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Facebook permanently grounds its Aquila solar-powered internet plane | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Facebook has announced that it will no longer pursue its dream of building a gigantic, solar-powered plane to blast internet to underserved communities via laser. Surprisingly, it’s just not practical. on the company’s coding sub-site, Facebook’s Yael Maguire announced that “we’ve decided not to design or build our own aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgewater.” Closing the facility comes with the loss of 16 jobs specific to the development and maintenance of the aircraft, the company confirmed to TechCrunch, though plenty relating to other aspects of the project were unaffected. The company will continue its work with partners, , to help advance “high altitude platform stations” (HAPS) like the Aquila. The program has been underway since 2014 ( seems to have been its real start) and , and had its — resulting in a “structural failure,” hard landing and . The second test flight was , but far from perfect. The craft itself, an enormous flying V that stayed aloft at extremely low power draw replenished by solar cells, seems to have worked quite well, actually, despite a few hiccups. But Facebook isn’t the only company looking to get into low-power, high-altitude communications craft. “As we’ve worked on these efforts, it’s been exciting to see leading companies in the aerospace industry start investing in this technology too — including the design and construction of new high-altitude aircraft,” wrote Maguire. Considering the considerable scale of investment required to build a craft like this from scratch, and the vast gap in expertise and core competencies between a social network and a veteran aerospace company, it’s not surprising that Facebook decided to cut its losses. The decision was preceded by that the project had more or less stalled: its head and chief engineer left last month after, from reading between the lines, efforts to double down on the project with a redesign and private hangar were rejected. The Aquila plan, like other ambitious connectivity ideas, some still in the offing, was conceived in a period one might call “peak Facebook,” when it was at the height of its growth, before it attracted nearly the level of criticism it faces today, and when its goals were lofty in several ways. No doubt the company plans to pursue “the next billion” in a way that isn’t quite so costly or unprecedented. Maguire does indicate that work will continue, just not in such a direct way: Going forward, we’ll continue to work with partners like Airbus on HAPS connectivity generally, and on the other technologies needed to make this system work, like flight control computers and high-density batteries. On the policy front, we’ll be working on a proposal for 2019 World Radio Conference to get more spectrum for HAPS, and we’ll be actively participating in a number of aviation advisory boards and rule-making committees in the US and internationally. It’s hard to fault Facebook for its ambition, though even at the time there were plenty who objected to this extremely techno-utopian idea of how internet could be delivered to isolated communities. Surely, they said, and will continue to say, that money would be better spent laying fiber or establishing basic infrastructure. We’ll see. I asked Facebook for more information, such as what projects specifically it will be backing, and what will happen to the IP and hardware the Aquila program comprised. Although a Facebook representative declined to answer my specific questions, they emphasized the fact that the Aquila project was both successful and wide-ranging; although an actual aircraft will no longer be part of it (that duty falls to actual aerospace companies), there were many other advances in transmission, propulsion and so on that are still very much in active development. What exactly the company plans to do with is still unclear, but we can probably expect news on that front over the next few months as the program adjusts focus. |
Tesla Model S battery reignited twice after fatal Florida crash, says NTSB | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | The battery in a 2014 Tesla Model S reignited two times after it was involved in a fatal and high-speed crash in Florida in May, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a released Tuesday. The NTSB report said the electric vehicle was traveling 116 miles per hour three seconds before its 18-year-old driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed along Seabreeze Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. The driver and a front seat passenger died. A third passenger, who was ejected, survived the crash. The vehicle erupted in flames as the crash unfolded. The Fort Lauderdale Fire and Rescue Department extinguished the vehicle fire using 200 to 300 gallons of water and foam. Firefighters also applied water and foam to the debris, which included small portions of the lithium-ion high-voltage battery that had separated from the vehicle, according to the report. The battery reignited as the vehicle was being loaded for removal from the scene. The fire was quickly extinguished, the said. However, the battery reignited again when the Model S arrived at the storage yard. A local fire department responded to the storage yard and extinguished the fire. Tesla declined to comment on the NTSB report. The NTSB says the investigation, which will also include examining the