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Jeff Bezos donates $33 million to fund college scholarships for Dreamers | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are donating $33 million in the form of a scholarship grant to help 1,000 undocumented immigrant high school graduates with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status attend college. The Bezos grant comes through , a scholarship fund for Dreamers. The organization, which is less than four years old, says this is the largest grant it has ever received. In partnership with more than 70 low-cost colleges in 15 states, TheDream.US offers individual students $33,000 in scholarship aid over four years to help them cover the cost of tuition, fees and books. “My dad came to the U.S. when he was 16 as part of Operation Pedro Pan,” . “He landed in this country alone and unable to speak English. With a lot of grit and determination – and the help of some remarkable organizations in Delaware – my dad became an outstanding citizen, and he continues to give back to the country that he feels blessed him in so many ways. MacKenzie and I are honored to be able to help today’s Dreamers by funding these scholarships.” Earlier this week, Bezos became the richest person of all time when his net worth reached $105.1 billion. At the time of publication, . Bezos’ donation also comes at a time when Congress and the White House are . Since 2012, 800,000 undocumented immigrants have received DACA status. But DACA status does not make them eligible for federal grants and loans, nor state aid in 44 states. That’s where TheDream.US comes in. As of now, 2,850 students are enrolled in college through this program. The Bezos grant will enable TheDream.US to help an additional 1,000 students. While TheDream.US organization is not old enough to have graduation rates, it says its scholars are thriving academically, noting that 94 percent return to college after their first year, while the national average is just 72 percent. “We expect a 75% graduation rate,” TheDream.US President Candy Marshall said in a statement. “This is extraordinary—extraordinary for any students; extraordinary for the colleges they attend; and extraordinary for students from low-income families in particular.” |
Facebook stock dips after the platform deprioritizes publishers | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Facebook shares fell around 5 percent on Friday following the news that the company would to boost social interactions over stories from publishers. Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on Thursday evening in a on his own Facebook page to expected investor skittishness. “I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down,” Zuckerberg admitted. “But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too.” Shares opened on Friday around $178, a sharp fall from the previous day’s high of around $188. Shares had perked back up to $181 at the time of writing. While the fall is notably tied to Thursday’s big news of a shift in mission, shares didn’t reach monthly low levels around $171, where Facebook traded in early December. As Zuck’s comments make clear, the dip doesn’t come as a surprise. Still, investors are likely to keep watch of the stock as the platform actually implements the major philosophical changes it says are underway. Facebook has pursued growth relentlessly ever since it debuted as a public company in 2012, and its formula works. The company recalibrates its legendary algorithms behind the scenes in order to boost engagement, its key metric, at all costs — at times at the expense of its users. As 2017’s scandal over fake news and on the platform demonstrated, there’s a dark side to Facebook’s eerily potent social formulas, and one it will need to answer for in 2018 if it intends to chart a sustainable future. |
Netflix was 2017’s top non-game app by revenue | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Netflix was the top earning app of 2017 that wasn’t a mobile game, according to on the most successful apps and publishers across Apple’s App Store and Google Play. In previous years, the top spot had gone to Spotify, and before that, LINE. But this was Netflix’s year to shine. The service saw gross subscriber revenue of approximately $510 million, per the firm’s estimates. That’s about 2.4 times the $215 million users spent in the Netflix app in 2016. It’s not surprising to see Netflix snagging this top-grossing position. The app has been at the top of the revenue charts at various points throughout 2017. For example, in Q2 Sensor Tower had year-over-year to $153 million, which was then up from the $46 million it had seen at the same time last year. At the time, Netflix was reporting a surge in international subscribers, which were accounting for the majority of its new signups. These new users are often joining Netflix through their phone and paying through in-app purchases. By its Q3 2017 earnings reported in October, Netflix had for subscriber growth, again thanks to its adoption in international markets. Of the 5.3 million new subscribers in the quarter, 850,000 came from the U.S. while 4.45 million came from international markets. The Netflix app was also the top earner across all of Apple’s App Store. But on Google Play, it ranked below Tiner, Google Drive, LINE, Pandora, and HBO NOW. Another notable app success last year was Tencent Video. In 2016, it was the #14 top grossing app (non-game) by revenue on the App Store alone. This past year, it jumped up to #3 by revenue on the App Store, and #5 in overall revenue across both stores. (If Google Play was available in China, things would probably look a lot different, too.) In terms of downloads, however, the top app list was dominated by Facebook. This year, Facebook’s main app lost the number one spot to WhatsApp as it sank to #3. Messenger and Instagram followed, and Snapchat was in fifth place. Sensor Tower’s report analyzed mobile games separately. Mixi’s Monster Strike was the top grossing mobile game in 2017 – a position it’s now held for three years in a row. Tencent’s Honor of Kings earned second place, but again, because Google Play isn’t in China. [gallery ids="1586459,1586463"] The games list is interesting for other reasons, as well. The one-time hit Pokémon Go didn’t make the top 10, but five year-old Candy Crush Saga did (#5). That goes to show that even though games is largely a hits-based business, it’s possible to have staying power in the market, too. Tencent’s success in gaming and with Tencent Video also helped it become the top mobile publisher for both game and non-game revenue in 2017. [gallery ids="1586461,1586462"] |
Peer-to-peer real estate marketplace Homie wants to replace your realtor with a bot | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Just a few weeks ago I was in Utah for the holidays, spending time with the many family members my husband and I both have there. At one family gathering, a cousin began talking about how he bought a brand new home and sold his own home all without a real estate agent on a site called . It seemed legally risky but he told me that Homie had blown up in the area over the past year, promising to handle all the paperwork while cutting out the middleman, the closing costs and the whopping six percent commission often associated with a realtor. Johnny Hanna, who had previously developed the successful real estate lead-gen software Entrata, started the agent-less real estate site with a few friends in hopes of taking some of the frustration out of the process of buying and selling a home. He tells TechCrunch Homie has taken over the millennial market along the Wasatch Front, the area linking a mountainous region from Provo to Ogden, Utah, since launching 18 months ago, and it now plans to do the same in Phoenix, Arizona. Hanna also mentioned he could possibly expand Homie to Vegas, Dallas, Denver and about five to 10 metro areas in the next year. But so far, the startup has only sold about 1,700 homes on the platform — all in the aforementioned Wasatch Front region. That’s a fraction, though a sizable one, of the single-family homes sold in Salt Lake alone in 2016. Of course, Utah also makes for a perfect market for something like Homie to thrive in with its newer and sprawling suburbs filled with tract homes. You don’t have to physically visit every house in the neighborhood when they’re all pretty much laid out in the same way. And overall in the area as more people have been attracted to the state’s booming tech scene, outdoor recreation offerings and family-friendly, low-cost living. Will Homie be able to meet with the same success in other markets? “We looked at a lot of different markets in the U.S. and identified the ones that make the most sense,” Hanna said. “We had some of the biggest demand in Phoenix.” Phoenix also has a lot in common with the Wasatch Front. It’s a hot market with a lot of growth potential and the same type of tract housing is popular in the area. You don’t need a human to show you the same house over and over when one is like the next and it’s more about negotiating price. As mentioned above, Homie also handles a lot of the legal paperwork, and even offers the financing, should you need it. On top of that, the startup provides inspectors, appraisers and other services. “It’s really a one-stop digital shop” for home buying, Hanna told TechCrunch. For young, upwardly mobile families like my cousin’s, it seems like a good solution that could take some of the hassle out of the process and keep more change in your pocket. Homie does charge a fee of roughly $1,500 per transaction, but that’s pennies compared to the possibly $18,000 you might pay the realtor on a $300,000 home, for example. According to Hanna, customers are saving about $10,000 on each transaction and have saved more than $17 million since Homie launched its services. But the platform might not work as well in a market like San Francisco, where all the homes are pretty unique and are going for top dollar with not a lot of room for negotiation. That’s where a bot may not be the best choice for getting the home of your dreams. Homie also will need a bit more capital with all of those expansion plans. So far, the startup has raised about $9 million in seed funding and is currently seeking another $10 to $15 million in Series A financing to help it scale in the next year. It also faces competition from the likes of and , which also aim to streamline the process and cut out the real estate agent. Opendoor is the bigger contender — out-raising both startups with its $320 million in VC cash and being first to market, starting in 2014. Homie will need to figure out how to take on this juggernaut as it spreads out across the country if it wants to succeed. But a couple things are certain — younger buyers and sellers aren’t keen on the middleman taking their money and real estate agents will likely all be replaced by automation one day. Hanna, a realtor himself, is okay with that bit. “Change is inevitable,” he says. Even if that means one more human job will be taken over by a bot. |
Cortana had a crappy CES | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Cortana gets no respect. Microsoft’s smart assistant is actually pretty solid, all things told, but it rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant. Maybe it’s a problem of marketing —the company was quick to point at Build in May that its smart assistant now has . More likely though, it’s a problem with Microsoft’s hardware strategy. The company knew as well as the rest of us that CES 2018 was going to be a smart assistant battleground, but Cortana barely entered into the conversation. Google’s Assistant dominated the show’s headlines through of product announced and an over the top ad campaign that found everything from the monorails to the signage at the Westgate emblazoned with the words “Hey Google.” Amazon’s presence was decidedly less intense, but the company did a solid job keeping up in terms of partner announcements. Both companies leveraged the platforms of their partners to keep their respective assistants dominating the news cycles. Sony, Lenovo, LG and Huawei all happily surrounded time to discuss Google and Amazon’s offerings. Only Samsung really stayed out of the conversation, because, well, Bixby. We’re still at the beginning of all of this, but thus far, Microsoft’s approach to the assistant feels fairly noncommittal. While it’s true that the company got a good footprint with regards to Windows 10 PCs, the form factor really isn’t a natural one for voice assistants — not like a smartphone or smart speaker. And the company’s only tread cautiously into those waters. The fact that Microsoft was roundly trounced in mobile has clearly made the company reticent to wade back into those waters, though it has begun work on expanding its presence through iPhone and Android apps. But where are all of the non-PC Cortana devices? There’s that Harman speaker that launched a while back and just ahead of CES, the company announced the launch of a . It’s a nice thermostat, but still, a thermostat does not a smart home strategy make — especially when it costs $319. Pricing was a hugely important piece of Amazon and Google’s smart home successes. The HP Pavilion Wave fits the bill to some degree, perhaps. The product is as much speaker as PC, with a cloth covering and B&O sound on-board. It’s kitted out with multiple microphones sporting far-field technology, which makes it a perfect contender for a premier Cortana device — but once again, Amazon was the story of the show here. The company announced at the show that it was brining Alexa to Windows 10 PCs, starting with HP. Microsoft’s Andrew Shuman told us at CES that he believes most voice assistants still have a long way to go (though he used more colorful language to describe this). It’s a fair assessment, of course. We’re still in early days here — but a head start is extremely important when it comes to ecosystems. The company still sounds bullish about the smart assistant. It’s promised more devices later this year. But if CES was a bellwether for the smart assistant, things don’t look great for Cortana. There’s always next year, I guess. |
39 million Americans now own a smart speaker, report claims | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | One in six Americans now own a smart speaker, according to new research out this week from NPR and Edison Research – a figure that’s up 128 percent from January, 2017. Amazon’s Echo speakers are still in the lead, the report says, as 11 percent now own an Amazon Alexa device compared with 4 percent who own a Google Home product. Today, 16 percent of Americans own a smart speaker, or around 39 million people. The holiday shopping season also seemed to have played a role in the increased adoption of smart devices in the U.S., with 7 percent of Americans reporting they acquired at least one smart speaker between Black Friday and the end of December, and 4 percent saying they acquired their smart speaker during the holidays. Both Amazon and Google used the holiday shopping season to their advantage in terms of acquiring market share for their respective devices by slashing prices to encourage more impulse buys, and by heavily promoting the items across their storefronts. In fact, during the holiday season, where they were discounting their smaller form factor devices to $29 for the Amazon Echo Dot and $50 for the Google Home Mini, for example. The end result for Amazon was that the Echo Dot became a top seller across its site and by manufacturers , and , Amazon recently said. The new report also delved into how consumers are using their devices, which have a range of functions including things like being able to stream music, control their TV and other smart home devices, and more. The research indicated that smart home functionality was in the minds of 64 percent of users, who say they bought the speakers because they plan on using them to control smart home devices. 66 percent said they want to entertain family and friends with the speakers – for example, by doing things like playing music, asking general questions, telling jokes, playing games, getting news and weather or sports scores, and more. Bringing a new, interactive device into the home may also be changing user behavior in other ways, the report found. 30 percent of smart speaker owner said the device is replacing time spent with TV. They’re also listening to more audio (71% are), including news and talk radio or podcasts. [gallery ids="1586414,1586410,1586415"] The adoption of the device for in-home voice assistance had a trickle-down effect as well, as 44 percent found they started using the voice assistance on their phone more since getting a smart speaker. This, perhaps, could push Amazon to add Alexa itself to the Alexa companion app where today users are able to manage various settings, and check in on conversations. (In fact, it seems that Amazon is already considering this. When we asked Alexa VP Steve Rabuchin about the plan during CES this week, he smiled and cagily responded, “that’s an interesting idea.”) The research also indicates that smart speaker usage grows the longer you have the device. A majority (51%) said they use their smart speaker more often than they did the first month they had it, while 33 percent they use it about the same amount. The full report is or as a . |
IBM may be prepping for massive changes at Global Technology Services group | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | IBM has been a company adrift for the last several years with . Against that backdrop suggesting there could be massive changes afoot for the company’s Global Technology Services group. Global Technology Services is the business consulting arm of IBM that deals with infrastructure support and hardware consulting. As the company has shifted its emphasis to the cloud, GTS’s hardware focus is an area that will have less significance for the company moving forward. This change would need to be seen against the changing backdrop of IT in general. The fact is that companies are moving away from running their own data centers and shifting to public cloud services. Having 100,000 employees focused on hardware deployment consulting doesn’t make a lot of sense in this context. The Register article stated that the division was about to undergo a major change in focus resulting in a huge restructuring of the workforce. Further, the change was so large, the company has hired Bain to help them organize it. Some 30,000 people would be affected worldwide, according to the report. Of that, 9300 jobs would be moved to areas where IBM is concentrating these days like cloud computing, while around 10,000 positions would simply not be refilled when the employees left. It’s less clear what happens to the remainder from the information in The Register article, but 6000 from cross-company or external services would be moved or eliminated. As for the remaining 5000 or so, it’s not explained what happens to them, or if there would be layoffs involved. An IBM spokesperson reacting to questions on the accuracy of the article had this to say: “As you know, we do not comment on speculation. Many consultants recommend things to IBM, many of which remain merely recommendations,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch. That’s a carefully worded response to be sure. The spokesperson went onto to explain, “And like every business, IBM re-skills its workforce to meet emerging client requirements. GTS is substantially increasing its investment in professional development and technical training to focus on our strategic initiatives.” In other words, IBM has been moving to areas like cloud, security, artificial intelligence and analytics over the last several years and they need to move the GTS workforce to those areas too (which would suggest they are actually doing it). Ray Wang, who is founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research says that this a change the company has to make. “IBM is in the middle of a larger re-skilling exercise. The goal is to redeploy and retrain their staff for new business models,” he said. “GTS was set up for legacy support models and outsourcing models This is why there may be some truth in the rumor, but we do know that Bain is there,” he added. The good news is that the reports don’t mention massive layoffs, although some layoffs are probably likely with a division this large. Still, if the initial report is correct, the focus appears to be on shifting employees to other positions, not eliminating them. Of course, time will tell how all of this plays out. |
Forget the Alexa-powered toasters at CES, these innovations will really shape 2018 | Ankur Jain | 2,018 | 1 | 12 |
As CES rolls out troves of new Alexa-enabled toasters, mirrors and even shower heads, the gathering has become just another symbol of Silicon Valley’s disconnect with the needs of everyday people. Meanwhile, to find new solutions for life stages where we could all use a little help, including: 1) graduating with student loans, 2) moving to a city and paying rent, 3) becoming a parent, and 4) living comfortably post-retirement. 2018 is the year we can finally look forward to exciting developments in each of these categories. In the coming year, we’ll see major shifts, including the biggest brands competing for the attention of baby boomers, not millennials; new apartments in cities like NY charging half the rent you’re paying now; and even checking your fertility becoming as easy as swiping right. Unfortunately, none of these innovations are things you will be hearing about at CES. And so at the turn of the year, I sat down with Dr. Oz, Bobbi Brown, President Fox and others on our Kairos board to map out the big changes we expect to see in 2018. Here are some of the things we predict will happen: 2017 was a tough year for lots of us, but entrepreneurs around the world are starting to respond to the real needs of our society. I hope you’re as excited as I am for what we’ll see in 2018. *Disclaimer: Kairos is currently working with entrepreneurs in the spaces of early-childhood nutrition, new models of housing and elderly care. |
Waymo’s self-driving Chrysler Pacifica begins testing in San Francisco | Darrell Etherington | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | Waymo is bringing its self-driving cars back to San Francisco streets for testing. TechCrunch has obtained pictures of the Waymo Chrysler Pacifica autonomous test vehicle on SF city roads, and Waymo confirmed that it is indeed bringing test vehicles back to one of the first spots where it ever tested AVs in the first place. A Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement about its latest-generation test vehicle arriving in San Francisco: San Francisco was one of the first cities where we tested our self-driving cars, dating back to 2009 when we traveled everything from Lombard Street to the Golden Gate Bridge. Now that we have the world’s first fleet of fully self-driving cars running in Arizona, the hilly and foggy streets of San Francisco will give our cars even more practice in different terrains and environments. Waymo has one of the most extensive testing programs of anyone in the industry, in geographic terms; the former Google self-driving car company has now tested its autonomous vehicles in 24 cities across the U.S. Its goal with these tests is to expose its fleet to a wide variety of road and weather conditions, as well as to variances in local traffic patterns and human driving habits. [gallery ids="1586345,1586346"] In San Francisco, it’ll have the chance to deal with fog, of course, and with roads with steep inclines, as well as fairly dense peak traffic, ample bike, scooter and pedestrian activity, frequent ongoing road work and a lot more. Waymo revealed last year that , with no safety driver behind the wheel at all (the cars in San Francisco will have safety drivers, by the way). The cars there can range across the entire area Waymo has set up around Chandler, Arizona for picking up and dropping off members of its pilot program of its forthcoming fully autonomous ride-hailing service. |
Brit + Co had a round of layoffs this month as part of a ‘reorganization’ | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | Brit + Co laid off some employees earlier this month as part of a reorganization, TechCrunch has learned. Brit + Co declined to comment on the number laid off, but the women’s lifestyle and digital media company’s employee base went from 92 people in September 2017 to just 78 today, according to its team page. “It’s been a very unpredictable time in the media industry, but we grew revenue by 50% in 2017 and are excited to continue to grow our already diverse revenue stream which, in addition to advertising, includes online classes, merchandising, and experiential events,” a Brit + Co spokesperson told TechCrunch. When asked what prompted the reorganization, the spokesperson said it “is part of an effort to make operations more efficient.” Meanwhile, the company recently brought on a new president, Jill Braff. Braff previously worked as general manager of Ellen Digital Ventures, a joint venture firm between Warner Bros and Ellen Degeneres. In her role at Brit + Co, Braff will be responsible for overseeing revenue, marketing and strategic partnerships. Since launching in 2011, Brit + Co has made a number of pivots. , the company was simply a lifestyle brand with a wedding app called Weduary. In 2012, into e-commerce with the launch of Brit Kits, monthly boxes for DIY crafts. Then, in 2014, on the DIY e-commerce play with the launch of an Etsy-like marketplace for makers to sell their goods. , Brit + Co raised a $15 million round from Verizon Ventures (TechCrunch’s parent company) with plans to expand its digital content business and branded merchandise that target women. This brought its total funding to more than $40 million. |
Why is health care so damn expensive? | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | Never has there been more talk of innovation and yet more disappointment in the future than in the health care industry. AngelList shows almost , and VCs invested according to Rock Health’s industry analysis. There are , with participants chattering, chattering, chattering about this or that “innovation.” All of that innovation has done practically nothing though to fix the single worst problem of modern American health care: it’s cost. Health care in the United States has never been more expensive. The United States is spending about , an increase of 12,300% since 1960. In that timeframe, health care spending increased from . Despite all of that spending, the age-adjusted mortality rate for Americans has . Even worse, life expectancy for Americans — among the most typical metrics for measuring broad health and wellness outcomes for a country — in 2017. It’s at its finest. We’re paying more, way more, than we used to, and yet our outcomes have never been worse. This is the problem known as “cost disease” — the rapidly escalating costs of basic human services like health care, housing, education, construction, and infrastructure. It’s a problem that plagues the developed world, but none more so than in the United States. Scott Alexander, who blogs at , that’s worth reading for how this pattern seems to emerge across all of these industries. It is one thing though to identify the pattern, and it’s another to start to tease out the reasons why costs have spiraled 123x in just a few decades. The pithy answer is that there is no pithy answer: industries like construction and healthcare are simply too complicated to have a simple response to the question of cost disease. It’s literally all the answers and none of them at the same time. There is a slowly growing understanding in policy circles that cost is the fundamental challenge to improving America’s human services and infrastructure. The tradeoffs required in American medicine — offering better care or offering more care to more people would simply be moot if the overall cost of health care was 9% of GDP instead of 17.5% — . Call me cynical, but having talked with dozens of digital health startups over the past few years, this basic fact so rarely seems to register with founders. Entrepreneurs are trying to digitalize medical records, or improve operating room efficiency through better analytics, or create a new (and expensive!) robotic medical device. These innovations are important, but they are a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to try to right-size the ship: actions far too small to make a difference. This problem is thankfully starting to be addressed by startups head on. One startup is , which this week (the round was closed mid-last year). I chatted with Derek Haas, who is the founder and CEO of the company and who has spent the last few years completely immersed in the challenges of controlling the rampant cost disease in American hospitals. If you are wondering what one of the main drivers of cost disease in health care is, it likely starts with the fact that few hospitals and providers actually what their costs are except for aggregated numbers. We can cue a facepalm emoji, but the reality is that it is really hard to do this sort of analysis with existing management systems. The company’s solution is to use a technique called “ ” and apply it to the health industry. The idea is to try to accurately assign every expense of an organization to the exact activity that created that cost. In the healthcare context, Avant-garde uses “time-driven” costing to assign expenses to treatment. The goal, Haas explained, is “to understand for each patient what care is delivered, who delivered that care, and how much time did it take to deliver that care.” So, for instance, every health professional that sees a surgery patient needs to assign exactly their time to that patient so that the true cost of that surgery can be calculated and analyzed. A nurse who spends 20 minutes in the room needs to assign one third of their hourly rate to the patient. Now, this sort of costing can sound like an MBA’s godsend or a patient’s worst nightmare (let alone the providers who need to input their timecards). However, Haas’ data from the last few years though shows that the tradeoff between quality of care and cost often doesn’t have to be made. “What we frequently observe is that the biggest drivers of cost and delivery of care is the volume of care,” he explained. In other words, surgeons who conduct more surgeries both have more experience — improving outcomes — while also cutting the cost of each surgery by amortizing their income across more patients. In addition to volume, standardized treatment is also key. “When you look at organizations with more standardization in how care is delivered, those organizations are getting better outcomes and are often more cost-effective” to boot Haas said. For example, Avant-garde worked with the Penn State Hershey Medical Center to improve the efficiency of Total Hip Arthroplasty surgery (i.e. a hip replacement). What the hospital found is that different surgeons were using different hip components at different rates, increasing the total supply cost of the surgery. With improved analytics and physician education, the hospital was able to save $842 per surgery with minimal change to outcomes. Today, Avant-garde is focused on just collecting and analyzing cost data. Its long-term goal though is to attach those costs to actual patient outcomes so that administrators can understand when additional spending is helping patients, and when it doesn’t. “People are often making decisions based on perceived quality, rather than actual outcomes,” Haas said. By getting better outcomes data, hospitals can start to help consumers get better treatment at lower expense. Avant-garde is not a panacea to our healthcare cost disease. But it is a step in the right direction. By quantifying aspects of the healthcare business that are today opaque, management is being given the tools to actually make the right decisions on behalf of patients and payers. That in many ways is the story of cost disease in every industry. What looks like a tradeoff can often be recast as a win-win situation. Lowering infrastructure costs can suddenly mean not choosing between three subway routes, but doing all of them. We suddenly don’t have to choose between new technology in classrooms and lower class sizes. And we don’t need to choose between limiting treatment and offering insurance to more people. For founders thinking about making an impact, there’s a trillion dollar idea right here. |
Gillmor Gang: Smart Speakers | Steve Gillmor | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 12, 2018. G3: Last Hope — Mary Hodder, Halley Suitt Tucker, Francine Hardaway, Tina Hui, and Tina Chase Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 12, 2018. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @fradice, @kteare, @DenisPombriant Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor [ustream id=111861298 hwaccel=1 version=3 width=480 height=302] |
The secret to avoiding CES cynicism is never really going | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | to CES for almost ten years now, and it amazes me that really, nothing has changed that whole time. The same people are saying the same things on the same stages, selling the same people the same junk with slightly higher price tags. But I had a great time and found some amazing companies — because I avoided at all costs actually stepping foot on the show floor. The math is simple: when a company gets big enough to get itself a big booth showing off its products, it is almost always at that point that it ceases to be a source of real innovation — or at least the kind of innovation I think is worth tracking down and writing about at CES. They don’t do anything truly cool, nor anything truly dumb. And I’m not punishing them for their success. I’ve seen some of these companies grow up from nothing to a flashy booth staffed by dozens, and that’s great. But they exist on a different plane now: they seed their news with sites ahead of time, they have private press conferences, they’re working in suites to set up sweetheart manufacturing deals. They’re part of the machine now. Congratulations! (The most eloquent summary of this side of the show came from a cab driver. After he asked about the latest advances to the TV ecosystem, we explained — something about OLED versus Micro-LED and refresh rates and other things that make almost no difference. “And is it cheaper or more expensive?” he asked with a straight face — then he cracked a grin and laughed uproariously. He knew the score, and with a single question reduced the whole industry to a pack of charlatans, which is exactly right. That was probably my favorite moment of the entire week.) It’s for this reason that I spent my entire time at CES roaming the hot, shabby wilds that are “Eureka Park.” A small portion of the Eureka Park map. Technically it is part of the show, but it’s also like hell. Hundreds of booths perhaps six feet wide and deep are crammed in, CEOs displaying their wares like butchers or street merchants. It’s hot and humid (even in the cold, usually dry Las Vegas January), there’s barely room to move along the inadequate aisles, and if anyone sees you’re media they make a sort of flying pitch at you to pique your interest . Normally I’d hate this kind of thing, but of course I’d do anything for our glorious parent companies. And actually, this is where pretty much everything cool is. Sure, you can find crazy gadgets and knockoffs in the innumerable Chinese manufacturers, and the likes of LG have things like roll-up OLED screens, but these are no more than novelties, both for the companies themselves and those viewing them. The companies at Eureka Park are generally startups with one product or service that they’ve put all their money and time behind; they really care about this stuff. That earnestness is endearing and makes for a good story — though not necessarily a good idea. I passed by hundreds of booths full of things no one needs and I suspect no one wants, services doomed to languish in obscurity, or devices surfing on a trend that won’t last out the year. (Just how many smartwatches do they think we need?) Every once in a while, though, you hit the trifecta: a smart piece of technology being created for a worthwhile purpose by people who actually care about both. I dare you to find anything like that in any of the main halls. This year I found a few examples of this. The first one I visited was , a device that closes a door it’s attached to when it hears a smoke alarm go off. Here’s something that could save lives ( ), is simply yet purposefully designed, and created by a few people (including firefighters) who saw a chance to make something that helped others. Another gadget I found seemed too good to be true, so much so that I requested third party documentation that it works. , a device smaller than a keyfob that instantly and reliably tells you if water is drinkable without even touching it. Wouldn’t you be skeptical? This company didn’t really even have its own booth; it was listed under the “Israel Export Institute.” An affordable device that could save thousands of lives, and it has less room dedicated to it than Samsung’s cheapest TV! Elsewhere I found Signall (pronounced “sign all”), a company using a rather complex camera/Kinect setup to translate sign language in real time. Here’s a tremendously difficult engineering problem, further complicated by it being a language and social problem as well, yet this small company is approaching it slowly and steadily and with the support of the deaf people it hopes to enable. (I’m still working on my writeup of this one.) The passion, if little else, was on display at the SoundSkrit booth. Other stories are less life-changing but equally fun stories. Euveka’s could help create clothes tailored to body types not catered to by the industry. Soundskrit’s student founders want to . And a high school student, tired of her hands freezing while playing lacrosse, worked with her dad . This is the interesting side of CES, full of people using technology for good or at the very least interesting purposes — not looking to sell you yet another “smart” appliance or scrape the bottom of the funding barrel for one more VR accessory. All of these people came to the Sony press conference and all of them were disappointed. More than a hundred thousand people come to CES, and among those myriads are a precious few who love what they do and want to accomplish something using technology. It isn’t easy and it isn’t glorious (especially not the booths), but it really is worthwhile, and worth seeking out. It’s easy to be cynical about the excess of CES: the pointless press conferences that cost millions, the acres upon acres of TVs nearly indistinguishable from last year’s, the buzzwords and half-truths used to stave off the reality that none of the junk they’re selling matters to them or anyone else. See, I waxed cynical just writing that sentence! But there are treasures waiting to be discovered there, and people waiting to be listened to and learned from. Just don’t look for them in the cavernous main halls and truth-deprived marketing. I can honestly say that CES was well worth going to this year — as long as you didn’t actually go. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 12 | null |
