thing, he has a multi-season plan, which will presumably take us to the Red Planet eventually. And while Willimon acknowledged that it would have been “a lot safer of a narrative choice to leap straight into the mission,” he wanted to explore other angles, like the fact that “the reality of getting to a place like Mars is that it would be incredibly difficult to even get to the starting line.” Part of that difficulty involves confronting space skeptics who wonder whether the mission is worth the cost and risk. In a traditional science fiction story, those opponents would probably be depicted as wrongheaded or even downright villainous, but in “The First”, they seem to have a real point. “My own personal attitude is, I absolutely think we should go to Mars,” Willimon said. “The value of exploration in any form, in space or here on Earth, speaks to a long and deep desire in humanity to understand and confront the unknown” — and that’s on top of the material and scientific benefits. Still, he said he wanted “The First” to “reflect the world in which we live and the world in which we’re likely to live 13 years from now,” which meant telling “the story of people who don’t share that same belief, who challenge it from a philosophical or emotional point of view. … Any astronaut going to Mars has to confront the fact that he or she may die. The question for any of them, or for any loved one, is: Is it worth it?” Ultimately, Willimon said, “We didn’t want to create a fantasy here. We’re not interested in science fiction. We’re interested in science fact.” That meant creating a plausible roadmap for how we might actually get to Mars. In “The First,” the mission is organized by a private company called Vista, but the funding comes from the U.S. government, and Willimon suggested that this kind of public-private partnership will probably be necessary. LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 12: (L-R) Creator/Writer/Executive Producer Beau Willimon speaks onstage at Hulu’s “The First” Los Angeles Premiere on September 12, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Hulu) With the current excitement around companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, he said “the private sector has a lot to offer in accelerating a mission like this and making it cost efficient.” But he doesn’t think the private sector is going to get us to Mars on its own. “In reality, the cost of getting to Mars, no matter what version you speculate, is enormous,” Willimon said. “I don’t think it’s likely that a purely private sector venture is going raise that amount of capital … In our conception, the money is coming from NASA, which means it’s really coming from taxpayer and the U.S. government, while the actual execution, building the hardware and seeing the mission through, is contracted out to Vista.” “The First” also depicts everyday life in 2031. Tappis explained that the production team “worked really closely with a handful of consultants and experts in the field” to develop its version of future technology — which looks a lot like the technology of 2018, but with a few key advancements in areas like self-driving cars, augmented reality and voice communication. “When you think about 13 years ago, the world looked pretty similar to the way it looks today, but with a few grace notes that you would find that showcase the evolution between then and now,” Tappis said. One thing that has changed dramatically in the past decade is the television landscape, and I suggested that by creating and showrunning “House of Cards,” Willimon essentially kicked off the shift to streaming content. “To be honest, I think that would have happened regardless of ‘House of Cards’,” Willimon replied. “We were the first show to go do that, because we were in the right place at the right time and were smart enough to say yes. But I think the trend was underway and was going to happen one way or another.” As for the future of television, he said, “If this much change happened in less than a decade, who knows what might happen 15 years from now. Maybe … the audience isn’t going to be watching shows on handheld devices, but instead watching it floating before them on AR glasses.” Near-future speculation is fun, and it’s a task that Willimon and Tappis seem to have taken very seriously. Still, if “The First” ends up running for several years, there seems to be a real risk that it could be overtaken or contradicted by how space travel plays out in the real world, or how consumer technologies evolve. “While we think our speculation is an informed one and certainly plausible in terms of what it could look like, the time will come when we do make our first mission to Mars and it will either be very accurate or it won’t be,” Willimon said. And yet, just as we still watch the ostensibly outdated “2001: A Space Odyssey”, he argued, “There’s a deeper story there, which is the human story of people with messy lives trying to accomplish something great. There’s an essential truth to that, which we hope is timeless.” |
Airbnb wants to give its hosts equity in its business | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | Airbnb wants to give the homeowners who power its service the opportunity to own a piece of its business. That’s why, , the $31-billion-valued company has written to the SEC to ask if its rules around security ownership can be revised. Specifically, Airbnb is seeking a change to the SEC’s Rule 701 — which governs ownership of equity in companies — to allow a new kind of shareholder class for workers who participate in gig economy companies and their services. Uber, for one, to propose a similar allowance but Airbnb’s argument is laid out in a letter that you can read (thanks to Axios.) “As a sharing economy marketplace, Airbnb succeeds when these hosts succeed,” the company wrote in one passage. “We believe that enabling private companies to grant hosts and other sharing economy participants equity in the company from an earlier stage would further align incentives between such companies and their sharing economy participants to the benefit of both.” . While it isn’t clear how earning equity might work for an Airbnb host — or an Uber or Lyft driver, for that matter — further amendment of rules would be required. Currently, SEC regulations require that any private company with over 2,000 shareholders or 500 or more who are not U.S. accredited investors, must be registered. That’s clearly a problem for Airbnb which has grown to more than five million listings since its foundation in 2008. It remains to be seen how many of those homeowners could own equity even were the rules amended to allow it. More generally, though, gig economy startups won’t pursue the equity options for contractors if doing so then triggers mandatory SEC reporting whilst they are private entities. Then there are additional complications for businesses that have expanded outside of the U.S. market. Most of Airbnb’s are located overseas — the service claims to offer lodgings across some 81,000 cities in over 190 countries — which makes handing out U.S-based equity tricky. Still, Airbnb’s public acknowledgment of its hosts and the crucial role they play is a positive part of that relationship. That’s something rare, for sure. Most of the discussion around the role between marketplace provider and gig economy worker has been negative, with . While this modern take on working gives those who choose it a degree of flexibility like never before, , such as paid vacation, benefits, overtime, health insurance and more. A slew of startups have sprouted to help cover some of those gaps, but their solutions all come at a cost to the worker, many of whom are already financially stretched. |
Twitter now puts live broadcasts at the top of your timeline | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | Twitter will now put live streams and broadcasts started by accounts you follow at the top of your timeline, making it easier to see what they’re doing in realtime. In , Twitter said that that the new feature will include breaking news, personalities and sports. The social networking giant included the new feature in its iOS and Android apps, updated this week. Among the updates, Twitter said it’s now , as well as through its sister broadcast service Periscope. Last month, Twitter discontinued its app , which according to still harbors some 5 percent of all iPhone and iPad users. |
Toyota’s autonomous mobility lead to speak at Startup Battlefield MENA | Richard Smith | 2,018 | 9 | 23 | null |
A new CSS-based web attack will crash and restart your iPhone | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | Sabri Haddouche tweeted webpage with just 15 lines of code which, if visited, will crash and restart an iPhone or iPad. Those on macOS may also see Safari freeze when opening the link. The code exploits a weakness in iOS’ web rendering engine WebKit, which Apple mandates all apps and browsers use, Haddouche told TechCrunch. He explained that nesting a ton of elements — such as “Anything that renders HTML on iOS is affected,” he said. That means anyone sending you a link on Facebook or Twitter, or if any webpage you visit includes the code, or anyone sending you an email, he warned. How to force restart any iOS device with just CSS? 💣 Source: IF YOU WANT TO TRY (DON’T BLAME ME IF YOU CLICK) : — Sabri (@pwnsdx) TechCrunch tested the exploit running on the most recent mobile software iOS 11.4.1, and confirm it crashes and restarts the phone. , director of Mac & Mobile at security firm Malwarebytes confirmed that the most recent iOS 12 beta also froze when tapping the link. The lucky whose devices won’t crash may just see their device restart (or “respring”) the user interface instead. For those curious, you can without it running the crash-inducing code. The good news is that as annoying as this attack is, it can’t be used to run malicious code, he said, meaning malware can’t run and data can’t be stolen using this attack. But there’s no easy way to prevent the attack from working. One tap on a booby-trapped link sent in a message or opening an HTML email that renders the code can crash the device instantly. Haddouche contacted Apple on Friday about the attack, which is said to be investigating. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. |
