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Survios co-founders Nathan Burba and James Iliff are joining us at TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | |
How corporations and startups can more effectively work with one another | Maria Palma | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Build versus buy? Potential partner or potential disruptor? The option set for corporations to collaborate with startups used to be simpler. Today, the options seem almost endless: build, partner, buy, integrate with their APIs, co-develop product together, white-label a part of their technology, share specific data sets, cross-sell each other’s products — and more. The notion of a straightforward “vendor” relationship doesn’t apply anymore. The landscape has also changed. If the corporate posture of the past around innovation could be described as “not invented here” with a strong bias toward building internally, today’s corporate posture leans in a much different direction, with many thinking about how to disrupt themselves before an external party beats them to it. Not surprisingly, this has created more corporate and startup partnerships. While getting this type of collaboration right is beneficial for both parties, if you speak to most startups selling into large enterprises or corporate executives looking to partner with startups today, you will find many justifiable frustrations on both sides. As the vice president of Business Development at RRE Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York, a major part of my role is leading our business development initiatives, where we enable collaboration between corporations and startups. Before this role, I spent time on the corporate side and on the startup side, so I’ve gotten to see this dynamic from both angles throughout my career. While there is no silver bullet for this type of work, here are a few best practices I’ve learned, sometimes through painful mistakes, or observed along the way. Corporate executives expect you to be prepared. Spend the time to understand what their business might be going through. Do they need new growth opportunities? Do they need to cut costs? Given the size of these companies, it’s easy to find information on them. Spend time reading recent press, analyst reports on the company or understanding more about the division you are speaking to. You want to walk in saying some version of “Here is how I think my product can be relevant to you and help you with one of your key objectives” instead of saying some version of “Here is my shiny object — don’t you want to buy it?” The last thing you want to happen is for a corporation to agree to use or test your product only for you to tell them in the next sentence that you haven’t yet launched or built what you just showed them. Be realistic with the corporation about what you can do for them today, tomorrow and in the future. They will be more flexible than you might think if they understand your timelines and product road map. We might all be reading headlines about Mars exploration these days, but let’s ground ourselves in a different space reality. It’s not uncommon for major Fortune 500 companies today to still be operating tech or leveraging data models that were built before man was put on the moon. Your technology might be incredible, but if they can’t test it easily or seamlessly integrate it with their tech stack, you are unlikely to get real traction. Think of your own trajectory as a company and how hard it has been to scale your company, from getting the right people to growing revenue and building the right product — and every detail in-between. Now multiply that by a million. Even though Fortune 500 corporations have more resources in absolute magnitude, they have all the same problems you do, often with more complexities, given their scale. If integrating your product has negative consequences for them, it will likely affect millions of customers, billions of dollars of revenue and have major brand and shareholder consequences, so have some empathy on why they want to properly vet your product and company first. Effective startup leadership requires one to zoom in and out on a daily basis, quickly and seamlessly. The ability to quickly shift gears and move between big picture and small details is crucial for operating early-stage companies. It’s also essential for working with corporations. Depending on the meeting, a prospective client might want you to go into the technical weeds or have a strategy discussion on a use case that’s not on your road map. Be ready to fly at both levels, and also be deliberate about where you personally spend your time, as it’s your scarcest asset while running a resource-constrained startup. While it can be tempting to meet with every startup employing the right buzzword of the moment (artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning), you want to avoid going on a startup safari where you see a number of cool things in the wild and walk away without doing anything differently in your organization. Instead of meeting with technology companies based on buzzwords, identify real problems your organization needs to solve and find companies that can help you solve those problems. What matters in the end is translating technology to real tangible use cases that are digestible internally in your organization. As a corporate executive I know puts it, “Maybes kill startups. A fast No is the best thing after Yes.” If you know you are not going to leverage the company’s product, say no as quickly as possible. With fewer resources, startups don’t have the same meeting after meeting bandwidth as you. Remember, saying no now isn’t no forever. Should you find yourself in a different situation a few months from now, you can always go back and revisit the company. In either case, please give startups real feedback, especially when you don’t move forward with them. In many cases these companies are early on in their growth trajectory, and providing honest feedback helps them build their own product and business. Unless you are one of the few corporations that have set this up well, most of your internal processes (IT Review, Procurement and Sourcing, Compliance, Security, Risk Analysis and Legal Review) for commercial vendor relationships are not set up with smaller companies in mind, which have limited HR and legal teams. To innovate more quickly, create a different set of processes for these types of partnerships that allow you to still assess risk but in a faster, more streamlined way. If your ability to partner is slower than the pace of change, you will never be ahead of the curve. Think about innovation along different time horizons. A good place to start is McKinsey’s methodology. Consider how you will collaborate with companies along these different time horizons. The most senior level in your organization should take this view as this conflicts with focusing on real use cases today. Make sure that your company is not just integrating incremental changes at all levels. Find ways to test new technologies with your own existing systems and data in a way that replicates scale without affecting your existing business. You don’t want to spend months creating a partnership only to find out the technology isn We think a lot about corporate and startup collaboration and welcome any dialogue on the topic; contact us at platform@rre.com. |
Inky’s book recommendation app helps you find new reads | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Amazon social reading service Goodreads five years ago, squelching the life out of the competitive landscape, as as it was. So it’s promising to see a new app appear with the goal of getting more people to move off of Goodreads for social book recommendations. That app is , built by two bookworm friends who wanted a better way to track their reading and find recommendations of what to read next. The app is very much an indie effort for the time being, and not as polished as a similar app, . However, it works well for those who are looking for a simple way of tracking their “read” list along with their “to read” list, and who want a way to see what other good books people are into right now. Explains co-founder Simon Bruno, “Mobile apps for avid readers just suck. The market leader in social networks for avid readers, Goodreads, is practically synonymous with archaic,” he says. After asking around about what people want in an app for readers, he recruited his friend Mike Salvador to help build it. Both just graduated from college, and have decided to work on Inky full-time. “No one knows who we are,” Bruno says. “We’re definitely not funded.” But, he adds, they’re updating the app every few days and getting “little sleep in the process.” Currently, you can using Facebook or email, and then you’re presented with some pre-selected users to follow. You can check or uncheck these suggestions as you choose. There aren’t many users on the app at present, beyond around 1,000 early adopters and some Instagram book nerds, the co-founder notes. So you may want to at least seed your network with a few of them. You can then fill out your two bookshelves — “read” and “to read” — with books, by searching for titles. Once added, these are presented in a visual format, similar to how back in the day before its untimely demise. You also can tap on books’ covers to read a description, giving you the feeling of picking up a book at the store and reading its jacket. Unfortunately, the app only presents the new recommendations from those you follow and not their recommendation history in its home feed; but you can visit users’ profiles to check their lists until friends post something new. The founders say their goal right now is to take in user feedback, then build what they hear people want. They aren’t looking to make money off Inky just yet. “The goal is to partner with publishing houses to help launch new titles, similar to Goodreads’ business model,” says Bruno. “Once we’re confident we have something people absolutely love, we’ll turn our heads towards monetization,” he says. However, their vision is not to reproduce Goodreads in a more modern format. That is, Inky is not meant to be a catalog of all the books you’ve ever read, but rather a place for you to show off the books you think be read. For that reason, the team won’t offer a Goodreads import mechanism. Instead, its focus will be on recommendations. That may make sense to a point, but there are times you to read a book and then are unpleasantly disappointed by it. Your negative reaction is just as valuable to your network of book readers as are your recommendations. As an occasional Goodreads user myself, I can’t see making a full switch to Inky. I miss the “Currently Reading” shelf, the book lists, the discovery features and, of course, the much larger community. But Inky is one to watch as it grows. Inky is , but the team says an Android version is the works. |
Fortnite players can unlock a new emote if they enable two-factor authentication | Jordan Crook | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Historically, we haven’t been great about digital security. In 2016 (not long enough ago to feel OK about it), the were “123456” and “password.” Awareness has certainly grown, but some folks could still use a nudge in the right direction. Luckily, Fortnite Battle Royale maker Epic Games has . The company has introduced a new emote to the game — emotes are just one type of cosmetic upgrade that helped Epic rake in . However, this new Boogie Down emote is only available to folks who enable two-factor authentication on their Epic Games account. As you can expect, hackers and other malicious actors are well aware of both the popularity of Fortnite and users’ willingness to spend money on the game. Obviously, these accounts are attractive targets for “the bad guys.” Two-factor authentication — which asks for two separate verifications that you are you (usually a password and then an SMS confirmation) — has its shortcomings, but it’s most certainly an upgrade to a single password. Incentivizing better security practices is an interesting take, and may very well be the first time a game maker has used the technique. The Boogie Down emote (above) is the prize for enabling 2FA, and it was introduced as part of by Epic Games. In March, the company asked its community to submit dance moves, with the winner making it into the game. For what it’s worth, the actual dance seems way cooler than the emote in the game. [via ] |
Apple moves forward with its adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Apple has placed a series order for Foundation, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic series of science fiction stories and novels. earlier this year that , but this was just the latest of several attempts to adapt Foundation, including a version developed by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan for HBO. Now, however, it looks like Foundation really will happen at Apple, with David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman as showrunners. (Like Nolan, Goyer was one of the writers on The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, while Friedman created Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) The series will be produced by Skydance Television, and Asimov’s daughter Robyn will be one of the executive producers. The Foundation series (initially a set of stories published in the 1940s, then collected into book form in the ’50s and followed up by long novels that Asimov wrote in the ’80s) focuses on the fall of a long-lived Galactic Empire, with a small group of scientists at the edge of the galaxy working to preserve knowledge and minimize the period of chaos. Elements of that plot description might make it sound like the ingredients for Apple’s version of Star Wars— and indeed, Asimov’s work is . But in its print form, at least, Foundation is far from your typical space opera, focusing more on debate and political intrigue than action, and taking place over hundreds of years, with often interchangeable characters swapped out between stories. In other words, Goyer and Friedman will probably have to make some significant changes. These are my favorite books by my favorite author, so I’m more excited about this than any of the other original shows that Apple’s planning (even the company’s space opera, which is being ). I sure hope they don’t screw it up. |
Nikon embraces a mirrorless future with Z series cameras and lenses | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | The largest trend in photography over the last five years or so, not counting smartphones, has been the emergence and maturity of mirrorless camera systems. These operate in a very different manner from traditional SLRs, and as such market leaders with decades embedded in the latter — namely Canon and Nikon — have resisted making the shift. That changes for Nikon today with its announcement of the and , which show the company is making the change wholeheartedly. The Z series comprises both these two cameras and a new lens mount, which in many ways is the more important news for photographers. The F mount has been around for decades and boasts some of the world’s best glass. But ultimately a more or less clean break was needed, and the Z mount manages to provide that, as well as solid back-compatibility for those who can’t bear to part with their old standby kit. The cameras themselves, which have been rumored for ages and , are both full-frame, meaning their sensor is as big as a 35mm still-film frame. Full-frame cameras are generally intended for professionals or deep-pocketed hobbyists: bodies generally cost well over $1,000 but offer improved image quality for a variety of reasons. So it’s somewhat ambitious of Nikon to aim at this elevated market, where competition is tough, standards are high and prices are higher. Old favorites like the Canon 5D vie with new challengers like Sony’s a9, and it seems as if slowly but surely the latter are coming out on top, due in no small part to the advantages conferred on them by their mirrorless nature. The Z7 starts at $3,400, which puts it squarely in professional territory. The Z6, at $2,000, sacrifices resolution but offers some other advantages — aside from holding onto that $1,400. If it were me I’d go for the latter, no question. The Z7 is the new flagship, and it closely replicates the ability of the popular Nikon D850, while adding a variety of improvements. Most obvious is body size; the camera is much, much smaller and lighter than its SLR predecessor, but is still far from petite. It also improves on a few stats like burst speed and autofocus in ways that will be appreciated by pros, and a new 10-bit N-LOG video output mode should provide more flexibility in post. Its sibling, the Z6, has a lower megapixel count (24 versus 45) but further improves burst speed and may in fact prove superior in terms of video performance. Both make the switch to an electronic viewfinder, or EVF, and apparently Nikon was very particular about this component. The resolution of the OLED eyepiece is 1280×960, which sounds low compared with phone and VR displays, but should be fine — and really, motion and color are more important. The rear LCD is also OLED, as is a little up-facing status display on the top plate. Both also have in-body stabilization, which means lenses can be lighter and cheaper. The stabilization will work with older lenses too (more on this in a moment) and in cases where a long lens has its own stabilization system, the camera will defer to that at least on some axes. I haven’t had a chance to play with these in person but I expect to soon; in the meantime, as always, . For many, the biggest change will be the switch to the new Z-mount system. There will be a series of Z lenses, and bonny lenses they will be, with the new dimensions allowing improved optics across the board. Everyone is hot about a F/0.95 Noct lens Nikon has been teasing for 2019. But with a hundred million F-mount lenses out there, backwards compatibility is a must. For them there is the FTZ adapter, which fits between the Z and the old lens, bridging the old technology and the new. If the lens is relatively new and supports automatic aperture and focus, those will be available. And, in fact, these lenses will benefit from the new autofocus system and may perform better than they did originally, if not identically — slight changes will no doubt emerge from the addition of the new optics. Older lenses, such as classics with manual focus and aperture, will still fit the adapter but can’t be magically endowed with automatic features. The adapter is not inconsiderable in size — more like a pancake lens than a filter. So your favorite lightweight walk-around setup may be impacted negatively. But overall it seems like it should do nicely for most. Nikon has made its play, and the Z series looks like a natural jump for thousands of photographers who have stuck with the brand for years out of loyalty and investment. It doesn’t take much away, it adds quite a bit and in a few years it will probably be a no-brainer rather than a “well, maybe.” |
The consequences of indecency | Ron Wyden | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | I wrote the law that allows sites to be unfettered free speech marketplaces. I wrote that same law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to provide vital protections to sites that didn’t want to host the most unsavory forms of expression. The goal was to protect the unique ability of the internet to be the proverbial marketplace of ideas while ensuring that mainstream sites could reflect the ethics of society as a whole. In general, this has been a success — with one glaring exception. I never expected that internet CEOs would fail to understand one simple principle: that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children, is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography. If you want to be the CEO of an internet titan where schools communicate with students, artists with their fans or elected officials with their constituents, you need to limit content like pornography — and they all do. But for some reason, these CEOs think it’s entirely appropriate to allow these other forms of indecency to live on their platforms. Their ineptitude is threatening the very legal foundation of social media. Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it’s statutory. Failure by the companies to properly understand the premise of the law is the beginning of the end of the protections it provides. I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms. Even if government doesn’t take the dangerous step of regulating speech, just eliminating the 230 protections is enough to have a dramatic, chilling effect on expression across the internet. Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site. Boards of directors should have taken action long before now against CEOs who refuse to recognize this threat to their business. It’s telling that Reddit, of all the social media sites, has been on the forefront of striking a balance — telling because they’re the only site owned by a traditional pre-internet corporation. This balance is not the one I would have chosen — and certainly there have been missteps and failures — but an average user of Reddit won’t encounter the extremes of obscenity and indecency that it allows in darker corners of the site. And even they have defined certain speech as too indecent to be permitted on their platform. There are real consequences to social media hosting radically indecent speech, and those consequences are looming. They are threatening to undo more than 20 years of internet law and jurisprudence that has protected speech and expression as never before. The forces of government regulation and control never sleep. Unfortunately, the internet CEOs have been asleep at the wheel. |
TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 dives deep into artificial intelligence and machine learning | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | As fields of research, machine learning and artificial intelligence both date back to the 50s. More than half a century later, the disciplines have graduated from the theoretical to practical, real world applications. We’ll have some of the top minds in both categories to discuss the latest advances and future of AI and ML on stage and Disrupt San Francisco in early September. For the first time, Disrupt SF will be held in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It’s a huge space, which meant we could dramatically increase the amount of programming offered to attendees. And we did. . Tickets are still available even though the show is less than two weeks away. . The show features the themes currently facing the technology world including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Some of the top minds in AI and ML are speaking on several stages and some are taking audience questions. We’re thrilled to be joined by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China and current CEO of Sinovation Ventures, Colin Angle, co-founder and CEO of iRobots, Claire Delaunay, Nvidia VP of Engineering, and among others, Dario Gil, IBM VP of AI. is the CEO and chairman of Sinovation, a venture firm based in the U.S. and China, and he has emerged as one of the world’s top prognosticators on artificial intelligence and how the technology will disrupt just about everything. Dr. Lee wrote in The New York Times last year that AI is “poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs — mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too.” Dr. Lee will also be on our Q&A stage (after his interview on the Main Stage) to take questions from attendees. co-founded iRobot with fellow MIT grads Rod Brooks and Helen Greiner in 1990. Early on, the company provided robots for military applications, and then in 2002, introduced the consumer-focused Roomba. Angle has plenty to talk about. As the CEO and Chairman of iRobot, he led the company through the sale of its military branch in 2016 so the company can focus on robots in homes. If there’s anyone that knows how to both work with the military and manage consumers’ expectations with household robots, it’s Colin Angle and we’re excited to have him speaking at the event where he will also take questions from the audience on the Q&A stage. is vice president of engineering at Nvidia, where she is responsible for the Isaac robotics initiative and leads a team to bring Isaac to market for roboticists and developers around the world. Prior to joining Nvidia, Delaunay was the director of engineering at Uber, after it acquired Otto, the startup she co-founded. She was also the robotics program lead at Google and founded two companies, Botiful and Robotics Valley. Delaunay will also be on our Q&A stage (after his interview on the Main Stage) to take questions from attendees. , the head of IBM’s AI research efforts and quantum computing program, is coming to Disrupt Sf to talk about the current state of quantum computing. We may even see a demo or two of what’s possible today and use that to separate hype from reality. Among the large tech firms, IBM — and specifically the IBM Q lab — has long been at the forefront of the quantum revolution. Last year, the company showed off its 50-qubit quantum computer and you can already start building software for it using the company’s developer kit. is the CEO/Co-Founder of AISense Inc, based in Silicon Valley. Funded by Horizons Ventures (DeepMind, Waze, Zoom, Facebook), Tim Draper, David Cheriton of Stanford (first investor in Google), etc. AISense has created Ambient Voice Intelligence™ technologies with deep learning that understands human-to-human conversations. Its Otter.ai product digitizes all voice meetings and video conferences, makes every conversation searchable and also provides speech analytics and insights. Otter.ai is the exclusive provider of automatic meeting transcription for Zoom Video Communications. is the Vice President of Engineering at CyPhy Works, where she leads R&D, product design and development and manages the multi-disciplinary engineering team. Prior to joining CyPhy Works, she worked at Draper Laboratory as a division lead and developed the first human-centered engineering capability and expanded it to included machine intelligence and AI. Laura also grew multiple programs and engineering teams to contribute to the development and expansion of ATAK, which is now in wide use across the military. founded and runs Clinc to try to close the gap in conversational AI by emulating human intelligence to interpret unstructured, unconstrained speech. AI has the potential to change everything, but there is a fundamental disconnect between what AI is capable of and how we interface with it. Clinc is currently targeting the financial market, letting users converse with their bank account using natural language without any pre-defined templates or hierarchical voice menus. At Disrupt SF, Mars is set to debut other ways that Clinc’s conversational AI can be applied. Without ruining the surprise, let me just say that this is going to be a demo you won’t want to miss. After the demo, he will take questions on the Q&A stage. , the namesake founder of Rigetti Computing, will join us at Disrupt SF 2018 to explain Rigetti’s approach to quantum computing. It’s two-fold: on one front, the company is working on the design and fabrication of its own quantum chips; on the other, the company is opening up access to its early quantum computers for researchers and developers by way of its cloud computing platform, Forest. Rigetti Computing has raised nearly $70 million to date according to Crunchbase, with investment from some of the biggest names around. Meanwhile, labs around the country are already using Forest to explore the possibilities ahead. co-founded and eventually sold Cruise Automation to General Motors in 2016. He stuck around after the sale and still leads the company today. Since selling the company to GM, Cruise has scaled rapidly and seemed to maintain a scrappy startup feel though now a division of a massive corporation. The company had 30 self-driving test cars on the road in 2016 and later rolled out a high-definition mapping system. In 2017 the company started running an autonomous ride-hailing service for its employees in San Francisco, later announcing its self-driving cars would hit New York City. Recently SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $2.25 billion in GM Cruise Holdings LLC and when the deal closes, GM will invest an additional $1.1 billion. The investments are expected to inject enough capital into Cruise for the unit to reach commercialization at scale beginning in 2019. |
Housing startup Bungalow raises $14 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Moving to a new city can be tough for a number of reasons, but what’s arguably hardest about moving is a competitive and expensive housing market, and lack of a pre-existing social support network. That’s the problem startup Bungalow is trying to solve. , which just raised a $14 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Founders Fund, Atomic VC, Cherubic Ventures and Wing Ventures, offers people relatively affordable places to live with others who have been vetted by Bungalow’s platform. As part of the round, Keith Rabois of Khosla will join Bungalow’s board of directors. Bungalow also raised a $50 million debt facility to fuel its home growth costs. Bungalow had previously raised a $7 million seed round. Bungalow, which joins the likes of , aims to be cheaper than getting your own studio or one-bedroom apartment, and offer a better experience than finding a roommate via Craigslist. Bungalow works with homeowners to lease their homes as the master tenant for three years at time. From there, Bungalow rents out the property on a room-by-room basis while guaranteeing occupancy to the homeowners. “There aren’t as many families that are looking for these four, five, six-bedroom homes and so the incremental additional cost for those additional bedrooms is not commensurate with the individual rate at which we can lease out those individual bedrooms,” Bungalow co-founder and CEO Andrew Collins told me. “And so we were able to therefore basically create value out of that and then with scale that margin that we’re able to create within those given homes in an incredibly profitable and exciting coupling.” For the renter, Bungalow says it’s about 30-40 percent cheaper than a studio. Depending on the market, of course, the prices can vary. Bungalow also furnishes shared common spaces, provides utilities, Wi-Fi and housekeeping in the monthly rental cost. In addition to what’s provided inside the space, Bungalow hosts monthly events for members in its properties to meet each other within a given market. While Bungalow’s current model is leasing assets from homeowners, it’s set up to operate any type of asset, Collins said, whether that’s a joint-venture or independently owned by Bungalow. Within the next six to 12 months, Bungalow is looking to launch in up to 12 new markets in the U.S. Next year, Bungalow hopes to expand its offering outside of the U.S. |
Twitter ends support for iOS 9 and lower | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | Twitter says it’s ending support for all Twitter iOS users who are running older versions of the iOS operating system. According to a message in the app’s update text in its latest App Store release this week, only those users running iOS 10 or higher will continue to have a supported mobile client. The company’s message notes this decision will allow it to streamline its app development for all clients. Typically, moving off older platforms means a company can more quickly roll out new features and take advantage of the benefits provided by newer frameworks, without worrying how to support legacy users along the way. It’s not unprecedented for social apps to make this choice, either – LinkedIn and Snapchat also only support iOS 10 or higher. Facebook, meanwhile, caters to anyone on iOS 9 or above. iOS 10 was released nearly 2 years ago, and next month, Apple device owners will gain access to the public release of iOS 12. Ditching older versions of iOS is not as risky for Twitter as ditching users on older versions of Android, because a majority of iOS users upgrade when Apple rolls out a new mobile operating system. In fact, Apple’s indicates only 5% percent of users are still on iOS 9 or below. At Apple’s scale, that’s still millions, but translated to Twitter’s install base it’s a much lower number. During its Q2 2018 earnings, Twitter said it had 335 million monthly active users. And of course, many of those are running Twitter on Android. Presumably a very, small percentage of users are on iOS 9 or below. Twitter must believe it’s small enough to be an acceptance loss, if it comes to that. This would hardly be news except for the fact that the decision comes at a time when Twitter is losing users – it users in Q2 – and when Twitter has been killing off a number of other client applications, as well. The company had already shut down of the TweetDeck client app it acquired, and this year it shuttered along with most of its . It also ended support for legacy APIs, knowing that doing so would third-party clients’ ability to operate. And now it’s shedding a small number of iOS users, too. Twitter says that anyone still running iOS 9 or older will no longer receive updates, so those who want to receive performance improvements, bug fixes and new features will need to upgrade. With all these changes, it’s clear that Twitter is focused on limiting the number of platforms it has to support, so it can better address the needs of its users. Time will tell if it’s successful with that, however. |
Mixmax launches IFTTT-like rules to help you manage your inbox | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | , a service that aims to make email and other outbound communications more usable and effective, today announced the official launch of its new -like rules for automating many of the most repetitive aspects of your daily email workflow. On the one hand, this new feature is a bit like your standard email filter on steroids (and with connections to third-party tools like Slack, Salesforce, DocuSign, Greenhouse and Pipedrive). Thanks to this, you can now receive an SMS when a customer who spends more than $5,000 a month emails you, for example. But rules also can be triggered by any of the third-party services the company currently supports. Maybe you want to send out a meeting reminder based on your calendar entries, for example. You can then set up a rule that always emails a reminder a day before the meeting, together with all the standard info you’d want to send in that email. “One way we think about Mixmax is that we want to do for externally facing teams and people who talk a lot of customers what GitHub did for engineering and what Slack did for internal team communication,” Mixmax co-founder and CEO Olof Mathé told me. “That’s what we do for external communication.” While the service started out as a basic Chrome extension for Gmail, it’s now a full-blown email automation system that offers everything from easy calendar sharing to tracking when recipients open an email and, now, building rules around that. Mathé likened it to an executive assistant, but he stressed that he doesn’t think Mixmax is taking anybody’s jobs away. “We’re not here to replace other people,” he said. “We amplify what you are able to do as an individual and give you superpowers so you can become your own personal chief of staff so you get more time.” The new rules feature takes this to the next level and Mathé and his team plan to build this out more over time. He teased a new feature called “beast mode” that’s coming in the near future and that will see Mixmax propose actions you can take across different applications, for example. Many of the new rules and connectors will be available to all paying users, though some features, like access to your Salesforce account, will only be available to those on higher-tier plans. |
Crypto firm Pantera Capital is looking to raise up to $175 million for a new venture fund | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | , a San Francisco firm that has made its mark in recent years by investing early and often in a wide variety of digital assets, is looking to raise up to $175 million for its third venture fund — an enormous jump from the $25 million it deployed for its second venture fund and its $13 million debut venture fund, which it closed in 2013. Firm partner Paul Veradittakit says the target amount is a “function of how fast the space is moving, the talent coming in, the opportunities, and the sizing of rounds. With more interesting later-stage investments [on our radar], too, we want to be flexible and able to move with the market.” Whether the firm closes with $175 million or another number is an open question. A newly processed shows it has so far rounded up more than $71 million in capital commitments from 90 investors, an amount that Veradittakit calls a first close. Certainly, Pantera is accustomed to managing meaningful sums of money. In addition to its venture funds, which are structured like most traditional venture funds — they feature a 10-year investing period, similar economics, and involve good old-fashioned checks to startups in exchange for some amount of equity — the firm is also juggling three other strategies. As we , one of its newest funds is a hedge fund that’s focused exclusively on initial coin offerings. As firm founder Dan Morehead told us at the time, Pantera buys pre-sale ICOs, “basically getting a discount to the ICO price by getting in early, when it’s just a team and a white paper.” Meanwhile, Morehead had added, “We help provide the right connections, whether in terms of marketing or recruiting or business development. The vehicle is evergreen, says Veradittakit, meaning it has an indefinite fund life that lets investors come and go. The other two other funds that Pantera currently oversees are also structured like hedge funds. One is a Bitcoin fund that has attracted plenty of investors over the years, and returned a lot to them, too, according to the calculations of Morehead. In fact, he wrote two weeks ago that the fund, launched five years ago, has enjoyed a lifetime return of . The very last fund invests in cryptocurrencies that are already trading on exchanges — an approach that includes machine learning to algorithmically invest in crypotcurrencies, as well as allows for some discretionary input by Pantera’s top brass, which includes Morehead, Veradittakit, and Joey Krug, who joined Pantera last year after cofounding the market forecasting startup Augur. (It went on to orchestrate the first ICO on the ethereum network.) Explains Veradittakit of this last pool, it’s for “if you are’t sure that Bitcoin will remain the dominant cryptocurrency, or you’re interested in other use cases that may arise, or you just want to build a diversified portfolio of assets that have asymmetrical returns as bitcoin, or maybe return even more because they feature lower valuations.” In some ways, the venture efforts of Pantera — which employs 38 people altogether in San Francisco and Menlo Park, Ca. — may be its most challenging given the nature of VC. Investors in the asset class are typically willing to wait a handful of years for a firm to produce returns; in Pantera’s case, because it is betting exclusively on ventures, tokens, and projects related to blockchain tech, digital currency, and crypto assets, some of those returns could potentially take even longer. Veradittakit doesn’t sound concerned. Rattling off some of Pantera’s venture investments to date, including in , , , and , not to mention more recent investments in , , , and , he sounds more like a proud parent. Pantera has invested in “lots of wallets and exchanges focused around the world, in Coinbases of different geographies, in enterprise-related blockchain companies. More recently, we’ve funded everything from big data to decentralized application platforms.” It’s still very early days, he acknowledges. But “in terms of returns, there will be companies that create something completely disruptive. There will be M&A [opportunities] more often and that [come together] more quickly than other companies.” If everything goes as planned, Pantera will be there when they do, and it will have more resources to deploy than ever. |
