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The iPhone XR is the one to get | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | [gallery ids="1711261,1711262,1711257,1711256,1711254"] |
Former Uber exec alleges ex-PR chief ‘destroyed his reputation’ | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | A nasty legal battle is set to play out between two former Uber executives. Eric Alexander, the ride-hailing company’s former president of business in Asia-Pacific, has filed suit against former Uber PR chief Rachel Whetstone. Alexander blames Whetstone for his firing from Uber in June 2017, claiming her “grossly misleading statements” both internally at Uber and to the media, “destroyed his reputation.” He claims she “harbored deep seated personal animosity” against him, was jealous of his close relationship with then-CEO Travis Kalanick and frequently made racist comments about several minority groups during her tenure. Whetstone, well-known in Silicon Valley for her comms prowess, also left Uber in 2017 and has since gone on to lead PR efforts at Facebook . We’ve reached out to Alexander and Uber for comment. Last year, Alexander was very publicly ousted from Uber in India. Alexander had reportedly been investigating the case himself because he believed the Indian ride-hailing business Ola was behind the incident and that the competitor was trying to damage Uber’s reputation in India. Alexander spent just over three years at the company and was a close confidant of Kalanick’s. The allegations outlined in the lawsuit, first reported by , don’t seem to be connected, but rather are an attempt by Alexander to portray Whetstone as a vicious, jealous and racist former colleague out for his career: The lawsuit provides several examples of racist comments allegedly made by Whetstone, including that “the Chinese cannot be trusted.” Alexander says Whetstone also went to reporters — Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer and Recode’s Kara Swisher were named specifically — and told them “false and misleading information.” The lawsuit, for the most part, looks to be an attempt on Alexander’s end to clear his name. According to his LinkedIn, he hasn’t pursued any new opportunities since his well-publicized exit from Uber, and that’s likely not for lack of trying. As for Uber, despite replacing its CEO and several other top-level employees following its no good, very bad year in 2017, the company hasn’t been able to shake its scandal-ridden reputation. The mistakes made under Kalanick’s reign have and will continue to catch up to it. And nothing, not even a , can stop that. |
Twitch hires head of diversity and inclusion | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform, has brought on its first head of diversity and inclusion, as well as a new chief financial officer and chief human resources officer. Katrina Jones, who will start next month as Twitch’s head of diversity and inclusion, is the former head of diversity at Vimeo. At Vimeo, Jones created the , and worked on disrupting bias and fostering inclusion. Meanwhile, Michelle Weaver and Sudarshana Rangachary are coming on board as CFO and CHRO, respectively. From the diversity and inclusion front, Twitch has a history of struggling. The platform itself, for example, . Fast-forward to 2016, and Twitch hosted a panel at its annual convention dubbed “Diversify Twitch.” That didn’t turn out very well for Twitch, . Just last year, Twitch hosted a site-wide “holiday” to celebrate diversity and inclusion on its streams, chats, apps and community. |
The second blockchain bubble is now complete — what’s next? | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | The last few months haven’t been easy for crypto investors. Following the dizzying highs of crypto trading late last year, which saw Bitcoin reach a peak of $19,276 and a market cap of $323 billion and Ether reach $1,152 with a market cap of more than $112 billion, prices have crashed. Today, Bitcoin trades at around $6,500, and Ether at $204. Their combined market caps have shed about $300 billion in value. That’s basically five Bernie Madoffs worth of losses. The situation has put crypto investors in quite the bind. As one indicative example, , who founded Polychain Capital. The fund, which has seen dizzying growth over the past few years turning a few thousand dollars into tens of millions in returns, has lost about 40 percent of its $800 million in capital through investment losses and investor withdrawals. It’s clear the second blockchain bubble is now complete (the first was the run-up in Bitcoin prices in 2013). The question is: What’s next for blockchain? that blockchain’s rise is a dual parallel to that of the internet. On one side that I dubbed the 1960s narrative, the technology is extraordinarily nascent, with limited use cases and almost no ability to scale. The other side is the 1990s narrative — that this is a groundbreaking new technology that should be invested in immediately for maximum returns. Blockchain’s story so far is the freakish combination of these two narratives. The enthusiasm of the “1990s” crypto investors on valuation never matched the enthusiasm of the “1960s” crowd of crypto researchers and core blockchain designers, who focused on the potential of these technologies over the vagaries of price. , many of the core engineers are hyper-aware of just how much work remains to be done to see blockchain become a foundational technology. Indeed, the interaction between these two groups explains much of the kerfuffle this week over . While the media has painted his comments in a deeply negative light, and he has been , I think it is clear that his pragmatism stems from his engineering background rather than his investment focus. The simple answer is that the 1960s crowd is right, and the 1990s crowd is just too early. Much more development is needed to get blockchain where it needs to be, and much more analysis is going to have to be done to figure out where the investment returns are going to be. Search and social ended up being the killer apps for the internet, but the winners in those categories hardly emerged instantly. , but there is still a ceiling on how fast things can change. The cell phone took almost two decades from its original launch in the 1980s to the launch of the iPhone in 2007. The internet took roughly three decades from its conception at ARPA to what we now understand as the world wide web. Blockchain is almost certainly on a similar timeline. While the tech has antecedents going back to the digital gold of the 1990s, we can start the clock with the launch of Bitcoin in 2009. That means we aren’t even finished with the first decade of understanding this technology, building up a theory of how it works, or thinking through its use cases in a scalable way. In short, there is so much more work to be done to harness this tech for our own purposes. The good news is that the massive infusion of investment from crypto traders over the past few years should help to rapidly accelerate blockchain’s development. Some of these projects, which wouldn’t have gotten funding even from a university laboratory, are sitting on a ridiculous level of seed funding. They could create a lot of progress in this space, assuming that these projects use their funds effectively. The downside to the onrush of capital is that morale has certainly been shaken for many participants, and morale is critical to seeing through complex new projects to completion. There are going to be ups and downs with the design of any new technology on the frontier of engineering — but morale and stubbornness can do a lot to keep the momentum up. To me, several veins of research and development around blockchain remain deeply exciting, if we have the patience to see them through. They are: I use “may” and “could” for each of these examples because we have no idea what we are going to discover on the frontier of blockchain. The good news is that these are rich directions to investigate, and even if we don’t discover something specifically in these areas, we are likely to discover that moves the technologies forward along the way. All this is to say that we need to stop reading the latest token prices every 10 minutes, and get back to the real work of building up this new technology and turning it into the revolution it one day could be. |
The funding mirage: How to secure international investment from emerging markets | Jose Deustua | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Looking for funding as a startup in Latin America is a lot like looking for a watering hole in the middle of the desert. You know it’s out there, but finding it in time is a life or death situation. Granted, venture capital investment in the region is at an , with leading firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners having made in markets like Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, respectively. But, at the same time, while startup founders might be tantalized by the news of big investments happening around them, as many of them get closer to the funding stage themselves, they often realize it’s nothing but a mirage. And this isn’t just a problem in Latin America. All over the world, startups are struggling to find investment, as VCs are investing more money in fewer deals in the endless search for the next unicorn. Due to a dwindling number of VC deals in both the and , even entrepreneurs in established ecosystems are having to look further afield for the resources they need to build their businesses, bringing many of them to emerging markets like Latin America. Fortunately, whether you’re a local or foreign founder in an emerging market, there is a way to quench your thirst for the international investment that you need to scale your company. Here’s what we recommend to the startups that are part of our UTEC Ventures accelerator program in Peru, and what we’d recommend to you, too. As a startup in an emerging market, the prospect of finding local investment can seem challenging. In fact, this is probably why you’re looking for international investment in the first place. But the truth is, finding local seed money to get started is really the first prerequisite for securing international funding later on. Last year in Peru, for example, was invested in the country’s startups, with barely over US$1 million coming from international funds. This goes to show that international investors peeking into emerging markets are less active in seed rounds, and more interested in later-stage rounds once a company has better demonstrated its worth. As such, we advise all startups to raise a first or second seed round locally in Peru, and then seek international investors. The same can go for other emerging markets, as well. To raise these initial rounds, the most important thing is to show that you have a solid team, a business idea that works and has traction with clients chasing your product and that you’re better than any local competition. If you can demonstrate that you meet these requirements, finding local seed capital shouldn’t be too difficult; all you need is a good pitch deck and some patience when networking within local angel groups or at investor events. If you want to attract international investors, you need to be an international startup. In other words, you need to demonstrate that you can sell your product in a bigger, more competitive market before turning the heads of international investors. For startups in Peru and other emerging markets in Latin America, that means successfully expanding to the region’s most developed markets in Mexico, Brazil or Argentina. Consider, for example, the Colombian courier service Rappi. It wasn’t until after the company expanded its operations to Mexico at the beginning of 2016 that it secured its led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company then went on to close a Series B round just , in addition to a US$130 million venture round at the beginning of this year, led by a German food delivery service with participation from a number of U.S.-based investors. The same idea goes for emerging markets outside of Latin America, too. In Eastern Europe, which in terms of VC funding, many entrepreneurs will either set up their businesses in Western European countries from the get-go, or expand there as soon as they’ve achieved product/market fit and demonstrated success in their home countries. This is a clear demonstration of the broader fact that if you want to start raising money from more developed markets, you generally need to be based in those markets, or at least a market of comparable size. Accordingly, your primary focus when seeking international funding should be to first succeed locally, and then replicate that success in a more developed market — whether that be in the United States, Mexico, Western Europe or anywhere else. While it’s easy to be distracted by the glitz and glamour of securing a round from international VCs, startups have a number of other options at their disposal to secure international funding. Foreign governments in emerging markets are increasingly stepping up their game with programs designed to bolster their local startup ecosystems as an engine for economic growth. As such, a number of have emerged, offering support in the form of equity-free cash to entrepreneurs who decide to set up shop in a given country. There are plenty of examples in Latin America alone. , for example, offers entrepreneurs up to US$80,000 to launch their businesses in Chile as a launch pad to reach the rest of the world; in Puerto Rico offers entrepreneurs up to US$75,000 to do the same thing; and the Peruvian government plans to announce a similar program to help startups soft launch in Peru with up to US$40,000 at the upcoming . Startups have another option, as well. Corporate capital, or startup investment from major corporations, has taken on a very important role in many emerging markets like Latin America. In fact, Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of U.S.-based tech giant Qualcomm, is the in Latin America. Naspers, American Express Ventures and other corporate funds have taken an active interest in the region’s startups, as well. Together, the growing support of foreign governments and interest from international corporations highlights the fact that securing international funding is in fact possible, and not as hard as you’d expect. Knowing that there are options besides getting an international VC on board, you should take the time to find out which alternatives are available in the markets to which you’re hoping to expand. So, no matter whether you’re a local or foreign entrepreneur in an emerging market, there’s no reason to give up hope on finding international funding. The key is to think globally and use technology to solve real-world challenges. Then, demonstrate success at home first, and duplicate it later in a bigger market. Resources are available to help you when taking your first step abroad, and if you do it well, you’ll find that the investment wells aren’t dry after all. |
It’s the end of crypto as we know it and I feel fine | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Watching the current price madness is scary. Bitcoin is falling and rising in $500 increments with regularity and Ethereum and its attendant ICOs are in a seeming freefall with a few “dead cat bounces” to keep things lively. What this signals is not that crypto is dead, however. It signals that the early, elated period of trading whose milestones including the launch of Coinbase and the growth of a vibrant (if often shady) professional ecosystem is over. Crypto still runs on hype. announcing a stablecoin, the World Economic Forum saying something , someone else saying – all of these things and more are helping define the current market. However, something else is happening behind the scenes that is far more important. As I’ve written before, the socialization and general acceptance of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial pursuits is a very recent thing. In the old days – circa 2000 – building your own business was considered somehow sordid. Chancers who gave it a go were considered get-rich-quick schemers and worth of little more than derision. As the dot-com market exploded, however, building your own business wasn’t so wacky. But to do it required the imprimaturs and resources of major corporations – Microsoft, Sun, HP, Sybase, etc. – or a connection to academia – Google, Netscape, Yahoo, etc. You didn’t just quit school, buy a laptop, and start Snapchat. It took a full decade of steady change to make the revolutionary thought that school wasn’t so great and that money was available for all good ideas to take hold. And take hold it did. We owe the success of TechCrunch and Disrupt to that idea and I’ve always said that TC was career pornography for the cubicle dweller, a guilty pleasure for folks who knew there was something better out there and, with the right prodding, they knew they could achieve it. So in looking at the crypto markets currently we must look at the dot-com markets circa 1999. Massive infrastructure changes, some brought about by Y2K, had computerized nearly every industry. GenXers born in the late 70s and early 80s were in the marketplace of ideas with an understanding of the Internet the oldsters at the helm of media, research, and banking didn’t have. It was a massive wealth transfer from the middle managers who pushed paper since 1950 to the dot-com CEOs who pushed bits with native ease. Fast forward to today and we see much of the same thing. Blockchain natives boast about having been interest in bitcoin since 2014. Oldsters at banks realize they should get in on things sooner than later and price manipulation is rampant simply because it is easy. The projects we see now are the Kozmo.com of the blockchain era, pie-in-the-sky dream projects that are sucking up millions in funding and will produce little in real terms. But for every hundred Kozmos there is one Amazon. And that’s what you have to look for. Will nearly every ? Yes. Does it matter? Not much. The market is currently eating its young. Early investors made (and probably lost) millions on early ICOs but the resulting noise has created an environment where the best and brightest technical minds are faced with not only creating a technical product but also maintaining a monetary system. There is no need for a smart founder to have to worry about token price but here we are. Most technical CEOs step aside or call for outside help after their IPO, a fact that points to the complexity of managing shareholder expectations. But what happens when your shareholders are 16-year-olds with a lot of Ethereum in a Discord channel? What happens when little Malta becomes the de facto launching spot for token sales and you’re based in Nebraska? What happens when the SEC, FINRA, and Attorneys General from here to Beijing start investigating your hobby? Basically your hobby stops becoming a hobby. Crypto and blockchain has weaponized nerds in an unprecedented way. In the past if you were a Linux developer or knew a few things about hardware you could build a business and make a little money. Now you can build an empire and make a lot of money. Crypto is falling because the people in it for the short term are leaving. Long term players – the Amazons of the space – have yet to be identified. Ultimately we are going to face a compression in the ICO and, for a while, it’s going to be a lot harder to build an ICO. But give it a few years – once the various financial authorities get around to reading the Satoshi white paper – and you’ll see a sea change. Coverage will change. Services will change. And the way you raise money will change. VC used to be about a team and a dream. Now it’s about a team, $1 million in monthly revenue, and a dream. The risk takers are gone. The dentists from Omaha who once visited accelerator demo days and wrote $25,000 checks for new apps are too shy to leave their offices. The flashy VCs from Sand Hill have to keep Uber and Airbnb’s plates spinning until they can cash out. VC is dead for the small entrepreneur. Which is why the ICO is so important and this is why the ICO is such a mess right now. Because everybody sees the value but nobody – not the SEC, not the investors, not the founders – can understand how to do it right. There is no SAFE note for crypto. There are no serious accelerators. And all of the big names in crypto are either goldbugs, weirdos, or Redditors. No one has tamed the Wild West. They will. And when they do expect a whole new crop of Amazons, Ubers, and Oracles. Because the technology changes quickly when there’s money, talent, and a way to marry the two in which everyone wins. |
Microsoft acquires Lobe, a drag-and-drop AI tool | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Microsoft today that is has acquired , a startup that lets you build machine learning models with the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface. Microsoft plans to use Lobe, which only launched into beta earlier this year, to build upon its own efforts to make building AI models easier, though, for the time being, Lobe will operate as before. “As part of Microsoft, Lobe will be able to leverage world-class AI research, global infrastructure, and decades of experience building developer tools,” the team . “We plan to continue developing Lobe as a standalone service, supporting open source standards and multiple platforms.” Lobe was co-founded by , who previously worked on the iPhone and iPad, as well as Facebook’s Paper and Instant Articles products. The other co-founders are Adam Menges and Markus Beissinger. In addition to Lobe, Microsoft also recently , a deep reinforcement learning platform, and , a conversational AI platform. Last year, it acquired Disrupt Battlefield participant . It’s no secret that machine learning talent is hard to come by, so it’s no surprise that all of the major tech firms are acquiring as much talent and technology as they can. “In many ways though, we’re only just beginning to tap into the full potential AI can provide,” Microsoft’s EVP and CTO Kevin Scott writes in today’s announcement. “This in large part is because AI development and building deep learning models are slow and complex processes even for experienced data scientists and developers. To date, many people have been at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing AI, and we’re committed to changing that.” It’s worth noting that Lobe’s approach complements Microsoft’s existing , which also offers a drag-and-drop interface for building machine learning models, though with a more utilitarian design than the slick interface that the Lobe team built. Both Lobe and Azure ML Studio aim to make machine learning easy to use for anybody, without having to know the ins and outs of TensorFlow, Keras or PyTorch. Those approaches always come with some limitations, but just like low-code tools, they do serve a purpose and work well enough for many use cases. |
This insect-inspired robot can fly a kilometer on a charge with its flappy wings | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | The incredible agility of the common house or fruit fly puts every drone and robot to shame, but devices inspired by them are beginning to catch up. A new four-winged flapping robot not only successfully imitates the fruit fly’s hyper-agile flying method, but can travel for up to a kilometer before running out of juice. Robotics researchers at the wanted to create a flying platform that could imitate and test theories on how insects fly the way they do, but without tethers or non-animal propulsion like propellers. It’s not just that they want a cool robot: The way insects respond to things like gusts of wind or an imminent slapping hand demonstrate incredible reaction times and control feedback, things that could inform autonomous craft like drones or even small airplanes. Wouldn’t it be nice to know your jet could autonomously and smoothly dodge a lightning bolt? The trouble is that when you get much bigger than an insect, that method of flying doesn’t always work any more due to the differences in mass, drag and so on. As the researchers put it in their paper, : Because of technological challenges arising from stringent weight and size restrictions, most existing designs cannot match the flight performance of their biological counterparts; they lack the necessary agility, sufficient power to take off, or sufficient energy to fly for more than a minute. Not only that, but tiny robots like the require a wired power connection, and other tiny flapping craft require manual piloting. Can’t have that! So rather than slavishly imitate the biology of a single animal, the team focused on how to achieve similar flight characteristics at a realistic scale. The four-winged, tailless style of their creation, the DelFly Nimble, is novel but evidently effective. Their robot can go 7 meters per second, or about 15 MPH, hover in place or perform all kinds of extreme motions like dives and rolls smoothly. It’s no joke doing that using rotors with continuous thrust, let alone via coordinated wing movement. You can see it perform a few more capers . Perhaps most amazing is its range; the robot can travel for a kilometer on a single charge. That sort of spec is the kind that military R&D directors love to hear about. But the DelFly Nimble is already producing interesting scientific data, as lead researcher Matěj Karásek explains: In contrast to animal experiments, we were in full control of what was happening in the robot’s ‘brain.’ This allowed us to identify and describe a new passive aerodynamic mechanism that assists the flies, but possibly also other flying animals, in steering their direction throughout these rapid banked turns. Development is continuing, and no doubt biologists and three-letter agencies have tendered letters of interest to the Dutch inventors. |
JBL’s smart display combines Google smarts with good sound | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | If you’re looking for a smart display that’s powered by the Google Assistant, you now have two choices: the Lenovo Smart Display and the . Lenovo was first out of the gate with its , but it also left room for improvement. JBL, given its heritage as an audio company, is putting the emphasis on sound quality, with stereo speakers and a surprising amount of bass. In terms of the overall design, the Link View isn’t going to win any prizes, but its pill shape definitely isn’t ugly either. JBL makes the Link View in any color you like, as long as that’s black. It’ll likely fit in with your home decor, though. The Link View has an 8-inch high-definition touchscreen that is more than crisp enough for the maps, photos and YouTube videos you’ll play on it. In using it for the last two weeks, the screen turned out to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but you’d expect that given that I put it on the kitchen counter and regularly used it to entertain myself while waiting for the water to boil. At the end of the day, you’re not going to spend $250 on a nice speaker with a built-in tablet. What matters most here is whether the visual side of the Google Assistant works for you. I find that it adds an extra dimension to the audio responses, no matter whether that’s weather reports, a map of my daily commute (which can change depending on traffic) or a video news report. Google’s interface for these devices is simple and clear, with large buttons and clearly presented information. And maybe that’s no surprise. These smart speakers are the ideal surface for its Material Design language, after all. As a demo, Google likes to talk about how these gadgets can help you while cooking, with step-by-step recipes and videos. I find that this is a nice demo indeed, and thought that it would help me get a bit more creative with trying new recipes. In reality, though, I never have the ingredients I need to cook what Google suggests. If you are a better meal planner than I am, your mileage will likely vary. What I find surprisingly useful is the display’s integration of Google Duo. I’m aware that the Allo/Duo combo is a bit of a flop, but the display does make you want to use Duo because you can easily have a video chat while just doing your thing in the kitchen. If you set up multiple users, the display can even receive calls for all of them. And don’t worry, there is a physical slider you can use to shut down the camera whenever you want. The Link View also made me appreciate Google’s Assistant routines more (and my colleague Lucas Matney found the same when he ). And it’s just a bit easier to look at the weather graphics instead of having the Assistant rattle off the temperature for the next couple of days. Maybe the biggest letdown, though (and this isn’t JBL’s, fault but a feature Google needs to enable) is that you can’t add a smart display to your Google Assistant groups. That means you can’t use it as part of your all-house Google Home audio system, for example. It’s an odd omission for sure, given the Link View’s focus on sound, but my understanding is that the same holds true for the Lenovo Smart Display. If this is a deal breaker for you, then I’d hold off on buying a Google Assistant smart display for the time being. You can, however, use the display as a Chromecast receiver to play music from your phone or watch videos. While you are not using it, the display can show the current time or simply go to blank. Another thing that doesn’t work on smart displays yet is Google’s continued “conversation feature,” which lets you add a second command without having to say “OK, Google” again. For now, the smart displays only work in English, too. When I first heard about these smart displays, I wasn’t sure if they were going to be useful. Turns out, they are. I do live in the Google Assistant ecosystem, though, and I’ve got a few Google Homes set up around my house. If you’re looking to expand your Assistant setup, then the Link View is a nice addition — and if you’re just getting started (or only need one Assistant-enabled speaker/display), then opting for a smart display over a smart speaker may just be the way to go, assuming you can stomach the extra cost. |
Why rumors that Adobe could be in talks to buy Marketo make sense | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | could be shopping for another piece of the digital marketing puzzle, as reports surfaced today that the company might be in talks with Vista Equity Partners to buy Marketo, a company the private equity firm in cash. Reuters the rumor. While the report states the talks are early, and nothing is imminent, and none of the companies involved would comment (understandably), it is a deal that makes sense for Adobe. The company has been trying to build out its digital marketing business for some time, including buying to help beef up the ecommerce piece. Assuming that Vista wants to flip Marketo for a profit, a good bet, it would likely need to come in at $2 billion at a minimum and probably more. There are only a few companies out there that could afford the price tag, who would be interested in a property like Marketo: Adobe, Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. If Adobe really wanted to go for the digital marketing jugular, it could fork over the cash and buy Marketo. Brent Leary, who covers this industry as the principle at CRM Essentials, says this would be a way for Adobe to grab a chunk of enterprise marketing automation business at a time when the market is getting highly competitive. “Marketo would give Adobe a leader in the marketing automation space at the enterprise customer level, particularly in the B2B space.” Leary explained. While nothing is clear yet, Adobe has the resources if it wants to do it. The company currently has $6.3 billion in cash on hand, according , and has seen its stock price rise significantly in the last year from $156.24 to $269.58 (as of publication today). Adobe Creative Cloud has always been the primary money maker for Adobe over the years, generating $1.3 billion (pdf) in June out of $2.2 billion in total revenue. Digital Experience, which includes marketing products, generated $586 million, and although it’s trending up, it has so much more potential. We have been seeing more M&A action in this space as companies try to fill in various parts of the sale-service-marketing triumvirate. Just last week, we saw Zendesk, the company that concentrates on cloud customer service, enter the sales automation and CRM part of the space with . Earlier this month, , a company which covers the quote-to-cash part of the sales cycle. Adobe finds itself competing with other giant organizations with the previously mentioned companies all lining up for a piece of the digital marketing business. Getting Marketo certainly has the potential to help push that Digital Experience revenue line up further as the fight for marketshare gets ever more intense. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but Marketo is certainly a company that would match up well with Adobe if it wanted to make such a move. It’s worth mentioning that Adobe will be reporting this afternoon. |
US lawmakers warn spy chief that ‘deep fakes’ are a national security threat | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | What once sounded like science fiction is now a reality: creating almost-perfectly faked videos of people saying things they never did. Surprise: Now they’re a reality, thanks to modern computing power and the power to instantly share it on the world’s social stage. But U.S. lawmakers are worried that these faked videos could be used by the enemy to harm national security. If you’re unaware, “deep fakes” are digitally manipulated videos — which, using existing footage mixed with artificial intelligence and machine learning, can be made to look like, or close to, the real thing. Unsurprisingly, one of the first uses of deep fake videos was for porn — by superimposing faces onto others. But now, lawmakers think that deep fakes could be used as part of wider disinformation campaigns — known to be a tactic of adversarial nation states like Russia — in an effort to sway elections or spread false news. “Deep fakes could become a potent tool for hostile powers seeking to spread misinformation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to Dan Coats, director of national intelligence. “As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security, with broad and concerning implications for offensive active measures campaigns targeting the United States,” said the letter, co-signed by Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). The lawmakers have a point. In recent years, disinformation has risen and was a major factor during the 2016 presidential election. Now, instead of false and misleading news, it is fake videos of politicians throwing shade at their rivals — or worse. Take this deep fake video — of what appears to be former President Obama calling President Trump a “dipshit” — to show how easy it is. A deep fake video created by BuzzFeed News to show how easy it is to create false and misleading videos. What might be good fun on one hand, on the other could have a major effect on those who are none the wiser. Schiff, Murphy and Curbelo want the director of national intelligence — who oversees the nation’s intelligence community — to report back on its assessment of how deep fake technology could harm national security interests, and if there are countermeasures to protect against foreign influence — and their limitations. The DNI’s office was asked to report back to Congress by mid-December. ODNI spokesperson Charles Carithers told TechCrunch: “We have received the letter and will respond to Reps. Schiff, Murphy and Curbelo.” |