Everyday home gear made smart | Makula Dunbar | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | If you only have one smart home device, it’s likely something simple and fun like a or . As you expand your smart home setup, you can begin to swap out gear that isn’t as flashy but you still use everyday. Switching to connected locks, power outlets and smoke alarms are all simple installs that can improve your safety and comfort in your own home. We’ve pulled together some of our favorite essentials made smart for anyone looking to upgrade. The is the most versatile that we’ve tested. Whether you prefer to use a wireless fob, smartphone app or key, you’ll be able to control the lock with all of them. When we compared it to similar models, the Kevo’s Bluetooth-activated tap-to-unlock mechanism was the easiest to use. The second generation of the Kevo improved on security and has all-metal internal components for better protection against forced break-in attempts. With the optional Kevo Plus upgrade, you’ll add the ability to control the lock remotely and receive status-monitoring updates. Photo: Liam McCabe If cleaning is neither your forte or preferred pastime, a will come in handy. Our upgrade pick, the , is one of the most powerful models that we tested. It can be controlled through the iRobot Home app and uses a bump-and-track navigation system that helps vacuum an entire floor without missing spots. If its battery is running low during a session, it’ll return to its dock to power up before finishing the job. It’s easy to disassemble for maintenance and is equipped with repairable parts that make it worth its price over some of our . Photo: Rachel Cericola We tested 26 models over more than 45 hours and chose the Wi-Fi plug as our top pick. If you’ve ever thought it’d be nice to remotely turn on or off home essentials such as , and from your smartphone, plugging them into a smart outlet makes it possible. The Wemo Mini has proven to be reliable throughout long-term testing, it doesn’t block other outlets on the same wall plate and it’s compatible with iOS and Android devices and assistants, including HomeKit/Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. The interface of the Wemo app is intuitive and easy to use. You can view all of your connected devices on one screen, set powering timers and from anywhere power on or off a device plugged into the Wemo outlet. Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy For a that’s affordable and doesn’t require extensive programming, we recommend the . After about a week, it creates a schedule after learning cooling and heating preferences that you’ve set. It isn’t compatible with as many HVAC systems as similar Nest models, but it’s easy to install and doesn’t lack any features we expect. It does come with Eco Mode — an energy-saving geofencing feature that detects when your home is empty (or when your smartphone is nowhere near your house). The Nest app uses the same technology to set the thermostat to a preferred temperature when it senses you’re on your way home. If you don’t have your smartphone on hand, you can still operate the Thermostat E by turning its outer ring and pressing selections on its touchscreen. Photo: Michael Hession A is one of the most relied-upon safety devices in every home. Nonetheless, it’s easy to forget to do routine checks to ensure it’s in tip-top shape and functioning properly. With a smart smoke alarm like the , we found that its simple app, self-tests, monthly sound checks and consistent alerts are enough to keep fire safety worries at bay. It isn’t difficult to install, has a sleek design and integrates with other smart home devices like the Nest Cam (which can record video of a fire) and the Nest Learning Thermostat (which shuts down HVAC systems that may be the cause of a fire). It’s sensitive to fast- and slow-burning fires, plus it monitors homes for both smoke and carbon monoxide. |
Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘Insatiable’ is even worse than you’ve heard | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | “Insatiable,” the Netflix comedy about an overweight high school girl who suddenly becomes slim and beautiful thanks to having her jaw wired shut for a summer, has been . The reviews for the show were , yet they didn’t quite prepare me for the terribleness of the initial episodes, which alternate between feeble attempts to mine humor from hot-button issues like sexual assault and suicide, and even feebler attempts to treat those issues seriously. To help me figure out just what makes this show so bad, I was joined by ‘s original co-host, . Our ultimate question: Is this the worst thing we’ve watched for the podcast? (Yes.) We also discuss the fact that Henry Cavill has been cast as the lead in . This episode was actually recorded more than a week ago, but I didn’t get time to edit it until after Disrupt SF. has happened since then — like and . (Plus, somehow, .) Still, the initial news gave us an opportunity to weigh the relative merits of the “Mission Impossible” movies, and to discuss my favorite subject, . You can listen in the player below, or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You also can . (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!) |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 24 | null |
FEMA to send its first ‘Presidential Alert’ in emergency messaging system test | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | The Federal Emergency Management Agency will next month test a new “presidential alert” system that will allow the president to send a message to every phone in the US. The alert is the first nationwide test of the presidential alert test, FEMA said , which allows the president to address the nation in the event of a national emergency. Using the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, anyone with cell service should receive the message to their phone. “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed,” the message will read. Minutes later, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) will broadcast a similar test message over television, radio, and wireline video services. The alert was due to be sent out on Thursday at 2:18pm ET, but will now run on October 3, FEMA . Emergency alerts aren’t new and warning systems have long been used — and tested — in the US to alert citizens of local and state incidents, like AMBER alerts for missing children and severe weather events that may result in danger to or loss of life. But presidential alerts have yet to be tested. Unlike other alerts, citizens will not be allowed to opt out of presidential alerts. Allowing the president to send nationwide alerts was included in the passing of , creating a state-of-the-art emergency alert system that would replace an aging infrastructure. As alarming as these alerts can (and are designed to) be, the system aims to modernize the alerts system for a population increasingly moving away from televisions and towards mobile technology. These presidential alerts are solely at the discretion of the president and can be sent for any reason, but experts have that the system may be abused. But the system isn’t perfect. Earlier this year, after an erroneous alert went out to residents warning of a “ballistic missile threat inbound.” The message said, “this is not a drill.” The false warning was amid the height of tensions between the US and North Korea, which at the time was regularly testing its ballistic missiles as part of its nuclear weapons program. More than 100 carriers will participate in the test, FEMA said. |
In VC fund creation, have we passed the peak? | Jason Rowley | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | In venture capital, a variant on the Glengarry Glen Ross mandate is most fund managers’ modus operandi: Always. Be. Raising. And it seems like VCs have picked up on that. In the last few months, even casual readers of the tech press would notice many, many stories about VCs raising big new funds. So are venture investors spinning up new funds as often as they did in the past? VCs are certainly raising tons of money, and Crunchbase News reported earlier this week that these huge funds are upward. But is that the full story? Even though 2018 has been a banner year so far for venture fund origination on the highest end of the assets-under-management spectrum, what about the market as a whole? Aggregated from Crunchbase suggests that U.S.-based firms are spinning up fewer new funds than they did just a couple of years ago. In other words, the peak might be in. Let’s take a look at the numbers, which we’ve segmented by U.S. Census region. There are a few trends to glean from the chart above, and it comes down to pace and scale. We’re able to see how the pace of venture fund creation varies by region. In the highly unlikely event you didn’t already know that the East and West coasts are responsible for the bulk of venture fund creation, the above chart makes that fact plainly obvious. And at least when it comes to investors from Western and Eastern states, the difference is one of scale rather than direction. As the count of funds raised rises in the East, so it goes in the West. Our data suggest that, in aggregate, new fund creation hit a local maximum in 2016. With more than 260 new funds announced that year, it’s a record that stretches back at least to the time of the first dot-com collapse — if it’s not an all-time record on its own. Even given historic patterns of when new funds are announced — which — matching 2017 levels of new fund creation is likely. Although nobody should hold their breath, it’s possible that 2018 will also break records for new fund creation and total capital raised. To break the dollar volume record, VCs need to raise another $4.6 billion in new funds by the end of the year. Considering that approximately $40 billion has already been raised, this seems possible. But it’s important to remember that . One of the things some might ignore about all the money currently going into venture capital funds (and, by proxy, into privately held tech startups) is that it is going to have to come back to limited partners with a hefty return. The $45 billion U.S. VCs are on pace to raise in 2018 would have to net more than $135 billion in returns by 2028, presuming a 10-year term for the fund and a 3x realized multiple (the minimum threshold for venture scale returns). That sounds unlikely, given that we are in the senescence of a bull cycle. But so long as public tech companies soar, SaaS booms and investors are so hungry for tech shares that middling Chinese firms can go public domestically twice in a week, there’s little reason to expect too much of a pullback in the short term. Until the real correction comes, at which point we’ll see some far shorter bars added to our graph. |
Why the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI deal has cloud companies going nuts | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 9 | 15 | By now you’ve probably heard of the Defense Department’s massive winner-take-all dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (or JEDI for short). Star Wars references aside, this contract is huge, even by government standards.The Pentagon would like a single cloud vendor to build out its enterprise cloud, believing rightly or wrongly that this is the best approach to maintain focus and control of their cloud strategy. Department of Defense (DOD) spokesperson Heather Babb tells TechCrunch the department sees a lot of upside by going this route. “Single award is advantageous because, among other things, it improves security, improves data accessibility and simplifies the Department’s ability to adopt and use cloud services,” she said. Whatever company they choose to fill this contract, this is about modernizing their computing infrastructure and their combat forces for a world of IoT, artificial intelligence and big data analysis, while consolidating some of their older infrastructure. “The DOD Cloud Initiative is part of a much larger effort to modernize the Department’s information technology enterprise. The foundation of this effort is rationalizing the number of networks, data centers and clouds that currently exist in the Department,” Babb said. It’s possible that whoever wins this DOD contract could have a leg up on other similar projects in the government. After all it’s not easy to pass muster around security and reliability with the military and if one company can prove that they are capable in this regard, they could be set up well beyond this one deal. As Babb explains it though, it’s really about figuring out the cloud long-term. “JEDI Cloud is a pathfinder effort to help DOD learn how to put in place an enterprise cloud solution and a critical first step that enables data-driven decision making and allows DOD to take full advantage of applications and data resources,” she said. Photo: Mischa