Messaging firm Line launches a dedicated crypto fund | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Messaging company Line is continuing to burrow deep into the crypto space after the launch of a $10 million investment fund. The fund will be operated by Line’s Korea-based blockchain subsidiary , which is tasked with research, education and other blockchain-related services. The fund will be called Unblock Ventures and it’ll initially have a capital pool of $10 million but Line said that is likely to increase over time. The company said the fund will be focused on early-stage startup investments, but it didn’t provide further details. Line is listed in Tokyo and on the NYSE. This fund makes it one of the first publicly traded companies to create a dedicated crypto investment vehicle. The objective, it said, is “to boost the development and adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.” Line claims nearly 200 million users of its messaging app, which is particularly popular in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. The company also offers a range of connected services that include payment, social games, ride-hailing, food delivery and more. This marks Line’s second major crypto move this year following last month. It isn’t available in the U.S. or Japan right now but Line envisages closes ties with its messaging service and other features further down the line. These moves into crypto come despite some serious downturn in the valuation of the space this year following record highs in January which saw the value of one Bitcoin touch nearly $20,000 and Ethereum, among others, surged. In the months since then, however, many cryptocurrencies have seen their valuations decline. This week, . Bitcoin has, for many years, risen and fallen although January’s valuations took the extremes to a new level. |
Facebook says birthday fundraisers have raised more than $300 million over the past year | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Facebook marked the first anniversary of its birthday fundraisers by have been raised through the feature, which lets users mark their birthdays by creating a donation drive for an organization of their choice. About 750,000 non-profits currently have access to Facebook’s fundraising tools (but , since they haven’t rolled out to all countries). The company also said that it is adding several new features based on feedback. These include allowing Pages to create and donate to fundraisers, as well as the ability to add matching donations and co-organizers to fundraisers. Donors will also be able to choose if they want to set up a recurring monthly contribution. For people who want to create a birthday fundraiser but don’t have an organization in mind already, Facebook plans to include more information about charities in the feature’s selection tool. The company said its fundraising feature’s top beneficiaries include St. Jude, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Cancer Society, Share Our Strength—No Kid Hungry and the ASPCA. Last November, Facebook removed its 5% fee on donations, which means all money goes to non-profits. For many charities, Facebook fundraisers are now the most frictionless way to raise donations, including from people who might otherwise never visit the charity’s own donation links. Facebook fundraisers are a notable example of how social media activism can actually translate into tangible results instead of yet more memes–but, of course, whenever Facebook releases any self-congratulatory announcements, it’s a good idea to take a step back and look at the potential downsides. As with almost every other Facebook feature, its fundraising tools have , particularly donor privacy, which is considered sacrosanct by many organizations (Facebook lets ). Some charities also have qualms about benefiting from Facebook fundraisers until the company , especially if the purpose of their work is aiding marginalized or persecuted minority groups. In an , fundraising consultant Jeremy Hatch argued that fundraising on Facebook also eliminates the relationship between donors and organizations, “where there are established norms and ethical practices.” He added that non-profits should reconsider before they grow increasingly reliant on a company whose ultimate goal is to gather and monetize user data. At the same time, Facebook’s reach leaves many organizations with little choice but to use the platform so they don’t miss out on much-needed funds. One notable example of how effective Facebook fundraisers can be is the on behalf of RAICES to help migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration. |
Tesla whistleblower tweets photos of allegedly damaged batteries | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Martin Tripp, who was fired from Tesla and then the company, has tweeted a number of photos that allegedly show damaged batteries and flawed practices at Tesla’s battery factory, . In an attempt to corroborate some of his claims, Tripp has posted photos of vehicle identification numbers that he says were delivered with faulty, punctured battery cells. “As we’ve said before, these claims are false and Mr. Tripp does not even have personal knowledge about the safety claims that he is making,” a Tesla spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “No punctured cells have ever been used in any Model 3 vehicles in any way, and all VINs that have been identified have safe batteries. Notably, there have been zero battery safety issues in any Model 3.” Here's what many of your M3 modules look like before and after, because they are generally reworked! Aren't they beautiful? — Martin Tripp (@trippedover) Are any of these VIN's YOUR car? If so, you have a module(s) that IS punctured/dented/damaged. (Subsidy Fraud-Boy) — Martin Tripp (@trippedover) In one tweet, Tripp shows what he alleges is proof that Tesla stores waste and scraps in open parking lots and trucks at the Gigafactory, instead of properly storing them in temperature-controlled warehouses. Hmmm.. commented several times that all their scrap/waste is being stored in climate controlled warehouses…could this be true?! Let these pics speak for themselves: HUNDREDS of trailers at the new parking lot at GF1… — Martin Tripp (@trippedover) alleging he leaked information with the intent to sabotage Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk. Tripp then filed a formal whistleblower tip to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging the company has misled investors and put customers at risk. Check out TechCrunch’s coverage of the Tripp versus Tesla saga below. |
Tweetbot loses several key features ahead of Twitter’s API change | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Twitter’s API changes won’t come out until tomorrow, but its ramifications are already being felt. Tapbots released an update today to that loses many of the Twitter client’s most popular or essential features. It also removed its Apple Watch app. In Tweetbot’s App Store release notes, Tapbots explained “on August 16th Twitter will disable parts of their public interface that we use in Tweetbot. Because Twitter has chosen not to provide alternatives to these interfaces we have been forced to disable or degrade certain features. We are sorry about this, but unfortunately this is totally out of our control.” The changes mean that Tweetbot’s timeline streaming is now disabled, so timelines will refresh every one to two minutes instead–a loss for people who want to see new tweets in real-time. Push notifications for Mentions and Direct Messages will also be delayed by a few minutes, while push notifications for Likes, Retweets, Follows and Quotes have been disabled altogether (Tapbots’ release notes say they are looking at how to reinstate some of those in the future). Tweetbot’s Activity and Stats tabs have been removed. As part of an effort to tighten control over how its services are used by third-party developers, Twitter that it will shut down User Streams, Site Streams and other APIs to prepare for the arrival of its new Account Activity API and other products. Other third-party Twitter clients that will likely be affected by the API changes include Twitterific, Tweetings and Talon, which along with Tweetbot that they hadn’t been given enough time or information to prepare for the release, which was originally scheduled for June 19. In response, Twitter extended the deadline to August 16. Other apps that have already been impacted include Favstar, . |
Powered by $25 million, Arcadia Power looks to expand its distributed renewable energy services | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | As renewable energy use surges in the U.S. and the effects of global climate change become more visible, companies like are pitching a nationwide service to make renewable energy available to residential customers. While states like New York, California and regions across the upper Midwest have access to renewable energy through their utilities and competitive marketplaces, not all states in the country have utilities that are building renewable power generation to offset coal and natural gas energy production. Enter Arcadia Power and its new $25 million in financing, which will be used to redouble its marketing efforts and expand its array of services in the U.S. Right now, renewable energy is the fastest growing component of the U.S. energy mix. It’s grown from of all power generation in the country, from Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And while Arcadia Power is only accounting for 120 megawatts of the 2.9 gigawatts of new renewable energy projects initiated since 2017, its new $25 million in financing will help power new projects. When we first wrote about the company in 2016, it was just developing solar projects that would generate power for the grid to offset electricity usage from its customers. Now the company is expanding its array of services. All customers are automatically enrolled in a 50 percent wind energy offset program, where half of their monthly usage is matched in investments in wind farms — and they can upgrade to fully offset their energy usage with wind power. Meanwhile, community solar projects are also available for free or customers can then purchase a panel and receive a guaranteed solar savings on each monthly power bill. Reduced prices are given to customers through the consolidation of their buying power across multiple competitive energy markets. Finally, Arcadia is offering new home efficiency upgrades like LED lighting and smart thermostats, along with smart metering and tracking services to improve customers’ payment options, the company said. Kiran Bhatraju, chief executive officer Arcadia Power Funding for the new Arcadia Power financing was led by G2VP, the investment firm that spun out from Kleiner Perkins cleantech investing, ValueAct Spring Fund, McKnight Foundation, Energy Impact Partners, Cendana Capital, Wonder Ventures, BoxGroup and existing investors, according to the company. As a result of the investment, Alex Laskey, Opower’s founder and president; Ben Kortlang, a partner at G2VP; and Dan Leff, a longtime investor in energy technology companies, will all join the Arcadia board of directors. Beyond the savings, the offsets can do something to reduce the carbon emissions that are exacerbating the problems of global climate change. |
Shelf Engine uses machine learning to stop food waste from eating into store margins | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Shelf Engine’s team While running Molly’s, the Seattle-based ready meal wholesaler he founded, Stefan Kalb was upset about its 28 percent food wastage rate. Feeling that the amount was “astronomical,” he began researching how to lower it — and was shocked to discovered Molly’s was actually outperforming the industry average. Confronted by the sheer amount of food wasted by American retailers, Kalb and Bede Jordan, then a Microsoft engineer, began working on an order prediction engine. The project quickly brought Molly’s percentage of wasted food down to the mid-teens. “It was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done in my career,” Kalb told TechCrunch in an interview. Driven by its success, Kalb and Jordan launched in 2016 to make the technology available to other companies. Currently participating in Y Combinator, the startup has already raised $800,000 in seed funding from Initialized Capital, the venture capital firm founded by Alexis Ohanian and Gerry Tan, and is now used at more than 180 retail points by clients including WeWork, Bartell Drugs, Natural Grocers and StockBox. Shelf Engine’s order prediction engine analyzes historical order and sales data and makes recommendations about how much retailers should order to minimize waste and increase margins. The more retailers use Shelf Engine, the more accurate its machine learning model becomes. The system also helps suppliers, because many operate on guaranteed sales, or scan-based trading, which means they agree to take back and refund the purchase price of any products that don’t sell by their expiration date. While running Molly’s, Kalb learned what a huge pain point this is for suppliers. To alleviate that, Shelf Engine itself buys back unsold inventory from the retailers it works with, taking the risk away from their suppliers. Kalb, Shelf Engine’s CEO, claims the startup’s customers are able to increase their gross margins by 25 percent and reduce food waste from an industry average of 30 percent to about 16-18 percent for items that expire within one to five days. (For items with a shelf life of up to 45 days, the longest that Shelf Engine manages, it can reduce waste to as little as 3-4 percent). The food industry operates on notoriously tight margins, and Shelf Engine wants to relieve some of the pressure. Running Molly’s, which supplies corporate campuses, including Microsoft, Boeing and Amazon, gave Kalb a firsthand look at the paradox faced by retail managers. Even though a lot of food is wasted, items are also frequently out of stock at stores, annoying customers. Then there is the social and environmental impact of food waste — not only does it raise prices, food rotting in landfills is . A store manager may need to make ordering decisions about thousands of products, leaving little time for analysis. Though there are enterprise resource planning software products for food retail, Kalb says that during store visits he realized a surprisingly high number still rely on Excel spreadsheets or pen and paper to manage reoccurring orders. The process is also highly subjective, with managers ordering products based on their personal preferences, a customer’s suggestion or what they’ve noticed does well at other stores. Sometimes retailers get stuck in a cycle of overcorrecting, because if customers complain about missing out on something, managers order more inventory, only to end up with wastage, then scaling back their next order and so on. “Americans want selection at all times, we get furious when a product is sold out, but it’s a really hard decision to make about how much challah bread to stock on a Monday,” says Kalb. “Yet we are doing that ad hoc.” When retailers use Shelf Engine’s prediction engine, it decides how many units they need and then submits those orders to their suppliers. After products reach their sell-by dates, the retailer reports back to Shelf Engine, which only charges them for units they sold, but still pays suppliers for the full order. As time passes, Shelf Engine can make more granular predictions (for example, how precipitation correlates with the sale of specific items like juice or bread). In addition to providing the impetus for the creation of Shelf Engine, Molly’s also helped Kalb and Jordan, its CTO, build the startup’s distribution network. Kalb says Shelf Engine has benefited from the network effect, because when a retailer signs up, their suppliers will often mention it to other retailers that they serve. Kalb says the startup is currently hiring more engineers and salespeople to help Shelf Engine leverage that and spread through the food retail industry. “It’s a world I got to know and I came into the world fascinated with healthy food and making delicious grab-and-go meals,” says Kalb. “It turned into a fascination with this crazy market, which is so massive and still has so many opportunities to be maximized.” |
VR optics could help old folks keep the world in focus | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | The complex optics involved with putting a screen an inch away from the eye in VR headsets could make for smartglasses that correct for vision problems. These prototype “autofocals” from Stanford researchers use depth sensing and gaze tracking to bring the world into focus when someone lacks the ability to do it on their own. I talked with lead researcher Nitish Padmanaban at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, where he and the others on his team were showing off the latest version of the system. It’s meant, he explained, to be a better solution to the problem of presbyopia, which is basically when your eyes refuse to focus on close-up objects. It happens to millions of people as they age, even people with otherwise excellent vision. There are, of course, bifocals and progressive lenses that bend light in such a way as to bring such objects into focus — purely optical solutions, and cheap as well, but inflexible, and they only provide a small “viewport” through which to view the world. And there are adjustable-lens glasses as well, but must be adjusted slowly and manually with a dial on the side. What if you could make the whole lens change shape automatically, depending on the user’s need, in real time? , and although the current prototype is obviously far too bulky and limited for actual deployment, the concept seems totally sound. Padmanaban previously worked in VR, and mentioned what’s called the convergence-accommodation problem. Basically, the way that we see changes in real life when we move and refocus our eyes from far to near doesn’t happen properly (if at all) in VR, and that can produce pain and nausea. Having lenses that automatically adjust based on where you’re looking would be useful there — and indeed some VR developers were showing off just that only 10 feet away. But it could also apply to people who are unable to focus on nearby objects in the real world, Padmanaban thought. This is an old prototype, but you get the idea. It works like this. A depth sensor on the glasses collects a basic view of the scene in front of the person: a newspaper is 14 inches away, a table three feet away, the rest of the room considerably more. Then an eye-tracking system checks where the user is currently looking and cross-references that with the depth map. Having been equipped with the specifics of the user’s vision problem, for instance that they have trouble focusing on objects closer than 20 inches away, the apparatus can then make an intelligent decision as to whether and how to adjust the lenses of the glasses. In the case above, if the user was looking at the table or the rest of the room, the glasses will assume whatever normal correction the person requires to see — perhaps none. But if they change their gaze to focus on the paper, the glasses immediately adjust the lenses (perhaps independently per eye) to bring that object into focus in a way that doesn’t strain the person’s eyes. The whole process of checking the gaze, depth of the selected object and adjustment of the lenses takes a total of about 150 milliseconds. That’s long enough that the user might notice it happens, but the whole process of redirecting and refocusing one’s gaze takes perhaps three or four times that long — so the changes in the device will be complete by the time the user’s eyes would normally be at rest again. “Even with an early prototype, the Autofocals are comparable to and sometimes better than traditional correction,” reads a short summary of the research published for SIGGRAPH. “Furthermore, the ‘natural’ operation of the Autofocals makes them usable on first wear.” The team is currently conducting tests to measure more quantitatively the improvements derived from this system, and test for any possible ill effects, glitches or other complaints. They’re a long way from commercialization, but Padmanaban suggested that some manufacturers are already looking into this type of method and despite its early stage, it’s highly promising. We can expect to hear more from them when the full paper is published. |
Reports indicate that Tesla has been subpoenaed over Elon Musk’s tweets | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | The long week for Tesla is getting even longer as the company has now been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to multiple reports. First reported by the and confirmed by , federal regulators appear to be interested in Elon Musk’s August 7 tweet regarding his plans for privatizing the electric car manufacturer and his claims to have found investors committed to finance the transaction. From later statements it has become clear that Musk had not actually secured financing, and has only had preliminary talks with investors. For Musk, the ill-advised tweet was either a or a short-sighted attempt to address the hordes of short-sellers who have swarmed over the stock, angling to make millions of dollars off any perceived misfortune in the market. Tesla declined to comment for this article. According to the Times, regulators were interested in Tesla even before Musk began his erratic tweeting. They were already questioning (according to the Times), who has claimed that the company knowingly manufactured batteries with punctured holes, which could impact hundreds of cars; misled the public about the number of Model 3s actually being produced by as much as 44 percent; and lowered vehicle specs so the company could use waste and scrap material in vehicles. While Tripp’s allegations are explosive enough, they’re now by the current drama over Musk’s tweets, which sent the stock price of his company soaring. While Tesla has now retained Goldman Sachs to arrange financing for a privatization, at the time of Musk’s tweets last week, no financing had been secured. That could land the serial entrepreneur in a lot of hot water. |
LA to become the first city to use body scanners in rail transit systems | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority just announced its plans to become the first city to use portable body scanners in its subway and light-rail systems to help detect the presence of explosive devices. “We’re dealing with persistent threats to our transportation systems in our country,” TSA administrator David Pekoske in a statement. “Our job is to ensure security in the transportation systems so that a terrorist incident does not happen on our watch.” The portable scanners will begin rolling out in a few months, the executive director of security for the LA Metro Alex Wiggins said yesterday. , the scanners will be able to conduct full-body scans from 30 feet away and are capable of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. “We’re looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass-casualty event,” Wiggins said. “We’re looking for explosive vests, we’re looking for assault rifles. We’re not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don’t have the ability to inflict mass casualties.” The machines, and costing $100,000 each, will project radio waves to create a visualization on a split-screen display that enshrouds “clean” passengers in bright-green and suspicious items in black. The city is one of several in which the TSA has piloted these new body scanners, although LA will be the first to fully adopt them. The agency public transit officials from San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, New Jersey’s transit system, as well as Amtrak stations at New York’s Penn Station and DC’s Union Station. Wiggins assured passengers that screenings in the LA Metro would be well-marked and that those choosing to opt out could do so by leaving the station. These automated options appear to be a definite step forward in protecting the on public transit in America last year; however, they are still no replacement for increased security personnel at these transportation hubs. Incidents, in a BART station this summer, would not be detected by these scanners but are preventable acts of violence nevertheless. As transportation security continues to become more sophisticated, it will be important to enhance not only the technology but the training and use of officials, as well. |
Making way for new levels of American innovation | Matt Weinberg | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | New fifth-generation “5G” network technology will equip the United States with a superior wireless platform, unlocking transformative economic potential. However, 5G’s success is contingent on modernizing outdated policy frameworks that dictate infrastructure overhauls and establishing the proper balance of public-private partnerships to encourage investment and deployment. Most people have heard by now of the coming 5G revolution. Compared to 4G, this next-generation technology will deliver near-instantaneous connection speed, significantly lower latency — meaning near-zero buffer times — and increased connectivity capacity to allow billions of devices and applications to come online and communicate simultaneously and seamlessly. While 5G is often discussed in future tense, the reality is it’s already here. Its capabilities were displayed earlier this year at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where Samsung and Intel to event-goers. In addition, multiple U.S. carriers, including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, have announced commercial deployments in select markets by the end of 2018, while chipmaker Qualcomm unveiled last month its new 5G millimeter-wave module that outfits smartphones with 5G compatibility. BARCELONA, SPAIN – 2018/02/26: View of the phone company QUALCOMM technology 5G in the Mobile World Congress. (Photo by Ramon Costa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) While this commitment from 5G commercial developers is promising, long-term success of 5G is ultimately dependent on addressing two key issues. The first step is ensuring the right policies are established at the federal, state and municipal levels in the U.S. that will allow the buildout of needed infrastructure, namely “small cells.” This equipment is designed to fit on streetlights, lampposts and buildings. You may not even notice them as you walk by, but they are critical to adding capacity to the network and transmitting wireless activity quickly and reliably. In many communities across the U.S., 20th century infrastructure policies are slowing the emergence of bringing next-generation networks and technologies online. Issues, including costs per small cell attachment, permitting around public rights-of-way and deadlines on application reviews, are all less-than-exciting topics of conversation but act as real threats to achieving timely implementation of 5G according to recent research from and the . Policymakers can mitigate these setbacks by taking inventory of their own policy frameworks and, where needed, streamlining and modernizing processes. For instance, current small cell permit applications can take upwards of 18 to 24 months to advance through the approval process as a result of needed buy-in from many local commissions, city councils, etc. That’s an incredible amount of time for a community to wait around and ultimately fall behind on next-generation access. As a result, policymakers are beginning to act. including Florida, Ohio and Texas, have already passed bills alleviating some of the local infrastructure hurdles accompanying increased broadband network deployment, including delays and pricing. Additionally, this year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has moved on multiple orders that look to remedy current 5G roadblocks, including to more amounts of needed high-, mid- and low-band spectrum. The second step is identifying areas in which public and private entities can partner to drive needed capital and resources toward 5G initiatives. These types of collaborations were first made popular in Europe, where we continue to see significant advancement of infrastructure initiatives through combined public-private planning, including the European Commission and European ICT industry’s (5G PPP). The U.S. is increasing its own public-private levels of planning. In 2015, the Obama administration’s Department of Transportation launched its successful “ ” encouraging planning and funding in U.S. cities around advanced connectivity. , the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded New York City a $22.5 million grant through its Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research ( ) initiative to create and deploy the first of a series of wireless research hubs focused on 5G-related breakthroughs, including high-bandwidth and low-latency data transmission, millimeter wave spectrum, next-generation mobile network architecture and edge cloud computing integration. While these efforts should be applauded, it’s important to remember they are merely initial steps. conducted by CTIA, a leading trade association for the wireless industry, found that the United States remains behind both China and South Korea in 5G development. If other countries beat the U.S. to the punch, which , companies and sectors that require ubiquitous, fast and seamless connection — like autonomous transportation, for example — could migrate, develop and evolve abroad, casting lasting negative impact on U.S. innovation. The potential economic gains are also significant. A predicts an additional $275 billion in infrastructure investments from the private sector, resulting in up to 3 million new jobs and a gross domestic product (GDP) increase of $500 billion. That’s just on the infrastructure side alone. On the global scale, we could see as much as $12 trillion in additional economic activity according to discussion at the in January. Former President John F. Kennedy once said, “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” When it comes to America’s technology evolution, this quote holds especially true. Our nation has led the digital revolution for decades. Now with 5G, we have the opportunity to unlock an entirely new level of innovation that will make our communities safer, more inclusive and more prosperous for all. |
Asian investors have plenty of cash, a hearty appetite for investments and a different approach to doing deals | Daniel Zimmermann | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | The VC landscape has been shifting radically in the past few years as Asian investors pump cash into startups. Last year, Asian VCs invested 40 percent of the $154 billion in global venture financing, compared to a 44 percent stake for U.S. investors, according to a recent Wall Street Journal . Asian VCs largely fund companies close to home, but their portfolios are expanding to include U.S. businesses. That influx of capital can be a valuable lifeline for founders who need cash to fuel hiring, product development and growth. Securing that money, however, demands cross-cultural sensitivities and negotiation skills more commonly exhibited by diplomats and ambassadors. American startup founders are often stunned to see how much control Asian investors demand in exchange for capital. If you’re being courted by Asian investors — and it’s more likely than ever that you will be — you’ll need to adjust the VCs’ expectations. That can be a challenging task when the parties have different perspectives on appropriate management styles and levels of control. Disparate expectations often arise because laws governing investments, disclosures and financing terms vary from country to country, and conventions can be different. Prospective foreign investors routinely question the need for rights that are customary in the U.S. and may dismiss specific venture capital lingo as unnecessary or irrelevant. For example, conversion rights or registration rights appear to be arcane provisions that can be negotiated, but in the world of U.S. venture-backed companies, these are part of the overall deal structure and are expected by the stakeholders. American founders have a similar knowledge gap when it comes to typical Asian deal terms. U.S. founders aren’t accustomed to putting their own assets on the line to secure financing, though this is common in Asia for early-stage founders. Similarly, American entrepreneurs are often shocked to see Asian VC term sheets that require founders to pay the investors a significant sum for deal-related expenses — a provision that is binding even if the deal is never completed. Without an understanding of why Asian investors include this provision, this demand seems ludicrously overreaching. Its purpose is to ensure that all parties approach negotiations with focus and gravity. With a significant amount of money on the line, the reasoning goes, the parties are more motivated to reach accord. This stipulation is familiar in Asia, but I routinely delete it from term sheets during contract negotiations because it seems counterintuitive to reaching an arm’s-length agreement. Remember that the Asian VC market, while explosive, is still in its infancy: Chinese-led venture funding has increased 15-fold since 2013, according to The Wall Street Journal. Because this market is so immature, investors aim to add language to term sheets that will give them an advantage. It’s also typical to see term sheets that include full-ratchet anti-dilution protection and most-favored-nation clauses. But their ubiquity doesn’t mean founders must be stuck with them. I encourage would-be investors to embrace realistic expectations by reviewing deal point studies, which summarize the typical terms in recent deals. Most major law firms, including mine, produce their . If a financing term sheet contains troublesome or even outrageous terms, don’t take it personally. Task your lawyer with explaining to foreign prospective investors why the term sheet they provided is wildly different from typical U.S. deal terms. Leave the expression of deep disappointment to your counsel so your feelings won’t taint your relationship with the investors. I recently provided this type of feedback to a group of would-be strategic investors from China. When they produced pages of unreasonable terms, I directed them to the model financing documents on the sites of the (NCVA) and . The forms from these neutral sources include typical terms and agreements drawn up by a group of investors, entrepreneurs, counsel and advisers. They need to be tweaked for each financing scenario, but they cover all the basics and beyond. In this instance, the Chinese investors reviewed this information and did some additional research. They then returned with far more conciliatory terms, which the founder ultimately accepted. If you’re concerned that the need for negotiations and diplomacy with foreign investors will be time-consuming and distract you from your business goals, reconsider. Shunning Asian capital may ultimately cost you down the line. Many Chinese VCs are well-connected, and a respectful, productive relationship with these investors can help you open doors to wealthy investor conglomerates eager to fund promising startups. Those connections can, in turn, lead you to larger, global markets that you could never have accessed otherwise. |
Uber reports Q2 losses of $404 million, up 32 percent from Q1 | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | While Uber isn’t required to disclose its financial results, Uber has done so for the past few quarters as it gears up to go public next year. In Q2 2018, Uber’s net revenue was up 8 percent quarter-over-quarter, at $2.7 billion. Year-over-year, that’s a 51 percent increase. Uber recorded gross bookings — the total taken for all of Uber’s transportation services — of $12 billion, a six percent quarter-over-quarter increase and a 41 percent year-over-year increase. But while Uber’s gross bookings increased, so did its losses. In Q2, Uber had adjusted EBITDA losses of $404 million compared to $304 million in losses in Q1. Uber’s losses added up, given its investments in Eats, India, the Middle East, bikes and scooters. This quarter, Uber expanded Eats into a number of new cities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, , and made its . Other key stats for Uber’s Q2 2018: “We had another great quarter, continuing to grow at an impressive rate for a business of our scale,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “Going forward, we’re deliberately investing in the future of our platform: big bets like Uber Eats; congestion and environmentally friendly modes of transport like Express Pool, e-bikes and scooters; emerging businesses like Freight; and high-potential markets in the Middle East and India where we are cementing our leadership position.” While Uber technically had a good quarter, it doesn’t mean that all is well. Regarding Uber’s self-driving car efforts, the company has spent between $125 million and $200 million a quarter over the last 18 months, . According to The Information’s sources, some of Uber’s investors are urging the company to get rid of its self-driving car program, which has been the source of many headaches at Uber as of late. Uber declined to comment on The Information’s reporting. In March, one of Uber’s self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. In the weeks and months following the accident, and . As Uber prepares for its , the name of the game is to reduce losses. In July, . But Uber Freight, which matches drivers with cargo needing to be shipped, is to make $500 million in the next 12 months. Meanwhile, Uber is aiming to take its . Uber’s plan is to develop and commercially deploy these air taxis by 2023. But in recent months, Uber has lost two key executives; and Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden, . Khosrowshahi will be joining us at Disrupt SF in September. You don’t want to miss it. |
Google releases a searchable database of US political ads | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | In an effort to provide more transparency and deliver on a promise to Congress, Google just published an that have run on its platform. Google’s new database, which it calls the , is searchable through a dedicated launch page. Anyone can search for and filter ads, viewing them by candidate name or advertiser, spend, the dates the ads were live, impressions and type. For anyone looking for the biggest ad budget or the farthest reaching political ad, the ads can be sorted by spend, impressions and recency, as well. Google also on the data, showing ad spend by U.S. state, by advertiser and by top keywords.