Facebook’s new ‘SapFix’ AI automatically debugs your code | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Facebook has quietly built and deployed an artificial intelligence programming tool called SapFix that scans code, automatically identifies bugs, tests different patches and suggests the best ones that engineers can choose to implement. at Facebook’s @Scale engineering conference, SapFix is already running on Facebook’s massive code base and the company plans to eventually share it with the developer community. “To our knowledge, this marks the first time that a machine-generated fix — with automated end-to-end testing and repair — has been deployed into a codebase of Facebook’s scale,” writes Facebook’s developer tool team. “It’s an important milestone for AI hybrids and offers further evidence that search-based software engineering can reduce friction in software development.” SapFix can run with or without Sapienz, Facebook’s previous automated bug spotter. It uses it in conjunction with SapFix, suggesting solutions to problems Sapienz discovers. These types of tools could allow smaller teams to build more powerful products, or let big corporations save a ton on wasted engineering time. That’s critical for Facebook as it has so many other problems to worry about. Meanwhile, Facebook is pressing forward with its strategy of reorienting the computing hardware ecosystem around its own machine learning software. Today it that its for machine learning hardware acceleration has signed up the top silicon manufacturers, like Cadence, Esperanto, Intel, Marvell, and Qualcomm, to support Glow. The plan mirrors Facebook’s Open Compute Project for open sourcing server designs and Telecom Infra Project for connectivity technology. Glow works with a wide array of machine learning frameworks and hardware accelerators to speed up how they perform deep learning processes. It was earlier this year at Facebook’s F8 conference. “Hardware accelerators are specialized to solve the task of machine learning execution. They typically contain a large number of execution units, on-chip memory banks, and application-specific circuits that make the execution of ML workloads very efficient,” Facebook’s team writes. “To execute machine learning programs on specialized hardware, compilers are used to orchestrate the different parts and make them work together . . . Hardware partners that use Glow can reduce the time it takes to bring their product to market.” Facebook VP of infrastructure Jason Taylor Essentially, Facebook needs help in the silicon department. Instead of isolating itself and building its own chips like and , it’s effectively outsourcing the hardware development to the experts. That means it might forego a competitive advantage from this infrastructure, but it also allows it to save money and focus on its core strengths. “What I talked about today was the difficulty of predicting what chip will really do well in the market. When you build a piece of silicon, you’re making predictions about where the market is going to be in two years” Facebook’s VP of infrastructure Jason Taylor tells me. “The big question is if the workload that they design for is the worlflow that’s really important at the time. You’re going to see this fragmentation. At Facebook, wew want to work with all the partners out there so we have good options now and over the next several years.” Essentially, by partnering with all the chip makers instead of building its own, Facebook future-proofs its software against volatility in which chip becomes the standard. The technologies aside, the Scale conference was evidence that Facebook will keep hacking, policy scandals be damned. There was nary a mention of Cambridge Analytica or election interference as a packed room of engineers chuckled to nerdy jokes during keynotes packed with enough coding jargon to make the unindoctrinated assume it was in another language. If Facebook is burning, you couldn’t tell from here\ |
OnePlus will ditch the headphone jack on its next phone | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Ready for a new pair of Bullets? Discover the Type-C Bullets earphones in our latest deep-dive on the forums. — OnePlus (@oneplus) |
Online used car startup Shift raises $140 million | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Shift Technologies, an online marketplace for used cars, has closed a Series D financing round of more than $140 million in equity and debt. The round, which consists of about $70 million in debt and $71 million in equity, was led by automotive retailer Lithia Motors. Bryan DeBoer, CEO and president of Lithia, will join ’s board of directors. Previous investors Alliance Ventures, BMW iVentures, DCM, DFJ, G2VP, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Highland Capital also participated. This new capital brings ’s total financing of equity and debt to $265 million. Shift, which is based in San Francisco, serves car buyers and sellers. The company, founded in 2013, has built a software platform that lets customers shop for cars, get financing and schedule test drives. Car owners can use the platform to sell their vehicle, as well. Shift says any car it buys must pass a “rigorous” 150+ point inspection. The company plans to invest in its technology platform and scale its engineering staff from 35 to more than 80 people by the end of 2019, CEO George Arison noted to TechCrunch in an email. Shift employs 380 people. The company’s platform has focused on scaling in California; it covers about 80 percent of that market. But the company has long had its sights set on expanding beyond the Golden State. Shift is focused on, and is heavily investing in, its peer-to-peer business, in which the company acquires cars from individuals and then sells them. Buying, refurbishing and then selling cars online is a logistics-heavy business pursuit, and one that has seen a number of competitors come and go in the past several years. But Arison says the company has not just survived; it has grown. Shift didn’t provide revenue numbers. But Arison cited the company’s more than 70 percent revenue growth in the past six months as an example of the company’s success. The company did have a partnership with rental giant Hertz, but that has since ended. At the time, Shift was going to feature vehicles from Hertz’s fleet inventory. It was meant to be a win-win: Hertz gets access to a new retail sales channel and Shift benefits from the rental car company’s ready supply of lightly used cars. The partnership ended after Hertz opened its own retail stores that competed against Shift. |
Uber is investing $150M in Toronto to expand self-driving car efforts | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Months after an Uber self-driving vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, the ride-hailing giant has announced it’s adding a new engineering hub in Toronto and expanding its autonomous research team as it refocuses its self-driving car efforts. In his first visit to the Canadian tech hub since becoming CEO of Uber last year, Dara Khosrowshahi announced plans to invest $150 million in Toronto over the next five years. Uber will bring on 300 new employees, bringing the company’s total headcount in Toronto to 500. The new engineering hub is expected to open early next year. We’ve reached out to Uber for comment. “At Uber, we recognize Canada’s commitment to innovation and the vibrancy of Toronto’s tech ecosystem,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement provided to the . “We want to support the innovation coming out of this great, diverse region.” “Toronto is a place where we as a company innovate, and innovation is really what Uber is all about.” Our CEO is in Canada today to announce the opening of ’s newest engineering hub, and the expansion of the self-driving R&D centre in Toronto. — Uber Canada (@Uber_Canada) It’s led by local AI researcher Raquel Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. The company initially suspended all efforts to get self-driving cars on the road following the fatal crash and opted in the state of California. Its vehicles . Uber has been testing self-driving cars in Toronto since last year and has said the company remains to beefing up its AV research in the region. |
Website builder Strikingly raises $10M Series A+ to continue growth in China | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | Almost exactly one year after announcing its Series A, website building platform said today that it has raised a $10 million Series A+. The new round was led by Cathay Capital, with participation from CAS Holding, the lead investor in Strikingly’s Series A. This brings Strikingly’s total funding so far to $17.5 million. Co-founder and CEO David Chen tells TechCrunch that the funding is “technically a Series B level round for us,” but the team wanted to call it a Series A+ because the capital will be used to continue the momentum of products , including a mobile website editor and a reseller program, as well as its growth in China. (Series A+ rounds are also more common in China, where Strikingly has an office in Shanghai and is one of the most popular website building services). “The A+ is a natural continuation of what we’ve been doing since our Series A,” Chen says. Founded in 2012, Strikingly doubled the size of its team over the past year from 150 to 300 employees. The reseller program, launched in early 2017 after the company realized many Strikingly customers use the platform to build sites for other people, now has users in 70 countries. This year, Strikingly’s goal is to continue growing the program in Asia and introduce more features to help resellers with customer acquisition. The reseller program allows them to buy websites in bulk and gives them a dashboard to manage their clients’ sites. While Strikingly’s core product will continue being its website builder, Chen says its reseller program has helped boost its growth in many markets, particularly Southeast Asia. When Strikingly launched back in 2012, it set itself apart from other website builders by focusing on easy to build, but polished-looking mobile responsive sites. Now mobile responsive sites are de rigueur for any website builder, but one of the things that continues to differentiate Strikingly from its competitors (a partial list includes Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and WordPress) is its ease of use. The company claims that the average time to launch a new website with Strikingly’s editor is just 10 minutes. Strikingly also has another edge over competitors in China, where it’s already dealt with the hurdles faced by content management software providers. “Content is very strictly regulated and just being able to enter China was a big step forward from any of our counterparts in the U.S.,” says Chen. Over the past two years, he says Strikingly has become the leading website-building SaaS solution in China, thanks to partnerships with Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and ZBJ, China’s largest market for freelancers. For example, Tencent Cloud users were offered free week-long trails of Strikingly and it is integrated into ZBJ’s platform. “China is a huge market obviously and we have already done the hard work of being able to enter China,” says Chen. “We see a lot of opportunities here even beyond website building, but that being our core product gives us a very good entry point to any enterprise service marketplace in China.” |
North Korea skirts US sanctions by secretly selling software around the globe | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Fake social media profiles are useful for more than just sowing political discord among foreign adversaries, as it turns out. A group linked to the North Korean government has been able to duck existing sanctions on the country by concealing its true identity and developing software for clients abroad. This week, the against two tech companies accused of running cash-generating front operations for North Korea: Yanbian Silverstar Network Technology or “China Silver Star,” based near Shenyang, China, and a Russian sister company called Volasys Silver Star. The Treasury also sanctioned China Silver Star’s North Korean CEO Jong Song Hwa. “These actions are intended to stop the flow of illicit revenue to North Korea from overseas information technology workers disguising their true identities and hiding behind front companies, aliases, and third-party nationals,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said of the sanctions. As the reported in a follow-up story, North Korean operatives advertised with Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, solicited business with Freelance.com and Upwork, crafted software using Github, communicated over Slack and accepted compensation with Paypal. The country appears to be encountering little resistance putting tech platforms built by US companies to work building software including “mobile games, apps, [and] bots” for unwitting clients abroad. The US Treasury issued its first warnings of secret North Korean software development scheme in July, though did not provide many details at the time. The Wall Street Journal was “tens of thousands” of dollars stemming from the Chinese front company, though that’s only a representative sample. The company worked as a middleman, contracting its work out to software developers around the globe and then denying payment for their services. Facebook suspended many suspicious accounts linked to the scheme after they were identified by the Wall Street Journal, including one for “Everyday-Dude.com”: “A Facebook page for Everyday-Dude.com, showing packages with hundreds of programs, was taken down minutes later as a reporter was viewing it. Pages of some of the account’s more than 1,000 Facebook friends also subsequently disappeared… “[Facebook] suspended numerous North Korea-linked accounts identified by the Journal, including one that Facebook said appeared not to belong to a real person. After it closed that account, another profile, with identical friends and photos, soon popped up.” Linkedin and Upwork similarly removed accounts linked to the North Korean operations. Beyond the consequences for international relations, software surreptitiously sold by the North Korean government poses considerable security risks. According to the Treasury, the North Korean government makes money off of a “range of IT services and products abroad” including “website and app development, security software, and biometric identification software that have military and law enforcement applications.” For companies unwittingly buying North Korea-made software, the potential for malware that could give the isolated nation eyes and ears beyond its borders is high, particularly given that the country has its offensive cyber capabilities. Between that and sanctions against doing business with the country, Mnuchin urges the information technology industry and other businesses to exercise awareness of the ongoing scheme to avoid accidentally contracting with North Korea on tech-related projects. |
This is how much VCs are paid | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Venture capital is known for being an opaque industry, so it’s no surprise most of us have no idea what the average VC earns in a year. I got a closer look at the survey results of ‘s annual venture firm compensation survey and, unsurprisingly, VCs make a lot of money. Just how much? Well, of the 204 VCs surveyed (172 male and 32 female), the average general partner expects to make roughly $634,000 this year, including a bonus for 2017 performance. The averages varied a bit depending on the size of the firm. VCs at firms with less than $250 million assets under management (AUM), for example, earn less than their counterparts at larger firms. [gallery ids="1713924,1713925,1713926"] GPs, who sit at the top of the ranks at VC firms, have the largest compensation packages. Their yearly bonuses are, on average, larger than an associate’s, or entry-level investor’s, average base pay. The survey didn’t parse out data from firms with billions AUM, aka the Sequoias, NEAs or Kleiner Perkins of the world. Those folks, if the above is any indicator, earn more. Take note: This is all in addition to a VC’s carried interest, or percentage of a fund’s profits paid to firms’ partners. |
NASA’s climate-monitoring space laser is the last to ride to space on a Delta II rocket | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | : and signal has been picked up! That’s 100 in a row for the Delta II. This weekend, NASA is launching a new high-tech satellite to monitor the planet’s glacier and sea ice levels — with space lasers, naturally. will be a huge boon for climatologists, and it’s also a bittersweet occasion: it will be the final launch aboard the trusty Delta II rocket, which has been putting birds in the air for nearly 30 years. Takeoff is set for 5:46 AM Pacific Time Saturday morning, so you’ll have to get up early if you want to catch it. , with NASA coverage starting about half an hour before. Keeping track of the Earth’s ice levels is more important than ever; with climate change causing widespread havoc, precise monitoring of major features like the Antarctic ice sheet could help climatologists predict and understand global weather patterns. Like Aeolus, which launched in July, ICESat-2 is a spacecraft with a single major instrument, not a “Christmas tree” of sensors and antennas. And like Aeolus, ICESat-2 . But while the first was launched to watch the movement of the air in-between it and the ground, the second must monitor the ground through that moving air. It does so by using an industrial-size, hyper-precise altimeter: a single, powerful green laser split into six beams — three pairs of two, really, arranged to pass over the landscape in a predictable way. But the real magic is how those lasers are detected. Next to the laser is a special telescope that watches for the beams’ reflections. Incredibly, it only collects “about a dozen” photons from each laser pulse, and times their arrival down to a of a second. And it does this 10,000 times per second, which at its speed means a pulse is bouncing off the Earth every 2.3 feet or so. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, its altitude readings are accurate down to the inch. And with multiple readings over time, it should be able to tell whether an ice sheet has risen or fallen on the order of . So if you’re traveling in the Antarctic and you drop a pencil, be sure to pick it up or it might throw things off. Of course, it’s not just for ice; the same space laser will also return the exact heights of buildings, tree canopies and other features. It’s a pity there aren’t more of these satellites — they sound rather useful. Although ICESat-2 itself is notable and interesting, this launch is significant for a second reason: this will be the final launch atop a Delta II rocket. Rocketry standby United Launch Alliance is in charge of this one, as it has been for so many others. Introduced in 1989, the Delta II has launched everything from communication satellites to Mars orbiters and landers; Spirit and Opportunity both left the Earth on Delta IIs. All told, more than 150 launches have been made on these rockets, and if Saturday’s launch goes as planned, it will be the 100th successful Delta II launch in a row. That’s a hell of a record. (To be clear, that doesn’t mean 50 failed; but a handful of failures over the decades have marred the launch vehicle’s streak.) A Delta II launching for the Aquarius mission in 2011 One charming yet perhaps daunting idiosyncrasy of the system is that someone somewhere has to literally click a button to initiate takeoff — no automation for this thing; it’s someone’s job to hit the gas, so they better look sharp. The ULA’s Bill Cullen told Jason Davis of the Planetary Society, : Yes, the Delta II engine start command is initiated by a console operator. The launch control system is 25 years old, and at the time this used a ‘person in the loop’ control which was preferred compared to the complexities of a fault-tolerant computer system. So why are we leaving this tried and true rocket behind? It’s expensive and not particularly big. With a payload capacity of 4 tons and a cost (for this mission anyway) approaching a hundred million dollars, it’s just not a good value any more. Not only that, but Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Base is the only place left on Earth with the infrastructure to launch it, which significantly limits the orbits and opportunities for prospective missions. After ICESat-2’s launch, even that will be torn down — though hopefully they’ll keep the pieces somewhere, for posterity. Although this is the last Delta II to launch, there is one more rocket left without a mission, the last, as it were, on the lot. Plans are not solid yet, but it’s a good bet this classic rocket will end up in a museum somewhere — perhaps standing upright with others at Kennedy Space Center. |
Three years later, Let’s Encrypt has issued over 380 million HTTPS certificates | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Let’s Encrypt! The was founded in 2014 in part by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is backed by Akamai, Google, Facebook, Mozilla and more. Three years ago Friday, it issued its first certificate. Since then, the numbers have exploded. To date, more than 380 million certificates have been issued on 129 million unique domains. That also makes it the largest certificate issuer in the world, by far. Now, 75 percent of all Firefox traffic is HTTPS, — in part thanks to Let’s Encrypt. That’s a massive increase from when it was founded, where only 38 percent of website page loads were served over an HTTPS encrypted connection. “Change at that speed and scale is incredible,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Let’s Encrypt isn’t solely responsible for this change, but we certainly catalyzed it.” HTTPS is what keeps the pipes of the web secure. Every time your browser lights up in green or flashes a padlock, it’s a TLS certificate encrypting the connection between your computer and the website, ensuring nobody can intercept and steal your data or modify the website. But for years, the certificate market was broken, expensive and difficult to navigate. In an effort to the EFF and others banded together to bring free TLS certificates to the masses. That means bloggers, and startups alike can get an easy-to-install certificate for free — even news sites like for a secure connection. Security experts and encryption advocates Scott Helme and Troy Hunt that by traffic are on HTTPS. And as it’s grown, the certificate issuer has — including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and more. A fully encrypted web is still a ways off. But with close to a million Let’s Encrypt certificates issued each day, it looks more within reach than ever. |
Inside Planet Labs’ new satellite manufacturing site | Anna Escher | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Inside the site are satellite-building stations where Planet engineers piece together “doves,” as the machines are called. Planet says their satellites can be built using only 10 tools The way Planet builds satellites is different from how NASA or Lockheed Martin does. Planet operates off the idea that instead of building large, cumbersome machines that sit in space taking images with outdated technology and old sensors, many smaller satellites with a one to three-year lifespan can get the job done faster and provide better images of the Earth’s surface. With the new site, Planet will bring all aspects of spacecraft production — from R&D to manufacturing to testing — under one roof. Doves in the dove nest |
California is ‘launching our own damn satellite’ to track pollution, with help from Planet | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | California plans to launch a satellite to monitor pollution in the state and contribute to climate science, Governor Jerry Brown announced today. The state is partnering with satellite imagery purveyor Planet to create a custom craft to “pinpoint – and stop – destructive emissions with unprecedented precision, on a scale that’s never been done before.” Governor Brown made the announcement in the closing remarks of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, echoing a pledge made two years ago to scientists at the American Geophysical Union’s 2016 meeting. “With science still under attack and the climate threat growing, we’re launching our own damn satellite,” Brown said today. Planet, which has launched hundreds of satellites in the last few years in order to provide near-real-time imagery of practically anywhere on Earth, will develop and operate the satellite. The plan is to equip it with sensors that can detect pollutants at their point sources, be they artificial or natural. That kind of direct observation enables direct action. Technical details of the satellite are to be announced as the project solidifies. We can probably expect something like a 6U CubeSat loaded with instruments focused on detecting certain gases and particulates. An orbit with the satellite passing across the whole state along its north/south axis seems most likely; a single craft sitting in one place probably wouldn’t offer adequate coverage. That said, multiple satellites are also a stated possibility. “These satellite technologies are part of a new era of environmental innovation that is supercharging our ability to solve problems,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “They won’t cut emissions by themselves, but they will make invisible pollution visible and generate the transparent, actionable, data we need to protect our health, our environment and our economies.” The EDF is launching its own satellite to that end ( ), but will also be collaborating with California in the creation of a shared Climate Data Partnership to make sure the data from these platforms is widely accessible. More partners are expected to join up now that the endeavor is public, though none were named in the press release or in response to my questions on the topic to Planet. The funding, too, is something of an open question. The effort is still a ways off from launch — these things take time — but Planet has certainly proven capable of designing and launching on a relatively short timeframe. In fact, it just opened up a brand new facility in San Francisco dedicated to pumping out new satellites. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 12 | null |
Senator claps back after Ajit Pai calls California’s net neutrality bill ‘radical’ and ‘illegal’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has provoked a biting senatorial response from California after calling the “nanny state’s” new net neutrality legislation “radical,” “anti-consumer,” “illegal” and “burdensome.” Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA), in response, said Pai has “abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet” and that the FCC lacks the authority to intervene. The political flame war was kicked off this morning in Pai’s remarks at the , a free market think tank. You can read them in full , but I’ve quoted the relevant part below: Of course, those who demand greater government control of the Internet haven’t given up. Their latest tactic is pushing state governments to regulate the Internet. The most egregious example of this comes from California. Last month, the California state legislature passed a radical, anti-consumer Internet regulation bill that would impose restrictions even more burdensome than those adopted by the FCC in 2015. If this law is signed by the Governor, what would it do? Among other things, it would prevent Californian consumers from buying many free-data plans. These plans allow consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits. They have proven enormously popular in the marketplace, especially among lower-income Americans. But nanny-state California legislators apparently want to ban their constituents from having this choice. They have met the enemy, and it is free data. The broader problem is that California’s micromanagement poses a risk to the rest of the country. After all, broadband is an interstate service; Internet traffic doesn’t recognize state lines. It follows that only the federal government can set regulatory policy in this area. For if individual states like California regulate the Internet, this will directly impact citizens in other states. Among other reasons, this is why efforts like California’s are illegal. The bogeyman of banning zero rating plans has been raised again and again, but everyone should understand now that — just another ploy by telecoms to parcel out data the way they choose. The legal question is far from decided, but Pai has been crowing about a recent court ruling for a week or so now, despite the fact that it has very little to do with net neutrality. went into detail on this ruling; the takeaway is that while it is possible that the FCC could preempt state law on information services in some cases, it’s not clear at all that it has any authority whatsoever to do so with broadband services. Ironically, that’s because Pai’s FCC drastically reduced the FCC’s jurisdiction with its reclassification of broadband in Restoring Internet Freedom. At any rate, more consequential legal challenges and questions are still in the works, so Pai’s jubilation is somewhat premature. “The Internet should be run by engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists, not lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians,” he concluded. Odd then that those very engineers, entrepreneurs and technologists , while he — literally seconds earlier — justified that policy via the world of lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians. Senator Wiener was quick to issue a correction to the Chairman’s remarks. In an official statement, he explained that “Unlike Pai’s FCC, California isn’t run by the big telecom and cable companies.” The statement continued: SB 822 is necessary and legal because Chairman Pai abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet. Since the FCC says it no longer has any authority to protect an open internet, it’s also the case that the FCC lacks the legal power to preempt states from protecting their residents and economy. When Verizon was caught throttling the data connection of a wildfire fighting crew in California, Chairman Pai said nothing and did nothing. That silence says far more than his words today. SB 822 is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, groups advocating for low income people, small and mid-size technology companies, labor unions, and President Obama’s FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler. I’ll take that support over Ajit Pai any day of the week. The law in question has been approved by the state legislature, but has yet to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown, who has another two weeks to consider it. |
ChargePoint is adding 2.5M electric vehicle chargers over the next 7 years | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Electric vehicles still make up just a fraction of the cars, trucks and SUVs on the road today. But that’s changing: The number of electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the world’s roads exceeded 3 million in 2017. By 2025, there are expected to be 20 million electric vehicles in just North America and Europe. And that means the world is going to need a lot more chargers. ChargePoint, the California startup that provides infrastructure for electric vehicles, said Friday it will expand its network of chargers nearly 50-fold over the next seven years. The company, which has more than 53,000 chargers in operation today, has committed to a global network of 2.5 million charging spots by 2025. The majority of these new EV chargers will be evenly split between Europe and North America, with smaller percentages in Australia and New Zealand, the company said Friday at the Global Climate Action Summit. ChargePoint has raised more than $292 million since its founding in 2007. It’s used the funds to add chargers to its network, including an expansion last year into Europe. The company secured an , led by automaker Daimler in May 2017. A month later the company announced another $43 million in funding from German engineering giant Siemens to bolster its European expansion. The network expansion comes at an auspicious time for automakers, a number of which are planning to roll out electric vehicles in the next several years. Tesla has its own network of chargers that it calls superchargers. The automaker has invested heavily to build out the network, which is now 1,342 stations with 11,013 superchargers globally. Only Tesla vehicles can use that network, which aims to promote long-distance travel. Other automakers that are beginning to sell EVs will rely heavily on third-party EV providers like ChargePoint. It’s estimated that at least 40 new electric vehicle models will be introduced in the next five years. Jaguar will start delivering its first EV, the i-Pace crossover, to customers in the U.S. this fall. Audi plans to introduce its first electric vehicle, the e-tron, on Monday. |
Twitch updates security for its TwitchCon event following the Jacksonville esports shooting | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Twitch is today changes to its security procedures for its TwitchCon event taking place in San Jose, California on October 26-28. The update follows news of the tragic at an esports event in Jacksonville, Florida last month where three people died, including the shooter, and 11 were injured. Twitch said it would review its procedures as a result, and would soon have more information about what it’s doing to keep attendees safe. Today, the company those plans. Our highest priority at TwitchCon is attendee safety and security. We want to assure you that we are adding additional security measures on top of past event measures. We will have more detailed information on TwitchCon security in the coming days so stay tuned! — TwitchCon 2018 (@TwitchCon) According to Twitch, it’s working with San Jose’s local law enforcement, convention staff and additional security services on the event. The conference will include bag searches and screenings at designated entrance points, and attendees will be limited to carrying just one bag. The bag can be no larger than 12” x 15” x 6”, the company says. Backpacks, luggage, large bags and bulky clothing will not be allowed. In addition, backpacks acquired at the show — even those that are Twitch-branded — will not be eligible for re-entry. There will be an on-site bag check available, but the company suggests that larger bags be left at home as space will be limited. It says small fanny packs or clear bags will help attendees move through the security checkpoints faster. Meanwhile, exhibitors will only be able to hand-carry their products and display materials in oversized bags and rollers before 8 AM on show days — that way there won’t be a way for people to bring in large bags when the event is underway. Press will also have to wear their press badges, and crews that need to carry their large camera equipment will need to be approved. Of course, the event has a as well, and anyone in violation will be removed without refund. Badges must be worn at all times, and an ID or passport needs to be on hand, as well. At first glance, the updated procedures don’t seem remarkably different from Twitch’s earlier policies. The company’s security plan before Jacksonville had also included bag searches, walk-through or hand-held scanners, the use of uniformed guards, ID checks and the wearing of badges. The biggest on-record change appears to be the backpack ban. However, we understand the reference to Twitch’s closer work with law enforcement services and the “additional security services” is a reference to other changes that may not have been fully detailed. (We’d guess this is likely because Twitch doesn’t want to provide too much information to anyone trying to workaround its security procedures.) The annual TwitchCon event brings together the Twitch community to play games, watch live esports, participate in hackathons and cosplay contests, attend sessions and hear from the company about what’s next for the live game-streaming service. Last fall, for example, Twitch a new set of tools at TwitchCon that would allow creators to make money from their online channels. However, the events in Jacksonville have had many of TwitchCon’s regular attendees event safety. After all, the video game competition, taking place at the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida, had been live-streamed on Twitch when the shooting happened. Would a copycat try to get into Twitch’s conference?, some have wondered. According to , the Florida shooter had been upset about losing two games of Madden earlier in the tournament, even refusing to shake hands with the winner after one game. Despite a of mental illness, the shooter had been able to legally acquire his weapons. It wasn’t clear how he got them into the Jacksonville bar. Sadly, mass shootings in the U.S. have now taken place at schools, movie theaters, churches, concerts, workplaces — even at — and elsewhere. But they had not yet before occurred at an esports event. The tragic event brought attention on the esports industry as a whole, which still sits somewhere outside of mainstream attention, despite Twitch more than 2 million broadcasters and 15 million viewers who tune in daily to watch. We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Jacksonville today. Twitch and all its staff send our deepest sympathies to the victims, their loved ones, and everyone in our community who's grieving today. — Twitch (@Twitch) Shortly after the tragedy, Twitch said it would make changes. “Security at TwitchCon is our top priority and is something we take very seriously at all our events,” the company told TechCrunch in August. “We regularly review and iterate on our policies and approach in order to provide a safe and positive experience for staff, attendees, and exhibitors. In the wake of yesterday’s tragedy we will be re-reviewing our plans and updating them accordingly,” a spokesperson had said at the time. The updated plans for TwitchCon are detailed on and its . |