‘Inexcusable’ false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii was caused by human error | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | Hawaiian residents were briefly but intensely disturbed this morning by a state-wide alert via TV and phone warning of an incoming ballistic missile. It was, however, shortly afterwards confirmed to be a mistake caused by “human error.” Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz “inexcusable” and said to expect “tough and quick accountability and a fixed process.” The alert went out at a little after 8 AM Hawaiian time, appearing on phones as an emergency services popup and broadcast on TV as a detailed warning of how to seek shelter. “This is not a drill,” it concluded. Authorities quickly issued followups to calm the no doubt panicking populace, but I imagine it’s hard to do that properly when you’ve just told everyone in the state to seek shelter and lie on the floor. NO missile threat to Hawaii. — Hawaii EMA (@Hawaii_EMA) Given the current state of international relations, particularly with North Korea, it’s hard to imagine how a simple human error could have resulted in such a major alert. In a statement issued a few hours later, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency explained in a bit more detail what happened: – A routine internal test during a shift change was initiated. This was a test that involved the Emergency Alert System, the Wireless Emergency Alert, but no warning sirens. – A warning test was triggered statewide by the State Warning Point, HI-EMA. The local military representative checked with USPACOM that no launch had actually happened by 8:10, and at 8:13 the alert was cancelled. Social media and other online explanations appeared starting a few minutes after that, and official messages saying “There is no missile threat to Hawaii” were spread via the broadcast system at 8:45 So what exactly happened? It still isn’t completely clear, but it sounds like a test of the system that was meant to stay internal ended up getting out. In order to prevent this from happening again, HI-EMA is taking three measures, as explained in the statement: This of course makes it clear that a single person could activate the tests and real warnings, which seems risky, and that once initiated it was not easy to cancel them (perhaps by design). Put these together and there’s certainly a large risk of mistake or misuse. HI-EMA is also evaluating the possibility of “expanding notification processes” for officials for situations like this. A full report will be made next week. In the mean time it may be wise for other states to check whether their systems are similarly at risk for a false alarm. |
US & Canada VCs favor late-stage giants over upstarts in Q4 | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 1 | 13 |
Startup investors in the U.S. and Canada have been putting a little less money to work across a lot fewer deals in recent months. After three quarters of rising investment at early through growth stage, VCs have cut back in the fourth quarter of 2017. They participated in fewer deals and invested less capital compared to both the prior quarter and year-ago periods, according to Crunchbase projected data. (For a quick explanation as to why this report now includes Canada, see the end of the post.) Overall, investors put a projected $21.9 billion into seed through technology growth-stage rounds in Q4, down from a projected $28.1 billion in Q3. Deal count fell most markedly at the earliest stages, with the projected number of closed rounds for seed-stage startups down by more than one-third from the prior quarter. The Q4 pullback contrasts with upbeat comparables for the full year. For all of 2017, U.S. and Canadian startup investors put a projected $89.4 billion to work, up from $82 billion in all of 2016. A smattering of really big, mostly late-stage rounds, boosted by SoftBank’s , contributed to the higher annual totals. Below, we look at some of the key data points for the just-ended quarter and year, including early and late-stage funding, round counts, M&A and IPOs. First, we’ll look at investment totals for the quarter and full year. Broadly, Q4 showed some pullback from Q3, but projected investment totals were still up year-over-year across most stages for 2017. Let’s start with Q4 numbers. Out of the $21.9 billion in projected total investment for the quarter, about 44 percent, or $9.7 billion, went to late-stage deals. Another 12 percent, or $2.6 billion, went to technology-growth rounds, a newly redefined category for Crunchbase News that includes many of the big financings for established unicorns. (For stage definitions, see the bottom of the post.) Early-stage (Series A and B) rounds, meanwhile, drew $8.7 billion in Q4, boosted by some unusually large deals. Seed and angel deals, which are always the smallest in dollar terms of any stage, brought in a projected $886 million. In the chart below, we look at investment totals by stage for Q4 and the preceding four quarters. It should be noted from this that the notion of a Q4 pullback is relative. The third quarter of 2017 was a particularly strong one for early through growth-stage investment. So while Q4 was down quarter-over-quarter, it still ranked third for total funding out of the past five quarters. As usual, a handful of big deals made an outsized contribution to the quarterly totals. At the late stage, the largest round was for , a developer of virtual reality display technology that raised $500 million in Series D funding in October. Another big funding recipient was , a technology-driven real estate platform that secured $550 million in Series C financing during the quarter. At the early stage, , a developer of diagnostics for early cancer detection, closed a $1.2 billion Series B round, the largest early-stage deal for Q4. Following Grail was a $200 million Series B for augmented reality game developer , developer of the hit game Pokémon GO. Now let’s turn to the 2017 numbers. Total projected venture investment was up year-over-year at every stage, but rose the most at growth and late stage. As previously noted, for all of 2017, U.S. and Canadian startup investors put a projected $89.4 billion to work, up from $82 billion in all of 2016. From early to the technology-growth stage, investment totals were up. Only seed-stage investments saw a reduction in year-over-year projected funding totals. Technology growth in particular saw the highest annual total in four years, driven in part by SoftBank’s voracious dealmaking. In the chart below, we look at funding totals at each stage for the past four years. It’s noteworthy that while there have been fluctuations, totals across stages have ranged within the $80 billion to $90 billion range over the past three years. The typical venture round has gotten bigger, but fewer startups are managing to secure funding. That’s the broad takeaway from Crunchbase projections for round counts at seed through growth stage. Here’s a breakdown of what we saw. After three quarters of holding up at levels relatively flat, the number of startups securing seed and venture funding fell sharply in Q4 of 2017. Across all stages, Crunchbase projects a total of 1,880 companies will close funding rounds in Q4, down 28 percent from Q3 and 21 percent from the year-ago quarter. The most pronounced decline was at the seed stage. The projected Q4 seed and angel round count is just 944, down more than a third from the prior quarter and down about 25 percent from year-ago levels. Early-stage (Series A and B) is also down. Crunchbase projects a total of 742 early-stage rounds for Q4 of 2017, down about 20 percent from the prior quarter and down about 13 percent from year-ago levels. Round counts were also down at late and technology-growth stage, as evident in the chart below. While it’s not entirely clear what’s driving the pullback in seed and early-stage rounds, industry insiders have been documenting for a while and raised a number of possibilities. Reasons include a cyclical investor backlash to inflated seed-stage valuations, increasing preference among established investors and a decline in funding for new and . The late-in-the-year decline in seed-stage rounds was pronounced enough to affect year-over-year comparisons. For all of 2017, projected round counts total 9,353 across all stages, down about 13 percent from the 2016 total of 10,711. In the chart below, we look at round counts by stage over the past four years to get a picture of how 2017 ranks. Overall, the number of late-stage and growth deals stayed relatively flat year-over-year, with investors continuing to chase big rounds for unicorns and near-unicorns. Virtually all of the decline is due to seed and early-stage trends. As noted in the sections above, investors did put an exceptionally large amount of capital to work in 2017. But how did they do in terms of getting money back? It’s tough to provide a precise accounting of annual or quarterly venture returns, given that purchase prices are undisclosed in many M&A transactions and share prices fluctuate massively in many IPO exits. However, if we were to generalize for both the quarter and full year, it would probably be along these lines: Exits were pretty so-so. The IPO window was open, but public market investors were picky and fickle. Acquirers, meanwhile, kept up a decent dealmaking pace, but didn’t do a lot of really big deals. Let’s look at some of the numbers, and significant deals. Those waiting for big, profitable acquisitions involving venture-backed unicorns will have to keep waiting. The fourth quarter of 2017 delivered a number of solid, high-return exits. However, like the prior two quarters, we didn’t see deals above the $1 billion mark. Instead, we saw a lot of smaller deals involving early-stage companies, a few purchases at apparent markdowns from private market valuations and some larger transactions in the mix. One company that made a big hit on the M&A market in Q4 was , the developer of a popular lip-syncing app that sold to China’s Toutiao in a deal reportedly valued at between $800 million and $1 billion. Other large transactions involved , a security provider that sold to Synopsis for $565 million, and , an online grocery delivery service that Target bought for $550 million. For all of 2017, venture-backed M&A was decidedly lackluster. Cisco’s $3.7 billion acquisition of enterprise software provider , announced in January, ranked as the year’s only known multi-billion dollar M&A transaction involving a venture-backed company. As for IPOs, 2017 was certainly more action packed than 2016, an unusually dull year for venture-backed public offerings. The biggest IPO event of the past year was in March. And although the self-deleting messaging provider subsequently , the blockbuster offering did seem to usher in a period of greater tech IPO activity. But 2017’s IPO cohort delivered mixed results. Top performers for the year included streaming media device maker Roku, analytics provider Alteryx and tech-enabled real estate company Redfin. Yet some startups that achieved IPO . Snap made that list. So did meal kit company Blue Apron and storage technology provider Tintri, both of which ended the year with shares down more than 50 percent from their initial offer price. For Q4 of 2017, a couple of tech offerings . Shares of Stitch Fix, an online provider of clothes curated by personal stylists, were recently trading up more than 70 percent from their initial offer price. Shares of email delivery platform Sendgrid also climbed sharply following the company’s October debut. While the seed-stage slowdown has raised concerns about the health of the startup ecosystem, the venture industry remains . Whether investors remain flush, however, will depend to a great extent on their ability to produce exits. Optimists have reason to expect improvement on the exit front. In particular, some industry insiders are predicting a pick-up in big M&A deals in 2018. Additionally, the passage of tax reform, including lower corporate tax rates and greater incentives to repatriate capital, could lead to a rise in big-ticket deals involving U.S. startups. Others, however, maintain that inflated startup valuations are keeping acquirers away. And while those valuations could certainly be corrected, it’s not the outcome startup investors would prefer. The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and in two varieties: data and data. Crunchbase uses projections for global and U.S. trend analysis. Projections are based on historical patterns in late reporting, which are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity. Using data helps prevent undercounting or reporting skewed trends that only correct over time. All projected values are noted accordingly. Certain metrics, like mean and median reported round sizes, were generated using only data. Unlike with data, Crunchbase calculates these kinds of metrics based only on the data it currently has. Just like with data, data will be properly indicated. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events as reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. For the first time, in this latest quarterly and annual report, we shifted our data collection to include both the U.S. and Canada. Previously, we reported U.S.-only quarterly numbers, in addition to our global reports. The reason for including Canada was in part to provide a differentiated data set. We noticed there are a few reports that come out covering the U.S. venture scene, and some data on Canada, but not much focused on North America more broadly. (We thought about a broader North American data set that includes Mexico, but due in part to differences in the rate and timing of self-reporting of startup funding, we deemed this might not fully capture the breadth of Mexican investment activity.) |
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule returns from the International Space Station | Darrell Etherington | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has returned from the International Space Station as planned, after spending around a month docked at the orbital facility. This Dragon spacecraft was previously flown on an ISS resupply mission, meaning it’s done the round trip successfully twice in its lifetime now. Dragon decoupled and departed from the space station around six hours ago, and finished its deorbit burn a few hours later, before deploying its landing parachutes and then splashing down early Saturday morning. Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed, completing the second resupply mission to and from the with a flight-proven commercial spacecraft. — SpaceX (@SpaceX) This capsule was originally launched on December 15, carrying around 4,800 lbs of supplies for the station, including scientific experimentation materials and mission materials for the astronauts on board the scientific facility. On the return trip, Dragon is loaded up with supplies, too, including experimental results that will be analyzed by scientists on the ground. For SpaceX, this is significant because it’s yet another proven mission success for its fight-proven, reusable spacecraft program. This Dragon was used on a previous resupply mission, as mentioned above, and on its most recent mission it also first stage booster, too. |
Irish startup SoapBox Labs is building speech recognition tech for kids | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | Irish startup is on a mission to create what it calls “the world’s most accurate and accessible speech technology for children”, tech it plans to offer to third-party hardware and app developers. These span educational apps that support reading and language development, children’s voice-control for IoT devices in the home, smart toys, and AR/VR experiences. Founded in 2013 by Dr. Patricia Scanlon, an ex-Bell Labs researcher and PhD with nearly 20 years experience in the area of speech recognition technologies, the young company is based on the premise that speech recognition tech built for adults, such as that most recently found in devices like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, doesn’t work as well as it could do for kids. That’s because children have higher pitched voices and different speech patterns. Crucially, unlike adults, younger children don’t tend to adapt their speech to suit machines, either, something we do consciously or unconsciously in order to improve the utility of voice-enabled user interfaces and so-called smart assistants. In a call, Scanlon explained that when she and the SoapBox Labs team began working on this problem in 2013, they had to disregard a lot of what they already understood about how to build speech technology. After an extensive research phase, it became clear that “children’s speech behaviours are vastly different to adults,” particularly the younger the child. Speech recognition tech developed using adult voice data that models adult behaviours leads to poor performance when used by young kids. Instead, SoapBox Labs has created its own unique children’s speech dataset (consisting of thousands of hours of children’s speech data), and combined this with the team’s understanding of children’s voice and behaviours. The resulting platform is said to leverage deep learning (AI) techniques to power the startup’s proprietary models and scoring algorithms, and ultimately provide far better speech technology targeted at children. This has seen SoapBox Labs release a version of its English language children’s speech recognition API for use by third parties, whilst I’m told a number of partnerships are to be announced as early as next month. The company is also disclosing further funding: €2.1 million, capital it plans to use to add multiple languages to its speech recognition platform. The cash injection consists of a €1.5 million EU grant, and €600,000 from existing backers. It brings total funding for SoapBox Labs to just over €3 million. Discussing the future of children’s speech recognition tech, Scanlon tells me she can see a situation where devices will recognise if it is a child or adult speaking and switch underlying data sets and models accordingly. That’s because, she says, kids speech tech, whilst arguably harder to develop, doesn’t work any better with adults. For now, two separate solutions are optimum. Additionally, a device or app that knows it is interacting with a child could change its behaviour or interaction permissions. In some situations, you really wouldn’t want a child to be in control, however well they are understood. |
CTRL+T podcast: Diversity and its discontents | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 1 | 13 |
No one is down with how diversity is unfolding in Silicon Valley. Depending on how one looks at it, they’re going to have an issue with it. White men are crying foul, saying they’re being left out of these conversations and initiatives. However, marginalized people are, rightfully so, saying not enough is being done to diversify the industry and foster inclusion. If you thought last year was intense for diversity, hold on tight, because based on the way this year is unfolding, it looks like we’re in for a wild ride. Already, Google was hit with a that alleges Google underpaid women in comparison with their male counterparts and asked new hires about their prior salaries. Then, against Google, saying the company discriminates against white men with “perceived conservative political views.” Meanwhile, tech companies are making little progress around increasing the number of underrepresented minorities employed at their companies. On this episode of CTRL+T, I chat with of the , an organization that aims to improve access and increase opportunity for people of color in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Dr. Cohen says she’s excited about the possibilities of what our future can look like and what it could look like when communities of color are more involved in designing technological solutions. However, what scares her is exclusion and people of color “missing out on the opportunity because they’re not invited or not aware that there is room for them,” she said. “And that their ideas are welcome and necessary to advancing society.” |
Google Assistant had a good CES | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | about Google Assistant before I’d even fully unpacked. The company had posted up a week-long residency with a profile to rival any in Vegas that first week of January. Amazon had a good show, too, albeit with a decidedly more subdued presence. There was no giant gumball machine or armies of employees in matching outfits screaming until the voices went hoarse, but the company handily sent along a list of Alexa announcements at the end of each show day. And the list is a solid one, particularly with the planned launch of Alexa on several Windows 10 PC — effectively . Both companies’ respective assistants had a successful CES, but Google’s list of devices go a long way toward shrinking the gap between the two players — and take it even closer to its dream of device ubiquity. That positioning, coupled with the years of backend development that have coalesced behind Assistant should leave Amazon more than a little concerned about holding onto its place at the top of the heap. |
Hulu announces April release date for The Handmaid’s Tale | Jordan Crook | 2,018 | 1 | 13 | Hulu on Friday released the first images of the next season of The Handmaid’s Tale, announcing that the next season will be released in April. Unfortunately, they weren’t any more specific than that. Another lingering question is whether or not Hulu will continue on with its weekly release of episodes for Season 2. In the first season, Hulu released the first three episodes at once, with the rest coming once a week after that. The series, which originally premiered around the same time last year, has taken home the Emmy, Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award for during this year’s awards season. Alexis Bledel, who originally played Ofglen, has also been promoted to a series regular for the second season. The Handmaid’s Tale is a key piece of Hulu’s strategy. The first season was released in conjunction with Hulu’s Live TV service. And given that The Handmaid’s Tale has become a must-see show, the company now has a more convincing play when asking users to upgrade to the $40/month Live TV offering. The first image released shows a large group of people traversing a wide open field. There seem to be two different ‘classes’ of people in the image, one being herded and the other doing the herding. While the group being led seems to have similar outfits to the Marthas, the group doing the leading don’t have familiar uniforms on. Might this be our first look at the Colonies? Wide open spaces with nowhere to run. Our story continues this April, only on . — The Handmaid's Tale (@HandmaidsOnHulu) The second picture is of the series star Elisabeth Moss, who plays Offred, covered in blood. She doesn’t seem to be bleeding herself, so maybe Offred ups the ante this upcoming season. A Sister, dipped in blood. The continues this April, only on . — The Handmaid's Tale (@HandmaidsOnHulu) There’s also an image, first released to , that shows what appears to be the Aunts and the Handmaids walking through a cemetery. They’re all wearing black. (Photo by: Take Five/Hulu) Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until sometime in April to get to the bottom of this. |
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ returns to Hulu on April 25 (and here’s a new trailer) | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 1 | 14 | The first season of has been a home run for Hulu — the series has been embraced by , and it was . This weekend, Hulu has been working to build up anticipation for the 13-episode second season, with . Now there’s a “first look” trailer, as well as an actual premiere date: April 25, when Hulu will air two episodes, followed by a new episode every week. was adapted by television writer Bruce Miller from the novel by Margaret Atwood, and The second season is expected to go beyond the plot of the novel, . Marisa Tomei will be . And , “Arguably, it’s darker than season one — if that’s possible.” Here’s that new trailer, which leans on — but the imagery is grim enough that it still works. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxQhWrAcQnE] Hulu’s announcements at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour weren’t about its big show. The service also announced that it’s , with George Clooney starring, directing and executive producing. And this isn’t about a Hulu Original, but still: If you’re an fan, you’ll be glad to know that all 331 episodes are now streaming. |
The state of Israel’s cybersecurity market | Ofer Schreiber | 2,018 | 1 | 14 |
The , , , , and many more cyber incidents – 2017 was certainly a busy year for hackers, illustrating yet again just how vital innovative cybersecurity solutions are in the fight against cyber threats. only to the U.S., in terms of cybersecurity investment 2017 was another excellent year for Israeli cybersecurity startups, with dozens of companies being formed, breaking fundraising records and producing solid exits. The 2017 data also suggest that the Israeli cybersecurity industry is maturing, as we see a shift in funding towards later stage companies. In 2017 we witnessed 60 newly founded cybersecurity startups emerge in Israel, a 28% decrease from the 83 companies founded in 2016. Conversely, the average 2017 seed round increased 16% YoY, growing from $2.85 million to $3.3 million. This is Israel’s fourth consecutive year of increasing round sizes at the seed stage – a trend that we are observing and contributing to as we write larger checks to invest in great cybersecurity entrepreneurs. One might think that the decrease in the number of cybersecurity startups is an alarming signal, warning of an industry in decline. Our view is that this is a positive indicator of a maturing industry. Cybersecurity is a crowded space, in which thousands of companies operate. CISOs are bombarded with dozens of solutions every day, each of which promises to stop the next big attack. Given this dynamic, it is getting harder for “me too” cybersecurity companies to receive funding, as investors are looking for more differentiated and broader solutions that address the increasingly complex needs of customers. Those who do manage to raise money tend to convey a grander vision, while aiming to build robust products that require more capital. The result is fewer startups being funded by more capital. This is a positive development for the entrepreneurs who want to build sustainable companies, the investors backing those ideas, and the customers who need more sophisticated solutions. The 2017 data show a steep increase in the percentage of female founders. While still a predominantly male field, 15% of newly established cybersecurity teams in 2017 had a female founder, an increase from 5% the previous year. As in 2016, there was a nearly even split between startups founded by experienced teams (those with more than a decade of executive or entrepreneurial experience) and companies founded by less seasoned entrepreneurs. We did witness a slight increase in teams led by IDF graduates, founders that leverage their relevant military experience to build cybersecurity companies soon after being discharged. One such example is , which was founded by three graduates of 8200, the IDF’s elite intelligence unit, who are building a visibility and control platform to secure assets on enterprises’ networks. Looking at 2017 Israeli cybersecurity fundraising, we see a familiar trend of fewer companies raising larger amounts of capital. Israeli cybersecurity companies across all stages raised over $847 million this year, representing a 23% increase from the $689 million raised in 2016. Breaking it down further, overall funding in seed and A rounds decreased 14% and 46% respectively, while funding at the later stages has increased significantly, with a 218% increase in B rounds and 165% increase in Growth. In addition, the number of investment rounds in Israeli cybersecurity companies decreased from 72 in 2016 to 63 rounds in 2017. The decrease in the number of funding rounds and the distribution of capital across stages is in line with a global trend in venture capital funding, as previously reported . The volume of venture deals in tech companies has decreased over the last few years. The majority of the decline is explained by a drop in early stage investments, with funding and volume levels in later rounds remaining significant This is driven, in part, by VC firms investing in late-stage opportunities and aggressively following-on in companies with the potential to lead their markets. We believe that the same dynamic is present in the Israeli cybersecurity ecosystem, with companies like , , , , and raising large B rounds, and companies like and raising significant amounts of growth capital this year. The most funded cybersecurity fields of 2017 include traditional IT categories like network security, mobile security and vulnerability & risk management. Another prominent category was IoT security which saw investments across all stages, as new companies emerged and mature ones gained momentum. The proliferation of smart devices into everyday life has sprouted a growing ecosystem of IoT security companies, creating sub categories within the sector, focused on specific use cases like smart home protection, securing connected and autonomous vehicles, and dedicated solutions for medical devices. Medical device protection is a newly emerged category this year, and we have seen several startups, including , that are focused on helping healthcare organizations secure themselves from the growing number of targeted attacks. Israeli cybersecurity companies exited for approximately $1.3 billion in 2017 (not including IPOs), with an average exit valuation of $130 million. The average amount of capital raised by 2017 exited cybersecurity companies was just above $17 million, and it took 5.5 years on average for a company to be acquired. Comparing these figures to those of the Israeli enterprise software companies that exited this year, cybersecurity companies performed better in every category – they raised less capital, achieved higher valuations, and exited quicker. Prominent cybersecurity exits this year included and (acquired by Symantec), (acquired by Microsoft), (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and (acquired by Continental). While 2017 certainly saw a healthy M&A exit market, it also worth mentioning that went public at over $800 million, a meaningful evidence of the Israeli ecosystem’s ability to produce large standalone cybersecurity companies. The global cybersecurity incursions of 2017 illuminate the continuing role that innovation plays in information security and defense. Looking forward to 2018, we believe Israeli startups will continue to leverage the immense pool of local talent to build comprehensive solutions addressing global markets. As the local industry matures, we anticipate that recent trends will continue in 2018, with fewer startups forming, while large amounts of capital pour into later rounds to fuel growth and expansion. The continued maturation and evolution of the Israeli cybersecurity startup ecosystem will soon be on full display at , the largest annual conference of cyber technologies outside the United States, taking place this January in Tel Aviv. |
Facebook invented a new time unit called the ‘flick’ and it’s truly amazing | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | I was all set to dislike the “flick,” a time unit just recently invented by Facebook (technically the Oculus team), because I thought it was going to be something worthless like “the average time someone looks at a post.” In fact it’s a very clever way of dividing time that theoretically could make video and audio production much more harmonious. So what is a flick? A flick is one seven hundred and five million six hundred thousandth of a second — 1/705,600,000 if you prefer the digits, or 1.417233560090703e-9 if you prefer decimals. And why is that useful? As a hint, here’s a list of numbers into which 1/705,600,000 divides evenly: 1/8, 1/16, 1/22.05, 1/24, 1/25, 1/30, 1/32, 1/44.1, 1/48, 1/50, 1/60, 1/90, 1/100, 1/120. Notice a pattern? Even if you don’t work in media production, some of those numbers probably look familiar. That’s because they’re all framerates or frequencies used in encoding or showing things like films and music. , 120 hertz TVs, 44.1 KHz sample rate audio. Many of these fractions resolve into inconvenient decimal series, necessitating shorthand or estimations. For instance, the 1/24th of a second around which the entire film industry is based on is equal to 0.0416666666666666… on and on forever (even attempting to use nanoseconds to represent these durations ends up creating fractions of nanoseconds). So it may be abbreviated for convenience to 0.04167. Easier to remember, but not numerically exact, and who knows when that “extra” value might break something? On the other hand, using flicks almost all these important fractional frequencies turn into a nice exact numbers, no bars or estimation needed: 1/24th of a second, for instance, is 29,400,000 flicks. 1/120th is 5,880,000 flicks. 1/44,100th is 16,000 flicks. Those numbers may not be easier for to remember, but it makes them a heck of a lot simpler for systems to match with one another without creating some kind of inter-format fraction that has to be resolved with yet another adjusting frequency. Computers love whole numbers, and so do I. Even the weird NTSC numbers in use due to certain technical constraints divide nicely. 23.976 (technically 24*(1,000/1,001)=23.976023976230 with the last 6 digits repeating) becomes exactly 29,429,400 flicks. It’s the same for 29.97, 59.94, and any others like them. No more fractions or decimals needed whatsoever! How great is that?! I don’t know why this is so immensely satisfying for me, in a “things fitting perfectly into other things” way. Probably because having dabbled in video and audio editing and effects, timing and frame rate stuff was always a pain (though thankfully we’ve mostly left behind interlacing and other legacy cruft) and I would welcome harmonization really of any sort. I congratulate this team of genius self-starters for finding this amazing number and creating this potentially super-useful time unit. You can download, fork, or otherwise investigate the flicks format and code . (Apologies for the meme lead image but it’s hard to illustrate units of time.) |
Everyone hates us, and it’s not because of our sex parties | Jon Evans | 2,018 | 1 | 14 | It was, briefly, the zeitgeist’s perfect Silicon Valley story: a sex-and-drugs party hosted hosted by since-ousted top-tier VC Steve Jurvetson, at an official Draper Fisher Jurvetson event,attended by multiple billionaires including Elon Musk. So said Paul Biggar, founder of CircleCI, in a , expanding on Vanity Fair’s of Emily Chang’s new book. (To be clear, it was Axios who subsequently Jurvetson and DFJ.) Is that actually what happened? Did a major Valley VC firm host a decadent sex-and-MDMA party as part of one of its official events smack in the midst of last year’s widespread sexual-harassment revelations? Uhhhhhh. Well. As it turns out, not so much. Biggar notes that he didn’t actually see anything outrageous or salacious happening by the time he left, and, it seems others have vouched that, afterwards … such things continued to not happen: I want to share some longer remarks on the so-called Silicon Valley elite “sex party” that’s making the rounds. (Be warned: the truth is boring.) — Mason Hartman (@webdevMason) I am *not* even close to the only one saying this. — Mason Hartman (@webdevMason) In fairness to Chang, she was writing about secret Valley sex parties in general, mentioned in passing that “while some parties may be devoted primarily to drugs and sexual activity, others may boast just pockets of it,” and cited this particular event — and a woman there being given drugs by one man, and then hit on by another in an inappropriate and exploitative way — as an example. So what happened at that party? It sounds like the answer is “at least two instances of shitty behavior which are basically, infuriatingly, pretty typical examples of how the tech industry treats women.” But it sounds like it was basically a fairly tame, if themed and Burning-Man-ish, event which some culturally conservative people saw and immediately misinterpreted as a sex party. Which is exactly why I call it the perfect Silicon Valley story: everyone is looking for lightning-rod reasons to hate the Valley right now. The sex-party narrative is like a Rorschach excuse. Right-wingers can condemn it as an example of tech’s corrupt, decadent liberalism. Leftists can excoriate it as an instance of tech’s bone-deep sexism and exploitative hegemony of privileged white men. This is just one especially vivid example. Slings and arrows from across the political spectrum are being aimed at tech. Liberals point out that it has treated women abominably for decades, while Asians face a “bamboo ceiling” and other nonwhite people are all but excluded; they blame Facebook for the election, Twitter for allowing Donald Trump and neo-nazis to run rampant, Amazon and Google for , etc. Conservatives, meanwhile, accuse tech of a lack of “ ” — which bespeaks a bizarre miscomprehension that their belief systems are rejected purely because they’re , when in fact they are rejected because climate-change denialism, and denying the systemic oppression of people who weren’t born white men, are as demonstrably & morally incorrect as e.g. flat-eartherism and eugenics, and treated accordingly. Slightly more plausibly, they accuse Facebook of censoring conservative news, while for shadow-banning right-wingers. While the "shithole" story continues to dominate on mainstream outlets, over in the RW media universe, Breitbart still giving all its attention to allegations Twitter is biased against conservatives… — Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) But wait, there’s more! As the wracks America, its victims, desperate for affordable housing in desirable places, hate the tech industry for gentrifying the cities — San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, etc — where people most want to live. Meanwhile, as the media hemorrhages money, it becomes ever more reliant on Facebook and Google — even as that duopoly devours most of the advertising dollars that used to go to the media. And as both media and finance go tech, East Coasters (and Londoners) see that their center-of-the-universe influence, which they once thought unassailable, has moved to California and beyond. Is it really that surprising, when you follow the money, that the American media’s love affair with the tech industry is coming to a bitter and increasingly furious end? The reason why is obvious. We have the money, now. Seven of the ten largest publicly traded companies in the world are tech companies, and three of them are headquartered within cycling distance of one another in Silicon Valley, surrounded by a nimbus of dozens of unicorns. With that wealth comes huge (at least perceived) power — not just financial, but the power to shape the future, to influence the masses, to shape mass political movements. Do you see a lot of popular narratives whose heroes are privileged, unelected engineers and investors whose previously sizable wealth has grown into riches and enormous power? Uh, no. In fact you may have noticed that, in virtually every popular story, such people are the . There’s a reason for that: historically, power corrupts. People everywhere are already eager for lightning-rod trumped-up reasons to hate the Valley and the tech industry as a whole. And it’s not like we haven’t given them at least a few real ones. So it might be time to start thinking less about money and power, and more about values, and how we might actually make sacrifices in service of those values — because history indicates that blatant, widespread hypocrisy is one of several effective ways to transform a lightning rod into an angry mob wielding pitchforks and torches. |
Crunch Report | Netflix is now worth more than $100 billion | Khaled "Tito" Hamze | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Tito hamze TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107 |