The company added a bit of context around its other recent ad transparency efforts: Earlier this year, we took important steps to increase transparency in political advertising. We implemented new requirements for any advertiser purchasing election ads on Google in the U.S.—these advertisers now have to provide a government-issued ID and other key information that confirms they are a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, as required by law. We also required that election ads incorporate a clear “paid for by” disclosure. The search features are pretty handy, but a few things are missing. While Google’s database does collect candidate ads in the U.S. it does not include issue ads — broader campaigns meant to influence public thought around a specific political topic — nor does it collect state or local ads. The ads are all U.S.-only, so elections elsewhere won’t show up in here either. Google says that it is collaborating with experts on potential tools that “capture a wider range of political ads” but it gave no timeline for that work. For now, ads that the tool does capture will be added into the library on a weekly basis. |
Coinbase acquires Distributed Systems to build ‘Login with Coinbase’ | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Coinbase wants to be Facebook Connect for crypto. The blockchain giant plans to develop “Login with Coinbase” or a similar identity platform for decentralized app developers to make it much easier for users to sign up and connect their crypto wallets. To fuel that platform, today Coinbase announced it has , a startup founded in 2015 that was building an identity standard for dApps called the Clear Protocol. The five-person Distributed Systems team and its technology will join Coinbase. Three of the team members will work with Coinbase’s Toshi decentralized mobile browser team, while CEO How can we allow that really rich identity data to enable a new class of applications?” No one really understood what we’re building,” and it wanted a partner with KYC data. It began talking to Coinbase Ventures about an investment, but after they saw Distributed Systems’ progress and vision, “they quickly tried to move to find a way to acquire us.” Distributed Systems began to hold acquisition talks with multiple major players in the blockchain space, and the CEO tells me it was deciding between going to “Facebook, or Robinhood, or Binance, or Coinbase,” having been in formal talks with at least one of the first three. Of Coinbase the CEO said, they “were able to convince us they were making big bets, weaving identity across their products.” The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Coinbase’s plan to roll out the Login with Coinbase-style platform is an SDK that others apps could integrate, though that won’t necessarily be the feature’s name. That mimics the way Facebook colonized the web with its SDK and login buttons that splashed its brand in front of tons of new and existing users. This turned Facebook into a fundamental identity utility beyond its social network. Developers eager to improve conversions on their signup flow could turn to Coinbase instead of requiring users to set up whole new accounts and deal with crypto-specific headaches of complicated keys and procedures for connecting their wallet to make payments. One prominent dApp developer told me yesterday that forcing users to set up the MetaMask browser extension for identity was the part of their signup flow where they’re losing the most people. This morning Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong these plans to work on an identity SDK. When Coinbase investor Garry Tan of Initialized Capital wrote that “ On it :) — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) In effect, Coinbase and Distributed Systems could build a safer version of identity than we get offline. As soon as you give your Social Security number to someone or it gets stolen, it can be used anywhere without your consent, and that leads to identity theft. Coinbase wants to build a vision of identity where you can connect to decentralized apps while retaining control. “Decentralized identity will let you prove that you own an identity, or that you have a relationship with the Social Security Administration, without making a copy of that identity,” , who’ll oversee Srinivasan’s new decentralized identity team. “If you stretch your imagination a little further, you can imagine this applying to your photos, social media posts, and maybe one day your passport too.” Considering Distributed Systems and Coinbase are following the Facebook playbook, they may soon have competition from the social network. It’s spun up its own blockchain team and . But given Coinbase’s strong reputation in the blockchain industry and its massive head start in terms of registered crypto users, today’s acquisition well position it to be how we connect our offline identity with the rising decentralized economy. |
Spotify is falling behind on lyrics and voice | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Spotify’s lack of full lyrics support and its minimal attention to voice are beginning to become problems for the streaming service. The company has been so focused on the development of its personalization technology and programming its playlists, it has overlooked key features that its competitors – including Apple, Google, and Amazon – today offer and are now capitalizing on. For example, in the of Apple Music rolling out this fall with iOS 12, users won’t just have access to lyrics in the app as before, they will also be able to perform searches by lyrics instead of only by the artist, album, or song title. And Apple Music is actually playing catch up with Amazon on this front. Amazon Music, which has quietly grown to become the , allows users to , and its Alexa voice platform. Amazon Music users with an Alexa device can also search for songs by lyrics just by saying . The company has been offering this capability . While it had originally been one of Alexa’s today asking Alexa to pull up a song by its lyrics is considered a standard feature. Though Google has lagged behind Apple, Spotify and Amazon in music, its clever Google Assistant , too. And as an added perk, it can also to identify a song that’s playing nearby. With the rise of voice-based computing, features like asking for songs with verbal commands or querying databases of lyrics by voice are now expected features. And where’s Spotify on this? It has launched lyrics search only in Japan so far, and refuses to provide a timeline as to when it will make this a priority in other markets. Even tucked away in the app’s code are references to lyrics tests only in the non-U.S. markets of Thailand and Vietnam. Spotify is testing viewing lyrics within mobile app. For some reason, the code suggests this feature might be rolled out to Japan, Thailand and Vietnam — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) Those tests have been underway since the beginning of the year, we understand from sources. But the attention being given to these tests is minimal – Spotify isn’t measuring user engagement with the lyrics feature at this point. And Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wasn’t even aware his team was working on these lyrics tests, we heard, which implies a lack of management focus on this product. Meanwhile, competitors like Apple and Amazon have dedicated lyrics teams. We asked Spotify multiple times if it was currently testing lyrics in the U.S. (You can see one person who claims they gained access , for example.) But the company never responded to our questions. Some Spotify customers who largely listen to popular music may be confused about the lack of a full lyrics product in the app. That’s because Spotify to launch “Behind the Lyrics,” which offers lyrics and music trivia on a portion of its catalog. But you don’t see all the song’s lyrics when the music plays because they’re interrupted with facts and other background information about the song, the lyrics’ meaning, or the artist. That same year, Spotify also , which had been providing its lyrics support, as the two companies . There was expectation from users that lyrics would return at some point – but only “Behind the Lyrics” emerged to fill the void. Demand for a real lyrics feature remains strong, though. Users regularly post on social media about the topic. Hey Could you make it possible to show the lyrics while playing a song somehow? Not, that i do not apreciate some trivia, but i would enjoy your App more if i could sing the text right ^^" Thank you 🎵🎶💚 — Felycitas Black (@FelycitasBlack) Remember when had a pretty good song lyrics feature but then their third party lyric provider told them to fuck off so they removed it and never bothered to replace it? — Daria (@imhkr) guys shall we open a petition to have back the lyrics on ? 🎼🎤👩🎤 — alessia (@cheekyprofile) I miss the days when had lyrics available for songs — Raikar (@Raikar_tv) A request for lyrics’ return is also on Spotify’s user feedback forum. It has 9,237 “likes,” making it the second-most popular request. (The idea has been flagged “Watch this Space,” but it’s been tagged like that for so long it’s no longer a promise of something that’s soon to come.) There is no internal solution in the works, we understand, and it’s not working on a new deal with a third-party at this time. The lack of lyrics is becoming a problem in other areas, as well, now that competitors are launching search-by-lyrics features that work via voice commands. In fact, Spotify was late, in general, to address users’ interest in voice assistance – even though a primary use case for music listening is when you’re on the go – like, in the car, out walking or jogging, at the gym, biking, etc. It only began , accessible through a new in-app button. Now rolled out to mobile users on Spotify Premium, via a long-press on the Search button in the app. You can then ask Spotify to play music, playlists, podcasts, and videos. But the feature is still wonky. For one thing, hiding it away as a long press-triggered option means many users probably don’t know it exists. (And the floating button that pops up when you switch to search is hard to reach.) Secondly, it doesn’t address the primary reason users want to search by voice: hands-free listening. Meanwhile, iPhone/HomePod users with a hands-free command; Google Home users can instruct the helper to play their songs – even if they only know the lyrics. And Amazon Music’s Alexa integration is live on Echo speakers, and . Even third-party music services like Pandora are tapping into the voice platforms’ capabilities to provide search by lyrics. For example, like the Google Home, and offers search-by-lyrics powered by Google Assistant. Spotify can’t offer a native search-by-lyrics feature in its app, much less search-by-lyrics using voice commands option, because it doesn’t even have fully functional lyrics. Voice and lyrics aren’t the only challenges Spotify is facing going forward. Spotify also lacks dedicated hardware like its own Echo or HomePod. Given the rise of voice-based computing and voice assistants, the company has the potential to cede some portion of the market as consumers end up buying into the larger ecosystems provided by the main tech players: Siri/HomePod/Apple Music vs. Google Assistant/Google Home/Google Play Music (or YouTube Music) vs. Alexa/Echo/Amazon Music (all promoted by Prime). For now, Spotify to make sure its service performs on their platforms, but Elsewhere, Spotify may play – – but won’t be as fully functional as the native solutions. With Spotify as the default service on Echo devices, for example, Alexa can’t always figure out commands that instruct it to play music by lyrics, activity, or mood – commands that work well with Amazon Music, of course. Amazon Music has seen impressive growth, thanks to in four key Prime markets, U.S., Japan, Germany and the U.K.. With now 12% of the music streaming market, it has become the dark horse that’s been largely ignored amid discussions of the Amazon vs Spotify battle. But it’s not necessarily one to count out just yet. YouTube Music, though brand new, has managed to Lyor Cohen as its Global Music Head, while Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook during the last earnings call that Apple Music has moved ahead of Spotify in North America. He also against ceding too much control to algorithms, in a recent interview, making a sensible argument for maintaining music’s “spiritual role” in our lives. “We worry about the humanity being drained out of music, about it becoming a bits-and-bytes kind of world instead of the art and craft,” Cook mused. Apple was late to music streaming, having been so tied to its download business. But it also had the luxury of time to get it right, knowing that its powerful iPhone platform means anything it launches has a built-in advantage. (And it’s to offer TV shows as a part of its subscription, too, which could be a further draw.) How much time does Spotify have to get it right? Despite these concerns, Spotify doesn’t need to panic yet – it still has more listeners, more paying customers, and more consumer mindshare in the music streaming business. It has its popular playlists and personalization features. . But it will need to plug its holes to keep up where the market is heading, or risk losing customers to the larger platforms in the months ahead. |
Grabb-It wants to turn your car’s window into a trippy video billboard | Greg Kumparak | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | It reminds me of something out of Blade Runner. Maybe it’s because it looks a bit futuristic — a bit unreal. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at an ad somewhere I never expected to see one, like the skyscraper-height ads of Ridley Scott’s future. turns a car’s side rear window into a full-color display, playing location-aware ads to anyone who might be standing curbside. They’re currently aiming to work with rideshare/delivery drivers, enabling them to make a bit of extra coin while doing the driving they’re already doing. As the driver crosses town, the ads can automatically switch to focus on businesses nearby. Near the ball park? It might pitch you on tickets for tonight’s game. Over in The Mission? It could play an ad about happy hour at the bar behind you. So how’s it work? I couldn’t figure it out at first glance — but once they opened the car door, it all clicked. The key: projection. It turns your window into a rear projection TV on wheels, of sorts. Grabb-It applies a material to the inside of a car’s right rear window to act as a projection surface. The material is thin enough that the window can still be opened — but, in what might annoy some passengers, not thin enough that you can see much through it. They mount a small projector inside the car and point it toward the window, blasting an image bright enough to see from the outside. I saw it running in a dim below-ground parking lot and outside in direct sunlight, and the image was surprisingly clear in both cases. The end result is quite neat to see (which is something I’m really not used to saying about tech meant to show me ads). Because the projection material is custom cut for each car, the image can cover pretty much the entire surface of the window glass. It gives the illusion of a display custom built for the contours of the car. It’s meant to only run when the driver is between rides. Once a passenger hops in the car, the projector is shut off — because, well, no one wants a projector blasting light in their face on the way to their next meeting. While the company is working on its own hardware kit, the build I saw was an early iteration running a small off-the-shelf projector. Even at this stage, it’s a pretty effective demo. While this prototype requires the driver to manually toggle the projector by remote control, Grabb-It’s founders tell me their eventual hardware will automatically detect when the rear doors open and cut the projector on-the-fly. The image juddered a bit as the idling engine vibrated, though that seems like something that could be improved with better damping. I a bit wary of the distraction factor; will a fully animated ad playing on the car next to you work out to eyes off the road ahead? While Grabb-It tells me they’re working with the proper authorities to ensure it’s all road-legal, I imagine people might contest it as more cars utilizing the tech hit the streets. Grabb-It says they’ll cover the cost of installation for drivers — and if a driver decides to remove it, it’s just a matter of unmounting the projector and peeling the projection material from the window. The company tells me it’s currently testing with around 25 drivers around San Francisco, with earnings working out to around $300 a month for those driving 40 hours a week. It’s not enough to pay the bills on its own, but it’s a solid chunk of change for something that will, if all goes to plan, be entirely automated. Grabb-It is part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2018 class, and has raised $100,000 outside of YC from Lyft founding investor Sean Aggarwal. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 23 | null |
Turkish President Erdogan calls for boycott of US tech | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | Yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a boycott of all U.S. technology in the country’s capital city of Ankara. “Every product that we buy in foreign currency from outside, we will produce them here and sell abroad,” said Erdogan during the speech. “We will boycott the electronics products of the U.S.” Erdogan continued to suggest that for every Apple iPhone Turkish citizens could use a Korean Samsung phone instead — an ironic statement given the importance the iPhone had in helping him in 2016 that from power. In what became a swiftly ended (though still deadly with over 200 casualties) coup, Erdogan used FaceTime to call his supporters to the streets. This announcement follows a tense week in Turkey where the country’s currency, the lira, fell more than 25 percent according to The New York Times. As the country struggles with increasing economic turmoil on its own soil, it continues to butt heads with the Trump administration, as well. Despite their history as allies, diplomatic tensions between the two countries have been rising this past year. Last fall, was enacted following the arrests of two U.S. mission staff in Turkey for suspected connections to the 2016 coup. While the visa ban was lifted in late December, this summer, diplomatic tensions have in the country for alleged connections to the same coup. Last week, Trump an increase in tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium in a tweet saying: I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time! In addition to its tech boycott, Turkey also with its own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, including cars and alcohol. |
LinkedIn to relaunch Groups in the flagship app as it looks to reverse ‘ghost town’ image | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | , the Microsoft-owned social networking platform for the working world with over 500 million users, is making a significant change as it continues to look for ways to make its platform more useful (and used). The company is relaunching Groups by rolling it into its main app by the end of the month after , and it will be streamlining the service by cutting out several features, including an ability for Group administrators to pre-moderate comments; and a way to email send Group posts as emails to the whole group, while also adding in new features like threaded replies and the ability to post video and other media. An announcement detailing the changes was sent out to a select Groups power users earlier today, and we have confirmed the details with LinkedIn directly. Mitali Pattnaik, the product manager for Groups, said that some of the discontinuations — such as the ability to approve posts before they are live — are temporary and will make their way back to the app in some form over time. The moves come nearly three years after LinkedIn tried another approach to put some more wind into Groups’ sails. In 2015, the company hived off an updated version of Groups into its own . Included in the changes, Groups were made private with the aim of reducing some of the spam that people were posting. The bigger idea was that, with some 2 million Groups already on LinkedIn, users would be able to dedicate more time to posting, reading and managing (if they were admins) those groups, and creating new groups, once they were in their own app. And on the part of LinkedIn, it would help the company focus on developing features specifically tailored to the Groups experience. But the move did not go down well. In the wake of the changes, reports started to surface about how the moves stifled usage of groups, turning the platform into what some were calling a . And LinkedIn itself, it seems, was finding it a challenge to continue updating the app, even as LinkedIn itself was getting enhanced with new features. “Being a standalone app, Groups was not able to take advantage of the overall LinkedIn ecosystem,” Pattnaik said. “Everything from the news feed to notifications to search, these things move at a fast pace, and the minute the apps got separated the main app innovated at a much faster pace and became more advanced than the standalone Groups app.” LinkedIn then the Groups app in February this year, as it announced plans to integrate the feature. It’s not clear what kind of impact the last three years have had on the product. These days company does not comment on how many groups there are, nor how much they are used, except to say that there are “over 2 million” and that more than half of all LinkedIn members are at least in one group. (The person who oversaw Groups’ move to becoming a standalone app is also .) LinkedIn’s main app, on the other hand, has seen session time rise by 41 percent year-on-year, “growing consecutively for several quarters.” The removal of the standalone app is in line with how another social network has evolved its own Group effort. Almost exactly a year ago, Facebook that it too was killing off its Groups app so that it could . In both the case of LinkedIn and Facebook, the idea is somewhat the same: while we have our wider networks of friends and Pages that we follow on both platforms, sometimes there is value in communities that are focused around more specific interests, and ultimately, that might turn out to be the lever that brings more people in and out of using the main service. On a product iteration level, it seems that LinkedIn is not the only one that found it hard to keep up with changes across two platforms that essentially rested of many of the same mechanics. As part of being rebuilt on LinkedIn’s platform, Groups will be getting a number of new features — essentially tapping into new features that LinkedIn has rolled out over the last several quarters on its own app but hadn’t built for the (previously standalone) Groups platform. For starters, conversations taking place in Groups will now appear in-stream on the LinkedIn feed, rather than in a separate tab. When group members are replying to posts, there will now be threaded replies, which will let people respond directly to comments within the thread. Groups are also going to have a rich media infusion: users will be able to edit posts and share videos and other non-text formats. This is a very long overdue feature, considering how central video and rich media like GIFs have been on other platforms in getting people engaged in a service, and also considering that LinkedIn’s been showing video in its feed for a while now. “Since video launched on LinkedIn, Groups have been asking for this,” she said. It also looks like LinkedIn will also be pushing a lot more Group activity into your notifications tab, while alongside this, it’s sunsetting the e-mail blast. That might not be such a bad thing: while it did help admins get information out (especially when Groups updates were essentially hidden from the average LinkedIn user), Pattnaik admitted that the email feature “can be abused” by those simply looking to promote themselves. Admins are also getting a few new controls. They will be able to pin important items to the top of a Groups’ individual feed, and Pattnaik said that LinkedIn is working on a way to collapse those pinned notifications after they’ve been viewed by the member so that they don’t continue to take up space. They will also be able to approve and remove members by way of the app, as well as send out messages when necessary. [gallery ids="1691948,1691949,1691950"] LinkedIn, it seems, hopes that people will be able to use the LinkedIn app to discover more Groups that they can join — when Groups choose to have themselves “listed” and discoverable — but one thing that won’t be changing with the new version is that those users will still have to get permission from admins before they can join. While Groups have a lot in common with how groups of employees might communicate using a messaging app like Slack (or stablemate Yammer, or Facebook’s Workplace) LinkedIn says that it has no plans at the moment to develop Groups into something that could be used in this way. The reason for this, Pattnaik says, is that for the moment LinkedIn isn’t focused on developing a way to verify whether a person is actually an employee at a particular company. “We are always evaluating ways to verify identity across the site, such as verification processes to help detect fake profiles,” a spokesperson said. It has made some small steps in building products for company-only teams, however, for example to share content among coworkers. In the meantime, the company is also continuing to develop other products beyond the main app. Just today, Sales Navigator got a quarterly refresh with more tools to update on deals, stronger integration with CRM apps and more. |
Android 9 Pie (Go edition) arrives this fall | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | null |
Taiwan startup FunNow gets $5M Series A to help locals in Asian cities find last-minute things to do | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | “Instant booking” apps that let tourists sign up for activities on very short notice have been in the news a lot lately, partly because of , but also because of the proliferation of startups in the space, especially in Asia. With so many instant booking apps, are there any niches left to fill? thinks so. Instead of targeting tourists, FunNow serves locals who want to find new things to do in their cities. The Taipei, Taiwan-based startup announced today that it has raised a $5 million Series A led by the Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund, with participation from CDIB, a returning investor, Darwin Venture and Accuvest. The capital will be used to expand FunNow into Southeast Asian and Japanese cities. Along with a pre-A round closed last July, its newest funding brings FunNow’s total raised since its launch in November 2015 to $6.5 million. FunNow currently claims 500,000 members and 3,000 vendors, who provide more than 20,000 activities and services daily. Co-founder and CEO T.K. Chen says the startup will focus on building its presence in Hong Kong, Okinawa, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Osaka and Tokyo. One noteworthy fact about its Series A is the participation of Alibaba, which is beefing up its online-to-offline (or O2O, the business of enabling users to book and pay for offline services) offerings as . A roster of Alibaba apps, including Koubei for local bookings, food delivery platform Ele.me and travel app Feizhu, compete against Meituan-Dianping, which describes itself as a “one-stop super app” because it offers all those services. A not-for-profit initiative, the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund supports startups that might eventually contribute to the tech giant’s ecosystem. While Alibaba’s O2O apps are focused on capturing a bigger share away from Meituan-Dianping in China, Chen says future synergies may include listing FunNow’s activities on Koubei so Chinese tourists can continue using the app when they travel. (Chen added that Alibaba wants FunNow to expand in Southeast Asia as soon as possible.) Even with a backer like Alibaba, however, the obvious question is how does FunNow compare with other instant booking apps? The most notable ones are Klook and KKday, but other players include Headout, Voyagin, GetYourGuide, Culture Trip, Peek and even Airbnb’s new “Experiences” feature. Chen, who notes Klook’s , says FunNow’s deep dive into the local market sets it apart. Its biggest categories are last-minute hotel bookings, like hot spring resorts in Taipei that offer rooms for blocks of several hours in addition to overnight stays; restaurants and bars; massages and other spa services; and events like music festivals and parties. Chen adds that catering to locals looking for fun stuff to do in their own cities means FunNow’s user engagement is high, with 70% of each month’s gross merchandise volume from repeat customers. The rest comes from first-time users and about 60% of people make another booking within 30 days after their first purchase. FunNow expects to make revenue of $16 million in 2018, three times what it made in 2017. Most of FunNow’s users are young, in the 25-to-35 age bracket. “We are like Uber, but for booking restaurants, massages, hotels or other kinds of activities around you. We are also targeting spontaneous consumers, because almost all of our bookings are for the next 15 minutes to hour. If you look at our data, 80% of our bookings are for the next hour,” says Chen. The company tailors its technology platform to local users, too, and relies on a patented algorithm that makes real-time availability calculations to prevent overbookings by syncing with merchant databases. Chen says users can see all available slots based on their location and search perimeters in less than 0.1 seconds and updates in real-time, so people don’t click on something only to find it’s no longer available. FunNow also screens vendors before adding them to the platform and will delist businesses that rate below 3.5 stars. The convenience is what draws users back to FunNow instead of, say, just reading reviews on Google or asking friends for recommendations and then messaging or calling for a reservation. Another challenge that potentially arise in the future is if Klook, KKday or other instant booking apps for tourists decide to start serving locals as well. Chen says he believes those startups will continue focusing on and demand for half-day or all-day tours. “If they want to cut into our play, they need to first find merchants one by one and also deploy strong systems to the merchant side,” says Chen. “However, once merchants use our system, it’s unlikely for them to use two systems to control availability, because you’d need to update all of them to avoid overbooking.” Despite its first mover advantage, FunNow is also constantly improving its tech, Chen says. “Even in a minute, a business might have sold the seat to a walk-in customer, causing a overbooking and that’s the worst thing to see.” |
The DNC’s lawyers subpoena WikiLeaks with a tweet | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | In a very unusual move, WikiLeaks has . In a tweet on Friday, a law firm representing the Democratic National Convention in its civil lawsuit against WikiLeaks and other defendants served legal documents formally notifying the non-profit that it is being sued. The also names a long list of other people and organizations, including the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, that the DNC claims worked together to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. By Court order, you are being served with the following legal documents: , , , .