UK warns of satellite and space surveillance problems in case of Brexit ‘no deal’ | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | The U.K. government says that access to satellites and space surveillance programs will suffer in the event of a “no deal” departure from the European Union. Britain has less than six months to go before the country leaves the 28-member state bloc, after a little over half the country voted to withdraw membership from the European Union in a 2016 referendum. So far, the Brexit process has been a hot mess of and , bureaucracy and backstabbing — amid and leadership challenges. And the government isn’t even close to scoring a deal to keep trade ties open, immigration flowing and airplanes taking off. Now, that services reliant on EU membership — like access to space programs — will be affected. The reassuring news is that car and phone GPS maps won’t suddenly stop working. But the government said that the U.K. will “no longer play any part” of the European’s GPS efforts, shutting out businesses, academics and researchers who will be shut out of future contracts, and “may face difficulty carrying out and completing existing contracts.” “There should be no noticeable impact if the UK were to leave the EU with no agreement in place,” but the U.K. is investing £92 million ($120 million) to fund its own U.K.-based GPS system. The notice also said that the U.K.’s military and intelligence agencies will no longer have access to the EU’s Public Regulated Service, a that enhances protections against spoofing and jamming. But that system isn’t expected to go into place until 2020, so the government isn’t immediately concerned. The U.K. will also no longer be part of the Copernicus program, an EU-based earth observation initiative that’s to national security as it contributes to maritime surveillance, border control and understanding climate change. Although the program’s data is free and open, the U.K. government says that users will no longer have high-bandwidth access to data from the satellites and additional data, but admits that it’s “seeking to clarify” the terms. Although this is the “worst-case scenario” in case of no final agreement on the divorce settlement from Europe, with just months to go and a distance to reach, it’s looking like a “no deal” is increasingly likely. |
The new iPhone’s here, so Google wants to talk Pixel 3 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | null |
The iPhone SE was the best phone Apple ever made, and now it’s dead | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | I only wanted one thing out of 2018’s iPhone event: a new iPhone SE. In failing to provide it Apple seems to have quietly put the model out to pasture — and for this I curse them eternally. Because it was the best phone the company ever made. If you were one of the many who passed over the SE back in 2015, when it made its debut, that’s understandable. The iPhone 6S was the latest and greatest, and of course fixed a few of the problems Apple had kindly introduced with the entirely new design of the 6. But for me the SE was a perfect match. See, I’ve always loved the iPhone design that began with the 4. That storied phone is perhaps best remembered for being left in a bar ahead of release and leaked by Gizmodo — which is too bad, because for once the product was worthy of the lavish unveiling Apple now bestows on every device it puts out. The 4 established an entirely new industrial design aesthetic that was at once instantly recognizable and highly practical. Gone were the smooth, rounded edges and back of the stainless original iPhone (probably the second-best phone Apple made) and the jellybean-esque 3G and 3GS. In the place of those soft curves were hard lines and uncompromising geometry: a belt of metal running around the edge, set off from the glass sides by the slightest of steps. It highlighted and set off the black glass of the screen and bezel, producing a specular outline from any angle. The camera was flush and the home button ( ) sub-flush, entirely contained within the body, making the device perfectly flat both front and back. Meanwhile the side buttons boldly stood out. Volume in bold, etched circles; the mute switch easy to find but impossible to accidentally activate; the power button perfectly placed for a reaching index finger. Note that all these features are directly pointed at usability: making things easier, better and more accessible while also being attractive and cohesive as parts of a single object. Compared to the iPhone 4, every single other phone, including Samsung’s new “iPhone killer” Galaxy S, was a cheap-looking mess of plastic, incoherently designed or at best workmanlike. And don’t think I’m speaking as an Apple fanboy; I was not an iPhone user at the time. In fact, I was probably still using — talk about beauty and the beast! The design was strong enough that it survived the initially awkward transition to a longer screen in the 5, and with that generation it also gained the improved rear side that alleviated the phone’s unfortunate tendency towards… well, shattering. The two-tone grey iPhone 5S, however, essentially left no room for improvement. And after 4 years, it was admittedly perhaps time to freshen things up a bit. Unfortunately, what Apple ended up doing was subtracting all personality from the device while adding nothing but screen space. The 6 was, to me, simply ugly. It was reminiscent of the plethora of boring Android phones at the time — merely higher quality than them, not different. The 6S was similarly ugly, and the 7 through 8 somehow further banished any design that set themselves apart, while reversing course on some practical measures in allowing an increasingly large camera bump and losing the headphone jack. The X, at least, looked a bit different. But to return to the topic at hand, it was after the 6S that Apple had introduced the SE. Although it nominally stood for “Special Edition,” the name was also a nod to the Macintosh SE. Ironically given the original meaning of “System Expansion,” the new SE was the opposite: essentially an iPhone 6S in the body of a 5S, complete with improved camera, Touch ID sensor, and processor. The move was likely intended as a sort of lifeboat for users who still couldn’t bring themselves to switch to the drastically redesigned, and considerably larger, new model. It would take time, Apple seems to have reasoned, to convert these people, the types who rarely buy first generation Apple products and cherish usability over novelty. So why not coddle them a bit through this difficult transition? The SE appealed not just to the nostalgic and neophobic, but simply people who prefer a smaller phone. I don’t have particularly large or small hands, but I preferred this highly pocketable, proven design to the new one for a number of reasons. Flush camera so it doesn’t get scratched up? Check. Normal, pressable home button? Check. Flat, symmetrical design? Check. Actual edges to hold onto? Check. Thousands of cases already available? Check — although I didn’t use one for a long time. The SE is best without one. At the time, the iPhone SE was more compact and better looking than anything Apple offered, while making almost no compromises at all in terms of functionality. The only possible objection was its size, and that was (and is) a matter of taste. It was the best object Apple ever designed, filled with the best tech it had ever developed. It was the best phone it ever made. And the best phone it’s made then, too, if you ask me. Ever since the 6, it seems to me that Apple has only drifted, casting about for something to captivate its users the way the iPhone 4’s design and new graphical capabilities did, all the way back in 2010. It honed that design to a cutting edge and then, when everyone expected the company to leap forward, it tiptoed instead, perhaps afraid to spook the golden goose. To me the SE was Apple allowing itself one last victory lap on the back of a design it would never surpass. It’s understandable that it would not want to admit, this many years on, that anyone could possibly prefer something it created nearly a decade ago to its thousand-dollar flagship — a device, I feel I must add, that not only compromises visibly in its design (I’ll never own a notched phone if I can help it) but backpedals on practical features used by millions, like Touch ID and a 3.5mm headphone jack. This is in keeping with similarly user-unfriendly choices made elsewhere in its lineup. So while I am disappointed in Apple, I’m not surprised. After all, it’s disappointed me for years. But I still have my SE, and I intend to keep it for as long as possible. Because it’s the best thing the company ever made, and it’s still a hell of a phone. |
Drone startup Airware crashes, shuts down after burning $118M | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Drone operating system startup Airware today suddenly informed employees it will cease operations immediately despite having raised from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google’s GV, and Kleiner Perkins. The startup ran out of money after trying to manufacture its own hardware that couldn’t compete with drone giants like China’s DJI. The company at one point had as many as 140 employees, all of which are now out of a job. A source sent TechCrunch screenshots from the Airware alumni Slack channel detailing how the staff was told this morning that Airware would shut down. Airware makes a cloud sofware system that helps enterprise customers like construction companies, mining operations, and insurance companies reviewing equipment for damages to use drones to collect and analyze aerial data. That allowed companies to avoid using expensive helicopters or dangerous rigs with humans on harnesses to make inspections and gauge work progress. One ex-employee asked “How do I get my options sent to me on paper so I can burn them all in a fire?😅” Founded in 2011 by Jonathan Downey, the son of two pilots, to follow certain routes to collect data. It could help businesses check rooftops for damage, see how much of a raw material was coming out of a mine, or build constantly-updated maps of construction sites. Later it tried to build its own drones before pivoting to consult clients on how to most efficiently apply unmanned aerial vehicles. While flying high, Airware launched its own for investing in the market in 2015, and in 2016. In this pre-crypto, pre-AI boom, Airware scored a ton of hype from us and others as tried to prove . But over time, the software that shipped with commercial drone hardware from other manufacturers was good enough to make Airware irrelevant, and a downward spiral of layoffs began over the past two years, culminating in today’s shutdown. Demonstating how sudden the shut down is, Airware opened a Tokyo headquarters alongside an investment and partnership from Mitsubishi just four days ago. “Airware was ahead of the game trying to build their software. So far ahead that to actually produce the granularity of data they needed to test out their software/train their algorithms” an ex-employee told TechCrunch (emphasis ours). “ , including two drones in-house, one multi-rotor called an AT-28, and one fixed-wing called Cygnet. Both projects were scuttled as hardware from DJI and Ebee caught up to needs, after sinking tons of engineering time and manufacturing into them.” Following TechCrunch’s inquiry about the unnannounced news, Airware confirmed the shut down to us with this statement: “History has taught us how hard it can be to call the timing of a market transition. We have seen this play out first hand in the commercial drone marketplace. We were the pioneers in this market and one of the first to see the power drones could have in the commercial sector. Unfortunately, the market took longer to mature than we expected. As we worked through the various required pivots to position ourselves for long term success, we ran out of financial runway. As a result, it is with a heavy heart that we notified our team, customers, and partners that we will wind down the business. This is not the business outcome we had worked so hard for over the years and yet we are deeply proud of our company’s accomplishments and our leadership in driving the adoption of drone powered analytics to improve productivity, mitigate risks, and take workers out of harm’s way. As we close the book of Airware; we want to thank the partners and customers who believed in us and helped us along the way. And, while it is difficult to say goodbye to our team, we want to thank them for all they have contributed to Airware and the industry. We look forward to seeing how they will take their learnings from Airware to fuel continued innovations in the world around us.” [Update: Since we broke the news, Airware has put up a about the shutdown informing clients that “A representative from the Airware team will be in touch.”] An Airware-hardware equipped drone Employees will get one week’s severance, COBRA insurance until November, and payouts for unused paid time off. It appears the startup wasn’t able to raise necessary funding to save the company or secure an acquisition from one of its strategic partners like Catepillar. Airware will serve as cautionary tale of startup overspending in hopes of finding product-market fit. Had it been more frugal, saved cash to extend its runway, and given corporate clients more time to figure out how to use drones, Airware might have stayed afloat. Sometimes, even having the most prestigious investors can’t save a startup from mismanagement. Our ex-employee source concludes that “I think having $118M in the bank led Airware to charge ahead and sink tons of money into force-it-to-work methods rather than exercise a bit of patience and wait for the inevitable advance of hardware to catch up. They had a knack for hiring extremely talented and expensive people from places like Google, Autodesk, there was even SpaceX and NASA alumni there. They spared no expense ever.” |
SpaceX announces plan to announce plan to send someone around the moon in planned spaceship | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | It’s been too long without any kind of outlandish news from any of Elon Musk’s companies, but SpaceX has filled the void with the announcement of a newly redesigned BFR spacecraft and the news that it will fly around the moon with a soon-to-be-named first passenger. Whenever they get around to actually engineering and building the thing, anyway. , SpaceX (though it was clearly Musk) announced that it has “signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle.” Attached to the tweet was an image of the BFR itself (above), much changed from its last appearance. : And now it looks like this: The old version was also two-toned, as you can see if you look closely at the ISS render, with the darker part likely corresponding to a heat-resistant surface. But this new one is more reminiscent of the Space Shuttle thanks to considerably lengthened fins and the addition of a top one. Perhaps the cool, smooth two-fin style simply proved impractical; flight stability in atmosphere probably makes that top fin necessary. There’s also what appears to be a front stabilizer of some kind. The engine cluster is also different; the original design had 4 Raptor engines in a square, with two smaller “sea-level” engines for landing operations in-between them. This new render has 7 Raptors in a honeycomb formation. We can only speculate why that might be: the engines may have been scaled down a bit for some reason or another, or the 7-thruster formation might be more robust to failures. Since this is all basically concept work, it’s hard to say how much is real and how much is fantasy. Considering how early the craft is in production, it’s not surprising that major changes like these would be made. A commentator on Twitter noted that the whole thing is very “Tintin-esque,” no doubt referring to the rocket flown by the beloved Belgian comic book hero in “Destination Moon” and “Explorers on the Moon.” Although Musk responded with “Intentionally so,” the similarities are actually pretty few. Perhaps he meant the whole concept of a private lunar mission. At any rate, Musk is clearly a fan of the comics, and any Tintin reference is a good reference. There are also 6 rows of windows behind the cockpit, up from 3, suggesting SpaceX has expanded the seating in the planned craft. That fits with the passenger-related nature of the announcement. As for that: This first circumlunar tourist will be announced at an event on Monday, September 17th. Who will it be? Likely a billionaire. Unfortunately, they’ll have a long time to wait. By the time the BFR is up and running, space tourism (though perhaps not round-the-moon trips) may very well have been going on for years. So if it will be this intrepid, extremely rich person’s first trip to our satellite, I doubt it will be their first trip above the Kármán line. |
Mary Meeker, author of the Internet Trends Report, is leaving Kleiner Perkins | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | The news, first reported by and confirmed to TechCrunch, is the latest high-level departure at one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms. |
Mobile bank Chime picks up credit score improvement service Pinch in all-stock deal | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | , the no-fees mobile bank , has put some of its funds to use with its first acquisition. The deal is for , a startup that was focused on helping millennials and other young adults build better credit. It was best known for a service called PinchRent, which allowed users to increase their credit scores over time by reporting on-time rent payments to credit bureaus. Millennials can sometimes struggle to improve their credit, or are , studies have shown. And like any younger demographic, they may also be afflicted with shorter credit histories, which impacts those scores, too. Many in this age group have said that are holding them back, and millennials , Visa has reported. Pinch’s focus was to provide a different way for its users to increase their scores, rather than simply using credit cards or making loan payments on time. It did this by aggregating the information on rent payments and submitting that to the credit bureaus. (The bureaus can take rental information, but they don’t work with individual landlords. That’s where Pinch came in.) Since its founding in 2016, more than 80% of people on its service increased their scores from 10 to 100 points. The startup was preparing to announce a $1.8 million seed round of funding from Homebrew and Collaborative ahead of its acquisition. Pinch had only been in beta testing prior to joining Chime, and was also planning to do a full public launch. Instead, it shut down its service by that its last day of business would be June 27, 2018. At the time of the service’s closure, it was in talks with Chime. But the deal itself only closed this Tuesday, we understand. Chime declined to share the deal terms, but noted it’s an all-stock transaction and investors were happy. The acquisition includes Pinch’s core team (5-10 people, depending on how the offers play out) plus founders and , who will now help the mobile bank launch credit and lending products over the next six months. Bittner previously co-founded subscription startup Rocksbox, and worked as a Sequoia Capital scout. Ducker, meanwhile, hailed from Microsoft and Twitter before starting Pinch. Chime, whose user base is 90% millennials, may or may not relaunch Pinch’s rent-paying service, but it will be soon moving into credit. “I think, particularly, post the 2008 crisis, there’s been just a general distrust of big banks. But also, people have seen how the amount of credit [they have] can create challenges in their life,” says Chime CEO Chris Britt, discussing the struggles its users face in terms of building their credit. “And younger consumers are so saddled with with student loan debt that the last thing they want to do is get more debt on a credit card,” he adds, explaining why young people turn to debit cards. He says Chime’s goal now is to helping serve this group’s needs around credit with a set of millennial-focused products. “The reality is the typical debit card and checking account do nothing to build your credit score. So as we think about the future set of products that we want to roll out, we’re very focused on helping our members with that part of their life,” he adds. Chime is now one of several millennial-focused mobile banks on the market, which do away with traditional banking fees as well as brick-and-mortar location. Others like Simple and Stash are also available, but Chime , making it the largest in terms of funding. The company today also shared new numbers – it says it has over 1.7 million bank accounts on its platform, and is opening more than 150,000 accounts per month – in line with Wells Fargo. It expects to surpass 2 million bank accounts and $10 billion in total transaction volume by year-end. Further down the road, Chime may venture into investing, but not until its user base is ready. “So we’re very deliberate in how we think about helping our members along their financial journey. We start with the checking account, we make sure you’re paying all your bills, then we make sure you have a savings account balance – because you should have a savings account balance before you start day trading,” Britt says. “It’s sort of irresponsible to be encouraging day trading if you don’t have the financial means…I think investment accounts and retirement accounts come first,” he notes. |
Cryptocurrency mining attacks using leaked NSA hacking tools are still highly active a year later | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | It’s been over a year since highly classified exploits built by the National Security Agency were stolen and published online. One of the tools, dubbed EternalBlue, can covertly break into almost any Windows machine around the world. It didn’t take long for hackers to to run ransomware on thousands of computers, grinding hospitals and businesses to a halt. Two separate attacks in as many months used WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware, which spread like wildfire. Once a single computer in a network was infected, the malware would also target other devices on the network. The recovery was slow and in damages. Yet, more than a year since Microsoft that slammed the backdoor shut, are still unpatched and vulnerable to attack. Although WannaCry infections have slowed, hackers are still using the publicly accessible NSA exploits to infect computers to mine cryptocurrency. Nobody knows that better than one major Fortune 500 multinational, which was hit by a massive WannaMine cryptocurrency mining infection just days ago. “Our customer is a very large corporation with multiple offices around the world,” said Amit Serper, who heads the security research team at . “Once their first machine was hit the malware propagated to more than 1,000 machines in a day,” he said, without naming the company. Cryptomining attacks have been around for a while. It’s more common for hackers to inject cryptocurrency mining code into vulnerable websites, but the payoffs are low. Some news sites are now as an alternative to running ads. But WannaMine works differently, Cybereason said in its of the infection. By using those leaked NSA exploits to gain a single foothold into a network, the malware tries to infect any computer within. It’s persistent so the malware can survive a reboot. After it’s implanted, the malware uses the computer’s processor to mine cryptocurrency. On dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers, the malware can mine cryptocurrency far faster and more efficiently. Though it’s a drain on energy and computer resources, it can often go unnoticed. After the malware spreads within the network, it modifies the power management settings to prevent the infected computer from going to sleep. Not only that, the malware tries to detect other cryptomining scripts running on the computer and terminates them — likely to squeeze every bit of energy out of the processor, maximizing its mining effort. At least 300,000 computers or networks are still vulnerable to the NSA’s EternalBlue hacking tools. Based from Shodan, a search engine for open ports and databases, at least 919,000 servers are still vulnerable to EternalBlue, with some 300,000 machines in the US alone. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg — that figure can represent either individual vulnerable computers or a vulnerable network server capable of infecting hundreds or thousands more machines. Cybereason said companies are still severely impacted because their systems aren’t protected. “There’s no reason why these exploits should remain unpatched,” the blog post said. “Organizations need to install security patches and update machines.” If not ransomware yesterday, it’s cryptomining malware today. Given how versatile the EternalBlue exploit is, tomorrow it could be something far worse — like data theft or destruction. In other words: if you haven’t patched already, what are you waiting for? |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 13 | null |
Kegel trainer startup Elvie is launching a smaller, smarter, hands-free breast pump | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | startup known best for its connected Kegel trainer, is jumping into the breast pump business with a new $480 hands-free system you can slip into your bra. Even with all the innovation in baby gear, breast pumps have mostly sucked (pun intended) for new moms for the past half a century. My first experience with a pump required me to stay near a wall socket and hunch over for a good 20 to 30 minutes for fear the milk collected might spill all over the place (which it did anyway, frequently). It was awful! Next I tried the Willow Pump, an egg-shaped, connected pump meant to liberate women everywhere with its small and mobile design. It received , though my experience with it was less than stellar. The proprietary bags were hard to fit in the device, filled up with air, cost 50 cents each (on top of the $500 pump that insurance did not cover), wasted many a golden drop of precious milk in the transfer and I had to reconfigure placement several times before it would start working. So I’ve been tentatively excited about the announcement of Elvie’s new cordless (and silent??) double breast pump. Displayed: a single Elvie pump with accompanying app Elvie tells TechCrunch its aim all along has been to make health tech for women and that it has been working on this pump for the past three years. The Elvie Pump is a cordless, hands-free, closed-system, rechargeable electric pump designed by former Dyson engineers. It can hold up to 5 oz. from each breast in a single use. It’s most obvious and direct competition is the Willow pump, another “wearable” pump moms can put right in their bra and walk around in, hands-free. However, unlike the Willow, Elvie’s pump does not need proprietary bags. You just pump right into the device and the pump’s smartphone app will tell you when each side is full. It’s also half the size and weight of a Willow and saves every precious drop it can by pumping right into the attached bottle so you just pump and feed (no more donut-shaped bags you have to cut open and awkwardly pour into a bottle). On top of that, Elvie claims this pump is silent. No more loud suction noise off and on while trying to pump in a quiet room in the office or elsewhere. It’s small, easy to carry around and you can wear it under your clothes without it making a peep! While the Willow pump claims to be quiet — and it is, compared to other systems — you can still very much hear it while you are pumping. Elvie’s connected breast pump app All of these features sound fantastic to this new (and currently pumping) mom. I remember in the early days of my baby’s life wanting to go places but feeling stuck. I was chained to not just all the baby gear, hormonal shifts and worries about my newborn but to the pump and feed schedule itself, which made it next to impossible to leave the house for the first few months. My baby was one of those “ ” who just nursed and nursed all day. There were days I couldn’t leave the bed! Having a silent, no mess, hands-free device that fit right in my bra would have made a world of difference. However, I mentioned the word “tentatively” above, as I have not had a chance to do a hands-on review of Elvie’s pump. The Willow pump also seemed to hold a lot of promise early on, yet left me disappointed. To be fair, the company’s customer service team was top-notch and did try to address my concerns. I even went through two “coaching” sessions, but in the end it seemed the blame was put on me for not getting their device to work correctly. That’s a bad user experience if you are blaming others for your design flaws, especially new and struggling moms. Both companies are founded by women and make products for women — and it’s about time. But it seems as if Elvie has taken note of the good and bad in their competitors and had time to improve upon it — and that’s what has me excited. As my fellow TechCrunch writer Natasha put it in her of Elvie as a company, “It’s not hyperbole to say Elvie is a new breed of connected device. It’s indicative of the lack of smart technology specifically — and intelligently — addressing women.” The Elvie Pump comes in three sizes and shapes to fit the majority of breasts and, in case you want to check your latch or pump volume, also has transparent nipple shields with markings to help guide the nipple to the right spot. The app connects to each device via Bluetooth and tracks your production, detects let down, will pause when full and is equipped to pump in seven different modes. The pump retails for $480 and is currently available in the U.K. However, those in the U.S. will have to wait until closer to the end of the year to get their hands on one. According to the company, it will be available on Elvie.com and Amazon.com, as well in select physical retail stores nationally later this year, pending FDA approval. |
Lyft hires yet another ex-Tesla employee | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | Lyft is on a bit of a Tesla poaching spree while Tesla employees are exiting in droves. The latest ex-Tesla employee to join Lyft is Cal Lankton, who most recently led the development of Tesla’s electric vehicle charging network . At Lyft, Lankton will serve as VP of infrastructure operations where he will focus on the next generation of Lyft’s driver hubs. “I came to Lyft because I believe in the company’s priorities of driver care and environmental sustainability, and I know that our retail footprint can effectively marry the two through smart design and deployment,” Lankton said in a statement. Lyft is also bringing on board Geoffrey Bain from Unilever to serve as the company’s senior director of retail operations. Both will work with Lyft VP of Driver Experience Operations Karim Bousta, . All of the aforementioned people report to Lyft COO Jon McNeill, . “With Cal and Geoffrey leading our retail strategy, I am confident that our next-generation service centers will exceed driver expectations, and they will see the results of this team’s dedication reflected in their earnings,” McNeill said in a statement. In May, $100 million to better support its drivers by specifically putting the money toward cheaper oil changes, basic car maintenance, serviced car washes and more. Lyft also will almost double its operating hours at its driver hubs in 15 cities throughout the nation. The idea with that commitment is to help drivers make more money and maximize their earnings by offsetting the costs of driving. Other benefits will include car and SUV rentals, tax education and more. Lyft also says it expects to more than double its driver base in the next five years. Currently, Lyft has 1.4 million drivers, . |
DC Comics’ streaming service launches tomorrow | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | That’s a lot of f***ing Batman. |
Swiping right on virtual relationships | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | in the latest season of the original series , where the main character, Alex, tries his hand at dating in virtual reality. He quickly meets a woman and develops a big, adrenaline-inducing crush only to realize she’s a scammer out for his credit card information. he report is full of interesting nuggets on how tech, like (Internet-connected sex toys), is transforming intimacy. There’s a whole class of startups named in the report embracing the notion that human experiences can be improved when powered by apps and devices. No, they aren’t advocating for you to bring your smartphone to the bedroom, but rather claiming that customizable tech can heighten the senses or create new avenues for exploration. , for example, has a mobile app that lets you exchange a kiss over the Internet. and sell Bluetooth-connected vibrators. And CamasutraVR streams virtual versions of real-life porn stars. VR, Cole says, is a the forefront of the sextech industry’s transformation and if used correctly, can As a safe space for experimentation, two people can explore fantasies, engage with The release of the report is hot off the heels of Future of Sex’s fourth sextech hackathon. Future of Sex partnered with porn site and asked hackers to come up with ways to leverage YouPorn’s content, which includes VR porn, to improve the sex lives of viewers. VR porn is not a new phenomenon and while it can allow for more personal sexual experiences, researchers have warned that blurring the line between the real and the virtual could lead to ethical issues. How, for example, do you give consent in VR? Women, who are often exploited for the purposes of sexual entertainment, need to be at the table while this content and other sextech are in development. Fortunately, Cole says, women are entering the sextech community in droves. “[It’s] exploding at the moment and more and more women entrepreneurs are having a go at building a company,” she said. “It’s Important to highlight why women are getting involved in sextech especially in the current climate of #MeToo.” On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF this year, . “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,” Unbound founder Polly Rodriguez Rodriguez is a close friend of Cole’s — the community is still small — and she’s appeared on the Future of Sex podcast. The podcast, hackathons and the 12-week accelerator program for sextech startups are part of Cole’s effort to expand the dialogue around VR & sextech, invite new voices into the movement and remove the stigma around having open and honest conversations about sex and intimacy. |