A cartoon for these tech times… | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 1 | 14 | null |
Japan’s SmartHR raises $13.3M led by 500 Startups | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | , a startup helping Japanese employers run HR and staffing smarter — — has raised a JPY 1.5 billion ($13.3 million) Series B round led by 500 Startups Japan. The startup is perhaps comparable to the likes of Zenefits and Gusto in the U.S. — it aims to drag Japanese HR departments into today’s digital era. “In Japan few companies think about doing their HR online, they are accustomed to doing it in spreadsheets and paperwork,” Takafumi Kurahashi, SmartHR’s COO, told TechCrunch in an interview. SmartHR was founded in 2015 and it has 50 staff today. The service is currently targeted at new employee enrollment, which traditionally requires a hefty stack of paperwork carted back and forth between government offices. Through its service, the cumbersome process can be done digitally and that has helped it attract 10,000 customers, including . Right now, the startup doesn’t cover payroll, benefits or other areas but it plans to move into those. The money is going to be put to work doubling SmartHR’s headcount to enable it to develop those new features and build a platform. The company hopes to become the digital system of record for Japan, which means it will open its doors to third-party services that can be hosted on its platform. One small pilot, for example, provided business card printing services to HR clients, a synergy that makes sense since the SmartHR system is used to onboard new hires. The platform play is likely to come next year. For now, it is working on new features requested by customers. That includes allowing for multiple branches/chain stores within the system, a request particularly needed by clothing stores and other high street retailers that have high levels of employee churn. SmartHR will also invest in marketing. To date it has promoted its services using online, but it plans to reach new customers through offline channels such as media commercials and exhibitions. Beyond SmartHR itself, the round is notable on the funding side because it is the first time 500 Startups — a prolific investor with a portfolio of other 1,000 companies — has led a Series B round. Added to that, it did so using a special purpose vehicle (SPV) which, while fairly common in the U.S., isn’t used in Japan. Among its benefits, an SPV allows a cleaner cap table with one single entity picking up a stake in a startup. Different investors enter the SPV to take their share of that equity. Speaking to TechCrunch, 500 Startups Partner James Riney — who leads 500 Startups Japan — explained why he advised, and ultimately led, the SPV for this deal. “Companies like SmartHR don’t come around very often so we wondered how we could capture the value beyond our early stage investment,” he said. Riney said Japan’s own unique, and fairly risk-averse, funding ecosystem made an SPV the ideal solution in this case. “There aren’t many places startups can go to [raise a large round.] You can have a ‘party round’ for $1 million here and there, but it takes a lot of time because [the founders] talk to a lot of people, spend a lot of time reporting and lose that startup speed,” he explained. In this case, SmartHR CEO Shoji Miyata is estimated to have spent just 10 hours involved in fundraising. That’s because Riney was able to do a lot of the outreach, using other members of Miyata’s team where necessary, to secure commitments to the SPV. COO Kurahashi also talked up the efficiency of the process. “Fundraising is a good opportunity for a company to revisit and refine its strategy, but it is too time-consuming that it often slows down the company growth. This joint round with 500 gave us the luxury to take only the good parts of fundraising,” he added. Riney said the SPV is “the first of its kind in Japan that we know of.” In the right circumstances, 500 Startups Japan may use the same approach again in the future, he added. |
Want to learn about African immigrants? Mr. President, meet Africa’s tech sector | Jake Bright | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | President Trump’s coming from “shithole” countries to a . And while the language itself is bad enough, the president and his advisors need to also reboot their assumptions about the African continent — not just for the immigration debate but for U.S. foreign policy considerations. Among other sweeping changes, Africa is in the midst of a tech boom that’s reshaping the culture, politics and economies of many of its countries. African immigrants are key drivers of this digital movement. And African tech companies are now generating revenue and creating jobs in the USA. Sure, just like any region in the world, the continent has its goods and bads. Many of Africa’s stereotypical problems — conflict, poverty, corruption — have not vanished. But nearly two decades of improved stability, economic growth and reform have come together to create some bright spots. Rapid modernization and a growing technology scene are among them. Africa now has more than 316 tech hubs, accelerators and innovation spaces across IT hotspots in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Rwanda. Thousands of African startups are moving into every imaginable sector: from , logistics and education to healthcare and . And hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital is flowing to these startups, with the expectation that some of their solutions for Africa’s 1.2 billion people will produce significant ROI. The continent minted its first billion-dollar unicorn — — in 2016. And at least one big technology company in Africa, , regularly makes outward investments in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Over the last five years, just about every big-name U.S. tech company, including , and , has expanded in Africa. based in Kenya to create an African version of Watson, dubbed Lucy. Uber operates in eight African countries and is on the continent that could end up in its cars in London, New York or DC. Africa is now exporting technology and innovation that has the potential to impact the U.S. The solar-powered , developed in Kenya, helps connect people in internet dead spots on five continents. The is shaping African programmers who work for global Fortune 500 companies. African and Nigeria are used as digital finance case studies by big banks across the world. In 2016, Africa incubated the first national drone delivery program at scale through a partnership with American robotics startup Zipline and the government of Rwanda, which has been for application in the U.S. And behind all this technological innovation is a new generation of African tech enthusiast and entrepreneurs. Many of them have stronger ties to the U.S. than any other region in the world. The original founders of the continent’s big e-commerce startups, Jumia (Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor) and went to Harvard Business School and worked in the U.S. BRCK co-founder Juliana Rotich BRCK co-founder Juliana Rotich is a University of Missouri grad and MIT Fellow. Nigerian fintech entrepreneur, Tayo Oviosu, founder of fintech firm , studied at Stanford and worked at Cisco before launching his digital payments company in Lagos. And Nigerian immigrant Chris Folayan — founder of e-commerce venture MallforAfrica — is using his platform to boost U.S. exports in Africa and profits for American companies. With its proprietary payment and delivery system, the site allows partners such as Macy’s, Best Buy and Auto Parts Warehouse to sell in Africa. Through , American individuals and small businesses are generating revenue in the U.S. through online sales in Africa. And MallforAfrica — a tech startup founded by an African immigrant — is now at its Portland processing center. It plans to expand with a new U.S. location in 2018. So circling back to Shithole-gate, when it comes to Africa and African immigrants, there’s a lot more for the president and his administration to consider when it comes to policy and characterizations of the continent. Africa’s technology sector, IT entrepreneurs and their growing connections to the United States should factor highly. |
Android 8.1 can now display Wi-Fi speeds before connecting | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Public Wi-Fi can be spotty. For the first time, 8.1 lets you take out the guesswork & see the speed of networks before you hit connect. Rolling out now: — Android (@Android) |
The Bowers & Wilkins PX headphones offer big sound at a high price | Travis Bernard | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Believe it or not, the PX are Bowers & Wilkins’ first noise-cancelling headphones. While the company is best known for its premium work with high-end speakers, the PX are a pretty big win. The headphones offer excellent sound and great looks, but you’re going to pay for it. At $399, they’re pricier than many of their more established competitors, including Bose and Sennheiser. The PX headphones sport a sharp look, touched with a metallic finish in some spots and carbon fiber-looking finish in other spots. The set I received for this review was grey, charcoal and black, but the headphones also come in a . They’ve also got a durable build, so you won’t have to worry too much about crushing them with a computer or book in your backpack. If you want a little extra protection, they also come with a small, soft carrying case. Unfortunately the headphones don’t fold up into a smaller form, so they will take up more space in your bag compared to the or . Although they don’t fold up into a smaller form, they are much more durable than the similarly priced headphones from Sennheiser and Bose. The headphones are comfortable, but there’s not a ton of padding on the ears. Compared to the Sennheiser HD1 Wireless Headphones and the Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones, the cushion on the cans of the PX feel less soft. The PX headphones from Bowers & Wilkins produce great sound with or without the noise-cancelling feature active. When you enable the noise cancelling there’s some trade-off with quality, but that’s to be expected, as certain frequencies are amplified through this process. The headphones sound best without any of the noise-cancelling features enabled, and it’s great to have more control over how the noise cancelling is handled in different environments. The Bluetooth range was great and I didn’t experience any sort of random signal losses. The on-ear controls allow you to adjust volume and playback, power on or off, toggle the noise-cancelling feature on or off and enable or disable Bluetooth. You also can answer phone calls with the headphones by tapping the same button that controls playback. The wireless playback buttons and call-answering feature all worked great on both an iPhone X and a MacBook Pro. I particularly liked that the pause button is slightly raised so it’s easy to locate with your thumb. Bowers & Wilkins advertises that the PX headphones will get 22 hours of battery life. Because sleep mode is activated when you take the headphones off, I often felt like I was getting a lot more than 22 hours out of them. The auto-pausing and auto-sleep functionality are excellent standout features for the PX headphones. Coupled with the long-lasting battery life, the PX headphones are great for long flights and late nights — and everything in-between. Bowers & Wilkins has a good-looking and great sounding pair of Bluetooth headphones. Pricing is really the only major sticking point for the PX — though it’s a big one for a company that’s pretty new to the space. The Bowers & Wilkins PX wireless headphones will run you $399 at most retailers. That’s slightly more than both the (~$350) and the (~$350). Indeed, $399 isn’t a crazy sum for a really solid pair of Bluetooth headphones, but the company ought to consider dropping the price by $50 to $100 if it’s going to be really competitive in the space. |
Netflix is now worth more than $100B | Matthew Lynley | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Netflix crossed a fun milestone today, crossing the $100 billion mark for its market cap as it once again surprised industry observers with better-than-expected growth in its subscribers. We’ll get to the financial numbers in a minute but, as usual, the big story here is that it continues to wow Wall Street with impressive growth in its subscriber numbers. The company said it added more than 8 million new subscribers total after already setting pretty robust targets for the fourth quarter this year, giving it a healthy push as it crossed the $100 billion mark after the report came out this afternoon. Here’s the rundown: Netflix’s biggest challenge has been to aggressively invest in good original content that’s going to bring in new subscribers. While its shows may clean up at various awards shows like the Emmys, it still has to show that it can convert those awards into raw subscribers. But thanks to what appears to be continuing success with its original content like , as well other returning seasons for shows like , it’s been able to continue its staggering run. While the company’s core financials actually came in roughly in line with what Wall Street was looking for (which is still important), Netflix’s subscriber numbers are usually the best indicator for the core health of the company. That recurring revenue stream — and its growth — is critical as it continues to aggressively spend on new content. The company said its free cash flow will be between negative $3 billion and negative $4 billion, compared to negative $2 billion this year. And that aggressive spend only seems to get more aggressive every time we hear from the company. Netflix is now saying that it expects to spend between $7.5 billion and $8 billion on content in 2018 — which is in line with what it said in October when it said it would spend between $7 billion and $8 billion. It’s the same range, but tuning up that bottom end is still an important indicator. Netflix shows picked up 20 Emmy awards last year, but just having a shiny object on a shelf isn’t something that’s going to indicate that the company is going to continue to grow at a healthy clip. In the face of an increasingly crowded market, Netflix has to demonstrate its ability to continue to offer lasting value for subscribers — especially as it continues to grow abroad. The company, of course, has plenty of benefits in terms of how it handles its shows when it makes them itself. The company also has to make sure its also fits that narrative, as it — and that has a monetary impact as well. Netflix said it took a $39 million “non-cash charge in Q4 for unreleased content we’ve decided not to move forward with.” The company didn’t specify what content, but it’s dealt with some issues in the past several months that might necessitate the need to recalibrate its slate. Netflix also tucked another newsy bit into the report: the addition of new board member Rodolphe Belmer, former CEO of Canal+. As the company continues to expand internationally, bringing on people with experience like Belmer of course makes sense. Here’s the final slash line for the company’s report today: |
Rupert Murdoch wants Facebook to pay for the news | Jordan Crook | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corporation, today calling for Facebook and Google to subsidize the news traveling through their platforms. In the statement, Murdoch calls on Facebook to pay a carriage fee, as cable companies do with pay TV, to trusted publishers that are posting their content on the social media platform: I have yet to see a proposal that truly recognizes the investment in and the social value of professional journalism. The time has come to consider a different route. If Facebook wants to recognize ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. This comes fresh on the heels of a , which prioritizes posts from friends and family over those from publishers and content providers. Facebook said that the change was meant to increase well-being among users, offering a more proactive way to build a community and positive sentiment across the network. But Wall Street , which Facebook predicted would decrease time spent on the network, which ultimately will decrease the time users spend looking at advertisements. As part of the announcement, Facebook’s News Feed chief Adam Mosseri didn’t have many concrete suggestions for publishers worried about decreased visibility on the world’s biggest social media platform, simply saying publishers should try “experimenting … and seeing … what content gets more comments, more likes, more reshares.” This also follows an ongoing situation around news credibility on social networks like Facebook. The spread of across the internet, most noticeably on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, may very well have changed the course of the 2016 election. Whether it was sparked and spread by foreign actors like Russia or domestic political groups, it has forced Facebook to try to remedy the situation over the past year. Facebook’s original entry into the world of media, the launch of Instant Articles in 2015, has spurred voracious consumption of news on the platform. Pew that around two-thirds of U.S. adults get their news from social media sites, with 20 percent saying they do so often. This has disenfranchised many publishers who require a direct connection with readers to maintain credibility. If all articles look the same, and many “readers” are looking at an entirely different “front page” on Facebook, establishing the one and only truth of any matter becomes more difficult. And let’s not forget that the media industry is in its own, continued transformation as century-old print publications try to move digital. Murdoch, one of the most successful people in news media, doesn’t see much progress with new business models such as subscriptions and pay walls, but does see an opportunity in making the pipes pay. However, on closer inspection his suggestion is disingenuous. To publicly issue a carefully scripted statement with questionable insinuations (Facebook is equated to a cable provider) and very few details is more mud-slinging than muckraking. We’re not saying Facebook shouldn’t be paying , but this isn’t a realistic solution and I don’t think Murdoch really believes it is either. Carriage fees are pretty simple. Your cable provider pays a fee per subscriber to networks like ESPN and AMC in order to carry their programming; these fees vary from under a dollar for specialty or less popular networks (AMC, FX) to more than $6 (ESPN, by far the most expensive). The idea is that you as a subscriber are paying for access to these channels, and then paying for the convenience of having them delivered to your TV by the cable company. The $40-50 is really only routed through the cable companies for convenience (yours and theirs). But while that makes sense for a cable provider with millions of subscribers in a single region of the U.S., all paying $50 or more for the privilege of watching live TV, it’s a poor match for the likes of Facebook. Facebook’s “viewers,” just off the top of my head: If Facebook pays a carriage fee for the privilege of carrying content from the Hindustan Times, and it shows up as a Facebook Instant Article in an American’s news feed because a British PR firm paid for it to be promoted, because it wants to drive subscribers, and it does… who exactly owes whom what? Who is paying what, for what? Who determines what is “trusted,” and what would happen to sources that aren’t “trusted”? Should Facebook literally pay every site a fee for every one of its billion (or however many) users, for the possibility that someday, some item may show up in any of those users’ feeds? You can see that this quickly descends into chaos. Murdoch’s suggestion is a horse and buggy solution for a company working on self-driving cars. Clearly something else is needed. Facebook is raking in cash and is confident that companies like Murdoch’s can’t survive without the reach that social media provides. Why would it as an ostensibly objective platform for users to post content attempt what is “trusted” and then pay for the title? Supposedly, trusted publishers pay for promotion on the platform and receive value in the form of readers, who view their ads and may eventually buy a subscription. Of course, Facebook undermines this value proposition all the time and publishers are upset at their emasculation and inability to dictate terms, as many have for decades. No one has a solution for the very real problem of modern media monetization, but Murdoch’s suggestion is worse than most. Publishers lost the last few rounds by clinging to the past, they’re not going to win the next one or even force a draw by doubling down and making empty threats with non-existent leverage. You can read Murdoch’s full statement below: Facebook and Google have popularized scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable. Recognition of a problem is one step on the pathway to cure, but the remedial measures that both companies have so far proposed are inadequate, commercially, socially and journalistically. There has been much discussion about subscription models but I have yet to see a proposal that truly recognizes the investment in and the social value of professional journalism. We will closely follow the latest shift in Facebook’s strategy, and I have no doubt that Mark Zuckerberg is a sincere person, but there is still a serious lack of transparency that should concern publishers and those wary of political bias at these powerful platforms. The time has come to consider a different route. If Facebook wants to recognize ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook’s profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists. |
Montana governor’s executive order could force ISPs to follow net neutrality rules | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | null |
AltspaceVR CEO joins Facebook months after selling his startup to Microsoft | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | After in October, Eric Romo, the co-founder of AltspaceVR, is joining the competing social VR team at Facebook as its product director, where he will be “exploring how VR can help communities connect.” “It wasn’t an easy decision, but I left AltspaceVR with confidence that the team is well-placed to continue pushing forward the promise of virtual communication as part of the Microsoft mixed reality ecosystem,” Romo wrote in a . Romo is joining the team that has built Facebook Spaces, a social virtual reality app for chatting and collaborating. It’s likely not something you’ve come across in your daily News Feed scrolling, but FB hopes that they can use the platform to play around with how social media plays out in a 3D space. Facebook and Oculus work closely together on virtual reality initiatives, but to date their social efforts have seemed a bit separate, with Oculus’s Avatars system being built for the Rift’s gaming audience while Facebook’s Spaces is more platform-agnostic and designed as an exploratory social tool for the company’s “10-year vision” for making VR happen. AltspaceVR has been one of the more savvy social VR startups of the past couple of years, and it benefited strongly from Romo’s vision. The former CEO’s move was likely already in the cards when the Microsoft deal surfaced; nevertheless, his joining up with Facebook highlights just how dug-in the social media giant is in the VR space. While AltspaceVR partially as a result of investments in the space getting harder to come by given its niche audience, Facebook’s devotion to VR shows few signs of slowing down — the company has already pumped billions of dollars into the space and is poised to invest even more. |
Another short-lived, overfunded startup is shutting down: Primary Data | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | A startup that’s operating in stealth mode raises an almost stunning amount of money before it releases a product. Investors write outsized checks to the outfit anyway because of the people involved in it, but before you know it, poof, the company is imploding, and the capital is gone. It’s a story that industry watchers know well at this point. Clinkle — the payments reward network that raised what was at the time the “ ,” then never released a product, remains the most of the genre. Another related flop is Airtime, a video chat service that was created by Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning and launched with that you just knew it wasn’t going far. The latest example to follow a similar trajectory: Primary Data, a four-year-old, Los Gatos, Calif.-based data virtualization startup, is in the process of after raising a whopping $100 million in equity and debt and attracting the likes of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to its management team. What happened? Neither the company nor the numerous investors to whom we reached out over the weekend have responded to our requests for comment. But according to a trusted source close to the company, Primary Data’s problem from the outset was that its technology was never quite as compelling as it needed to be, given that it was trying to sell mission-critical software. (If it’s not up to snuff, data virtualization software can create challenges with manageability, usability, data quality and performance.) Certainly, the issue wasn’t one that Primary Data’s investors — including Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures Partners and Pelion Venture Partners — anticipated at the outset. With Primary Data, VCs were re-investing in a team that had brought them financial success with their previous startup: Fusion.io, a flash storage company that enjoyed a highly in 2011. Indeed, when Fusion.io co-founders David Flynn and Rick White left in 2013, investors quickly provided the pair with to spin up their next thing. (It was separately becoming clear that Fusion.io was on two big customers. As those customers dialed back on their flash storage, Fusion.io’s share price began slipping, and it was in 2014 by the chipmaker SanDisk.) We aren’t sure as of this writing why Primary Data’s software disappointed. What we do know is the company had brought aboard the founders’ longtime colleague, Lance Smith, as Primary Data’s new CEO in 2014. Smith had joined Fusion.io as its president and COO in July 2008 and spent six years with the company. Immediately upon joining Primary Data, Smith realized that its burn rate was out of control, particularly for a company with no revenue. But while the processes Smith instituted helped, they didn’t change the fact that Fortune 500 companies weren’t prepared to buy Primary Data’s technology — even after Wozniak the team shortly afterward as chief scientist. (Like Smith, Wozniak was also an alum of Fusion.io, where he’d been named chief scientist in 2009.) We’re told that the offerings from an Israel-based storage technology called Tonian, which Primary Data for undisclosed terms, were expected to help address the problem but fell short. Meanwhile, a of Primary Data’s software that was rolled out in August may not have been sufficiently riveting to bring aboard key customers, either. In fairness, Primary Data and other data virtualization upstarts face an increasingly daunting uphill battle, as virtualization giants like Dell’s VMware have continued to grow stronger and the data storage market more broadly continues to consolidate. (Even Cisco its data virtualization business for undisclosed terms, saying it was “not aligned” with Cisco’s long-term focus.) Still, Primary Data’s lofty valuation out of the gate also apparently worked against the company. Though it announced funding this summer from insiders — it announced $20 million in follow-on funding and a $20 million line of credit that we understand was basically a bridge loan provided by its founders — we’re told that its backers more recently decided they’d rather shut down the company than re-invest on terms they found disagreeable. Specifically, they were asked to allow their preferred shares to be converted to common — and then reverse split 20:1. (In other words, management wanted to reduce the total number of shares outstanding and increase the share price by that same multiple.) The VCs said no. Soon afterward, the company’s website . Reached last night via email, Wozniak said he hasn’t been “on top” of Primary Data’s day-to-day goings-on, largely owing to his public-speaking obligations. He also said that he proudly maintains his status as the company’s chief scientist, while acknowledging that he’s “not in the loop about such things as re-financing or shutting down.” Wozniak, who is frequently described as one of the nicest people in tech, further added that he does consider himself “a part of Primary Data and would do whatever I could, even without salary, to help them.” If “PD shuts down,” he told us, “it’s very sad because of how much good technology has been developed by them for so long.” |
Linus Torvalds declares Intel fix for Meltdown/Spectre ‘COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | The always outspoken Linus Torvalds, best known for his continuing work on the innermost code of Linux systems, has harsh words to say and accusations to level against Intel. His evaluation of Intel’s latest proposed fix for the : “the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE.” As a potential line of inquiry, he suggests: “Has anybody talked to them and told them they are f*cking insane?” (Asterisk his.) These and other kind epithets are awarded by Torvalds in between him and David Woodhouse, an engineer at Amazon in the U.K., regarding Intel’s solution as relating to the Linux kernel. The issue is (as far as I can tell as someone far out of their depth) a clumsy and, Torvalds argues, “insane” implementation of a fix that essentially does nothing while also doing a bunch of unnecessary things. The fix needs to address Meltdown (which primarily affects Intel chips), but instead of just doing so across the board, it makes the whole fix something the user or administrator has to opt into at boot. Why even ask, if this is such a huge vulnerability? And why do it at such a low level when future CPUs will supposedly not require it, at which point the choice would be at best unnecessary and at worst misleading or lead to performance issues? Meanwhile, a bunch of other things are added in the same patch that Torvalds points out are redundant with existing solutions, for instance adding protections against an exploit already mitigated by Google Project Zero’s “retpoline” technique. Why do this? Torvalds speculates that a major part of Intel’s technique, in this case “ Is Intel really planning on making this shit architectural? Has anybody talked to them and told them they are f*cking insane? They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense. That makes all your [i.e. Woodhouse’s] arguments questionable and suspicious. The patches do things that are not sane. …So somebody isn’t telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons. Sorry for having to point that out. Woodhouse (who in a long-suffering manner asks they “be done with the shouty part”), acknowledges Torvalds’ criticism, calling IBRS is “a vile hack” and agreeing that “There’s good reason for it to be opt-in.” But he but notes some points that are, if not exactly in favor of Intel’s approach, at least explain it a bit. Intel, for its part, offered the following statement: “We take the feedback of industry partners seriously. We are actively engaging with the Linux community, including Linus, as we seek to work together on solutions.” So at least they seem to still be on a first-name basis. At any rate, this is all very deep discussion and really only a small slice of it. I’m not highlighting this because I think it’s technically interesting (I’m not really qualified to say so) or consequential in terms of what users will see (it’s hard to say at this point) but rather to simply point out that the Meltdown/Spectre debacle is far from over — in fact, it’s barely begun. What we saw a few weeks back was the initial wave of craziness and the first line of defense being established. But the work of protecting the billions of devices affected by these problems is going to go on for years as conflicts like this work themselves out. And Linus Torvalds, as profane as his criticisms are wont to be, is one of the many people working hard on behalf of the open-source community and the people who ultimately benefit from it down the line. If there weren’t detail-oriented, no-BS, old-school coders out there watching out for the likes of you and me, the great complacent unwashed out here in userland, we would have to take whatever Intel and the others hand us and thank them in our ignorance. I for one am glad to have people smarter and more uncompromising than myself fighting on our behalf, however “shouty” they may be. |
Apple debuts a dashboard for artists that tracks both streams and purchases | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Apple today launched a new dashboard that will allow artists on Apple Music to track fans’ listening and buying habits and view a variety of analytics about their music, according to , which had the launch exclusive from Apple. The dashboard, called Apple Music for Artists, is currently available only for select beta users ahead of a broader launch planned for later this spring. The move is clearly a competitive measure against Spotify, which has been steadily ramping up its products for artists over the past year. Last April, , allowing artists to dive into streaming insights and analytics, manage their profile and more. In October, Spotify debuted with access to similar data, including real-time data on new releases. That same month, it also the launch of its emerging artist program called RISE. Pandora has a dashboard for artists, too, and using short audio messages, or to alert them about new releases, live events, ticket offers and more. Apple, clearly, needed to catch up. Apple’s advantage with its new dashboard is that it track both streams and purchases at a granular level. The dashboard shows the current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases in its interface, going as far back as the 2015 launch of Apple Music itself. An insights panel reveals other milestones, like all-time number of plays and purchases for specific songs, or cumulatively, reports Billboard. There’s also a global map that artists can click on and drill down to the city level to see how their music is performing in that location and user demographics. (The map supports clicking into the 115 countries where Apple Music and iTunes are available). This could help artists better plan their touring schedule and other live events. Apple will begin testing the dashboard with beta users who will provide feedback ahead of a public launch. Apple Music for Artists will open publicly later this spring for Apple’s several million artists. Of course, it’s unlikely that artists will use only Apple Music’s dashboard at this point. Given that Spotify is driving music trends and getting added to its playlists can make an artist’s career, it’s still going to be one of the first places artists check to track their music’s performance. |
Ziro’s robotics kit for kids now works with Alexa | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | is a nifty programmable robotics kit for kids that had a successful last year. And the company behind it, ZeroUI, is still adding new features. By default, Ziro kits come with a smart glove to control your robots. You can use the mobile app to configure gestures based on hand movements. For instance, if you tilt your hand forward, it can make a car go forward. Ziro now also works with Alexa. You can configure voice actions to control your robot. For instance, you can ask your robot to wave at you and the robot will wave its arm. If ZeroUI manages to sell enough Ziro kits, a community of builders could pop up and share robot designs. It would be nice if you could follow a guide on an online forum to build a dinosaur or a dancing robot using cardboard layouts. |
Ex-Uber Maps exec Brian McClendon running for office | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Brian McClendon, a notable engineering executive at startups and large tech companies, including Google and Uber, has . He will compete in the Democratic primary scheduled for August 7th. McClendon has been a lifelong engineer, growing up in the state and receiving his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the University of Kansas. He spent almost a decade at Silicon Graphics before becoming a co-founder of Keyhole, a visual mapping startup and become what is today known as Google Earth (Google Earth famously centered its visual globe on ). He was most recently . While he has spent much of the past two decades in the Bay Area, he returned home to Kansas last year following the election of President Donald Trump. “Technology can bring you home,” he described to me. “We reached a point at the end of 2016 that became problematic on the political side and that was the impetus to give up my management career in the Valley and return here.” McClendon has been a research professor at the University of Kansas for the past year, but as he was talking with voters, he realized there was a large gap between the duties of secretary of state and the actions that the current and former holders of the position have taken. Software is critical to many of the systems operated by the secretary, but Kansas’ current offerings were lackluster, particularly in voter registration. “When I started to work on it and built some tools in the area, I was quickly able to build something better than the current state offering,“ McClendon said. He believes there is an opportunity to take his previous experience in Silicon Valley and improve government services across the board with better software. It’s not just usability that is a concern, but also the security of that data. McClendon explained to me that voter rolls are one of the few paths states have to engage with big data, but there are a lot of challenges in managing highly sensitive and personal information. He gave the example of Crosscheck, which is a Kansas-sponsored program to check voter rolls for duplicate voters by compiling data from 26 other states. Security issues with the upload and download of data has , and . McClendon described the implementation as “sub-par.” The role of secretary of state in Kansas includes managing elections, handling business filings, including incorporations and licensing, and releasing data and reports about Kansas state government, including the state’s . The current secretary of state, Kris Kobach, is . Kobach is among the most vocal politicians on voter fraud, and he was the “de facto leader” of President Trump’s which looked into claims that up to . That commission was . So far, five candidates have announced their candidacies for the role, including Lucy Steyer, who will compete with McClendon in the Democratic primary, as well as Kelly Arnold, Keith Esau and Scott Schwab, who are running as Republicans . This is McClendon’s first run for public office. |
Unbound’s Polly Rodriguez talks about the future of sexuality | John Biggs | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | is a self-described sextech webshop for rebellious women, and its founder, Polly Rodriguez, is a unique and fascinating representative for the site. In this podcast I talk to Rodriguez about the future of sex toys and why sex robots probably won’t win us over. It’s refreshing to hear someone like Rodriguez talk about the future of human-to-human content and what it takes to go beyond the clichés. Please have a listen. is a podcast by John Biggs about a better future. You can subscribe in , or or .