All of these documents may be found here: . — Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll Process Server (@ProcessServiceC) The has no other tweets and appears to have been set up this month by Cohen Milstein, the DNC’s law firm, for the purpose of serving papers to WikiLeaks. The DNC , asking for permission to subpoena WikiLeaks on Twitter after several unsuccessful attempts by email. The DNC argued that the WikiLeaks Twitter account is very active and an April tweet appeared to confirm that the organization was aware of the lawsuit. Though using Twitter to serve legal documents is unusual, it has legal precedent, with the DNC noting that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had previously decided that Twitter could be used to notify defendants who had an active account. In addition, another social media network, Facebook, has . WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, who is currently living under asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The DNC lawsuit argues that the massive trove of internal DNC emails released by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, including ones written by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta, was part of a conspiracy to damage Clinton’s presidential run and “destablilize the U.S. political environment.” |
Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘Disenchantment’ offers tongue-in-cheek fantasy adventures | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | is the latest animated series from Matt Groening, creator of and . The show premieres on Netflix on August 17, and we talk about our initial impressions on the latest episode of . Our guest host Brian Heater is a big fan of Groening’s previous creations, and he also . While brings Groening’s funny, skewed approach to a medieval fantasy setting, it isn’t a parody, exactly. It’s packed with jokes, but they rely more on the characters and on general zaniness, rather than references to (say) or . Some of us weren’t completely won over the first couple episodes. The most promising aspect of the show is its central trio of characters, including the rebellious princess Bean (voiced by ‘s Abbi Jacobson), her personal demon Luci (Eric Andre) and the runaway elf Elfo (Nat Faxon). We also discuss recent streaming headlines, 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!) |
Nobody minding the store: security in the age of the lowest bidder | Jon Evans | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | So, to recap: Satellite communication systems are “protected” by easily cracked hard-coded passwords. The private internet connecting the world’s mobile phone operators remains with vulnerabilities. Russia has successfully hacked into American . Oh, and voting machines in use in 18 states can be . Just stole an election at . The machine was an AccuVote TSX used in 18 states, some with the same software version. Attackers don't need physical access–we showed how malicious code can spreads from the election office when officials program the ballot design. — J. Alex Halderman (@jhalderm) Do you see a theme here? We assume that everything is fine, that the world in which we live rests on solid foundations, that competent grown-ups are in charge of the fundamental infrastructure on which our society rests, which have been constructed as fault-tolerant, resilient systems. We assume somebody somewhere is at the switch, keeping a sharp eye on things. In some cases, such as aviation, that does indeed seem to be the case. In others, the infrastructure is too decentralized and disconnected to be seriously at risk. But in far too many others, our we have constructed a perfect-storm-in-waiting of tightly coupled networks, zero oversight, and laughable attempts at security. Authority without responsibility, in other words. And in those cases, the assumption that our structural foundations are fine is a pipe dream. Reminders of this state of affairs come every month, with every infosec conference, every excited burst of news coverage following the discovery of a new high-profile hole. We patch the holes — maybe — but we don’t change our approach. At last week’s Black Hat conference, its creator Jeff Moss mused: “attackers have strategies, but defenders only seem to have tactics.” This is tacitly deliberate. We could have a strategy of hardening our collective infrastructure to improve its security, but the daunting list of upgrades (or downgrades) that would require would be ruinously expensive. This isn’t a problem unique to information security: for instance, , too. Are we going to repair all 54,000 anytime soon? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve observed while travelling that one of the most striking differences in quality of life, between nations with comparable wealth, is simply what’s culturally acceptable. (A famous example: in Japan it is not culturally acceptable for trains to be late. In wealthier America … not so much.) The only way we’re going to harden our infrastructure, and fix our bridges, if it becomes culturally unacceptable for them not to be fixed. I don’t see that happening. Instead, in a wealthy world of increasing economic disparity, I expect us to increasingly see two-tier infrastructure; stable, secure, reliable infrastructure for the 20%, and a haphazard, kinda-mostly-functional, vulnerable tier for the 80%. “Natural monopolies” such as power grids will be replaced by e.g. private solar power and PowerWalls. At some point one of the US mobile phone provides may well decide that it’s strategically worth it to become the Apple of phone service, charging twice as much for far better service and security. Etcetera. Unless, of course, some kind of perfect storm arrives first, and our security problem turns into a genuine crisis, or even catastrophe. I’m an optimist; I don’t think that will happen. But it’s increasingly hard to ignore the possibility. |
Hacking the websites responsible for election information is so easy an 11-year-old did it | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | It’s time to talk about election security. Over the weekend at , the annual hacker convention in Las Vegas to discuss some of the latest and greatest (or scariest) trends in the wild world of hacking, a pair of set up and offered up some frightening revelations about America’s voting infrastructure. (I’m .) For 11-year-old Emmett from Austin, hacking the website for the Florida Secretary of State was as easy as a simple SQL injection. While it took Emmett only 10 minutes to break into the election reporting section of the Florida Secretary of State web page, it’s important to note that these pages were set up as replicas. The idea, according to event organizers from (a secure communications platform), “was mainly focused on breaking into the portions of the websites that are critical to the election process, [so] the kids worked against the replicas of the webpages where election results are reported by secretaries of state.” The replicas were built by the team at Wall of Sheep Village and they issued the following statement: “The main issues with the live sites we are creating the replicas of are related to poor coding practices. They have popped up across the industry and are not vendor specific.” And while the National Association for the Secretaries of State for the Voting Machine Hacking Village, they didn’t address the hacks the kids made on their . Well this is interesting. National Association of Secretaries of State issues statement against the Def Con Voting Village. Says its attempt to recreate (and likely hack the shit out of) a connected mockup of the election process isn't realistic. — Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) In all, some 47 kids participated in the election hacking contest and 89 percent of them managed to get in to the virtual websites set up by Wickr and Wall of Sheep Village. Emmett, whose dad works in cybersecurity and who has been attending Def Con for four years, has some thoughts on how easy it was for him to get into the system and change the vote tallies for election results. “It’s actually kind of scary,” the 11-year-old said. “People can easily hack in to websites like these and they can probably do way more harmful things to these types of websites.” The point, according to Wickr’s (badass) founder Nico Sell, is to bring attention to just how flawed security operations remain at the state level in areas that are vital to the nation’s democracy. Some executives at big corporations share the same concerns. For Hugh Thompson, the chief technology officer at Symantec, the risks are real — even if the problems won’t manifest in the most important elections. As Thompson (who worked on election security in the early 2000s) “The risk that I think most of us worried about at that time is still the biggest one: someone goes into a state or a county that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of the election, is not going to change the balance on x, y or z, but then publishes details of the attack,” he said. “Undermining confidence in the vote is scary.” Stakes are incredibly high, according to experts familiar with election security. Despite the indictments that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference, issued against 12 Russian nationals for targeting the 2016 U.S. election, Russian hacking remains a threat in the current election cycle. that it has detected evidence of attempted Russian interference into three campaigns already in the 2018 election cycle. As Fortune reported in July, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security said that researchers at the company had discovered phishing campaigns that were linked to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit tied to the DNC election hacks from 2016. For security officers working on the websites for the secretaries of state in the battleground states that the tween and teen hackers targeted during Def Con, young Emmett has some advice. |
Inside Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VR Interview Experience | Maggie Lane | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | Mikey and Donnie in Nickelodeon’s “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live” virtual reality interview experience [gallery ids="1690189,1690191,1690192"] |
A private Tesla backed by Saudi Arabia might not be as far-fetched as you think | Mike Butcher | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | This week the business and tech world was stunned when Elon Musk on August 7, via Twitter of course, that he wanted to take Tesla private. The estimated price tag for such a move is commonly put at up to $72 billion. Shortly after that no ‘ ’ appeared and Tesla’s shares plummeted. But today, Bloomberg came out with a new which might well fan the flames of speculation on Monday. Its story has sources which say that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (called the Public Investment Fund or PIF) was already in talks with Tesla to become a significant investor Musk’s tweets. The timing of this revelation is important, because the PIF has already built up a stake — valued at about $2 billion — just short of 5 percent in Tesla in recent months. One could easily surmise that the world’s biggest crude oil producer might well be considering a stake in the world’s most iconic electric car company to hedge against oil. Indeed, that is exactly what Bloomberg’s sources are telling them. Now, part of the reasons the PIF might be talking to Tesla is that the car maker is alleged to have already had limited talks with SoftBank, of which PIF is a major backer. What makes these rumours so interesting is that Saudi Arabia’s government is planning to supercharge the PIF into a $2 trillion fund. And a major (let me repeat that) major focus of the PIF is technology. Why? The Saudis are extremely keen to diversify the kingdom’s oil-dependent economy and it needs a war-chest and technology assets to do that. This policy is being driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the next in line to the throne and dubbed ‘MBS’ by everyone in Saudi. Since he was named heir-apparent last year he’s been on a tear, restricting the powers of the religious police, removing the ban on female drivers and various other cultural reforms. He’s also driving the country’s tech policy, which last week Steve Wozniak as a “tech ambassador”. He’s also behind , a huge national plan to diversify the economy, and develop public service sectors such as health, education and infrastructure. Technology will be a key enabler and driver of these numerous changes. Saudi Arabia is the largest spender on ICT in the Middle East, with spending estimated at $35 billion in 2015 and expected to surpass $39 billion by 2019. Then there’s , the planned mega city close to the border region of Saudi Arabia and Egypt which will be 33 times the size of New York and make Dubai look like a village. This is being backed by $500 billion from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and international investors. Put all this in the context of a ‘mere’ $72 billion for Tesla, an icon of the industry, a millennial Crown Prince who is hot for tech, and a sovereign wealth fund which will eventually hit $2 trillion, and Elon Musk’s hints that he may find enough funding to take Tesla private might not look so fanciful after all. |
How Airbnb went from renting air beds for $10 to a $30 billion hospitality behemoth | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | Happy 10th anniversary . When we first wrote about the company a decade ago, it was a spare website cobbled together by its founders for the low low price of $20,000. In the years since, the marketplace Airbnb created has radically transformed the rental landscape in cities, created an entirely new hospitality market and surged to a valuation of roughly $31 billion. We researched the number of airbeds sold every year because that’s how big we thought Airbnb could become. — Brian Chesky (@bchesky) As it prepares for an initial public offering in 2019, it’s worth a look back on how far the company has come, and how its founders’ vision for a new type of way to monetize unused apartment space for budget travelers has become the engine driving a new kind of travel and new experiments in modern living (for better or worse). When we wrote about the company in 2008, the pitch for Airbnb’s services had already been set. AirBed and Breakfast will definitely appeal to younger travelers, and conventioneers who can’t find a regular hotel room. In overbooked Denver, where 20,000 people will be descending for the Democratic National Convention, hotels are already sold out. More than 600 people have found alternative accommodations through AirBed and Breakfast, and 50 to 100 new listings appear every day. Prices range from $20 a night for an airbed to $3,000 for an entire house. Indeed, it’s likely that there would have been no Airbnb without the 2008 presidential campaign. The election created a serendipitous confluence of an incredibly unique historical moment where a groundswell of demand could be met by a new type of supply and Airbnb’s co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were there to capitalize on the opportunity. It’s good to remember that in 2008, the co-founders were claiming that they could barely make rent. And they were certainly strapped for cash for the fledgling business. There, again, the 2008 election presented them with an opportunity. “The world thought we were crazy,” Gebbia recalled in an interview. But the RISD grads had that $20,000 in seed funding and politically themed cereal boxes to tide the business over. It was the cereal gimmick — selling Obama O’s and Captain McCains – for $40 a box that got them the hearing from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham and acceptance into the accelerator. Three years later, the business was a rocket ship. It had pulled in a (whopping for the time) $112 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and General Catalyst and was already on the path to bulldozing the old models of hospitality with a shared vision for visiting any city anywhere in the world. “Airbnb, with its strong management team and engaged worldwide community is on a path to become a transformational company,” said Yuri Milner founder of DST Global, in a truly understated statement at the time. So transformational, in fact, that the company would go on to raise billions more atop that hundred-million-plus Series B round. But that success has not come without a certain cost. For all of the ways in which Airbnb claims to be unlocking the local economy, it can’t avoid the accusations that it has locked out local renters in favor of financial speculators who are buying up apartments to lease to a traveling class rather than sustain a viable and vibrant neighborhood for the actual citizens that live there. One study, (and funded by the AFL-CIO and the Hotel Trades Council), indicated that the company significantly impacted rental prices in New York. … the study estimates that Airbnb has driven up long-term rental prices by 1.4 percent, or $384 per year, for the median New York City renter. The research suggests that both restricted availability in the long-term rental market and increased financial incentives in the short-term rental market account for this increase. It’s those kinds of figures that have led to the sometimes aggressive pushback from local real estate advocates. Indeed, it was just about three years ago that San Francisco protestors from the Coalition on Homelessness took over Airbnbs headquarters to protest what they viewed as the company’s complicity in the surge in evictions and homelessness in the city. In a 2015 letter to New York legislators, Airbnb’s public policy chief at the time, David Hantman, wrote, “The majority of hosts use the money they earn to pay their bills and stay in their homes.” And in a separate blog post (now apparently lost in a site redesign) around the same time, Hantman took Airbnb’s argument further. “In fact, Airbnb makes cities more affordable,” Hantman . “Sixty two percent of Airbnb hosts in New York said Airbnb helped them stay in their homes and the typical Airbnb host in New York earns $7,530 per year — a modest, but significant amount that can make a huge difference for families.” The company’s kerfuffles with regulators (a sort of mirror image of the woes faced by fellow marketplace service Uber and its American competitor Lyft) have not effected the way investors are valuing the virtual room-for-rent-filled house that Chesky and Gebbia have built. As we reported earlier this year, Airbnb raised nearly $4.4 billion in funding as a private company, to date, and reports say it is on track to make between $3.5 billion and $4 billion in revenues this year from its business connecting travelers with private homes and an array of other related services. That’s a long, long way from matching would-be attendees to the 2008 Democratic National Convention with air mattresses or sofas in Denver. |
Understanding smartwatches | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | I was wrong. Several years ago I reviewed the first Garmin Fenix 3 smartwatch. This was before the release of the Apple Watch. That’s key to this story. . The Apple Watch would be better in every way, I pointed out. Therefore, there would be little reason to buy the Fenix 3. But here I am, in the middle of the woods, wearing the fifth generation of the Garmin Fenix while my Apple Watch sits at home on my desk. In some ways I was right. The Apple Watch is better by most measurable attributes: there are more apps, the screen is superior, there’s a vibrant accessory market, and it’s thinner, faster and cheaper. The Garmin Fenix is big, clunky and the screen looks like it’s from a Kindle. It’s not a touchscreen nor does it have the number of apps or band options of the Apple Watch. I like it. To me, the Garmin Fenix is akin to a modern Casio G-Shock, and that’s what I want to wear right now. Smartwatches are often reviewed like phones or vacuums. Specs are compared, and conclusions are drawn. Wearability is talked about, and functions are tested. If the watch has a swimming option, take it in a pool, nevermind the fact the reviewer hasn’t done a lap since high school. I started out doing the same thing with this Garmin. I took it kayaking. I had kayaked twice in my life, and dear reader, I’m here to report the watch performed well on this kayak trip. The watch has topography maps, which are novel, but haven’t been useful since the river. It has a cadence beat to help keep strokes consistent. I tried it all. I ended up drinking a lot of Michigan beer instead of tracking the performance of the watch. Sorry. Still, performance matters to a point. Here’s my OG review of the Garmin Fenix 5: The watch is significant even on my wrist. The screen is underwhelming though it’s always on and visibility improves in sunlight. The buttons have great tactical feedback. The watch is waterproof to the extent it survived a flipped kayak and hours in Lake Michigan. The battery lasts nearly a week. The watch does not know when it’s on or off the wrist, so notifications will cause it to buzz even while it’s on your nightstand. But most of that doesn’t matter. The Garmin Fenix 5 is exceptional, and I love wearing it. Smartwatches need to be reviewed like ordinary watches. I need to explain more about how the watch feels rather than what it does or how it works. Of course it tracks steps and heart rate and displays select notifications from my phone. If those items work, they’re not important in a review. Take a Citizen Skyhawk line. It packs a highly sophisticated complication that’s designed, so the maker says, for pilots. Ball makes a lovely line intended to provide accurate timekeeping for train conductors. There are watches for high magnetic fields, tactical operators, race car drivers and, of course, countless ones for divers. Here’s my point: The vast majority of these watches are not used by divers or train conductors or fighter pilots. This Garmin Fenix watch, much like the Apple Watch or Rolex diver, can be an aspirational item. It’s like the juicer in my kitchen or rowing machine in my basement. I got it because I wanted to be a person who woke up and juiced some veggies before my workout. I haven’t used either in months. Smartwatches are different from smartphones and need to be reviewed as such. This Garmin Fenix watch has many modes I would never use, yet I love the watch. There’s a BASE jumping mode. I’m not jumping off a cliff. There’s a tactical mode and a golf mode and an open water mode, and I have no desire to be in situations where I need to track such activities. But I like the thought of having them available if I ever wanted to monitor my heartbeat while shooting targets. The smartwatch industry is approaching a point where features are secondary to design. It’s expected that the watch will track steps and heartbeat while providing access to various features. It’s like the time and date of a regular watch. Past that, the watch needs to fit into a person’s aspirations. Everyone is different, but to me, this is how it is laid out: The Apple Watch is for those looking for the top-tier experience regardless of the downsides of constant charging and a delicate exterior. Android Watch buyers are looking for something similar but in a counter-culture way. Samsung’s smartwatches are interesting, and with the new Galaxy Watch, finally reaching maturity. There are fashion smartwatches with fewer features but designs that make a statement. That’s where this Garmin watch lives and I’m okay with it. Fossil and Timex watches live here too. Using the Apple Watch as a standard, some of these fashion watches cost more, and some cost less, but they all say something an Apple Watch does not. I’m bored with the Apple Watch, and right now I’m into thinking I live the type of life where I need a smartwatch that tracks every aspect of a triathlon. I don’t need all these features, but I like to I do. I also don’t need to have a GMT watch with a third timezone, and I don’t need a watch with a hacking movement hand as if I need to synchronize my watch with other members of my special forces squad. But I have those watches, along with dive watches and anti-magnetic watches. I’m not alone. The watch industry has long existed on selling lifestyles. I was wrong before. The Apple Watch isn’t better than this Garmin or most other smartwatches— at least it’s not better for me right now. Maybe two weeks from now I’ll want to wear an Apple Watch and not because it’s better, but because it makes a different statement. |
California may mandate a woman in the boardroom, but businesses are fighting it | Antoinette Siu | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | California is moving toward becoming the first state to require companies to have women on their boards –assuming the idea could survive a likely court challenge. Sparked by debates around fair pay, sexual harassment and workplace culture, two female state senators are spearheading a bill to promote greater gender representation in corporate decision-making. Of the 445 publicly traded companies in California, a quarter of them lack a single woman in their boardrooms. Source: and , which won Senate approval with only Democratic votes and has until the end of August to clear the Assembly, would require publicly held companies headquartered in California to have at least one woman on their boards of directors by end of next year. By 2021, companies with boards of five directors must have at least two women, and companies with six-member boards must have at least three women. Firms failing to comply would face a fine. “Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas,” said Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, who is sponsoring the bill with Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego. “It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s good for a company’s bottom line.” Source: and Yet critics of the bill say it violates the federal and state constitutions. Business associations say the rule would require companies to discriminate against men wanting to serve on boards, as well as conflict with corporate law that says the internal affairs of a corporation should be governed by the state law in which it is incorporated. This bill would apply to companies headquartered in California. Jennifer Barrera, senior vice president of policy at the California Chamber of Commerce, argued against the bill and said it only focuses “on one aspect of diversity” by singling out gender. “This bill basically mandates that we hire the woman above anybody else who we may be fulfilling for purposes of diversity,” she said at a hearing. Similarly, a legislative analysis of the bill cautioned that it could get challenged on equal protection grounds, and that it would be difficult to defend, requiring the state to prove a compelling government interest in such a quota system for a private corporation. Source: and Five years ago, California was the first state to pass a , authored by Jackson, calling on public companies to increase gender diversity. In response, about 20 percent of the companies headquartered in the state followed through with on their boards, according to the research firm Board Governance Research. But the resolution was non-binding and expired in December 2016. Other countries have been more proactive. Norway in 2007 was the first country to pass a law requiring 40 percent of corporate board seats be held by women, and Germany set a 30 percent requirement in 2015. Spain, France and Italy have also set quotas for public firms. In California, smaller companies have fewer female directors. Out of 50 companies with the lowest revenues, 48 percent have no female directors, according to Board Governance Research. Only 8 percent of their board seats are held by women. The 2017 said larger companies did a better job of appointing women, with all 50 of the highest-revenue companies having at least one female director and 23 percent of board seats held by women. “The main issue is still that a lot of companies headquartered here don’t have women on their boards,” said Annalisa Barrett, clinical professor of finance at the University of San Diego’s School of Business. “We quite often like to think of California as progressive and a leader on social issues, so that’s kind of disappointing.” Barrett publishes an annual report of women on boards in California. Public companies are major employers in the state, and their financial performance has a big impact on public pension funds, mutual funds and investment portfolios. “Financial performance does really impact the broader community,” she said. The National Association of Women Business Owners, sponsor of the bill, says an economy as big as California’s ought to “set an example globally for enlightened business practice.” In a letter of support, the association cites that suggest corporations with female directors perform better than those with no women on their boards. One University of California, Davis did find that companies with more women serving on their boards saw a higher return on assets and equity, but the author acknowledges this may not suggest a cause-and-effect. |
Electric scooters are going worldwide | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | on a city-by-city basis, electric scooter companies and their respective services are continuing to make their way to markets all over the world. Earlier this week, for example, , launching hundreds of electric scooters in the Spanish capital. About a week before that, competitor . As Bird expands to international markets, it’s worth noting that competitor Lime has operated its bikes and scooters outside of the U.S. for quite some time. , Lime brought its bikes to a number of European cities and in June, . Lime also . Nationwide, Bird, Lime, Spin, Goat and Skip have collectively deployed scooters in 33 cities. Outside of the U.S., you’ll find scooters from those companies in just three cities. Bird and Lime are by no means the only companies working in this space, but they’re the two that have raised most the capital. Bird has raised $415 million in funding while Lime has raised $467 million. Bird and Lime are also the only two U.S.-based scooter companies that have gone international. Over in the U.S., of course, the competitive landscape is an entirely different story. California is the main hot spot for scooters in the U.S., but they have also popped up in Texas, Washington D.C., North Carolina and other states throughout the country. Unsurprisingly, regulation has proved to be an issue for many of these companies. In San Francisco, the Municipal Transportation Agency is currently reviewing permit applications from 12 electric scooter services — — looking to operate in the city. The permit process came as a result of Bird, Lime and Spin deploying their electric scooters without permission in the city in March. Fast forward to today and electric scooters are nowhere to be found on the streets of San Francisco. The SFMTA initially said it expected to make a decision about which five, if any, companies would receive permits by the end of June. The SFMTA expects to finalize its recommendations and documentation “in the coming weeks,” . Once that’s done, the agency says it will work with companies to finalize and clarify the terms and conditions of the permit. The goal, according to the blog post, is to issue permits sometime in August. As part of the 24-month pilot program, electric scooter companies selected to operate in the city will need to provide user education and insurance, share its detailed trip data with the city, have a privacy policy that protects user data, offer a low-income plan and operate in a to-be-approved service area. The city will allow no more than 2,500 electric scooters on the streets at any one time. Last month, . And let’s not forget the , where Bird first deployed its scooters. In Austin, D.C. and Portland, Ore., it’s a slightly different scenario. Over in Austin, dockless electric scooter startup with the city to ensure its service meets the criteria laid out by regulators. Moving forward, GOAT says it’s actively working with other cities to pursue additional operating permits. Skip, which worked with city officials and lawmakers to ensure it had the green light before launching. In Portland, . With the sheer volume of capital pouring into these companies, along with interest from ride-hailing giants Lyft and Uber, it’s clear these scooters are here to stay. Whether cities like them or not, scooters are going to roll up. It’s just a matter of when and how many. |
Spotify runs test in Australia, allowing users to skip ads at any time, potentially boosting targeting and revenues | Mike Butcher | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | If you want to test out a feature on a large, well-known, global, platform, there’s a very simple solution: Test it in Australia. At a population of 24 million and with a predominantly Western culture, it’s a large enough test bed and small enough market, so ideal for testing new features before (maybe) rolling them out globally. And that’s exactly what Spotify appears to be doing in testing out how it can tweak its advertising platform to take the fight to the likes of Pandora and other competitors. Advertising Age today that it’s running a test in Australia which will let listeners skip audio and video adverts at any time while the ad is playing. This is instead of having a preset time limit to listen to or watch the advert which can’t be skipped. They’ll be able to do this any time they want, as often as they want, and the new feature will also let them jump straight back into the music. The feature (well, it’s still a test feature after all) is called “Active Media.” In it, advertisers won’t have to pay for any ads that are skipped. It’s a high risk strategy because clearly Spotify may get less ad revenue in the short-term, while the algorithm is trained to serve ads that consumers will in fact listen to. But Australia’s smaller market means any lost revenue will be relatively small. AdAge quote Danielle Lee, global head of partner solutions at Spotify, saying the move is about tailoring the ads to users’ tastes, so similar to Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” feature, which does the same for music. It’s a smart move, since, by allowing users to spend longer on the ads they actually do like, Spotify will get better data on the ads which work best for that particular user, and thus sell better-targeted ads which, in turn, will have a higher premium. “Our hypothesis is if we can use this to fuel our streaming intelligence, and deliver a more personalized experience and a more engaging audience to our advertisers, it will improve the outcomes that we can deliver for brands,” Lee said. Plus, a user listening to a better-targeted advert in full is worth more than blasting adverts to consumers who may ultimately be put off the platform for being forced to listen to adverts. They’d also listen to fewer ads overall, thus keeping the platform ‘sticky’. Spotify says advertisers won’t have to pay for any ads that are skipped. If things go well, it’s likely the feature will expand globally. Spotify previously reported in July that it closed the second quarter of the year with 180 million monthly active users. This is up 30 percent year-over-year. It now have over 101 million ad-supported users in 65 markets globally. Total ad revenue has reached $158 million, up 20 percent. Automated ad sales are growing quickly and accounted for more than 20 percent of ad revenue, the company reported. |
24 hours left to apply to Startup Battlefield Latin America | Ned Desmond | 2,018 | 8 | 12 | The clock is ticking: only 24 hours left to submit your application to compete in the first TechCrunch on November 8, 2018, in São Paulo, Brazil. Is your startup one of Latin America’s best? If so, don’t waste another minute. before the 24-hour clock runs out. Don’t miss your chance to launch your early-stage startup on a global stage. no later than . The winning founders receive a $25,000 non-equity cash prize and a trip for two to the next TechCrunch Disrupt. While there, they can exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley. All Startup Battlefield competitors — win or lose — reap the benefits of broad exposure to the media outlets and investors sitting in the audience. Plus, we video all the Startup Battlefield sessions and post them on TechCrunch.com. That exposure lives on long after the competition ends. All competing teams also become part of our Startup Battlefield alumni community. Since 2007, more than 750 companies have competed in Startup Battlefield. Those companies — including Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare — have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. Here’s how the competition works. TechCrunch editors will evaluate every eligible application and select 15 founders to compete in the Battlefield, which takes place at São Paulo’s Tomie Ohtake Institute. Founders receive intensive — and free — pitch coaching from TechCrunch editors and will be primed and ready to go come game day. During three preliminary rounds, five startups per round will each have six minutes to pitch and present their demo before a panel of top investors and seasoned entrepreneurs. The judges have six minutes following each pitch for a thorough Q&A. Only five teams advance to the finals for another round of pitching and more probing questions. And only one team will emerge as the first champion. Here’s what you need to know about eligibility. Founders must meet these requirements: TechCrunch takes place on November 8, 2018, in São Paulo, Brazil. You have everything to gain by applying, but time is running out: You only have 24 hours left to apply by the deadline of . Show us what you’ve got: . |
Tim Draper has a song about Bitcoin for you | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Down in the dumps while ? Quirky billionaire and long-time Bitcoin bull Tim Draper is here for you with what is apparently called a rap song. The song you have all been waiting for by Kelley James and me . Free to share. — Tim Draper (@TimDraper) … Anyhow, we wish it had ended there. It didn’t. [ for making us aware of this] |
WeWork China rival Ucommune raises $43.5M more at a $1.8B valuation | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | , one of its main rivals is refueling its tanks too. Ucommune — the company formerly known as UrWork until a WeWork lawsuit forced a rebrand — announced its $43.5 million Series C round. Beijing-based Ucommune’s new round was led by real estate-focused investment firms Prosperity Holdings and RK Properties. The company said the deal gives its business a $1.8 billion post-money valuation. to date, it has raised around $450 million from investors, . For comparison, WeWork China has pulled in $1 billion overall since being . Both investors are strategic, according to Ucommune. It said that its p In total, Ucommune claims to manage 160 locations in over 35 cities. That’s primarily China but outside of Asia its reach does include New York, London, Hong Kong and Taiwan, too. News of this new funding comes one day after another Chinese co-working brand, My Dream, . Three big names is nothing though, the field used to be comprised of dozens of players. Some have died out but the market has also seen plenty of consolidation. in a deal reportedly worth $400 million. Meanwhile, , including Workingdom for around $45 million this summer. |