White House says a draft executive order reviewing social media companies is not “official” | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | A draft executive order circulating around the White House “is not the result of an official White House policymaking process,” according to deputy White House press secretary, Lindsay Walters. Walters denied that White House staff had worked on a draft executive order that would require every federal agency to study how social media platforms moderate user behavior and refer any instances of perceived bias to the Justice Department for further study and potential legal action. the draft executive order and a copy of the document was by . Here’s the relevant text of the draft (from ): Section 2. Agency Responsibilities. (a) Executive departments and agencies with authorities that could be used to enhance competition among online platforms (agencies) shall, where consistent with other laws, use those authorities to promote competition and ensure that no online platform exercises market power in a way that harms consumers, including through the exercise of bias. (b) Agencies with authority to investigate anticompetitive conduct shall thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws, as defined in subsection (a) of the first section of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 12, or any other law intended to protect competition. (c) Should an agency learn of possible or actual anticompetitive conduct by a platform that the agency lacks the authority to investigate and/or prosecute, the matter should be referred to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission. While there are several reasonable arguments to be made for and against the regulation of social media platforms, “bias” is probably the least among them. That hasn’t stopped of bias under the guise of “anticompetitive regulation” against platforms like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter from increasing in volume and tempo in recent months. Bias was the key concern Republican lawmakers brought up when Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress earlier this year. And bias was front and center in Republican lawmakers’ questioning of Jack Dorsey, Sheryl Sandberg, and Google’s empty chair when they to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Justice Department has even called in the attorneys general of several states to review the legality of the moderation policies of social media platforms later this month ( ). With all of this activity focused on tech companies, it’s no surprise that the administration would turn to the Executive Order — a preferred weapon of choice for Presidents who find their agenda stalled in the face of an uncooperative legislature (or prevailing rule of law). However, as the reported, aides in the White House said there’s little chance of this becoming actual policy. … three White House aides soon insisted they didn’t write the draft order, didn’t know where it came from, and generally found it to be unworkable policy anyway. One senior White House official confirmed the document had been floating around the White House but had not gone through the formal process, which is controlled by the staff secretary. |
Corporate venture investment climbs higher throughout 2018 | Jason Rowley | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | Many corporations are pinning their futures on their venture investment portfolios. If you can’t beat startups at the innovation game, go into business with them as financial partners. Though many technology companies have robust venture investment initiatives— and ’s prolific approach to startup investment come to mind—other corporations are just now doubling down on venture investments. Over the past several months, several big corporations committed additional capital to corporate investments. For example, defense firm added to its in-house venture group back in June. Duck-represented insurance firm just bumped its corporate venture fund , and lust of its own. This is to say nothing of financial vehicles like ’s , into which the Japanese telecom giant invested $28 billion of its own capital. And 2018 is on track to set a record for U.S. corporate involvement in venture deals. We come to this conclusion after analyzing corporate venture investment patterns of the top 100 publicly traded, U.S.-based companies (as ranked by market capitalizations at time of writing). The chart below shows that investing activity, broken out by stage, for each year since 2007. A few things stick out in this chart. The number of rounds these big corporations invest in is on track to set a new record in 2018. Keep in mind that there’s a little over one full quarter left in the year. And although the holidays tend to bring a modest slowdown in venture activity over time, there’s probably sufficient momentum to break prior records. The other thing to note is that our subset of corporate investors have, over time, made more investments in seed and early-stage companies. In 2018 to date, seed and early-stage rounds account for over 60 percent of corporate venture deal flow, which may creep up as more rounds get reported. (There’s a documented reporting lag in angel, seed, and Series A deals in particular.) This is in line with the past couple of years. Finally, we can view this chart as a kind of microcosm for blue-chip corporate risk attitudes over the past decade. It’s possible to see the fear and uncertainty of the 2008 financial crisis causing a pullback in risk capital investment. Even though the crisis started in 2008, the stock market didn’t bottom out until 2009. You can see that bottom reflected in the low point of corporate venture investment activity. The economic recovery that followed, bolstered by cheap interest rates that ultimately yielded the slightly bloated and strung-out market for both public and private investors? We’re in the thick of it now. Whereas most traditional venture firms are beholden to their limited partners, that investor base is often spread rather thinly between different pension funds, endowments, funds-of-funds, and . With rare exception, corporate venture firms have just one investor: the corporation itself. More often than not, that results in corporate venture investments being directionally aligned with corporate strategy. But corporations also invest in startups for the same reason garden-variety venture capitalists and angels do: to own a piece of the future. Our goal here was to develop as full a picture as possible of a corporation’s investing activity, which isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. We started with a somewhat constrained dataset: the top 100 U.S.-based publicly traded companies, ranked by market capitalization at time of writing. We then traversed through each corporation’s network of sub-organizations as represented in Crunchbase data. This allowed us to collect not just the direct investments made by a given corporation, but investments made by its in-house venture funds and other subsidiaries as well. It’s a similar method to what we did when investigating Alphabet’s investing universe. Using Alphabet as an example, we were able to capture its direct investments, plus the investments associated with its sub-organizations, and their sub-organizations in turn. Except instead of doing that for just one company, we did it for a list of 100. This is by no means a perfect approach. It’s possible that corporations have venture arms listed in Crunchbase, but for one reason or another, the venture arm isn’t listed as a sub-organization of its corporate parent. Additionally, since most of the corporations on this list have a global presence despite being based in the United States, it’s likely that some of them make investments in foreign markets that don’t get reported. |
Comcast outbids Fox in $40B battle for Sky | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | Sky operates several brands including Sky News, Sky Sports and Sky Cinema. |
Cinematic train wreck, “The Room”, is now on YouTube in its entirety | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-htzzL-JOUg has been ranked with as a strong contender for the “best” worst movie ever made — and it’s now available in its entirety on . Written, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, belongs in the same category as , and (which was immortalized in the 1999 documentary ) as a paean to moviemaking by people who have no idea how to make a movie. The combination of passion and ineptitude is what made a cult classic after its release, and what made — the James Franco film it inspired so compelling ( , the biopic from Tim Burton about the director behind is also amazing). Writer, actor, and director Tommy Wiseau in a still from “The Room” In “The Room” Wiseau plays Johnny, an investment banker caught in a bizarre love triangle with his best friend, Mark, played by Greg Sestero, and his fiancee, Lisa, played by Juliette Danielle. It was Sestero’s book on the making of the film, “The Disaster Artist”, that inspired the eponymous movie directed by Franco and starring his brother Dave and Seth Rogen. According to Sestero and Wiseau are now promoting a straight-to-digital follow-up to their feature debut — a two-part black comedy called “ . Viewers might just be better off watching the original contender for best worst movies, which is also available on YouTube (and below). |
Singapore is the crypto sandbox that Asia needs | Joyce Yang | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | happened this past week. While there have been a few announcements from companies, some of the most interesting updates have come from regulators, and specifically, the (MAS). The financial regulator openly discussed its views on cryptocurrency and plans to develop blockchain technology locally. For those who are unfamiliar, Singapore historically has been a financial hub in Southeast Asia, but now has also gradually become the crypto hub of Asia. Compared to the rest of Asia and the rest of the world, the regulators in Singapore are well-informed and more transparent about their views on blockchain and cryptocurrency. While regulatory uncertainties still loom over Korea and Japan, in Southeast Asia, the MAS has already released its opinion “ ” that illustrates the application of securities laws to digital token offerings and issuances. Singaporean regulators have arguably been pioneering economic and regulatory standards in Asia since the early days of the country’s founding by . |
Fintech startups: Apply to exhibit for free as a TC Top Pick at Disrupt Berlin 2018 | Leslie Hitchcock | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | Fintech promises to be one of the hottest topics at , and you can take that to the bank see what we did there? On 29-30 November thousands of attendees will descend on Berlin, and what better way to get your fintech business in front of them than to exhibit in ? Oh wait, we know a better way — and exhibit at Disrupt Berlin for FREE! Our highly discerning editors will review every application and choose up to five of the absolute best early-stage fintech startups. Each TC Top Pick receives one free along with prime real estate in Startup Alley where they can strut their stuff in front of influential technologists and investors, potential collaborators and customers. It’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss, so don’t wait — before the 28 September deadline. Here’s what you get with a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. Exhibiting in Startup Alley can help you build connections and relationships you might not otherwise make. Consider Zeroqode, a company that exhibited in Startup Alley at Disrupt Berlin 2017. Startup Alley attendees chose Zeroqode as a Wild Card company on day three, which earned them a five-minute interview with TechCrunch editor John Biggs on the Startup Alley Showcase Stage. What’s more, TechCrunch shot that interview and promoted it, along with an article penned by Biggs, across its social media platforms. Here’s what Vlad Larin, the company’s co-founder, had to say about the experience. “Exhibiting in Startup Alley was a massively positive experience. It gave us the chance to show our technology to the world and have meaningful conversations with investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers. The publicity we received from the on-stage interview brought a lot of people to our website. We had a huge spike in traffic, and we’re still feeling the positive business effects of that interview.” You’ll also have the opportunity to hear some of Europe’s fintech movers and shakers speak from the Main Stage. People like , the founder and CEO of Starling Bank and Ricky Knox, the CEO and co-founder of Tandem Bank. takes place on 29-30 November. If you want a shot at being one of the fintech TC Top Picks and exhibiting for free in Startup Alley, then . We can’t wait to see you in Berlin! |
null | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 14 | null |
Understanding Renaud Laplanche’s next Upgraded act | Conor Witt | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | ten years building LendingClub. In the process, he created an industry from scratch. Circumventing conventional banking channels for consumer credit began in 1996 when Chris Larsen started , which ultimately led to . But LendingClub, which Laplanche founded in 2007, was and remains the poster child for the business of marketplace lending. The industry’s short history has been volatile, characterized by both and utter . While LendingClub has struggled in the public markets since their , they have managed to propel their industry into significance, while rapidly expanding their share of the personal loan market to . After his in May 2016, Laplanche got started on his next venture in a hurry. Just a few months later he started , ultimately renamed to , a company that bears a striking resemblance to LendingClub. In just two years Upgrade has raised in funding, while originating in loans since August 2017. |
As Magic Leap preps for its first developer conference, the focus shifts to content | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Even as Magic Leap has cleared the milestone of its first hardware release, the augmented reality startup still has big challenges ahead as it aims to entice developers to build the content for its wild new device. The $2,295 Magic Leap One headset is a very polished-looking developer kit, but it didn’t ship with a ton of software for buyers to play around with at launch, just a couple short experiences that were essentially concept proofs. The startup, which was most recently valued at north of $6 billion, is just a few weeks away from its first developer conference taking place down in Los Angeles. The conference will be an opportunity for the company to bring more developers to its platform to build up a content library ahead of an eventual more consumer-facing release. At L.E.A.P., Magic Leap is planning to show off more than a dozen demos from developers, the company tells TechCrunch. We’ve already taken a at a full Angry Birds game for Magic Leap One from Rovio and Resolution Games. Other demos to be showcased include ‘s , ‘s , ‘s and Magic Leap’s own title. We’ll also finally see the first demo of , a shooter title by Weta Workshops that Magic Leap has been hyping since its first-ever teaser video. Though building up content for a new device category is certainly daunting, Magic Leap has the benefit of having seen the major players of the VR industry brute force their way past some of these issues. For the VR industry’s first two years following the releases of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, one of the big issues was that you could play through most of the good available titles in a week or two. The “content problem,” as it was called, led Facebook to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into upstart studios to build games that wouldn’t have otherwise been created. Fast forward to 2018 and there are plenty of high-quality games available on the Oculus and Steam stores though groups like Oculus and HTC are still investing just as heavily. With Microsoft pointing its HoloLens AR developer ecosystem towards the enterprise, Magic Leap is in the somewhat lonely position of wrangling developers around building stuff for an AR headset that appeals to consumers, though plenty are excited to just get in on the ground floor. “I’ve always been very fascinated at being able to do things at the forefront of technology, I definitely think that games are going to be trailblazing on these platforms when it comes to user interface and just coming up with what you can use it for,” Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm told TechCrunch. “I think we’re among a lot of small and big companies that are believing that this is going to be a very big computing platform in the future.” Magic Leap has several partnerships built up already with game studios, media orgs like The New York Times, and, just announced today, medtech company . Getting other partners to invest significant resources into the early platform could require Magic Leap to invest more of its own funds into kickstarting the content ecosystem. The startup has raised at least $2.3 billion according to , but as it takes an end-to-end approach to the entire ecosystem, it’s going to have to decide where its efforts are best spent. Things will certainly be expedited if and when Apple and/or Google embrace AR headset hardware and bring their developer networks into the fold, but Magic Leap will obviously want to make the most of its head start before then. Magic Leap may be an entirely new platform with some big investors and big ideas. It’s newest challenge is a very old one however, getting developers pumped up for something new. |
It looks like Coinbase is preparing to add a lot more cryptocurrencies | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | , and it is taking a small — but not insignificant – step to offering a lot more cryptocurrencies after it revamped the process of listing new digital assets. The exchange currently only supports just five cryptocurrencies — Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin — and the process of adding each one has been gradual. The company would announce plans, and then later announce when listing the asset. The idea being to reduce the potential to send the value of a token skyrocketing. (Since support from Coinbase potentially adds a lot more trading volume.) That clearly isn’t a sustainable process if Coinbase is to add “hundreds” of tokens, . Regulatory concern is high on the scale when evaluating support for new cryptocurrencies, so now Coinbase is speeding up the process by limiting trading of some tokens to specific locations where necessary. “Today we’re announcing a new process that will allow us to rapidly list most digital assets that are compliant with local law, by satisfying listing requests in a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction manner. In practice, this means some new assets listed on our platform may only be available to customers in select jurisdictions for a period of time,” . That’ll mean an end to the double announcement — ‘token X is coming soon’ and ‘token X is now supported’ — and instead a single reveal. That indicates that a large number of new assets may be incoming — for an idea of which ones, . Interestingly, the company also noted that it may introduce a listing fee — this is common with many other exchanges — in the future in order to cover costs around adding some projects. “Initially there will be no application fee. Depending on the volume of submissions, we reserve the right to impose an application fee in the future to defray the legal and operational costs associated with evaluating and listing new assets,” it explained. The company has opened a listing proposal link, . If similar features from other exchanges are anything to go by, Coinbase’s will be flooded by naive token holders who think they have a shot at getting listed on Coinbase, which will take them to the moon. Good luck maintaining that list, guys. |
Crypto giant Binance looks to the future with fiat trading and a decentralized exchange | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Binance, the one-year-old startup that appeared from nowhere to become the world’s top crypto exchange, is making major moves as it enters the next phase of its business. That includes a plan to offer fiat-to-crypto trading in international markets and the release of a decentralized exchange to complement its current trading site. The company routinely trades more than $1 billion in crypto volumes daily — — but to date it has only allowed crypto-to-crypto trading. That’s primarily down to the need for regulation in order to offer fiat currency conversation, but that’s set to change. last week, CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao revealed plans to launch a slew of local exchanges offering fiat conversation in markets across the world and he provided further details in an interview with TechCrunch. “Right now, we are centralized crypto-to-crypto,” Zhao told us. “We don’t offer fiat gateways and so we rely on others to do that. But through discussions with different regulators across the world, we now have those channels. We want to make it easier for fiat currency to get into the crypto world.” There’s certainly a need for institutional money. Crypto prices are down as much as 55 percent on January’ highs, , so it figures that major players like Binance need the backing of big names and large amounts to reverse the trend. While many in the space say they are happy to see a low price since it drives out less sincere operators, dwindling interest in crypto isn’t ideal for those who get paid by facilitating trades. Zhao said the plan is to open three fiat exchanges this year with a view to growing the number to 10 in 2019, with “ideally two per continent.” Part of the goal is to help larger, institutional investors bring money into the crypto ecosystem, a move that would help Binance and the rest of the industry, too. “We want to” reach both retail and institutional investors he added. “Our target has always been more retail focused, but now institutions are coming into crypto and we are seeing that.” Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao speaks at TechCrunch’s blockchain event in Zug in July 2018 [Image: Daniel Vaiman/Explore To Create] While he didn’t specifically call out other markets that Binance is looking at, he did rule out launching in China, Japan and the U.S, which are three major markets for crypto despite respective legal roadblocks. China banned ICOs and exchanges some time ago, the U.S. has begun cracking down on crypto and Japan has tight licensing around exchanges which, for one thing, imposes regulations on what tokens can be listed on exchanges. “Japan is progressive on crypto but their exchange regulation is too strict,” Zhao said. “It makes it very hard for exchanges.” Indeed, it stands to reason that Binance — which once had an office in Tokyo before deciding against operating a local entity — would need to modify its token selection in line with Japanese laws were it to gain a license to operate in Japan. Either way, Zhao doesn’t seem key to reevaluate the country just yet. Elsewhere, Zhao said he “respects” China’s decision to ban ICOs and exchanges, while he is happy to let others do the heavy lifting in the U.S. “We are interested in the U.S. but that’s not a top priority and we will probably let the other guys go in first,” he told TechCrunch. That’s hardly surprising since Binance is one of three exchanges mentioned by in who believes they may have violated state trading law. Zhao declined to comment. Either way, it seems like a lot would have to change — either on the U.S. regulation side or Binance’s side — in order for the exchange to operate in the U.S. within the law. Binance — which has flocked to crypto-friendly nations like Malta and Bermuda instead — said it would open an office in Singapore should the proposed exchange rollout go successfully. Beyond fiat, the company is also getting closer to launching a decentralized exchange (dex) which would allow buyers and sellers to trade tokens directly without the exchange acting as an intermediatory. High-profile figures have criticized central exchanges. for their position controlling asset selection, price and more. Binance seems to be making as much progress as anyone with its dex which, simply because of the company’s market position, could force others to follow suit. The Binance dex would significantly alter the trading flow as it stands today, but Binance itself — which made a profit of $350 million over the past six months — would still draw revenue. That’s because the dex would operate on Binance’s own blockchain with the company operating a number of nodes itself. Zhao said that when its nodes are used in transactions, it would gain some of the network fee. While, equally, the firm stands to profit from increased dex use because that could make Binance’s BNB token more valuable, Zhao argued. The company recently released a very early demo of the dex — spoiler alert: it is underwhelming — but Zhao said a fully-working service should be available by the end of this year or early 2019 at the latest. The Binance CEO, who once build software for futures trading for Bloomberg, is leading the development of the project. “Development is going well,” he added. “Our dex is very simple but it’s fast.” Beyond its exchange business, Binance is also putting itself to work on growing the crypto industry. Earlier this year it announced and would invest directly into companies and new crypto investment funds, too. across the world to help develop new businesses that support the crypto ecosystem. Ella Zhang, who runs the Binance Labs division that manages both projects, candidly told TechCrunch last month that real use cases for blockchain and crypto are crucial if Binance is to “thrive” as a business. |
Seven reasons not to trust Facebook to play cupid | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 9 | 22 | has , slotting an algorithmic dating service inside its walled garden as if that’s perfectly normal behavior for an ageing social network. Insert your [ ] right here. Facebook getting into dating looks very much like a mid-life crisis — as a veteran social network desperately seeks a new strategy to stay relevant in an age when app users have largely moved on from social network ‘lifecasting’ to more bounded forms of sharing, via private messaging and/or friend groups inside dedicated messaging and sharing apps. The erstwhile Facebook status update has long been usurped by the Snapchat (and now Instagram) Story as the social currency of choice for younger app users. Of course Facebook owns the latter product too, and has mercilessly cloned Stories. But it hardly wants its flagship service to just fade away into the background like the old fart it actually is in Internet age terms. Not if it can reinvigorate the product with a new purpose — and so we arrive at online dating. Facebook — or should that be ‘Datebook’ now?! — is starting its dating experiment in Colombia, as its beta market. But the company clearly has ambitious designs on becoming a major global force in the increasingly popular online dating arena — to challenge dedicated longtime players like eHarmony and OkCupid, as well as the newer breed of more specialized dating startups, such as . Zuckerberg is not trying to compete with online dating behemoth Tinder, though. Which Facebook dismisses as a mere ‘hook up’ app — a sub category it claims it wants nothing to do with. Rather it’s hoping to build something more along the lines of ‘get together with friends of your friends who’re also into soap carving/competitive dog grooming/extreme ironing’ than, for e.g., the raw spank in the face shock of ‘ ‘. (The latter being the experimental startup which tried, some six years ago, to combine Facebook and sex — before eventually , never to be heard of again. Or, well, not until Facebook decided to get into the dating game and reminded us all how we lol’d about it.) Mark Zuckerberg’s company doesn’t want to get into anything smutty, though. Oh no, no, NO! No sex please, we’re Facebook! Facebook Dating has been carefully positioned to avoid sounding like a sex app. It’s being flogged as a tasteful take on the online dating game, with — for instance — the app explicitly architected to push existing friends together via suggestive matching (though you’ll just have to hope you don’t end up being algorithmically paired with any exes, which judging by Facebook’s penchant for showing users ‘photo memories’ of past stuff with exes may not pan out so well… ). And no ability to swap photo messages with mutual matches in case, well, something pornographic were to pass through. Facebook is famously no fan of nudes. Unsurprisingly, then, nor is its buttoned up dating app. Only ‘good, old-fashioned wholesome’ text-based chat-up lines (related to ‘good clean pieces of Facebook content’) here please. If you feel moved to text an up-front marriage proposal — feeling 100% confident in Facebook’s data scientists’ prowess in reading the social media tea leaves and plucking your future life partner out of the mix — its algorithms will probably smile on that though. The company’s line is that dating will help fulfil its new mission of encouraging ‘time well spent’ — by helping people forge more meaningful (new) relationships thanks to the power of its network (and the data it sucks out of it). This mission is certainly an upgrade on Facebook’s earlier and baser interest in just trying to connect every human on planet Earth to every other human on planet Earth in some kind of mass data-swinging orgy — regardless of the ethical and/or moral consequences (as ), as if it was trying to channel the horror-loving spirit of Pasolini’s . Or, well, a human centipede. But that was then. These days, in its mid teens, Facebook wants to be seen as grown up and a bit worth. So its take on dating looks a lot more ‘marriage material’ than ‘casual encounters’. Though, well, products don’t always pan out how their makers intend. So it might need to screw its courage to the sticking place and hope things don’t go south. From the user perspective, there’s a whole other side here too though. Because given how much baggage inevitably comes with Facebook nowadays, the really burning question is whether any sensible person should be letting Mark Zuckerberg fire cupid’s arrows on their behalf? He famously couldn’t tell malicious Kremlin propaganda from business as usual social networking like latte photos and baby pics — so what makes you think he’s going to be attuned to the subtle nuances of human chemistry?! Here are just a few reasons why we think you should stay as far away from Facebook’s dalliance with dating as you possibly can… |
Mars orbiter spots silent, dust-covered Opportunity rover as dust storm clears | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Mars rover Opportunity has been operating on the surface of the Red Planet since 2004, but a dust storm this summer may prove to be the mission’s toughest challenge. The enormous storm caked Opportunity in dust and blocked out the sun, its source of energy — and there’s no guarantee the batteries aren’t dead for good. But now that the skies have cleared, we at least have since it went radio silent. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures fabulous imagery of the planet at a regular rate, but it happened that it passed over Perseverance Valley last week, where Opportunity is currently stationary. In the image you can just make it out as a few pixels raised above the surface. That valley isn’t the only place that was hit by the storm — this was no flurry but a full-blown planet-spanning tempest that lasted for months. It isn’t the first dust storm Opportunity has weathered by a long shot, but it was probably the worst. The last we heard from the rover was on June 10, at which point the storm was getting so intense that Opportunity couldn’t charge its batteries any more and lowered itself into a hibernation state, warmed only by its plutonium-powered heaters — if they’re even working. Once a day, Opportunity’s deeply embedded safety circuit checks if there’s any power in its battery or coming in via solar. “Now that the sun is shining through the dust, it will start to charge its batteries,” , director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA. “And so some time in the coming weeks it will have sufficient power to wake up and place a call back to Earth. But we don’t know when that call will come.” An Opportunity shadow-selfie from 2004, when Opportunity was comparatively young (and had “only” doubled its mission length). That’s the hope, anyway. There is of course the possibility that the dust has obscured the solar cells too thickly, or some power fault during the storm led to the safety circuit not working… there’s no shortage of what-if scenarios. But space exploration is a unique combination of the deeply realistic with the deeply optimistic, and there’s no way Opportunity’s handlers aren’t going to give the little rover all the time it needs, within reason, to get back in touch. The team has been sending extra signals out to spur a response from Opportunity and will continue to do so for the next few weeks, but even that won’t be the end of the line. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, assured the many Opportunity superfans out there that they plan to keep listening at least through January. And you can bet a few sentimental types will find a way to check now and then after that as well. Should the worst happen and the dust storm appear to have disabled the rover for good, that would still be a hell of a run — Opportunity was intended to last for 90 days and has instead gone for 14 years. Nothing sad about that. But here’s hoping we hear from this long-lived explorer soon. |
Tinder’s ‘Swipe the Vote’ campaign aims to educate young voters and get them to polls | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Tinder has partnered with nonprofit for a second time, in the hopes of driving young people to the polls through in-app messaging. The company claims a young adult user base where more than half are in the 18 to 24 demographic, and believes it’s well-positioned to mobilize younger voters during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. It’s critical to get these voters to the polls, as only 46.1 percent of the 18 to 29-year olds turned out to vote during the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the company notes. Tinder says it will begin to share “fun facts” with its users during election season right in the app — like the volumes of voter registrations and other anecdotes related to past and upcoming elections. These facts will have a particular focus on those that are of most interest to Tinder’s younger users. For example, some that will be shared include: and plus, The facts will pop up in the app as often as two to three times a week in the U.S. as a “Swipe the Vote” native display card. These cards will also include a way to tap to navigate in-app to the , where users can enter their ZIP code and details in order to register to vote. Additionally, the two organizations also produced a -inspired encouraging young Americans to vote. (Though the reference may fly over the 18-year-olds’ heads.) Tinder isn’t the only large platform participating in National Voter Registration Day today (September 25). Others, including , , , , , , and have also rolled out their own campaigns in an effort to mobilize and register voters. But because of Tinder’s access to a very young group of potential voters, it’s one of the more interesting efforts to watch, . |