Keijser for Getty Images The single vendor component, however, could explain why the various cloud vendors who are bidding, — everyone except Amazon, that is, which has been mostly silent, happy apparently to let the process play out. The belief amongst the various other players, is that Amazon is in the driver’s seat for this bid, possibly because they delivered a for the government in 2013, standing up a private cloud for the CIA. It was a big deal back in the day on a couple of levels. First of all, it was the first large-scale example of an intelligence agency using a public cloud provider. And of course the amount of money was pretty impressive for the time, not $10 billion impressive, but a nice contract. For what it’s worth, Babb dismisses such talk, saying that the process is open and no vendor has an advantage. “The JEDI Cloud final RFP reflects the unique and critical needs of DOD, employing the best practices of competitive pricing and security. No vendors have been pre-selected,” she said. As the Pentagon moves toward selecting its primary cloud vendor for the next decade, has been complaining to anyone who will listen that Amazon has an unfair advantage in the deal, going so far last month, even before bids were in and long before the Pentagon made its choice. Photo: mrdoomits for Getty Images (cropped) Somewhat ironically, given their own past business model, Oracle complained among other things that the deal would lock the department into a single platform over the long term. They also questioned whether the bidding process adhered to procurement regulations for this kind of deal, according to a report in . In April, that co-CEO Safra Catz complained directly to the president that the deal was tailor made for Amazon. Microsoft hasn’t been happy about the one-vendor idea either, pointing out that by limiting itself to a single vendor, the Pentagon could be missing out on innovation from the other companies in the back and forth world of the cloud market, especially when we’re talking about a contract that stretches out for so long. As Microsoft’s in April, the company is prepared to compete, but doesn’t necessarily see a single vendor approach as the best way to go. “If the DOD goes with a single award path, we are in it to win, but having said that, it’s counter to what we are seeing across the globe where 80 percent of customers are adopting a multi-cloud solution,” he said at the time. He has a valid point, but the Pentagon seems hell bent on going forward with the single vendor idea, even though the cloud offers much greater interoperability than proprietary stacks of the 1990s (for which Oracle and Microsoft were prime examples at the time). Microsoft has in place for almost a billion dollars, although this deal from 2016 was for Windows 10 and related hardware for DOD employees, rather than a pure cloud contract like Amazon has with the CIA. It also recently , a product that lets government customers install a private version of Azure with all the same tools and technologies you find in the public version, and could prove attractive as part of its JEDI bid. It’s also possible that the fact that of the cloud infrastructure market, might play here at some level. While Microsoft has been coming fast, it’s still about a third of Amazon in terms of market size, as Synergy Research’s Q42017 data clearly shows. The market hasn’t shifted dramatically since this data came out. While market share alone wouldn’t be a deciding factor, Amazon came to market first and it is much bigger in terms of market than the next four combined, according to Synergy. That could explain why the other players are lobbying so hard and seeing Amazon as the biggest threat here, because it’s probably the biggest threat in almost every deal where they come up against each other, due to its sheer size. Consider also that , was rather late to the cloud after years of dismissing it. They could see JEDI as a chance to establish a foothold in government that they could use to build out their cloud business in the private sector too. It’s worth pointing out that the actual deal has the complexity and opt-out clauses of with just an initial two-year deal guaranteed. A couple of three-year options follow, with a final two-year option closing things out. The idea being, that if this turns out to be a bad idea, the Pentagon has various points where they can back out. Photo: Henrik Sorensen for Getty Images (cropped) In spite of the winner-take-all approach of JEDI, Babb indicated that the agency will continue to work with multiple cloud vendors no matter what happens. “DOD has and will continue to operate multiple clouds and the JEDI Cloud will be a key component of the department’s overall cloud strategy. The scale of our missions will require DOD to have multiple clouds from multiple vendors,” she said. The DOD accepted final bids in August, then for Requests for Proposal to October 9th. Unless the deadline gets extended again, we’re probably going to finally hear who the lucky company is sometime in the coming weeks, and chances are there is going to be lot of whining and continued maneuvering from the losers when that happens. |
Security flaw in ‘nearly all’ modern PCs and Macs exposes encrypted data | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | , even devices with disk encryption, are vulnerable to a new attack that can steal sensitive data in a matter of minutes, new research says. In new findings published Wednesday, F-Secure said that none of the existing firmware security measures in every laptop it tested “does a good enough job” of preventing data theft. F-Secure principal security consultant Olle Segerdahl told TechCrunch that the vulnerabilities put “nearly all” laptops and desktops — both Windows and Mac users — at risk. The new exploit is built on the foundations of a traditional cold boot attack, a technique that is well known in the hacking community. Modern computers overwrite their memory when a device is powered down to scramble the data from being read. But Segerdahl and his colleague Pasi Saarinen found a way to disable the overwriting process, making a cold boot attack possible again. “It takes some extra steps,” said Segerdahl, but the flaw is “easy to exploit.” So much so, he said, that it would “very much surprise” him if this technique isn’t already known by some hacker groups. “We are convinced that anybody tasked with stealing data off laptops would have already come to the same conclusions as us,” he said. It’s no secret that if you have physical access to a computer, the chances of someone stealing your data is usually greater. That’s why so many use disk encryption — like BitLocker for Windows and FileVault for Macs — to scramble and protect data when a device is turned off. But the researchers found that in nearly all cases they can still steal data protected by BitLocker and FileVault regardless. After the researchers figured out how the memory overwriting process works, they said it took just a few hours to build a proof-of-concept tool that prevented the firmware from clearing secrets from memory. From there, the researchers scanned for disk encryption keys, which, when obtained, could be used to mount the protected volume. It’s not just disk encryption keys at risk, Segerdahl said. A successful attacker can steal “anything that happens to be in memory,” like passwords and corporate network credentials, which can lead to a deeper compromise. Their findings were shared with Microsoft, Apple, and Intel prior to release. According to the researchers, only a smattering of devices aren’t affected by the attack. Microsoft said in a on BitLocker countermeasures that using a startup PIN can mitigate cold boot attacks, but Windows users with “Home” licenses are out of luck. And, any Apple Mac equipped are not affected, but a firmware password would still improve protection. Both Microsoft and Apple downplayed the risk. Acknowledging that an attacker needs physical access to a device, Microsoft said it encourages customers to “practice good security habits, including preventing unauthorized physical access to their device.” Apple said it was looking into measures to protect Macs that don’t come with the T2 chip. When reached, Intel would not to comment on the record. In any case, the researchers say, there’s not much hope that affected computer makers can fix their fleet of existing devices. “Unfortunately, there is nothing Microsoft can do, since we are using flaws in PC hardware vendors’ firmware,” said Segerdahl. “Intel can only do so much, their position in the ecosystem is providing a reference platform for the vendors to extend and build their new models on.” Companies, and users, are “on their own,” said Segerdahl. “Planning for these events is a better practice than assuming devices cannot be physically compromised by hackers because that’s obviously not the case,” he said. An |
Apple’s Watch isn’t the first with an EKG reader but it will matter to more consumers | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Apple’s COO Jeff Williams exuberantly proclaimed Apple’s Watch was to get FDA clearance as an over-the-counter electrocardiogram (EKG) reader during the special event at Apple headquarters on Wednesday. While Apple loves to be first to things, that statement is false. AliveCor has held the title of first since for its KardiaMobile device, a $100 stick-like metal unit you attach to the back of a smartphone. Ironically, it FDA clearance for the Kardiaband, an ECG reader designed to integrate with the Apple Watch and sold at Apple stores late last year. Just , the FDA gave the go ahead for AliveCor’s technology to screen for blood diseases, sans blood test. However, the Apple Watch could be the first to matter to a wider range of consumers. For one, Apple holds a firm of the world’s wearables market, with an estimated shipment volume of 28 million units in just 2018. While we don’t know how many AliveCor Kardiaband and KardiaMobile units were sold, it’s very unlikely to be anywhere near those numbers. For another thing, a lot of people, even those who suspect they have a heart condition, might have some hesitations around getting a separate device just to check. Automatic integration makes it easy for those curious to start monitoring without needing to purchase any extra equipment. Also, while heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S. and affects a good majority of the global population, most of us probably aren’t thinking about our heart rhythm on a daily basis. Integrating an EKG reader straight into the Watch makes monitoring seamless and could take away the fear some may have about finding out how their heart is doing. Then there’s the Apple brand, itself. Many hospitals are now partnering with Apple to use iPads and it’s reasonable to think there could be some collaboration with the Watch. “Doctors, hospital systems, health insurers, and self-insured employers don’t want to manage separate partnerships with each of Apple, Xiaomi, Fitbit, Huawei, Garmin, Polar, Samsung, Fossil, and every other wearable manufacturers. They need a cross-platform product that works for all of their patients,” Cardiogram founder and EKG researcher Brandon Ballinger told TechCrunch. “So if Apple becomes the Apple of healthcare, then a company like Cardiogram or AliveCor can become the Microsofts of this space.” How does this announcement from Apple affect AliveCor? CEO Vic Gundotra shrugs it off. He tells TechCrunch the vast majority of AliveCor’s business is from KardiaMobile, not it’s Apple-integrated ECG reader. “Apple has long alluded they were building something like this into the device,” Gundotra said, “so we’ve been anticipating it.” |