FiveAI to start a trial of its shared autonomous car fleet in London in 2019 | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | After raising $35 million to develop driverless car technology and a strategy to build a fleet of shared vehicles, UK startup FiveAI is announcing its first on-street trial: a service aimed at commuters in the London outer boroughs of Bromley and Croydon. Projected to begin in late 2019, it will kick off first with a 10-month “data gathering” exercise, which will see five FiveAI vehicles, with drivers, collect information about road conditions, the movement of pedestrians and various vehicles, and other variables to help train its AI platform. The new trial will be the first on-street effort from the UK startup, which has up to now been testing its technology primarily in Bedfordshire, at automotive testing centre , according to Ben Peters, FiveAI’s VP of product who is also a co-founder of the company (alongside Stan Boland Steve Allpress, John Redford and Simon Walker). The news of the London trial comes as TechCrunch has learned that FiveAI is also about to start raising a new round of funding. While the $35 million FiveAI has raised to date is considered the highest amount of funding for an autonomous car company in Europe, it is a very modest figure when compared to startups in the US and China. Indeed, although transportation across Europe is estimated to be a $400 billion market, Peters estimates that no more than $100 million has been raised by autonomous driving startups in the region, versus around $8 billion by autonomous car startups the US, home to startups like and (which, like FiveAI, are building platforms that they plan to use in their own fleets), transportation providers like Uber, and car makers (which themselves are their efforts), and tech giants like Google that approach cars like the next big hardware challenge. But there is a clear opportunity: Europe has a lot of urban density, roads that are less likely to follow grid patterns, and road names are very often the opposite of clearly marked. These factors make Europe a hard problem to tackle, but one that a local company might be more amenable to trying. With that in mind, Peters would not say how much FiveAI is looking to raise, or anything about the investors, but he did confirm that the round would be FiveAI’s largest to date, with the aim of expanding trials to more cities across Europe. In the meantime, Bromley and Croydon may not be the most high-profile parts of London to those outside of England, but Peters said that FiveAI is eschewing Central London and opting instead to focus on these two boroughs for a couple of reasons. One is that the area affords the startup some sympathetic guinea pigs, or as Peters calls them, “friendly users.” Direct Line, the insurance company that is a partner of FiveAI’s, has recently moved its offices to Bromley from Croydon, and so there are employees living in the latter borough who have to commute to the former on a regular basis. This gives FiveAI an opportunity to build a service tailored to that market. Another is the opportunity to fill a gap that isn’t being addressed by others. The center of London is very congested, but there are already a number of transportation alternatives attempting to address that issue. “There are a lot of problems to solve there, but they are very well served by current providers,” said Peters. “But in Zones 4 to 6 [the outer boroughs of London], about one quarter of people are still driving their own vehicles to and from work.” That presents an opportunity for a shared mobility service. It will take a good 10 months before the first FiveAI vehicles can offer rides, and likely more months before no driver has to be present to engage the vehicle if something goes awry. Peters said that this slow early work will help the startup add more roads, areas and cities to the service more quickly down the line. “It doesn’t have to be as slow in the future, maybe just a few months to get up and going,” he said. “We’re really targeting an urban service, which is the difficult part. Autonomous driving in urban areas is the hardest challenge, one that is still unsolved.” |
Ethereum’s falling price splits the crypto community | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Hello And Welcome Back To The Latest Edition Of All The Cryptos Are Getting Rekt Right Now. Crypto bloodbaths have become fairly common in 2018 — mainly because of the insane growth in 2017 — but we’ve not covered them all because they are so numerous and often include so-called ‘flash crashes’ or small drops, but the fall happening today is worth noting for several wider reasons. Primarily that’s because this is a major test for Ether — the token associated with the Ethereum Foundation that is the second largest cryptocurrency by volume — has been on a downward spiral with little sign of change. Ether, which is the preferred platform of choice for most developers building on the blockchain, is down nearly 17 percent over the past day. That’s erased billions of dollars in paper (crypto) value as the bear market for cryptocurrencies continues to pull markets south. The drop also marks the first time ever that the price of an Ether has fallen below its valuation over one year: one Ether is worth $266 right now at the time of writing, versus $304 on August 14 2017. The token has been steadily falling since early May, when its peak value was $808, and as the lynchpin for many ICO project tokens, its demise has sent the value of most other tokens down, too. Just looking at Coinmarketcap.com this morning, all but two of the top 100 tokens are down over the last 24 hours with many losing 10-25 percent of their value over the past day. Bitcoin, too, has dropped below $6,000, . Ether’s plummet below $300 has sparked a mixed debate among those in the crypto community. The token had been held as visionary, an improvement on Bitcoin that gives developers a platform to build on — whether it be decentralized apps, decentralized systems or more — but that hasn’t been reflected in in this months-long price retreat. Certainly, two founders who spoke TechCrunch and have held ICOs expressed a belief that Ether “needs to find some price stability” to allow the focus to become about product and not just ‘get rich’ speculation. Of course, it helps that the two founders and many of those who held token sales have long since sold the Ether or Bitcoin they raised in exchange for fiat currency. Indeed, if their token sale was last year, the chances are they got a lot more real-world cash than they initially bargained for or would get now. But still, the idea of consistency is shared by others who are in crypto professionally. That includes investors like Kenrick Drijkoningen, , a spinout of Singapore-based VC firm Golden Gate Ventures. In an interview last week, Drijkoningen told TechCrunch that raising a fund and doing deals in a ‘low tide’ market like now beats attempting to do the same amid a frothy period with hype and peak valuations — one Ether was worth nearly $1,400 in January, for example. A number of others VCs have long said that, ultimately, stability is good for the ecosystem. Vitalik Buterin is the creator of Ethereum But, on the other side, there are more pessimistic voices. Among some investors canvassed by TechCrunch, the sense is that with the downturn of the ICO funding boom that fueled much of Ethereum’s rise, there may be less incentive to hold as the broader market’s interest in the cryptocurrency wanes. For one Bitcoin bull, the intrinsic value of Bitcoin as an immutable, decentralized ledger acts as a more powerful draw than the perceived mutability and centralization that the Ethereum platform offers. “People are also beginning to understand the unique value of an immutable, decentralized ledger, and recognize that Ethereum is not that,” the investor wrote in an email. Another long-term problem that Ethereum faces, according to this investor, is that the promise of decentralized apps backed by the token is yet to be released. Crypto Kitties, a smash hit earlier this year, has faded and now there’s competition as Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is adding nodes and apps — referred to as LApps — which can operate in a similar but leverage the Bitcoin ledger. It’s still early days, of course, and markets will always rise and fall, but this is the first big test for Ether and Ethereum. Beyond the sport of price speculation, it’ll be worth watching to see where this heads next. |
null | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 8 | 15 | null |
New defense bill bans the U.S. government from using Huawei and ZTE tech | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | U.S. government agencies will be forbidden from using certain components or services from several Chinese tech firms, including Huawei and ZTE. The ban was signed into law today by President Trump as part of the and will go into effect over the next two years. The bill covers anything that is a “substantial or essential component of any system,” as well as tech that is used to route or view user data. So even though it doesn’t mandate an outright ban on Huawei and ZTE products, it still means many government workers or contractors, or companies that want to do business with the government, will have to jettison much of their current technology. The Defense Authorization Act also directs U.S. agencies to allocate funding to companies that need to replace equipment as a result of the new bill. Last month, ZTE to lift a denial order that was put in place after it violated sanctions against North Korea and Iran. The denial order, barring ZTE from working with American suppliers, would have seriously damaged its business and was a major point of contention in the U.S.-China trade war. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle opposed the deal and continue to view ZTE as a security threat, but , which paved the way for the less severe provision in the Defense Authorization Act. TechCrunch has contacted Huawei and ZTE for comment. ( Huawei emailed back this statement–“Huawei supports the US government’s goals for better security, but this random addition to the NDAA is ineffective, misguided, and unconstitutional. It does nothing to identify real security risks or improve supply chain security, and will only serve to stifle innovation while increasing internet costs for US consumers and businesses. We believe that the American people deserve equal access to the best possible connections and smart device options, and will keep working to make this happen.”) Huawei and ZTE, in particular, have been singled out as national security threats by the U.S. since . But the ban also covers video surveillance and telecommunications hardware produced by Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company and Dahua Technology Company, all Chinese firms. |
The FDA OK’d an app as a form of birth control | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Don’t want to get pregnant? There’s a Food and Drug Administration-approved app for that. The FDA has just given the for Swedish app Natural Cycles to market itself as a form of birth control in the U.S. Natural Cycles was already in use as a way to prevent pregnancy in certain European countries. However, this is the first time a so-called “digital contraceptive” has been approved in America. The app works using an algorithm based on data given by women using the app, such as daily body temperature and monthly menstrual cycles. It then calculates the exact window of days each month a woman is most fertile and therefore likely to conceive. Women can then see which days the app recommends they should avoid having sex or use protection to avoid getting pregnant. Tracking your cycle to determine a fertile window has long been used to either become pregnant or avoid conceiving. However, Natural Cycles put a scientific spin on the age-old method by evaluating more than 15,000 women to determine its algorithm had an effectiveness rate with a margin of error of 1.8 percent for “perfect use” and a 6 percent failure rate for “typical use.” What that means is almost two in every 100 women could likely conceive on a different date than the calculated fertile window. That’s not exactly fool-proof, but it is higher than many other contraceptive methods. A condom, for instance, has an 18 percent margin of error rate, according to the . And though the app makers were able to convince the FDA of its effectiveness, at least one hospital in Stockholm has with Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (MPA) after it recorded 37 unwanted pregnancies among women who said they had been using the app as their contraception method. “Consumers are increasingly using digital health technologies to inform their everyday health decisions, and this new app can provide an effective method of contraception if it’s used carefully and correctly,” assistant director for the health of women in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health Terri Cornelison said in a statement. However, she also acknowledged there was a margin of error in the app’s algorithm and other contraceptive methods. “Women should know that no form of contraception works perfectly, so an unplanned pregnancy could still result from correct usage of this device,” she said. |
Nvidia’s new Turing architecture is all about real-time ray tracing and AI | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | In recent days, word about Nvidia’s new Turing architecture started leaking out of the Santa Clara-based company’s headquarters. So it didn’t come as a major surprise that the company today announced during its keynote the launch of this new architecture and three new pro-oriented workstation graphics cards in its . Nvidia describes the new Turing architecture as “the greatest leap since the invention of the CUDA GPU in 2006.” That’s a high bar to clear, but there may be a kernel of truth here. These new Quadro RTx chips are the first to feature the company’s new RT Cores. “RT” here stands for ray tracing, a rendering method that basically traces the path of light as it interacts with the objects in a scene. This technique has been around for a very long time (remember POV-Ray on the Amiga?). Traditionally, though, it was always very computationally intensive, though the results tend to look far more realistic. In recent years, ray tracing got a new boost thanks to faster GPUs and support from the likes of Microsoft, which recently added ray tracing support to DirectX. “Hybrid rendering will change the industry, opening up amazing possibilities that enhance our lives with more beautiful designs, richer entertainment and more interactive experiences,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “The arrival of real-time ray tracing is the Holy Grail of our industry.” The new RT cores can accelerate ray tracing by up to 25 times compared to Nvidia’s Pascal architecture, and Nvidia claims 10 GigaRays a second for the maximum performance. Unsurprisingly, the three new Turing-based Quadro GPUs will also feature the company’s AI-centric Tensor Cores, as well as 4,608 CUDA cores that can deliver up to 16 trillion floating point operations in parallel with 16 trillion integer operations per second. The chips feature GDDR6 memory to expedite things, and support Nvidia’s NVLink technology to scale up memory capacity to up to 96GB and 100GB/s of bandwidth. The AI part here is more important than it may seem at first. With NGX, Nvidia today also launched a new platform that aims to bring AI into the graphics pipelines. “NGX technology brings capabilities such as taking a standard camera feed and creating super slow motion like you’d get from a $100,000+ specialized camera,” the company explains, and also notes that filmmakers could use this technology to easily remove wires from photographs or replace missing pixels with the right background. On the software side, Nvidia also today announced that it is open sourcing its (MDL). Companies ranging from Adobe (for Dimension CC) to Pixar, Siemens, Black Magic, Weta Digital, Epic Games and Autodesk have already signed up to support the new Turing architecture. All of this power comes at a price, of course. The new Quadro RTX line starts at $2,300 for a 16GB version, while stepping up to 24GB will set you back $6,300. Double that memory to 48GB and Nvidia expects that you’ll pay about $10,000 for this high-end card. |
Rapper Azealia Banks’ claims to have the inside track on Elon Musk’s Tesla take-private drama | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | If Azealia Banks’ , Elon Musk’s tweets about Tesla’s take-private deal can be chalked up to some good ole acid and a whole lot of . Over a series of Instagram stories from the weekend, Banks (whose account should be taken with an entire salt shaker — more on that later) reported from the belly of the beast (which in this case is one of Elon Musk’s Los Angeles homes). Azealia Banks exposing Elon Musk for tweeting while on Acid.. while she was waiting for Grimes at her home … whewwww lord 😳 — sadhoeflo (@sadhoeflo) Banks, who claims she was invited to Elon’s demesne at the behest of Musk’s partner, the musician Grimes, to collaborate on music, wound up being a witness to what she claimed was a drug-induced financing tweet and a weekend of dealing with its repercussions. At this point, yes, of course we reached out for comment. A spokesperson for Musk responded to a request for comment in an email, writing, “With regard to your question about drug use, as a spokesman for Elon this is ‘total nonsense’ – additionally, ‘Elon has never even met Ms. Banks or communicated with her in any way’.” A close reading of Banks’ account paints the picture that she was left alone in the house and only overheard frantic phone calls as Musk scrambled to shore up the funding he had claimed was “secured” in a tweet from last week. Just when you think it doesn't get crazier than Elon vs. the shorts, you find out about the Azealia Banks Vs. Grimes/Elon craziness and realize THERE COULD BE SO MANY MORE LEVELS OF CRAZY TO GO. — Jeremy C. Oweñs (@jowens510) Banks did not respond to a direct message requesting comment. As soon as Musk tweeted his infamous tweet claiming Tesla had secured financing last week, there was instant speculation about whether it was Saudi money, Softbank money…or maybe no money. The theories were that either he had pulled off a coup or Musk was chasing the recent with some speculative (shaky) fiction about Tesla’s outcomes. Indeed, does not make the financing picture any more solid, nor, , would it absolve Musk from potential problems with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial regulator remains highly interested in Musk’s confirmation fo funding and whether or not it is more than just a pipe dream more befitting a confabulation from Timothy Leary. There is, however, the matter of Banks’ credibility. While other sites have confirmed that she was at Musk’s house, the notorious shit-stirrer is… well… a notorious stirrer of shit. She’s picked fights with celebrities from Beyonce to cast members of RuPaul’s drag race and remains a controversial figure. Indeed, that Musk (reached via DM) said he never met Banks. … when reached via Twitter direct messages, Musk told Gizmodo that he “has never even met [Banks] or communicated with her in any way.” In other words, . That said, this feels… insane as it may be… of a piece with the arc of Tesla’s recent story (and the founder to which, as of now, it is inextricably tied). The company makes very real, and very beloved cars that could have a major impact on renewable energy for all — while simultaneously riding the waves of controversy kicked up by its founder CEO like a battery powered toy boat. All things could be true. The Saudis could come in to save Musk and Tesla (although today’s statement from Musk indicates nothing so solid as a deal on the table) and he could also be Howard Hughes-ing it in one of his Los Angeles estates. Musk has already shown us that he’s brilliant, but his erratic behavior recently (from random tweets, to errant earnings calls) may be a sign that he is also — at least for now — out of whatever stands in for balance when it comes to high-functioning futurists. And he certainly hasn’t done himself any favors regarding his credibility by trying to paint reasonable journalism and journalists as purveyors of “fake news”. As of now, I’m #teamnoone and all of this sucks. |
Google keeps a history of your locations even when Location History is off | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | In a wonderfully clear example of “dark patterns” designed to mislead users and retain control over their data, Google continues tracking your location even when you turn off Location History and are told that “the places you go are no longer stored.” Google says it tells users, but its disclosure is the bare minimum and users are discouraged from further interference with data collection. lays out the details, but the information will come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to fully expunge their location data, or who read . The problem is quite simple. When you turn off (technically “pause,” a choice of words in itself troubling) “Location History,” a major Google account-level setting, you are told: “With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.” Yet many apps and services Google provides when Location History has been turned off, in fact, record and store your location. To be fair, this is explained, after a fashion, when you turn off location history ( ): “This setting does not affect other location services on your device, like Google Location Services and Find My Device. Some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps.” : The language in the previous paragraph was only added around the time of the AP report, meaning that originally the setting only said that data is no longer stored. Since that was clearly not true, Google may find itself in serious legal trouble with the FTC and privately filed lawsuits. Although it makes sense that checking the weather would require location data, it makes less sense that the data would be collected systematically, in direct contradiction with what the user has been told. It’s not exactly a deception on Google’s part, but rather what appears to be a deliberate understatement of the company’s other location tracking practices. Not listed: that a precise location is recorded every time you interact with some apps and services. That “some location data” as part of your search history is precise and organized, good enough to reconstitute a person’s movements over a few days, as indeed the AP reporters did; with Location History off, there was in fact a detailed history of locations stored with Google. Google protests that you can turn off this location data collection as well — it’s just under a separate setting called “Web and App Activity.” Why is it there? Why are there multiple places? Why is the user not told that in order to truly turn off location history, there is a second setting that must be adjusted as well? Why is it assumed that the user will understand that location is also stored under separate headings of search and other services? It hardly need be said that this is completely inadequate as far as informing the user of how their data is being handled. Further, it falls squarely under the concept of dark patterns. The user is duped into thinking that their locations are no longer being recorded by Google, down to a warning from the company that some services might not work correctly if Location History is disabled. Meanwhile location is still recorded silently and without notifying the user, for example, that such and such an action will produce a location record that will be saved, and giving them a chance to delete it or recall the action. The deletion of these points, by the way, is one of Google’s other defenses: you can go delete them at any time. But deleting location history points was one of the main points of criticism for Google in the , which found that hardly any of their testers could figure out how to do it. There are separate controls for different types of location collection, isolated from each other and each unaffected by the other’s deletion or restriction, but it is not explained why, or why for example some can be deleted in bulk but others must be done one by one. This kind of confusing and underhanded, not to say malicious, practice is far from uncommon among tech companies, but this is a particularly indefensible one. Continuing to maintain a history of locations when a user has deliberately indicated their preference to have no such history recorded is simply ridiculous. In a statement to TechCrunch, Google explained: Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time. As the story notes, we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions. It’s easy to imagine a handful of minor UI or alert changes that would fully inform users of what is being recorded and when. A notification when a location is generated, for instance, or a link to the separate location tracking setting would be sufficient. But it is telling that not only is the interface the way it is, but the system has been designed the way it is: silently recording location in spite of user preference, with no way to opt out without compromising the service. These are both deliberate choices, and the more such choices are exposed and questioned, the better off users will be. |
What the rumors say about Google’s upcoming Pixel 3 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | null |
Zendesk introduces support bot for Discord gaming community | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | The gaming community boasts 150 million members and 46 million active monthly users, who spend their days chatting about games, finding people to play with and looking for advice on how to resolve issues. Up until now, game publishers have had to monitor public discussions looking for people who need help or relied on expert users to assist them, but that’s about to change with Zendesk’s new Discord support bot. Zendesk VP of product and platform, Luke Behnke, says they count a fair number of gaming companies as customers, and they have been looking for a way to have more direct communication with Discord users right where they play. With the Zendesk-Discord integration, users can request help by typing and then the nature of the problem. This activates the Zendesk bot and triggers the creation of a help ticket, paving the way for a customer service rep to work directly with a person having an issue. Calling the Zendesk bot in Discord. Screenshot: Zendesk Prior to this, the only way that the game publishers could use Zendesk to generate help tickets was through the traditional sources like email, texts or phone calls, which required their users to leave the flow of the game. This integration allows the publishers to let the customers come to them for help without leaving the community. Behnke says his company has been talking to Discord, whose members generate more than 530 million messages a day, about creating an integration that would work for their users. “We worked with Discord on this and they have been testing it internally and giving us feedback,” he said. Conversation with game publisher CSR using Zendesk-Discord bot. Screenshot: Zendesk Of course, it requires people know that you type to activate it, but Behnke believes that if the integration works well, word will get around that this is a useful way to get support directly from the publisher without leaving Discord. He says his company sees this as a unique approach to customer service, one that the gaming publishers, who tend to be innovative, are particularly open to. Future updates could include the ability to push messages to the community such as information on an outage, or for the bot to answer common questions without accessing a human CSR. For now, this integration is in early release. The company is still working out the kinks with publishers, but they hope to get it into full production by the end of the year. |
Facebook buys Vidpresso’s team and tech to make video interactive | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Zombie-like passive consumption of static video is both unhealthy for viewers and undifferentiated for the tech giants that power it. That’s set Facebook on a mission to make video interactive, full of conversation with broadcasters and fellow viewers. It’s racing against Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat to become where people watch together and don’t feel like asocial slugs afterward. That’s why Facebook today told TechCrunch that it’s acqui-hired , buying its seven-person team and its technology but not the company itself. The six-year-old Utah startup works with TV broadcasters and content publishers to make their online videos more interactive with on-screen social media polling and comments, graphics and live broadcasting integrated with Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and more. The goal appears to be to equip independent social media creators with the same tools these traditional outlets use so they can make authentic but polished video for the Facebook platform. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it wouldn’t have taken a huge price for the deal to be a success for the startup. Vidpresso had only raised a $120,00 in seed capital from Y Combinator in 2014, plus some angel funding. By 2016, it was that it was profitable, but also that, “We will not be selling the company unless some insane whatsapp like thing happened. We’re building a forever biz, not a flip.” So either Vidpresso lowered its bar for an exit or Facebook made coming aboard worth its while. For now, Vidpresso clients and partners like KTXL, Univision, BuzzFeed, Turner Sports, Nasdaq, TED, NBC and others will continue to be able to use its services. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that customers will work with the Vidpresso team at Facebook, who are joining its offices in Menlo Park, London and LA. That means Facebook is at least temporarily becoming a provider of enterprise video services. But Facebook confirms it won’t charge Vidpresso clients, so they’ll be getting its services for free from now on. Whether Facebook eventually turns away old clients or stops integrating with competing video platforms like Twitch and YouTube remains to be seen. For now, it’s giving Vidpresso a much more dignified end than the sudden shutdowns some tech giants impose on their acquisitions. “ Facebook Live has seen 3.5 billion broadcasts to date, and they get six times as many interactions as traditional videos. But beyond public figures, game streamers, and the odd moment of citizen journalism, it’s become clear that most users don’t have compelling enough content to stream. Interactivity could take some pressure off the broadcaster by letting the audience chip in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=rJKCUL-ubB4 Facebook already has some interactive video experiments out in the wild. For users, it recently rolled out its Watch Party tool for letting Groups view and chat about videos together. It’s also trying new games like and a where users submit videos of them singing. For creators, Facebook now let streamers , and lets fans subscribe to donating money to their favorite video makers like on Patreon. And on the publisher side, to help publishers pull in social media content. It’s even got an interactive video API that it’s developing to allow developers to . But the last line of Vidpresso’s announcement above explains Facebook’s intentions here, and also why it didn’t just try to build the tools itself. It doesn’t just want established news publishers and TV studios making video for its platform. It wants semi-pro creators to be able to broadcast snazzy videos with graphics, comments and polls that can aesthetically compete with “big video” but that feel more natural. This focus on creators over news outlets aligns with of Facebooks head of journalist relations Campbell Brown allegedly saying that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about publishers and that “We are not interested in talking to you about your traffic and referrals any more. That is the old world and there is no going back.” Facebook has contested these reports. Every internet platform is wising up to the fact that web-native creators who grew up on their sites often create the most compelling content and the most fervent fan bases. Whichever video hub offers the best audience growth, creative expression tools and monetization options will become the preferred destination for creators’ work, and their audiences will follow. Vidpresso could help these creators look more like TV anchors than selfie monologuers, but also help them earn money by integrating brand graphics and tie-ins. Facebook couldn’t risk another tech giant buying up Vidpresso and gaining an edge, or wasting time trying to build interactive video technology and expertise from scratch. |
Y Combinator invests in a build-your-own mac and cheese restaurant | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Y Combinator has invested $120,000 in , a build-your-own mac and cheese restaurant that lets customers choose their own adventure from the beginning. I popped over to one of the Mac’d locations last week in San Francisco to get my mac on and chat with the founders. For starters, the mac and cheese was bomb. Sure, one could argue it’s hard to mess up mac and cheese, but it’s somehow been done before. Trust me, I know this from firsthand experience. I opted for a relatively basic mac and cheese with what Mac’d calls its “#Basic” sauce, which is a blend of cheddar cheeses, a spice mix and a hint of asiago. From there, I selected a combination of a shells and elbow noodle base. For those who are gluten-free, Mac’d also offers a cauliflower base. Next, I picked my mix-ins. Again, I’m super basic, so I just went with bacon and topped it with pulled pork and breadcrumbs. Although the restaurant is tech-enabled, it’s less of a tech play and more of a restaurant play, Mac’d founder Chen-Chen Huo (pictured above on right) told TechCrunch. “I wouldn’t necessarily say with full confidence that we’re a tech company but we’re a company that participates in a lot of tech and integrates tech into the production of our product to grow the business,” Huo told me. Mac’d currently has two brick-and-mortar locations, both of which are in San Francisco. Mac’d is also available in Portland through what Huo describes as a ghost kitchen. In fact, ghost kitchens are part of the company’s expansion plans for at least the next 12 months, as it aims to be in about five to seven cities. “How we plan to do that isn’t necessarily building out more brick-and-mortars in these cities but our expansion strategy sort of ties into that idea of cloud kitchens — sort of like ghost kitchens,” Huo said. “Essentially we move into commissary kitchens and hop on to existing catering and delivery networks and serve our customers like that.” In Portland, Mac’d rents out some kitchen space and sells its mac and cheese strictly through providers like UberEats, Caviar, DoorDash, Postmates and others. The idea is that once Mac’d determines some of the patterns of a specific market via its low-capital ghost kitchen approach, the company can make a more informed decision of where to open a brick-and-mortar location. Eventually opening brick-and-mortar locations in cities is important, Mac’d co-owner Antony Bello (pictured above on left) told TechCrunch, because it helps build up the brand and get people on board with the experience. “It’s an interesting new wave of restaurants,” Bello said. “As far as marketing strategies, it’s more salient to come in and experience the food because you get a better sense of the kind of people that are behind this. Putting a face behind it is more difficult if it’s all online and digital.” Mac’d got its start by doing a series of pop-ups in San Francisco last January. The mac and cheese restaurant opened its first permanent location in July 2017, located in San Francisco’s Marina district. That first location, Huo said, was entirely bootstrapped — in part thanks to the money earned through the pop-ups. Mac’d was able to open its second brick-and-mortar location a couple of months ago in June, funded solely off the profits of its first location. “Theoretically, if we were to continue this trajectory, we could continue to bootstrap and continue to organically grow,” Huo said. “But if there’s anything about going through YC, it’s realizing the power and benefits of expanding quickly but also efficiently and thoughtfully, and taking it one step at a time.” |
This happy robot helps kids with autism | John Biggs | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | A little bot named QTrobot from LuxAI could be the link between therapists, parents, and autistic children. The robot, which features an LCD face and robotic arms, allows kids who are overwhelmed by human contact to become more comfortable in a therapeutic setting. The project comes from , a spin-off of the University of Luxembourg. They will present conference at the end of this month. “The robot has the ability to create a triangular interaction between the human therapist, the robot, and the child,” co-founder Aida Nazarikhorram told . “Immediately the child starts interacting with the educator or therapist to ask questions about the robot or give feedback about its behavior.” The robot reduces anxiety in autistic children and the researchers saw many behaviors – hand flapping, for example – slow down with the robot in the mix. Interestingly the robot is a better choice for children than an app or tablet. Because the robot is “embodied,” the researchers found that it that draws attention and improves learning, especially when compared to a standard iPad/educational app pairing. In other words children play with tablets and work with robots. The robot is entirely self-contained and easily programmable. It can run for hours at a time and includes a 3D camera and full processor. The researchers found that the robot doesn’t become the focus of the therapy but instead helps the therapist connect with the patient. This, obviously, is an excellent outcome for an excellent (and cute) little piece of technology. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk–cFLRSdk] |
Here’s where to sign up to get Fortnite for Android | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | null |