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Google is launching an AI research center in France and expanding its office | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Google CEO Sundar Pichai a blog post about Google’s investments in France. There are three different pieces of news in this announcement. First, Google is going to expand its office in Paris. If you already know Google’s current office , that building is going to stick around. The company is going to acquire or rent other buildings around Google’s current office and connect them. Google is adding 6,000 square meters of office space (64,500 square feet). In total, a thousand Google employees are going to be based in Paris. In addition to growing Google’s current teams, the company is going to create a new research center dedicated to artificial intelligence. France has some of the best universities and schools in the world when it comes to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That’s why Facebook already created an AI research center in Paris back . Facebook also announced earlier today that it would inject to support 40 PhD researchers instead of 10, and double the team of researchers and engineers, from 30 to 60. Google has yet to share more details about its plans for its AI research center — but it’s clear that Paris has become a key city when it comes to AI talent. Finally, Google is creating Google Hubs with local partners around France, starting with Rennes, with three other hubs coming soon. Those physical locations will help when it comes to learning digital skills. Google is approaching market saturation. If the company wants to acquire new users, the company needs to bring more people online. French President Emmanuel Macron met privately with Google’s Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg earlier today. Macron also to Versailles to talk about France’s attractiveness ahead of Davos. That’s why both Facebook and Google had things to share today. In recent years, Google faced a for tax noncompliance in France. A court in Paris the fine in July 2017. But it’s clear that France represents an important market and a regulatory risk for big tech companies. Hiring people in France, investing in France and “training” people about Google’s services is a great way to lobby the French government using a bottom-up approach. Thank you for your very strong commitment to France . Google's investments today show that we are gaining momentum as a digital nation ! — Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) |
Waymo heads to Atlanta to test its self-driving cars | Darrell Etherington | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Waymo continues to expand the pool of locations where it’s testing its autonomous vehicle tech, and the latest destination is metro Atlanta. The former Google self-driving car company revealed the news on Twitter, noting that it’s expanding considerably its geographic testing footprint now that it’s got fully driverless test vehicles on the road in Phoenix. Its test cars in cities outside of Arizona still have safety drivers at the wheel, but the more places it can get its Pacificas with autonomous tech on roads, the better for building an autonomous driving “brain” that can handle anything it encounters. Atlanta has some specific challenges, including bad traffic (commute and traffic issues are ranked among the worst locations in the U.S.) and one of the more dense greater metro areas in the U.S., and temperatures that regularly reach a humid 80+ degrees Fahrenheit. Metro Atlanta marks Waymo’s 25th test city in total, including its . Its testing so far has consisted of mapping the city with manually driven Waymo vehicles ahead of launching its testing program in full. A Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement to TechCrunch regarding the expansion: Now that we have the world’s first fleet of fully self-driving cars on public roads, we’re focused on taking our technology to a wide variety of cities and environments. We’re looking forward to our testing in Metro Atlanta, and the opportunity to bring this lifesaving technology to more people in more places. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal also provided the statement below: With our talented workforce and legacy of innovation, Georgia is at the forefront of the most dynamic, cutting edge industries like autonomous vehicles. We are thrilled to welcome Waymo to our state because fully self-driving vehicle technology holds tremendous potential to improve road safety, and we are proud Georgia is paving the way for the future of transportation. |
How MyHeritage found a new business in DNA | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | , genealogy may seem like a quiet hobby you take up in your retirement, but it’s also a big industry, with the likes of Ancestry, MyHeritage, Helix and others all vying for new users. You’d think that there isn’t much these companies can do to really differentiate themselves from each other, but they all offer a slightly different spin on the core theme of building family trees. In the last few years, both Ancestry and MyHeritage also expanded their business with DNA testing services — not to help you find potential health issues but to help you find your relatives and tell you where your family comes from. Unsurprisingly, that’s creating a number of new business opportunities for these companies. Earlier this month, CEO Gilad Japhet (pictured above) gave us an unusually detailed look at his company’s finances and the success of , which launched just before the holiday shopping season of 2016. The kit, once it has been processed, gives users a detailed view of their ethnicity, which currently breaks down to about 42 regions, with more in the plans as the company gathers more data from its users. MyHeritage can also use this data to discover other relatives on the service who also took the test and who you may not even know. Over the course of the last year, MyHeritage sold more than 1 million DNA kits, and revenue from DNA sales was $58 million. Combined with $75 million in subscription revenue from MyHeritage’s more traditional genealogy business — which now has more than half a million paying subscribers (who pay an average of $150 per year) — the company had total revenue of $133 million in 2017. That’s up from just over $60 million in 2016. The company’s profit in 2017 was $18.1 million. During the holiday season alone, MyHeritage sold 400,000 DNA kits, up from the just 36,000 it sold in November and December 2016. “You can’t put a subscription under the Christmas tree,” Japhet joked and added that the average user currently buys just under two kits — and he hopes that number will hit three to four in the future. While the DNA sales account for much of the company’s recent growth spurt, it’s worth noting that the company’s subscription business is also growing between 30 and 40 percent year over year, with a retention rate of more than 75 percent. The two products also reinforce each other, given that those who buy DNA kits often convert to paying MyHeritage users and because its existing user base comprises people who would be most interested in using one of the company’s kits. Current conversion rates for DNA kit users are in the double digits, Japhet tells me — and that makes sense, given that you need a family tree to make the most out of the data. When the company launched its DNA service in 2016, it was faced with a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Unless you have a lot of data already, after all, you can’t really tell people where their ancestors came from — but unless you can do that, your users aren’t likely to be satisfied with the product. So to kickstart the process, MyHeritage allowed users to both upload existing tests and the company sent free DNA kits to some of its existing users. “We created a founder population project where we used our family trees to identify families that looked like they had stayed in the same area for a long time,” Japhet explained. It’s the combination of the DNA data and the data in the family trees that then allows the company’s data scientists to build the kind of model that tells you whether your family moved to the U.S. from England or another part of Western Europe. Japhet openly admits that the first results weren’t all that great, because, while the company could match you with direct relatives, it had issues once you hit fourth cousins and similar distant relations. In addition, the service still didn’t have all that much data and it hadn’t yet invested in building out its DNA and data science teams. Since then, the company went from 310 to 420 employees over the last year and many of them are part of the company’s science team. “DNA is hard and it’s attracting good talent,” Japhet told me. “We built a very strong science team with the purpose of innovating and building the algorithms.” Now that this team is in place, it’s also working on building new products. Recently, MyHeritage has started to run surveys, for example, that will allow the company to link its DNA data with other traits like a person’s eye color or whether they are right- or left-handed. Its users have already answered more than 4 million questions. “You need a large, trusting user base and you need to make sure you respect that trust and never abuse it,” said Japhet. Over time, the idea here is to use the DNA results to build as much of your family tree for you as possible. “Some genealogists don’t want a silver bullet and if it doesn’t take 40 years of hard work, it’s not worth it,” Japhet said. “But the more people are drawn into it, the more the value increases. We make family history much more accessible to everyone — including younger people.” Beyond the DNA project, MyHeritage is also looking to acquire more companies in the future. Japhet noted that he believes the DNA market for genealogy will probably consolidate to maybe three strong players (unsurprisingly, he assumes MyHeritage will be one of them). The doors have almost closed for new companies to launch DNA kits, Japhet believes, but to continue to grow — and grow geographically — the winners will have to make acquisitions. “It’s difficult to grow across territories that have been covered by others,” he told me. MyHeritage has made nine acquisitions already; it’s probably a fair guess that a tenth is on the horizon. Most companies don’t share as much of their internal financial data as MyHeritage did. He told me that over the last few months, though, he realized that there wasn’t much to hide for the company. “I can’t pretend I’m broke and that weakens my position in negotiations,” he said. “But it’s also good that people know what we’ve been up to and that we have ambitious goals.” And judging from the data the company shared with us, it also has the means to make those goals happen. |
YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV now have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, says report | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | Hulu and YouTube are battling for subscribers for their respective live TV streaming services, according to a out this morning, which says that Hulu Live has grown to 450,000 paying subscribers and YouTube TV has just over 300,000. Both are still trailing competitors, including Dish’s Sling TV, which has more than 2 million subscribers, and AT&T’s DirecTV Now, which . Of course, DirecTV Now has benefited from AT&T promotions that allowed customers to for $10 per month, as well as those where it doled out . That’s given it an edge in growing its base. Meanwhile, Dish’s Sling TV has been around longer than the others — it . YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV are both relative newcomers to the streaming TV market, on the other hand. The two services launched last year — the former and the latter . Hulu’s lead over YouTube in terms of subscribers could be chalked up, in part, to availability. Hulu Live TV launched across the U.S., but didn’t make the four major networks — ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC — available in all cities, as it hashed out its deal. YouTube took a different approach. It didn’t roll out to a city unless it could offer all four, or in some cases, at least three, of the major networks. Today, it’s available in 80 percent of U.S. households, CNBC notes. The subscriber numbers it reported, which came from CNBC sources, were not confirmed by either Hulu or YouTube. CBNC’s report also downplays the potential for streaming TV, citing BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield’s rather bearish description of the market. Greenfield said these services will struggle to substantially grow their customer bases because they’re so easy to cancel, and they still have to compete with video-on-demand alternatives, like Netflix. That said, if the sources’ numbers are accurate, you’re looking at services that are each approaching the half-million mark in less than a year’s time. That’s not something to outright dismiss — especially given how many options there are now for streaming TV. In addition to the four named in CNBC’s report, there’s also PlayStation Vue; the new, entertainment-focused Philo; and sports-focused fuboTV. Plus, not only is YouTube TV’s rollout incomplete, it hasn’t even launched its app across all platforms yet. (For example, its Roku app is still in the works.) In other words, it could be too soon to discount YouTube TV’s potential, given its appeal to the young YouTube user base, and its plans to potentially incorporate at some point in the future. Hulu hasn’t fully fleshed out its own user experience, either. The company to better personalize its suggestions, give users more control over various settings, add a live TV guide, and launch a customizable Olympics dashboard, among other things. Next year, it plans to add social features, including those that will highlight TV trends among your friends, let users create lists of recommendations and co-watch with friends. When these product plans are realized on YouTube and Hulu, both will have a better value proposition beyond over-the-top TV alone. They could turn TV watching into a social experience of its own, and new way to network online. This, in turn, could spur more subscriber growth, if streaming TV audiences find the new features compelling. |
Annual smartphone shipments in China declined for the first time in 2017 | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | China’s smartphone market is no longer growing after it witnessed its first annual decline in shipments during 2017, according to new figures released today. The writing was on the wall with but this is the first time a drop has been sustained over a twelve-month period. which reported that total smartphone shipments dipped four percent year-on-year to reach 459 million units in 2017. In particular, the numbers in Q4 were down 14 percent on one year previous with 113 million units shipped. Despite evidence of buyer saturation, Huawei continued its impressive growth spurt with 24 million shipments in the final quarter of 2017, growing its numbers nine percent above the market. Sister companies Oppo and Vivo have exploded on to the global stage with strong sales in emerging markets in Asia, but, in China, their numbers fell 16 percent and 7 percent, respectively, with 19 million and 17 million shipments, according to Canalys. Finally, the launch of the iPhone X and iPhone 8 helped Apple pip Xiaomi to fourth place with 13 million shipments in Q4 2017. Slowing growth at home has prompted Chinese phone brands to look overseas, with many turning to India and , which could grow significantly. Xiaomi, in particular, , has also made moves into Spain, Mexico, Russia and parts of Africa, too. The U.S. has proven a tougher market to crack. Xiaomi has sold accessories there for some time, but it is yet to make the leap of smartphones despite many public declarations of intent. Those that have been more aggressive have met tough pushback. AT&T, the second-largest U.S. carrier, following reports of pressure from the government. is facing pressure over its plan to stock the device, which has already seen its launch pushed back from an original summer timeline. and it recruited Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot to front its campaign as its “Chief Experience Officer.” But carrier deals remain a key way to reach users without an upfront price that can near the quadruple digits. Huawei has distribution with key retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, but the company ultimately won’t penetrate the market the way it hopes without that extra push. |
Crunch Report | CNN shuts down Casey Neistat’s Beme | Khaled "Tito" Hamze | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Gregory Manalo TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
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San Francisco Ca. 94107 |
Walmart and Rakuten partner on grocery delivery in Japan, Kobo e-books and audiobooks in U.S. | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Walmart today a major expansion in terms of its global e-commerce presence: the retailer is entering a strategic partnership with Tokyo-based Rakuten, which will see the companies collaborating on the launch of a new online grocery service in Japan, and the sale of e-readers, audiobooks and e-books in the U.S., via . The strategic alliance is one that has two of the world’s largest e-commerce retailers joining forcing in an effort to combat Amazon, and is yet another example of how Walmart is using large-scale partnerships to aid in that battle. For example, in order to have an entry point in the voice-assisted shopping space, by way of Google Home smart speakers – an area where Amazon’s Alexa has . In this new partnership, Walmart says it and Rakuten will co-create an online grocery service in Japan that will launch in the third quarter of 2018. The service will be operated by Rakuten and Seiyu GK, a Walmart subsidiary, and will be called “Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper.” Walmart, via Seiyu, has operated a grocery delivery business in Japan since 2000. This new co-branded service will replace that, the company says. Once live later this year, some customers’ orders will continue to be fulfilled by their local Seiyu store, as before. But depending on their geography, other customers’ orders may come from a new, dedicated fulfillment center operated by Walmart and Rakuten. The center, which is an existing building Walmart owns, will be exclusively used for online grocery. Walmart today also operates an online grocery business in the U.S., where customers can shop online and pay, then pull up to a designated parking spot for curbside pickup when their order is ready. The option to take delivery is available for an additional fee, but Walmart hands off that part of the operation to third-party partners, like Uber. However, in all other markets where Walmart operates online grocery – including Japan, the U.K., China, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and India – the service is focused on home delivery. This will be the case with Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper, as well. Groceries will also continue to be delivered to homes using existing local delivery companies, Walmart tells us. Another difference between the U.S.-based pickup service and Japan’s delivery service is that Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper will offer pre-prepared meal kits, as well as partially prepared foods and other convenience-focused items like pre-cut vegetables, in addition to its selection of fresh produce and other consumables. Some items from Rakuten’s Ichiba marketplace – which has over 93 million registered members – will be available, too, including gourmet foods. Rakuten will additionally help craft the website for the new online grocery service, which will take advantage of its e-commerce technology, including big data and A.I., in order to personalize the merchandise offerings. “Rakuten is a strong e-commerce business and we’re excited to collaborate with the top
online shopping destination in Japan,” said Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon, in a statement. “Here in Japan and everywhere we operate, we’re constantly exploring new ways to make every day easier for customers by offering great experiences in stores, online, via mobile—no matter how customers want to shop.” The from this alliance is the addition of Kobo’s e-book and audiobook selection to Walmart’s website – a clear attempt to unseat Amazon Kindle’s dominance in e-readers and e-books, and Amazon-owned Audible’s dominance in audiobooks. Kobo will bring nearly 6 million audiobooks and e-book titles from hundreds of thousands of authors to Walmart, which will sell them on Walmart.com starting sometime later this year. (E-books will arrive first, followed by audiobooks.) Walmart will also sell digital book cards in stores, as well as Kobo’s e-readers. Kobo is the second-largest e-reader manufacturer worldwide, but never became a household name here in the U.S. However, the company has been fairly innovative with its hardware, offering premium versions and even a The companies haven’t yet decided which of Walmart’s stores will get which e-reader models, as the assortment details are still being worked out. The two companies will also release a co-branded Walmart/Kobo e-reading app for iOS and Android, as their alternative offering to Amazon’s Kindle app, as well as a desktop app. The new app will replace the existing Kobo app that’s live on app stores, but the companies couldn’t detail how the transition process will work for existing U.S. Kobo users. Similar to how Amazon lets consumers choose the format of the book they want to purchase while shopping, Walmart says Kobo’s product selection will also be “fully integrated” into its Walmart.com shopping site. That means when customers find the book they want to buy, they’ll be able to choose from the physical book, an e-book or an audiobook version from one place. Walmart says it will use the power of its physical retail presence to get this e-book offering off the ground, noting that its stores see over 140 million weekly customers who will be able to buy e-readers and digital book cards. Amazon, meanwhile, has been moving in the other direction – it already has the e-book empire others want to topple, so now its focus is on launching Amazon bookstores that put physical books in front of shoppers, too. But unlike Walmart, the retail stores are only open in select (generally urban) markets at this time. The bookstore chain is part of Amazon’s larger efforts to , in fact – efforts that include its acquisition of grocer Whole Foods and its new, cashier-less Amazon Go stores. “Kobo has been very successful in working with market-leading book retailers around the world to provide a very competitive experience in the e-book space,” Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn told TechCrunch. “We’re very excited to come to the U.S. and bring e-books and audiobooks to Walmart, and take advantage of the scale that a market leader and a leading bookseller like Walmart can provide,” he added. |
Research into full-body tracking at Facebook hints at broader AR/VR ambitions | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | It’s no secret that Facebook is big on both AR and VR, both for entertainment and communication purposes. And new research suggests it is working on AR applications that could not just modify or replace your face, but your entire body. has the AI Camera Team showing off a bit of work clearly aimed at doing full-body replacement or tracking in a VR or AR context. “We recently developed a new technology that can accurately detect body poses and segment a person from their background. Our model is still in research phase at the moment, but it is only a few megabytes, and can run on smart phones in real time,” the researchers write. Of course, this type of research is far from unprecedented; skeletal tracking systems are commonplace in many industries. And indeed this blog post is more about how this particular system and its component neural networks operate than claiming any major advances. That said, Facebook is clearly looking especially into keeping things efficient and easy to deploy on mobile. That means working within many hard limitations as far as sensor data, image resolution and refresh rate, processing power available, and so on. , as the technique is called, is a nice step in this direction. We can surely expect more like this from Facebook in the future — the company is even looking for a dedicated to this line of research. |
Dutch intelligence reportedly hacked Russian election hackers in 2014 | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | As if the story of the 2016 election and associated cyberattacks wasn’t already complicated enough, new information now suggests that Dutch intelligence has for years been aware of, and sharing, information on the Russian hackers suspected to be behind a number of high-profile hacks. Dutch broadcaster NOS and reported the news today. The Netherlands’ Joint Sigint Cyber Unit, in the summer of 2014, seems to have found the den of “Cozy Bear,” as the state-sponsored group came to be known (also APT29) after the DNC hack in 2016. JSCU infiltrated its network and a nearby security camera, allowing it to see what Cozy Bear was up to, and possibly who was a member. JSCU shared this data with the CIA and NSA on a continuing basis all the way through the 2016 election, after which their surveillance was discontinued or compromised. months later apparently revealed a bit more than they were comfortable with, and the report says that the Dutch intelligence sources have been more guarded with their information since that time. is well worth reading; clearly we have a lot to thank our Dutch allies for. No doubt this treasure trove of information will (perhaps already has been) prove extremely useful in our own government’s ongoing investigation in Russian interference in the election. |
botkeeper has an automated bookkeeping bot for your accounting needs | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | There are probably few things that small businesses hate more than accounting. It’s tedious, time consuming and totally vital to ensure that businesses can remain in business and don’t run afoul of authorities. Well, to make the process of bookkeeping a little bit less painful, a number of investors have joined together to finance , which pitches itself as the chatbot for your bookkeeping needs. It’s a long, long list of investors backing the company including Ignition Partners; former Microsoft chief financial officer John Connors; 500 Startups partner Matthew Johnson, Trevor Kienzle of Correlation Ventures; and finally, Talla founder Rob May. While a lot of startups run their business off of Quickbooks, botkeeper is a chatbot tool that performs some of the same functions. The tool can also replace a lot of the oversight required by accountants by automating the process using machine learning and human assistance, the company said. After signing up for botkeeper, customers receive a dedicated virtual bookkeeper that provides accounting services. Integrating financial information like credit cards, bank accounts and accounting software, companies can make entries, track and schedule revenue and deferred expenses, account for payroll, reconcile bank accounts and send invoices, the company claims. “Using AI and ML, botkeeper can eliminate the inefficiencies, complexities, and prohibitive costs inherent in traditional accounting processes and tasks. botkeeper leverages these advanced computer science techniques to analyze diverse company-wide data sets, categorize expenses, and execute timely accounting actions automatically – all with 99.97% accuracy,” said Enrico Palmerino, chief executive at botkeeper in a statement. “We knew we were on to something when an early demonstration showed that botkeeper could clean up three years of a client’s bookkeeping in just two weeks.” The key, according to the company, is the combination of automated bookkeeping with real accountants who can provide the expertise to handle the questions that can’t be automated. “Any urgent, custom, or complex client accounting tasks are addressed immediately,” said Palmerino in a statement. |
‘La La Land’ director Damien Chazelle is making a show for Apple | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Damien Chazelle, who won last year’s Best Director Oscar for his work on , will be making a TV show for Apple. that Chazelle will be writing and directing every episode of the first season, and that the series will come from MRC, the studio that’s making for Netflix. Nothing else — not the title, the subject or the number of episodes — has been revealed. Chazelle (who also wrote and directed the terrific drama ) had already to direct the first two episodes of a musical drama called for Netflix. If you’re worried that all this streaming work will keep Chazelle away from the big screen, well, his next movie (a biopic starring ‘s Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong) is already scheduled for release on October 12. Apple, meanwhile, has been making big announcements around its plans for original TV series — though usually it doesn’t reveal much more than the talent involved and the general subject matter. The announced projects include , (the writer behind the critically acclaimed reboot of ) and from Steven Spielberg and Bryan Fuller. |
Shadow launches its cloud computer for gamers in the UK | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | French startup Blade, the company behind , is launching its cloud gaming service in the U.K. Just like in , the company is starting with a pre-sale before accepting all customers. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent a gaming PC in a data center near you. You can then access this beefy computer using desktop and mobile apps as well as the company’s own little box. It’s a full-fledged Windows 10 instance — you can install Steam, Battle.net or whatever you want. And British customers will get the exact same specs. Each user gets a high-end dedicated Nvidia GPU — the company is currently using a mix of GeForce GTX 1080 and Quadro P5000. You also get 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and eight threads on an Intel Xeon 2620 processor. The company says it’s a high-end gaming machine worth around $2,100/£1,500. Now let’s talk about pricing. You can get a Shadow instance for £26.95 per month with a one-year commitment, £32.95 per month for a three-month commitment and £39.95/month without any commitment. Even if you choose to commit, you don’t have to pay everything upfront — you’ll get charged every month. Plans cost nearly the same price in France and the U.S. Finally, you can also get Shadow’s own little box that you can plug directly to your TV or a monitor. You can rent it for an additional £7.95 per month or pay £109.95 once. The first 500 British subscribers will get it for free. Finally, make sure you have a fast and stable connection before subscribing to Shadow. |
Trueface.ai integrates with IFTTT as the latest test-case of its facial recognition tech | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | , the stealthy facial recognition startup that’s backed by 500 Startups and a slew of angel investors, is integrating with IFTTT to allow developers to start playing around with its technology. Chief executive Shaun Moore tells me that the integration with IFTTT represents the first time that facial recognition technology will be made available to the masses without the need to understand complex code. The company initially started as both a hardware and software vendor, but back in 2017 Moore said that the company stripped out its hardware component and focused on its software. “We ended up taking a really broad approach and letting [hardware developers] do whatever they want with it,” Moore tells me. Focusing on digital identification and verification tools, Trueface.ai sells technology that it says can be used to verify a request to open a bank account or for digital document notarization. “We can do that remotely and verify proof of possession and identity,” says Moore. The goal, says Moore, is to make facial recognition available to everybody. And IFTT’s integration is one step to make that happen, because it will familiarize product developers and makers with the toolkit, Moore says. [gallery ids="1591251,1591252,1591253,1591254"] “We just saw this as a way to launch this technology on a third party where anyone could go in. If you’ve got a Lockitron, Trueface can take the picture and then IFTTT can unlock the door for anyone who has been given permission,” says Moore. The technology uses deep learning models to detect, normalize, validate, match and identify faces. Back before its pivot to software, Trueface.ai actually came by TechCrunch’s New York offices to put the tech through its paces . Artificial intelligence models are trained with millions of facial images and — depending on the use case — are designed to generate mathematical representations of a human face (called embeddings). These embeddings can be stored and referenced by other models to infer identity. The company’s spoof detection service is trained on attack examples to differentiate between a real human face and an image (goodbye lock-screen issues). With the IFTTT integration, the company intends to show off its IDVerify product as a means to acclimate users with the technology. Already, the company’s tech is interoperable with identity documents for more than 150 countries and can be used with Trueface.ai web and mobile applications. “The target demographic of what we were thinking were tinkerers and hackers who kind of want to build things themselves,” says Moore. |
Occipital closes $12M more as it strives to build a ‘perception engine’ | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Sensors are growing more and more sophisticated as we build machines that can interpret the world with more precision than we can. is aiming to do this as effectively and cheaply as possible as it morphs its 3D scanning technology into a product that can do much, much more. The company has closed $12 million of what it plans to be a $15 million Series C. The round is being led by the Foundry Group. The company has raised about $33 million to date. With this round, Occipital is looking to expand its tracking platform into what it calls its “Perception Engine,” which will require it making some deeper moves into machine learning, pushing into technologies that reside outside of simply defining the geometry of a space. The startup wants its tracking tech to recognize people and identify objects. SF-based Occipital has moved around a little bit within the tracking space as it’s sought to find a worthwhile niche. The company’s $379 Structure sensor allows users to 3D scan their environment and objects using the high-frame-rate depth camera that attaches to the back of an iOS device. Occipital’s Canvas software solution allows customers to use the camera to develop more refined CAD models. The company later introduced a mixed reality dev kit that brought positional tracking to the iPhone. The company’s latest bet is bringing quality inside-out tracking to products with its monoSLAM tech that tracks devices in space using a single camera and an IMU. Though AR/VR remains an obvious application, Occipital announced at CES that it has partnered with Misty Robotics. As its focus moves closer toward the market that Intel’s RealSense and other large companies have been aiming to capture, Occipital has its sights set higher than before with some new cash to do so. |
Ubiquitous AR to dominate focused VR by 2022 | Tim Merel | 2,018 | 1 | 25 |