Nvidia launches the Tesla T4, its fastest data center inferencing platform yet | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Nvidia today announced its new GPU for machine learning and inferencing in the data center. The new (where the ‘T’ stands for Nvidia’s new Turing architecture) are the successors to the current batch of P4 GPUs that virtually every major cloud computing provider now offers. Google, Nvidia said, will be among the first to bring the new T4 GPUs to its Cloud Platform. Nvidia argues that the T4s are significantly faster than the P4s. For language inferencing, for example, the T4 is 34 times faster than using a CPU and more than 3.5 times faster than the P4. Peak performance for the P4 is 260 TOPS for 4-bit integer operations and 65 TOPS for floating point operations. The T4 sits on a standard low-profile 75 watt PCI-e card. What’s most important, though, is that Nvidia designed these chips specifically for AI inferencing. “What makes Tesla T4 such an efficient GPU for inferencing is the new Turing tensor core,” said Ian Buck, Nvidia’s VP and GM of its Tesla data center business. “[Nvidia CEO] Jensen [Huang] already talked about the Tensor core and what it can do for gaming and rendering and for AI, but for inferencing — that’s what it’s designed for.” In total, the chip features 320 Turing Tensor cores and 2,560 CUDA cores. In addition to the new chip, Nvidia is also launching a refresh of its for optimizing deep learning models. This new version also includes the TensorRT inference server, a fully containerized microservice for data center inferencing that plugs seamlessly into an existing Kubernetes infrastructure. |
Detroit’s StockX raises $44M from GV and Battery to expand marketplace internationally | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | StockX started as a marketplace for reselling sneakers but has since grown to be much more, bringing its transparent and anonymous marketplace to more verticals. Today the company is announcing a $44 million Series B that will help fuel international and domestic growth while letting it expand to even more product categories and perhaps opening StockX stores. The idea driving StockX is simple: Provide a marketplace with fair pricing and ensure the merchandise is authentic. The result scales to nearly day-trading in consumer goods in the same vein as oil futures. In some cases, the seller never touches the product. Sneakers and other in-demand products are priced and sold at rates set by the market rather than the seller. If a particular sneaker is in demand, the price increases. StockX is among the fastest growing startups in Detroit and Michigan and currently employs 300 in Detroit and 50 in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 2016 by CEO Josh Luber, COO Greg Schwartz and Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, the company has scaled to see more than $2 million in daily transactions and 800,000 users have sold or purchased items on StockX. Today, at an event in Detroit, Luber told the audience that the company is approaching a billion dollar run-rate. The company has never been capital constrained and CEO and co-founder Josh Luber told TechCrunch that the company never thought they would have to turn to institutional financing. That’s the comfort of having a billionaire like Gilbert as a co-founder; Luber said Gilbert was always happy to fund StockX. “We didn’t need money,” Luber told TechCrunch the day before this announcement, adding. “It was really about having external people that that we thought added truly different values than we had around the table.” Right now the company’s main marketplace centers around sneakers but StockX is built around a platform that works for most ecommerce. It’s a $5 billion market worldwide. Last year the company also launched marketplaces for streetwear, handbags and watches — all verticals with a strong demand in the secondary market. Scaling the service requires more bodies. Since everything sold on StockX is authenticated — in person — it takes more hands to authenticate more items. With that comes more customer service employees and as the company grows, StockX will need more engineers. The company is already growing fast but Luber seems ready to double down. In March StockX had 130 people. Today, it’s at 415. He thinks. He confesses it could be a slightly more. “We have about 50 engineers today and I would quadruple that tomorrow if I could,” he said. “We have about 50 customer service people today. I think it would be safe to double that tomorrow just because the business is growing so fast and we obviously hope it continues to grow as we scale.” If StockX is going to scale, it needs more employees to ensure the company’s core ethos does not soften. The new round of funding will go far in bringing in the people Luber is seeking including additional members of the C-suite. StockX is running without a CTO, CMO, or CFO — pretty much the entire leadership suite, Luber admits. It seems this is part of the reasoning behind the funding. The company was not seeking funding but, as Luber tells it, as the company gained attention, investors increasing reached out requesting meetings. Of the meetings they took, there were two firms that meshed with Luber’s vision of growing a marketplace. The new round of funding comes from GV and Battery Ventures including several high-profile investors including DJ Steve Aoki; model and entrepreneur, Karlie Kloss; streetwear designer Don C; Salesforce founder chairman and co-CEO, Marc Benioff; Bob Mylod, founder and managing partner of Annox Capital; Shana Fisher, managing partner at Third Kind Venture Capital; and Jonathon Triest, managing partner of Ludlow Ventures — only Mylod and Triest are based in the Detroit area. StockX says it intends to use the funding to expand internationally. Right now StockX only advertises in the US and only supports purchases in U.S. dollars. Going forward it intends to open up local versions of StockX to better support key markets with support for local currency, language and marketing. The company could also open location operations to make shipping and receiving easier and faster. “In some of these countries, we have, a pretty decent customer base where people are tendered on a VPN,” Luber said. “There are pictures of people that walk around China with a StockX tag hanging off their shoe.” Fifteen percent of StockX sales currently come from international buyers. Of the four product categories StockX current sells, sneakers and streetwear make up the bulk of the sales. Before expanding to different verticals, Luber tells me there’s a lot of room for growth in each of the current categories but expanding means more employees. For instance, each streetwear brand is essentially a sub-vertical, he says, adding that if the company launches a new brand StockX has to assemble a staff around it with brand expertise to build the catalog and product authentication process. StockX is not ready to announce what other type of products it might sell. Street art seems like one they’re exploring. Despite the growth, Luber remains committed to Detroit. He said the company will always be headquartered in Detroit and was proud to point to the fact that StockX was the second largest tenant in Dan Gilbert’s marquee Detroit building, One Campus Martius. The company also operates a 30,000 square foot facility in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. StockX could come to other cities though, Luber says. The company is talking about what a StockX “in-real-life” experience would look like: It could be retail, a brand experience, accepting products to be sold or additional operation centers. The company is exploring all the obvious candidates including LA, NYC, San Francisco and Portland. |
Fintech investment powerhouse Ribbit Capital aims for $420 million with its latest fund | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | , the financial technology investment firm whose portfolio includes hits like the no-fee mobile investment platform ; cryptocurrency wallet and marketplace provider ; and , the automotive insurance platform that just ; is raising $420 million for its latest fund, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund would be Ribbit’s fifth foray out with limited partners and its $420 million target is only a nominal increase from the $300 million it had set out to raise for its fourth fund last year. That kind of restraint is remarkable in itself. But with the portfolio of hits Ribbit has amassed, the firm would be forgiven for attempting to raise double its current target. Ribbit founder, Meyer (Micky) Malka, did not respond to a request for comment. Coinbase alone is now worth at least $8 billion on paper, and no one laughs when chief executive Brian Armstrong says that his company’s goal is to become the New York Stock Exchange of crypto securities. Robinhood, another one of Ribbit’s portfolio darlings, after its latest funding round earlier this year — and has become synonymous with stock trading for a new generation of investors ( ). Then there are other bets the company has made in the financial services space. Along with Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures, Ribbit made an investment in , a financial services institution that provides a good chunk of the fintech businesses in the U.S. with their sole link into the world of regulated financial institutions. It was the originator for over $2 billion worth of loans for Max Levchin’s lending business, (another Ribbit portfolio company, ) and (a fintech company that, shockingly, did not make its way into Ribbit’s portfolio). Lest we forget, there’s another multi-billion-dollar portfolio company in the Ribbit portfolio. The company was also an early investor in Credit Karma, now a $4 billion juggernaut that was . Just to make the math easier, that’s four companies worth more than $20 billion (on paper) that Ribbit can count in its latest portfolio. Not bad for a fund angling for only $420 million. Ribbit launched its first fund in 2012, targeting a humble $90 million, when the latest financial technology investment boom was just getting started. The brainchild of Malka, Ribbit has never really been a fund that claims the spotlight, but Malka has been a financial wizard since the age of 19. That’s when he co-founded a securities and investment broker-dealer, Heptagon Group, which serviced the U.S. and Malka’s home market of Venezuela. In 1998, Malka created the first online brokerage for financial services in Latin America, Patagon.com. After its acquisition in 2000 for more than $700 million, Malka served as an interim chief executive officer for OpenBank, a Spanish and German online bank. Malka has been steeped in financial services in both North America and South America and his portfolio not only reflects his knowledge, but also his roots. Malka is still active in Latin American investments, and some of the fintech portfolio that he’s amassed includes up-and-comers in South America’s fintech community, too. Look at Guiabolso, that combines Mint, LendingClub and Credit Karma into a single service. The interest in finance dates back to an early age. Malka likes to recount a story from when he was eight years old and wrote a letter to the tooth fairy asking for money for a lost tooth… Except Malka had certain conditions. “I wrote, ‘Here is my tooth, please, I do not want to receive bolivars, I will only accept dollars,’” Malka told the . That passion for finance and attention to detail hasn’t changed in the intervening years. “Banks have proven to be difficult environments for innovation to flourish, resulting in an antiquated financial services industry that remains relatively untouched by the technology-driven evolution transforming other markets ranging from social media sharing to professional enterprise services,” said Malka, in a statement announcing the launch of his first fund. “The technology to unlock this innovation is in place, and there are entrepreneurs around the world with groundbreaking ideas that have the potential to turn this industry on its head. What’s lacking is the investment, will and expertise to develop and make them reality. It is going to require focused investment to ignite this change, and Ribbit is here to answer the call.” |