Airbnb shows off new collaboration features that let co-travelers plan trips together | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | In recent years, Airbnb has been working to expand its business beyond accommodations, by becoming a more robust travel companion with features like , , and full-service hospitality for high-end travelers with its , for example. Now the company is preparing even more trip-planning features, including support for adding co-travelers to trips and other collaboration features for group travel. Airbnb offered a sneak peek at these otherwise unannounced features at a given at company headquarters. “Trip planning is not necessarily complete unless you can share your trip with someone. So now we’re building features that let you add co-travelers – so you can add and share ideas, so you can add comments, so you can collaborate,” said Laura Xu, an Android engineer on Airbnb’s Trip platform, during the presentation. “You can really build out your trip.” From the screenshots displayed, the co-travelers feature will allow Airbnb users to send invites to people who are joining the trip. This allows everyone to save ideas to a master list, including homes that match their criteria, experiences, food and drink, sights and more. Each item will indicate who added it to the trip. There’s also a way for others to comment on the items, which allows for group conversations about the place or activity. The company didn’t say how soon the features were arriving. The focus of this portion of the presentation was to give a look at how a company of Airbnb’s size and scale can change its platform and codebase to support more than just home listings. Over the past couple of years, the company has added support for things like restaurants, concerts, coworking spaces, luxury rentals, and even high-end vacations like castle rentals and even private islands, Xu said. Now the company is creating a mobile platform that can support its change in focus, as well. Also offered was a deeper look at of the newer features on mobile, where travelers can add anything to their trip itinerary – like places they want to visit. The feature is integrated with Google Places to pull in photos, directions, open hours, and other details. Meanwhile, the ‘Organize’ experience under Trips in the Airbnb app is being updated to become a way to plan the entire trip. The company showed off a new trip planner – which hasn’t yet launched – which will include a day-by-day view to see when everything is booked, an embeddable map that shows where everything is booked, and a suggestions feature, so you’re never short on ideas of what to do while in town. In addition, Airbnb presented a new concept called Trip Platform, which was described as something that powers the end-to-end trip experience on Airbnb, and enables the launch of new tools. It includes easy-to-reuse UI (user interface) components that will make it easier to create and add new features, while maintaining a consistent look and feel across the app. The tech talk, overall, was focused on what goes into building Airbnb’s iOS and Android apps – something that’s important to the company because over 50% of its incoming traffic is now mobile, and because travelers aren’t generally using a desktop or laptop computer. Airbnb also hinted towards its longer-term, mobile-first vision – one that has expanded beyond “where I am going to stay” to now include “what am I going to do?” but hasn’t yet addressed the question, “where am I going to go?” It could help with that latter query by introducing more discovery features, but these plans weren’t discussed during the talk. We’ve reached out to Airbnb to get more information on these additions, but the company has not offered an official response. Are you curious about what goes into building Airbnb's iOS and Android apps? Join us to hear Airbnb native engineers cover in-house technologies that facilitate product development, along with learnings from large-scale product launches. RSVP to attend in person: https://airbnbmobile.splashthat.com/ Posted by on Tuesday, August 7, 2018 |
Twitter Lite expands to 21 more countries, adds push notifications | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Twitter today its Twitter Lite app is expanding to 21 more countries, which makes the data-saving app available to more than 45 countries in total. The app was introduced last year with the goal of bringing in more users from emerging markets to Twitter. Similar to other data-saving apps, like Facebook Lite or , Twitter Lite is designed to load faster on slower network connections, like 2G and 3G, and also has a smaller footprint, so it takes up less space on the phone. The app was first as a test in the Philippines in September, before rolling out to a in November. Twitter’s hope is that by addressing the needs of those low-bandwith users in international markets, the company could help increase its overall user base, which has remained fairly stagnant. Today, the company is making the app available to 21 countries, including: Argentina, Belarus, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Romania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. These join the other markets where Twitter Lite has been available, such as: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Serbia, El Salvador, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, Tanzania and Venezuela, in addition to the Philippines. The app offers a variety of features for those on slower or unreliable networks. For example, Lite users can turn on a Data saver mode that allows them to control which images or video load when browsing the network. Once enabled, you can load this content by tapping “Load Image” or “Load video,” as needed. The app is also under 3MB in size, so it will load more quickly on slower networks. And like Twitter, the app includes features like Bookmarks, a darker “Night mode” theme, threads, and starting today, push notifications. The company in November Twitter Lite led to a greater than 50% increase in tweets, and noted that 80% of its then 330 million monthly users were outside the U.S. That percentage remains roughly the same – , Twitter had a total of 335 million users, with 68 million of those in the U.S. However, the company isn’t growing that quickly outside the U.S., despite Twitter Lite. Also as of July 2018, we noted the company’s international audience had only over the past year. An expansion of the Twitter Lite app will certainly open up Twitter to more people, but it’s not clear there’s much demand. The app is available as a free download on . |
Firefox now supports the newest internet security protocol | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Last Friday, the released the final version of . This is a major update to TLS 1.2, the security protocol that secures much of the web by, among other things, providing the layer that handles the encryption of every HTTPS connection. The updated spec promises improved security and a bit more speed, thanks to the reduced need for round trips as the browser and server negotiate the security settings. And the good news is, you can already use it today, because, as Mozilla today , Firefox already supports the new standard out of the box. Chrome, too, started supporting the new protocol (based on earlier drafts) in version 65. TLS 1.3 has been and it’s been 10 years since the last version launched. It’s no secret that TLS 1.2 had its share of problems — though those were mostly due to its implementations, which are obviously a favorite target for hackers thanks to their ubiquity and which opened up bugs like the infamous Heartbleed vulnerability. But in addition to that, some of the algorithms that are part of TLS 1.2 have been successfully attacked. It’s no surprise, then, that TLS 1.3 focuses on providing access to modern cryptographic methods (the folks over at Cloudflare have a more at what exactly that means). For users, all of this ideally means that they get access to a more secure web, as well as a slightly faster one, as the new protocol allows the browser and server to quickly negotiate which encryption to use without lots of back and forth. Some of the companies that already support TLS 1.3 include Facebook (which says that it already serves almost half of its traffic ), as well as Google and Cloudflare. |
Twitter puts Infowars’ Alex Jones in the ‘read-only’ sin bin for 7 days | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | Twitter has finally taken action against Infowars creator Alex Jones, but it isn’t what you might think. have removed Jones and his conspiracy-peddling organization Infowars from their platforms, Twitter has remained unmoved with its claim that Jones hasn’t violated rules on its platform. last week, but now Jones has been found to have violated Twitter’s rules, . Twitter is punishing Jones for a tweet that violates its community standards but it isn’t locking him out forever. Instead, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that Jones’ account is in “read-only mode” for up to seven days. That means he will still be able to use the service and look up content via his account, but he’ll be unable to engage with it. That means no tweets, likes, retweets, comments, etc. He’s also been ordered to delete the offending tweet — more on that below — in order to qualify for a fully functioning account again. That restoration doesn’t happen immediately, though. that the read-only sin bin can last for up to seven days “depending on the nature of the violation.” We’re imagining Jones got the full one-week penalty, but we’re waiting on Twitter to confirm that. The offending tweet in question is a link to a story claiming President “Trump must take action against web censorship.” , but not before Twitter judged that it violates : Abuse: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice. When you consider the things Infowars and Jones have said or written — 9/11 conspiracies, harassment of Sandy Hook victim families and more — the content in question seems fairly innocuous. Indeed, you could look at President Trump’s tweets and find seemingly more punishable content without much difficulty. But here we are. The weirdest part of this Twitter caning is one of the reference points that the company gave to media. These days, it is common for the company to point reporters to specific tweets that it believes encapsulate its position on an issue, or provide additional color in certain situations. In this case, Twitter pointed us — and presumably other reporters — to this tweet from Infowars’ Paul Joseph Watson: Alex Jones has been suspended by Twitter for 7 days for a video talking about social media censorship. Truly, monumentally, beyond stupid. 😄 On the same day that the Infowars website was brought down by a cyber attack. Will this madness ever end? — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) WTF, Twitter… |
African tech leaders Fope Adelowo, Ken Njoroge, Tayo Oviosu to speak at Disrupt SF | Jake Bright | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | |
Y Combinator is launching a startup program in China | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | U.S. accelerator Y Combinator is expanding to China after the hiring of former Microsoft and Baidu executive Qi Lu who will develop a standalone startup program that runs on Chinese soil. Shanghai-born Lu spent 11 years with Yahoo and eight years with Microsoft before , where . Now he becomes founding CEO of YC China while he’s also stepping into the role of Head of YC Research. YC will also expand its research team with an office in Seattle, where Lu has plenty of links. There’s no immediate timeframe for when YC will launch its China program, which represents its first global expansion, but YC President Sam Altman told TechCrunch in an interview that the program will be based in Beijing once it is up and running. Altman said Lu will use his network and YC’s growing presence in China — — to recruit prospects who will be put into the upcoming winter program in the U.S.. Following that, YC will work to launch the China-based program as soon as possible. It appears that the details are still being sketched out, although Altman did confirm it will run independently but may lean on local partners for help. The YC President he China’s startup scene has grown massively in recent years, , so it makes sense that YC, as an ‘ecosystem builder,’ wants to in. But Altman believes that the benefits extend beyond YC and will strengthen its network of founders, which spans more than 1,700 startups. “The number one asset YC has is a very special founder community,” he told TechCrunch. “The opportunity to include a lot more Chinese founders seems super valuable to everyone. Over the next decade, a significant portion of the tech companies started will be from the U.S. or China [so operating a] network across both is a huge deal.” Altman said he’s also banking on Lu being the man to make YC China happen. He revealed that he’s spent a decade trying to hire Lu, who he described as “one of the most impressive technologists I know.” Y Combinator President Sam Altman has often spoken of his desire to get into the Chinese market Entering China as a foreign entity is never easy, and in the venture world it is particularly tricky because China already has an advanced ecosystem of firms with their own networks for founders, particularly in the early-stage space. But Altman is confident that YC’s global reach and roster of founders and mentors appeals to startups in China. YC has been working to add Chinese startups to its U.S.-based programs for some time. Altman has long been keen on an expansion to China, , and partner Eric Migicovsky — who co-founder Pebble — has been busy developing networks and arranging events like the Beijing one to raise its profile. That’s seen some progress with more teams from China — and other parts of the world — taking part in YC batches, which have never been more diverse. But YC is still missing out on global talent. , fewer than 10 Chinese companies have passed through its corridors but that list looks like it is missing some names so the number may be higher. Clearly, though, admission are skewed towards the U.S. — the question is whether Qi Lu and creation of YC China can significantly alter that. |
Only two weeks left to grab a spot in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF 2018 | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | Fourteen days. That’s what stands between you and the opportunity to showcase your early-stage startup at , which takes place September 5-7. With more than 10,000 attendees expected to descend on Moscone Center West, can you afford to miss out on that kind of exposure? We think not. There are only two weeks left to secure your spot in — the very heart and soul of every Disrupt. Don’t wait, now. More than 400 media outlets will be among the attendees coursing through the Alley, perusing more than 1,200 early-stage startups and sponsors exhibiting a dazzling array of the latest — and future-forward — tech products, platforms and services. It’s an atmosphere of opportunity, and that’s not just us bragging. Here’s what Vlad Larin, co-founder of Zeroqode, said about his Startup Alley experience. “Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt 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.” Here’s what you get with a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. Disrupt San Francisco takes place September 5-7. If you want to place your early-stage startup in front of thousands of influential technologists, investors, entrepreneurs and potential customers, Startup Alley is where you need to be. You have just two weeks left to get ‘er done. today. |
This robot maintains tender, unnerving eye contact | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | Humans already find it unnerving enough when extremely alien-looking robots are kicked and interfered with, so one can only imagine how much worse it will be when they make unbroken eye contact and mirror your expressions while you heap abuse on them. This is the future we have selected. The Simulative Emotional Expression Robot, or SEER, was on display at SIGGRAPH here in Vancouver, and it’s definitely an experience. The robot, , is a small humanoid head and neck that responds to the nearest person by making eye contact and imitating their expression. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s pretty complex to execute well, which, despite a few glitches, SEER managed to do. At present it alternates between two modes: imitative and eye contact. Both, of course, rely on a nearby (or, one can imagine, built-in) camera that recognizes and tracks the features of your face in real time. In imitative mode the positions of the viewer’s eyebrows and eyelids, and the position of their head, are mirrored by SEER. It’s not perfect — it occasionally freaks out or vibrates because of noisy face data — but when it worked it managed rather a good version of what I was giving it. Real humans are more expressive, naturally, but this little face with its creepily realistic eyes plunged deeply into the uncanny valley and nearly climbed the far side. Eye contact mode has the robot moving on its own while, as you might guess, making uninterrupted eye contact with whoever is nearest. It’s a bit creepy, but not in the way that some robots are — when you’re looked at by inadequately modeled faces, it just feels like bad VFX. In this case it was more the surprising amount of empathy you suddenly feel for this little machine. That’s largely due to the delicate, childlike, neutral sculpting of the face and highly realistic eyes. If an Amazon Echo had those eyes, you’d never forget it was listening to everything you say. You might even tell it your problems. This is just an art project for now, but the tech behind it is definitely the kind of thing you can expect to be integrated with virtual assistants and the like in the near future. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad one I guess we’ll find out together. |
Finding the Goldilocks zone for applied AI | Ivy Nguyen | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | While Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg debate the dangers of a general i , startups to more narrowly defined problems such as accelerating the performance of sales teams and improving the operating efficiency of manufacturing lines are building billion-dollar businesses. Narrowly defining a problem, however, is only the first step to valuable business applications of . To the right opportunity around which to build an business, startups must the “ principle” in several different dimensions to the sweet spot that is “just right” to begin — not too far in one dimension, not too far in another. Here are some ways aspiring startup founders to thread the needle with their strategy, based on what we’ve learned from working with thousands of startups. Unlike pre- software, responds to the environment in which they operate; algorithms take in data and return an answer or prediction. Depending on the application, that prediction may describe an outcome in the near term, such as tomorrow’s weather, or an outcome many years in the future, such as whether a patient will develop cancer in 20 years. The time horizon of the algorithm’s prediction is critical to its usefulness and to whether it offers an opportunity to build defensibility. Algorithms making predictions with long time horizons are difficult to evaluate and improve. example, an algorithm may use the schedule of a contractor’s previous projects to predict that a particular construction project will fall six months behind schedule and go over budget by 20 percent. Until this new project is completed, the algorithm designer and end user can only tell whether the prediction is directionally correct — that is, whether the project is falling behind or costs are higher. Even when the final project numbers end up very close to the predicted numbers, it will be difficult to complete the feedback loop and positively reinforce the algorithm. Many factors may influence complex systems like a construction project, making it difficult to A/B test the prediction to tease out the input variables from unknown confounding factors. The more complex the system, the longer it may take the algorithm to complete a reinforcement cycle, and the more difficult it becomes to precisely train the algorithm. While many enterprise customers are open to piloting solutions, startups must be able to validate the algorithm’s performance in order to complete the sale. The most convincing way to validate an algorithm is by using the customer’s real-time data, but this approach may be difficult to achieve during a pilot. If the startup does get access to the customer’s data, the prediction time horizon should be short enough that the algorithm can be validated during the pilot period. Historic data, if it’s available, can serve as a stopgap to train an algorithm and temporarily validate it via backtesting. Training an algorithm making long time horizon predictions on historic data is risky because processes and environments are more likely to have changed the further back you dig into historic records, making historic data sets less descriptive of present-day conditions. In other cases, while the historic data describing outcomes exists you to train an algorithm, it may not capture the input variable under consideration. In the construction example, that could mean that you found out that sites using blue safety hats are more likely to complete projects on time, but since that hat color wasn’t previously helpful in managing projects, that information wasn’t recorded in the archival records. This data must be captured from scratch, which further delays your time to market. Instead of making singular “hero” predictions with long time horizons, startups should build multiple algorithms making smaller, simpler predictions with short time horizons. Decomposing an environment into simpler subsystems or processes limits the number of inputs, making them easier to control confounding factors. The BIM 360 Project IQ Team at Autodesk takes this small prediction approach to areas that contribute to construction project delays. Their models predict safety and score vendor and subcontractor quality/reliability, all of which can be measured while a project is ongoing. Shorter time horizons make it easier the algorithm engineer to monitor its change in performance and take action to quickly improve it, instead of being limited to backtesting on historic data. The shorter the time horizon, the shorter the algorithm’s feedback loop will be. As each cycle through the feedback incrementally compounds the algorithm’s performance, shorter feedback loops are better building defensibility. Most algorithms model dynamic systems and return a prediction a human to act on. Depending on how quickly the system is changing, the algorithm’s output may not remain valid very long: the prediction may “decay” before the user can take action. In order to be useful to the end user, the algorithm must be designed to accommodate the limitations of computing and human speed. In a typical -human workflow, the human feeds input data into the algorithm, the algorithm runs calculations on that input data and returns an output that predicts a certain outcome or recommends a course of action; the human interprets that information to decide on a course of action, then takes action. The time it takes the algorithm to compute an answer and the time it takes a human to act on the output are the two largest bottlenecks in this workflow. most of history, slow computational speeds have severely limited the scope of . An algorithm’s prediction depends on the input data, and the input data represents a snapshot in time at the moment it was recorded. If the environment described by the data changes faster than the algorithm can compute the input data, by the time the algorithm completes its computations and returns a prediction, the prediction will only describe a moment in the past and will not be actionable. example, the algorithm behind the music app Shazam may have needed several hours to identify a song after first “hearing” it using the computational power of a Windows 95 computer. The rise of cloud computing and the development of hardware specially optimized computations has dramatically broadened the scope of areas where is actionable and affordable. While macro tech advancements can greatly advance , the algorithm is not totally held hostage to current limits of computation; reinforcement through training also can improve the algorithm’s response time. The more of the same example an algorithm encounters, the more quickly it can skip computations to arrive at a prediction. Thanks to advances in computation and reinforcement, today Shazam takes less than 15 seconds to identify a song. Automating the decision and action also could help users make use of predictions that decay too quickly to wait humans to respond. Opsani is one such company using to make decisions that are too numerous and fast-moving humans to make effectively. Unlike human DevOps, who can only move so fast to optimize performance based on recommendations from an algorithm, Opsani applies Not all applications of can be completely automated, however, if the perceived risk is too high end users to accept, or if regulations mandate that humans must approve the decision. Just like software startups launch when they have built a minimum viable product (MVP) in order to collect actionable feedback from initial customers, startups should launch when they reach the minimum algorithmic performance (MAP) required by early adopters, so that the algorithm can be trained on more diverse and fresh data sets and avoid becoming overfit to a training set. Most applications don’t require 100 percent accuracy to be valuable. example, a fraud detection algorithm may only immediately catch five percent of fraud cases of when they occur, but human fraud investigators catch 15 percent of fraud cases after a month of analysis. In this case, the MAP is zero, because the fraud detection algorithm could serve as a first filter in order to reduce the number of cases the human investigators must process. The startup can go to market immediately in order to secure access to the large volume of fraud data used training their algorithm. Over time, the algorithms’ accuracy will improve and reduce the burden on human investigators, freeing them to focus on the most complex cases. Startups building algorithms zero or low MAP applications will be able to launch quickly, but may be continuously looking over their shoulder copycats, if these copycats appear before the algorithm has reached a high level of performance. Startups attacking low MAP problems also should watch out problems that can be solved with near 100 percent accuracy with a very small training set, where the problem being modeled is relatively simple, with few dimensions to track and few possible variations in outcome. -powered contract processing is a good example of an application where the algorithm’s performance plateaus quickly. There are thousands of contract types, but most of them share key fields: the parties involved, the items of value being exchanged, time frame, etc. Specific document types like mortgage applications or rental agreements are highly standardized in order to comply with regulation. Across multiple startups, we have seen algorithms that automatically process these documents needing only a few hundred examples to train to an acceptable degree of accuracy before additional examples do little to improve the algorithm, making it easy new entrants to match incumbents and earlier entrants in performance. AIs built applications where human labor is inexpensive and able to easily achieve high accuracy may need to reach a higher MAP before they can an early adopter. Tasks requiring fine motor skills, example, have yet to be taken over by robots because human performance sets a very high MAP to overcome. When picking up an object, the AIs powering the robotic hand must gauge an object’s stiffness and weight with a high degree of accuracy, otherwise the hand will damage the object being handled. Humans can very accurately gauge these dimensions with almost no training. Startups attacking high MAP problems must invest more time and capital into acquiring enough data to reach MAP and launch. Narrow can demonstrate impressive gains in a wide range of applications — in the research lab. Building a business around a narrow application, on the other hand, requires a new playbook. This process is heavily dependent on the specific use case on all dimensions, and the performance of the algorithm is merely one starting point. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to moving an algorithm from the research lab to the market, but we hope these ideas will provide a useful blueprint you to begin. |
Revcontent is trying to get rid of misinformation with help from the Poynter Institute | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | CEO John Lemp recently said that thanks to a new policy, publishers in ‘s content recommendation network “won’t ever make a cent” on false and misleading stories — at least, not from the network. To achieve this, the company is relying on fact-checking provided by the Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network. If any two independent fact checkers from International Fact Checking flag a story from the Revcontent network as false, the company’s widget will be removed, and Revcontent will not pay out any money on that story (not even revenue earned before the story was flagged). In some ways, Revcontent’s approach to fighting fake news and misinformation sounds similar to the big social media companies — Lemp, like Twitter, has said his company cannot be the “ ,” and like Facebook, he’s emphasizing the need to for posting sensationalistic-but-misleading stories. However, Lemp (who’s spoken in the past about to reduce publishers’ reliance on individual platforms) criticized the big internet companies for “arbitrarily” taking down content in response to “bad PR.” In contrast, he said Revcontent will have a fully transparent approach, one that removes the financial rewards for fake news without silencing anyone. Lemp didn’t mention any specific takedowns, but the big story these days is Infowars. has been cracking down on Alex Jones’ far-right, conspiracy-mongering site, removing at least some Infowars-related accounts and content in the past couple of weeks. The Infowars story also raises the question of whether you can effectively fight fake news on a story-by-story basis, rather than completely cutting off publishers when they’ve shown themselves to consistently post misleading or falsified stories. When asked about this, Lemp said Revcontent also has the option to completely removing publishers from the network, but he said he views that as a “last resort.” |
Bird and Lime are protesting Santa Monica’s electric scooter recommendations | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | Lime and Bird are protesting recommendations in Santa Monica, Calif. that would prevent the electric scooter companies from operating in the Southern California city. We first saw the news over on which reported both Lime and Bird are temporarily halting their services in Santa Monica. Last week, recommended the city move forward with Lyft and Uber-owned Jump as the two exclusive scooter operators in the city during the upcoming 16-month pilot program. The committee ranked Lyft and Jump highest due to their experience in the transportation space, staffing strategy, commitments to diversity and equity, fleet maintenance strategies and other elements. Similarly, the committee recommended both Lyft and Jump as bike-share providers in the city. “The Lyft and Uber applications to operate e-scooter sharing programs in Santa Monica demonstrate the desperate lengths CO2 polluting companies will go to for the purpose of undermining clean energy competition,” a Bird spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We at Bird are dedicated to replacing car trips with clean energy trips and will continue to fight against car dependency alongside our loyal riders.” Santa Monica! We've taken our fleet offline until 4:30pm locally in order to rally your support in opposition to the council's recommendation. Don't let a be the future. Help City Hall make the right decision + take action right now: — Lime (@limebike) Now, both Bird and Lime are asking their respective riders to speak out against the recommendations. Bird, which first launched in Santa Monica, has also emailed riders, asking them to tell the city council that they want to Bird to stay. “In a closed-door meeting, a small city-appointed selection committee decided to recommend banning Bird from your city beginning in September,” . “This group inexplicably scored companies with no experience ever operating shared e-scooters higher than Bird who invented this model right here in Santa Monica.” Bird goes on to throw shade at Uber and Lyft — neither of which have operated electric scooter services before. That shade is entirely fair, but one could argue both Uber and Lyft already have more experience operating transportation services within cities and would be better equipped to run an electric scooter service than a newer company. Lime says it’s worked collaboratively with the city to design a program tailored to the needs of the Santa Monica community since day one. “It’s clear Santa Monica residents and visitors have enthusiastically embraced Lime, with over 180,000 unique riders choosing us as their affordable, zero-emission transportation option since we launched in April,” Lime CEO Toby Sun said in a statement to TechCrunch. “As the most experienced shared bike and scooter company in the United States, we are disappointed by the City’s current proposal because Santa Monica riders deserve access to best-in-class technology. We have on-the-ground experience operating shared scooters in Santa Monica and around the world, giving us the greatest readiness to fulfill the needs of residents without interruption when the pilot program begins.” In addition to asking people to contact their city officials, Bird and Lime are hosting a rally later today at Santa Monica City hall. But given that most of these electric scooters are manufactured by the same provider and that the services are essentially the same, I’d be surprised if there’s much brand loyalty. Over in San Francisco, I personally miss having electric scooters, but I really don’t give a rat’s pajamas which services receive permits. That’s just to say, we’ll see if these efforts are effective. |
‘Unhackable’ BitFi crypto wallet has been hacked | John Biggs | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | The was supposed to be unhackable and none other than famous weirdo John McAfee claimed that the device – essentially an Android-based mini tablet – would withstand any attack. Spoiler alert: it couldn’t. First, a bit of background. The $120 device launched at the beginning of this month to much fanfare. It consisted of a device that McAfee claimed contained no software or storage and was instead a standalone wallet similar to the Trezor. The website featured a bold claim by McAfee himself, one that would give a normal security researcher pause: Further, the company offered a bug bounty that seems to be slowly being eroded by outside forces. They asked hackers to pull coins off of a specially prepared $10 wallet, a move that is uncommon in the world of bug bounties. They wrote: We deposit coins into a Bitfi wallet
If you wish to participate in the bounty program, you will purchase a Bitfi wallet that is preloaded with coins for just an additional $10 (the reason for the charge is because we need to ensure serious inquiries only)
If you successfully extract the coins and empty the wallet, this would be considered a successful hack
You can then keep the coins and Bitfi will make a payment to you of $250,000
Please note that we grant anyone who participates in this bounty permission to use all possible attack vectors, including our servers, nodes, and our infrastructure Hackers began attacking the device immediately, eventually hacking it to find the passphrase used to move crypto in and out of the the wallet. In a , security researchers Andrew Tierney and Alan Woodward began finding holes by attacking the operating system itself. However, this did not match the bounty to the letter, claimed BitFi, even though they did not actually ship any bounty-ready devices. Something that I feel should be getting more attention is the fact that there is zero evidence that a bounty device was ever shipped to a researcher. They literally created an impossible task by refusing to send the device required to satisfy the terms of the engagement. — Gallagher (@DanielGallagher) Then, to add insult to injury, the company earned a The award was given for worst vendor response. As hackers began dismantling the device, BitFi went on the defensive, consistently claiming that their device was secure. And the hackers had a field day. One hacker, 15-year-old Saleem Rashid, was able to play Doom on the device. Well, that's a transaction made with a MitMed Bitfi, with the phrase and seed being sent to a remote machine. That sounds a lot like Bounty 2 to me. — Ask Cybergibbons! (@cybergibbons) The hacks kept coming. McAfee, for his part, kept refusing to accept the hacks as genuine. The press claiming the BitFi wallet has been hacked. Utter nonsense. The wallet is hacked when someone gets the coins. No-one got any coins. Gaining root access in an attempt to get the coins is not a hack. It's a failed attempt. All these alleged "hacks" did not get the coins. — John McAfee (@officialmcafee) Unfortunately, the latest hack may have just fulfilled all of BitFi’s requirements. Rashid and Tierney have been able to pull cash out of the wallet by hacking the passphrase, a primary requirement for the bounty. “We have sent the seed and phrase from the device to another server, it just gets sent using netcat, nothing fancy.” Tierney told . “We believe all conditions have been met.” The end state of this crypto mess? BitFi did what most hacked crypto companies do: double down on the threats. In a recently deleted Tweet they made it clear that they were not to be messed with: I haven’t really been following this Bitfi nonsense, but I do so love when companies threaten security researchers. — Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) The researchers, however, may still have the last laugh. Claiming your front door has an unpickable lock does not make your house secure. No more does offering a reward only for defeating that front door lock, and repeatedly saying no one has claimed the reward, prove your house is secure, especially when you’ve left the windows open. — Alan Woodward (@ProfWoodward) |
Smart speaker sales on pace to increase 50 percent by 2019 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | null |