DoorDash customers say their accounts have been hacked | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Food delivery startup DoorDash has received dozens of complaints from customers who say their accounts have been hacked. Dozens of people with complaints that their accounts had been improperly accessed and had fraudulent food deliveries charged to their account. In many cases, the hackers changed their email addresses so that the user could not regain access to their account until they contacted customer services. Yet, many said that they never got a response from DoorDash, or if they did, there was no resolution. Several also point to complaints. DoorDash is after raising $250 million last month, and serves more than 1,000 cities across the U.S. and Canada. After receiving , TechCrunch contacted some of the affected customers. Four people we spoke to who had tweeted or commented that their accounts had been hacked said that they had used their DoorDash password on other sites. Three people said they weren’t sure if they used their DoorDash password elsewhere. But six people we spoke to said that their password was unique to DoorDash, and three confirmed they used a complicated password generated by a password manager. DoorDash said that there has been no data breach and that the likely culprit was credential stuffing, in which hackers take lists of stolen usernames and passwords and try them on other sites that may use the same credentials. Yet, when asked, DoorDash could not explain how six accounts with unique passwords were breached. “We do not have any information to suggest that DoorDash has suffered a data breach,” said spokesperson Becky Sosnov in an email to TechCrunch. “To the contrary, based on the information available to us, including internal investigations, we have determined that the fraudulent activity reported by consumers resulted from credential stuffing.” The victims that we spoke to said they used either the app or the website, or in some cases both. Some were only alerted when their credit cards contacted them about possible fraud. “Simply makes no sense that so many people randomly had their accounts infiltrated for so much money at the same time,” said one victim. If, as DoorDash claims, credential stuffing is the culprit, we asked if the company would improve its password policy, which currently only requires a minimum of eight characters. We found in our testing that a new user could enter “password” or “12345678” as their password — which have for years ranked in . The company also would not say if it plans to roll out countermeasures to prevent credential stuffing, like two-factor authentication. |
See the new iPhone’s ‘focus pixels’ up close | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | The new iPhones have excellent cameras, to be sure. But it’s always good to verify Apple’s with first-hand reports. We have of the phones and their photography systems, but teardowns provide the invaluable service of letting you see the biggest changes with your own eyes — augmented, of course, by a high-powered microscope. We’ve already seen of the phone, but to the device’s components — including the improved camera of the iPhone XS and XS Max. Although the optics of the new camera are as far as we can tell unchanged since the X, the sensor is a new one and is worth looking closely at. Microphotography of the sensor die show that Apple’s claims are borne out and then some. The sensor size has increased from 32.8mm to 40.6mm — a huge difference despite the small units. Every tiny bit counts at this scale. (For comparison, the Galaxy S9 is 45mm , and the soon-to-be-replaced Pixel 2 is 25mm .) The pixels themselves also, as advertised, grew from 1.22 microns (micrometers) across to 1.4 microns — which should help with image quality across the board. But there’s an interesting, subtler development that has continually but quietly changed ever since its introduction: the “focus pixels.” That’s Apple’s brand name for phase detection autofocus (PDAF) points, found in plenty of other devices. The basic idea is that you mask off half a sub-pixel every once in a while (which I guess makes it a sub-sub-pixel), and by observing how light enters these half-covered detectors you can tell whether something is in focus or not. Of course, you need a bunch of them to sense the image patterns with high fidelity, but you have to strike a balance: losing half a pixel may not sound like much, but if you do it a million times, that’s half a megapixel effectively down the drain. Wondering why all the PDAF points are green? Many camera sensors use an “RGBG” sub-pixel pattern, meaning there are two green sub-pixels for each red and blue one — it’s complicated why. But there are twice as many green sub-pixels and therefore the green channel is more robust to losing a bit of information. Apple introduced PDAF in the iPhone 6, but as you can see in TechInsights’ great diagram, the points are pretty scarce. There’s one for maybe every 64 sub-pixels, and not only that, they’re all masked off in the same orientation: either the left or right half gone. The 6S and 7 Pluses saw the number double to one PDAF point per 32 sub-pixels. , the number is improved to one per 20 — but there’s another addition: now the phase detection masks are on the tops and bottoms of the sub-pixels as well. As you can imagine, doing phase detection in multiple directions is a more sophisticated proposal, but it could also significantly improve the accuracy of the process. Autofocus systems all have their weaknesses, and this may have addressed one Apple regretted in earlier iterations. Which brings us to the XS (and Max, of course), in which the PDAF points are now one per 16 sub-pixels, having increased the frequency of the vertical phase detection points so that they’re equal in number to the horizontal one. Clearly the experiment paid off and any consequent light loss has been mitigated or accounted for. I’m curious how the sub-pixel patterns of Samsung, Huawei and Google phones compare, and I’m looking into it. But I wanted to highlight this interesting little evolution. It’s an interesting example of the kind of changes that are hard to understand when explained in simple number form — we’ve doubled this, or there are a million more of that — but which make sense when you see them in physical form. |
What to expect from Facebook’s big Oculus Connect 5 keynote | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | The Oculus Connect 5 conference kicks off tomorrow in San Jose where FB and company will let their latest virtual reality efforts loose and attempt to prove to the world that VR is coming at last and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for hardware, though there might not be all that many surprises as Oculus has already been pretty vocal about some of its future plans. We’ll see. Here’s some of the stuff that we’re expecting to go down tomorrow. The still unnamed standalone, 6DoF headset with tracked controllers is more than likely coming early next year; the big question is really going to be its price. While Oculus has been very aggressive with their $199 starting price for Oculus Go, it will be interesting to see where the pricing moves for whatever “Santa Cruz” ends up being called. The headset is still running a mobile chipset, though it will more than likely be a current-generation Snapdragon 845 as opposed to the much older 821, which is on the Oculus Go. The headset most notably will also sport positional tracking and hand controllers (which we’ll probably see an updated design for) at launch, features that will also surely add to the price. I’m expecting pricing to sit around $349-$399; anything less would probably cannibalize Oculus Go sales and anything more would be a tough sell to consumers that have already proven a little reluctant to buy into VR right now. We got a peek at the Oculus “Half Dome” prototype at F8; my guess is we’ll see a lot more about it tomorrow and perhaps get some press demos of a feature prototype. The company’s Rift headset is more than a couple of years old at this point so it’s probably time to start thinking about the next generation of the PC-powered headset. There have been a lot of leaps in GPU power since the Rift was announced and now that Oculus has a few products rounding out the low-end, they may be freed up a bit more to have a PC professional tier that can get a bit more experimental. The big deal with “Half Dome” is its new approach to the way the lenses focus on objects. With the old system, their fixed focal distance ensured you couldn’t really read anything within arm’s length; with the new system that uses motorized displays and eye-tracking, the headset will be able to act more like your eyes do, focusing on objects as you look at them dynamically. This is coupled with a new lens system that significantly widens the field-of-view. It’s all really powerful stuff, but presents a lot of engineering challenges, so it’ll be interesting to hear more details from Oculus onstage. Just as Instagram and WhatsApp have been sucked into the Facebook corporate hierarchy, we’ll likely see the results of deeper Oculus integration into Facebook’s VR division represented at the keynote. After the big reorganization at the end of 2016, the Oculus exec structure has seen the co-founders downgraded while power has swelled to executives in Zuckerberg’s inner circle. Hugo Barra’s job title is still Facebook VP of VR, while Andrew Bosworth is the VP of AR/VR; we’ll likely hear quite a bit from them. In the conference’s earlier years, we saw an Oculus co-founder take to the stage for the big announcement, then last year Mark Zuckerberg opened things up and walked everyone through the big announcements. This year, Oculus Research was renamed Facebook Reality Lab. It’ll be interesting to see where else Facebook makes inroads into the Oculus structure. Facebook Spaces has gotten some air time for the past few years; it’s likely the team will be back onstage sharing their latest feature updates. We’ll see whether the social app gains “Santa Cruz” support and whether it will grow to become a stock app or continue to live in its more experimental phase. One thing we can certainly expect to hear a lot about tomorrow is new gaming titles available on the company’s existing platforms. Oculus made a big deal last year about how it’s looking to court AAA game publishers to develop for Rift; the Oculus Studios divisions will probably clue us into its next wave of titles with more of an emphasis on a few polished big-ticket releases rather than a wave of indie projects. A couple of years back Oculus detailed that they had spent $250 million on content and were spending $250 million more, but we haven’t heard many updates on the dollar amounts pledged to games or experiences. Maybe we’ll hear a few more details about how substantial the company’s investments have grown or where the company is looking to direct its investments next. This one might be a stretch, but this could be the year we get to see some of the company’s experimentations with augmented reality that they’ve been lightly teasing over the past few years. We know the team at the Facebook Reality Lab is working on AR headset technologies, but it’s also clear that it’s still a very early, expensive time for the technology. Nevertheless, Microsoft is likely going to be showing off an updated HoloLens focused squarely on enterprise soonish and Magic Leap has already showcased their first big move into the consumer space. Oculus showing its hand this early would be a bit surprising, but if Apple is as close to releasing a headset as reports have suggested, perhaps they want to clue people into what they’re working on. There’s going to be a lot happening over the next couple of days, especially at the keynote tomorrow morning at 10am PT. TechCrunch will be on the ground bringing you the best analysis and the quickest updates you can find on the world wide web. |
Protesters call on Salesforce to end contract with border patrol agency | Kate Clark | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | accompanied by a 14-foot, 800-pound cage gathered in downtown San Francisco Tuesday morning to protest Salesforce’s contract with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing the Trump Administration’s Today is the first day of , Salesforce’s annual user conference that attracts some 200,000 people. The protesters claim Salesforce, which is complicit in the actions of CBP and should be held accountable. “Salesforce has a moral and ethical obligation to end this contract,” one protestor shouted. The sign plastered to the front of the cage — a mock-up of those reportedly used in CBP facilities to hold separated children of migrant families — read “Detention center powered by Salesforce.” [gallery ids="1719937,1719939,1719940,1719941"] Almost 1,800 families were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border from October 2016 through February of this year, per . And another 2,342 children were separated from 2,206 parents between May 5 and June 9, according to In late June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end family separation, though the zero-tolerance policy, which mandates that any persons entering the U.S. illegally be prosecuted, remains. Salesforce chief executive officer Marc Benioff, who has a reputation for advocating for liberal causes and politics, has said the deal with CBP does not involve CBP’s U.S.-Mexico border policies. CBP, rather, uses some Salesforce cloud tools, specifically Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud, to bolster its recruiting process and to “manage border activities.” When asked for comment, Salesforce told TechCrunch the cloud-computing company respects the right to protest and pointed us in the direction of Benioff’s tweets, which reaffirm the business doesn’t have an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and that the CBP contract is unrelated to family separation. Our employees asked me to review how CBP uses us & I included them. I’ve proudly engaged & discussed this with all our Ohana. Salesforce doesnt work with CBP regarding separation of families at the border. We dont have an agreement with ICE. Im proud of our Ohana & their Kuleana! — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) That tweet, posted in July, was a response to a signed by 650 Salesforce employees, who took issue with the CBP contract, specifically CBP’s use of Salesforce Service Cloud to manage activities at the border. “We cannot cede responsibility for the use of the technology we create–particularly when we have reason to believe that it is being used to aid practices so irreconcilable to our values,” the employees wrote. “Those values often feel abstract, and it is easier to uphold them when they are not being tested. They are being tested now. In addition to his tweet, at the time that he is “opposed to separating children from their families at the border.” “It is immoral. I have personally financially supported legal groups helping families at the border. I also wrote to the White House to encourage them to end this horrible situation.” Salesforce co-CEO and that Salesforce would match employee donations. In his tweet, he did not specify which organizations the company would support. Today, Block similarly to announce that the nonprofit arm of Salesforce would donate $18 million to “Bay Area causes.” that the San Francisco and Oakland Unified School Districts will receive $15.5 million, Hamilton Families, Larkin Street Youth Services and the San Francisco Food Bank will receive $2 million and the San Francisco Park Alliance will receive $500,000. Today’s protest was organized by Fight for the Future, Color of Change, Demand Progress, Defending Rights and Dissent, Mijente, Presente.org, RAICES and Sum of Us. RAICES, The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, because of its contract with CBP. Benioff contacted RAICES executive director Jonathan Ryan over the summer to discuss the opposition to Salesforce’s contract with CBP, according to a new report from . The pair were scheduled to speak until Benioff canceled last minute. “I am sorry I’m scuba diving right now,” Benioff reportedly wrote to Ryan. We’ve reached out to RAICES for comment. Benioff and Salesforce are among several large tech companies that have struck controversial deals with government agencies. Employees at both . after employees resigned in protest of the search giant’s involvement with controversial AI research project Project Maven. |
Hear from investors at General Catalyst, FirstMark and Shasta at TC Sessions: AR/VR | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | The worlds of augmented reality and VR theoretically represent a boundless expanse for startups looking to create a new digital future. Realizing that future is the tough part, and doing so while Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple all look to plant their flags is even harder. While plenty of investors have taken a look at AR/VR companies in the years following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR, for many, the prospect of buying in at a stage where the consumer interest is so uncertain has proven a bit too risky. At , we’ll chat with investors from top venture capital firms about where they’re seeing potential in the market and how they are approaching investments in AR/VR in 2018. We’ll be joined by from General Catalyst, from FirstMark Capital and from Shasta Ventures on a panel discussing the ins and outs of AR/VR investing. Bonatsos was an early investor in Snap and has also backed AR cloud startup 6D.ai (which will also be joining us), Ulrich’s firm FirstMark has made investments in AR/VR startups like Sketchfab and Mullins runs Shasta Ventures’ Camera Fund focused on early-stage AR investments. The future of consumer AR/VR may be a bit murky for the time being, but these investors are looking to peer through the smoke and mirrors and find the startups that will stand resilient. Get an inside look into the AR/VR investment landscape when you . Early-bird sales were extended til this Friday, September 28. Don’t miss out! Student tickets are just $45 and can be purchased through .
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The new era in mobile | Joe Apprendi | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | A future dominated by autonomous vehicles (AVs) is, for many experts, a foregone conclusion. Declarations that the automobile will become the next living room are almost as common — but, they are imprecise. In our inevitable driverless future, the more apt comparison is to the mobile device. As with smartphones, operating systems will go a long way toward determining what autonomous vehicles and what they . For mobile app companies trying to seize on the coming AV opportunity, their future depends on how the OS landscape shapes up. By most measures, the mobile app economy is still growing, yet the time people spend using their apps is actually starting to dip. A reported that overall app session activity grew only 6 percent in 2017, down from the 11 percent growth it reported in 2016. This trend suggests users are reaching a saturation point in terms of how much time they can devote to apps. The AV industry could reverse that. But just mobile apps will penetrate this market and will hold the keys in this new era of mobility is still very much in doubt. When it comes to a driverless future, multiple factors are now converging. Over the last few years, while app usage showed signs of stagnation, the push for driverless vehicles has only intensified. are software , and investments in autonomous vehicle technology and software by tech giants like Google and Uber ( in the ) are starting to mature. And, after some reluctance, automakers have now this idea of a driverless future. Expectations from all sides point to a “passenger economy” of mobility-as-a-service, which, may be worth as much as $7 trillion by 2050. For mobile app companies this suggests several interesting questions: Will smart cars, like smartphones before them, be forced to go “exclusive” with a single OS of record (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon/AGL), or will they be able to offer multiple OS/platforms of record based on app maturity or functionality? Or, will automakers simply step in to create their own closed loop operating systems, fragmenting the market completely? Complicating the picture even further is the potential significance of an OS’s ability to support multiple Digital Assistants of Record (independent of the OS), as we see with Google Assistant now working on iOS. Obviously, voice NLP/U will be even more critical for smart car applications as compared to smart speakers and phones. . Opening a new front in driverless vehicles could have a fascinating impact. Either way, the implications for mobile app companies are significant. Looking at the driverless landscape today there are several indications as to which direction the OSes in AVs will ultimately go. For example, after some initial inroads developing their own fleet of autonomous vehicles, Google almost all its efforts on autonomous driving software while striking . Some automakers, however, are moving forward developing their own OSes. Volkswagen, , announced that vw.OS will be introduced in VW brand electric cars from 2020 onward, with an eye toward autonomous driving functions. (VW also plans to launch a fleet of autonomous cars in 2019 to rival Uber.) a leader in AV, is building its own unified . Companies like Udacity, however, are building an “ ” self-driving car tech. and Baidu have a in place to provide software for automobile manufacturers. Clearly, most smartphone apps would benefit from native integration, but there are several categories beyond music, voice and navigation that require significant hardware investment to natively integrate. Will automakers be interested in the Tesla model? If not, how will smart cars and apps (independent of OS/voice assistant) partner up? Given the hardware requirements necessary to enable native app functionality and optimal user experience, how will this force smart car manufacturers to work more seamlessly with platforms like AGL to ensure competitive advantage and differentiation? And, will this commoditize the OS dominance we see in smartphones today? It’s clearly still early days and — at least in the near term — multiple OS solutions will likely be employed until preferred solutions rise to the top. Regardless, automakers and tech companies clearly recognize the importance of “connected mobility.” Connectivity and vehicular mobility will very likely replace traditional auto values like speed, comfort and power. The combination of Wi-Fi hotspot and autonomous vehicles (let alone consumer/business choice of on-demand vehicles) will propel instant conversion/personalization of smart car environments to passenger preferences. And, while questions remain around the and the in this new era in mobile, it’s not hard to see the Americans already spend an average of 293 hours per year inside a car, and the average commute time has jumped around 20 percent since 1980. In a recent survey (conducted by Ipsos/GenPop) researchers found that in a driverless future people would spend roughly a third of the time communicating with friends and family or for business and online shopping. By 2030, it’s estimated the autonomous cars ” Another analysis suggested that even with just Productivity in this sense extends well beyond personal entertainment and commerce and into the realm of business productivity. Use of integrated display (screen and heads-up) and voice will enable business multi-tasking from video conferencing, search, messaging, scheduling, travel booking, e-commerce and navigation. First-mover advantage goes to the mobile app companies that first bundle into a single compelling package information density, content access and mobility. An app company that can claim 10 to 15 percent of this market will be a significant player. For now, investors are throwing lots of money at possible winners in the autonomous automotive race, who, in turn, are beginning to define the shape of the mobile app landscape in a driverless future. In fact, what we’re seeing now looks a lot like the early days of smartphones with companies like Tesla, for example, applying an Apple-esque strategy for smart car versus smartphone. Will these OS/app marketplaces be dominated by a Tesla — or Google (for that matter) — and command a 30 percent revenue share from apps, or will auto manufacturers with proprietary platforms capitalize on this opportunity? Questions like these — while at the same time wondering just who the winners and losers in AV will be — mean investment and entrepreneurship in the mobile app sector is an extremely lucrative but risky gamble. |
Big cameras and big rivalries take center stage at Photokina | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | Photokina is underway in London and the theme of the show is “large.” Unusually for an industry that is trending towards the compact, the cameras on stage at this show sport big sensors, big lenses, and big price tags. But though they may not be for the average shooter, these cameras are impressive pieces of hardware that hint at things to come for the industry as a whole. The most exciting announcement is perhaps that from Panasonic, which surprised everyone with the S1 and S1R, a pair of not-quite-final full frame cameras that aim to steal a bit of the thunder from Canon and Nikon’s entries into the mirrorless full frame world. Panasonic’s cameras have generally had impressive video performance, and these are no exception. They’ll shoot 4K at 60 FPS, which in a compact body like that shown is going to be extremely valuable to videographers. Meanwhile the S1R, with 47 megapixels to the S1’s 24, will be optimized for stills. Both will have dual card slots (which Canon and Nikon declined to add to their newest gear), weather sealing, and in-body image stabilization. The timing and inclusion of so many desired features indicates either that Panasonic was clued in to what photographers wanted all along, or they waited for the other guys to move and then promised the things their competitors wouldn’t or couldn’t. Whatever the case, the S1 and S1R are sure to make a splash, whatever their prices. Panasonic was also part of an announcement that may have larger long-term implications: a lens mount collaboration with Leica and Sigma aimed at maximum flexibility for the emerging mirrorless full-frame and medium format market. L-mount lenses will work on any of the group’s devices (including the S1 and S1R) and should help promote usage across the board. Leica, for its part, announced the S3, a new version of its medium format S series that switches over to the L-mount system as well as bumping a few specs. No price yet but if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Sigma had no camera to show, but announced it would be taking its Foveon sensor tech to full frame and that upcoming bodies would be using the L mount as well. This Fuji looks small here, but it’s no lightweight. It’s only small in comparison to previous medium format cameras. Fujifilm made its own push on the medium format front with the new GFX 50R, which sticks a larger than full frame (but smaller than “traditional” medium format) sensor inside an impressively small body. That’s not to say it’s insubstantial: Fuji’s cameras are generally quite hefty, and the 50R is no exception, but it’s much smaller and lighter than its predecessor and, surprisingly, costs $2,000 less at $4,499 for the body. The theme, as you can see, is big and expensive. But the subtext is that these cameras are not only capable of extraordinary imagery, but they don’t have to be enormous to do it. This combination of versatility with portability is one of the strengths of the latest generation of cameras, and clearly Fuji, Panasonic and Leica are eager to show that it extends to the pro-level, multi-thousand dollar bodies as well as the consumer and enthusiast lineup. |
The death of once high-flying VC funds | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | with the best of intentions. Formation 8 talked about bringing “smart enterprise” to the corporate world. Social Capital talked about how to “fix capitalism” and Binary Capital wanted to “affect global behaviour change.” Rothenberg Ventures set out to “work on the biggest problems that change the world.” Young founding partners debuting change-the-world funds were irresistible for chroniclers of the venture world, who too often had been forced to chat with balding and aging managing directors while hitting the links at resplendent country clubs. Everything was going to change in the venture world, and here was a new guard of progressive-thinking talent that would transform Silicon Valley forever. Then it all came crashing down. Social Capital last week after . Formation 8 , and its successive funds continue to deal with new challenges, such as a new, unreported lawsuit in California filed against Formation Group. Binary faced , while with . Some of the tales are sordid, while others are clearly the result of inexperience and hubris. But together, they weave a narrative for us that shouldn’t surprise anyone: giving hundreds of millions of dollars to neophytes wasn’t perhaps the best plan to build long-lasting funds. The lessons though are myriad and broad. For founders, receiving investments from same-age peers may have made board meetings more relaxing, but at the cost of experience and oversight. Journalists who sat by while VCs built founding fables about themselves should have done more to pierce these reality distortion fields. But perhaps most of all, the lessons need to be learned by limited partners. As LPs continue to lower their guard and drop due diligence in the race to get into the next hot fund, perhaps the combination of these stories can serve as a warning against rushing to write a check and being thoughtful about who to partner with in business. Sand Hill Road was the epicenter of venture capital. Its monopoly is increasingly being lost to downtown Palo Alto and SF. (Photo by Steven Damron used under Creative Commons). It’s almost impossible to imagine today, but venture and the broader startup ecosystem used to be decidedly uncool. In the early 2000s, before the rise of blogs like TechCrunch and the breathless coverage of thousands of tech startups, Silicon Valley startups worked in the relative obscurity of the South Bay — the actual Silicon Valley of lore. A boring suburban hell of sorts, startups attracted the misfits and the communalists, and most definitely the engineers who saw in the internet the future of human society. Things changed as the global financial crisis struck in 2008. The startup world began to migrate north, to San Francisco. Technology went from a backwater industry to the forefront of global power and commerce. Once the bastion of nerds, , ready to seek out fortune — the tech that might drive it be damned. Perhaps most importantly, glamour hit the tech world hard. Conferences like Disrupt and AllThingsD propelled formerly unknown entrepreneurs to the heights of fame. Exec comms became for founders, and . Yet, while the entrepreneurs were increasingly speaking about “saving the world,” the venture firms were not. Stodgy, venerable and just plain old (and white and male), the stalwarts of Sand Hill Road (the epitome of a suburban hell street complete with a full-service gas station) struggled to adapt their boring Excel number crunching thinking to this new world. Their firms — and LPs — noticed, and responded by trying to hire a new crop of partners, operators with the cachet to win over founders and snare the next great deal. Operators had , but that was okay in the competition for the next hot startup. But as any Silicon Valley enthusiast knows, the path to disruption doesn’t lie through evolving incumbents. Instead, it’s about founding startups, or in this case, new venture firms with fresh perspectives that connect with founders looking for a friend on their board rather than competent but mature directors who were older than their grandparents. Joe Lonsdale of 8VC. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images And so we get Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, who left and eventually started Formation 8 at age 30 with Brian Koo, age 33, scion of the Koo family of South Korea, which owns the LG conglomerate, along with long-time VC investor Jim Kim. in 2013, the largest debut in the history of venture. Lonsdale : “First and foremost, we invest in driven entrepreneurs who we believe will change the world.” We get Jonathan Teo, aged 34, and Justin Caldbeck, aged 37 (and the oldest of the pack!), two young but reasonably experienced venture capitalists peeling off of their venerable funds (General Catalyst for Teo and Lightspeed and Bain for Caldbeck) to start Binary Capital, in 2014 and . Teo, , explained that “We are at the centre of the tech ecosystem, and consumer technology is the highest leverage a company has to affect global behaviour change.” (That same article noted in its intro that “It is not every day that someone buys a Boeing 747 as a gift. But that was exactly what Jonathan Teo did last year, when he gathered a group of Silicon Valley tech titans to purchase a used plane and donated it to Burning Man, an annual experimental art festival held in Black Rock Desert, Nevada.” Burning Man may well be one of the most inter-connected events for all of these folks). Justin Caldbeck, formerly of Binary Capital. Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images Chamath Palihapitiya, who spent four years at Facebook early in that company’s history and eventually headed growth, in 2011 and synced up with experienced hands Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid. Palihapitiya, aged 34 and a self-described “ ,” said that he wanted to “fix capitalism.” , he said, “But you can fix capitalism. And the reason you can fix capitalism: It is inherently numerical, and as a result, it is inherently objective. It can be done objectively.” Rothenberg may not have raised the same kind of moolah, in 2013, but Rothenberg spread his wings far and wide in San Francisco, . He loved the press and media attention and outlandish behavior, eventually hosting a now . , “…we can build and create awesome experiences, people care about that and then we can actually work on the biggest problems that change the world and that’s awesome…” These four firms flouted venture conventions, and sought out the path-breaking investments that would drive returns. Formation 8 struck a bit of gold and . The rebranded Social Capital bought into high-flying startup Slack, and also led the Series A into Intercom. Binary invested in young consumer startups like Bellhops and Shoptiques and Havenly according to PitchBook. Rothenberg invested heavily in VR and also in popular companies like Boosted, Apartment List and Chubbies, albeit with mostly tiny checks. These firms were designed to cultivate the next generation of founders, and on that front, they succeeded. In fact, Social Cap and Formation 8 are heading toward blockbuster funds if they can harvest their portfolios. If only that was the sole benchmark for success. Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the line that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same is true of venture firms. Portfolio returns can easily make everyone happy, but when firms blow up, they all blow up in their own, idiosyncratic ways. Formation 8 was the first of the set to disintegrate. Part of the equation was accusations and a lawsuit against Joe Lonsdale around a sexual assault — . But the challenges internally at the firm far pre-dated those challenges. , Lonsdale and Brian Koo were at loggerheads over investment strategy, and even the geography of where the Formation 8 offices should be located in the Bay Area. Plus, they had a fight over a Korean restaurant Koo tried to open in Palo Alto. , where Lonsdale was a board member. The two ended up separating, with and . Yet, the troubles continue – at least for the Koo side. A lawsuit — so far unreported — this past June, alleging that Koo and Formation Group (not to be confused with Formation 8, which is unrelated) and its affiliates committed “fraud, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing…“ by failing to pay a partner named Martin Robinson and a principal named Selvam Moorthy. That litigation remains ongoing according to district court records, where the parties are due to discuss a motion to move the matter to arbitration. Lonsdale, for his part, has certainly shied away from the media, and has been building up 8VC, . Partner fallout is one version of an unhappy venture firm, but Binary Capital disintegrated due to . He would eventually come to be the Silicon Valley poster boy for the MeToo movement, and . earlier this year, and it is now essentially a non-entity. Rothenberg Ventures team Meanwhile, Rothenberg has been facing tougher challenges. He faced a litany of investigations over , last month for fraud. Rothenberg settled those charges with the SEC, and agreed to be . And then we get to Social Capital, whose troubles appear to be more managerial. Palihapitiya’s two early partners, Maidenberg and Hamid, both decamped to other firms. , with . . Outside of Palihapitiya, the math on who is left remains decidedly unclear. “I would rather spend time with the people that are 100% aligned with what I want to do and the person that’s most aligned with what I want to do is me.” That shouldn’t be a problem when there is no one else in the room. RubberBall Productions via Getty Images Silicon Valley loves a great story. We love the entrepreneurs who fight like hell to build their companies, who beat the odds against incumbents and competitors. We love the drama of business, of Uber against Lyft and Airbnb against city governments. We want the underdogs to win. At some point though, we need to evaluate our own narrative fetishes. We need to see through the loud pronouncements, the ambitious quotes, the glossy marketing. Especially in venture capital, where excuses for poor performance are a common trade, we need to resurrect the age-old skill of simply looking at the numbers and evaluating quality. As my VC mentors over the years have consistently said: VC is not an investment business, it is a returns business. We also need to reevaluate our patience. Startups take 12 years or more to build and exit, but VC firms have a much longer cycle. They are meant to last, because they owe broad obligations to so many other firms through the board seats they hold. Partner turnover is up at many firms, despite the damage that does to startup governance. Even worse is when a firm disintegrates entirely. We should celebrate the slow and steady on the finance side, and leave the quick growth to the startups. In a region that reveres the young, we also need to remember that many jobs are ultimately dependent on experience, and venture capital is certainly one of them. VC is its own trade, with learnings and techniques that build up over a lifetime of investing. That doesn’t mean that young people have nothing to offer — far from it. But it does mean that our indexing should not just assume that a 30-something automatically has the capacity to manage a complex front and back office team and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a few short months. LPs face the greatest challenges in this area. They are the guardians of their funds, since after all, it’s their money that will be lost. But the timing to get into a hot investor’s hand can be extraordinarily limited, and even asking a question or two could lead them to be cut out of a fund’s subscriptions. LPs need to band together and refuse to concede to these demands. Due diligence doesn’t have to be exhaustive on a debut fund, but it should also not be . Some coordination here is just absolutely needed to ensure a basic level of integrity. It’s said that new VCs need to down an F-16 in order to learn the trade. Together, Formation 8 raised $1.39 billion, Social Capital $1.3 billion, Binary $300 million and Rothenberg $70 million, according to PitchBook. That’s a $3 billion education for these partners, and for all of us. The article as originally written said that Mike Rothenberg’s charges of fraud were on-going. He has settled these charges with the SEC, and the article was updated to reflect that settlement. The article’s text was also updated to better characterize Formation 8 and Formation Group. |