Beats did announce something today, after all | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | null |
Uber is getting a new look | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | The move comes two days after to lead marketing efforts. [gallery ids="1711398,1711397,1711396,1711421"] Worth $62 billion, Uber is the most valuable private company in the world. |
The 7 most egregious fibs Apple told about the iPhone XS camera | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Apple always drops a few whoppers at its events, and the today was no exception. And nowhere were they more blatant than in the introduction of the devices’ “new” camera features. No one doubts that iPhones take great pictures, so why bother lying about it? My guess is they can’t help themselves. To be clear, I have no doubt they made some great updates to make a good camera better. But whatever those improvements are, they were overshadowed today by the breathless hype that was frequently questionable and occasionally just plain wrong. Now, to fill this article out I had to get a bit pedantic, but honestly, some of these are pretty egregious. There are a lot of iPhones out there, to be sure. But defining the iPhone as some sort of decade-long continuous camera, which Apple seems to be doing, is sort of a disingenuous way to do it. By that standard, Samsung would almost certainly be ahead, since it would be allowed to count all its Galaxy phones going back a decade as well, and they’ve definitely outsold Apple in that time. Going further, if you were to say that a basic off-the-shelf camera stack and common Sony or Samsung sensor was a “camera,” iPhone would probably be outnumbered 10:1 by Android phones. Is the iPhone one of the world’s most popular cameras? To be sure. Is it the world’s most popular camera? You’d have to slice it pretty thin and say that this or that year and this or that model was more numerous than any other single model. The point is this is a very squishy metric and one many could lay claim to depending on how they pick or interpret the numbers. As usual, Apple didn’t show their work here, so we may as well coin a term and call this an educated bluff. As Phil would explain later, a lot of the newness comes from improvements to the sensor and image processor. But as he said that the system was new while backed by an exploded view of the camera hardware, we may consider him as referring to that as well. It’s not actually clear what in the hardware is different from the iPhone X. Certainly if you look at the specs, they’re nearly identical: If I said these were different cameras, would you believe me? Same F numbers, no reason to think the image stabilization is different or better, and so on. It would not be unreasonable to guess that these are, as far as optics, the same cameras as before. Again, not that there was anything wrong with them — they’re fabulous optics. But showing components that are in fact the same and saying it’s different is misleading. Given Apple’s style, if there were any actual changes to the lenses or OIS, they’d have said something. It’s not trivial to improve those things and they’d take credit if they had done so. The sensor of course is extremely important, and it improved: the 1.4-micrometer pixel pitch on the wide-angle main camera is larger than the 1.22-micrometer pitch on the X. Since the megapixels are similar we can probably surmise that the “larger” sensor is a consequence of this different pixel pitch, not any kind of real form factor change. It’s certainly larger, but the wider pixel pitch, which helps with sensitivity, is what’s actually improved, and the increased dimensions are just a consequence of . We’ll look at the image processor claims below. It’s not really clear what is meant when he says this. “To take advantage of all this technology.” Is it the readout rate? Is it the processor that’s faster, since that’s what would probably produce better image quality (more horsepower to calculate colors, encode better, and so on)? “Fast” also refers to light-gathering — is faster? I don’t think it’s accidental that this was just sort of thrown out there and not specified. Apple likes big simple numbers and doesn’t want to play the spec game the same way as the others. But this in my opinion crosses the line from simplifying to misleading. This at least Apple or some detailed third party testing can clear up. Now, this was a bit of sleight of hand on Phil’s part. Presumably what’s new is that Apple has better integrated the image processing pathway between the traditional image processor, which is doing the workhorse stuff like autofocus and color, and the “neural engine,” which is doing face detection. It may be new for Apple, but this kind of thing has been standard in many cameras for years. Both phones and interchangeable-lens systems like DSLRs use face and eye detection, some using neural-type models, to guide autofocus or exposure. This (and the problems that come with it) go back years and years. I remember point-and-shoots that had it, but unfortunately failed to detect people who had dark skin or were frowning. It’s gotten a lot better (Apple’s depth-detecting units probably help a lot), but the idea of tying a face-tracking system, whatever fancy name you call it, in to the image-capture process is old hat. What’s in the XS may be the best, but it’s probably not “entirely new” even for Apple, let alone the rest of photography. Apple’s brand new feature has been on Google’s Pixel phones for a while now. A lot of cameras now keep a frame buffer going, essentially snapping pictures in the background while the app is open, then using the latest one when you hit the button. And Google, among others, had the idea that you could use these unseen pictures as raw material for an HDR shot. Probably Apple’s method is a different, and it may even be better, but fundamentally it’s the same thing. Again, “brand new” to iPhone users, but well known among Android flagship devices. I’m not saying you shoot directly into the sun, but it’s really not uncommon to include the sun in your shot. In the corner like that it can make for some cool lens flares, for instance. It won’t blow out these days because almost every camera’s auto-exposure algorithms are either center-weighted or intelligently shift around — to find faces, for instance. When the sun is in your shot, your problem isn’t blown out highlights but a lack of dynamic range caused by a large difference between the exposure needed to capture the sun-lit background and the shadowed foreground. This is, of course, as Phil says, one of the best applications of HDR — a well-bracketed exposure can make sure you have shadow details while also keeping the bright ones. Funnily enough, in the picture he chose here, the shadow details are mostly lost — you just see a bunch of noise there. You don’t need HDR to get those water droplets — that’s a shutter speed thing, really. It’s still a great shot, by the way, I just don’t think it’s illustrative of what Phil is talking about. This just isn’t true. You can do this on the Galaxy S9, and it’s being rolled out in Google Photos as well. Lytro was doing something like it years and years ago, if we’re including “any type of camera.” Will this be better? Probably – looks great to me. Has it never been possible ever? Not even close. I feel kind of bad that no one told Phil. He’s out here without the facts. Well, that’s all the big ones. There were plenty more, shall we say, embellishments at the event, but that’s par for the course at any big company’s launch. I just felt like these ones couldn’t go unanswered. I have nothing against the iPhone camera — I use one myself. But boy are they going wild with these claims. Somebody’s got to say it, since clearly no one inside Apple is. Check out the rest of our Apple event coverage here: |
Tesla just lost its head of global finance | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Tesla’s head of global finance is leaving the automaker, the latest high-level executive departure that comes just days after chief accounting officer Dave Morton resigned after barely a month on the job. The departure was first . Tesla confirmed to TechCrunch that Justin McAnear, whose official title was vice president of worldwide finance and operation, is leaving after three years. His last day is October 7. “Several weeks ago, I announced to my team that I would be leaving Tesla because I had the chance to take a CFO role at another company,” McAnear said in a statement provided by Tesla. “I’ve truly loved my time at Tesla, and I have great respect for my colleagues and the work they do, but this was simply an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Any other speculation as to why I’ve left is simply inaccurate. I’ve been working with the team to ensure a smooth transition prior to my last day on , and a number of members of the team are stepping up to fill my role.” A have left the company since the beginning of the year, including chief people officer Gaby Toledano, Sarah O’Brien, who headed up Tesla’s communications team, and the company’s senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field. Tesla has hired some executives in recent months, such as a global director of vehicle delivery and CFO for China operations, but gaps still remain. Some high-level positions haven’t been filled, while others have been restructured. CEO Elon Musk announced a earlier this month that put more responsibility on a few key people. For instance, Kevin Kassekert previously headed up infrastructure development, a job that included leading the construction and development of gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. His new title is vice president of people and places, a position that gives him responsibility of human resources — a job that was once filled by Toledano — as well as facilities, construction and infrastructure. Tesla has more than 37,000 employees in facilities all over the world, including its factory in Fremont, California. Musk also promoted Jérôme Guillen to president of automotive. Guillen will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate Tesla’s supply chain. Guillen previously headed up Tesla’s truck program and worldwide sales and service. |