Cytera CellWorks aims to bring cell culture automation to your dinner plate | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | hopes to revolutionize the so-called “clean meat” industry through the automation of cell cultures — and that could mean one day, if all goes to plan, the company’s products could be in every grocery store in America. Cytera is a ways off from that happening, though. Founded in 2017 by two college students in the U.K., Ignacio Willats and Ali Afshar, Cytera uses robotic automation to configure cell cultures used in things like growing turkey meat from a petri dish or testing stem cells. The two founders — Willats, the events and startups guy and Afshar the scientist, like to do things differently to better configure the lab, as well — like strapping GoPros to lab workers’ heads, for instance. The two came together at the Imperial College of London to run an event for automation in the lab and from there formed their friendship and their company. “At the time, lab automation felt suboptimal,” Afshar told TechCrunch, further explaining he wanted to do something with a higher impact. Cellular agriculture, or growing animal cells in a lab, seems to hit that button and the two are currently enrolled in Y Combinator’s Summer 2018 cohort to help them get to the next step. There’s been an explosion in the lab-made meat industry, which relies on taking a biopsy of animal cells and then growing them in a lab to make the meat versus getting it from an actual living, breathing animal. In just the last couple of years startups like Memphis Meats have started to pop up, offering lab meat to restaurants. Even the company known for its vegan mayo products, Hampton Creek (now called Just), is creating a lab-grown . Originally, the company was going to go for general automation in the lab, but had enough interest from clients and potential business in just the cell culture automation aspect they changed the name for clarity. Cytera already has some promising prospects, too, including a leading gene therapy company the two couldn’t name just yet. Of course, automation in the lab is nothing new and big pharma has already poured billions into it for drug discovery. One could imagine a giant pharma company teaming up with a meat company looking to get into the lab-made meat industry and doing something similar, but so far Willats and Afshar says they haven’t really seen that happening. They say bigger companies are much more likely to partner with smaller startups like theirs to get the job done. Obviously, there are trade-offs at either end. But, should Cytera make it, you may find yourself eating a chicken breast one day built by a company who bought the cells made in the Cytera lab. |
StarVR’s One headset flaunts eye-tracking and a double-wide field of view | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | While the field of VR headsets used to be more or less limited to Oculus and Vive, numerous competitors have sprung up as the technology has matured — and some are out to beat the market leaders at their own game. brings eye-tracking and a seriously expanded field of view to the game, and the latter especially is a treat to experience. The company announced the new hardware at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, where I got to go hands-on and eyes-in with the headset. Before you get too excited, though, keep in mind this set is meant for commercial applications — car showrooms, aircraft simulators and so on. What that means is it’s going to be expensive and not as polished a user experience as consumer-focused sets. That said, the improvements present in the StarVR One are significant and immediately obvious. Most important is probably the expanded FOV — 210 degrees horizontal and 130 vertical. That’s nearly twice as wide as the 110 degrees wide that the most popular headsets have, and believe me, it makes a difference. (I haven’t tried the Pimax 8K, which has a similarly wide FOV.) On Vive and Oculus sets I always had the feeling that I was looking through a hole into the VR world — a large hole, to be sure, but having your peripheral vision be essentially blank made it a bit claustrophobic. In the StarVR headset, I felt like the virtual environment was actually around me, not just in front of me. I moved my eyes around much more rather than turning my head, with no worries about accidentally gazing at the fuzzy edge of the display. A 90 Hz refresh rate meant things were nice and smooth. To throw shade at competitors, the demo I played (I was a giant cyber-ape defending a tower) could switch between the full FOV and a simulation of the 110-degree one found in other headsets. I suspect it was slightly exaggerated, but the difference really is clear. It’s reasonably light and comfortable — no VR headset is really either. But it doesn’t feel as chunky as it looks. The resolution of the custom AMOLED display is supposedly 5K. But the company declined to specify the actual resolution when I asked. They did, however, proudly proclaim full RGB pixels and 16 million sub-pixels. Let’s do the math: 16 million divided by 3 makes around 5.3 million full pixels. 5K isn’t a real standard, just shorthand for having around 5,000 horizontal pixels between the two displays. Divide 5.3 million by that and you get 1060. Rounding those off to semi-known numbers gives us 2560 pixels (per eye) for the horizontal and 1080 for the vertical resolution. That doesn’t fit the approximately 16:10 ratio of the field of view, but who knows? Let’s not get too bogged down in unknowns. Resolution isn’t everything — but generally, the more pixels the better. The other major new inclusion is an eye-tracking system provided by Tobii. We knew eye-tracking in VR was coming; it was demonstrated at CES, and the Fove Kickstarter showed it was at least conceivable to integrate into a headset now-ish. Unfortunately, the demos of eye-tracking were pretty limited (think a heat map of where you looked on a car) so, being hungry, I skipped them. The promise is good enough for now — eye tracking allows for all kinds of things, including a “foveated rendering” that focuses display power where you’re looking. This too was not being shown, however, and it strikes me that it is likely phenomenally difficult to pull off well — so it may be a while before we see a good demo of it. One small but welcome improvement that eye-tracking also enables is automatic detection of intrapupillary distance, or IPD — it’s different for everyone and can be important to rendering the image correctly. One less thing to worry about. The StarVR One is compatible with SteamVR tracking, or you can get the XT version and build your own optical tracking rig — that’s for the commercial providers for whom it’s an option. Although this headset will be going to high-end commercial types, you can bet that the wide FOV and eye tracking in it will be standard in the next generation of consumer devices. Having tried most of the other headsets, I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t want to go back to some of them after having experienced this one. VR is still a long way off from convincing me it’s worthwhile, but major improvements like these definitely help. |
Twitter is purging accounts that were trying to evade prior suspensions | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | Twitter announced this afternoon it will begin booting accounts off its service from those who have tried to evade their account suspension. The company says that the accounts in question are users who have been previously suspended on Twitter for their abusive behavior, or for trying to evade a prior suspension. These bad actors have been able to work around Twitter’s attempt to remove them by setting up another account, it seems. The company says the new wave of suspensions will hit this week and will continue in the weeks ahead, as it’s able to identify others who are This week, we are suspending accounts for attempting to evade an account suspension. These accounts were previously suspended for abusive behavior or evading a previous suspension, and are not allowed to continue using Twitter. — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) Twitter’s announcement on the matter – which came in the form of a tweet – was light on details. We asked the company for more information. It’s unclear, for example, how Twitter was able to identify the same persons had returned to Twitter, how many users will be affected by this new ban, or what impact this will have on Twitter’s currently stagnant user numbers. Twitter was not able to answer our questions, when asked for comment. The company has been aggressively suspending accounts, as part of the effort to stem the flow of disinformation, bots, and abuse on its service. The Washington Post, for example, that Twitter had suspended as many as accounts between the months of May and June, and was continuing in July at the same pace. The removal of these accounts , Twitter’s CFO later clarified. Even though they weren’t a factor, Twitter’s user base is shrinking. The company actually lost a million monthly active users in Q2, with 335 million overall users and 68 million in the U.S. In part, Twitter may be challenged in growing its audience because it’s not been able to get a handle on the rampant abuse on its platform, and because it makes poor enforcement decisions with regard to its existing policies. For instance, Twitter is under fire right now for the way it chooses who to suspend, as it’s one of the that hasn’t taken action against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The Outline even hilariously (???) suggested today that we all abandon Twitter and (Disclosure: Oath owns Tumblr and TC. I don’t support The Outline’s plan. Twitter should just fix itself, even if that requires new leadership.) In any event, today’s news isn’t about a change in how Twitter will implement its rules, but rather in how it will enforce the bans it’s already chosen to enact. In many cases, banned users would simply create a new account using a new email address and then continue to tweet. Twitter’s means of identifying returning users has been fairly simplistic in the past. To make sure banned users didn’t come back, it used information like the email, phone and IP address to identify them. For it to now be going after a whole new lot of banned accounts who have been attempting to avoid their suspensions, Twitter may be using the . At the time of the deal, Twitter had praised Smyte’s proactive anti-abuse systems, and said it would soon put them to work. This system may pick up false positives, of course – and that could be why Twitter noted that some accounts could be banned in error in the weeks ahead. We will continue this work in the coming weeks as we identify others who are attempting to Tweet following an account suspension. If you believe your account has been suspended in error, please let us know. — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) Reached for comment, Twitter declined to answer our specific questions and said it could also not go into further details as that would give those attempting to evade a suspension more insight into its detection methods. “This is a step we’re taking to further refine our work and close existing gaps we identified,” a spokesperson said. “This is specifically targeting those previously suspended for abusive behavior. Nothing to share on amount of accounts impacted since this work will remain ongoing, not just today.” |
null | David Frankel | 2,018 | 8 | 13 | null |
HQ Trivia downloads spiral downward as it hits Apple TV | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | HQ Trivia’s app store ranking has continued to sink the past three months, but it’s hoping a new version on your television could revitalize growth. HQ today an Apple TV that lets users play the alongside iOS Android players. “Everything about the game is still the same – same questions, same time, same rules,” says a spokesperson, except you’ll play with the Apple TV remote instead of your phone’s screen. But that might not be enough to get HQ’s player count rapidly growing again. According to , on iOS HQ has fallen from the No. 1 U.S. trivia game to No. 10, from the No. 44 game to No. 196, and from the No. 151 overall app to No. 585. It’s exhibited a similar decline on Android. Analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates HQ has seen 12.5 million lifetime installs by unique users, with about 68 percent on iOS. “Installs have been on the decline. For last month, we estimate them with about 560K, which is down from their height of more than two million per month back in February,” Sensor Tower’s head of mobile insights Randy Nelson tells TechCrunch. The question is whether this is just a summer lull as people spend time outside and students aren’t locked in the schedule of school, or if HQ is in a downward spiral beyond seasonal fluctuations. But if we zoom out, you can see that HQ has been dropping down the charts through the school year since peaking in January. At one point it climbed as high as the No. 3 game and No. 6 overall app. The app’s record high of concurrent players has also declined from a peak of 2.38 million in late March. [Update: The CEO of HQ Trivia parent company Intermedia Labs and the former co-founder of Vine, Rus Yusupov, on the decline in downloads and HQ’s plans. He says, “Games are a hits business and don’t grow exponentially forever,” signalling the drop-off was expected and the team is still optimistic. But he also notes that HQ is “developing new game formats, one of which we think is really special and complements Trivia nicely”, indicating that HQ will branch out beyond its 12-question everyone vs everyone approach.] Games are a hits business and don’t grow exponentially forever. HQ has massive early traction and still millions playing daily. Also developing new game formats, one of which we think is really special and complements Trivia nicely. More soon! Until then thanks for playing 🎮 — Rus (@rus) Meanwhile, new clones keep popping up. After the initial wave of Chinese live trivia apps, now U.S. television studios are getting into the mix. This week Fox unveiled which looks and works almost exactly the same as HQ. One of HQ’s long-time rivals, Trivia Crack, where users play asynchronously over the course of days, also declined earlier this year, but has bucked HQ’s trend and started rising on the App Store charts again. There are also new 1-on-1 on whether they can outsmart their opponent. Fox’s FN Genius. Image via With themed games, celebrity hosts, big jackpots like a recent $400,000 prize and new features like the ability to see friends’ answers, HQ has tried to keep its app novel. But it’s also encountered cheaters and people playing with multiple phones that make normal players feel like they’ll never win. While the live aspect adds urgency, it also can feel interruptive with time as users aren’t always available for its noon and 6pm Pacific games. HQ may need to launch a second game app, come up with some new viral hooks or find ways to revive lapsed players if it’s going to make good on the . |
Come watch the Equity podcast record live at Disrupt SF 2018 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | is right around the corner, which means startupland is prepping to congregate once again in the city for another epic run of investors, startups and celebrities. This year, Disrupt is heading to Moscone West, so the event will be bigger and better than ever. And I have some good news for you. will join and live on the Showcase Stage at 3 pm on Thursday, September 6, to dig through the latest, greatest and worst from the world of venture capital. That’s right, you can come to Disrupt and watch us sit on tall stools holding mics while we talk about the week’s money news in front of a bustling crowd of onlookers. Live tapings are fun because we can’t run the intro a second time if we mess it up. So come on down and hang out with us. Alex may even wear a shirt with buttons. And it gets better. If you want to obtain a discounted ticket to Disrupt (and why wouldn’t you?), head to the and use the code “EQUITY” to get 15 percent off. Come for Equity and stay to see Aileen Lee, Reid Hoffman, Drew Houston, Anne Wojcicki, Arlan Hamilton, Ashton Kutcher, Mike Judge and so very many more people you’ve heard of on the Disrupt stage. To whet your appetite until the big show begins, click to see the full agenda. It’s a good one. See you at Disrupt! |
Y Combinator invests in HappiLabs to help scientists shop smarter | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | To create life-saving drugs or groundbreaking technological advancements, scientists first need the proper lab equipment. Everything from intricate and expensive specialized machines to beakers and rubber gloves must be sourced, price compared and ordered by a lab manager before even the first steps toward discovery can take place. But, says Tom Ruginis, CEO and founder of the virtual lab manger startup , the process for finding the best and most cost-effective materials for your lab is far from a standardized process. “The pricing aspect started catching my attention more and more,” Ruginis told TechCrunch. “The profit margin for lab supplies is extraordinarily large. Scientists don’t know that, and even if they know that it’s really hard for them to shop around. There’s nowhere for them to go.” As an ex-PhD student and lab manager himself, Ruginis has first-hand experience with the struggles — and shortcuts — necessary to properly stock your lab. After leaving his PhD program in pharmacology, Ruginis took a job as a salesman for a scientific distributor and saw that even labs that were floors apart were paying drastically different prices for the same basic supplies. Taken aback at how far behind scientific purchasing was from the rest of the retail world, Ruginis began compiling his own spreadsheet of pricing information and, with the help of his then-girlfriend (now wife) Rachel, began designing small price-comparison pamphlets for items like gloves and beakers to distribute to local labs to give them a perspective on the pricing space. “I went to this one lab that I knew was paying too much,” said Ruginis. “I had data showing that a lab three floors up in their building was paying almost half the price. I went straight to [the lab] and showed [them] this. I asked ‘would you give me $10 for this info and if I kept bringing you more pricing info?’ They gave me $10 and in my head that was our first customer.” Ruginis says the pamphlets grew from one page to eight and it wasn’t long after that labs began coming to him directly for purchasing guidance and outsourcing. And in 2012, with $20,000 raised from friends and family, he launched HappiLabs as a virtual lab manager for labs, spanning topics from biotech and brain research to robotics. Since its launch, HappiLabs has grown to 14 employees — comprising six PhD virtual lab managers and eight support staff — and, after earning $1 million in 2017, this summer received a $120,000 investment from Y Combinator. Actively working with 26 labs across the country, Ruginis says the company is ready to begin incorporating more software and technology into the company and is to help it reach that goal. “We’re building an internal software tool that’s strictly for lab managers,” said Ruginis. “What some other companies have done is they’ll try to build a tool and give it to all the lab managers on the planet, but what we’re doing is we’re building a tool for us [first]. We’re going to use it for a few years, make it awesome, and then we’ll end up selling that somewhere down the line as a lab manager software.” Even further down the road, Ruginis says he imagines creating both hardware and software that can not only be installed in labs across the world (think Alexa for scientists) but even support scientific advancement in labs that are out-of-this-world for future scientists working on the red planet or the ISS. |
MoviePass says those cancellation bugs have been fixed | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | MoviePass is about to roll out , which will keep prices at $9.95 while imposing a new limit of three movies per month. But it seems that the transition hasn’t been going entirely smoothly. reports that several users have complained about previously canceling their plans, only to receive emails from the service suggesting that they were still subscribed. We reached out to a MoviePass spokesperson, who confirmed that there were “bugs” in the cancellation process, but said they’ve since been fixed: On Monday, August 13th, we learned that some members encountered difficulty with the cancellation process. We have fixed the bugs that were causing the issue and we have confirmed that none of our members have been opted-in or converted to the new plan without their express permission. In addition, all cancellation requests are being correctly processed and no members were being blocked from canceling their accounts. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that any impacted members contact customer support via the MoviePass app. The company also said that all members are being given the option to either opt in to the new plan or cancel their memberships. If someone doesn’t respond by the end of their billing cycle, their subscription will be automatically canceled. The new plan is part of a broader effort at MoviePass to try to get the company to profitability. In addition to capping monthly tickets, the company is keeping big releases off the service for the first couple of weeks — and apparently, . |
RideAlong is helping police officers de-escalate 911 calls with data designed for the field | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | RideAlong keeps people in mind, and that’s a good thing. The , founded by Meredith Hitchcock (COO) and Katherine Nammacher (CEO), aims to make streets safer, not with expansive surveillance systems or high-tech weaponry but with simple software focused on the people being policed. That distinction sounds small, but it’s surprisingly revelatory. Tech so often forgets the people that it’s ostensibly trying to serve, but with RideAlong they’re front and center. “The thing about law enforcement is they are interacting with individuals who have been failed by the rest of society and social support networks,” Nammacher told TechCrunch in an interview. “We want to help create a dialogue toward a more perfect future for people who are having some really rough things happen to them. Police officers also want that future.” RideAlong is specifically focused on serving populations that have frequent interactions with law enforcement. Those individuals are often affected by complex forces that require special care — particularly chemical dependence, mental illness and homelessness. “I think it is universally understood if someone has a severe mental illness… putting them through the criminal justice system and housing them in a jail is not the right thing to do,” Nammacher said. For RideAlong, the question is how to help those individuals obtain long-term support from a system that isn’t really designed to adequately serve them. Made for field work, RideAlong is a mobile responsive web app that presents relevant information on individuals who frequently use emergency services. It collects data that might otherwise only live in an officer’s personal notebook or a police report, presenting it on a call so that officers can use it to determine if an individual is in crisis and if they are, the best way to de-escalate their situation and provide support. With a simple interface and a no-frills design, RideAlong works everywhere from a precinct laptop to a smartphone in the field to a patrol car’s dash computer. Nammacher explains that any police officer could easily think of the five people they interact with most often, recalling key details about them like their dog’s name and whether they are close to a known family member. That information is very valuable for responding to a crisis but it often isn’t accessible when it needs to be. “They’ve come up with some really smart manual workarounds for how to deal with that,” Nammacher says, but it isn’t always enough. That real-time information gap is where RideAlong comes in. RideAlong is designed so that police officers and other first responders can search its database by name and location but also by gender, height, weight, ethnicity and age. When a search hits a result in the system, RideAlong can help officers detect subtle shifts from a known baseline behavior. The hope is that even very basic contextual information can provide clues that mean a big difference in outcomes. So far, it seems to be working. RideAlong has been live in Seattle for a year, with the Seattle Police Department’s 1,300 sworn officers using the software every day. Over the course of six months with the software, Seattle and King County saw a 35 percent reduction in 911 calls related to the 200 individuals indexed by RideAlong who most frequently utilize 911 systems. That decrease, interpreted as a sign of more efficient policing, translated into $407,000 in deferred costs for the city. “It really assists with decision making, especially when it comes to crisis calls,” Seattle Police Sergeant Daniel Nelson told TechCrunch. Officers have a lot of discretion to do what they think is best based on the information available. “There is so much gray space.” RideAlong has also partnered with the San Francisco Department of Public Health where a street medicine team is putting it to use in a pilot. West of Seattle, Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office is looking at RideAlong for its team of 300 officers. What this looks like in practice: An officer responds to a call involving a person they know named Suzanne. They might remember that normally if they ask her about Suzanne’s dog it calms her down, but today it makes her upset. Rather than assuming that her agitated behavior is coming out of the blue, the responding officer could address concerns around Suzanne’s dog and help de-escalate the situation. In another example, an officer responds to someone on the street who they perceive to be yelling and agitated. Checking contextual information in RideAlong could clarify that an individual just speaks loudly because they are hard of hearing, not in crisis. If someone is actually agitated and drawing helps them calm down, RideAlong will note that. “RideAlong visualizes that data, so when somebody is using the app they can see, ‘okay this person has 50 contacts, they’ve been depressed, sad, crying,’” Nelson said. “Cops are really good at seeing behavior and describing behavior so that’s what we’re asking of them.” The idea is that making personalized data like this easy to see can reduce the use of force in the field, calm someone down and open the door to connecting them to social services and any existing support network. “I’ve known all along that we’ve got incredible data, but it’s not getting out to the people on the streets,” said Maria X. Martinez, director of Whole Person Care at San Francisco Department of Public Health. RideAlong worked directly with her department’s street medicine team on a pilot program that gave clinicians access to key data while providing medical care in to the city’s homeless population. Traditionally, street medicine workers go do their work in the field and return to look up the records for the people with whom they interacted. Now, those processes are combined and 15 different sets of relevant data gets pulled together and presented in the field, where workers can add to and annotate it. “It’s one thing to tell people to come back and enter their data… you sort of hope that that does happen,” Martinez said. With RideAlong, “you’ve already done both things: documented and given them the info.” The small team at RideAlong began when the co-founders met during a Code for America fellowship in 2016. They built the app in 2016 under the banner of a data-driven justice program during the Obama administration. Interest was immediate. The next year, Nammacher and Hitchcock spun the project out into its own company, became part of Y Combinator’s summer batch of startups and by July they launched a pilot program with the entire Seattle police department. Neither co-founder planned on starting a company, but they were inspired by what they describe as a “real-time information gap” between people experiencing mental health crises and the people dispatched to help them and the level of interest from “agencies across the country, big and small” who wanted to buy their product. “There’s been more of a push recently for quantitative data to be a more central force for decision making,” Nammacher said. The agencies has worked with so far like how user-friendly the software is and how it surfaces the data they already collect to make it more useful. “At the end of the day, our users are both the city staff member and the person that they’re serving. We see them as equally valid and important.” |
iOS 12 beta 7 pulled after reports of bugs, crashes | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | null |
Alphabet invests $375 million in Oscar Health | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | “Alphabet has invested in Oscar over many years and has seen the company and its team up close. We’re thrilled to invest further to help Oscar in its next phase of growth,” an Alphabet spokesperson told TechCrunch. Part of that product expansion includes getting into Medicare Advantage in 2020, which is a deviation from the current offerings in the individual and employer insurance markets. Oscar started out by offering insurance for individuals, growing rapidly during the launch of the Affordable Care Act and then rolling into small business offerings with its product Oscar for Business. |
Trulia crowdsources neighborhood reviews so you won’t regret your move | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | , the online real estate site owned by its former rival Zillow, wants to give you a better idea of what a certain neighborhood feels like before you move there. To do this, the company today launched Neighborhoods, a feature that brings together direct reviews and feedback from residents based on the existing tool, data and images from Trulia’s own team (including drone shots), as well as more general information about other neighborhood highlights and safety info. This new feature is now available for 300 neighborhoods in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Austin and Chicago, with 1,100 more planned to go live throughout the rest of 2018. These new neighborhood guides are available in Trulia’s mobile apps and . However, the feature is a bit hidden and will only pop up when you search for a neighborhood in Trulia. I also had no luck bringing it up on the web, but the mobile version is quite nice. It’d be nice to be able to pin a link to a neighborhood guide somewhere in the app, though. [gallery ids="1691190,1691191,1691189"] The overall idea is solid. The neighborhood you buy in matters, after all. Indeed, Trulia says 85 percent of homebuyers say that the neighborhood matters as much to them as the house itself. You’ll still want to spend a bit of time in the neighborhood you are looking at, but tools like this can give you an early feel for what’s right for you. Combined with Trulia’s existing data about things like commute times and local crime, if nothing else, you can at least cross a few areas off your list with this. “Prior to Trulia Neighborhoods, there wasn’t a resource that showed consumers what life is really like in a neighborhood,” said Tim Correia, senior vice president and general manager at Trulia. “Our research found consumers were determined to find this type of information and even developed a series of hacks to source these valuable insights. It was clear it was time to rebuild the home and neighborhood discovery experience from the ground up and empower consumers with all the information to make the best decision for themselves.” |
This bipedal robot has a flying head | John Biggs | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | Making a bipedal robot is hard. You have to make sure maintain exquisite balance at all times and, even with the amazing things can do, there is still a chance that your crazy robot will fall over and bop its electronic head. But what if that head is a quadcopter? University of Tokyo have done just that with their wild Aerial-Biped. The robot isn’t completely bipedal but it’s designed instead to act like a bipedal robot without the tricky issue of being truly bipedal. Think of the these legs as more a sort of fun bit of puppetry that mimics walking but doesn’t really walk. “The goal is to develop a robot that has the ability to display the appearance of bipedal walking with dynamic mobility, and to provide a new visual experience. The robot enables walking motion with very slender legs like those of a flamingo without impairing dynamic mobility. This approach enables casual users to choreograph biped robot walking without expertise. In addition, it is much cheaper compared to a conventional bipedal walking robot,” the team told . The robot is similar to the bizarre-looking and spindly legs. The new robot learned how to walk convincingly through machine learning, a feat that gives it a realistic gait even though it is really an aerial system. It’s definitely a clever little project and could be interesting at a theme park or in an environment where a massive bipedal robot falling over on someone might be discouraged. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULPwfa8MjR0] |
Hyundai leads $14.3M investment in Indian car rental startup Revv | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | Korean automaker Hyundai is jumping into India’s on-demand mobility space after it led a $14.3 million investment in car-rental startup . Hyundai, , initially announced an undisclosed investment in Revv this week, but now the startup has confirmed that the capital is part of a larger 100 Crore INR (~$14.3 million) Series B round. Other investors in the round include Japan’s Dream Incubator, Telama Investment and Sunjay Kapoor of auto component firm Sona BLW. Existing investors Edelweiss and Beenext also took part in the deal, which takes Revv to $23 million raised from investors, . Revv was founded in 2015 and it offers on-demand car rentals using a model similar to Zipcar in the U.S. The startup is currently active in 11 cities in India with a fleet of around 1,000 vehicles. It claims to have served 300,000 users to date. One of its hallmarks is doorstep delivery and collection from customers, which eschews the usual process of designated collection and return locations. In an interview with TechCrunch, Revv co-founders Anupam Agarwal (CEO) and Karan Jain (COO) said the plan is to expand to 30 cities over the next 12-18 months while growing the fleet size to 10,000-12,000. The duo said that the investment from Hyundai didn’t include any specific clause to provide vehicles, but that it is possible that an agreement may be reached in the future. Beyond potential support on growing the fleet, Agarwal and Jain said that Revv plans to tap Hyundai for its knowledge in vehicles, including performance upkeep, maintenance of cars and more, and other tech areas as it builds out its platform and new products. A photo of the Revv team That’s because the startup’s expansion plan goes beyond new geographies to include different types of services, too. Right now, Revv offers on-demand car rentals and a subscription-based product — Switch — that is designed for power-users, but Agarwal and Jain want to introduce more modular and flexible products. Already Shift users account for around one-third of rentals, but Revv wants to go further. Agarwal and Jain hinted that could range from shorter time “on-demand” rentals, such as within 15 minutes, to longer-term alternatives to car ownership that remain financial commitments of loans and repayments. “We are looking at innovative business models that we can take to the consumer,” the Revv co-founders said. “We understand that the traditional model of car ownership will be diluted and alternative options of accessible mobility will be the norm. “Cabs solve point A to B in 40 minutes, but every other need is still a largely unsolved problem in this country. India is unique [and the need for] mobility solutions is far higher because 98 percent of people don’t own cars,” they added. While taxi on-demand apps like Ola and Uber are making the cab experience better in India, Revv believes it can address other needs like out of town trips, long-distance commuting and other requirements that it believes are common among Indian consumers. Longer term, the startup’s aim is to grow the ‘automobile access’ rate to 50 percent across India to help cover these gaps. Revv co-founders Anupam Agarwal (left) and Karan Jain (right) With this new funding in the bag, Revv aims to amp up its business with a “slew” of new products. Agarwal and Jain said the target is to increase revenue 10X, going from $10 million ARR right now to $100 million within 18 months. They believe that these new services are essential and that they could account for half of that revenue target. They also plan to increase marketing spend to grow the brand, having previously focused on user retention, according to Agarwal and Jain. When asked about the potential to add two-wheeled transportation — given the growth of startups in that space, — the duo, who both spent time with McKinsey, said they would remain focused on cars for at least the next year. Revv’s chief domestic rival is , and is backed by the likes of Ford and Mahindra & Mahindra. Zoomcar has already moved into two-wheelers, and its big differentiator is a program that allows existing car owners to lease out their vehicles by adding them to the Zoomcar fleet. The five-year-old startup is also considering overseas expansion. Elsewhere, other competitors include , and . |
Zoox CEO and co-founder Tim Kentley-Klay is out | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | Tim Kentley-Klay, the co-founder and CEO of secretive self-driving vehicle company Zoox, was fired suddenly Wednesday by the company’s board. Kentley-Klay’s departure was first reported by , which cited an unnamed source. Kentley-Klay later tweeted a statement confirming that he had been fired by the board. Kentley-Klay and Zoox could not be reached for comment. TechCrunch will update the story as it develops. Cheers to the most legendary crew, ever. — Tim Kentley-Klay (@TimKentleyKlay) In the tweet, Kentley-Klay wrote: I came to this town as a founder only to build the future of mobility, and by the metrics shared here was crushing it against the biggest. But the shocking reality is that this—without a warning, cause or right of reply—the board fired me. Today was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks. This town sells the story that it backs founders to create real change. Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win, the board chose a path of fear, optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress for the Universe. Cheers to the true believers that have built Zoox from scratch these last four years. Don’t let anyone stand between you and what you know is right. TKK. He also posted a graphic comparing with Zoox the capital efficiency of top autonomous vehicle programs like Waymo, Uber, and Cruise. Kentley-Klay has since posted more than a dozen tweets, quoting others who have contacted him to express support and disappointment. He doesn’t name anyone, but the presumption is that these are Zoox employees. The firing comes just a month after Zoox closed a massive at a $3.2 billion post-money valuation. The round, led by Mike Cannon-Brookes of Grok Ventures, brings its total amount of funding to $800 million. Kentley-Klay founded Zoox with Jesse Levinson about four years ago. The company is infamous for its secrecy. The first real inside look into the company, and Kentley-Klay, came just a month ago in a feature by . The company, which employs about 500 people, wants to deploy autonomous vehicles on public streets and launch a ride-hailing service with its fleet by 2020. |