AR (mobile AR, smartglasses) could approach three and a half billion installed base and $85 billion to $90 billion revenue within five years. At the same time, VR (mobile, standalone, console, PC) might deliver 50 million to 60 million installed base and $10 billion to $15 billion. That’s a pretty big difference, and it all has to do with AR’s ubiquity and VR’s focus. To understand why the sister markets are shaping up so differently, we’re going to dig in to AR’s and VR’s installed bases, use cases, app store category revenues (IAP/premium), e-commerce category sales, adspend by industry, enterprise revenues by industry and geographic splits. The devil’s in the detail, and this is the most detailed dive we’ve ever done. Mobile AR ( , , , ) could hit and dominate AR/VR for the foreseeable future. Yet while VR’s market potential was diminished by the emergence of mobile AR as a rival platform last year, saying “ ” might be a little harsh. Mobile/standalone VR ( , , ) had its potential reduced by phone makers and developers shifting their focus more toward mobile AR, and might not top a few tens of millions installed base long-term. (Note: scales on both charts are not the same) Standalone premium VR (neither PC nor mobile tethered, like and ) could begin to accelerate in 2019/2020 as hardware/software develops and prices come down, but might only deliver around half of mobile/standalone VR’s installed base by 2022. Console/PC VR ( , , , ) could grow from today’s low single-digit millions, but might only be in the high single-digit millions in five years’ time. Smartglasses ( , , , , ) remain the long-term future of AR/VR. If Apple launches smartphone tethered smartglasses in 2020, the smartglasses market could grow from a few hundred thousand enterprise users last year to several tens of millions of mass-consumers by 2022. All told, the combined AR/VR headset market could reach an installed base in the high tens of millions to more than 100 million by 2022 (or around 3 percent of mobile AR). Mobile AR apps in their first few months were largely ports from existing platforms, but AR’s coming scale, flexibility, mobility and ubiquity are driving an explosion of new use cases and business models. E-commerce sales ( ) could become the largest revenue driver for AR, where , and Alibaba has partnered with Starbucks for the world’s largest in Shanghai (Alibaba is a for a reason). If and when Apple launches smartphone-tethered smartglasses, hardware sales could become AR’s second largest revenue stream. Adspend driven by mobile AR’s scale comes next, followed by app store revenues from a diversity of new non-games’ IAP/premium revenues and more familiar games’ business models. Enterprise AR could be significant for both future developments of today’s enterprise-focused smartglasses and mobile AR. Lastly, location-based AR entertainment could deliver long-term. (Note: scales on both charts are not the same) VR’s smaller installed base, lower mobility and exclusive immersion (i.e. ) focuses it on entertainment use cases and revenue streams. Entertainment (games, location-based entertainment and video) could take two-thirds of all VR sector revenue long-term, with hardware taking just over a quarter due to limited unit sales and price competition. There will be enterprise use-cases, but VR’s relatively lower installed base and form factor could see much lower corporate spending than equivalent enterprise mobile AR and smartglasses. VR e-commerce and advertising revenues could develop, but the scale and fragmentation of VR’s user base limit their significance for now. The differences between the two markets become clearer when looking at the 23 app store revenue (IAP/premium) categories. (Note: scales on both charts are not the same) While AR games could take more than two-thirds of AR app store revenue this year (no other category taking more than a few percent), a Cambrian explosion of creativity by developers and could see 20-plus non-games sectors drive over half of AR app store revenue by 2022. Games should remain significant, but the greatest innovation and growth could come from sectors from social to navigation and beyond. Totally new use cases could give rise to new business models, disrupting sectors both old and new. In contrast, games might take the bulk of VR app store revenues long-term. VR looks most like a subset of the video games market, where it has been heavily marketed toward a gamer user base. As above, emerging AR e-commerce has already proven its worth to market leaders. But the potential extends far beyond lifestyle retailers like Houzz. The biggest AR e-commerce sales could come from clothing, consumer electronics, automotive, furniture, health/personal care, toys/hobby, office equipment, food/drink and media categories. While new players will emerge to leverage e-commerce’s AR potential, current e-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba could see the greatest benefit from more immersive AR sales techniques. The massive installed base coming for mobile AR could be a boon for Facebook ( , , ), Snap ( , ), Tencent ( , ) and other social/messaging platforms. Snap’s pointed to where the company is heading in terms of advertising, and mobile advertising’s meant that Mark Zuckerberg’s was always going to happen. Major brands could take a little time to fully understand mobile AR’s potential, but when they do, expect to see significant adspend from retail, automotive, financial services, telecom, CPG/consumer products, travel, consumer electronics, media, entertainment and healthcare/pharma advertisers. Smartglasses have been enterprise-focused to date, as corporate users’ ROI from cost savings allows them to invest in pilot projects. Companies like Microsoft, ODG, Meta and Vuzix are seeing early enterprise traction, although the enterprise smartglasses market remains early-stage. Mobile AR’s ubiquity and low cost could also help enterprise AR adoption from this year. Together with new generations of smartglasses, enterprise AR could see steady growth until it hits an inflection point around 2021 across manufacturing/resources, TMT, government (including military), retail, construction/real estate, healthcare, education, transportation, financial services and utilities industries. With mobile AR’s geographic distribution broadly similar to current smartphone/tablet distribution, and VR’s distribution broadly similar to current games’ market distribution, AR/VR revenue could be dominated by Asia (particularly China, Japan and South Korea). This could see Asia roughly equal in size to North America and Europe, combined. As , its revenues might follow a similar geographic pattern. Since 2015 we’ve said that Apple could own your augmented future, and Tim Cook seems to agree, “AR [is] profound. Not today, not the app you’ll see on the App Store today, but what it will be, what it can be…the real beauty is that [it] is mainstream and…Apple is the only company that could have brought this because it requires hardware/software integration…this is very much like in 2008 when we fired the gun in the App Store. That’s what it feels like to me, and I think it will just get bigger from here.” We’ve also said that AR/VR is the fourth wave of consumer technology, and that AR could be bigger than VR. That looks like how things might pan out, but we’re still only at the start of what that wave could become — 2018 isn’t the “year of AR/VR” yet. While fellow surfers know that picking (and riding) big waves isn’t without risk, when you get it right, there’s little better. So for the patient and brave, it’s going to be a wild ride. |
Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Similar to Uber’s “God View” scandal, Lyft staffers have been abusing customer insight software to view the personal contact info and ride history of the startup’s passengers. One source that formerly worked with Lyft tells TechCrunch that widespread access to the company’s backend let staffers “see pretty much everything including feedback, and yes, pick up and drop off coordinates.” When asked if staffers, ranging from core team members to customer service reps, abused this privilege, the source said “Hell yes. I definitely looked at my friends’ rider history and looked at what drivers said about them. I never got in trouble.” Another supposed employee anonymously reported on workplace app Blind that staffers had access to this private information and that the access was abused. Our source says that the data insights tool logs all usage, so staffers were warned by their peers to be careful when accessing it surreptitiously. For example, some thought that repeatedly searching for the same person might get noticed. But despite Lyft logging the access, enforcement was weak, so team members still abused it. Lyft tells TechCrunch that staffers in several departments that might need access to this data for their job have the ability to look up this information. That includes data analytics, engineering (particularly those working on fraud or investigations), customer support, insurance and the trust and safety team. A Lyft spokesperson confirmed it’s investigating the issue and that there have been instances of enforcement in the past. They provided this statement: Maintaining the trust of passengers and drivers is fundamental to Lyft. The specific allegations in this post would be a violation of Lyft’s policies and a cause for termination, and have not been raised with our Legal or Executive teams. We are conducting an investigation into the matter. The news raises serious questions about proper data privacy at Lyft. While occasional access to rider data can be essential to some roles at the company, like if someone loses an item, widespread and improperly restricted access could be seen as a violation of riders’ trust. Lyft has tried to position itself as the friendlier, more ethical alternative to Uber, but staffers may have engaged in the same shady behavior. An image of Uber’s former God View program Back in 2014, broke news that Uber used a system called “God View” that let staffers see details about riders and their trips. That led to an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office. It struck a where the startup agreed to limit access to designated employees using multi-factor authentication, establish someone to supervise privacy of the system and audit usage of it. Yet reports surfaced in 2016 that Uber employees were the system renamed “Heaven View.” In early 2015, Lyft’s [gallery type="slideshow" ids="1591203,1591204,1591205"] Today, though, TechCrunch received a tip about a supposed Lyft staffer with either a Lyft email address or public Lyft job listing who was using anonymous workplace app Blind to blow the whistle about data privacy abuse at the company. They claimed that staffers could use Lyft’s backend software to view unmasked personally identifiable information. This was said to be used to look up ex-lovers, check where their significant others were riding and to stalk people they found attractive who shared a Lyft Line with them. Staffers also could see who had bad ratings from drivers, or even look up the phone numbers of celebrities. One staffer apparently bragged about obtaining Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number. Lyft employees are active on Blind, and wrong information is typically challenged. But no one came out contradicting the original report before press time, beyond one person saying that access was limited, logged and audited, though it’s not clear to what degree. They also noted that some unmasked personal data was visible in places it didn’t need to be. Our source confirmed some of these practices to TechCrunch, saying they would check to see where their significant other was Lyfting to. “It was addictive. they noted. New staffers were particularly keen to try it despite warnings to be careful. The situation highlights how having policies against bad behavior inside fast-moving startups doesn’t necessarily prevent abuse. Diligent enforcement must also be undertaken despite the costs or time required. |
Juni Learning is bringing individualized programming tutorials to kids online | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | wants to give every kid access to a quality education in computer programming. The company, part of Y Combinator’s latest batch of startups, is taking the same approach that turned into the largest Chinese employer in the U.S. and a runaway hit in the edtech market — by matching students with vetted and pre-qualified online tutors. While VIPKID focused on teaching English, Juni wants to teach kids how to code. So far, the company has taught thousands of kids around the world how to code in Scratch and Python and offered instruction in AP Computer Science A, competition programming and overall web development. Founded by Vivian Shen and Ruby Lee, Juni Learning was born of the two women’s own frustrations in learning how to code. While both eventually made their way to the computer science department at Stanford (where the two friends first met), it was a long road to get there. Lee (class of 2013) and Shen (class of 2014) both had to fight to get their computer educations off the ground. Although Shen grew up in Palo Alto, Calif. — arguably ground zero for technology development in the Western world — there was only one computer science class on offer at her high school. For Lee, who grew up in Massachusetts outside of Boston, the high school she attended was a computer science wasteland… with nothing on offer. “As public awareness of women gaining engineering roles, we started discussing how to make education more accessible,” says Shen. “I was traveling in China and started hearing about these amazing education companies [like VIPKID].” Indeed, Cindy Mi, VIPKID chief executive, was an inspiration for both women. “I thought, why couldn’t a model like that bring great computer science education to the U.S.,” Shen says. The company offers different plans starting with an individual tutoring session running about $250 per month. Customers also can sign up for group classes that are capped at $160 per month. “When you think about computer science education — since it’s such an important subject for kids — why aren’t they getting the best education they can get?” Shen asks. The prices were set up after feedback with customers and exists at what Shen said was a sweet spot. VIPKID classes cost around $30 per hour. The company initially had a soft launch in late August and was just accepted into the recent batch of Y Combinator companies. Juni Learning recruits its tutors from current and former computer science students at top-tier colleges — primarily in California. The company charges $250 per month for once-a-week classes and pays its teachers an undisclosed amount based on their previous experience teaching computer science to children. The company’s product couldn’t come at a better time to reach students in both the U.S. and international markets… like China. investing in coding could be the next big thing for Chinese investors in education technology. “Coding is about the only course that has the potential to become as important as English for students and for the industry,” Zhang Lijun, a venture capitalist who backs Chinese edtech companies, told the WSJ. “But nobody knows when that’s going to happen.” By using a model that’s already proven successful in China — and resonates with consumers in the U.S., Juni Learning may have gotten ahead of the curve. [gallery ids="1591215,1591213,1591214"] |
Amazon adds single sign-on for Fire TV | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Signing on to all of your favorite networks’ apps on just got a little easier. The company, which had in September, is now bringing the service to network apps in the U.S. Users just need to sign in with their pay TV provider credentials and they can access all the networks they need without entering additional passwords. The service works with pay TV providers that support single sign-on authentication through . That includes Dish, DirecTV, AT&T Uverse, Verizon FiOS, Cox, Cablevision (Altice) and many more. Networks that support Fire’s new single sign-on feature include Freeform, Syfy, Bravo, Telemundo, The cooking Channel, Turner and BBC. The feature should be up for most apps now, and Amazon says that it will work with other app developers and cable providers to integrate the new feature soon. |
Benchmark’s lawsuit against former Uber CEO Kalanick dismissed | Katie Roof | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | It’s over. Benchmark’s has now been dropped, ending one of the biggest VC-founder disputes in history. It was dismissed as a condition of the The deal was completed earlier this month, giving The venture firm and early investor in Uber filed a contentious lawsuit against Kalanick last year, shortly after he was pressured to resign as CEO. Benchmark alleged that Kalanick had misled them about the state of the company when they gave him the power to grant additional board seats. Benchmark also has a board seat. It was Bill Gurley’s, and then it was handed over to Matt Cohler. In the midst of the lawsuit, Kalanick exercised his rights and appointed A spokesperson for Kalanick declined to comment. The lawsuit was very controversial in Silicon Valley because the relationship between a founder and VC is an important one. Some felt that Benchmark took things too far. But others felt that Kalanick deserved to pay consequences for overseeing a problematic company culture. The board has a lot of work to do as the company prepares to go public next year under the helm of new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. |
null | Fitz Tepper | 2,018 | 1 | 22 | null |
Tesla responds to fresh reports of Model 3 production issues | Darrell Etherington | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Tesla’s Model 3 EV delays are well-known, including in the company’s own earnings report and quarterly delivery numbers. A , with specific continued issues around battery manufacturing. CNBC also suggested that the company is “not close” to mass-production of the batteries required for its $35,000 trim level Model 3. Tesla initially responded to the news outlet pointing them to prior comments made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel regarding its current delays and production bottlenecks, but now the company has released a more extensive statement, flatly refuting may of the claims made int he new report. Tesla takes particular issue with claims that its quality control workers lack necessary experience, or that it’s cutting corners that could result in hazards related to batteries. Tesla’s full statement is included below: This is an extremely misinformed and misleading article. To be absolutely clear, we are on track with the previous projections for achieving increased Model 3 production rates that we provided earlier this month. As has been well documented, until we reach full production, by definition some elements of the production process will be more manual. This is something Elon and JB discussed extensively on our Q3 earnings call, and it has no impact on the quality or safety of the batteries we’re producing. As noted in our Q4 deliveries release, during the fourth quarter, “we made major progress addressing Model 3 production bottlenecks, with our production rate increasing significantly towards the end of the quarter.” Furthermore, as is often the case in manufacturing, some parts of the production process require the expertise of employees with engineering or manufacturing experience, and others don’t. We’ve created thousands of new high-quality jobs in Nevada in recent years. As we continue to expand Gigafactory 1 and ramp Model 3 production, we’ve been able to teach new skills to thousands of new employees, many of whom had no manufacturing experience prior to joining Tesla. New hires on the module line receive extensive training, including safety training, and learn about the importance of proper cell-to-cell spacing so they can identify such issues in the production process. More broadly, battery production – and the module line in particular – is overseen by our top engineering talent, and many of Tesla’s most senior leadership. Finally, the implication that Tesla would ever deliver a car with a hazardous battery is absolutely inaccurate, contrary to all evidence, and detached from reality. It is irresponsible to suggest as much based on unnamed, anonymous sources who have provided no such evidence and who obviously do not have a complete understanding of the extensive testing that all batteries in Tesla vehicles are subjected to. As with Model S and Model X, which have well demonstrated safety records, we maintain a rigorous approach to quality and process control for the Model 3 battery. Even more importantly, to our knowledge, there has not been a single safety concern in the field related to Model 3 batteries at any point over the six months of Model 3 production. As for the assertion about cells touching in Model 3 batteries, this is extremely misleading and displays a complete lack of basic knowledge about how our batteries work. Every battery in a Tesla vehicle has thousands of cells, the vast majority of which are at the same voltage potential as neighboring cells. Hypothetically, even if two cells of the same voltage potential were touching, there would be absolutely zero impact, safety or otherwise – it would be as if two neutral pieces of metal touched. Despite this fact, all Model 3 battery modules’ cell positions are measured twice in manufacturing to verify process control and quality of outgoing parts. Conversely, if at any point in the production process cells are touching at different voltage potentials, they cannot be electrically interconnected. Over the course of the production process, we conduct three different tests to ensure the right number of cells are electrically connected in Model 3 modules. Additionally, the long term reliability of cell position is something validated through testing, including shock and vibration, and high temperature and humidity testing, as well as thermal cycling endurance testing throughout design and via sampling in production. All of this testing is designed to prevent touching cells from being installed in any of our vehicles, including Model 3. Finally, the safety aspects of our module design would continue to function even in the presence of touching cells, so the concerns raised are further unfounded. These false claims are being made even though we have a proven history of making the safest vehicles on the road, with Model S and Model X receiving 5-star safety ratings not only overall but in every subcategory. Although not yet tested by NHTSA, Model 3 has been designed and internally tested to have the same result. Data from NHTSA’s testing shows that Model S and Model X have the two lowest probability of injury scores in the history of NHTSA testing. Furthermore, over billions of miles of actual driving, Tesla’s vehicles have been roughly five times less likely to experience a fire than a conventional gasoline vehicle. In light of these facts, it’s preposterous to suggest that a company as committed to safety as Tesla would allow untested or unsafe batteries to go in our vehicles. Tesla’s Model 3 production is likely its biggest issue in terms of analyst, stockholder and stakeholder pressure. The automaker’s ability to deliver its most affordable EV at scale, and to do so in due time, is probably the biggest reason anyone has right now to doubt its long-term success, so understandably it’s sensitive about the accuracy of reports surrounding the product’s progress. |
PUBG takes the Chicken Dinner with 4 million players on Xbox alone | Darrell Etherington | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | People like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the game where you basically re-enact a version of with you as one of the contestants in the human survival game. It had huge success in alpha prior to its full launch on PC, and now we know that console gamers also love the heck out of it – despite reports of buggy experiences with the Xbox One version. Bugs aside, Xbox One’s PUBG player community now . That’s a really big number, especially considering that PUBG for Xbox One only came out last month, and that the total number of console sales to date for the Xbox One is somewhere around 30 million based on current estimates. If you read this because you don’t know what the heck ‘PUBG’ is, then now is the time to find out: Microsoft just pushed an update for the game with a bunch of bug fixes and content additions, and it’s giving people who buy the game before the end of this month bonus in-game credits to dress up your character. |
Airbnb brings on American Express CEO to board of directors | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Airbnb has appointed Kenneth I. Chenault, the outgoing CEO of American Express, to its board of directors. The announcement comes one week after . “As the CEO of American Express, Ken has built one of the most successful trust-based companies in the world,” . “It is a company that has endured and innovated for nearly 168 years. Ken and I spent time talking about the 21st-century model and in particular the role of trust as the infrastructure for such a model. Ken also believes deeply that, now more than ever, companies need to stand for values, character, and competence.” Chenault will be the first non-affiliated independent board member at Airbnb and the first black board member at Airbnb. He also is the first and only black board member for Facebook. Chesky added, “As [Chenault] says, ‘I think corporations exist because society allows us to exist. Corporations are not entitled to exist. So I think we have a responsibility and an obligation to help improve society.’ ” Airbnb seems to be gearing up for an IPO. On February 22, Chesky said Airbnb will announce its next chapter “to empower a host-led world with some substantial improvements to our service that set us up for an infinite time horizon.” As part of Chesky’s vision for Airbnb to be a company that survives “to see the next century,” Chesky said Airbnb will release its first annual stakeholder report in March. |
Microsoft drops the price of its standard support for Azure to $100 per month | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | If you are a Microsoft Azure customer and want to get 24/7 access to technical and billing support for your company, as well as a response time of less than an hour for your critical issues, but you don’t want to pay $300 per month for this, today is your lucky day. Microsoft today that it’s dropping the price of from $300 per month to $100 per month and that it’s shortening its promised response time for from two to one hour. Government customers, too, will see a price drop from $375 per month to $125 per month, as well as the promise of one-hour response times. If you are in Germany, though, you are out of luck as the changes do not apply to you. Given that virtually all large cloud providers offer the same set of core services (and often at comparable prices), it’s maybe no surprise that we are now seeing some competition around service. AWS’s Business plan starts at $100 per month and also promises a one-hour response time for when production systems go down, but that’s only that starting price. What you actually pay is a percentage of your monthly AWS usage fees on a slide scale that depends on your monthly AWS bill. Google basic support at $150 per month with the promise of a four-hour response time for business critical issues. Unlike AWS and Microsoft, Google does not offer a cheaper and significantly more limited “developer” plan for $29 per month. : |
SEC warns against public companies adding blockchain to their name | Fitz Tepper | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | Everyone knows that both Main Street and Wall Street investors are going gangbusters for cryptocurrency and blockchain-related technology. But here’s the thing. It’s currently nearly impossible to invest directly in cryptocurrency or in legitimate cryptocurrency companies if you want to limit your investments to SEC-sanctioned ETFs or stocks that are listed on NASDAQ or NYSE. So to capitalize on this supply and demand imbalance some small-cap public companies are doing things like “pivoting” to blockchain technology or even just changing their name to something related to crypto. And since some Main Street investors don’t really know better and just want to get a piece of the cryptocurrency craze they often buy stock in these companies thinking they are the real deal. So a few days ago SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to these companies while giving a speech at the Securities Regulation Institute. Before I move on to the next topic I want to raise one more narrow, distributed ledger or “blockchain”-related legal issue by means of a hypothetical. I doubt anyone in this audience thinks it would be acceptable for a public company with no meaningful track record in pursuing the commercialization of distributed ledger or blockchain technology to (1) start to dabble in blockchain activities, (2) change its name to something like “Blockchain-R-Us,” and (3) immediately offer securities, without providing adequate disclosure to Main Street investors about those changes and the risks involved. The SEC is looking closely at the disclosures of public companies that shift their business models to capitalize on the perceived promise of distributed ledger technology and whether the disclosures comply with the securities laws, particularly in the case of an offering. – SEC Chairman Jay Clayton What types of things is Chairman Clayton talking about? How about when beverage company Long Island Iced Tea and the stock spiked 500% in a day. Or when And how about when another after they bought a cryptocurrency micro-lending startup (that’s never actually made a crypto-backed loan) that was 95% owned by the acquiring company’s CEO. Going forward expect to see the SEC take a stronger stance towards public companies that either quickly shift their name of their business or their entire business strategy to take advantage of crypto and blockchain hype. And this is a good thing. Many Main Street investors don’t know enough about cryptocurrency to know what’s legitimate technology and what’s just a company changing its name to prop up its stock. And the faster we get rid of this fraudulent activity the faster we can get to a place where the SEC and other regulators will allow Main Street investors to actually invest directly in cryptocurrency and other promising blockchain technology. |
TransferWise partners with France’s second largest bank BPCE Groupe | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | might be best known for its international money transfer app, but the has play entirely agnostic of how you access the service. This includes providing banks with access to the TransferWise API to power their own international money transfer features. However, perhaps understandably — given that the company also competes with banks — these partnerships have been small in number. With that said, today TransferWise is adding what looks like its most significant banking partner to date: BPCE Groupe, France’s second largest bank. The partnership will see TransferWise provide international money transfer services for BPCE Groupe’s 15 million or so customers, which, the company notes, is the first time a major bank in Europe will directly integrate TransferWise’s API into its mobile banking apps. TransferWise’s existing bank partnerships are with Estonia’s LHV, and German challenger bank N26. It was due to add U.K. challenger bank Starling to the list, but the integration with the bank’s app never materialised and . Meanwhile, the partnership between Groupe BPCE/Natixis Payments and TransferWise isn’t set to be launched until the beginning of 2019. Once it does launch, the bank’s customers will be able to send money outside of the eurozone at TransferWise’s standard fees via the banks’ app. “Both TransferWise and BPCE are committed to offering the best possible service and the fairest deal to their customers and this collaboration is an important step in making that a reality for everyone,” says TransferWise. “The service will enable BPCE customers to send money to over 60 countries at TransferWise’s usual low fee of 0.5 per cent on most currency routes and at the mid-market exchange rate”. Adds Kristo Käärmann, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise: “TransferWise has a mission to make money move around the world as fast and as cheaply as email. This partnership is a momentous step on that journey – for the first time a major mainstream bank is offering its customers the chance to benefit from TransferWise’s lightning fast, low cost service. It’s proof that we can scale our technology, which will allow other big institutions to seamlessly integrate with the service”. On that note, it will be interesting to see how TransferWise continues to walk the tight rope of partnering whilst, in some ways and with increasing feature parity, competing with the same potential partners. The original target for the company’s consumer and business money transfer app was incumbent banks who typically charge high fees for international money transfers and aren’t always transparent about the way they mark up the underlying exchange rate. And more recently it has launched its “Borderless” account, a multi-currency banking product and lets you deposit, send and spend money. However, TransferWise co-founder and Chairman Taavet Hinrikus has always insisted that the Borderless account is designed to work as a companion product to your main current account and not a fully fledged bank replacement. |
Nvidia prices Jetson Xavier AI platform developer kit at $1,299 | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Today at Computex in Taipei, Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang announced the availability of a drastically upgraded version of Issac. Nvidia calls the next-gen robotics system the next step in autonomous machines as it reportedly brings AI capabilities to a new set of industries. The company has been talking about this platform some time, touting its capabilities and use cases. A Jetson Xavier SoC provides the processing with more than 9 billion transistors, it delivers over 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second). Inside the Xavier is a Volta Tensor Core GPU, an eight-core ARM64 CPU, dual NVDLA deep learning accelerators, an image processor, a vision processor and a video processor. The platform developer kit will be available in August for $1,299 and includes the Isaac robotics software. “AI is the most powerful technology force of our time,” said Huang in a released statement. “Its first phase will enable new levels of software automation that boost productivity in many industries. Next, AI, in combination with sensors and actuators, will be the brain of a new generation of autonomous machines. Someday, there will be billions of intelligent machines in manufacturing, home delivery, warehouse logistics and much more.” The Isaac Robotics Software includes the Isaac SDK, a collection of APIs and tools to develop robotic algorithm software, the Isaac IMX, Nvidia-developed robotics software, and the Isaac Sim, a virtual simulation software to train autonomous machines. The availability of the developer kit should mark a turning point of robotics development. It provides serious processing power and capabilities in a ready-made package. |
Facebook says it “disagrees” with the New York Times’ criticisms of its device-integrated APIs | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Facebook has to a that raises privacy concerns about the company’s device-integrated APIs, saying that it “disagree[s] with the issues they’ve raised about these APIs.” Headlined “Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends,” the New York Times article criticizes the privacy protections of device-integrated APIs, which were launched by Facebook a decade ago. Before app stores became common, the APIs enabled Facebook to strike data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers, including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung, that allowed them to offer Facebook features, such as messaging, address books and the like button, to their users. But they may have given access to more data than assumed, says the article. New York Times reporters Gabriel J.X. Dance, Nicholas Confessore and Michael LaForgia write that “the partnerships, whose scope has not been previously reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections,” as well as its compliance with a . The FTC is currently investigating Facebook’s privacy practices in light of the . “Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders,” the New York Times story says. “Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.” Facebook it would begin winding down access to its device-integrated APIs, but the New York Times says that many of those partnerships are still in effect. Facebook is already under intense scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators, including the FTC, because of the Cambridge Analytica revelation, which raised serious concerns about the public APIs used by third-party developers and the company’s data-sharing policies. “In the furor that followed, Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends,” the New York Times says. “But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.” Facebook told the New York Times that data sharing through device-integrated APIs adhered to its privacy policies and the 2011 FTC agreement. The company also told the newspapers that it knew of no cases where a partner had misused data. Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data, including data from their Facebook friends, on their own servers, but said that those practices abided by strict agreements. In a post on Facebook’s blog, vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong reiterates the company’s stance that the device-integrated APIs were controlled tightly. “Partners could not integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission. And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built,” he continued. “Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends. We are not aware of any abuse by these companies.” But the New York Times report claims that Facebook’s partners were able to retrieve user data on relationship status, religion, political leanings and upcoming events, and were also able to get data about their users’ Facebook friends, even if they did not have permission. “Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did,” it says. “Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.” |
India’s Locus raises $4M to expand its logistics management service worldwide | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | , a three-year-old startup that helps companies map out their logistics, has pulled in $4 million in funding to grow its global footprint outside of its native India. The round is described as pre-Series B and it was provided by Rocketship.vc, Recruit Strategic Partners, pi Ventures and DSP Group’s Hemendra Kothari. Existing backers Blume Ventures, Exfinity Venture Partners, BeeNext and growX ventures also took part. Bengaluru-based Locus . The company was founded in 2015 by Nishith Rastogi and Geet Garg, two ex Amazon engineers who met when working on machine learning for AWS. Initially the duo developed a safety app that mapped out optimal routes to let a ride-hailing customer sense if their driver was going rogue and not sticking to the designated trip, but it later pivoted into logistics tracking after feedback from enterprise users. Today, Locus is focused on helping customers optimize the operational side of their logistics, whether that is moving people, goods or more at scale. It doesn’t cover ride-hailing and it isn’t necessarily focused on ensuring the faster route. Instead, it tackles complex challenges such as helping FCMGs optimize travel for their management — the key focus being on spending as much time in stores for meetings — or helping organizations move large orders by figuring out how many trucks are needed, which routes are optimal, etc. Co-founder and CEO Rastogi described the role as that of “chief supply chain officer.” “We want to automate all human decisions around logistics,” he explained to TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the business makes use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to suss out routes and operational approaches. He added that the machine-based approach can trump human logic in some cases, thanks to the sheer amounts of data it is based on. In one example, he explained how the Locus system had advised trucks taking a long haul trip to return to the client HQ using a different route. Initially the team figured there was a problem, but on closer inspection they found that the return route cut out a steep hill which, while fine to travel down on the outbound led, was best avoided on the return trip. That decision, Rastogi said, was based on travel data that the system had observed and might not ordinarily have been made by human-based analysts. To help with the system, the company also provides a $500-priced scanner — “SizeUp,” pictured below — for measuring packages. The idea is to not only make the tech portable but affordable enough that it can be used companies of all sizes. The company began to expand to overseas markets this year with moves into North America — both Canada and the U.S. — and Southeast Asia. Rastogi said the new capital will go towards expanding its presence in those markets. Later this year, he said, Locus plans to raise a “significant” Series B round, among the objectives for that is a dedicated technical team in Tel Aviv to complement the work happening in India. |
Apple’s AR bet still has a lot to prove | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | As Apple gears up for its developer keynote conference tomorrow, one of its bigger announcements is likely to be new changes coming to its augmented reality platform. Since announcing ARKit last year, the tech giant has hardly been sheepish about its belief in AR’s potential.