Airbnb hosts are offering free rooms to people fleeing Hurricane Florence | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | With Hurricane Florence rapidly approaching the southeastern seaboard, many are leaving the area and seeking accommodation inland. Hopefully people have shelter lined up, but for a handful of those that don’t, Airbnb hosts are . Well over 300 hosts from Pennsylvania to Alabama are participating in Airbnb’s Disaster Response Program, by which they can easily offer their room or spare unit to people on the run from Mother Nature, free of charge. They don’t get anything out of it except presumably the satisfaction of helping someone in need. , and you can (and should) activate your own spot by logging in and finding the “urgent accommodation” option. Technically you can opt to charge instead of be free, but that would be a bit rotten in this situation. You’ll need an account, of course, if you’re looking for a place to stay. You’ll have to work out with your host how long it’s possible to stick around for free. And anyone who takes advantage of this to fake out a generous host and go sightseeing on the back of a natural disaster is a scumbag. Don’t even think about it. Three hundred spare rooms might not make a big dent in the thousands upon thousands looking for a place to stay, but it’s a nice example of a platform making it easy to generate a little social good. Airbnb has done this for lots of other disasters, but not everyone knows about it, so if you’re new to the system, consider signing up. |
Apple Watch Series 4 up close and hands-on | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | out there, there’s someone who wants nothing more in this world than a circular Apple Watch. That person, I’m sad to report, was once again disappointed with the outcome of yet another Apple event. Circle-sporting invites and office buildings aside, the squircle works well for Apple, so it’s sticking around for the time being. [gallery ids="1711325,1711324,1711316,1711314,1711308,1711327"] |
Introducing Rapide E, Aston Martin’s first electric sports car | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Aston Martin is finally sharing some specs and a couple of teaser photos of the upcoming Rapide E, the British automaker’s first all-electric sports car. The upshot: It’ll be fast and rare. The company will only make 155 of the Rapide E, which will be powered by an 800-volt battery system with 65 kilowatt-hour capacity. (Pretty sure that makes Aston Martin the first luxury car company to launch an 800-volt system.) The battery, which will use more than 5,600 lithium-ion 18650 format cylindrical cells, is expected to have a range of more than 200 miles. The battery system will have a charging rate of a 185 miles per hour using a 400V outlet with 50kW charger. The car’s battery system does enable faster charging of 310 miles of range per hour for those using a 800V outlet delivering 100kW. CEO Andy Palmer told TechCrunch recently that translates to about 15 minutes to charge the battery 80 percent. The big objective of this project — one that has been years in the making — is to build an electric vehicle that can deliver those V12-engined Rapide S feels. The company said engineers paid particular attention to the development and tuning of the electric powertrain, which Williams Advanced Engineering worked on, the chassis and software integration. Aston Martin Rapide E. The Rapide E is expected to have a top speed of 155 miles per hour and be able to travel from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds, and from 50 to 70 mph in 1.5 seconds. The battery system powers two rear-mounted electric motors that produce a combined target output of just over 600 horsepower and 700 pound-feet of torque. Aston Martin emphasized that drivers will be able to hit these performance targets regardless of how full the battery is. The aim, the company said, is for the Rapide E to drive a full lap of the famous Nürburgring “with absolutely no derating of the battery and the ability to cope with the daily demands of repeated hard acceleration and braking.” Customer deliveries are set for the fourth quarter of 2019. The Rapide E is a bridge of sorts to Aston Martin’s electric future. The Rapide E and the resurrected Lagonda brand will be built in the upcoming St. Athan production facility in the U.K. Lagonda will be Aston Martin’s electric brand, with production beginning in 2021. “The Rapide E will help us understand the technology and the customer,” Palmer told TechCrunch during Monterey Car Week in August. Customers have agreed to work with the company to provide data and their experience of driving and owning an electric vehicle, Palmer said, adding that information will impact the upcoming Lagonda brand. Aston Martin doesn’t advertise the price of the Rapide E, saying pricing is available once customers have applied. The company previously said it would be . |
iPhone XS Max up close and hands-on | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | thing about the iPhone XS Max is that it doesn’t feel huge. It’s all relative, of course. And surely Apple’s old guard would have scoffed at the notion of a 6.5-inch display. But time marches on. Seasons change and so do minds. Temperatures increase, superhero movies pile up and screen sizes increase, unabated. [gallery ids="1711196,1711198,1711200,1711195,1711186,1711181,1711184"] |
iPhone XR up close and hands-on | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | you believe that it’s not beholden to such trivial things as the market — roadmaps are long and the company’s always done its own thing. But the XR feels like as much a response to the first iPhone X than anything. [gallery ids="1711262,1711263,1711265,1711261,1711257,1711256,1711254"] |
Business school grads and quants are winning the battle to create the next P&G | Micah Rosenbloom | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | These days my Instagram feed feels more like QVC than a social network. And many of these companies are enjoying tremendous success pitching natural deodorants, unique underwear, creative candles, glam glasses, stunning shoes — all manner of well-crafted . We’re witnessing a Cambrian explosion of new consumer startups. For the last couple of years, building a successful startup has seemed as simple as picking an out of favor category like ketchup and turning the most mundane of condiments into a ! Why try to build a robot or AI company when you can just modify and repackage a topping? But how should founders evaluate the markets for mattresses and men’s health? What heuristics should an investor use to weigh and , or to compare and ? And what is the right kind of founder for this sort of startup? Do you look for the designer with an unimpeachable aesthetic sense? Or an MBA who’s run the numbers on every facet of the fashion industry? It’s far from clear at this point, but I think there are a few emerging ground rules: What strikes me as most unusual and unpredictable is that most of these companies were founded by entrepreneurs with analytical, business training. They’re strong on finance, marketing, and customer acquisition. It’s not what you would have expected in categories noted more for an ineffable “cool” factor than feature lists. helps a brand stand out, but accounting acumen is what keeps it alive and on its way to becoming a unicorn. It turns out that much of the same playbook for building and scaling a software company applies to a modern CPG startup. In many ways, isn’t so different from , and they are certainly closer in spirit than a direct competitor like MattressFirm. This is why you see a migration of founders and VCs like me playing in categories previously out of bounds for tech investors. Whether its finding the latest targeting tools or closely monitoring customer NPS, this is the DNA needed to be successful. For this reason, VCs are able to pattern match, somewhat, based on what they’ve seen working in other aspects of their investing. Bootstrapped mattress maker merged with market leader Serta-Sealy for somewhere between Perhaps it’s a coincidence that three amazing founding teams bet on beds, but I’d wager the state of the mattress market is partially responsible for their success. The mattress business is essentially a run by who have made major investments in real-estate and an in-store sales model. As a result, we see less experimentation and artificially high prices. Compare the mattress industry to the meal kit delivery business which had to contend with a wide variety of substitute food products, from Domino’s to and supermarkets to — not to mention spoilage, high levels of customer churn, etc. As a result, companies in this space have had a harder time dominating their respective categories. Sadly, there is no amount of clever branding or subway advertising that will eliminate those realities. Image: Soifer/iStock The first Casper mattress was the . Prior to manufacturing his own beds, Krim built a drop ship business serving other manufacturers and learned which levers to pull in order to attract customers and generate demand. It was this seemingly mundane insight – that you could box and ship a mattress via a carrier instead of onboard a large truck that allowed him to scale much faster than Sleepys and . Similarly, and each ignited a boom in direct-to-consumer food delivery. These companies recognized that fresh and immediately frozen products limit spoilage and allows for much easier transport. While competitors had to worry about organic kale rotting in a fulfillment center, these companies could focus more attention on customer acquisition. This insight coupled with smart marketing, virality, and high NPS has helped them both . It’s not nearly enough to say, “The competitors don’t get it.” or this is for “Gen Z.” Instead, like with all start-ups, the founders need to identify that non-obvious, often contrarian, insight. This is usually less of a product “A-Ha!” and is more likely an arbitrage opportunity in a dysfunctional market. Digital vertical native brands can be compelling investments, but they are unlikely to have deal dimensions, in terms of multiples or absolute exits, that we see with traditional tech investments. Just look at a few recent sales of DNVBs. The absolute dollar amounts are reasonable, but the multiples are small relative to tech, ranging from 1.6X to a potential 8X (no doubt subject to earn outs), with the average being in the 2-3X range. On the bright side, these acquisitions do tend to consummate quickly, often within a few years of their founding. If you finance a DNVB like a deep tech company with heavy reliance on tens of millions of venture capital, founders and investors are likely to see little in return. As recently wrote at ReCode, many of these brands are skipping VC all together. Sir Kensington was Native Deodorant was MVMT was Tuft and Needle had and was acquired for 1-5X Dave’s Killer Bread was Anova was acquired for . Blue Apron has built the biggest brand in meal kit delivery, got public, and currently has a . StitchFix is one of the clearest success stories and still . Dollar Shave Club sold for , though it wasn’t yet profitable. It’s important to remember that these sales are predicated on impressive revenues. Cruise Automation can get acquired for $1B because its technology could be the basis for a new kind of car, but don’t expect Kellogg’s to acquire a pre-launch cereal company for a similar sum. DNVB investing is here to stay as there is a fundamental shift going on in retail and how consumers shop. Unless you’re Kylie Jenner with a hit reality show, investors would be wise not to dismiss that nerdy MBA or former consultant pitching the next great brand. |