procedures used to extinguish the battery fire and to remove and store the car post-crash, will continue. Tesla does provide information to first responders on how they should handle Tesla vehicles following a collision. There have been two other fire incidents in recent months involving a Tesla battery. Six days after a fatal crash in California involving a Tesla Model X, the vehicle’s battery reignited three or four times, the Mountain View Fire Department told a local . Earlier this month, actress Mary McCormack posted a on Twitter showing her husband’s Tesla that abruptly burst into flames. Tesla has said it’s investigating the highly unusual event. Tesla has long contended that design of the battery pack as well as the fortified structure mounted on the floor of the car has a number of protections that prevent it from igniting. For example, the battery pack includes thousands of cells divided in groups and housed in separate modules. Firewalls are between each module and between the battery pack and passenger compartment. The pack is also designed so that if a fire occurs it’s supposed to spread more slowly than it might in a gas car. Tesla did release a new feature following the fatal crash in Fort Lauderdale that optionally limits the acceleration of Tesla vehicles and allows owners to set a maximum speed limit up to 90 mph. The feature can only be engaged or disengaged with a four-digit pin. A notification is sent to the owner’s mobile device if the vehicle approaches the set maximum speed. |
Watch Rocket Lab’s first commercial launch, ‘It’s Business Time’ [Update: Postponed] | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Rocket Lab, the New Zealand-based rocket company that is looking to further amplify the commercial space frenzy, is launching its first fully paid payload atop an Electron rocket tonight — technically tomorrow morning at the launch site. If successful, it will mark a significant new development in the highly competitive world of commercial launches. Sorry folks but not today. The company said it will announce a new target soon, while the launch window remains July 6. Liftoff is planned for 2:10 in the morning local time in New Zealand, or 7:10 Pacific time in the U.S.; the live stream will start about 20 minutes before that. https://youtu.be/hHPtSfjoF8A The Electron rocket is a far smaller one than the Falcon 9s we see so frequently these days, with a nominal payload of 150 kilograms, just a fraction of the many tons that we see sent up by SpaceX. But that’s the whole point, Rocket Lab’s founder, CEO and chief engineer Peter Beck told me recently. “You can go buy a spot on a big launch vehicle, but they’re not very frequent. With a small rocket you can choose your orbit and choose your schedule,” he said. “That’s what we’re driving at here: regular and reliable access to space.” An Electron rocket launching during a previous test Just like not every car on the road has to be a big rig, not every rocket needs to be a Saturn V; 150 kilos is more than enough to fill with paying customers and cover the cost of launch. And Beck told me there is no shortage whatsoever of paying customers. “The most important part of the mission is the timing in which we manifested it,” he explained (manifesting meaning having a payload added to the manifest). “We went from nothing manifested to a full payload in about 12 weeks.” For comparison, some missions or payloads will wait literally years before there’s an opportunity to get to the orbit they need. Loading up just a few weeks ahead of time is unusual, to say the least. Today’s launch will carry satellites from Spire, Tyvak/GeoOptics, students at UC Irvine and High Performance Space Structure Systems; you can see the specifics of these . It’s not the first time an Electron has taken a paid payload to orbit, but it is the first fully commercialized launch. Rocket Lab has no ambitions for interplanetary travel, sending people to space or anything like that. It just wants to take 150 kilograms to orbit as often as it can, as inexpensively as it can. “We’re not interested in building a bigger rocket, we’re interested in building more of this one,” Beck said. “The vehicle is fully dialed in; we started from day one with this vehicle designed from a production approach. We’re fully vertically integrated, we don’t have any contractors, we do everything in-house. We’ve been scaling up the factories enormously.” “We’re looking for a one-a-month cadence this year, then next year one every two weeks,” he continued. “Frequency is the key — it’s the choke point in space right now.” Ultimately the plan is to get a rocket lifting off every few days. And if you think will be enough to meet demand, just wait a couple years. |