Behind a lot of that talk is belief in the tech’s utility down the road, but until Apple is ready to experimenting with AR tech in core iOS features, all of the chatter around AR having plenty of utility today feels a bit half-hearted. I’ll be very interested to see if the company announces any AR integrations in iOS 12 tomorrow that add new utility or if Animojis are still about as far as they’re willing to go. While nearly every major tech company spent 2017 opining about the potential of AR, there still doesn’t seem to be much that consumers can show for it. Google made a few interesting announcements surrounding the technology at its I/O conference last month, most fascinating was an being tested for Google Maps. Apple Maps is in desperate need of an upgrade and it makes sense for that to be the starting point for where its integrations begin. AR is definitely one of Apple’s longer term investments, but it’s also one that may not see much payoff in the short term. While Apple has been content to let many of their long-term bets iterate through awkward phases underground in the R&D labs, ARKit has been thrust onto hundreds of millions of devices while still in that odd, what-are-we-supposed-to-do-with-this stage. AR is more broadly one of those unique scenarios where everyone can imagine a potential end-case, it’s how it gets there that’s the head-scratcher and Apple seems to need developers to take on the risk of experimenting. At Apple’s developer conference keynote tomorrow, the company seems poised to showcase new developments for its ARKit augmented reality platform. Chief on the list of expected upgrades (via ) is a system of sharing coordinated point clouds between phones so that multiple users can run AR apps in a shared experience, aka AR multiplayer. Where Apple will definitely highlight ARKit’s potential is in the gaming sector. Gaming has always been more-engaging with multi-player, but how that really looks with augmented reality is anyone’s guess. It’s been two years since Pokémon GO was released and for all of the attention that title received, it isn’t entirely clear how AR capabilities contributed to its success. Games that integrate a multiplayer ARKit are going to have to make a lot of discoveries on their own. Playing games with friends in AR will gain a hyper-local edge but will lose much of the freedom offered by online gameplay in terms of connecting gamers seamlessly. There are countless other UX questions that will also still need to be experimented with. Augmented reality is a truly exciting technology and Apple’s efforts to lead the pack in building developer support has built up a lot of initial enthusiasm from that crowd, but to keep that excitement Apple’s going to need to start proving out some of those use cases for users on their own and put its big bet deeper into users’ daily digital lives. |
Monetizing computing resources on the blockchain | Ben Dickson | 2,018 | 6 | 3 |
Awhile back, a startup approached me with their pitch, a decentralized social media application in which users can earn money simply by doing what they already do on other platforms, such as posting updates, photos and videos. I would have been intrigued had they sent me the message a couple of years ago. But not so much after observing the space for more several years. Several applications profess to enable users to monetize various resources, whether it’s their unused storage and CPU power, or the tons of data they generate every day. Regardless of whether they will succeed to deliver on their promises or not, these projects highlight one of the problems that haunts the centralized internet. Users are seldom rewarded for the great value they bring to platforms such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. applications suggest that decentralized alternatives to current services will give users the chance to collect their fair share of the revenue they generate with their participation in online ecosystems. It’s an enticing proposition because it doesn’t require users to do much more than what they’re already doing: send emails, browse websites, watch ads, keep the computer on… But what exactly do you earn from your resources on the internet, and how accessible and reliable are your earnings? Here’s what you need to know. A handful of platforms enable you to rent your unused storage, idle CPU cycles and internet bandwidth to those who are in need. The premise is simple: You list your resources along with your payment terms on the application and get paid in the proprietary crypto-token of the application when others use them. Purchases are arranged, performed and paid peer-to-peer through smart contracts, bits of code that run on without the need for a centralized application server. Examples include Golem and iExec, two . Users can earn the platforms’ proprietary cryptocurrencies, GNT and RLC tokens respectively, by renting their CPU cycles to developers and users who want to run applications on the network. Golem and iExec aim to replace centralized cloud providers such as Amazon and Google, in which the service provider sets the rates and rakes in all the profits. Storj and Filecoin are two where users can earn cryptotokens for sharing their free hard drive space with the network. Both platforms are designed to provide infrastructure for various applications, such as web hosting and streaming services. Gladius, a decentralized content delivery network (CDN) and DDoS mitigation solution, enables users to monetize their internet bandwidth to serve content from websites and services running on the network. These applications provide a good opportunity to turn into a side income the hours that your computer sits idly in the home or office. Other platforms enable you to monetize your data. An example is Datum, a decentralized marketplace for user data. Datum enables users to earn DAT tokens by choosing to share it with other organizations. Other players in the domain include Streamr, a real-time data-sharing platform geared toward the Internet of Things (IoT). With Streamr, users can earn DATAcoin tokens by sharing the data their connected devices generate with other devices that need it to carry out their functions and companies that use them for analytics and research. Data is a huge market that is currently dominated by a few big players such as Google and Facebook. These companies hoard user data in their walled-garden silos and use it to make huge profits. platforms give users the choice and power to claim their share of that market by . Matchpool is a decentralized social network that enables users to monetize their groups and online communities. Matchpool provides the decentralized equivalent of Facebook groups and provides tools for administrators to earn GUP tokens by setting fees on membership and access to content. And there’s Brave, the developed by the former CEO of Mozilla. Brave removes ads from websites and instead gives users the choice to earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) by opting to view ads. It’s difficult to measure earnings on applications because most of them either haven’t launched yet or are in their early stages. Few of the companies I reached out to could provide stable numbers or average figures. Also, the value of the resource you share on these platforms is often subject to supply-and-demand dynamics. For instance, iExec leaves it to the users to determine the price of their computational resources and doesn’t take any cut from their earnings. If there’s a large demand for decentralized CPU power, you’ll earn more from participating in the network. Storj, the decentralized storage network, had the most accurate information to share. The platform provides a to calculate the monthly earnings of “farmers,” the users who share their free storage space with the network. Storj charges $0.015 per gigabyte of data stored and $0.05 per gigabyte downloaded, 60 percent of which goes to the farmers. Several factors affect the final earnings, including whether the farmer nodes store primary or mirror copies of data, how long they participate in the network and how well they perform in terms of up-time, bandwidth and response times. “If someone stored 1TB of data for the entire month, and that entire TB of data was downloaded once that month, they could potentially make $39,” said Philip Hutchins, CTO at Storj Labs. But the current average monthly payment for a Storj farmer node is around $2, according to the network data the company shared. Storj has also launched partnerships with FileZilla, Microsoft and other companies to build decentralized apps on top of its network, which could increase demand for Storj space. On Datum, the decentralized data market, users earn between $0.50 and $5 in DAT tokens for each promotional email they opt to open, according to Roger Haenni, the company’s CEO, though he did not share the details of how earnings are calculated. Currently the network supports email inboxes, but in the future, the company plans to provide users with the option to get paid for sharing various categories of data, such as the location data their phone collects, apps, services and websites they use, data that their smart gadgets collect and others. That last bit sounds a bit invasive on user privacy. “This [data] is currently widely tracked by cookies from various ad networks,” explains Haenni. “However, the user is not asked to explicitly opt in to share this data nor does he get paid when this data is monetized.” Datum will give the chance to claim the money that’s already being made from their data. The Datum network currently has 80,000 users, and since the launch of the Datum App in late December, users have collected 1.5 million DAT tokens, amounting to around $75,000. Gladius, the decentralized CDN, doles out $0.03 in GLA tokens per gigabyte of bandwidth of data streamed through a node (however, the states that this is an estimate based on favorable market conditions). An internet connection with a 30 mbps upload speed shared with the network for eight hours a day could earn its owner around $49 per month. In most cases, you’ve already paid for the resources you’ll be sharing on the , whether it’s your hard drive space, your CPU or your bandwidth (unless you’re on a metered connection, in which case sharing it would be unwise). However, you’ll have to factor in electricity costs of keeping your computer on, which vary depending on the region you live in. Social and data-sharing platforms won’t have any extra costs, but you’ll be responsible for keeping the balance between sharing your data and preserving your privacy. One of the real risks of earning cryptotokens is the constant price fluctuations. The value of what you earn today could double overnight — or drop by half in the same manner. This means you’ll have to choose between holding your tokens or cashing out. And there are always the risks of that will absorb users’ funds and resources only to disappear and leave them out in the cold. “Resource-sharing projects on top of the that allow users to control and profit from their own data will be the most profitable and successful projects in the future,” says Jared Tate, expert and the founder of DigiByte. However, Tate also notes that many of the current resource-sharing platforms are PR projects that will never scale. “The majority of projects out there won’t be around in five years. Most of the projects don’t even have working software, just a whitepaper and some fancy graphics on a website,” Tate says. Some users evaluate projects by examining the market cap alone, which Tate believes is the absolute worst way to gauge a projects long term viability. “So many market caps are artificially inflated by developer pre-mines or deceptive coin counts,” he warns. Another challenge users will have to overcome is what to do with the tokens they earn from their resources. For instance, if you earn Storj tokens from renting your free hard disk space, the only thing you can do with your earnings is, well, rent storage from other users, which doesn’t make sense since you already had an excess of it to begin with. Some platforms have multi-faceted economies that enable users to use their earned tokens for various purposes. For instance, in Flixxo, a decentralized streaming service, users can earn FLIXX tokens by sharing their free disk space and bandwidth to host content on the network. They can then use their earned tokens to consume videos published on the platform. But that is still a limited use case and might not be the problem they want to solve with their earnings. Digital currencies and tokens have a liquidity problem. There are very few retailers and online services that accept Bitcoin as a method of payment, and even fewer that accept other cryptocurrencies. Users often must find some online exchange that matches buyers and sellers of various digital and fiat currencies. The process is slow and complicated and involves fees at different levels. An alternative is Bancor, a decentralized liquidity network built on top of the Ethereum . Supported by its own token, BNT, Bancor enables users to convert between tokens supported on its network without the need to find a buyer or seller. So, for instance, if you’ve earned an amount of RLC tokens from renting your idle CPU time on iExec, you can instantly trade it on Bancor for, say, MANA, the token that will let you purchase VR experiences on Decentraland. Bancor already lists several dozen tokens on its network and plans to add more in the future. “The aim of this mathematic liquidity solution is to allow the long tail of tokens to emerge, by allowing any user-generated currency to be viable on day one without needing to achieve massive trade volume in order to be listed and thus become liquid,” says Galia Benartzi, the co-founder of Bancor. “Great tokens will still rise, bad ones will fail, but all will have a chance to try.” |
Announcing the TechCrunch Ethereum Meetup alongside our blockchain event in Zug | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | There are already many, many reasons to attend this coming July 6 in Zug, Switzerland. You’ll hear from industry leaders including , and , but here’s a further sweetener: we will have a follow-on event the very next day. We’re excited to announce that we’ll hold an on July 7, the day after the event. TechCrunch is producing this event with support from the Ethereum Foundation and other members of the Ethereum community. To recap: the TC Sessions: Blockchain event takes place July 6 in Zug, the Swiss Canton know as ‘Crypto Valley,’ and it’ll be followed by the on July 7th from 1-6pm at the Casino, the same venue as the blockchain event the day before. A follow-on meetup is a first for our single-day ‘TC Sessions’ events, which TechCrunch produces to cover important emerging topics like robotics, AR/VR and tech diversity. The second-day event in Zug reflects the strong demand we’ve seen from readers who are keen to further explore and understand the blockchain space. This meetup will feature core developers and leaders from the Ethereum ecosystem, including Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation developer Karl Floersch, and others. It will cover a range of topics on the technical side, including presentations and discussions around issues of scaling, protocol improvements, and improvements to consensus among other topics. We’ll have full details on the agenda very soon so stay patient. Attendees of the TC Sessions: Blockchain event who wish to attend the Ethereum Meetup will need to purchase a separate pass. Tickets are available now for the meetup and can be purchased — they are priced at 50 CHF plus VAT, that’s around $53 at current rates. We can’t wait to see you there. There are a limited number of sponsorship opportunities open for the Ethereum Meetup produced by TechCrunch. If you are interested in sponsoring the event, please . |
Microsoft is reportedly acquiring GitHub | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Earlier this year, meanwhile, GitHub was hit with on record — though the site managed to come back online after 10 or so minutes. |
White Star Capital raises new $180M fund to help startups go international | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Global venture capital firm has closed a second fund of $180 million, money it plans to invest in “transatlantic” companies that need help to go international. The VC already has a presence in London, New York, and Montreal, and as part of its new fund is adding Paris and Tokyo to the list. Oversubscribed from an initial target of $140 million, apparently, White Star says it will invest in around 20 new companies from the new fund, writing opening cheques of between $1 million and $6 million. White Star’s first fund of $70 million closed in 2015 and the VC has backed around 26 startups to date. Notably, the firm has already invested in eight companies from its second fund. They span Seed to Series B and include fintech and insurtech companies Borrowell (Canada) and (Germany), as well as “disruptive commerce” models Vention (Canada), Meero (France), and Butternut Box (U.K.). The fund has also invested in digital health companies (U.K.) and Dialogue (Canada), as well as data-as-a-service company Unacast (US). LPs in the new fund include institutional investors such as Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Fonds de solidarité FTQ (FSTQ), the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Korea Venture Investment Corporation (KVIC), Investissement Quebec, ARKEA Group, Mizuho Securities, Swen Capital Partners, Isomer Capital, Walter Financial, Clerville Investment Management, Temaris Capital, Simone Investments, and Portag3 Ventures. In addition, a number of multinational corporate groups have invested including Veolia, La Capitale, Corporate Groupe ADP, Ubisoft and Unisys Corporation through Canal Ventures. In a call last week, White Star Capital Managing Partner and co-founder Eric Martineau-Fortin told me the VC will look to focus on three specific areas of investment. They are fintech, “disruptive commerce”, and algorithms and sensors. Asked if most of the unbundling of various consumer financial services was now “done” and that we are now likely to see a next phase of consolidation, the VC didn’t disagree but pointed me to insurance, which is an industry still very much ripe for the picking. White Star has already made two insurtech investments and I got the impression it isn’t done yet. The firm is also keeping an eye on how technologies like Blockchain is developing but Martineau-Fortin said he hasn’t been persuaded that the use cases were there quite yet. More broadly, White Star’s new fund will continue to seek out companies that use data as a competitive advantage and where the fund’s “operational experience and physical presence can help companies scale internationally”. Meanwhile, to help beef up its own global presence, White Star Capital has recruited Matthieu Lattes, who was previously a VC specialist at Rothschild, as its new Partner in Paris. In addition, Shun Nagao has joined as a Venture Partner in Tokyo, and Lylan Masterman has been promoted to Partner in the VC firm’s office in New York. Alongside Martineau-Fortin (who tells me he is partly relocating from New York to Paris to lead the firm’s presence in France), the firm’s other personnel are Jean-Francois Marcoux (the former co-founder of mobile game publisher Ludia), and Christian Hernandez Gallardo (a former Facebook executive) who heads up White Star’s London operations. Adds Martineau-Fortin: “Our growing team has extensive operational experience and we are passionate about supporting ambitious entrepreneurs with truly global ambitions. Internationalisation represents a huge opportunity for many high-growth companies and our global reach means we can support companies looking to scale outside of their home market. We become active partners to all the entrepreneurs we work with and the new fund will enable us to help even more companies realise their potential”. |
The robot revolution is just beginning | Sanjit Dang | 2,018 | 6 | 3 |
Every year, Time magazine gets swamped with pitches from thousands of companies, all convinced product deserves to be included in Time’s “25 Best Inventions” list. This past December, the magazine reserved its cover for a Pixar-like, 11-inch armless robot named . Jibo — a so-called “social robot” — is just the latest example of a clear phenomenon: A new generation of exponentially more intelligent and capable robots is on the way. In fact, they’re already everywhere we look: over our heads, in our cars and operating rooms, next to us on the assembly lines, in our military and on the last mile. And the prospect of exponentially more robots, crunching exponentially more data, necessitates not just a lot more computing power but also an entirely new product architecture. An article written in 2015 by a former Pentagon robotics researcher looks more prescient by the day. That summer, Gill Pratt, who oversaw robotics technology as a manager of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said robot capabilities had crossed a key threshold. Improvements in electric energy storage and the exponential growth of computation power and data storage, he argued, had enabled robots to learn and make decisions informed by the experiences of other robots. His expectation back then? Robots would multiply like rabbits because they were no longer simple-minded, single-purposed machines. And as robots learn more and more, Pratt argued, more people will have uses for them. Today, that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Demand for robotics is increasingly broad-based. Everybody seems to want them. To get a sense of this growth, consider: In 2014, the Boston Consulting Group forecast the global market for robotics would reach $67 billion over the coming decade. Just , BCG last June revised that dollar figure upward — by another $20 billion. The DARPA horse Industry has for decades been a core consumer of robotics. Today, of the world’s robots are still used in factories. What’s different is that those robots are a lot smaller, more perceptive and more collaborative than their predecessors. And the flood of venture capital into the space ensures we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in our distribution centers and warehouses in coming years. Consider that between 2016 and 2017, venture capital investments in industrial robots , from $402 million to $1.2 billion. Five years ago, startups in this same space raised just $195 million. Also interesting about this current robotics explosion is that companies from a wide swath of other industries, from retailers to hotels, are embracing the benefits of smarter machines. The , for example, has begun using artificial intelligence tools like machine vision and natural language processing to handle claims. These expanding use cases help explain why Boston Consulting Group now expects the commercial robotics market to grow to $23 billion by 2025 — 34 percent higher than originally predicted. It’s consumers, though, who account for the biggest spike in demand. BCG’s projections of the consumer market’s size rose by . Many prominent firms, including , and , have noticed and have invested in educational and “entertainment robots.” As we speak, there’s a fierce race to develop self-driving automotive technology. Autonomous vehicle startups raised $3 billion in 2017, more than three times the prior year’s take. Robot teachers and companions are attracting attention, too. And we can’t forget drones. Beyond their many commercial applications, particularly in security, personal drones are an increasingly popular gadget. Chinese drone maker DJI alone has raised more than $100 million from U.S. venture capital firms. (Photo by Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images) At their core, robots create a lot of data. In fact, that’s the only way they work. And several trends in robotics will increase demand for more processors and an entirely new product architecture. The coming wave of robots will need to hear more, see more and feel more. Each of those capabilities necessitates its own sensors, such as microphones, cameras and, to a lesser extent, touchscreen displays. And each of requires its own processors. Then there’s the software underlying robotic capabilities. We believe AI, computer vision, natural language processing and blockchain will be the key enabling forces here. Robots will also have a greater need to communicate — both via the cloud and without access to it.
After all, many, if not most, of today’s robots are only as effective as their internet connections. And we expect the growing number and sophistication of robots will place enormous strain on network bandwidth, turning smart robots into slow ones. With all of this activity, it’s clear that the robot revolution is only just beginning. |
VCs like what they are hearing out of the podcasting sector | Jason Rowley | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Podcasts are television for the earbud generation. And podcasts have been around for a surprisingly long time. If you’re one of the folks who got hooked on podcasts around 2014, when Sarah Koenig and other producers from This American Life launched the wildly popular Serial podcast, you might think that it’s a brand new medium. But podcasts — audio that’s packaged and syndicated over RSS — have been around . And although many podcasters make money, typically through sponsorships, the podcasting industry (such as it is) hasn’t received much in the way of venture funding until quite recently. 2017 was a pivotal year for venture investment in the industry. In the chart below, we plot deal and dollar volume for venture rounds raised by companies that are either in Crunchbase’s or use the word “podcast” in their descriptions: In charts like this, one typically expects a significant spike in dollar volume to come from one really big round, but that’s not what happened in the podcast world. Rather, there were several large deals struck with early-stage companies in the space. Here are some of the highlights from 2017: So far in 2018, a number of other podcasting startups also raised venture funding, including West Hollywood-based podcast network , which raised . A company with a name that’s a little on-the-nose, , went through Y Combinator. Why has the podcast industry taken so long to appeal to VCs in a big way? In part, it’s a fairly decentralized industry. While there are some larger podcasting networks, most podcasts are still produced and promoted independently. But, perhaps more importantly, the business value of podcasts has been difficult to quantify until relatively recently. Unlike a web page or streaming video platform, where basically every user action can be tracked and optimized, historically it’s been difficult to analyze podcast listening habits and target ads. But this is changing. Podcasts are now a mainstream medium for news and entertainment. And in December 2017, Apple, a longtime podcast booster and the largest distributor of podcasts, rolled out podcast episode analytics. This lets podcast producers and their advertisers know whether people actually listened to the entire episode and heard the ads. (Note: a few smaller podcast players offered similar analytics and ad monitoring features before Apple did.) This leads some investors to believe they can achieve “venture scale” returns by putting money into podcasting startups. |
Former Twitter employees prove innovation isn’t just for profit | Gregory Manalo | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | There’s no secret the tech industry suffers a reputation for harmfully disrupting a . But not everyone in tech is to blame for the negative effects. In 2015 Ben Kovacs and Joel Lunenfeld founded the non-profit , a buy-one give-one mixed martial arts gym/after-school program that now boasts over 300 adult members and youth mentees. Kovacs attributes the success of the gyms growth partly to Dick Costolo’s example at Twitter. “He talked to the people, he made everyone feel important, everyone thought he was their friend,” Kovacs said. “And I realized that we needed to build a similar type culture if we wanted to be here for the next couple of decades.” The first of its kind gym is outgrowing its current space and is in the process of securing a second location to meet the community’s needs. Kovacs plans on having a proper classroom space, nap pods, indoor/outdoor BBQ and lounge area, as well as an all-youth jiujitsu and boxing program from 5-9 p.m. that runs concurrently with the adults. “Imagine a place a kid could go every day and essentially have everything they need to be healthy, to get their exercise out, eat nutritious meals, and of course do their homework,” said Kovacs. You can donate to the new site on their page. |
‘Arrested Development’ struggles to shake off recent controversies | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | Netflix’s revival of may have had a mixed reception from critics and fans, but the dysfunctional Bluth family isn’t done yet. Five years after the premiere of the much-anticipated fourth season, is back for season five — or rather, the first eight episodes of the season, with more to follow later this year. On the latest episode of , we’re joined by TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney to discuss our thoughts on the show. For many fans, this new season may feel like a return to form. Not everything works — there’s still some awkward editing and greenscreen — but it’s back to the format of the show’s classic episodes, with lots more delightful bickering between characters like Michael (Jason Bateman), George Michael (Michael Cera), Gob (Will Arnett), Maeby (Alia Shawkat) and Lucille (Jessica Walter). Unfortunately, it’s tough to talk about the show’s quality without also acknowledging , where actor Jeffrey Tambor was asked about yelling at Walter, who apparently started crying while a number of the male cast members seemed to defend Tambor’s behavior. They’ve since , but we still wrestle with how the controversy . We also talk about another big piece of streaming news, namely after it was canceled by Syfy. 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 . |
Will smart home tech make us care more about privacy? | Fen Zhao | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | For most people, the thought of a smart device sharing their intimate conversations and sending those recordings along to their acquaintances is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. And for one family in Portland, it’s a nightmare that became when their Amazon Echo sent a recording of a private conversation to a random contact in their phone book. Mercifully, the recorded conversation was fairly banal — a chat about home renovations. But as smart home technology is swiftly being integrated into our daily lives and private spaces, it’s not difficult to imagine far worse scenarios. Smart speakers record residents’ conversations. Thermostats equipped with motion sensors track the whereabouts of each household member, and when they leave the house. Refrigerators and spending habits. One thing is clear: When residents invite smart technology into their homes, they are gambling with their privacy. Ironically, the smart home may turn out to be the salvation of online privacy itself. Internet companies have gotten away with hoarding people’s personal data for so long in part because of what experts call “ ”: While most people claim to care deeply about online privacy, very few of them take action to protect it. Just look at the recent furor over Facebook’s lack of data privacy protections, which resulted in the compromise of 87 million users’ personal information. Though plenty of people tweeted they would #DeleteFacebook, how many actually permanently closed their accounts? Certainly far fewer than 87 million. While experts disagree about why this paradox exists, at least some of the problem seems rooted in the fact that online space is virtual, whereas our privacy instincts evolved in physical space. By bringing virtual privacy incursions into the physical world — particularly into the protected private space of the home — smart home technology could short-circuit that dynamic. The internet is intangible, and so its privacy risks appear to be too. It’s one thing to know, in the back of your mind, that Facebook has the ability to comb through your private messages. But when devices in your home are recording your spoken conversations and physical movements, it’s harder to ignore the looming threat of potentially disastrous privacy violations. If smart fridges and smart locks get people to take online privacy as seriously as physical privacy, they could do what the Equifax hack and other high-profile data breaches could not: actually get people to change their behavior. If users vote for privacy with their feet — or their wallets — they could spur a wholesale rethinking of the online economy, away from one-sided exploitation and toward greater trust and transparency. In Western culture, the home has long been recognized as a protected zone; the Talmud includes against putting in windows in a house that directly look into a neighbor’s. When a stranger peeps through our window or listens at our door, millennia-old norms tell us we should chase them away. This desire for isolation may stem from a fundamental biological need; whether you’re a human or a possum, physical withdrawal means concealment and protection from predation, making privacy an evolutionary life-or-death matter. But websites and apps have no physical presence in our lives. A software algorithm, no matter how malicious, doesn’t have the visceral menace of an unknown face at the glass. The internet disarms us by making our interactions feel abstract, even unreal. One 2016 posited that this sense of unreality leads to contradictory attitudes about online privacy: While people know rationally that they should be concerned about virtual incursions, they simply don’t have a strong “gut feeling” about it intuitively. And when making decisions in the moment, gut feeling often wins out. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that online, there is less of a clear distinction between private and public space. We use social media to communicate simultaneously with hundreds or thousands of anonymous followers and with our closest friends. Email inboxes, Slack channels and the like are more obviously “closed” spaces, but even there it’s often unclear to users which algorithms might be listening in. Even Snapchat — known for auto-deleting users’ photos, videos and chats to protect their privacy — announced it would in fall 2017, to relatively little backlash. It’s hard to think about protecting ourselves from the stranger peeping in the window when we’re not even sure if it’s a public or private space he or she is looking into. What’s more, many users tend to imagine online “walls” that aren’t really there. Multiple studies have shown that the mere existence of a privacy policy on a website makes users feel more secure, even though a policy in itself is no guarantee that their data won’t be sold to third parties. When the internet enters the clearly private space of the home, some of that ambiguity will disappear. It’s telling that a November 2017 by Deloitte found that consumers are more cautious in general about smart home devices compared to general online activities or even other categories of IoT. Forty percent of respondents said that they felt smart home technology “reveals too much about their personal lives,” while another 40 percent said they were worried about their usage being tracked. By comparison, they were less mistrustful of other IoT applications like autonomous vehicles and smart car technology, even though they have similar tracking capabilities. And that survey only considers peoples’ reaction to fairly abstract privacy risks. The reality is that in a smart home, security vulnerabilities and data breaches can have much more dramatic real-world impacts. On his blog Charged, developer and journalist Owen Williams recently his experience trying to figure out who or what kept overriding his brightness settings for his Philips Hue smart light bulbs. It turned out that an app he’d enabled to dim his office lights at night had taken over all the bulbs hooked up to Williams’ Hue system and was keeping them at one uniform brightness. As Williams points out, if a malicious app accomplished the same feat, it could extort money from the user by “randomly changing the brightness or color of lights until they pay.” When a cyberattack results in lights that won’t stop flashing — or doors that won’t lock, windows that won’t close, or a fridge turns itself off and melts all your ice cream — it’s logical that people’s reactions to digital privacy incursions will become that much more extreme. Image courtesy of RamCreativ How can internet companies thrive in the privacy-sensitive space of the home? If privacy behavior is mostly about gut feelings, they’ll need to reinforce positive ones by winning consumers’ trust. Trust has not historically been a major factor in the adoption of complex new technologies — research into technology acceptance models on both virtual and IoT systems shows that usability has been much more important. Even heavy users of Google and Facebook probably wouldn’t say that they trust either company very deeply. However, a look at another internet giant, Airbnb, shows how this calculus changes when users’ homes and not just their online identities are involved. Airbnb puts trust at the core of its business model. Hosts are only willing to open their homes to strangers because the company empowers them with access to information about potential guests (which the guests themselves choose to provide), including their bio, reviews and public Facebook profile. By focusing on forging connections between hosts and guests, Airbnb builds community and reduces the uncertainty that pervades users’ relationships with so many internet companies. Airbnb is also relatively transparent about how it collects and analyzes user data, and often puts it to use in ways that increase users’ control over how they use the platform — for instance, to . The result: It pushes users’ concerns about opening their homes or staying in others’ spaces out of the realm of gut feeling into that of a more considered, rational (and easy to ignore) concern. If they want to thrive amid rising privacy concerns in the long-term, manufacturers of smart home products, would be wise to take a page from Airbnb’s book. They should find ways to forge trust through absolute transparency, sharing with customers what data is being collected and how it’s being used. They should create new business models that don’t rely on collecting terabytes and terabytes of personal data, but on building trust — and even community — with customers. Companies should not only implement best practices for personal data encryption, storage, sharing and deletion, but design their products around the customer’s ability to control their own data. If the development of IoT follows this path, the next 10 to 15 years won’t bring an inevitable erosion of privacy, but its renaissance. |
Whither VR/AR? | Jon Evans | 2,018 | 6 | 3 | “Despite many pronouncements that 2016 was the year of VR, a more apt word for virtual reality might be absence,” caustically last summer, noting that during that year forecasts of combined sales of VR hardware and software dropped from $5.1bn to $3.6bn to the harsh reality of $1.8bn. But hey, one rough holiday season does not an industry make, right? Surely in 2017 things began to — — oh. “ .” So much for the that VR headset shipments would grow exponentially for years. Crow appears to be the for nearly every these days. But that was before the , right? Except … the Go seems to have sold at most in its first few weeks, far behind the comparably priced Nintendo Switch released months earlier, and as I write this languishes well outside the top 20 of Amazon’s “Video Games > Accessories” bestsellers. I mean. These aren’t numbers. Sony’s PlayStation VR has sold almost 3 million units! … which is to say, it’s reached almost 4% of PlayStation owners. But aren’t VR and AR supposed to be the Next Big Thing, not the Next Little Niche? And doesn’t that mean their reach is supposed to grow , not linearly? AR is in everyone’s hands, of course, courtesy of Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, Facebook’s AR Studio, etc. But, quick, name a popular/successful AR smartphone app a) that isn’t Pokémon GO b) doesn’t involve furniture! If I’m pointing accusatory fingers at anyone I’m pointing them at myself. I too expected VR/AR to be much further along by now. I though we’d see hit games that could only be played in VR. I thought Pokémon GO, which launched twenty-three months ago, was the harbinger of a whole new wave of AR worlds, some of which would then begin to interrelate and cross over. In the long run maybe it will still seem that way. But in the short term — — well, I dropped by the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara this week, and my main takeaway was that the industry has essentially abandoned the consumer AR/VR space, at least for now. Everyone’s aiming at AR/VR for work now. But how many jobs are there, really, where complex information needs to be accessed in a hands-free way? How many problems can be solved by VR conferencing but not videoconferencing? Sure, they exist, and the tech can be spectacularly great for them; but, again, for now at least, we’re talking Next Little Niche. I did see one really eye-opening thing, which led me to the sudden belief that the humble QR code will achieve its apotheosis in mixed reality: That said this is kind of genius: "mixed reality backpacks" which are basically just wearable QR codes. Prediction: much-maligned QR codes, often camouflaged except to machine eyes, will become the de facto standard for meatspace-AR bridges. — Jon Evans (@rezendi) …but what use is a bridge between two worlds when nobody bothers spending any time in one of them? “But gaming!” you say. “I mean, immersive storytelling!” Sure. I’m super excited about that too; I’m a novelist in my spare time, after all. And that is the industry bright spot right now; “location-based VR,” i.e. “VR arcades,” are , and they seem like an obvious fit with the recent upsurge of immersive theater such as ‘s , ‘s , and . …But all the VR / mixed-reality immersive storytelling I’ve seen has been really cool for about 15 minutes max, heavy on hype and buzzwords, and basically failed at telling anything more than the crudest of stories. “Rather than storytelling, you’re storyliving,” enthused some Industrial Light & Magic folks at an event I went to a few months ago, and that sure sounds nice — but the VR ‘storyliving’ I’ve seen to date is all far, far less sophisticated than that of even my teenage Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. I know. It’s the very early days of a new technology. It’s expensive. It’s still hardware-intensive. We’re still figuring out its best uses, and how it interacts with human physical location, and a whole new grammar of storytelling. But the Oculus Kickstarter launched almost six years ago, and I’ve seen a whole lot of VR/AR/mixed-reality demos since then, and every time, I walk away thinking: “This technology has so much .” But in order to be the Next Big Thing at some point you have to actually start realizing your potential. Maybe Magic Leap will do it. (Not joking. At least, not entirely.) Otherwise, though, the disheartening truth is that, despite the low-price new standalone hardware, despite all the effort that’s gone into software and design and storytelling, I still don’t feel like we’re meaningfully closer to that than we were two years ago. Please, somebody show me I’m wrong. |