Everything Apple announced at its iPhone XS event | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Today was Apple’s big hardware event, and the trillion-dollar company had quite a lot to share about the future of some of its most profitable product lines. While Apple boasted how its products had been completely redesigned and re-engineered, in reality, what was most notable about today’s Apple event is how Apple is choosing to design within the bounds of its past releases. The new class of flagship iPhones, the XS and XS Max, made hardware upgrades focused on durability and performance, with a new chipset and not too much else. The first hardware design update in years for the Apple Watch equated to a larger, rounded corner display and updates to the biometric sensors. There were also a couple of surprises though; here’s what we saw today: [gallery ids="1711200,1711198,1711196,1711195,1711186,1711181"] Apple’s latest and greatest iPhone didn’t reinvent the wheel after last year’s major refresh, but the flagship now has a plus size, though it’s not called the XS Plus. The iPhone XS Max sports a 6.5-inch OLED display compared to the XS’s 5.8 display. It’s a massive screen and it’s the biggest that’s ever been on an iPhone. For comparison, the iPad Mini’s screen is 7.9 inches, so the XS Max is as phablet as phablets come. The iPhone XS and XS Max are identical specs-wise, with both toting Apple’s latest ; the only difference is the display and a $100 price bump for the larger phone. The iPhone XS starts at $999 for a 64GB version, while the 64GB iPhone XS Max starts at $1,099. They’re up for pre-order on September 14. [gallery ids="1711254,1711261,1711256,1711265,1711263,1711257,1711262"] While Apple’s iPhone X may have oozed premium luxury when it launched last year, boy, was it pricey. The next best option was the iPhone 8 line, which felt like a pretty major step down in terms of design. This year the choice is a lot easier with the “edge-to-edge” , which cuts down on priceyness (it starts at $749) by using an LCD display as opposed to the more high-end OLED one found in the iPhone XS. The XR may offer a tad less vibrant experience, but the large 6.1-inch LCD phone is sure to be Apple’s best seller thanks to how similar it is to the XS. The main areas where it falls short beyond display types are the single camera module and its lack of 3D Touch. The body of the XR is also made of aluminum as opposed to the stainless steel body on the XS. The phone starts at $749 for 64GB. It’s up for pre-order on October 19. [gallery ids="1711324,1711314,1711325,1711316,1710834,1710793,1710794,1710826,1711215,1711216"] After three years of under-the-hood upgrades, we finally got some changes to the look of the Apple Watch. The major story here is a new, larger curved-edge display. The Series 4 has some crazy health-monitoring features, namely it now has the ability to perform electrocardiograms in 30 seconds. The 40mm Apple Watch starts at $399 while the LTE version starts at a pricey $499. You can pre-order the Watch on September 14. There were still plenty of things that we expected Apple to touch on that we heard diddly squat about. Where’s AirPower? Where are the new AirPods? What’s up with the MacBook Air? Any word on a cheaper HomePod? What about those rumored over-ear headphones? What about that AR headset we’ve been hearing about for years? In the end, Apple can only share so much at each event, but even through the lens of past announcements, this was a pretty quiet keynote. |
Snapchat shares hit all-time low as search acquisition Vurb’s CEO bails | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Snapchat’s sagging share price is making it tough to retain talent. Bobby Lo, founder and CEO of mobile search app two years ago is leaving day-to-day operations at the company. That means Lo cut out early on his four-year retention package vesting schedule, which was likely influenced by Snapchat falling to new share price lows. Snap is trading around $9.15 today, compared to its $17 IPO price and $24 first-day close. That’s down over 7 percent from yesterday following BTIG analyst with a target price of $5 saying “We are tired of Snapchat’s excuses for missing numbers and are no longer willing to give management ‘time’ to figure out monetization.” Greenfield is known as one of the top social network analysts, so people take him seriously when he says “We have been disappointed in SNAP’s product evolution (as have users) and see no reason to believe this will change.” Vurb is a good example of this. The app let users , allowing them to bundle restaurants, movie theaters, and more into shareable decks of search cards. It took over a year after the October 2016 acquisition for the tech to be integrated into Snapchat in the form of context cards in search. But Snap never seemed to figure out how to make its content-craving teen audience care about Vurb’s utility. Snap could have built powerful offline meetup tools out of the cards but never did, and lackluster Snap Map adoption furthered clouded the company’s path forward around local businesses. Now Lo tells TechCrunch of his departure, “Building experiences at Snap has been a wonderful culmination of my seven-year startup journey with Vurb. My transition to an advisor at Snap lets me continue supporting the amazing people there while directing my time back into startups, starting with investing and advising in founders.” Lo was early to embrace the monolithic app style pioneered by WeChat in China that’s become increasingly influential in the states. Snap confirmed the departure while trying to downplay it. A spokesperson tells me, “Bobby transitioned to an advisory role this summer, and we appreciate his continued contributions to Snap.” Given Snap is known to back-weight its stock vesting schedules, Lo could be leaving over half of his retention shares on the table. That decision should worry investors. As a solo founder, Lo already made off with a big chunk of the acquisition price that including $21 million in cash and $83 million in stock, so with the company’s share price so low, he might have had little incentive to stay. Snapchat Context Cards built from Vurb’s acquired technology Since last July, Snap has lost a ton of talent including SVP of Engineering , early employee Chloe Drimal, VP of HR and Legal Robyn Thomas and VP of Securities and Facilities Martin Lev, CFO Drew Vollero, VP of product Tom Conrad, TimeHop co-founder Jonathan Wegener, Spectacles team lead Mark Randall, ad tech manager Sriram Krishnan, head of sales Jeff Lucas, and just last week, its . With its user count shrinking, constant competition from Facebook and Instagram, and talent fleeing, it’s hard to see a bright future for Snap. Unless CEO Evan Spiegel, without the help of his departed lieutenants, can come up with a groundbreaking new product that’s not easy to copy, we could be looking at downward spiral for the ephemeral app. At what point must Snap consider selling itself to Google, Apple, Tencent, Disney, or whoever will take on the distressed social network? |
Here’s how Apple’s stock fared during today’s big hardware event | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Apple announced a whole bunch of new products today at its fancy Cupertino campus in what was its first hardware event since becoming a The company proudly unveiled the , , and . The stock market behaved as we expected. Apple’s stock spent much of the day hovering down 1 percent, dropping as low as 2 percent at the conclusion of the big presentation. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) recovered by the time the markets closed, ending the day, again, down about 1.2 percent. Exciting stuff, I know. A few of Apple’s competitors’ stocks, however, tumbled on the news of its new lineup of iPhones and its latest Apple Watch. Fitbit’s (NYSE: FIT) stock took the hardest hit on Wednesday as Apple announced its newest smartwatch, . Fitbit, the creator of a competing wearable health and fitness device, closed down nearly 7 percent. Samsung, another one of Apple’s competitors, was down just 1 percent on the news of Apple’s new fancy-schmancy phones. The iPhone XS, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, is the best and greatest phone the company has ever made. U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ: QCOM) stock dipped 2 percent on that news. Apple, as a result, has been . Samsung and Qualcomm closed down about 1 percent Wednesday. Apple’s stock is up more than 30 percent so far this year. The company shipped some 41 million phones in Q2 2018, per Canalys (via email), and has continued to in its lead-up to the big $1 trillion. The company’s stock took a slight hit earlier this week after President Trump tweeted that Apple’s prices may climb due to . Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China – but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now. Exciting! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) The tweet was a response to a letter Apple wrote to the Trump administration warning them that tariffs may increase the cost of its products, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePods. “It is difficult to see how tariffs that hurt U.S. companies and U.S. consumers will advance the Government’s objectives with respect to China’s technology policies,” Apple wrote, per . “We hope, instead, that you will reconsider these measures and work to find other, more effective solutions that leave the U.S. economy and U.S. consumer stronger and healthier than ever before.” If you missed today’s event or you’re already ready to relive it (no judgment), we live-blogged the whole thing . Catch up on all the new hardware . |
A Tesla investor says he was recently questioned by US regulators about that infamous ‘funding secured’ tweet | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Last week, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, regulator Jina Choi, who heads the SEC’s wide-reaching San Francisco unit, that the SEC is investigating Tesla CEO Elon Musk for possible fraud. Said Choi, “I can’t tell you about any particular investigation in our office. And I can’t confirm or deny the existence of investigations that are in our office. I can say that we are very diligent about covering the issuers in our region and some of the more high-profile issuers in our region. We try to stay on top of that, but that’s about all I can say.” Now, investor James Anderson of the global asset manager tells Reuters that, as a shareholder, he was by U.S. securities regulators about Musk’s famous — and possibly fateful — early August tweet that he was thinking of taking Tesla private and that he had “funding secured.” Said Anderson to Reuters, “I don’t know what they’ll do with [Musk], but there’s no implication that we’ve done anything wrong . . . I think quite naturally they wanted to know whether major shareholders had any lead indication or knowledge of the tweet about ‘funding secured.’” Because it isn’t talking, it’s impossible to know how seriously the SEC is looking into the chain of events that led to the tweet or what followed. As industry watchers likely know, days after making his surprising announcement, Musk on why he made it, that he’d left a late July meeting with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund that gave him the impression that a deal to take Tesla private could close. A by the WSJ of what happened behind the scenes during this period — it was published shortly after Musk abandoned his take-private idea — said officials in the kingdom were “rankled” by the suggestion that the Saudis, who have of Tesla’s shares this year, had made any kind of formal proposal. Bruised feelings aside, Musk, it’s now plain, may be dealing with regulatory fall-out, too. And interestingly, much of what happens next may center not just on interviews with shareholders and Musk’s other communications, but on plain-old psychology. Onstage, we asked Choi if, typically speaking, false statements are enough to prove fraud or whether there needs to be an accompanying scheme. “When you talk about fraud,” she answered, “you’re talking about a state of mind, you’re talking about mens rea. We call it . You have to do something with intentionality. The idea of just making a misstatement doesn’t necessarily rise to the level of fraud. I think that’s what makes our investigations so challenging. I think the idea of trying to understand what’s in people’s heads can be very difficult.” Misstatements can “be the first step to fraud,” Choi had added. “But generally, when we talk about fraud the F word, I think we are talking about a state of mind that’s a little bit higher than that.” |