Trump’s new presidential limo is a beastly take on the Cadillac CT6 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | The new presidential limousine — and an identical one called a “spare” that travels in President Donald Trump’s motorcade for added security — was spotted this week on the streets of New York. This new “Beast,” like so many before it, is a Cadillac. But this time, the heavily armored vehicle produced by GM is designed after the Cadillac CT6. (Although if you look closely there are some Escalade influences in there.) The last version of the presidential limo used during the Obama administration was modeled after a Cadillac DTS. The Secret Service dictates much of the design of the presidential limousine, such as a heavy-duty chassis and armored material. There are other accoutrements inside the vehicle, which is based on a GM truck platform. GM didn’t provide many details however, citing security reasons. “It’s GM’s honor to develop and build the presidential limousine, a great American tradition,” a GM spokesperson said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “ , the new car embodies Cadillac’s style and craftsmanship. The limousine, which was designed and built in Detroit, proudly resembles the Cadillac CT6 sedan. This being a secure project, we cannot discuss further details.” GM won to develop two phases of what the government describes as a “next-generation parade limousine program.” GM has other multi-million dollar contracts with the Secret Service to supply the agency with services and vehicles. Here’s what we do know: the custom tank-like Cadillac CT6 appeared for the first time in public on Sunday. The Secret Service even tweeted an image promoting the vehicle ahead of this week’s United Nations General Assembly meetings. If this presidential Cadillac CT6 is anything like its predecessors, the vehicle is outfitted with everything you’d need to stay alive in the midst of an attack, including bullet-proof glass, a supply of the president’s blood type and an independent air supply to thwart a chemical attack. The Secret Service is ready to roll into 2018! — U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) The last Beast, a 2009 custom Cadillac DTS, was unveiled on former President Barack Obama’s inauguration day. The vehicle, which featured 19.5-inch wheels and seating for five, was in production for two years. The interior included a fold-out desk for the president. |
Federal appeals court rules Uber drivers must arbitrate claims | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | A federal appeals court has handed a defeat to Uber drivers who were suing the company in three separate lawsuits over claims that they were misclassified as independent contractors instead of full-time employees. The litigants must go through arbitration to pursue their claims against the company rather than have the claims heard in open court. The decision also means that the drivers in one of the suits can’t file a class-action against Uber. Had the case been able to go to trial, drivers could have pursued larger damage claims against the company. In a 3-0 decision, judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco flipped the ruling of a lower court judge that would have allowed Uber drivers to sue in open court. As full-time employees, the drivers argued they would be entitled to reimbursement for gas and expenses around maintenance and general upkeep. , the drivers also claimed that Uber was not allowing them to keep all of their tips from passengers. While Uber drivers aren’t able to avoid forced arbitration for complaints against the platform, Uber did do the right thing recently in ending forced arbitration in cases . Were the Uber drivers to proceed with their lawsuit and become full-time employees of the ride-hailing company, they’d be likely to face the . Full-time Uber employees are also forced into arbitration to settle disputes rather than have their claims heard in open court. At the heart of the dispute for Uber drivers is the demand for the safety net that comes with full-time employment and for companies a potentially significant hit to their bottom line. Ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Lyft have long argued that the drivers on the platform aren’t actually employees of the company, despite being the providers of the service that the technology platforms facilitate. For drivers, the inability to set pricing or negotiate the percentage that Lyft or Uber will take of the fees that are charged means they operate more like employees than bidders in a marketplace. And earlier this year, the California Supreme Court seemed to agree with the drivers’ argument. In April, in a case involving the nationwide delivery company Dynamex Operations West Inc. and its contract drivers. The decision established a new test for enforcement of California wage laws, and made it much harder for companies in California to claim that independent contractors are not actually full-time employees. |
Qualcomm doubles down on claims that Apple stole chip secrets for Intel | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | If you happen to crack open that fancy little iPhone XS casing on your new phone, you’ll notice there’s a dwindling amount of Qualcomm chips in there and that they’re increasingly being replaced by Intel hardware. The swap is representative of the cooling state of affairs between the two as the companies’ legal teams battle over Apple’s refusal to pay royalties that Qualcomm claims it is owed. Today, Qualcomm doubled down on its claims that Apple was stealing chip secrets from Qualcomm tech and feeding it to Intel engineers. reports: Qualcomm has unveiled explosive charges against Apple for stealing “vast swaths” of its confidential information and trade secrets for the purpose of improving the performance of chip sets provided by Qualcomm competitor Intel, according to a filing with the Superior Court of California. The allegations are contained in a complaint that Qualcomm hopes the court will amend to its existing lawsuit against Apple for breaching the so called master software agreement that Apple signed when it became a customer of Qualcomm’s earlier this decade. The newly filed documents amend an earlier suit by the company, claiming that Intel engineers working with Apple have been using Qualcomm source code. |
Watchdog says face scanning at US airports is plagued with technical problems | Zack Whittaker | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | A watchdog report has warned that Homeland Security’s face scanning program, designed to track all departing travelers from the U.S., is facing “technical and operational challenges” that may not see the system fully working by the time of its estimated completion in 2021. The report by Homeland Security’s inspector general said that although Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was making “considerable progress” in rolling out the facial scanning technology, the program is dogged with problems. CBP has been on a years-long effort to roll out facial recognition at U.S. airports, trialing one airport after the other , in an effort to track passengers as they leave the U.S. Although citizens can opt-out, the biometric scanning is mandatory for all foreign nationals and visitors. CBP is using the system to crack down on those who overstay their visas, but critics say . Currently in nine airports, the facial recognition program is set to be operational in the top 20 airports by 2021. But the inspector general report said the government may miss that target. “During the pilot, CBP encountered various technical and operational challenges that limited biometric confirmation to only 85 percent of all passengers processed,” the report said. “These challenges included poor network availability, a lack of dedicated staff, and compressed boarding times due to flight delays.” The report said the scanners failed to “consistently match individuals of certain age groups or nationalities.” Although the system detected 1,300 visitors overstaying their allowed time in the U.S., the watchdog seemed to suggest that more overstays would have been found if the system wasn’t running under capacity at an 85 percent success rate. As a result, CBP “may be unable to meet expectations for achieving full operational capability, including biometrically processing 100 percent of all international passengers at the 20 busiest airports,” the report said. Staffing issues and a lack of certainty around airline assistance are also throwing the program into question. After all, CBP said that it will rely on the airlines to take the facial scans, while CBP does the background checks behind the scenes. But CBP’s “plans to rely upon airport stakeholders” for equipment purchases, like digital cameras needed for taking passenger photos at boarding gates “pose a significant point of failure” for the program, the report read. “Until CBP resolves the longstanding questions regarding stakeholder commitment to its biometric program, it may not be able to scale up to reach full operating capability by 2021 as planned,” the report said. Although the CBP disagreed, the agency said it would “develop an internal contingency plan” in case airlines and airports decline to help. A CBP spokesperson told TechCrunch that the agency has made “significant advancements” since the inspector general’s report, and now says the biometric matching averages at 97 percent. |
The Horological Machine 9 puts a rocket on your wrist | John Biggs | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | If you’ve been keeping up with watchmaker you’ll be familiar with their Horological Machine series, watches that are similar in construction but wildly different when it comes to design. This watch, the HM9, is called the Flow and hearkens back to roadsters, jets and 1950s space ships. [gallery ids="1719823,1719822,1719821"] The watch, limited to a run of 33 pieces, shows the time on a small forward-facing face in one of the cones. The other two cones contain dual balance wheels. The balance wheel is what causes the watch to tick and controls the energy released by the main spring. Interestingly, MB&F added two to this watch in an effort to ensure accuracy. “The twin balance wheels of the HM9 engine feed two sets of chronometric data to a central differential for an averaged reading,” they wrote. “The balances are individually impulsed and spatially separated to ensure that they beat at their own independent cadences of 2.5Hz (18,000bph) each. This is important to ensure a meaningful average, just as how a statistically robust mathematical average should be derived from discrete points of information.” [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-71e-EnvGI&feature=youtu.be] There are two versions, called the Road and Air, and they cost a mere $182,000 (tax not included). Considering nearly every piece of this is made by hand — from the case to the curved crystal to the intricate movement — you’re essentially paying a team of craftsman a yearly wage just to build your watch. While it’s no Apple Watch, the MB&F HM9 is a unique and weird little timepiece. While it’s obviously not for everyone, with enough cash and a little luck you can easily join a fairly exclusive club of HM9 owners. |
Cody Wilson out as CEO of Defense Distributed | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | As for the future of the company, “I cannot be more proud of my team right now. We didn’t miss a beat. No one blinked. We have no intention of stopping.” |
Facebook Dating will be a feature, not an app; here’s a peek | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Facebook Dating doesn’t plan to launch a standalone dating app, which should temper expectations about how deeply it’s diving into Tinder and Match Group’s territory. The feature will be based inside Facebook’s main app, alongside its many other utilities buried beyond the home screen. It’s not ready for the public yet, but company employees are now internally testing it — though they’re warned that it’s not for dating their co-workers. [Update: in its first market of Colombia on September 20th. Read our full story about it .] back in May at its F8 conference. Now we’re getting an early look at its onboarding process thanks to screenshots pulled from the Facebook app’s code by mobile researcher and frequent TechCrunch tipster . The designs give a sense of the more mature vibe of Facebook Dating, which seems more purposeful for finding a serious partner than a one-night stand. Once you opt in to activating Facebook Dating, only other people who have also turned it on will be able to see you, and it won’t be shared to News Feed. You can choose if friends of friends can see you or not, and Dating profiles allow non-binary and transgender and orientation options. You’ll unlock Groups or Events you’re a part of for Dating, and you’ll be able to browse potential matches based on the plethora of info Facebook knows about you. If two people express interest in each other (no swiping), they can text each other over Messenger or WhatsApp. TechCrunch has learned some new details from Facebook, as well. Facebook is considering a limit on how many people you can express interest in, which would prevent a spammy behavior of rapidly approving everyone you see. Blocking someone on Dating won’t also block them on Facebook, though that’s not finalized. Facebook has no plan for paid subscriptions to premium Dating features. It’s currently not going to show ads in Dating, though it could reconsider that later. Dating will be 18+ only in the U.S. and abide by local laws on who is considered an “adult.” For now Facebook is taking careful steps toward Dating. It’s not blitzing into the market with a big flashy app. Instead it’s hoping the feature could create the meaningful relationships that make people appreciate Facebook and stick with it over the years. That’s more important than ever with all its recent troubles. |
Sagewise pitches a service to verify claims and arbitrate disputes over blockchain transactions | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Sometimes smart contracts can be pretty dumb. All of the benefits of a cryptographically secured, publicly verified, anonymized transaction system can be erased by errant code, malicious actors or poorly defined parameters of an executable agreement. Hoping to beat back the tide of bad contracts, bad code and bad actors, , a new Los Angeles-based startup, has raised $1.25 million to bring to market a service that basically hits pause on the execution of a contract so it can be arbitrated in the event that something goes wrong. Co-founded by a longtime lawyer, Amy Wan, whose experience runs the gamut from the U.S. Department of Commerce to serving as counsel for a peer-to-peer real estate investment platform in Los Angeles, and Dan Rice, a longtime entrepreneur working with blockchain, Sagewise works with both Ethereum and the Hedera Hashgraph (a newer distributed ledger technology, which purports to solve some of the issues around transaction processing speed and security which have bedeviled platforms like Ethereum and Bitcoin). The company’s technology works as a middleware, including an SDK and a contract notification and monitoring service. “The SDK is analogous to an arbitration clause in code form — when the smart contract executes a function, that execution is delayed for a pre-set amount of time (i.e. 24 hours) and users receive a text/email notification regarding the execution,” Wan wrote to me in an email. “If the execution is not the intent of the parties, they can freeze execution of the smart contract, giving them the luxury of time to fix whatever is wrong.” Sagewise approaches the contract resolution process as a marketplace where priority is given to larger deals. “Once frozen, parties can fix coding bugs, patch up security vulnerabilities, or amend/terminate the smart contract, or self-resolve a dispute. If a dispute cannot be self-resolved, parties then graduate to a dispute resolution marketplace of third party vendors,” Wan writes. “After all, a $5 bar bet would be resolved differently from a $5M enterprise dispute. Thus, we are dispute process agnostic.” Wavemaker Genesis led the round, which also included strategic investments from affiliates of Ari Paul (Blocktower Capital), Miko Matsumura (Gumi Cryptos), Youbi Capital, Maja Vujinovic (Cipher Principles), Jordan Clifford (Scalar Capital), Terrence Yang (Yang Ventures) and James Sowers. “Smart contracts are coded by developers and audited by security auditing firms, but the quality of smart contract coding and auditing varies drastically among service providers,” said Wan, the chief executive of Sagewise, in a statement. “Inevitably, this discrepancy becomes the basis for smart contract disputes, which is where Sagewise steps in to provide the infrastructure that allows the blockchain and smart contract industry to achieve transactional confidence.” In an email, Wan elaborated on the thesis to me, writing that, “smart contracts may have coding errors, security vulnerabilities, or parties may need to amend or terminate their smart contracts due to changing situations.” Contracts could also be disputed if their execution was triggered accidentally or due to the actions of attackers trying to hack a platform. “Sagewise seeks to bring transactional confidence into the blockchain industry by building a smart contract safety net where smart contracts do not fulfill the original transactional intent,” Wan wrote. |
GameFly to shutter streaming service this month | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | GameFly, the video game rental company, will be shutting down its streaming service at the end of the month, Variety earlier this week. This closure comes just over three years after the streaming service launched in 2015. GameFly, the no-console streaming service for gamers, for $7 and $10 per month that gave users unlimited access to titles — as long as they had a smart TV like an Amazon Fire or Samsung Smart TV, in addition to a controller and access to the internet. Just as GameFly’s original snail-mail rental service for games mimicked Netflix’s from days of yore, many touted the streaming service as the Netflix of gaming. Support for the service will be maintained through the end of August and accounts will not be charged for the service after that date, according to Variety. But people (and movies) from the company for $9.50 per month (one rental at a time) or $13.50 per month (two rentals at a time.) This news comes about three months after from GameFly’s cloud gaming division — a division that helped make it possible to save your progress to the cloud while gaming on the streaming service. But the acquisition did not include GameFly’s streaming service. “We acquired the team in Israel and the technology they’ve developed, we did not acquire the Gamefly streaming service,” an EA spokesperson told Variety. “We have not been involved in any decisions around the service.” TechCrunch reached out to GameFly for comment but the company did not respond by the time of publication regarding the reasons behind this closure. Meanwhile, the world of streaming games appears to be continuing on just fine. Sony’s PlayStation Now continues to add titles to its service, French startup Blade’s streaming service is this week in the U.S. and EA itself announced at E3 this summer plans to start work on its own streaming service. |
Rentlogic lands millions to grade NYC real estate for renters and landlords | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | A company called has raised $2.4 million to take the guesswork out of determining whether that cheap, beautiful New York apartment is actually a deathtrap wrapped in a brownstone’s clothing. Renting in New York is murder already, but using Rentlogic, apartment hunters can figure out if their new housing situation could actually kill them (or put them at significant risk of bodily or property harm… or even minor inconveniences). Investors in the company’s seed round include the Urban-X accelerator (which is a partnership between Urban.US and Mini); Urban.Us, an investor in urban technologies; the millennial-entrepreneur-focused investment firm, Kairos; and Seagram beverage company scion Edgar Bronfman, Jr. Rentlogic already provides a grade for every building in New York — more than 1 million properties — but has added an inspection feature that it charges landlords for so that they can display a rating outside of their building. It’s like the city’s scoring grades for restaurants in neighborhoods. “We grade every single property in New York,” says Yale Fox, the company’s founder and chief executive. “We have inspected 103 properties. Everybody is really happy with it and everybody is going to re-sign and we’re going to start scaling this out to every property in New York.” Rentlogic scores buildings on a combination of around 150 different variables, including the ability to provide continuous heat and hot water, and whether or not a building has evidence of bed bugs or rodents. The looks of the building doesn’t matter, Fox says. It’s more about the conditions of the building. “It’s the same way a building would get LEED-certified,” says Fox. “It’s a good way for one landlord to differentiate their property as higher quality than a competitor’s in the same neighborhood.” Launched initially in 2013, Rentlogic was born out of Fox’s own tragic experience as a new renter in New York. The Canadian transplant (and the son of a family of real estate professionals and small scale landlords) had come to the city for a new job and was looking at an apartment in the West Village. After shelling out a $12,000 deposit for first month’s rent, last month’s rent and a security deposit, Fox settled into his abode in the tree-lined luxury of one of Manhattan’s most sought-after neighborhoods. The love affair with the building didn’t last long. Unexpectedly, Fox started to become sick. Several visits to the doctor couldn’t identify a cause for his illness, until, finally, his physician suggested a mold-related illness. “I asked the landlord to fix it and I wound up having to take the landlord to court,” says Fox. By the time the court date arrived, Fox had paid to fix the mold problem himself and had little in the way of solid evidence to show a judge. So he built an app that would track the public complaints filed against the landlord and the public assessments that had been done on the building. “I went to court and I showed the judge this model that I had put together and he said, ‘Welcome to New York and I’m sorry this happened to you… and you should definitely build an app, because New York City needs this.'” Rentlogic founder Yale Fox Fox, already enrolled in the TED Fellows program, built the app, initially called “RentCheck” and began marketing it to landlords and renters. “It was just a hobby because I was so angry about how things had happened to me,” says Fox. “We didn’t want to charge renters fees to the site. We thought having equal access to information could prevent this from happening in the future.” Things continued as a hobby for a while until last year Fox hit on a business model. He designed a ratings card for the building based on the data his company had collected and showed it to his current landlord. “She said, ‘How much would you charge for it?'” Fox recalled. Thus RentCheck became Rentlogic and a business was born. Fox charges landlords for assessments and to display a ratings placard that indicates the building’s grade. Renters are willing to pay up to an additional $45 per month, , to sign a lease in a building that’s been independently certified. “People are willing to pay a little bit more just to not deal with the constant headaches that happen in certain kinds of buildings,” he said. Fox appears to have launched Rentlogic at the right time. The market for housing in New York has softened as luxury apartments flood the market and demand softens, meaning that rents are coming down across the board. But beyond being more competitive there’s a defensive aspect to getting rated in a market filled with demanding, complaint-prone consumers that have no qualms savaging any business, from landlords to local restaurants (although oftentimes the landlords and restaurants deserve it). “A lot of times landlords are purchasing this because there’s no way to prove they’re not a one-star landlord,” Fox says. “This is accessible for big landlords and small landlords. In a zero-transparency and low-accountability marketplace, there’s no incentive for bad actors to improve their behavior, but with Rentlogic there is.” The company is already making institutional moves. Fox has inked a deal with Blackstone about providing ratings for their $5.5 billion Stuyvesant Town acquisition on the Lower East Side, according to Fox. In addition, the company has partnered with a number of real estate brokers and roommate-hunting services like and to use its ratings. While Rentlogic is scrupulous about using data to train its algorithm, it’s also transparent about how the algorithm works, according to Fox. “Algorithms control so much what’s going on in the world and people just don’t understand them,” he says. So in the interest of full transparency, the company is putting together a building simulator where users can add problems and see how it affects a building’s rating on the Rentlogic site. The company also has an algorithmic review committee that reviews the results coming from the building assessments. And while Rentlogic is starting in New York, the company has plans to use its machine learning system to hoover up publicly available data and provide grades for real estate across the United States. Ultimately, Fox just wants to help improve the tenant-landlord relationship, he says. “I was in a terrible situation with a landlord who went to jail… I launched this site so no one would have to go through what I went through.” |
EA apologizes for ‘unfortunate mistake’ of cutting Colin Kaepernick reference from ‘Madden’ | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Oh!!!!! who told you to edit Colin’s name out???? ? Curious minds want to know 👁 Thanks Jean for the info!!! If you guys see more shady stuff send it over. — NESSA (@nessnitty) Hey Sean, no doubt we messed up here. We look forward to making it right. — EA SPORTS Madden NFL (@EAMaddenNFL) notes, however, that this is apparently not the first time |
Kin expands its celebrity-driven ‘neighborhood’ model for online video | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Digital media company has announced a slate of new video series from singer/actress Jordin Sparks, JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers (who successfully proposed to Fletcher over on the series). The company also revealed more details about its programming with Vanessa Lachey (who had already signed on with her husband Nick). She’ll be hosting a competition series called , where contestants compete to create specific looks using unconventional products. This is all part of what the company calls its “neighborhood” strategy, where it launches a set of interconnected channels, usually featuring stars who became famous on traditional media. The new announcements bring Kin up to five channels, with the goal of creating three more by the end of the year. “[Ultimately,] We want to create 20 of these channels … a neighborhood of channels for women in what we call the ‘builder’ phase of their lives,” Kin CEO Michael Wayne told me. “And they all have sort of the same like-minded, inspirational, accessible feeling to them, in women lifestyle verticals.” The company’s first big success with this model was , a series of lifestyle and how-to videos from the star. According to research by Nielsen, reached 8.8 million total viewers in the week of June 25, including 3.7 million women between the ages of 18 to 34 — an audience that’s comparable to cable reality hits like and . So Kin said it’s extending its partnership with Mowry to develop more lifestyle content in addition to . In Wayne’s view, it makes more sense for Kin to work with a “mainstream star” like Mowry rather than someone who recently became famous on social media, especially since the first wave of social media influencers is being “completely disrupted by the next wave.” He said that Mowry, on the other hand, has been in the public consciousness for decades: “No one searches for Tia because she did a smokey eye video.” Wayne added that he remains focused on a cross-platform strategy, where individual platforms might get early access to the videos ( will premiere on Facebook Watch), but the videos ultimately get posted to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram TV and Amazon. He also said it’s crucial that the “unit economics” of advertising on each series makes sense, so Kin isn’t relying on the platforms or on custom, branded video deals to subsidize production. “With Tia, I know exactly how much money I’m making on Facebook, I know how Amazon will monetize, I can chart this investment and know it’s going to pay off and become profitable within 9 to 12 months,” he said. Updated to correct Wayne’s final quote. |
JetLenses aims to save you a bunch of money on your contacts | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | A Y Combinator-backed startup, , is taking on the major contact lens e-commerce sites, like 1-800-Contacts, Lens.com, and other online ordering systems offered by major retailers, such as Walmart. The startup’s goal is to bring down the cost of prescription products by automating the overhead associated with these businesses, in areas like prescription verification, order tracking, compliance and fulfillment, then pass those savings on to customers. The company also promises fair and transparent pricing, so there aren’t surprises at checkout, and offers customers free shipping on their orders. JetLenses was founded by Dhaivat Pandya, the son of an eye doctor who studied Statistics and Computer Science at Harvard. His background allowed him to identify the market inefficiencies in this business, in order to develop a new solution, he says. “It was a space where doing this kind of work – engineering and data science – would have an immediate impact that I could see on a day-to-day basis,” Pandya explains as to why he decided to target the prescription lenses market. “A lot the reason why contact lenses are so expensive is just overhead,” he says. Around 20 percent of the time, the online sites run into issues when verifying customer prescriptions. For example, the eye doctor may have relocated their practice, and their phone and fax numbers changed. This ends up eating away a lot of time in terms of human labor, as staff has to research if the practice still exists and locate their new contact information before they can proceed with the verification. JetLenses, meanwhile, will instead try to first match the doctor’s information to a data set it maintains of existing practices to find a match, then locate the new phone number and fax automatically It also automatically faxes the office to verify the prescription, and processes the doctor’s office response. The company is leveraging data science around the logistics of order fulfillment, too, in order to determine which fulfillment partner to use for each incoming order. These sorts of engineering tasks may already be common to larger e-commerce shopping sites, but haven’t really been put to work in the prescription lenses market, Pandya claims. [Following publication, a competitor emailed to dispute this statement. Everyone has data science teams, they said. Full statement below.*] He says JetLenses’ lower pricing comes from these improvements – it’s not just slashing prices to attract customers. “Our margins are basically identical to others in the space,” he notes. “The goal is not to alter the business by just selling [lenses] for cheaper.” While not a comprehensive review, I tried out online ordering on JetLenses before speaking to the company, to see how it compared with my usual site, 1800Contacts.com. I was fairly surprised to find that a 6-pack of my Acuvue Oasys for Astigmatism lenses were $32.99 on JetLenses, compared with the $51.99 I usually pay. (1800Contacts encourages shoppers to buy 4 boxes per eye at once, to get a $40 rebate on these lenses. But that’s a lot to spend all at once.) JetLenses will honor the manufacturer rebates, too, and works with customers’ vision insurance plans. The website itself is a little wonky in parts, but it’s only been online since the fall. You’ll need to know your lens brand and do a search rather than try to browse your way. as the site navigation is somewhat lacking, I found. But to save nearly $20 a box? Worth it. JetLenses isn’t the only contacts lens e-commerce startup out there right now. Another, Hubble, last year for its , sold on subscription. That’s the not route JetLenses is going. Instead, it aims to apply these data science techniques to other prescription businesses, like dental products or prescription creams. The company hasn’t fully detailed the data science techniques it plans to implement, beyond a few examples. For now, the startup is focused on raising a seed round following Y Combinator’s Demo Day to scale the business more quickly. *Update, 8/7/18, 3 PM ET: A representative for competitor Simple Contacts was incredulous at this startup’s claims. Here’s a statement we received from them: The gist is that we’re pretty skeptical about some of their claims around automating overhead associated with these businesses, since just about all of the legacy players have huge teams devoted to this. That includes 1-800-Contacts, Walmart, and Lens.com. Even Simple Contacts, which is pretty small relative to the older companies, has a four-person machine-learning and data analytics team for this very purpose. It’s something they’ve invested millions in. |