ASUS’ new ZenBook Pro features a 5.5-inch touchscreen instead of a touchpad | Catherine Shu | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | The event today at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan had three main hooks: health, ergonomics and, most importantly, second screens. The headliner was the premium ZenBook Pro 14 and 15 (pictured above), the latest versions of ASUS’ premium notebook that feature a touchscreen where the touchpad would usually be Meant to increase the laptops’ multitasking possibilities, the 5.5-inch ScreenPad functions as a second screen for things like messaging or apps including a calculator, a video and music player or calendar. It can also be used as a launchpad for apps on the ZenBook Pro’s main display or serve as a function command screen for Microsoft Office programs. During his presentation, ASUS global PC and phone marketing senior director Marcel Campos said the ZenBook Pro 15 was designed with three kinds of professionals in mind: video makers, photographers and 3D designers. It has a 15.6-inch 4K UHD NanoEdge display with Delta E<2 Color Accuracy (ASUS says the Pro 15’s display has been validated by Pantone) and runs on an Intel Core i9 processor, 16GB of memory, a 1TB PCIe SSD and a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. The Pro 15 is 18.9mm thick and weighs 1.88 kg. It will go on sale in mid-July starting at $2,299. The 14-inch ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 also has a 5.5-inch ScreenPad and boosts an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, a 1TB PCIe SSD and GTX 1050 MAX-Q GPU. It is 17.9 mm thick and weights in at 1.6kg. Both of the latest Zenbook Pro models are built with a new hinge design ASUS calls ErgoLift, which props the laptop’s keyboards up at 5.5 degree angle when it is opened. ErgoLift is also built into the latest models of ASUS’ Zenbook and VivoBook series. ASUS ZenBook S The ZenBook S is 12.9-mm thick and weighs 1 kg and runs on an Intel Core i7 processor, with 16GB of memory, a 1TB PCIe SSD and up to 13.5 hours of battery life. It has a 4K UHD, 331ppi NanoEdge display and 2 USB-C drives. ASUS claims up to 13.5 hours of battery, which will be released on June 11 for $1,199. ASUS VivoBook S15 The latest iterations of the VivoBook series, the 14-inch screen S14 and 15.6-inch S15, will come in 5 colors and also feature ErgoLift hinges. The S14 weights 1.4 kg and is 18-mm thick, while the S15 is 1.8 kg, 18-mm. Both have Intel Core i7-8550U or Intel Core i3-8130U processors, a NVIDIA GeForce MX150 or MX130 GPU and up to 16 GB of memory. The S15 will launch in the United States for $699 later this year. ASUS VivoWatch Other notable launches by ASUS include a blood pressure monitor that the company says is not a smartwatch or fitness tracker, even though it looks a lot like one. Called the ASUS VivoWatch, the wearable delivers real-time blood pressure data in 15 seconds, has a Gorilla Glass screen and ECG sensor on front of device and claims non-stop 28 day battery life. Like last year, ASUS didn’t debut new ZenFones, though it did show off a collaboration with Intel and Microsoft called Project Precog, the main fruit of which will be a dual-screen laptop with AI-powered features that is supposed to launch next year. ASUS also held an event on Monday before the official start of Computex today, focusing on its Republic of Gamers line of PCs and peripherals. There it , a rival to the Razer Phone for gamers, that also has a 90Hz display, meant for smoother display of animations, and a 2.96GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip. This was in addition to new gaming laptops, the Strix Scar II, which starts at $1,999, and the Strik Hero II, which will start at $1,699. Both have six-core Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8750H or Core i5-8300H processors, 15.6-inch 144Hz 1080p “IPS-level” displays, up to 32GB of RAM, with a standard GPU of GTX 1060. |
null | Sarah Buhr | 2,018 | 1 | 25 | null |
Ride-hailing firm Grab launches new venture to back startups in Southeast Asia | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | Grab, the ride-hailing firm that acquired Uber’s Southeast Asia business, is aiming to catalyze the early-stage startup scene in Southeast Asia after it launched an accelerator and investment unit called Grab Ventures. The six-year-old company has already made investments and acquisitions — and buying and — and Grab Ventures will build on that by making 8-10 investments over the coming 24 month period, but it is also offering different kind of support. The firm will offer an accelerator program for “growth-stage” companies and play a hand incubating new services inside Grab, according to Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures. That accelerator effort — called ‘Velocity’ — will launch its first intake before the end of the year with around four to six companies per batch. “It’s time for us to reflect on the tremendous support we’ve seen over the years and give back to the community,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “We have a responsibility to empower the next generation of startups in Southeast Asia. We have a strong belief in taking a partnership approach, we know we can’t do it alone.” On the partner side, Grab has recruited Singapore government agencies Info-communications Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Enterprise SG to aid its efforts. Taken together, Grab said it is aiming to help build an ecosystem of companies in Southeast Asia, a region of over 600 million consumers where the internet economy is tipped to grow from $50 billion per year in 2017 to over $200 billion by 2025, . Ride-hailing as a segment is forecast to rise to $20 billion by 2025 up from $5 billion last year. Grab believes that now it has reached scale with over 100 million downloads and more than 200 cities, the firm can help other startups rise up. “Our object is to build new startups inside Grab and scale existing promising growth-stage startups. “Our hope for them is to grow from local leaders to regional champions and maybe global challengers,” said Yeo. Grab Cycle is one business that Grab Ventures has incubated Unlike traditional accelerator programs, Velocity isn’t aimed at a particular type of company while it is fairly general in terms of the stages that they are at. Yeo said the idea is to be flexible and work with companies that can benefit from Grab’s regional business and its various business units, which beyond taxis include food delivery, mobile payment and financial services. “[Selection] depends on the startup, sector and industry,” Yeo explained. “Ideally they’ve got funding and are looking to scale up their business — which means typically going into more countries or accessing a larger customer base.” However, Velocity will not take equity/offer investment as part of the program, although there may be investment opportunities with Grab Ventures further now the line, according to Yeo. On the investment side, the focus is also broad, too. Yeo said that Grab ventures isn’t a dedicated VC arm. There’s no set check size per investment (nor a total fund size) but it is broadly looking to back 8-10 companies in areas that align with Grab’s business, although financial services looks like being a major focus since Grab has already built a strong business in taxis, logistics and ( ) food delivery. Yeo said Grab would back more startups than that target if it finds the right opportunities. He said the business will identify opportunities using its teams in the eight markets that Grab is present. While Singapore, where Grab is based, is a key focus for the business alongside Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s fourth most-populous country, Yeo said Grab Ventures will look for investment opportunities across the Southeast Asian region. |
Udacity and Google launch free career courses for interview prep, resume writing and more | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | today a new partnership with Google that will make a number of career courses freely available to recent graduates and mid-career professionals. The free career courses, which mark a first for Udacity, will focus on helping employees improve their chances of getting a job, no matter whether that’s a first job or we are talking about a mid-career course change. The two companies trialed this approach with the “Networking for Career Success” course, which launched in March. At the time, they made that course available to and it’s now part of the 12 courses Udacity and Google are launching together. The new courses cover a wide swath of topics that range from helping you refresh your resume and write a cover letter to giving you tips for optimizing your GitHub profile and strengthening your LinkedIn Network. But there also are more technical topics, and Udacity will offer a “Data Structures and Algorithms in Python” class, as well as a course on using Swift for technical interviews. “This next generation of talent will enter the job market possessing a diverse range of skills, but facing a lot of competition, and a rapidly-shifting hiring landscape,” writes Udacity VP of Careers Kathleen Mullaney. “They’re going to need every resource they can get to make sure they’re able to compete successfully for available roles. They are not alone in benefiting from this kind of support. Mid-career professionals pursuing career change, older workers returning to the workforce, and anyone looking ahead to a job search, will find these courses valuable as well.” Udacity has long partnered with industry partners, so it’s no surprise the company is now working with Google again. Google itself has worked with both Udacity and its competitor Coursera over the years for launching both career-oriented courses and more technical classes that range from and classes to . |
Indonesia’s EV Hive raises $20M for its co-working business to rival WeWork | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | , but that isn’t stopping local rivals from building up their business. In Indonesia, — a co-working brand first started by a VC firm — has pulled in $20 million for expansion as its U.S.-based rival increases its focus on Indonesia. The company was founded in 2015, by seed-stage investment firm East Ventures and a few friends, and today it counts 21 locations across Indonesia with eight more in development right now. This Series A round was led by Softbank Ventures Korea with new investors H&CK Partners, Tigris Investment, Naver, LINE Ventures and STIC Investments taking part. Added to those names, a range of existing backers also put into the round, including East Ventures, SMDV, Sinar Mas Land, Insignia Venture Partners, Intudo Ventures and angel investors Michael Widjaya and Chris Angkasa. EV Hive CEO Carlson Lau told TechCrunch that the firm plans to add 20 more locations next year as it expands its focus from Jakarta and Medan to cover more of the country, which is the world’s fourth largest with a population of over 250 million people. Further down the line, it aims to reach 100 spaces by 2022 with moves into markets like Thailand and Vietnam. The company makes its mark with large spaces — typically over 7,000 square meters per location — and it sees vast untapped potential in Indonesia, where Lau said there are 10 cities with populations of two million or more. Lau said the company is already fielding expansion requests from overseas but for now the focus is growing a presence in Indonesia. The startup is also looking to do more for its members, which number some 3,000 plus as of May. Not unlike WeWork, it is building out a services play which includes a member-based marketplace that lets fellow members sell services to each other. Typically, Lau said, the focus is areas like accounting, branding and marketing but where there are gaps, EV Hive is stepping up to offer its own services, too. The goal there is to increase revenue and broaden the services on offer. “A a lot of co-working spaces compete on the same plain, whether it is design or giving away freebies, but we feel we have strong execution,” Lau said. “We fill out at the fastest space and the lowest cost. The nearest competitor has four spaces and just one-tenth of our floor space.” “We’re also in a good position with a lot of top VCs invested in us and we’ve built an ecosystem of different community partners,” he added. Lau ruled out potential acquisition-led expansion — , and — but he did concede that the co-working market in the region is getting crowded, particularly as those who started out “thinking the business is cool” begin to realize it is tougher than it looks. “There will be a wave of consolidation in the coming months,” the EV Hive CEO predicted. |
Fitbit has shipped more than a million Versa smartwatches | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | null |
App developers get their wish with expanded support for free trials | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | A group of Apple developers recently banded together as a group called “ ” in order to plead with Apple, en masse, to allow them to offer free trials of their apps to end users. While not a traditional union with dues, it represented the first time a large group of developers pushed back at Apple’s control of the App Store’s policies. Today, it seems, the developers are having their voices heard. In Apple’s newly updated App Store , the company has changed its policy around free trials. Previously, it allowed free trials of subscription-based apps, but now any app can offer a free trial. The change, spotted by , clarifies how this system will operate. Apple says developers of non-subscription apps may offer a “free time-based trial period” before presenting a full unlock option by setting up a non-consumable in-app purchase that doesn’t cost any money. The in-app purchase must specify the time frame the trial is being offered, and clearly explain to users what content and services it includes. While Apple may have already been considering support for free trials for all apps, it’s notable that the change followed The Developer Union’s open on this matter. That gives the appearance, at least, that the developers had some sway. This is important because the group says they plan to advocate for other changes in the future, including a “more reasonable revenue cut” and “other community-driven, developer-friendly changes.” As for the request for free trial support, there are currently 636 apps backing this cause on the union’s website – and the majority are indie developers looking to grow their businesses, not the major players. Their letter specifically asked Apple to commit to “allowing free trials for all apps for the App Stores before July 2019.” [Update: as to why the support for free trials is still lacking.] The updated support for free trials wasn’t the only significant change in the new App Store guidelines. Apple also added a new section that requires apps to implement “appropriate security measures” for handling user data – a rule that could allow it to boot out shadier applications. Another privacy-related change said in-app ads can’t target “sensitive user data” and have to be age-appropriate. The company addressed the situation with the of the Steam Link app, as well, by saying that cross-platform apps may allow users to access content acquired on the other platforms, but only if it’s also available as an in-app purchase. And Apple spelled out that apps cannot mine for cryptocurrency in the background, and explained how crypto apps should operate: (i) Wallets: Apps may facilitate virtual currency storage, provided they are offered by developers enrolled as an organization. (ii) Mining: Apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device (e.g. cloud-based mining). (iii) Exchanges: Apps may facilitate transactions or transmissions of cryptocurrency on an approved exchange, provided they are offered by the exchange itself. (iv) Initial Coin Offerings: Apps facilitating Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), cryptocurrency futures trading, and other crypto-securities or quasi-securities trading must come from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants (“FCM”), or other approved financial institutions and must comply with all applicable law. (v) Cryptocurrency apps may not offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks, etc. |
Apple is introducing a health record API for developers this fall | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | For all of the news that Apple managed to cram into today’s 135-minute(!) WWDC keynote this morning, the event was actually pretty light on health care updates. It was a bit of a surprise, given how much of a focus the company has put on the space at past events. Apple did announce an interesting health tidbit today — something that likely just got squeezed out of keynote the event late in the game. Starting this fall, the company will open up health record data to third-party iOS apps through a new API. The feature will make it possible for users to share health data from more than 500 hospitals/clinics with third-party apps. There are, clearly, some serious concerns around sharing this sort of sensitive data. The company is addressing this in a couple of ways. For starters, it’s all opt-in, obviously. Your personal information won’t be shared with any apps unless you explicitly allow it to be. The health records are also encrypted and stored locally on the phone. “When consumers choose to share their health record data with trusted apps,” according to Apple, “the data flows directly from HealthKit to the third-party app and is not sent to Apple’s servers.” As far as specific applications for such data, Apple points to medication tracking as one of the key case uses. Medisafe will be among the first to use the information in this way, letting users import prescription lists, in order to push reminders, without having to manually enter all of that information in the app. Disease management is another possibility, for something along the lines of a diabetes app, which customizes recommendations based on health information. There’s also some applications for broader medical research here, providing anonymized health data for laboratory purposes. |
Forget DeepFakes, Deep Video Portraits are way better (and worse) | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | The videos (often explicit) with the faces of the subjects replaced by those of celebrities, set off alarm bells just about everywhere early this year. And in case you thought that sort of thing had gone away because people found it or unconvincing, the practice is back with the highly convincing “Deep Video Portraits,” which refines and improves the technique. To be clear, I don’t want to conflate this interesting research with the loathsome practice of putting celebrity faces on adult film star bodies. They’re also totally different implementations of deep learning-based image manipulation. But this application of technology is clearly here to stay and it’s only going to get better — so we had best keep pace with it so we don’t get taken by surprise. is the title of a paper submitted for consideration this August at SIGGRAPH; it describes an improved technique for reproducing the motions, facial expressions and speech movements of one person using the face of another. Here’s a mild example: What’s special about this technique is how comprehensive it is. It uses a video of a target person, in this case President Obama, to get a handle on what constitutes the face, eyebrows, corners of the mouth, background and so on, and how they move normally. Then, by carefully tracking those same landmarks on a source video it can make the necessary distortions to the president’s face, using their own motions and expressions as sources for that visual information. So not only does the body and face move like the source video, but every little nuance of expression is captured and reproduced using the target person’s own expressions! If you look closely, even the shadows behind the person (if present) are accurate. The researchers verified the effectiveness of this by comparing video of a person actually saying something on video with what the deep learning network produced using that same video as a source. “Our results are nearly indistinguishable from the real video,” says one of the researchers. And it’s true. So, while you could use this to make video of anyone who’s appeared on camera appear to say whatever you want them to say — in your voice, it should be mentioned — there are practical applications as well. The video shows how dubbing a voice for a movie or show could be improved by syncing the character’s expression properly with the voice actor. There’s no way to make a person do something or make an expression that’s too far from what they do on camera, though. For instance, the system can’t synthesize a big grin if the person is looking sour the whole time (though it might try and fail hilariously). And naturally there are all kinds of little bugs and artifacts. So for now the hijinks are limited. But as you can see from the comparison with previous attempts at doing this, the science is advancing at a rapid pace. The differences between last year’s models and this year’s are clearly noticeable, and 2019’s will be more advanced still. back when that viral video of the eagle picking up the kid was making the rounds. “I’m aware of the ethical implications,” co-author Justus Theis . “That is also a reason why we published our results. I think it is important that the people get to know the possibilities of manipulation techniques.” If you’ve ever thought about starting a video forensics company, now might be the time. Perhaps a deep learning system to detect deep learning-based image manipulation is just the ticket. The paper describing Deep Video Portraits, from researchers at Technicolor, Stanford, the University of Bath, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Technical University of Munich, is available for you to read . |
Facebook data misuse firm snubs UK watchdog’s legal order | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | The company at the center of a major Facebook data misuse scandal has failed to respond to a legal order issued by the U.K.’s data protection watchdog to provide a U.S. voter with all the personal information it holds on him. An enforcement notice was served on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections and the deadline for a response passed without it providing a response today. The enforcement order followed a complaint by the U.S. academic, professor David Carroll, that the original Subject Access Request (SAR) he made under European law seeking to obtain his personal data had not been satisfactorily fulfilled. My prepared statement to committees today on my data quest to recover my Cambridge Analytica data under UK/EU law. The company did not respond to the Enforcement Order due today. We are now in uncharted waters. — David Carroll 🦅 (@profcarroll) The academic has spent more than a year trying to obtain the data Cambridge Analytica/SCL held on him after learning the company had built psychographic profiles of U.S. voters for the 2016 presidential election, when it was working for the Trump campaign. Speaking in front of the EU parliament’s justice, civil liberties and home affairs (LIBE) committee today, Carroll said: “We have heard nothing [from SCL in response to the ICO’s enforcement order]. So they have not respected the regulator. They have not co-operated with the regulator. They are not respecting the law, in my opinion. So that’s very troubling — because they seem to be trying to use liquidation to evade their responsibility as far as we can tell.” While he is not a U.K. citizen, Carroll discovered his personal data had been processed in the U.K. so he decided to bring a test case under U.K. law. The ICO supported his complaint — and last month ordered Cambridge Analytica/SCL Elections to hand over everything it holds on him, warning that failure to comply with the order is a criminal offense that can carry an unlimited fine. At the same time — and pretty much at the height of a storm of publicity around the data misuse scandal — Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections announced insolvency proceedings, what they described as “unfairly negative media coverage.” Its has been silent ever since. Though company directors, senior management and investors were quickly spotted attaching themselves to . So the bankruptcy proceedings look rather more like an exit strategy to try to escape the snowballing scandal and cover any associated data trails. There are a lot of data trails though. Back in April Facebook admitted that data on had been passed to Cambridge Analytica without most of the people’s knowledge or consent. “I expected to help set precedents of data sovereignty in this case. But I did not expect to be trying to also set rules of liquidation as a way to avoid responsibility for potential data crimes,” Carroll also told the LIBE committee. “So now that this is seeming to becoming a criminal matter we are now in uncharted waters. “I’m seeking full disclosure… so that I can evaluate if my opinions were influenced for the presidential election. I suspect that they were, I suspect that I was exposed to malicious information that was trying to [influence my vote] — whether it did is a different question.” He added that he intends to continue to pursue a claim for full disclosure via the courts, arguing that the only way to assess whether for the purposes of manipulating political opinions — which is what Cambridge Analytica/SCL stands accused of misusing Facebook data for — is to see how the company structured and processed the information it sucked out of Facebook’s platform. “If the predictions of my personality are in 80-90% then we can understand that their model has the potential to affect a population — even if it’s just a tiny slice of the population. Because in the US only about 70,000 voters in three states decided the election,” he added. The LIBE committee hearing in the European Union’s parliament is the first of a series of planned sessions focused on digging into the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal and “setting out a way forward,” as committee chair Claude Moraes put it. Today’s hearing took evidence from former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Sandy Parakilas; investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr; Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie; and the U.K.’s ICO Elizabeth Denham, along with her deputy, James Dipple-Johnstone. The Information Commissioner’s Office has been running a more-than-year-long investigation into political ad targeting on online platforms — which now of course encompasses the Cambridge Analytica scandal and much more besides. Denham described it today as “unprecedented in scale” — and likely the largest investigation ever undertaken by a data protection agency in Europe. The inquiry is looking at “exactly what data went where; from whom; and how that flowed through the system; how that data was combined with other data from other data brokers; what were the algorithms that were processed,” explained Dipple-Johnstone, who is leading the investigation for the ICO. “We’re presently working through a huge volume — many hundreds of terabytes of data — to follow that audit trail and we’re committed to getting to the bottom of that,” he added. “We are looking at over 30 organizations as part of this investigation and the actions of dozens of key individuals. We’re investigating social media platforms, data brokers, analytics firms, political parties and campaign groups across all spectrums and academic institutions. “We are looking at both regulatory and criminal breaches, and we are working with other regulators, EU data protection colleagues and law enforcement in the U.K. and abroad.” He said the ICO’s report is now expected to be published at the end of this month. Denham a U.K. parliamentary committee she’s leaning toward recommending a code of conduct for the use of social media in political campaigns to avoid the risk of political uses of the technology getting ahead of the law — a point she reiterated today. “Beyond data protection I expect my report will be relevant to other regulators overseeing electoral processes and also overseeing academic research,” she said, emphasizing that the recommendations will be relevant “well beyond the borders of the U.K.” “What is clear is that work will need to be done to strengthen information-sharing and closer working across these areas,” she added. Many MEPs asked the witnesses for their views on whether the EU’s new data protection framework, the , is sufficient to curb the kinds of data abuse and misuse that has been so publicly foregrounded by the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal — or whether additional regulations are required? On this Denham made a plea for GDPR to be “given some time to work.” “I think the GDPR is an important step, it’s one step but remember the GDPR is the law that’s written on paper — and what really matters now is the enforcement of the law,” she said. “So it’s the activities that data protection authorities are willing to do. It’s the sanctions that we look at. It’s the users and the citizens who understand their rights enough to take action — because we don’t have thousands of inspectors that are going to go around and look at every system. But we do have millions of users and millions of citizens that can exercise their rights. So it’s the enforcement and the administration of the law. It’s going to take a village to change the scenario. “You asked me if I thought this kind of activity which we’re speaking about today — involving Cambridge Analytica and Facebook — is happening on other platforms or if there’s other applications or if there’s misuse and misselling of personal data. I would say yes,” she said in response to another question from an MEP. “Even in the political arena there are other political consultancies that are pairing up with data brokers and other data analytics companies. I think there is a lack of transparency for users across many platforms.” Parakilas, a former Facebook platform operations manager — and the closest stand in for the company in the room — fielded many of the questions from MEPs, including being asked for suggestions for a legislative framework that “wouldn’t put breaks on the development of healthy companies” and also not be unduly burdensome on smaller companies. He urged EU lawmakers to think about ways to incentivize a commercial ecosystem that works to encourage rather than undermine data protection and privacy, as well as ensuring regulators are properly resourced to enforce the law. “I think the GDPR is a really important first step,” he added. “What I would say beyond that is there’s going to have to be a lot of thinking that is done about the next generation of technologies — and so while I think GDPR does a admirable job of addressing some of the issues with current technologies the stuff that’s coming is, frankly, when you think about the bad cases is terrifying. “Things like . The ability to create on-demand content that’s completely fabricated but looks real… Things like artificial intelligence which can predict user actions before those actions are actually done. And in fact Facebook is just one company that’s working on this — but the fact that they have a business model where they could potentially sell the ability to influence future actions using these predictions. There’s a lot of thinking that needs to be done about the frameworks for these new technologies. So I would just encourage you to engage as soon as possible on those new technologies.” Parakilas also discussed disseminates user data published by The New York Times at the weekend. The newspaper’s report details how, until April, Facebook’s API was passing user and friend data to at least 60 device makers without gaining people’s consent — despite a , which Parakilas suggested “appears to prohibit that kind of behavior.” He also pointed out the device maker data-sharing “appears to contradict Facebook’s own testimony to Congress and potentially other testimony and public statements they’ve made” — given the company’s repeat claims, since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, that it “locked down” data-sharing on its platform in 2015. Yet data was still flowing out to multiple device maker partners — apparently without users’ knowledge or consent. “I think this is a very, very important developing story. And I would encourage everyone in this body to follow it closely,” he said. Two more LIBE hearings are planned around the Cambridge Analytica scandal — one on June 25 and one on July 2 — with the latter slated to include a Facebook representative. Mark Zuckerberg himself attended a meeting with the EU parliament’s Council of Presidents on , though the format of the meeting was widely criticized for allowing the Facebook founder to he wanted to answer — and dodge those he didn’t. MEPs pushed for Facebook to follow up with answers to their many outstanding questions — and of Facebook responses have now been published by the EU parliament. In its follow up responses the company claims, for example, that it does not create shadow profiles on non-users — saying it merely collects information on site visitors in the same way that “any website or app” might. On the issue of compensation for EU users affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal — something MEPs also pressed Zuckerberg on — Facebook claims it has not seen evidence that the app developer who harvested people’s data from its platform on behalf of Cambridge Analytica/SCL sold any EU users’ data to the company. The developer, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, had been contracted by SCL Elections for U.S.-related election work. Although his apps collected data on Facebook users from all over the world — including some . “We will conduct a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica, which we hope to complete as soon as we are authorized by the UK’s Information Commissioner,” Facebook also writes on that. |
Apple announces a very international group of Apple Design Award winners | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | On Monday afternoon, June 4, Apple handed out its annual Apple Design Awards onstage at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose. The awards, now in their 21st year, are meant to highlight those apps that set a benchmark for high-quality design, taking into consideration things like the user interface and user experience, originality and other factors that represent those types of applications that Apple would like to see more of in its App Store. Other app developers often look to the list of design award winners to get a sense of the type of apps and designs that Apple values. This year, the award winners were an international crowd — only one winner comes from the U.S., despite the U.S. being one of Apple’s largest markets. The American award winner was also a bit unusual — instead of being a consumer-facing app or game, it’s one built for the medical industry. Several others showcase quality game development featuring beautiful artwork and music. And others, still, rethink in interesting ways our standard utilities like note-taking apps, language translators and calculators. The full list of the winners is below: (Netherlands) Agenda is a minimalist note-taking app for Mac and iOS that takes a unique approach of organizing notes into a timeline, giving it the ability to track the past, present and future of tasks at once. The app also includes beautifully styled notes and typography, along with well-thought-through navigational design elements, search and support for iCloud sync and Handoff. What’s also interesting about Agenda is that its highlights the standalone Mac app download. The Mac App Store download link is buried at the bottom of the page. (Finland) Bandimal is an adorably designed music composer for kids where animals are used in place of instruments. Kids can swipe through animals to change instruments, set up drum loops and compose melodies without knowing about notes, chords and scores. (India) Calzy 3 is a smart, modern calculator app that adds a unique bookmarking features for saving calculations for future reference. It also integrates a host of Apple technologies in thoughtful ways, including Drag & Drop for sharing results in other apps, iMessage integration, Spotlight search for finding bookmarks, iCloud sync and Handoff. (Austria) While Google Translate is the best known among real-time translator apps, iTranslate Converse, downloaded some 80 million times, offers an app with a simpler design and the ability to automatically detect the correct language, even in noisy rooms. The app supports 38 languages, works offline, uses 3D Touch and works on both iPhone and Apple Watch. On Apple Watch Series 3, you can use the app without your iPhone. (USA) Triton Sponge, by Gauss Surgical, is an app dedicated to a very specific task — use in medical operating rooms to track blood loss, as estimated by what’s collected on surgical sponges and suction canisters. While not a consumer-facing app, Triton Sponge has a very critical and even life-saving task to manage. And it does so with the use of iOS technologies including Core Image, camera Depth Map to detect the sponges, Core ML and machine learning to perform blood loss calculations. The app also is capable of detecting duplicate sponges, even if they’re held up in front of the camera in a different orientation. Triton Sponge is FDA approved and HIPAA compliant. (Australia) Florence is an interactive graphic novel from designer Ken Wong of Mountains, which is sort of a of love and relationships. Players/readers follow along as Florence and Krish meet, date, fall in love and move in together. It showcases hand-drawn art and original music, while it shows you what it’s like to go through life as Florence as she experiences her first love. (Denmark) This multi-award winning puzzle-adventure platformer from the team behind Limbo includes gorgeous art and animation, but with a darker and even frightening tone. You play as an unnamed boy exploring a monochromatic, scary world, solving puzzles along the way. The (creepy) sound design also stands out, and works well to immerse players in the world when wearing their headphones. The app works across iPhone, iPad and Apple TV and has 10,000 5-star reviews on the App Store. (Canada) Alto’s Odyssey, the follow-up to the popular Alto’s Adventure, brings a similar magic, but instead has players on an endless sandboarding journey instead of skiing. The game takes advantage of 3D Touch and haptics, as well as Metal optimized artwork and design, and other immersive soundtrack, like its predecessor. (Austria) This free-form puzzle game has players drawing paths to guide the flocking spirits to their home planets. It’s both beautiful and — thanks to its soundtrack — calming. Frost uses Metal technology to create its smooth animations, and takes advantage of other technologies like multi-touch. This is the second win for the team, which previously won for their game Blek. (Turkey) Oddmar, four years in the making, is a hand-drawn Viking-themed side-scroller that looks almost like it could be a film instead of game. The story focuses on Oddmar, the main character, trying to redeem himself and be worthy of a place in Valhalla. The game is optimized for touch controls, supports game controllers, takes advantage of Metal and includes a soundtrack influenced by traditional Swedish music that was actually recorded in small studio in Sweden. All the winners receive a solid aluminum trophy (pictured above) that lights up and a treasure trove of Apple swag, including a tricked out iMac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone X, AirPods, MacBook Pro 15″ and exposure on the Apple iOS App Store. You can watch a replay of the winners . |