Australia bans Huawei and ZTE from supplying technology for its 5G network | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | Australia has blocked Huawei and ZTE from providing equipment for its 5G network, which is set to launch commercially next year. In a tweet, Huawei stated that the Australian government told the company that both it and ZTE are banned from supplying 5G technology to the country, despite Huawei’s assurances that it does not pose a threat to national security. We have been informed by the Govt that Huawei & ZTE have been banned from providing 5G technology to Australia. This is a extremely disappointing result for consumers. Huawei is a world leader in 5G. Has safely & securely delivered wireless technology in Aust for close to 15 yrs — Huawei Australia (@HuaweiOZ) Earlier today, the Australian government issued . Although it did not mention Huawei, ZTE or China specifically, it did strongly hint at them by stating “the Government considers that the involvement of vendors who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from foreign government that conflict with Australian law, may risk failure by the carrier to adequately protect a 5G network from unauthorized access or interference.” Concerns that Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese tech companies will be forced to , that obligates all Chinese organizations and citizens to provide information to national intelligence agencies when asked have made several countries wary of using their technology. Earlier this month, the United States by government agencies and contractors, six years after a first cited the two companies as security threats. In its new security guidelines, the Australian government stated that differences in the way 5G operates compared to previous network generations introduces new risks to national security. In particular, it noted the diminishing distinctions between the core network, where more sensitive functions like access control and data routing occur, and the edge, or radios that connect customer equipment, like laptops and mobile phones, to the core. “This new architecture provides a way to circumvent traditional security controls by exploiting equipment in the edge of the network – exploitation which may affect overall network integrity and availability, as well as the confidentiality of customer data. A long history of cyber incidents shows cyber actors target Australia and Australians,” the guidelines stated. “Government has found no combination of technical security controls that sufficiently mitigate the risks.” Last year, Australia introduced the , which takes effect next month and directs carriers and telecommunication service providers to protect their networks and infrastructure from national security threats and also notify the government of any proposed changes that may compromise the security of their network. It also gives the government the power to “intervene and issue directions in cases where there are significant national security concerns that cannot be addressed through other means.” Huawei’s Australian chairman John Lord that the company had received legal advice that its Australian operations are not bound to Chinese laws and he would refuse to hand over any data to the Chinese government in breach of Australian law. Lord also argued that banning Huawei could hurt local businesses and customers by raising prices and limiting access to technology. TechCrunch has contacted ZTE and Huawei for comment. |
Facebook bans first app since Cambridge Analytica, myPersonality, and suspends hundreds more | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | Facebook that it had banned the app myPersonality for improper data controls and suspended hundreds more. So far this is only the second app to be banned as a result of the company’s large-scale audit begun in March; but as myPersonality hasn’t been active since 2012, and was to all appearances a legitimate academic operation, it’s a bit of a mystery why they bothered. The total number of app suspensions has reached 400, twice the number Facebook announce publicly. Suspensions aren’t listed publicly, however, and apps may be suspended and reinstated without any user notification. The only other app to be banned via this process is Cambridge Analytica. myPersonality was created by researchers at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre (no relation to Cambridge Analytica — this is an actual academic institution) to source data from Facebook users via personality quizzes. It operated from 2007 to 2012, and was quite successful, gathering data on some four million users (directly, not via friends) when it was operational. The data set was used for the Centre’s own studies and other academics could request access to it via an online form; applications were vetted by CPC staff and had to be approved by the petitioner’s university’s ethics committee. that a more or less complete set of the project’s data was available for anyone to download from GitHub, put there by some misguided scholar who had received access and decided to post it where their students could access it more easily. Facebook suspended the app around then, saying “we believe that it may have violated Facebook’s policies.” That suspension has graduated into a ban, because the creators “fail[ed] to agree to our request to audit and because it’s clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place.” This is, of course, a pot-meet-kettle situation, as well as something of a self-indictment. I contacted David Stillwell, one of the app’s creators and currently deputy director of the CPC, having previously heard from him and collaborator Michel Kosinski about the data set and Facebook’s sudden animosity. “Facebook has long been aware of the application’s use of data for research,” Stillwell said in a statement. “In 2009 Facebook certified the app as compliant with their terms by making it one of their first In 2011 Facebook invited me to a meeting in Silicon Valley (and paid my travel expenses) for a workshop organised by Facebook precisely because it wanted more academics to use its data, and in 2015 Facebook invited Dr Kosinski to present our research at their headquarters.” During that time, Kosinski and Stillwell both told me, dozens of universities had published in total more than a hundred social science research papers using the data. No one at Facebook or elsewhere seems to have raised any issues with how the data was stored or distributed during all that time. “It is therefore odd that Facebook should suddenly now profess itself to have been unaware of the myPersonality research and to believe that the data may have been misused,” Stillwell said. Examples of data sets available via the myPersonality project A Facebook representative told me they were concerned that the vetting process for getting access to the data set was too loose, and furthermore that the data was not adequately anonymized. But Facebook would, ostensibly, have approved these processes during the repeated verifications of myPersonality’s data. Why would it suddenly decide in 2018, when the app had been inactive for years, that it had been in violation all that time? The most obvious answer would be that its auditors never looked very closely in the first place, despite a cozy relationship with the researchers. “When the app was suspended three months ago I asked Facebook to explain which of their terms was broken but so far they have been unable to cite any instances,” said Stillwell. Ironically, Facebook’s accusation that myPersonality failed to secure user data correctly is exactly what the company itself appears to be guilty of, and at a far greater scale. Just as CPC could not control what a researcher did with the data (for example, mistakenly post it publicly) once they had been approved by multiple other academics, Facebook could not control what companies like Cambridge Analytica did with data once it had been siphoned out under the respectable guise of research purposes. (Notably, it is projects like myPersonality that seem to have made that guise respectable to begin with.) Perhaps Facebook’s standards have changed and what was okay by them in 2012 — and, apparently, in 2015 — is not acceptable now. Good — users stronger protections. But this banning of an app inactive for years and used successfully by real academics for actual research purposes has an air of theatricality. It helps no one and will change nothing about myPersonality itself, which Stillwell and others stopped maintaining years ago, or the data set it created, which may very well still be analyzed for new insights by some enterprising social science grad student. Facebook has mobilized a full-time barn door-closing operation years after the horses bolted, as evident by today’s ban. So when you and the other four million people get a notification that Facebook is protecting your privacy by banning an app you used a decade ago, take it with a grain of salt. |
Simple Feast raises $12M from Balderton and 14W to expand its weekly meat-free meal-box deliveries | Mike Butcher | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | The vast majority of environmental experts say that avoiding meat and dairy is the single most important, and most impactful action, you can take to reduce your personal impact on Earth. Why? Because of the sheer amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere from the process of meat production. Many would agree it’s also pretty good for your health. But when most of us have been brought up with animal protein in the middle of our plates, it often feels pretty hard to achieve. At the same time, fast food delivery has been taking off, but we’re still eating the same thing: meat. So a Danish startup has come along to try to solve this. delivers sustainable food to people’s homes in biodegradable boxes, and it’s now raised a $12 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital in London, with participation from 14W in New York. Existing investors Sweet Capital and ByFounders are also re-investing the round. Simple Feast offers what it describes as ready-to-eat plant-based food that is “sustainably produced, organic, and delivered straight to the doorstep” in biodegradable boxes every week. The meal solution delivers weekly boxes with three prepared plant-based and 100 percent organic meals ready to serve in 10 minutes. In this respect it’s not unlike other startups, such as HelloFresh, with the main difference being that all the food is plant-based. Jakob Jønck, CEO and co-founder of Simple Feast, says: “Climate change is real. There is no Planet B and we are facing what is arguably the biggest challenge in human history. This is a big investment for a small company, but it’s a drop in the ocean considering the challenge at hand, the politicians and industries we are up against.” He and Thomas Ambus, co-founder/CTO, started thinking more deeply about Simple Feast when Under Armour acquired Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, their previous startups, in the spring of 2015 and got serious about it in 2016. “Ever since founding Endomondo and heading up International Operations for MyFitnessPal, I always felt a missing link when trying to move towards a healthy, sustainable diet — an actual product that didn’t compromise on taste, nor convenience, but solved the huge challenges involved with embarking on this journey towards eating plants first and foremost,” says Jønck. Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at Balderton Capital, says: “With a global transition towards plant-based food, we believe Simple Feast is uniquely positioned to change the way we eat and create awareness about the impact of our food choices.” The main target is families, with the parents in their 30s and 40s. “We find that women are still predominantly the decision maker when it comes to food for the family. Our most typical customers are women in a relationship in their 30s with one or two kids. Our customers are also politically interested, above the average,” says Jønck. They are competing with restaurants, meal kits and take-away. “We are disrupting both the restaurant and the meal kit industry. Nobody has ever taken the challenge of creating climate-friendly, plant-based food seriously while serving it directly to consumers. We don´t make compromises on taste, nor convenience, and we don´t believe that we have seen that before,” he told me. |
Apple removed Facebook’s Onavo from the App Store for gathering app data | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | If you were on the edge of your seat wondering what Facebook’s next major consumer privacy headache would be, the wait is over! reports that Apple has deemed Facebook-owned app in violation of its App Store policies and will be giving it the boot shortly. In a statement to TechCrunch, an Apple spokesperson explained the reasoning behind its decision to pull the app: We work hard to protect user privacy and data security throughout the Apple ecosystem. With the latest update to our guidelines, we made it explicitly clear that apps should not collect information about which other apps are installed on a user’s device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing and must make it clear what user data will be collected and how it will be used. In some ways, it’s a wonder that Onavo has lasted this long. Onavo, which , does two things. As far as regular consumers are concerned, Onavo , offering to “keep you and your data safe” and “blocking potentially harmful websites and securing your personal information.” But Onavo’s real utility is pumping a ton of app usage data to its parent company, giving Facebook an invaluable bird’s-eye view into mobile trends by observing which apps are gaining traction and which are fizzling out. That perspective is useful both from a product standpoint, allowing Facebook to get ahead of the competition (Snapchat is a fine example), and giving it an edge for considering which competitors to acquire. That dual personality is likely part of the problem for Apple. In its descriptions, Onavo leans heavily on its promise to “protect your personal information” and the cover story of a fairly legitimate looking VPN. With no meaningful opt-in for users who want to use Onavo’s VPN services but might be hesitant about sharing data with Facebook, the app’s true intentions were buried deep in its description: “Onavo collects your mobile data traffic… Because we’re part of Facebook, we also use this info to improve Facebook products and services, gain insights into the products and services people value, and build better experiences.” By February of this year, the Onavo app had been downloaded more than . While the app is no longer showing up in searches within Apple’s App Store, it’s still alive and well in Google’s considerably more free-wheeling app store, so Facebook will have to lean more heavily on its Android eyes and ears for now. |
Hands-on with the bizarrely fascinating Looking Glass volumetric display | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | What good is 3D? Does depth give you anything worthwhile in an interface that’s most likely flat anyway? Is “immersion” as a metric really worth that much? Even as a ton of startups and big companies have invested in 3D-centric hardware and software, there has undoubtedly been some pushback on whether it’s all that necessary. I grappled with some of these questions when I played with the latest project from , a desktop volumetric display that they see as so central to the company’s goals that they’ve just named it the Looking Glass. My experience with it left me a bit perplexed with where the tech would end up, but god dammit was it cool anyway. via Looking Glass The startup is in the midst of a to gauge interest in such a product, they’ve raised about $775k with north of 1,200 backers. I had a chance to try out both of the versions of what they’re shipping, a $450 8.9 inch version and a $2,500 15.6 inch type. The display is beaming 45 views of an object, each at 60 frames per second delivering images that you can peer around and see multiple angles of. How it works is that the display is basically sending out a fan of perspectives which can be observed by multiple people from multiple perspectives. No matter what you initially hear about the technical details of how it all works, there is a certain degree of disbelief baked into seeing a volumetric display like this for the first time. It’s like… looking into a fishbowl of pixels. Looking Glass Factory has been around since 2015 and has already shipped quite a few products that broadly fit into the world of holograms, this one comes at a time where it has the chance to be a little bit more than a toy for designers and creative types. Rather than putting on a headset, the company argues, this product offers these people the chance to easily see what they’re working on and show it to other without tossing a headset around. The display is a fascinating pairing for the recent buildup in platforms and stores for 3D digital assets. It’s easier than its ever been to build a 3D scan of something now that there are sophisticated camera arrays on devices like the iPhone X, similarly large tech cos are looking to buy into the AR/VR development process with 3D digital asset libraries that can be easily accessed. I’m a bit torn on how far out I see the use cases for a volumetric display type like this actually extending, but this does specifically seem like a very intriguing tool for a 3D creator who’s building their own models and wants to see them visualized in a more immersive way. Is it solving an essential problem for them? I wouldn’t say so, but it’s such a weirdly interesting technology that I don’t doubt they’ll be able to move some units to an early adopter crowd that’s generally aching for this type of stuff. Most of these Kickstarter upstarts are peddling pipe dreams, but Looking Glass Factory has been working on this stuff for awhile and whether or not you actually do need it, they’ve got it. |
Court rules warrants are needed for cops to access smart electrical meter data | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | You can tell a lot about what’s going on in a home from how much electricity it’s using — especially when that information is collected every few minutes and recorded centrally. It’s revealing enough that a federal judge has ruled that people with smart meters have a reasonable expectation of privacy and as such law enforcement will require a warrant to acquire that data. It may sound like a niche win in the fight for digital privacy, and in a way it is, but it’s still important. One of the risks we’ve assumed as consumers in adopting ubiquitous technology in forms like the so-called Internet of Things is that we are generating an immense amount of data we weren’t before, and that data is not always protected as it should be. This case is a great example. Traditional spinning meters are read perhaps once a month by your local utility, and at that level of granularity there’s not much you can tell about a house or apartment other than whether perhaps someone has been living there and whether they have abnormally high electricity use — useful information if you were, say, looking for illicit pot growers with a farm in the basement. Smart meters, on the other hand, send exact meter readings at short intervals, perhaps every 15 minutes, and these readings may be kept for years. With that much detail you could not only tell whether someone lives in a house, but whether they’re home, whether the fridge has been opened recently, what room they’re in, how often they do laundry, and so on. The fingerprints of individual devices on the house’s electrical network aren’t that difficult to figure out. To be sure this can help the utility with load balancing, predicting demand and so on. But what if the government wants to do more with it, for example to establish whether someone was home at a certain time in a criminal investigation? A group of concerned citizens sued the city of Naperville, Illinois, which mandated smart readers several years ago, alleging that collection of the data was unconstitutional as it amounted to an unreasonable search. An earlier court decision essentially found that by voluntarily sharing electricity consumption data with a third party, residents surrendered their right to privacy. No privacy means it’s not a “search” to ask for the data. But as the 7th Circuit pointed out in its ruling on appeal ( ), there isn’t really a third party: the city collects the data, and city authorities want to use the data. And even if there were, “a home occupant does not assume the risk of near constant monitoring by choosing to have electricity in her home.” So it a search. Collecting the data is not an search, however, when it is done with no “prosecutorial intent,” the court ruled. That means that when the city is acting in its own interest as far as administrating and improving the electrical grid, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to collect this information without a warrant. But should it be required for more than that, for instance in a criminal investigation, a warrant would certainly be required. This distinction is important and not always observed. Systematic collection and analysis of metadata can produce remarkably detailed records of a person’s movements and habits, and it can be difficult to find and plug the holes by which that data pours out of protected containers like the Fourth Amendment. Although it’s possible that this could be appealed up to the Supreme Court, it seems unlikely as this is not a major issue of free speech or government access. A warrant for electrical usage is rarely, one presumes, a matter of life or death, but could indeed be critical in a court battle — for which reason requiring a warrant is not an unreasonable requirement. It seems more likely that the city of Naperville, and others in its position, will abide by this decision. That’s a win for your privacy and a foot in the door for other data collection practices like this one. |
Thoughts on Xiaomi’s eighth anniversary and inaugural month as a public company | Hans Tung | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | On August 16, Xiaomi celebrated the seventh anniversary of the release of its first phone, and the eighth anniversary of MIUI’s launch. As an early investor in Xiaomi in spring 2010 and a former board member of the company, I attended Xiaomi’s IPO in Hong Kong on July 9. I felt nostalgic and grateful, and marveled at how much Xiaomi — which seemed like a crazy idea to many back in January 2010 — has achieved over the past eight years. Xiaomi’s business model is not the easiest to appreciate if you have never tried its products. Its holistic value proposition doesn’t have an easy equivalent in the US. I frequently get asked questions about how the company works and what justifies its valuation for each round over the years. Here’s my take on the five most asked questions: At first glance Xiaomi may seem like a hardware company, which traditionally has lower gross margins. But if you look at the company as a whole and how it engages with users, it’s much more – it’s an Internet company. It is true that around 70% of Xiaomi’s revenue comes from smartphones, 20% comes from connected devices and lifestyle products, and 10% comes from Internet services in 2017. Once users get a taste of Xiaomi through its smartphones, they fall in love with the brand’s superb design, ease of usage, quality, and amazing price-to-performance ratio, and are more likely to buy a Xiaomi smart TV next, then Xiaomi’s smart home appliances, and finally use Xiaomi’s apps. Over time, Xiaomi’s Internet service revenue will grow more rapidly than most people think. , including the Mi App Store, Mi Browser, Mi Music, and Mi Video apps. Rather than paying search engines to acquire users, Xiaomi is essentially getting paid for acquiring users through selling its smartphones. Another under-appreciated pillar of Xiaomi’s growth is its “ecosystem strategy.” Xiaomi strategically invests in many startups as well as the many Internet services providers they work with, both in China and outside of China. Companies in the Xiaomi ecosystem include SmartMi (air purifiers), Zimi (power banks), Huami (Mi bands), Chun Mi (rice cookers), and 80-plus more. Thanks to these prolific investments, you can find a wide variety of products in any Xiaomi store, from scooters to ukeleles (see below). As a result, every time consumers visit a Xiaomi store, they can find something new, and Xiaomi’s users are often loyal to the brand because there are so many great Xiaomi ecosystem products consumers can buy. Over 1.4 million users already own more than five connected Xiaomi products (excluding smartphones and laptops). The rising middle class in China and other emerging markets trust, embrace, and identify with the Xiaomi brand – similar to how Muji and Uniqlo from Japan are loved by consumers worldwide. Overtime, as more users become “Mi fans”, Xiaomi’s Internet service revenue will grow, but there is a lagging effect, which many public investors don’t fully appreciate yet. In addition, Xiaomi also invests in Internet service providers. It then preloads their content into its own apps, or preloads their apps into its own phones and smart TVs. For example, within the Mi Video app, you can access content from top Chinese video platforms like iQiyi and Youku Tudou, because Xiaomi was an investor in these companies. Xiaomi shares advertising and subscription revenue with these platforms, allowing it to rapidly grow its revenue from Internet services, which have extremely high margins. I have known CEO and founder LEI Jun for almost 10 years. We first met when he became an angel investor in early 2008. When Lei Jun first told me about his idea for Xiaomi in January 2010 in Beijing, I listened to his pitch (there wasn’t even a PowerPoint) and it took about 90 minutes before I decided to invest. He used five arguments to convince me. The team he assembled was the only one that had experience in four out of the five areas that I considered to be critical to the success for his “ ”: No one else had all these skills under one roof. This is why I thought Xiaomi might have the chance to do something very special. However, for anyone who passed on Xiaomi early, it was very a reasonable and logical decision. In the history of mobile phone companies around the world, no startup had ever been successful. Some even predicted that for Xiaomi to succeed, Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia would all have to fail. In 2010, that seemed a crazy idea. But the rest is history. Xiaomi did a great job in recruiting Hugo Barra, who was formerly an executive at Google Android, to join them as Head of International in 2013. Hugo’s experience lent credibility to Xiaomi, as he became the international face of the company for the next three to four years. He also recruited several young executives and country managers, mostly in their late 20s or early 30s back then, many of whom were first-generation Chinese Americans or Western educated immigrants. These executives have helped Xiaomi become a global company, and they all have a bright future ahead of them with more responsibilities to come. It’s really important to hire the right head of international and country managers to make it work. Conversely, when US companies go to China, it’s harder to hire young millennials to spearhead the China business because the Chinese Internet space is a lot more difficult to navigate. But as there are more and more Gen Z and millennial consumers in China, American and international companies can take more chances, recruit young entrepreneurs to join them, and form an advisory board of industry veterans and investors around their China initiative. In my opinion, the US market is not an immediate priority for Xiaomi today. Emerging markets, which include India, Southeast Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Latin America, represent much bigger and immediate opportunities. Xiaomi is already in 74 countries today. In the first quarter of 2018, over 36% of Xiaomi’s revenue came from markets outside of China. According to IDC, in Q4 2017, Xiaomi was among the top five smartphone brands in terms of unit shipments in 15 countries, including India (No. 1), Indonesia (No. 2), Russia, Poland, Greece, and Israel. Xiaomi also has plans to double down on markets in Latin America such as Mexico. Why is this significant? Allow me to share a historical lesson. When Yahoo! Invested in Alibaba (another GGV portfolio company) in 2005, the world had 1 billion Internet users. Now, the world has 3.5 billion Internet users. Over the last 13 years, Alibaba’s valuation increased 100 times from $5 billion to $500 billion. The fact that China was the fastest growing market for Internet users during this period, coupled with Alibaba’s amazing ability to execute, turned the company into a growth miracle. In the next 12-13 years, the world will most likely grow to 5 billion Internet users. Going forward, Xiaomi is very well-positioned to take advantage of the next phase of growth through selling hardware, software, and bundled Internet services, as well as by investing in partner companies in those countries. I think Xiaomi is undervalued at HK$17 per share. Xiaomi’s was the world’s largest tech IPO since Alibaba’s in 2014 and it has a relatively complicated business model, so it might take time for public investors to understand and appreciate. I believe Xiaomi will deliver performance that beats expectations going forward. If you look at the IPO price of HK$17 a share, Xiaomi was valued using a revenue multiple of 10x for its Internet services (a discount to Alibaba and Tencent), and 2x for its hardware-related revenue (an average multiple for one of China’s favorite brands), based on the 2017 numbers. So there is still a lot of potential for upside both in terms of operational growth and multiple expansions. I remember when Facebook went public in 2012, its share was priced at $38 and its first day of trading ended at $38.23. Obviously, six years later, Facebook is now worth about five times its valuation at IPO. Similarly, there’s a lot of room for Xiaomi to grow. |
Facebook VP of partnerships Dan Rose is leaving the company | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | Facebook’s vice president of partnerships Dan Rose will leave the company early next year. Rose announced the move on his , indicating that he would stay on through Mobile World Congress in February. During his long tenure at the company, Rose oversaw Facebook’s transformation into a media giant, steering it toward partnerships with TV networks and traditional news publishers. In a comment on his announcement, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg summarized Rose’s influence on Facebook’s direction over the years. “Your idea that we should be a partnership company and work closely with others in the industry has been key to some of our greatest successes,” Sandberg said. “I’ve been lucky to have you not just as a colleague but a friend – and you will always be a part of the Facebook family.” Per his Facebook post, Rose will step down from his post to spend more time with his wife and children, who relocated to Hawaii a year ago. “Mark and Sheryl changed my life and my career. I would walk through fire for them, or fly across the ocean on a regular basis,” Rose said. “But they deserve someone in my role who is present and fully engaged every day in the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.” Rose sounds like he’ll be involved in the search for his replacement and the transition, leaving the door open to remaining involved and “helping Facebook from a distance.” Prior to his time at Facebook, Rose spent seven years at Amazon as a director of business development in the Kindle’s early days. Rose is the latest major departure announcement from Facebook in recent months, following the planned exit of and . You can read Rose’s full announcement, embedded below. I have some news to share about my personal situation. I am moving to Hawaii and transitioning out of my current role at… Posted by on |
Plant-focused startup The Sill raises $5M | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | , a startup that sells potted plants online and in physical stores, announced this weekend that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Raine Ventures. The company was founded in 2012 and has now raised a total of $7.5 million. It was bootstrapped until last year, when it raised seed funding from Brand Foundry Ventures, Halogen Ventures, BBG Ventures, Tuesday Capital, Blueseed and The Chernin Group. (BBG Ventures is backed by TechCrunch’s parent company Oath.) That seems like a long time for a startup to go without outside funding, and indeed, CEO Eliza Blank acknowledged that she “probably waited too long to go out and raise.” Still, she said those first few years also gave her time to find the right business model (like focusing “exclusively on the direct-to-consumer business,” rather than selling to offices as well). And while it’s easy to group among all the startups using the internet to build a consumer business around a traditional category of retail, Blank said her vision is bigger than “just putting plants online and being another direct-to-consumer brand.” After all, there are plenty of people (myself included) who are interested in owning plants but don’t really know how to care for them properly. And our casual interest level probably isn’t going to get us to the local horticultural society to learn more. Blank said she founded the company in response to her own experience wanting to buy plants, and realizing how limited the resources were for learning “how to approach the category as a newbie.” So The Sill doesn’t just sell you a plant (along with basic care instructions). It also allows you to ask questions of the company’s plant experts — and with the opening of its first brick-and-mortar stores in New York City, it also offers weekly workshops. “We have a much longer relationship than a typical transaction business,” Blank said. “Making the purchase is almost like the start — or maybe the middle — of a conversation.” The company says it sold more than 75,000 products in the last six months, with sales up 500 percent year-over-year, and anticipated revenue for the year of nearly $5 million. |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 8 | 14 | null |
Crater rebrands as Shyft to focus on helping global nomads move | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 8 | 22 | After finally settling on a new apartment, packing your last box and rushing out to pick up your moving van for the measly three hours you could book it — have you ever taken a moment to think, “Wow, this is so easy?” Nope, and neither has anybody else. But , a logistics platform company based in San Francisco, is hoping to change that. , the company announced today a re-brand of its name and mission to focus on helping improve the corporate relocation process for millions of movers per year. The company is bringing with it three years of experience developing software and technology to help moving companies provide better estimates and service to customers. “We spend hours thinking about these global citizens who are moving everyday and literally shifting their lives,” Shyft CMO Rajiv Parikh told TechCrunch. “They’re moving to new communities, they’re finding new schools, they’re finding new opportunities. It’s a monumental and pivotal moment in someone’s life.” The process works two-fold. First, Shyft is continuing its partnerships with moving companies and selling its software to them in order to help update their portals and make the process as seamless as possible for their existing customers. As part of these partnerships, Shyft is able to create a reliable network of moving companies and services that it can utilize in the second part of its service — connecting with corporate Fortune 500 companies to help their transferees easily and intuitively complete their moving process. Through the platform, employees planning a move can fill out information like how many boxes they’re moving, what their housing needs will be and even what kind of food they like and dietary restrictions they have. With this data, Shyft will help direct them to the services they need and work to help them best integrate into their new communities. Shyft works with corporate companies’ lump-sum funds to help employees find the best price possible for their move. And transferees can use the services for free (or be reimbursed the difference). “A traditional moving company is focused on moving — dollars and cents — [and] they want the largest and the biggest moves out there,” Shyft CEO Alex Alpert told TechCrunch. “From our perspective, we’re agnostic to that. If it’s in someone’s best interest to sell their sofa and buy a new one, we want to help facilitate that.” In a recent collaboration with eBay, the company says it has seen large increases in the number of employees using its portal instead of trying to figure out logistics on their own. “We have monitored the use of Shyft in our lump sum program and have seen a marked increase in the willingness of employees to engage with Shyft to identify the best solution to their moving needs,” eBay Director of HR Global Mobility Eric Halverson said in a statement. “Shyft is helping our employees optimize their lump sum allowance with a variety of moving solutions geared to their personal needs and circumstances.” Alpert says that Shyft is now focusing on growing and refining its service, and this summer was accepted to join Moderne Venture’s summer Passport Program. The seven-month industry immersion program is designed to help companies refine their go-to-market strategies and network with others working in the real estate, finance, insurance and home-services spaces. |
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