NASA names first astronauts for the inaugural commercial flights to the ISS | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | has announced the names of the first astronauts who’ll fly to the on American-made, commercial spacecraft. The crews will fly to the space station on rockets built by NASA commercial partners Boeing and SpaceX. “Today, our country’s dreams of greater achievements in space are within our grasp,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, in a statement. “Today’s announcement advances our great American vision and strengthens the nation’s leadership in space.” Nine astronauts were selected to crew the first test flights and missions of and “The men and women we assign to these first flights are at the forefront of this exciting new time for human spaceflight,” said Mark Geyer, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. After each company completes their crewed test flights successfully, NASA will start the process to finally certify the spacecraft and systems for regular crew missions to the space station. So far, NASA has contracted for six missions with each company, with as many as four astronauts crewing each commercial spacecraft. In the 18 years that NASA has had a presence on the space station, the space agency has conducted experiments in biology, biotechnology, physics and space science that have resulted in thousands of spin-off technologies, the agency said. With the new spaceflight capabilities through Boeing and SpaceX (initially), NASA says it will maintain a crew of seven astronauts on the space station for continued scientific research and experimentation on understanding and mitigating the challenges of long-duration spaceflight. Here are the astronauts who will be taking flight: Eric Boe/ Photo courtesy of NASA The Miami-born and Atlanta-raised Boe came to NASA from the Air Force, where he rose to the rank of colonel as a fighter pilot and test pilot. Boe was first selected as an astronaut in 2000 and piloted the space shuttle Endeavor. Boe was also on the final flight of the Discovery before the Space Shuttle Program was sunset. Christopher Ferguson/Photo by Robin Marchant/FilmMagic A retired Navy captain who hails from Philadelphia, Ferguson piloted space shuttle Atlantis, and commanded the shuttle Endeavour. Ferguson was on the Atlantis for its final flight with the Space Shuttle Program. Nicole Aunapu Mann/ Photo courtesy of NASA A lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, Nicole Aunapu Mann is an F/A-18 test pilot with more than 2,500 flight hours in more than 25 aircraft and was selected to be an astronaut in 2013. The test flight with Boeing will be her first trip to space. The will launch aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, according to a NASA statement. Robert Behnken/Photo courtesy of NASA Missouri native Robert Behnken has a doctorate in engineering and is a flight test engineer and colonel in the Air Force. Behnken first joined the astronaut corps in 2000 and flew aboard space shuttle Endeavour twice, performing six spacewalks that totaled 37 hours. Douglas Hurley/ Photo courtesy of NASA Douglas Hurley joined the Marine Corps and served as a test pilot before joining NASA in 2000. The Apalachin, N.Y. native piloted both the space shuttle Endeavor and Atlantis. According to NASA, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Josh Cassada/Photo courtesy NASA From his home in Minnesota to a career in the Navy, commander and test pilot Josh Cassada has spent more than 3,500 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft. He was selected as an astronaut in 2013. His Starliner mission will be his first spaceflight. Sunita Williams/Photo courtesy of NASA A Needham, Mass. by-way-of Euclid, Ohio naval test pilot, Williams was a captain in the Navy before her retirement. She was selected as an astronaut in 1998 and has spent 322 days on the International Space Station. Williams commanded the space station and has also performed seven spacewalks. Victor Glover/ Photo courtesy NASA Pomona, Calif.-born Victor Glover is a Navy commander, aviator and test pilot who has flown more than 3,000 hours in more than 40 different aircraft. With 24 combat missions and 400 carrier landings, Glover was selected as part of the 2013 astronaut candidate class and will be making his first spaceflight aboard the Dragon. Michael Hopkins/ Photo courtesy NASA A former farm boy who grew up near Richland, Mo., Michael Hopkins went on to be a colonel in the air force where he was a flight-test engineer before being selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. Hopkins spent 166 days on the International Space Station and has been on two space walks. NASA said that additional crew members would be assigned by international partners at a later date. |
Fanatics exec chairman Michael Rubin to speak at Disrupt SF 2018 | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Even as the wealth of Jeff Bezos balloons and Amazon eats everyone’s online retail lunch, there are still a few other e-commerce entrepreneurs faring rather well. In 2011, eBay , at the same time divesting wholly from the sports merchandise business in Fanatics and significantly from the sites ShopRunner and Rue La La, which together were set up under a new holding company named Kynetic that was put under the control of GSI CEO Michael Rubin. Seven years later, Rubin is worth an estimated $3 billion from his online shopping empire that has dialed in on key niches thanks to high-profile partnerships rather than a spiderweb network of other retailers, a strategy the company is hoping will protect it from Amazon’s growing land grab. Today, Fanatics helps leagues and teams sell their official sports merchandise directly to consumers. The sports merchandising space relies heavily on partnerships with major organizations, and the MLB and NFL have both directly invested in Fanatics as a direct avenue for getting jerseys onto fans. In addition to selling gear, Fanatics is manufacturing much of it itself. The company acquired Majestic sportswear early last year, which has been behind much of the MLB’s merchandise for years, as it strikes to build out these operations. How big of a business is all of this? Well, the company which, after betting big on Alibaba, is placing Fanatics as one of its strongest Vision Fund bets to be the next commerce hit. Rubin will be joining us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss his path as an entrepreneur and what’s next for his commerce empire. He will join other commerce-focused speakers, including executives from Glossier, Warby Parker and Adidas. The full agenda . You can purchase tickets . |
Volunteer at Disrupt SF 2018 for free admission | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Forking over your cold, hard cash isn’t the only way you can score a ticket to on September 5-7. We’re looking for volunteers willing to trade their time to help us produce conference ever. And what do you get in return? One complimentary that gives you access to all three days of Disrupt. Interested? . This is a chance to attend the show without spending a dime while getting an up-close-and-personal look at what it takes to produce one of the most iconic startup events of the year. Whether you aspire to be a startup founder, marketer or event coordinator, this is a great way to see how it all gets done. We’ll put you to work at a variety of tasks, which might include stuffing VIP goodie bags, assisting with registration, scanning tickets, directing attendees, placing signage or helping with pre-marketing efforts — any number of things to help make Disrupt SF 2018 an outstanding experience for everyone. Here’s what you need to know (a.k.a., the fine print): There you have it. Work exchange is an awesome way to attend Disrupt SF 2018 without spending money, to see what goes into producing an event this size, and to experience three program-packed days of tech-startup goodness. The deadline for volunteer applications is August 15. . We appreciate the assist! |
Andreessen-funded dYdX plans ‘short Ethereum’ token for haters | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Crypto skeptics rejoice! A new way to short the cryptocurrency market is coming from , a decentralized financial derivatives startup. In two months it will launch its protocol for creating short and leverage positions for Ethereum and other ERC20 tokens that allow investors to amp up their bets for or against these currencies. To get the startup there, dYdX recently closed a $2 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain, and joined by Kindred and Abstract plus angels, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and co-founder Fred Ehrsam, and serial investor Elad Gil. “The main use for cryptocurrency so far has been trading and speculation — buying and holding. That’s not how sophisticated financial institutions trade,” says dYdX founder Antonio Juliano. “The derivatives market is usually an order of magnitude bigger than the spot trading or buy/sell market. The cryptocurrency market is probably on the order of $5 billion to $10 billion in volume, so you’d expect the derivatives market would be 10X bigger. I think there’s a really big opportunity there.” The idea is that you buy the short Ethereum token with ETH or a stable coin from an exchange or dYdX. The short Ethereum’s token price is inversely pegged to ETH, so it goes up in value when ETH goes down and vice versa. You can then sell the short Ethereum token for a profit if you correctly predicted an ETH price drop. On the backend, lenders earn an interest rate by providing ETH as collateral locked into smart contracts that back up the short Ethereum tokens. Only a small number of actors have to work with the smart contract to mint or close the short Tokens. Meanwhile, dYdX also offers leveraged Ethereum tokens that let investors borrow to boost their profits if ETH’s price goes up. The plan is to offer short and leveraged tokens for any ERC20 currency in the future. dYdX is building its own user-facing application for buying the tokens, but is also partnering with exchanges to offer the margin tokens “where people are already trading,” says Juliano. “We think of it as more than just shorting your favorite shitcoin. We think of them as mature financial products.” Coinbase has proven to be an incredible incubator for blockchain startup founders. Juliano was employed there as a software engineer after briefly working at Uber and graduating in computer science from Princeton in 2015. “The first thing I started was a search engine for decentralized apps. I worked for months on it full-time, but nobody was building decentralized apps so no one was searching for them. It was too early,” Juliano explains. But along the way he noticed the lack of financial instruments for decentralized derivatives despite exploding consumer interest in buying and selling cryptocurrencies. He figured the big hedge funds would eventually come knocking if someone built them a bridge into the blockchain world. Juliano built dYdX to create a protocol to first begin offering margin tokens. It’s open source, so technically anyone can fork it to issue tokens themselves. But dYdX plans to be the standard-bearer, with its version offering the maximum liquidity to investors trying to buy or sell the margin tokens. His five-person team in San Francisco with experience from Google, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, NerdWallet and ConsenSys is working to find as many investors as possible to collateralize the tokens and exchanges to trade them. “It’s a race to build liquidity faster than anyone else,” says Juliano. So how will dYdX make money? As is common in crypto, Juliano isn’t exactly sure, and just wants to build up usage first. “We plan to capture value at the protocol level in the future likely through a value adding token,” the founder says. “It would’ve been easy for us to rush into adding a questionable token as we’ve seen many other protocols do; however, we believe it’s worth thinking deeply about the best way to integrate a token in our ecosystem in a way that creates rather than destroys value for end users.” “Antonio and his team are among the top engineers in the crypto ecosystem building a novel software system for peer-to-peer financial contracts. We believe this will be immensely valuable and used by millions of people,” says Polychain partner Olaf Carlson-Wee. “I am not concerned with short-term revenue models but rather the opportunity to permanently improve global financial markets.” With the launch less than two months away, Juliano is also racing to safeguard the protocol from attacks. “You have to take smart contract security extremely seriously. We’re almost done with the second independent security audit,” he tells me. The security provided by decentralization is one of dYdX’s selling points versus centralized competitors like Poloniex that offer margin trading opportunities. There, investors have to lock up ETH as collateral for extended periods of time, putting it at risk if the exchange gets hacked, and they don’t benefit from shared liquidity like dYdX will. It also could compete for crypto haters with the CBOE that now offers Bitcoin futures and margin trading, though it doesn’t handle Ethereum yet. Juliano hopes that since dYdX’s protocol can mint short tokens for other ERC20 tokens, you could bet for or against a certain cryptocurrency relative to the whole crypto market by mixing and matching. dYdX will have to nail the user experience and proper partnerships if it’s going to beat the convenience of centralized exchanges and the institutional futures market. If all goes well, dYdX wants to move into offering options or swaps. “Those derivatives are more often traded by sophisticated traders. We don’t think there are too many traders like that in the market right now,” Juliano explains. “The other types of derivatives that we’ll move to in the future will be really big once the market matures.” That “once the market matures” refrain is one sung by plenty of blockchain projects. The question is who’ll survive long enough to see that future, if it ever arrives. |
Insurance app Lemonade looks set to drop lawsuit against Germany’s Wefox | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | , the New York-based insurance platform, looks set to drop , its , and Wefox founder Julian Teicke. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court Southern District of NY, alleged that Wefox reverse engineered Lemonade to create ONE, infringed Lemonade’s intellectual property, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and breached the contract in Lemonade’s terms of service. At the time of the filing, a statement issued on behalf for Wefox said the allegations had no merit and “ultimately appear to be an attempt to disrupt our business rather than a serious dispute,” dubbing Lemonade’s concerns as meritless. “We intend to defend ourselves vigorously. This lawsuit appears to be an attempt to bait the media into covering a non-issue,” concluded the statement. However, in a slightly bizarre turn of events, Wefox founder Teicke has taken to his personal LinkedIn profile to post what appears to be a mea culpa of sorts — also revealing that he and Lemonade founder Daniel Schreiber recently met in person to discuss Lemonade’s lawsuit against ONE Insurance (as adults are supposed to do). Posted to LinkedIn on the 2nd of August, Teicke : “Here’s the bottom line: Lemonade created something truly revolutionary, and their innovation inspired many in our industry – including myself. There’s a fine line between inspiration and imitation, and we acknowledge that Lemonade’s perspective is that we crossed it in some parts”. Continues Teicke: “While ONE has many unique features, I’m committed to addressing this concern of Lemonade. To that end, ONE will immediately undertake a redesign of elements in the app, website and marketing material that are similar to Lemonade. I am looking forward to putting this conflict aside and to exploring possibilities for cooperation in the future”. In response, Schreiber shared Teicke’s post on his own LinkedIn profile, and for a “very amicable and constructive meeting” and for committing to remedy the issues raised in the complaint. He also said he is “committed to dropping the lawsuit once all these changes are implemented”. I have reached out to Teicke, who said he was unable to comment, and to Schreiber, who declined to comment on record. If and when the lawsuit is dropped, which I understand could be within a matter of a couple of weeks, we’ll endeavour to update our reporting. As always, watch this space. According to documents filed in the U.S. District Court Southern District of NY in August, and seen by TechCrunch, Lemonade has dropped the suit against all the plaintiffs, including Wefox. |
Foundry Group quietly announces a big fat $750 million fund | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | the Boulder, Colo.-based venture firm co-founded 11 years ago by startup whisperer Brad Feld, has raised a $750 million seventh fund to target early-stage and growth-stage companies, as well as to invest in other venture funds. It sounds like — and is — a of money, though the firm notes that it encompasses all of its various investment strategies, whereas its last fund, a that it closed in 2016, was used to invest in other venture funds and growth-stage companies alone; Foundry was separately managing its early-stage bets in a different fund. It’s a little confusing, but if you really want to know the details, Feld : For historical reference, our early-stage funds (FG 2007, FG 2010, FG 2013, and FG 2016) are all $225 million in size. Our first early growth fund raised in 2013, Foundry Group Select, is also $225m in size. In 2016, when we raised Foundry Group Next, we approximately doubled the size of that fund to $500 million since 30% of it was going to be invested in partner funds and 70% in early growth. So, at the beginning of 2016, we effectively raised $725 million (FG 2016 and Foundry Group Next). Foundry Group Next 2018 is simply the combination of those two funds rounded up slightly. Foundry was founded by Feld, Ryan McIntyre, Jason Mendelson and Seth Levine — “four equal partners,” as Feld describes them. With this newest fund, he says, Foundry now has “seven equal partners,” meaning each receives the same amount of carry — or profits from the firm’s successful investments — no matter that three of the partners are newer to the table. Foundry’s newer partners include Lindel Eakman, who joined in 2015 to help Foundry identify venture funds in which to invest. (Very meta, we know.) Eakman had previously spent 13 years with the University of Texas Investment Management Company (or UTIMCO), which was Foundry Group’s largest investor. The firm last year also added Chris Moody, who’d been the CEO of Twitter data reseller Gnip before Twitter the company in 2014 and made Moody a GM and VP of its data and enterprise business. (Foundry was an investor in Gnip.) The firm’s newest partner is Jamey Sperans, who was as an early member and managing director of Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, where he served on the global investment and executive committees. Sperans, who joined earlier this year, has also founded five companies over the years. In case you are wondering, yes, that is seven men. (Just remarking.) Foundry has had at least 44 exits over the years, according to Crunchbase. Among its most recent wins: the email service provider SendGrid, which staged a last November; and the 2015 IPO of Fitbit, the wearable device company, whose shares are trading at roughly $5.50 apiece right now but were as high as $47 in the months after the offering. Among Foundry’s newest investments is , a four-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.-based company that makes a salad-making robot and raised in Series A-1 funding last month; and , a year-old, Portland, Ore.-based full-stack monitoring platform that raised in Series A funding back in April. It has also re-upped in plenty of its portfolio companies in recent months, including , an eight-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based company behind a digital customer engagement platform. In June, it raised in Series F funding led by Foundry, which had also led the company’s Series B round in 2010. |
Scare off burglars with this ridiculous Alexa skill | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Some people leave lights, music or the TV on when they’re away from home in an attempt to ward off burglars, but a has a different idea. Instead of lights and noises, you can keep your home safe from unwanted visitors by playing lengthy audio tracks that sound like real – and completely ridiculous – conversations. When you launch , Alexa will play one of seven audio tracks penned by comedy writers from SNL, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and UCB. The company doesn’t have permission to share all the writers’ names at this time, but says there were half a dozen involved, including of “Always Sunny…” There are conversations from a book club where no one discusses the book, a mom walking her daughter through IKEA assembly over the phone, a stay-at-home mom losing her s***, and argument over a board game. For example, the mom can be heard yelling things like: A would-be podcaster pitches his friend: The board game players argue: The mom gives IKEA instructions: After enabling the skill on your Alexa device, you can cycle through the various conversations by saying “Next.” The idea for this wacky skill comes from the folks at homeowners’ insurance startup , who are using it as a means to get a little free advertising. (Score!) Explains the company, you can turn the volume up and leave your apartment, knowing that any potential burglar will be scared off by “thinking that someone is still at home who is absolutely insufferable.” “Hippo was looking for a way to engage a broad audience in a conversation about home security and home insurance,” a spokesperson said. “We figured it was easier to drive awareness and education through humor, so we brought on some of the funniest people we know to pull it off.” The tracks themselves are around an hour or so long, so Away Mode makes more sense for those times you’re out running errands, but can’t take the place of things like timers that turn off and on lights while away on vacation, for example. We tried the skill ourselves, and it worked as advertised – though we didn’t listen to the full tracks. (We should also note that one Amazon Skill Store review talks about the skill not responding to voice prompts, but the skill doesn’t ask you to choose a number, as the reviewer says – they must have found it while still in testing.) There are other “burglar deterrent” skills for Alexa if you’re interested in the general concept, like Or those that play or sound like But Away Mode is just a little more fun. You can try it yourself . |
Google Maps is no longer #flatearth | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Go to Google Maps and zoom out. Halfway out, the map’s perspective changes from a traditional flat map view to an interactive globe. Zoom all the way out and the Earth is presented as a globe with landmasses of the appropriate size. Greenland is no longer the size of Africa and all is right with the world. On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale. Objects in the north and south become distorted as the flat map compensates for the flattening of the globe. This is most evident in the commonly used Mercator projections that properly represents the size of land around the equator but super-sizes land in the Arctic and Antarctic. Now, when Google Maps is used on Desktop, users will see the appropriate size of land masses. The update is great but I have yet to find the giant ice wall that’s preventing all of life from sliding off the side of the flat earth and onto the back of the giant turtle we’re riding through the vast emptiness of space. With 3D Globe Mode on Google Maps desktop, Greenland's projection is no longer the size of Africa. Just zoom all the way out at 😎🌍 — Google Maps (@googlemaps) |
Portal offers an easy way to pay creators for their content | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | founder Jonathan Swerdlin is just the latest media pundit to point to advertising as the root cause of the industry’s problems. But he’s not content to diagnose the illness — he thinks he’s created a cure. “Digital media has become toxic, in part, because of advertising,” Swerdlin said. “The unmet and unarticulated need is a peer-to-peer economy where you’re rewarded for creating value, rather than a quantity model” where a publisher or creator’s main economic incentive is to attract as many eyeballs as possible. Naturally, that’s what Swerdlin is trying to offer in Portal. When you open the app, you follow creators and topics that interest you, then get presented with a feed of videos. During or after the video, you can tip the creator in Portal coins — the current price is 1 cent per coin, and individual payments can be anything from 10 to 10,000 coins. This changes the equation for creators. If you’re monetizing a video with ads, 1,000 views would represent a negligible amount of ad revenue — but if 1,000 people like the video and are willing to pay a dollar, then you’re starting to talk about real money. Conversely, there’s no financial incentive to post a video on Portal that gets a million views if everyone’s going to think it’s a complete waste of their time. Swerdlin said removing advertising changes the incentives for Portal too, because the startup doesn’t benefit from promoting content just because it’ll get clicks. In fact, he said Portal will allow users to post pretty much anything, as long as it doesn’t violate community standards around things like pornography and hate speech. And it presents a purely reverse chronological feed of content based on what you follow — the question of surfacing interesting content in the feed will probably get more complicated as more users join the platform, but Swerdlin argued, “We don’t need algorithms to solve feed problems.” “We’re not going to bury things that are not advertiser-friendly,” he added. “It’s a very different game. Portal is very much about people having a place to freely express themselves and not worry about being buried by an algorithm.” Swerdlin acknowledged that these aren’t entirely new ideas or strategies — micropayments have been touted as a solution to media monetization for years, and he pointed to services like Netflix as offering models that help creators “break free of advertising.” At the same time, Swerdlin said Portal’s approach to payments truly offers “no friction” — it uses your App Store payment info, so you don’t even need to enter your credit card. He also said that by creating an app for content (rather than just a micropayment platform that plugs into existing websites), Portal can truly solve the problem by offering a media environment that’s “safe, it’s a healthy media diet, as opposed to the junk food.” Currently, Portal’s content is limited to videos, but those videos cover a range of topics and genres like advice (personal- and business-related), comedy, music and personal vlogging. Over time, Swerdlin wants to expand to other content formats. You also need an invite code to access the app, but if you want to try it out, feel free to use mine: “anthonyha”. (Don’t blame me; I didn’t choose it.) |
Goodly looks to give companies student loan payments as an employee benefit | Matthew Lynley | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | As employers duke it out over hiring the best possible candidates, especially ones coming out of school, they are starting to get a little bit more creative with their incentive packages — and that includes offering an option for paying down student debt. is a new startup that’s looking to help those employers offer that as a benefit. Smaller companies without the resources to create complicated incentive packages especially need tools that help shortcut the process of offering those benefits. It’s following a similar playbook of companies looking to make it easier to get the tools they need in place and focus more on the set of products that are going to make it an actually differentiated company. Goodly is launching out of Y Combinator’s summer class this year. “We found it to be a really great tool for recruiting and retaining,” co-founder Gregory Poulin said. “When people hear student loan benefits, they instantly think it’s very expensive. You can offer student loan benefits starting $25 to $50 per employee per month, up to $200. Our system is completely flexible. You can offer any company size for any budget. You can offer meaningful benefit for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day. For the average borrower, when they have an employer contributing an extra $100 per months, it could help your average employee get out of debt almost a decade faster.” There are more common benefits like stock packages, 401(k) matches, insurance, better time off policies, or others along those lines. But as student debt increasingly becomes a factor in a candidate’s decision on where they work, it’s another way that companies — ones without larger compensation packages or very aggressive recruiting operations like, say, Google or Facebook — can still get the attention and interest of good candidates coming out of school. Like other companies (like ), the goal is to make it easy to get started and maintain the whole process. Employees connect their student loans to Goodly, which takes a few minutes to verify them before setting up the contribution plan. Goodly integrates with payroll operations and gives companies and employees a pretty flexible way to set their spending schedule. Then, it goes from there, without the employees having to manage it on a per-period basis. While it might have the robust tax incentives in place like a retirement plan, it’s still a way to help companies offer some way of showing employees that they’re invested in their employees’ future success, which is another way that those companies might be able to retain that talent. Goodly then brings back detailed reports on the company’s implementation to help it better understand whether the policies are working for their employees. It’s certainly an area that’s attracted interest — and funding — which look to help employers get a little more creative about their benefits. Much like contributions to retirement plans, it’s another way to offer employees a way to invest in their future by reducing the financial stress they have through some of their biggest financial decisions like where to go for college. Poulin also said it’s a way to help discover a more diverse talent pool as it surfaces up underrepresented parts of the population that are acutely dealing with student debt as a factor in their decision-making. |
Matt Groening goes back to the drawing board for ‘Disenchantment’ | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | around in a Homer mask, but the latex is hard to breathe in. My head gets so sweaty and my glasses fog up. It’s not worth it for me,” Matt Groening laughs. “But what a way to go, suffocating on a Homer Simpson mask.” Groening in 2000. (Photo by Colin Davey/Getty Images) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp_RnJcb8Ig (Photo: under a ) |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 9 | 25 | null |
Optic wants to help developers drop boilerplate code into their development flow | Matthew Lynley | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Stack Overflow and other various sites and tools have made it easy to Google search for solutions — or code snippets — to the easier parts of putting together an app or program for developers, but Aidan Cunniffe wants to take that one automated step further. That’s the premise behind , which gives developers a way to grab very common coding use cases that they can drop right into their code. It works by finding the sort of routine additions developers might need, like how to create a form that will add a user to a database, as well as all the ancillary parts that come with that like tests. Optic works within a developer’s IDE, so they don’t have to look externally for the code they need, which is compiled together from online sources. Right now it works for JavaScript, with Python next on the docket. Optic is coming out of Y Combinator’s summer 2018 class. “The biggest problems are when people have a bunch of systems that have to talk together,” Cunniffe siad. “Optic’s really good at syncing that code. If you change something on the backend, it’ll update the front end. That’s a big problem that anyone who develops anything complex. We generate a lot of unit tests for people, speed up the development of new features, and larger companies are using us as an advanced linter to ensure developers write code that conforms to their standards.” Optic works as a little Clippy-like object within an IDE, where developers can search for things to add to a slice of code. The processing is all done locally, and the project itself is open source with a free version (in addition to a paid version for larger teams). While there are a number of other code-generating tools, Cunniffe says Optic competes primarily with those kinds of Google searches for Stack Overflow results, and one of the primary reasons it’s better is that any changes on any part of the code will propagate through existing code throughout a system. “Code generators had been around for a long time,” Cunniffe said. “There’s a ton of tradeoffs to tools that existed, people wanted stuff that was useful but didn’t change their workflow. They could also only be used once, so there’s not as much utility, and there wasn’t work to maintain the code. [Code search engines] are really useful, but the biggest drawback they have is it’s not your code. What sets us apart is it’ll help you generate those snippets but it’ll do that in a smart way. All the args and parameters are variables in your own code.” |
Epic Games sidesteps the Play Store with Fortnite for Android launch | Jordan Crook | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | Epic Games continues to spread the love… to consumers, at least. Following the launches of Fortnite Battle Royale and earlier this summer, Epic Games is now confirming that the Android version of the game will be available exclusively through the Fortnite website. Users can visit Fortnite.com and download the Fortnite Launcher, which will then allow them to load Fortnite Battle Royale onto their devices. When asked why Epic would choose to distribute the game via their own website instead the more official channel of the Google Play Store, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told TechCrunch in an email: On open platforms like PC, Mac, and Android, Epic’s goal is to bring its games directly to customers. We believe gamers will benefit from competition among software sources on Android. Competition among services gives consumers lots of great choices and enables the best to succeed based on merit. Of course, Sweeney didn’t mention the 30 percent fee that goes to Google each time a user makes an in-app purchase, but it’s hard to imagine that’s not a factor in the decision. In-game purchases are a huge source of revenue for Epic. After all, Fortnite Battle Royale is still a free download across all platforms. That said, Epic Games has already made more than on the game through in-game purchases alone. For context on that 30 percent fee, Epic Games is making approximately $2 million per day as of July, according to . Using a virtual currency called V-Bucks, players can buy skins, pick axes, gliders and emotes, none of which offer a competitive advantage. Epic declined to clarify if mobile users have the same purchasing behavior as PC and console players. But if they do on Android, Epic will make 100 percent of the revenue. Epic Games also declined to give an exact date for the launch, still simply saying that the game will launch this “summer.” That said, you can expect to see the same game, and the same cross-play compatibility, on the Android version of Fortnite Battle Royale when it launches. One potential drawback to the launch will be security. As points out, loads of people will enable unknown sources in settings, forgetting to turn it off after, which could end up being a problem down the line. We’ll be sure to let you know more specific information around the launch date and supported devices as soon as we hear more from Epic Games. |