Online travel agency Exoticca bags $4.1M for market expansion | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | Barcelona-based online travel agency — which sells “affordable luxury” holidays to popular destinations such as India, Kenya, Brazil, Thailand and South Africa — has closed a €3.5 million (~$4.1 million) Series A to expand into more markets. The lead investor is early-stage Madrid-based VC , with existing investors Sabadell Venture Capital and Grupo Palau also participating, along with new investors Nero Ventures, Palladium Corporate Venture and Smartech Capital. Exoticca was founded in 2013 and currently operates in three European markets: Spain, France and the U.K. The new funding will be put toward expanding that tally — with the German market next in line, and a launch into the U.S. and Canada also on the horizon. Funds will also be funneled into further developing the platform. “The company spent the first couple of years developing the technological platform and sales have grown very rapidly since then (€4.4 million in 2016, €10.5 million in 2017 and a budget of more than €20 million for 2018),” says CEO Pere Valles, a recent recruit to the business and previously CEO of . Valles argues that Exoticca’s progress to date proves both the profitability of its business model — noting that Spain was “the first market which Exoticca launched is already profitable” — and its replicability. “Last year we launched the U.K. and France and the U.K. is already bigger than Spain,” he says, adding: “In July, we are launching in Germany and we have plans to open in the U.S. and Canada in 2019.” Valles says the market Exoticca is operating in is one of the few travel market segments that has not yet been digitized — with people still purchasing these types of trips in traditional “offline” travel agencies, owing to relative complexity, with the holidays typically having multiple legs and components, perhaps including international and domestic flights, land transportation, hotels in different locations, tour guides and so on. Exoticca’s platform allows users to buy such trips online in a single visit, thanks to a proprietary booking engine that integrates with all the various providers — enabling real-time pricing for each component (so no need to phone up for an actual price before being able to book, for example). “There is nobody else who provides real-time pricing for these types of trips through an online platform,” argues Valles. “Our competition uses internet only to generate leads and then close the sale either on the phone or in a store while we allow our customers to do the entire purchase process online in a single visit.” There are some differences versus traditional bricks-and-mortar travel agents, though. Exoticca customers can’t spec out a bespoke holiday in discussion with an agent, for example. Rather it offers an inventory of around 50 trip packages in its permanent portfolio, covering what are described as “the most popular destinations” for its target travel category. (Though Valles points out it does offer a degree of light personalization — such as being able to pick a hotel category and optional excursions, for example.) If you’re content to choose from the selection, Exoticca claims the trips are 30 percent cheaper on average versus “traditional providers” — as a consequence of the disintermediation process (i.e. it acting as both wholesaler and retailer). “Each one of these trip packages is our ‘own’ product in the sense that we are the ones who ‘build’ it by engaging directly with the provider of each component,” says Valles, adding: “We also give our own personal touch to the tours in each one of these destinations.” There’s a pretty striking branding style on show too — which features 1950s-esque graphics illustrating elements of the holiday packages and service… Presumably the hope is the retro styling will resonate with the older adults who are the demographic most likely to be in the market for long-haul, luxury trips. “We have customers in all age groups but those between 45 and 65 tend to be ‘overrepresented,’ ” agrees Valles. He says the company is generally targeting a similar customer profile to that of GV-backed members-only travel club . Though they are not like-for-like competitors, with Exoticca’s product certainly having more of a focus on, well, exotic holidays — versus Secret Escapes offering hotel getaways to almost anywhere (so long as the hotel is up to snuff). Other European online travel agency startups include the likes of , which is focused exclusively on cruise holidays to address a distinct market segment; and , a marketplace for tailored travel experiences that connects travelers directly with a community of local travel agents — so is doing the lead generation Exoticca’s approach avoids. Valles says the packages it sells are with “high-quality providers” (4- and 5-star hotels) but offered at “discounted prices” intended to appeal to a mass market of middle- and upper-class travelers. The overall aim is to “democratize” this segment of the travel market. (“A Funding wise, Valles says Exoticca previously raised €1 million in two seed rounds, one with F&F and another with Sabadell Venture Capital. The business is not breaking out any user or usage metrics at this stage, five years in. |
This robotic hose-dragon could jet its way into burning buildings | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | While hose-toting drones may be a , hose-powered robo-dragons (or robotic hose-dragons — however you like it) are very much a reality. This strange but potentially useful robot from Japanese researchers could snake into the windows of burning buildings, blasting everything around it with the powerful jets of water it uses to maneuver itself. Yes, it’s a real thing: Created by Tohoku University and Hachinohe College, the DragonFireFighter was at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation. It works on the same principle your hose does when you turn it on and it starts flapping around everywhere. Essentially your hose is acting as a simple jet: the force of the water being blasted out pushes the hose itself in the opposite direction. So what if the hose had several nozzles, pointing in several directions, that could be opened and closed independently? Well, you’d have a robotic hose-dragon. And we do. The DragonFireFighter has a nozzle-covered sort of “head” and what can only be called a “neck.” The water pressure from the hose is diverted into numerous outlets on both in order to create a stable position that can be adjusted more or less at will. It requires a bit of human intervention to go forwards, but, as you can see, several jets are pushing it that direction already, presumably at this point for stability and rigidity purposes. If the operators had a little more line to give it, it seems to me it could zoom out quite a bit farther than where it was permitted to in the video. For now it may be more effective to just direct all that water pressure into the window, but one can certainly imagine situations where something like this would be useful. DragonFireFighter at the International Fire and Disaster Prevention Exhibition in Tokyo. One last thing. I really have to give credit where credit’s due: I couldn’t possibly outdo , “Firefighting Robot Snake Flies on Jets of Water.” |
Two days left to apply for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF 2018 | Samantha Stein | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | Listen up, early-stage startup founders! Do you know the line that Marlon Brando made famous in the classic film, “On the Waterfront?” Well, if you don’t act within the next 48 hours and in , the phrase “I coulda been a contender” might haunt you for a very long time. TechCrunch — which takes place September 5-7 — is going big this year. We’re taking over Moscone Center West, tripling our floor space and playing host to more than 10,000 attendees, 1,200 exhibitors and more than 400 accredited media outlets. With such a <cough> disruptive Disrupt, no “ordinary” Startup Battlefield would do. So, we doubled the money to a very chill $100,000 equity-free cash prize. You have absolutely nothing to lose by applying and a lot to gain if your company makes the cut. TechCrunch charges no fees and takes no equity from startups; applying to and competing in Startup Battlefield is 100 percent free. The selection process is highly competitive — savvy TechCrunch editors review every application and choose anywhere from 15-30 startups. The acceptance rate ranges between three and six percent. But here’s the thing: Just making the first cut comes with a hefty load of benefits in the form of investor interest, media coverage and free exhibition space in — a birthing ground for magical wheeling and dealing — for all three days of the show. Consider, for example, the case of , a cloud-based call center solution that competed in Startup Battlefield SF back in 2015. It didn’t move beyond round one but, trust us, they aren’t crying about it. Probably because Aircall recently scored $29 million in . That brings its total funding to $40.5 million since its Battlefield debut. Here’s another bennie at which you ought not sneeze. Every competing team joins the ranks of the Startup Battlefield alumni community. Imagine the connections you can make among the more than 800 companies in this elite cohort. Companies that have, by the way, collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. If you suffer from performance anxiety, we’ve got you covered on that score. Every Startup Battlefield team receives free expert pitch coaching from our experienced, seen-it-all TechCrunch editorial team. We’ve been doing this since 2007, folks. You WILL be prepared to step into the ring to give it your best shot. takes place September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. Your chance to apply and be a contender disappears in just two short days. Steer clear of Palooka-ville. . |
Egnyte releases one-step GDPR compliance solution | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | has always had the goal of protecting data and files wherever they live, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Today, the company announced a new feature to help customers comply with GDPR privacy regulations that went into effect in Europe last week in a straight-forward fashion. You can start by simply telling Egnyte that you want to turn on “Identify sensitive content.” You then select which sets of rules you want to check for compliance including GDPR. Once you do this, the system goes and scans all of your repositories to find content deemed sensitive under GDPR rules (or whichever other rules you have selected). Photo: Egnyte It then gives you a list of files and marks them with a risk factor from 1-9 with one being the lowest level of risk and 9 being the highest. You can configure the program to expose whichever files you wish based on your own level of compliance tolerance. So for instance, you could ask to see any files with a risk level of seven or higher. “In essence, it’s a data security and governance solution for unstructured data, and we are approaching that at the repository levels. The goal is to provide visibility, control and protection of that information in any in any unstructured repository,” Jeff Sizemore, VP of governance for Egnyte Protect told TechCrunch. Photo: Egnyte Sizemore says that Egnyte weighs the sensitivity of the data against the danger it could be exposed and leave a customer in violation of GDPR rules. “We look at things like public links into groups, which is basically just governance of the data, making sure nothing is wide open from a file share perspective. We also look at how the information is being shared,” Sizemore said. A social security number being shared internally is a lot less risky than a thousand social security numbers being shared in a public link. The service covers 28 nations and 24 languages and it’s pre-configured to understand what data is considered sensitive by country and language. “We already have all the mapping and all the languages sitting underneath these policies. We are literally going into the data and actually scanning through and looking for GDPR-relevant data that’s in the scope of Article 40.” is generally available on Tuesday morning. The company will be makign an announcement at the InfoSecurity Conference in London. It has had the service in Beta prior to this. |
Advocacy groups knock ‘unjust’ copyright-extending CLASSICS Act | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | , but more of a mess in some ways than others, and one of the biggest messes right now is licensing music for digital broadcast. The Music Modernization Act aims to smooth over some of the biggest bumps, but a companion piece has aroused the ire of a collection of internet advocacy groups, via a letter penned by copyright scholar Lawrence Lessig. The CLASSICS Act is the one in question, though no one is disputing the cleverness of its acronym: it stands for Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society. And indeed the goal of the act is to harmonize copyright for musical works created before 1972, a sort of turning point after which copyright law changed considerably. The issue at hand, although due to the complexity of copyright any summary will necessarily be somewhat inadequate, is that pre-1972 works are essentially ineligible for federal copyright status, and are instead registered by a hodgepodge of state and common law. This was a pain to start with, to be sure, but as digital transmission of music has increased and federal copyright become more important, it has really started to chafe and the question of royalties has become an increasingly complicated one. ( has a good summary if you want more details.) What CLASSICS is intended to do is endow those pre-1972 works with a semblance of federal copyright, helping eliminate this arbitrary line on how music is licensed. Sounds good, right? And it mostly is. But there’s a catch — or perhaps two catches. “The objective of the whole package is to make much more efficient the process of licensing music in the digital age, and I think that’s great,” Lessig told me in an interview. “But I think, and this is an important line to draw, what we’re criticizing is that the public doesn’t benefit.” He says the issues came up in discussions with other IP experts and in particular with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, who Lessig said had faced serious legal obstacles relating to music archives in particular. “America’s copyright system needs to be modernized, but not like this,” , “and certainly not in a fashion that results in excessively long periods of protection, creates massive inconsistencies in the copyrighting of sound recordings, and gives inequitable access to those sound recordings.” Co-signatories include Demand Progress, the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Internet Archive. First there is the issue that under CLASSICS, the pre-1972 works are given what amounts to (though is legally not quite the same as) a copyright extension covering them until 2067. Why 2067? That’s 1972 plus 95 years, the duration a work would be copyrighted if registered today. But it’s not just works from 1972 that will be covered up to 2067. Works going back another 50 years will be protected until 2067. In other words, a 1927 recording would be getting what amounts to 140 years of copyright protection. In case you don’t see the harm here, consider that such a recording would normally have entered the public domain a handful of years from now, but under CLASSICS would be granted another 42 years, during which royalties would have to be paid and rights managed. Now, the recurring extension of copyrights over years tends to benefit rights holders more than consumers. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine something like Mickey the Mouse being public domain, but really, there has to be limit. And for a work to be kept out of the public domain for nearly a century and a half seems fundamentally excessive. Brewster Kahle told me in an email that CLASSICS “would not release even Edison wax cylinders into the public domain until 2067 — nuts, if you ask me.” Dozens of scholars argued this point : The Act is deeply flawed…Because it grants new federal protections only to works that were created long ago (ranging in age from 46 to 95 years), it does nothing to incentivize the creation of new works. Rather, it simply provides new rewards to existing copyright owners. Critics point out that the works aren’t actually being given copyright extensions — they’d be governed under a different law. But that has the air of semantics: CLASSICS itself assigns the same “remedies” as copyright infringement as punishment for the same crime. It’s not copyright, but it sure looks, walks and would be prosecuted like copyright. It’s a sort of white-label copyright, since extending and reducing actual copyright terms is a bit of a difficult issue. But the 2067 thing is just more of the same copyright extension stuff we’ve seen, Lessig says. “A lot of people are concerned about the length, and I am too,” he told me. “But the 2067 thing doesn’t matter as much as the idea that you have to do something to earn this right. If you’re going to give the extension or benefits, at least do it in a way that clarifies the rights to the public.” The main issue is that CLASSICS would apply universally to every work created before 1972, regardless of age, current status, whether the creators are alive and still benefiting and so on. A hit song played daily on oldies stations is given the same rights as an obscure jazz recording no one has ever attempted to monetize or reissue. The latter works are the type of thing that should be entering the public domain, Lessig and his colleagues argue. Under CLASSICS they are copyright protected by default, and their public domain status delayed by decades when they should be available for free like other old and abandoned media. “I’d like to see a clear line between works people use and works people have no use for,” Lessig said. Let the likes of The Temptations benefit from their hit songs for another century, if that’s what the government and industry decide is a reasonable term — all they should have to do is those works. By having artists and rights owners register, it solves the problem for everyone. Anyone who wants to have their pre-1972 works brought into the new scheme can easily achieve that, but orphan works will enter the public domain as they ought to. This has the side effect of centralizing and formalizing the copyright status of pre-1972 works; if you’re a documentary producer or DJ looking for some music to use in your own project, you’ll be able to easily check if some ’60s record is rights-managed, in which case you can license it, or if it’s an orphan, in which case you can safely use it like any other public domain work. Registration has been a sticky issue in IP law, as it isn’t necessary for the creation of a copyright — but as this isn’t creation of copyright, in fact not technically copyright at all in some ways, it’s an ideal time to introduce the concept to the benefit of the public and with very little if any inconvenience to rights holders. Music industry coalition executive director, Chris Israel, disagrees: calling registration “a terrible idea,” he suggested it was onerous for artists who are already dealing with the pre/post-1972 complexities to have to “jump through new legal hoops.” He was not concerned that many works scheduled to enter the public domain would not do so. “I’m concerned about getting protection for the thousands of valuable pre 72 performances being exploited commercially, not exempting them. Let’s start with that,” he wrote in an email. Arguments for against are necessarily speculative, but all the same there’s no reason to think that the registration process would be complex, time-consuming, or labor-intensive. It’s really just a basic filter to separate used from unused works and could even be extracted from some other part of the overall transition process. “We’ve never had a point to leverage this point into the system,” Lessig said. There’s still time to add it and it would cost little to do so, he added. Collective, automatic rights managed at a high level are the domain of large companies that can navigate the agreements and pay the huge fines associated with operating outside their terms while the law catches up with the rest of the world. CLASSICS, Lessig suggested, would benefit these companies. “It concentrates their power as a sort of clearing house for intellectual property rights,” he said. “Right now we have no way to tell what is protected, which has what rights and why. The people that can do it are companies like Spotify and Google, that can afford the liability. But that doesn’t make the culture that nobody cares about available to the public.” (NB: Lessig, among others, has been accused of being a paid academic puppet for Google; he laughed at the suggestion, saying “I’d love to see one of those checks.” Many of said scholars have , though certainly private funding in science must be closely monitored.) Kahle and others have recommended as an alternative to CLASSICS or even a modified version thereof, , which takes a simpler approach to federalizing the copyrights of pre-1972 works. Perhaps too simple, critics argue: it would put a lot of work directly in the lap of the Copyright Office, which, like most federal organs, is overworked and inefficient enough as is. The Music Modernization Act has received remarkable bipartisan support; it passed the House 415-0, which is nothing short of incredible in this day and age. So it seems to be on track to becoming a law. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and just as we have ended up kicking ourselves for sloppy wording and a lack of foresight in parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it might be better to take a moment to get it right the first time. |
14 big announcements from Apple’s annual developer conference WWDC 2018 | Matthew Lynley | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, started this afternoon down in San Jose — kicking off with a keynote as it does every year where it announced a bunch of updates to all of its major operating systems. We’ve wrapped up all the big announcements from its keynote below, and there will be plenty more information to come in over the next few days. : Its next generation iPhone operating system. iOS 12 comes with a variety of new features, many of which we’ll dig into below, but it includes things like group FaceTime, new Animoji, some quality of live improvements to Siri, improvements in performance (especially for older devices) and updates to its push into augmented reality. : WWDC has always been the place where it’ll show off a slew of new features, which while very consumer-y in feel is typically pointed at developers to show all the tools they’ll soon get their hands on and all the reasons Apple will keep users on iPhones. The company is introducing its own file format for augmented reality, clearly signaling to developers that they should be flocking to iOS 12 if they want to go where the users are in the future. : Apple said it is rolling out ARKit 2.0, the next generation of its development software for augmented reality experiences on the iPhone. The new version showed improved face tracking, more realistic rendering, 3D object detection, persistent experiences and shared experiences (as well as a neat party trick when it comes to measurement). There’s also a multiplayer component the company will roll out with its new development tools. Tim Cook has alluded to the importance of augmented reality for the iPhone multiple times over the years. While it was a sort of promise of the future for a while, the release of Pokémon Go and the phenomenon that followed demonstrated the potential of augmented reality to capture the hearts and minds of potential users. That was just one use case of what could be a massive potential app ecosystem, and Apple wants to get ahead of that with robust development kits that will keep users on iPhones with better augmented reality experiences. : Apple loves to talk about how its new OS generations, including iOS 11, have the highest adoption rate among smartphones — as well as show off a graphic that shows how bad Google is at that with Android. But it spent a lot of time today talking about how efficient its next OS, iOS 12, will be on older phones like the iPhone 6. Apple can’t leave its older users in the dust. While it’s better that they upgrade to newer phones, some users are sitting on older devices like an iPhone 6S, and rolling out new operating systems with more robust and complex features might put a strain on those older devices. Apple got in trouble , and if it wants to keep people in the ecosystem — and eventually upgrade — it still has to keep those users with older phones excited about the Apple ecosystem amid a ton of competition. : If you’ve ever used Bitmoji, you know exactly what to expect here. Apple is giving users a way to create a customized avatar for themselves that will behave exactly like an Animoji, its animated emoji that moves around as you move your head. Plus you can stick out your tongue and your Animoji will do the same, for some reason. Snap . Clearly this is a feature that users want, and it’s starting to show up in a lot of different ways as an attempt to differentiate a communications platform. Apple obviously needs iMessage to succeed because it continues to create iOS lock-in, and having these kinds of customized avatars can make the experience more robust. : Apple is adding group FaceTime video calls to iOS 12, where you can chat with up to 32 people. : Apple is adding group FaceTime video calls to iOS 12, where you can chat with up to 32 people! This is an interesting and obvious move for Apple to port over the capabilities of Houseparty, an app that tapped a weird zeitgeist around multi-user video streaming. Managing that many streams is difficult and compute intensive, so it makes sense that Apple could absorb the shock of the challenges and bake that right into iOS. Apple showed a bunch of new features that will show up in the next generation of the operating system for the Apple Watch. That includes new features like new workout types like yoga and hiking, challenges for friends, and automatic workout detection. There’s also Siri shortcuts and the walkie talkie, which we’ll get to below. : The most significant of these announcements focused in the health realm, which is where Apple is increasingly positioning itself with the Apple Watch. Originally seen as a sort of do-it-all accessory, it turns out the whole wearable category doesn’t really click for that, but it makes a lot of sense as a fitness tracker and a way to monitor health. It’s still an important part of Apple’s ecosystem, and creating better experiences around workouts can help the company position the Watch as the best fitness tracker on the market. and : Apple is adding some options in iOS to track usage of certain apps, as well as add time limits to flag users when they’re approaching the self-imposed boundaries within iOS. The updates also include more robust do-not-disturb modes. All this also extends to parental controls for children. Apple is announcing this just after Google unveiled a slew of updates to its new Android operating system that were also focused on digital wellness. It’s become an increasing focus for the creators of the operating systems to try to discourage users from just tapping around and wasting time on some apps — and hopefully promote better behavior, which would make the whole experience nicer (and, of course, get them to buy new phones). The parental controls part is also significant given that investors questioned Apple when it came to screen time for children. Apple is giving its users the ability to create custom commands with Siri. The whole process involves chaining together a bunch of activities and queries within Siri that users can piece together to respond to a single voice command like “I’m headed to the gym.” : Siri is widely considered to be a much weaker service compared to Alexa or Google Assistant, and it certainly seems like something Apple is not ignoring. The company argues it works to protect privacy, but that comes at a cost, and Apple has to find a way to ensure that its voice assistant is competitive with other products out there. : The company’s next version of its Mac operating system. Mojave, its latest update, brings in a ton of incremental updates for the service that include a “dark mode” that dims most of the elements on the screen. There are also a bunch of new tools to help users stay a little more organized, such as a new way of viewing files in Finder and stacking documents intelligently. : While the Mac operates a smaller niche inside Apple’s larger business — which, to be clear, is driven by phones — it has to keep those Mac users happy. They can be among Apple’s most avid fans, and the Mac serves as another piece of Apple’s overall ecosystem that sits alongside the phone and tablet. If Apple wants to pitch additional devices like the Watch or the HomePod, it has to convince users to stay within the Apple ecosystem. That means ensuring its laptop is up to date with new features every year. : You can talk into your watch like a walkie talkie. : You can talk into your watch like a walkie talkie. Some . It’s another thing Apple Watch users have to play with that might get them to buy more watches. Or not.
: Apple’s Mac App Store, it’s App Store for its line of laptops and computers, is getting a complete overhaul. Everything is divvied up into tabs and more intelligent grouping, and Apple is making it easier for developers to prompt users to rate their apps. Apple launched the Mac App Store years ago, but it hasn’t seen any major updates since Apple began making some significant changes to the Apple App Store. The company has taken more of an editorial bent for the App Store, looking to surface up the best apps in an era where the App Store is getting increasingly crowded. So it makes sense that the company would port over those learnings to the Mac App Store. The numbers above. Apple loves to tout these numbers every year, but it’s also an important barometer for the success of the Apple App ecosystem. It’s kind of like looking at a stock chart — you might hear a company is doing well when you’re deciding whether or not to invest in something, but it’s good to have that nice round public-facing number.
The company is making it easier to sign on and also introducing Dolby Atmos audio, two quality-of-life improvements for Apple TV owners. The latter of which is a nice way to keep the experience clean, but the former makes the Apple TV the only streaming device to be both Dolby Atmos and Vision certified. Apple insists that the TV is not a hobby, so it keeps bringing these updates to its living room device. While it really hasn’t gotten , owning the living room is a tantalizing piece of the home puzzle that would help Apple not only sell more devices, but keep people locked into its ecosystem. That’ll be especially true as more and more internet-connected devices end up in the home, all of which needing some kind of hub — which could be the Apple TV. : CarPlay, the company’s car-focused operating system, will support third-party apps like Google Maps and Waze. This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a nice quality of life improvement that might make users a little more interested in using CarPlay. Apple doesn’t have a true car play yet, so to speak, but this is one way to start getting users accustomed to iOS in the car. |
Apple’s Create ML is a nice feature with an unclear purpose | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | Apple announced a new feature for developers today called . Because machine learning is a commonly used tool in the developer kit these days, it makes sense that Apple would want to improve the process. But what it has here, essentially local training, doesn’t seem particularly useful. The most important step in the creation of a machine learning model, like one that detects faces or turns speech into text, is the “training.” That’s when the computer is chugging through reams of data like photos or audio and establishing correlations between the input (a voice) and the desired output (distinct words). This part of the process is extremely CPU-intensive, though. It generally requires orders of magnitude more computing power (and often storage) than you have sitting on your desk. Think of it like the difference between rendering a 3D game like Overwatch and rendering a Pixar film. You do it on your laptop, but it would take hours or days for your measly four-core Intel processor and onboard GPU to handle. That’s why training is usually done “in the cloud,” which is to say, on other people’s computers set up specifically for the task, equipped with banks of GPUs and special AI-inclined hardware. Create ML is all about doing it on your own PC, though: as briefly shown onstage, you drag your data onto the interface, tweak some stuff and you can have a model ready to go in as little as 20 minutes if you’re on a maxed-out iMac Pro. It also compresses the model so you can more easily include it in apps (a feature already included in Apple ML tools, if I remember correctly). This is mainly possible because it’s applying Apple’s own vision and language models, not building new ones from scratch. I’m trying to figure out who this is for. It’s almost like they introduced iPhoto for ML training, but as it’s targeted at professional developers, they all already have the equivalent of Photoshop. Cloud-based tools are standard and relatively mature, and like other virtualized processing services they’re quite cheap, as well. Not as cheap as free, naturally, but they’re also almost certainly better. The quality of a model depends in great part on the nature, arrangement and precision of the “layers” of the training network, and how long it’s been given to cook. Given an hour of real time, a model trained on a MacBook Pro will have, let’s just make up a number, 10 teraflop-hours of training done. If you send that data to the cloud, you could choose to either have those 10 teraflop-hours split between 10 computers and have the same results in six minutes, or after an hour it could have 100 teraflop-hours of training, almost certainly resulting in a better model. That kind of flexibility is one of the core conveniences of computing as a service, and why so much of the world runs on cloud platforms like AWS and Azure, and soon dedicated AI processing services like Lobe. My colleagues suggested that people who are dealing with sensitive data in their models, for example medical history or x-rays, wouldn’t want to put that data in the cloud. But I don’t think that single developers with little or no access to cloud training services are the kind that are likely, or even allowed, to have access to privileged data like that. If you have a hard drive loaded with the PET scans of 500,000 people, that seems like a catastrophic failure waiting to happen. So access control is the name of the game, and private data is stored centrally. Research organizations, hospitals and universities have partnerships with cloud services and perhaps even their own dedicated computing clusters for things like this. After all, they also need to collaborate, be audited and so on. Their requirements are also almost certainly different and more demanding than Apple’s off the shelf stuff. I guess I sound like I’m ragging for no reason on a tool that some will find useful. But the way Apple framed it made it sound like anyone can just switch over from a major training service to their own laptop easily and get the same results. That’s just not true. Even for prototyping and rapid turnaround work it doesn’t seem likely that a locally trained model will often be an option. Perhaps as the platform diversifies developers will find ways to make it useful, but for now it feels like a feature without a purpose. |
Xiaomi CDRs, SoftBank’s successors and China’s Samsung investigation | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 6 | 4 | The weekend provided no rest to news-wary reporters, with major announcements coming from Xiaomi, SoftBank and the Chinese government the past few days that will continue to change the global tech landscape. One of the most important yet underreported stories of 2018 has been the development of Chinese Depository Receipts (known as CDRs). , but the summary is that CDRs will give mainland Chinese investors access to overseas-listed stocks that set up the right custodian accounts. Due to domestic capital controls and relatively weak stock exchange rules in China, many Chinese tech giants are listed on overseas stock exchanges in New York and Hong Kong. Beijing-based Xiaomi, which produces a line of phones and offers mobile software services, is , with a valuation expected to top tens of billions of dollars. In its official filing, the company targeted a fundraise of $10 billion. While Xiaomi is a sterling example of the potential success of Chinese entrepreneurs, local retail buyers would likely have had no access to buy the stock, which will be listed in Hong Kong. Fiona Lau and Julie Zhu at Reuters are now reporting that , potentially reserving 30 percent of its new issue for CDR buyers. That would be about $3 billion if the assumptions of the fundraise play out. If the CDR mechanism works as expected, Chinese companies and potentially many others could suddenly tap a vast new pool of capital, either in the IPO process or more generally. That could push valuations for many of these issues higher than they might otherwise go, since Chinese mainland investors have limited ability to invest in overseas stocks due to capital controls. A valuation that might cause a New York-based money manager to flee might be more than palatable to a Chinese investor. While Chinese tech giants are likely to quickly offer CDR options to take advantage of their local brand power and increase upward pressure on their stock prices, the bigger question in my mind is how long it will take overseas companies to offer similar measures and get access to this capital market. While companies like Facebook and Google are blocked or mostly blocked from mainland China, other companies like Apple have strong brand presence in the country, and could theoretically offer a CDR as it strives for a $1 trillion valuation. There are huge legal and policy roadblocks to overcome of course, but such a debut would be a major milestone in China’s financial development. Japan’s SoftBank Group, which owns a set of major tech and finance companies, announced a new group of senior execs late on Friday that sets up something of a leadership contest to succeed the group’s founder, Masayoshi Son. Several years ago, Son had indicated that Nikesh Arora, who had spent a decade at Google and eventually rose to be the company’s chief business officer, would succeed him. , but before heading out from the role. As a sort of coda to that chapter, we learned late last week that . Now, SoftBank has announced that . Rajeev Misra, who runs the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, will become an executive vice president (EVP) while maintaining his duties to the fund. Katsunori Sago, who until recently was the chief investment officer of Japan Post, Japan’s largest savings bank with a $1.9 trillion portfolio, will join SoftBank as an EVP and chief strategy officer. Sago had been rumored to be . Finally, former Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure was named an EVP and SoftBank’s new chief operating officer. , while stepping down as CEO. Each of the three are positioned around the key tentpoles of SoftBank. SoftBank’s core business remains telecom, on which Claure will presumably spend significant time. The group’s financial interests, which includes a 100 percent stake in Fortress Investment Group, will likely get significant attention from Sago. And the SoftBank Vision Fund, which has received , is obviously a key future pillar of the company, giving Misra a powerful perch in the group. Masayoshi Son is 60 years old today. While retirement seems to be the least likely course of action for the energetic entrepreneur, clearly he is starting to think through succession in a more robust way than he did before with Arora. That should make SoftBank investors far more content, and also provide a little bit of a competitive dynamic at the top of the organization to drive the group’s results in the years to come. The chip wars between China and the rest of the world continue to heat up. Now, it looks like Samsung, the , is in the crosshairs of Beijing, . In addition to Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix were also ensnared in the investigation. China has made building a strong indigenous chip industry a core pillar of its economic development strategy. In addition to a , the country has also been attempting to put together the , which in aggregate could have tens of billions of dollars in capital at its disposal. The investigations against Samsung and the two chipmakers comes at the same time that China has also . Qualcomm has been waiting for months to get Beijing’s approval on that deal, which would provide the company a fresh source of revenue and a renewed product mix in strategic areas like automotive. The use of economic investigations to help and hurt Chinese companies and their competitors is starting to become a mainstay. The United States used the negative conclusions of its investigation into Chinese telecommunications company ZTE in order to . While the U.S. has now started to walk back that threat by , it is clear that these sorts of tit-for-tat investigations are going to continue into the future. |
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