XS, XR, XS Max? The difference between the new iPhones | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | XS is the normal one. XR is the cheap one. XS Max is the big one. That’s a good start to understanding Apple’s confusing naming scheme for its new line of iPhones. Apparently jealous of Android’s fragmentation, Apple decided it needed three different models, three different storage sizes and nine different colors. You can think of the XS as the updated iPhone X, the Max as the new Plus and the XR as a revival of the great-for-kids budget iPhone SE. Here’s a comparison of their features, prices, options and release dates. Apple’s new flagship phone is the . If you want the best Apple has to offer that will still fit in your pocket, this is the one for you. It’s got a 5.8-inch diagonal OLED “Super Retina” HDR screen with 458 pixels per inch, which is actually taller than the old 8 Plus’s 5.5-inch screen, but it’s a little thinner, so it has less total screen volume. Dual 12 megapixel cameras offer stabilization and 2X optical zoom, plus the new depth control Portrait mode feature. It’s $999 for the 64GB, $1,149 for the 256GB, or $1,349 for the 512GB. It comes in silver, gold and space gray, all in stainless steel that’s waterproof to two meters. Pre-orders start Friday, September 14th, and they ship and hit stores on September 21st. If you love watching movies, browsing photos and shooting videos on your phone, you’ll want the . The 6.5-inch OLED “Super Retina” HDR screen is the biggest ever on an iPhone, dwarfing the 8 Plus’s screen, yet with a similar device size since the XS Max takes up more of the phone’s face. The twin 12 megapixel lenses stabilize your images and offer 2X optical zoom, as well as Portrait mode depth control. It also comes in stainless steel silver, gold and space gray that are all waterproof to two meters, and costs $100 more than the XS at $1,099 for 64GB, $1,249 for 256GB or a whopping $1,449 for 512GB. As with the XS, pre-orders start Friday, September 14th, and you can get it in your hands on September 21st. Don’t need the sharpest or biggest new screen and want to save some cash? Grab an . Its size comes in between the XS and XS Max, with a 6.1-inch diagonal LCD “Liquid Retina” screen with 326 pixels per square inch. Fewer pixels and no HDR display means the XR won’t look quite as brilliant as the XS models. The XR also only has one 12 megapixel camera lens, so it doesn’t offer stabilization or 2X optical zoom like its XS siblings, but it still gets the cool Bokeh-changing Portrait mode depth control. The XR is only waterproof to one meter instead of two like its expensive sisters, and lacks 3D Touch for quick access to deeper features. As a bonus with the XR, you do get 1.5 hours of additional battery life and six color options in the aluminum (“aloominium” if you’re Jonny Ive) finish: white, black, blue, yellow, coral and red. And it’s cheaper at $749 for 64GB, with $799 for 128GB and $899 for 256GB. If that’s not cheap enough, you can now get the iPhone 7 for $449 and the iPhone 8 costs $599 — though there are no more iPhones with headphone jacks now that the 6S and SE are getting retired. In hopes that you’ll buy a pricier one, the XR arrives a month later than the XS models, with pre-orders on October 19th and shipping October 26th. Apple may find this level of customization lets everyone find the right iPhone for them, though it could simultaneously produce decision paralysis in buyers who aren’t confident enough to pay. While it’s a headache at first, you’ll end up with a phone fit for your style and budget. Though without a ton of improvements over the iPhone X, you might not need an “iPhone Excess.” |
New iPhones courageously ditch the free headphone dongle | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | Apple is under the impression that its “courage” has already paid off and that it no longer needs to ship a headphone dongle with its new phones. Mission accomplished! The new iPhone XS and XR models will not include the Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter, and users will have to buy it separately for $9. The iPhone 8 will also not include the dongle moving forward, reported. On the bright side, the dongle is only $9, and if you’ve been an iPhone owner for the past few years, you’ve got one already. To be clear, a lot of phones have been moving in the headphone jack-less direction and including the dongles with its past models was a nice precedent set by Apple. That said, the Pixel 2 included the dongle, so Apple is again leading the way here with an unpopular move. |
Golden Gate Ventures closes new $100M fund for Southeast Asia | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Singapore’s has announced the close of its newest (and third) fund for Southeast Asia at a total of $100 million. The fund hit a first close in the summer, , and now it has reached full capacity. Seven-year-old Golden Gate said its LPs include existing backers Singapore sovereign fund Temasek, Korea’s Hanwha, Naver — the owner of messaging app Line — and EE Capital. Investors backing the firm for the first time through this fund include Mistletoe — the fund from Taizo Son, brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son — Mitsui Fudosan, IDO Investments, CTBC Group, Korea Venture Investment Corporation (KVIC), and Ion Pacific. Golden Gate was founded by former Silicon Valley-based trio Vinnie Lauria, Jeffrey Paine and Paul Bragiel. It has investments across five markets in Southeast Asia — with a particular focus on Indonesia and Singapore — and that portfolio includes Singapore’s , automotive marketplace , P2P lending startup , payment enabler and health tech startup . and it closed in 2016. Some of the firm’s exits so far include (although not a blockbuster), , and . It claims that its first two funds have had distributions of cash (DPI) of 1.56x and 0.13x, and IRRs of 48 percent and 29 percent, respectively. “When I compare the tech ecosystem of Southeast Asia (SEA) to other markets, it’s really hit an inflection point — annual investment is now measured in the billions. That puts SEA on a global stage with the US, China, and India. Yet there is a youthfulness that reminds me of Silicon Valley circa 2005, shortly before social media and the iPhone took off,” Lauria said in a statement. that Southeast Asia’s digital economy will grow from $50 billion in 2017 to over $200 billion by 2025 as internet penetration continues to grow across the region thanks to increased ownership of smartphones. That opportunity to reach a cumulative population of over 600 million consumers — more of whom are online today than the entire U.S. population — is feeding optimism around startups and tech companies. Golden Gate isn’t alone in developing a fund to explore those possibilities, there’s plenty of VC activity in the region. Some of those include Openspace, which was and , Qualgro, which is and Golden Equator, which Temasek-affiliated last year and that remains a record for Southeast Asia. , LuneX, which is in the process of raising $10 million. |
Nintendo’s NES Switch controllers activate the nostalgia centers (and wallets) of retro gamers | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | The news that Nintendo would be adding NES games to the Switch as part of its paid online service had a mixed reception, but the company has completely made up for this controversial decision by releasing wireless NES controllers with which to play those games. At $60 they’re a bit steep, but come on. You know you’re going to buy them eventually. Probably next week. The controllers were revealed during the latest dump, alongside a host of other nostalgia bombs, . But first the details of those sweet, sweet controllers. They’re definitely NES-style down to the buttons, meaning they aren’t going to replace your existing Switch Joy-Cons. So why do they cost so much? Because Nintendo. At least they’re wireless and they charge up by slotting onto the Switch’s sides like Joy-Cons. And they have shoulder buttons, though, for some reason. You’ll be able to pre-order a two-pack starting on the 18th for $60, which also happens to be the launch date for Nintendo Switch Online. Yeah, it’s time to fork out for that online play Nintendo has generously given away for so long. Fortunately, as you may remember , the cost is pretty low; $20 per year, and it gets you online game access and a growing library of NES classics. Ten of those games were confirmed before, but 10 more were added to the list today. So at launch you’ll be able to play: The service will also enable cloud backups of saves and possible special deals down the line. It sounds like it’s basically a must-have, although plenty of people are angry that their virtual console games have been essentially stolen back from them. At least we have the NES and SNES Classic Editions. |
Nintendo finally announces some new games for the Switch | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Nintendo is at last (at last!) bringing some new content to the Switch! Yes! In a Nintendo Direct, the company let fly a number of games and a couple of original titles. The biggest Nintendo-produced titles we had glimpses of are a new Animal Crossing in development for the Switch and Luigi’s Mansion 3. We learned next to nothing about the new Animal Crossing, other than that it’s coming in 2019, but we did get to see some gameplay from the latest chapter of Luigi’s only titular adventure in the Nintendo world. Luigi’s Mansion 3 seems to follow in the ghost-vacuuming footsteps of its predecessors with the bizarre camera angles and all. It’s also heading to the Switch stage in 2019, setting up a couple of Nintendo titles for us to look forward to next year, possibly alongside Metroid Prime 4 (?). Other familiar additions to the Switch include a port of the Wii U game New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe coming in January and Yoshi’s Crafted World coming in spring 2019. Aside from the Nintendo-made titles, fans were served up a big surprise with the announcement that some recent and old-school Final Fantasy titles are coming to the Switch. Final Fantasy VII, IX, X, X-2 HD Remaster and XII are all arriving in 2019. There are about a dozen other incoming titles (several of which are remasters), including EA SPORTS FIFA 19, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Diablo III: Eternal Collection, Mega Man 11, Katamari Damacy REROLL and plenty of others that you can jump through in the Direct below. The Nintendo Switch is a fantastic system, and while it has a lot going for it, I barely have any games to play for it anymore. It’s not all that out of character for Nintendo to delay the hell out of the instant gratification its customers want, but the Switch has had a particularly stuttered content rollout since its launch. Hopefully the company can pick up a little more consistent cadence as it gets more third-party studios onboard. |
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