What we know about the Note 9 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | products a closely guarded secret, like they were nuclear codes or ingredients to a popular cola. Others seem less concerned about the whole thing, as long as it keeps people talking. Based from the Galaxy Note 9 to date, it seems that Samsung falls firmly into the latter camp. Of course, it’s key to point out that we won’t know what the new handset is all about until its big reveal at Unpacked on Thursday. But also, we really know what it’s all about because, I mean, look at all these leaks. That said, there’s probably still plenty of reason to pay attention to the event. Given the fact that the company opted not to wait to announce the could point to even more big product announcements in the coming months. There have been various other rumors swirling around these past few weeks and months, including a lot of speculation around a new watch that could make its debut at the same event. The Note 9, on the other hand, has all but stood up and announced its presence. In addition to your standard array of rumors, there have been a few egregious leaks on Samsung’s part, including a top executive using the new device in public and Samsung posting a . Here’s what we know so far about the upcoming phablet. By all accounts, the design language hasn’t changed much since the last generation device — in fact, that’s likely the reason DJ Koh thought he could go unnoticed using the phone. There is, however, one major tell that tipped off viewers to the fact that the executive was using something new. Originally rumored to be located under screen, the fingerprint sensor has, indeed, been moved. This time, out, however, it’s under the camera, rather than beside it — addressing a key complaint with the Note 8’s design, which found users fumbling with the camera lens when attempting to unlock the device. The dimensions are reportedly roughly the same here, as well. At 161.9 x 76.3 x 8.8mm, the device is marginally shorter than its predecessors, due perhaps in part to thinner bezels on the top and bottom. The display, meanwhile, is the ever so slightly larger at 6.4-inches to the 8’s 6.3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWw7Jn9GVfY Samsung’s made it pretty clear from the start that battery life is a primary focus for the new device. The company appeared to confirm early rumors that the handset would be sporting a 4,000mAh battery in an early teaser that openly mocked the iPhone’s relatively small offering (as is Samsung’s M.O. these days). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM2iiQNqnVs That’s a 700mAh jump over the Note 8’s offering, and puts the forthcoming handset toward the top of the phone battery heap. It also bucks Samsung’s recent trend of battery modesty, in the wake of the ongoing Note 7 fiasco. The company apologized profusely, instituted strict testing guidelines, and the phone buying public appears to have mostly forgiven and forgotten the whole kerfuffle. Subsequent teasers, meanwhile, have focused on additional storage and performance enhancements. A massive 512GB version is rumored to be on tap and will no doubt cost a pretty penny. That can be augmented by up to a terrabyte, courtesy of the microSD slot. – – Samsung Galaxy Note 9 live images leaked — /LEAKS (@Slashleaks) This is a no-brainer. Camera updates have been the focus of virtually every flagship phone release. That said, this is one of the few pieces of the phone that’s still a relative mystery. The company’s beloved stylus was clearly a focus from the outset. In fact, the shows a closeup of the S-Pen’s button on a yellow background. The new leaked video confirms the vibrant new color scheme, which, at the very least, should make it a bit harder to lose. S Pen? — Evan Blass (@evleaks) The company has also strongly hinted that S-Pen improvements will be a focus for the new phone, but these have mostly managed to stay under wraps. Suggested functionality includes non-drawing controls for things like music playback and remote unlock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_MjXbX3VA Yep, still here. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that the company for what it perversely deemed a “double-dongle” required to listen to music and charge the phone at the same time. It remains a key differentiator between Samsung’s handsets and the iPhone, and as such, is likely sticking around for a wwhile. All of the leaks thus far appear to confirm this. |
Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake NYC venture totals | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | Boston has regained its longstanding place as the second-largest U.S. startup funding hub. After years of trailing New York City in total annual venture investment, Massachusetts is taking the lead in 2018. Venture investment in the Boston metro area hit $5.2 billion so far this year, on track to be the highest annual total in years. The Massachusetts numbers year-to-date are about 15 percent higher than the New York City total. That puts Boston’s biotech-heavy venture haul apparently second only to Silicon Valley among domestic locales thus far this year. And for New England VCs, the latest numbers also confirm already well-ingrained opinions about the superior talents of local entrepreneurs. “Boston often gets dismissed as a has-been startup city. But the successes are often overlooked and don’t get the same attention as less successful, but more hypey companies in San Francisco,” Blake Bartlett, a partner at Boston-based venture firm , told Crunchbase News. He points to local success stories like online prescription service , which Amazon just snapped up for $1 billion, and online auto marketplace , which went public in October and is now valued around $4.7 billion. Meanwhile, fresh capital is piling up in the coffers of local startups with all the intensity of a New England snowstorm. In the chart below, we look at funding totals since 2012, along with reported round counts. In the interest of rivalry, we are also showing how the Massachusetts startup ecosystem compares to New York over the past five years. So what’s the reason for Boston’s 2018 successes? It’s impossible to pinpoint a single cause. The New England city’s startup scene is broad and has deep pockets of expertise in biotech, enterprise software, AI, consumer apps and other areas. Still, we’d be remiss not to give biotech the lion’s share of the credit. So far this year, biotech and healthcare have led the New England dealmaking surge, accounting for the majority of invested capital. Once again, local investors are not surprised. “Boston has been the center of the biotech universe forever,” said Dylan Morris, a partner at Boston and Silicon Valley-based VC firm . That makes the city well-poised to be a leading hub in the sector’s , which is capitalizing on a long-term shift toward more computational approaches to diagnosing and curing disease. Moreover, it goes without saying that the home city of MIT has a particularly strong reputation for so-called deep tech — using really complicated technology to solve really hard problems. That’s reflected in the big funding rounds. For instance, the largest Boston-based funding recipient of 2018, , is a developer of mRNA-based drugs that raised $625 million across two late-stage rounds. Besides Moderna, other big rounds for companies with a deep tech bent went to , which is focused on engineering T cells for cancer therapy, and (based in both Boston and New York), which is deploying the world’s first millimeter wave band active phased array technology for consumer broadband. Other sectors saw some jumbo-sized rounds too, including enterprise software, 3D printing and even apparel. Boston also benefits from the . A plethora of rounds raised at $100 million or more fueled the city’s rise in the venture funding rankings. So far this year, have raised rounds of that magnitude or more, compared to 12 in all of 2017. Boston companies are going public and getting acquired at a brisk pace too this year, and often for big sums. At least seven metro-area startups have sold for $100 million or more in disclosed-price acquisitions this year, according to Crunchbase data. In the lead is online prescription drug service PillPack. The second-biggest deal was , a provider of analytics for big financial institutions that sold to S&P Global for $550 million. IPOs are huge, too. A total of have gone public so far this year, of which 15 are life science startups. The largest offering was for , a developer of red cell therapeutics, followed by cybersecurity provider . Meanwhile, many local companies that went public in the past few years have since seen their values skyrocket. Bartlett points to examples including online retailer (market cap of $10 billion), marketing platform (market cap $4.8 billion) and enterprise software provider (sold to Salesforce for $2.8 billion). Recollections of a frigid April sojourn in Massachusetts are too fresh for me to comfortably utter the phrase “Boston is hot.” However, speaking purely about startup funding, and putting weather aside, the Boston scene does appear to be seeing some real escalation in temperature. Of course, it’s not just Boston. Supergiant venture funds are surging all over the place this year. Morris is even bullish on the arch-rival a few hours south: “New York and Boston love to hate each other. But New York’s doing some amazing things too,” he said, pointing to efforts to invigorate the biotech startup ecosystem. Still, so far, it seems safe to say 2018 is shaping up as Boston’s year for startups. |
India may become next restricted market for U.S. cloud providers | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | Data sovereignty is on the rise across the world. Laws and regulations increasingly require that citizen data be stored in local data centers, and often restricts movement of that data outside of a country’s borders. , although it’s relatively porous. is much more strict, and forced and . Now, it appears that India will join this policy movement. , an influential cloud policy panel has recommended that India mandate data localization in the country, for investigative and national security reasons, in a draft report set to be released later this year. , who founded Infosys, the IT giant. That report would match . The government’s said that data sovereignty is a top mission for the country. The report called for the government by 2022 to “Establish a comprehensive data protection regime for digital communications that safeguards the privacy, autonomy and choice of individuals and facilitates India’s effective participation in the global digital economy.” It’s that last line that is increasingly the objective of governments around the world. While privacy and security are certainly top priorities, governments now recognize that the economics of data are going to be crucial for future innovation and growth. Maintaining local control of data — through whatever means necessary — ensures that cloud providers and other services have to spend locally, even in a global digital economy. India is both a crucial and an ironic manifestation of this pattern. It is crucial because of the size of its economy: public cloud revenues in the country , according to Gartner’s estimates, an annual growth rate of 37.5%. It is ironic because much of the historical success of India’s IT industry has been its ability to offer offshoring and data IT services across borders. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made development and rapid economic growth a top priority of his government. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images) India is certainly no stranger to localization demands. In areas as diverse as and , the country maintains strict rules around local ownership and investment. While those rules have been opening up slowly since the 1990s, the explosion of interest in cloud computing has made the gap in regulations around cloud much more apparent. If the draft report and its various recommendations become law in India, it would have significant effects on public cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Alibaba, all of whom have cloud operations in the country. In order to comply with the regulations, they would almost certainly have to expend significant resources to build additional data centers locally, and also enforce data governance mechanisms to ensure that data didn’t flow from a domestic to a foreign data center accidentally or programmatically. , since they’re the only ones with the scale to be able to competently handle the thicket of constantly changing regulations that govern this space. In the India case though, the expense may well be warranted. Given the phenomenal growth of the Indian cloud IT sector, it’s highly likely that the major cloud providers are already planning a massive expansion to handle the increasing storage and computing loads required by local customers. Depending on how simple the regulations are written, there may well be limited cost to the rules. One question will involve what level of foreign ownership will be allowed for public cloud providers. Given that several foreign companies already exist in the marketplace, it might be hard to completely eliminate them entirely in favor of local competitors. Yet, the large providers will have their work cut out for them to ensure the market stays open to all. The real costs though would be borne by other companies, such as startups who rely on customer datasets to power artificial intelligence. Can Indian datasets be used to train an AI model that is used globally? Will the economics be required to stay local, or will the regulations be robust enough to handle global startup innovation? It would be a shame if the very law designed to encourage growth in the IT sector was the one that put a dampener on it. India’s chief objective is to ensure that Indian data benefits Indian citizens. That’s a laudable goal on the surface, but deeply complicated when it comes time to write these sorts of regulations. Ultimately, consumers should have the right to park their data wherever they want — with a local provider or a foreign one. Data portability should be key to data sovereignty, since it is consumers who will drive innovation through their demand for best-in-class services. |
Patrick Stewart is returning to the role of Jean-Luc Picard for a new Star Trek series | Greg Kumparak | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | Did you ever think Patrick Stewart would return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard? Neither did he. But he will! Sir Pat Stew himself just announced the news on Instagram, timed to line up with an on-stage announcement at the Star Trek Las Vegas 2018 convention: I will always be very proud to have been a part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when we wrapped that final movie in the spring of 2002, I truly felt my time with Star Trek had run its natural course. It is, therefore, an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him. Seeking out new life for him, when I thought that life was over. During these past years, it has been humbling to hear stories about how The Next Generation brought people comfort, saw them through difficult periods in their lives or how the example of Jean-Luc inspired so many to follow in his footsteps, pursuing science, exploration and leadership. I feel I’m ready to return to him for the same reason – to research and experience what comforting and reforming light he might shine on these often very dark times. I look forward to working with our brilliant creative team as we endeavor to bring a fresh, unexpected and pertinent story to life once more. The official account for the new (but separate) series sheds light on a few more details: the story will focus on the “next chapter” of Picard’s life (after , presumably), and will be made available on CBS’ online subscription/original content service, CBS All Access. Make it so! will be returning to his iconic role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new series that tells the story of the next chapter in Picard’s life‼️ — Star Trek: Discovery (@startrekcbs) Stewart shared a few more details at the Las Vegas convention, noting that it was still early days and they’re still working out what it’ll all look like: He may not… be a captain anymore. He may not be the Jean-Luc that you recognize and know so well. It may be a very different individual; someone who has been changed by his experiences. Twenty years will have passed — more or less exactly the time between the last movie (Nemesis) and today. We have no scripts, as yet. We’re just talking, talking, talking storylines. It will be, I promise, I guarantee, something very, very different. But it will come to you with the same passion, and determination, and love of the material, and love of our followers and fans… exactly as we had it before. Alas, just about everything else about the show is still a mystery for now, presumably because it’s not all totally finalized yet. Name? Unknown. How many episodes? Who knows! Maybe what the world needs right now is some Star Trek. Not the flashy, snappy JJ Abrams Trek — just good ol’ Picard out there getting his Prime Directive on. Here’s Patrick Stewart’s surprise Star Trek convention visit in full, as uploaded by Jaime Bastidas (the announcement comes in at 9:20): |
Virus shuts down factories of major iPhone component manufacturer TSMC | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | Apple touts the cybersecurity of its iPhone, but less can be said for the exclusive manufacturer who makes the processor for the iPhone. Semiconductor foundry TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, was hit by a virus late Friday night, which forced it to shut down several factories . The virus and the shutdown were confirmed by TSMC representatives. It is not clear at this time which factories were hit, or whether those factories were producing the iPhone’s main processor. , and supply chain disruptions in the critical month of August could have significant adverse consequences for the rapid availability of the new phone before the key Christmas holiday. TSMC has grown to become the largest independent semiconductor foundry in the world, . The company has benefitted from partnerships with smartphone companies like Apple, which produces the designs for its own A-series chips and then contracts out their manufacturing to foundries. TSMC is a critical partner for the launch of the new iPhone. It announced earlier this year that , which will drive performance while limiting energy usage. The origins of the virus are not known, although a statement by the company to Bloomberg said that it wasn’t introduced by a hacker. Cyberattacks are nothing new to the island nation, which has increasingly faced sophisticated cyberattacks, mostly originating from China, which holds deep antipathy for Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen. Taiwan’s government websites have , with the bulk believed to be originating from China. that Chinese cyberattacks had grown more successful, even as their total volume has declined. Taiwan’s local elections will be held later this year in November, and as the date approaches. Alongside Foxconn, TSMC is one of Taiwan’s most important and profitable companies, and is an obvious target both due to its wealth and scale, as well as its centrality in the increasingly fraught cross-straight relations between China and Taiwan. China has made , and companies like TSMC are deeply competitive with mainland foundries. That’s the paranoid context for many tech executives in Taiwan, and while the culprit of this particular virus is not yet publicly known, eyes and fingers are already beginning to point in one direction. More information about the attack is expected to be available next week. |
Washington hit China hard on tech influence this week | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | After months of back-and-forth negotiations, Washington moved rapidly this past week to fend off the increasing transcendence of China’s tech industry, with and the . — the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — since the proposal was first floated late last year. The committee is charged with protecting America’s economic interests by preventing takeovers of companies by foreign entities where the transaction could have deleterious national security consequences. The committee and its antecedents have slowly gained powers over the past few decades since the Korean War, but this week, it suddenly gained a whole lot more. Through the , which was rolled into the must-pass and passed by Congress this week, CFIUS is gaining a number of new powers, more resources and staff, more oversight, and a charge to massively expand its influence in any M&A process involving foreign entities. , but I want to highlight a few of the changes that I think are going to have an outsized effect on Silicon Valley and the tech industry more widely. One of the top priorities of this legislation was to make it more difficult for Chinese venture capital firms to invest in American startups and pilfer intellectual property or acquire confidential user data. Congress fulfilled that goal in two ways. First, the definition of a “covered transaction” has been massively expanded, with a focus on “critical technology” industries. In the past, there was an expectation that a foreign entity had to essentially buy out a company in order to trigger a CFIUS review. That jurisdiction has now been expanded to include such actions as adding a member to a company’s board of directors, even in cases where an investment is essentially passive. That means that the typical VC round could now trigger a review in Washington — and in the fast timelines of startup fundraising, that might be enough friction to keep Chinese venture capital out of the American ecosystem. Given that Chinese venture capital (at least by some measures) has , this provision will have huge ramifications for startups and their valuations. The second element Congress added was requiring that CFIUS receive all partnership agreements that a company has signed with a foreign investor. Often in a transaction, there is a main agreement spelling out the overall structure of a deal, and then side agreements with individual investors with special terms not shared with the wider syndicate, such as the right to access internal company data or intellectual property. By requiring further disclosure, CFIUS will have a more holistic picture of a deal and any risks it might add for national security. It’s important to note that Congress was keen on balancing the need for investment with the need of national security. Through oversight provisions, including allowing CFIUS decisions to be contested in the DC Court of Appeals, Congress has designed the reform to be fairer, even as it takes a harder line on certain transactions. It will take many months for the provisions to come in full force, so some of the effects of this bill won’t be felt until the end of next year. Nonetheless, Congress has sent a clear message of its intent. Congress’ national security concerns in financial transactions are also crossing the Atlantic. British Prime Minister Theresa May and her government are , and the to ensure that transactions are in the best interests of the continent. All of these legislative moves are a response to Chinese foreign direct investment, while almost disappearing in North America. President Trump signed tariffs on China earlier this year. Now, the administration wants to more than double them. That disappearance is a function of the on-going trade dispute between the U.S. and China, which crescendoed this past week. The Trump administration said it is considering increasing tariffs , significantly heightening the tariffs it had . , with the Chinese Commerce Ministry saying that it would put tariffs on $60 billion worth of American goods in retaliation if the U.S. followed through with its threat. So far, the tech industry appears to have been more insulated from the back-and-forth than expected, although the increasing scope and intensity of tariffs could change that calculus. , saying that “Tariffs could also make the Company’s products more expensive for customers, which could make the Company’s products less competitive and reduce consumer demand.” Legal boilerplate for sure, but it is the first time the company has included such a provision in its filing. The tariffs drama is going to continue in the weeks and months ahead. But this week in particularly was a watershed for U.S. and China technology relations, and a busy week for tech lobbyists and policy officials. For startups, most of this news basically boils down to the following: the U.S. is one market, and China is another. Cross-investing and cross-distribution just aren’t going to be easy as they were even a few months ago. Pick a market — one market — and focus your energies there. Clearly, it’s going to be tough times for anyone caught in the middle between the two. |
The greedy ways Apple got to $1 trillion | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 4 | richest company ever with $243 billion in cash, Apple sure cuts corners in the stingiest ways. The hardware giant became the . Yet it’s tough to reconcile Apple earning $11 billion in profit per quarter with it still screwing us over on cords and keyboards. The “it just works” philosophy has slipped through the cracks of the money-printing machine. It’s not that Apple couldn’t afford to fix the problems, it’s just ensnared in hubris such that it doesn’t see them as important. We still turn to Apple because it makes the best core products. But the edges of the customer experience have frayed like the wires of a Lightning cable. The key to Apple’s fortune is obviously selling high margin iPhones, not these ways it nickels and dimes us. But the company has an opportunity to raise its standards after this milestone, and win back the faith that could push it to a $2 trillion market cap. Image via [Update 2/13/19: Six months after we recommended Apple add a prominent “Manage Subscriptions” button in your Account info, what Apple has done. Success!] Apple has added the “Manage Subscriptions” button I suggested. Image and change spotted by Image via |
null | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 3 | null |
LemonBox brings US vitamins and health products to consumers in China | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 5 | China is rising in many ways — the economy, consumer spending and technology — but still many of its population looks overseas, and particularly to the West, for cues on lifestyle and health. That’s a theme that’s being seized by , a China-U.S. startup that lets Chinese consumers buy U.S. health products at affordable prices. Indeed, the recent scare around Chinese vaccinations, which saw , has only fueled demand for overseas health products which LemonBox founder Derek Weng discovered himself when his father was diagnosed as having high blood sugar levels. Weng, then working in the U.S. for Walmart, was able to look up and buy the right medicine pills for his father and bring them back to China himself. He realized, however, that others are not so fortunate. After polling friends and family, he set up an experimental WeChat app in 2016 that dispensed health information such as articles and information. Within a year, it had racked up 30,000 subscribers and given him the confidence to jump into the business fully. Today, LemonBox allows Chinese consumers to buy its own-branded daily vitamin packs from the U.S.. Further down the line, the goal is to expand into more specific verticals, including mother and baby, beauty and daily supplements, according to Weng, who believes that the timing is good. “For the first time in China, people are taking a major interest in health and are working out, while society is becoming more developed,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “We estimate that Chinese consumers are investing 30 percent of their income in health.” The LemonBox daily pack of vitamins. Since its full launch three weeks ago, LemonBox has pulled in 700 customers with 40 percent purchasing a three-month bundle package and the remainder a monthly order, Weng said. Typical basket size is around 300 RMB, or nearly $45. To get the business off the ground, Weng needed expert support and his co-founder Hang Xu — who is also LemonBox’s “Chief Nutrition Scientist” — has spent 10 years in the field of nutrition science. Xu holds a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, is a U.S.-registered dietitian and has published over 10 research papers. The startup’s third co-founder, Eddy Meng (CMO), is a graduate of Chinese app store startup Wandoujia two years ago. Right now, LemonBox has offices in the U.S. and China and it is squarely focused on e-commerce but Weng said the company is looking to introduce other kinds of health services. That could include consultations with dietary experts and specific offerings for patients leaving a hospital or in other long-term care situations, as well as potentially own-label products. “We look at Stitch Fix for inspiration,” Weng said. “Right now, it leverages data to develop its own in-house private label products that improve on margin and the accuracy of recommendations. This kind of data and further services will be the next stage for us.” LemonBox raised a seed round in March, which included participation from Y Combinator, and as part of Y Combinator’s current program, it’ll present to prospective investors at the program’s demo day. Already, though, Weng said there’s been interest from investors which the company is thinking over. Interestingly, it was fourth time lucky entering YC for Weng, who had before applied with previous startups unsuccessfully. This time it was entirely circumstantial. He applied to be in the audience for . Unbeknownst to him, YC picked out a handful of attendees whose companies were of interest, and, after an interview that Weng didn’t realize was an audition, LemonBox was selected and fast-tracked into the organization’s latest program. In addition, YC joined the startup’s seed funding round which had initially closed in March. That anecdotal evidence says much of YC’s effort to grab a larger slice of China’s startup ecosystem. and With events like the one in May, which helped snare LemonBox, and a new China-centric role for partner Eric Migicovsky, who founded Pebble, YC is trying harder than ever. |
Apple has removed Infowars podcasts from iTunes | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 5 | and after it removed Infowars, the conspiracy theorist organization helmed by Alex Jones, from its iTunes and podcasts apps. Unlike Google and Facebook, which removed four Infowars videos on the basis that the content violated its policies, Apple’s action is wider-reaching. The company has withdrawn all episodes of five of Infowars’ six podcasts from its directory of content, leaving just one, a show called ‘Real News With David Knight.’ The removals were first spotted on Twitter. Later, Apple confirmed it took action on account of the use of hate speech which violates its content guidelines. “Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Apple’s action comes after fellow streaming services and removed Infowars on account of its use of hate speech. Jones has used Infowars, and by association the platforms of these media companies, to broadcast a range of conspiracy theories which have included claims 9/11 was an inside job and alternate theories to the San Bernardino shootings. In the case of another U.S. mass shooting, Sandy Hook, Jones and Infowars’ peddling of false information and hoax theories was so severe that some of the families of the deceased, who have been harassed online and faced death threats, have been forced to move multiple times. A group is . |
July sets a record for number of $100M+ venture capital rounds | Jason Rowley | 2,018 | 8 | 5 | In July 2018, the tech sector’s leisure class — venture capitalists — kicked investments into overdrive, at least when it comes to financing supergiant venture rounds of $100 million or more (in native or as-converted USD values). With accounting for just over $15 billion at time of writing, July likely set an all-time record for the number of huge venture deals struck in a single month. The table below has just the top 10 largest rounds from the month. (A full list of all the supergiant venture rounds can be found .) It’s certainly a record high for the past decade. Earlier this month, we set out to find . We found that, prior to the tail end of 2013, supergiant VC rounds were relatively rare. In a given month between 2007 and the start of the supergiant round era, a $100 million round would be announced every few weeks, on average. And many months had no such deals come across the wires. Of course, that hasn’t been the case recently. Why is this happening? As with most things in entrepreneurial finance, context matters. There are some obvious factors to consider. At the later-stage end of the spectrum, . Billions of dollars in dry powder is in the offing as venture investors continue to raise new and ever-larger venture funds. All that capital has to be put to work . But there’s another, and perhaps less obvious, cog in the machine: the changing part VCs play in a company’s life cycle. The current climate presents a stark contrast to the last time the market was this active (in the late 1990s). Back then, companies looking to raise nine and 10-figure sums would typically have to turn to private equity firms or boutique late-stage tech investors, or raise from the public market via an IPO. Now some venture capital firms are able to provide financial and strategic support from the first investment check a private company cashes to when it goes public or gets acquired. On the one hand, this prolongs the time it takes for companies to exit. But on the other, some venture firms get to double, triple and quadruple down on their best bets. But as in Newtonian physics, a market that goes up will also come down. The pace of supergiant funding announcements will have to slow at some point. What are some of the potential catalysts for such a slowdown? Keep an eye out for one or more of the following: All this being said, there’s little sign that the market is slowing down. Crunchbase has already recorded four rounds north of $100 million in the first two days of August. Most notably, ride-hailing company Grab snagged (after gulping down $1 billion last month) at a post-money valuation of $11 billion. If you believe the stereotypes, venture investors are either already on vacation or packing their bags for late summer jaunts to exotic locales at this time of year. But, as it turns out, . So even though the dog days of summer are upon us, August could end up being just as wild as July. |
Original Content podcast: The end is in sight on ‘Orange is the New Black’ | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 5 | is back for a sixth season, dealing with the fallout from season five and shifting the location to the maximum security wing of Litchfield Prison. On the latest episode of , we’re joined by Megan Rose Dickey to discuss the latest developments on one of Netflix’s longest-running shows. Some of us are more on-board with the show than others, but we’re all impressed by the show’s balance between drama and comedy. We also speculate about whether the story may be winding down, and whether ‘s seventh season might be its last. Before our review, we recap the week’s streaming and entertainment news, including , and . 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!) |
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