Highland Europe closes new €463M fund to invest in growth-stage tech | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | , the European “growth-stage” technology investor, has closed a new €463 million fund, the firm’s third fund in just six years. Targeting “globally ambitious” European software and internet-enabled businesses, the VC typically writes initial cheques of between €10 million and €30 million. It says that startups seeking investment need to demonstrate that they have reached sufficient scale “to confirm the validity of their business model.” That may seem quite conservative by some venture standards. However, it’s an investment criteria that Highland Europe says is working, with all of its main LPs bullish enough to return for a third bite of the apple. “Significantly oversubscribed, the fund was raised in just 12 weeks and takes the firm’s assets under management to €1.1 billion,” says the VC. On that note, Highland Europe , with combined revenues of €1.1 billion in 2017. In terms of exits, over the last 18 months, the firm has most recently sold stakes in , and waste industry software provider AMCS Group. Meanwhile, Berlin-based GetYourGuide, another Highland Europe-backed startup, . “There are different kinds of players in our industry and there is room for everybody,” Highland Europe partner and co-founder Fergal Mullen told me on a call last week. “Let’s be clear, we are not the early-stage people who make a bet on a concept, that’s not what we do. We need proof points, and if the proof points are there we have got 10 to 50 or 60 million available capital for each company.” Asked how the European startup ecosystem has changed in the last few years and how it currently compares to Silicon Valley, Mullen says that although the U.S. still has a lot more capital to deploy — and is probably overcapitalized — European founders are more ambitious than ever and European companies continue to punch way above their funding weight. “If you look at the mentality and ambition of the of young entrepreneurs in Europe nowadays, as far as I’m concerned there’s no difference between Europe and the U.S., the ambition level is there now,” he says. “The big thinking is there. The positive frame of mind. And the willingness to push the boat out, maybe fail, make mistakes, but pick up and move on. Therefore, the young entrepreneurs that we meet are looking to match up with venture capital and growth equity players who are prepared to help them achieve their full ambition and go for it. That’s a huge change and that’s a lot to do with the maturing of the market here in Europe.” Mullen is impressed by the number of valuable companies being created in Europe and says that the quality of these companies is “exceptional.” “When I say quality I mean our companies are more capital efficient. They have to be because there’s not as much capital available so they use less capital to get to the same value as a U.S. unicorn. And they have typically twice the revenue of a U.S. unicorn on average. So they have to get to a bigger scale for a similar value.” Longer-term, he references the pipeline of talent Europe has as another factor in its favor, pointing me to the most recent Mary Meeker “Internet Trends” report that suggests the EU is churning out many more STEM graduates than the U.S., even if China is accelerating fastest. “This is often forgotten, [but] Europe right now is graduating hundreds of thousands more STEM graduates per year than the United States. At the PhD level, we are graduating 35,000 to 40,000 more per year. So that data point alone to me is a very compelling reason to be long on European tech for the next few decades,” says Mullen. One thing Highland Europe won’t do is invest in a particular sector just because it is in vogue, says Mullen, after I note the VC firm has only invested in a couple of fintech companies and none you are likely to have heard of. “We don’t invest in the hype phase of any sector,” he says. “We look at fintech all the time, but our criteria are very, very strict. If you don’t have a certain amount of revenue and you’re not demonstrating real capital efficiency, we’re not going to jump in just because fintech is hot.” Likewise, Mullen singles out AI, arguing that a lot of the concepts being pitched as AI-based aren’t true AI. “At best they might be ML, but they’re not AI. If you define it as an algorithmic-based approach with the ability of the algorithm to evolve itself and it learns and ingests more data… there is very little that is genuinely AI. That sector is very much overhyped, but it doesn’t mean we’re not looking and looking hard. At the end of the day we don’t care what it is as long as it is really working and working well.” Challenged to name sectors that are under-hyped, the Highland Capital partner says mundane industries offer a great opportunity, citing , which operates in the waste management industry. “That’s a trillion-plus industry that is completely under invested from a tech stack standpoint.” Adds Mullen: “At the end of the day, what’s our objective? Our objective is to deliver fantastic results to our investors and along the way we want to have a great time with wonderful entrepreneurs that we enjoy working with. If you have all of that you don’t have a job, you’ve got a vocation. It’s just an extraordinary business to be in.” |
Amazon’s Alexa app for iOS finally gets voice control | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Amazon has, of course, been at something of a disadvantage in the smart assistant race. Among the big three, Alexa is the only one without a major mobile footprint. The company has seen some small in-roads through partnerships with Android hardware developers like Motorola and Huawei, but Google and Apple have a clear vested interest in developing their own smart assistant ecosystem. Unless or until the company takes another swing at the mobile market, getting its app onto as many iOS and Android handsets is the best way to expand that mobile footprint. With the addition of voice, Alexa on mobile suddenly becomes more than just an app for setting up Echo devices. |
Seattle gets its first staffed Amazon pickup delivery hub | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | You’d think Seattle would be first in line for all things Amazon, but apparently the online retailer’s home city didn’t yet have a dedicated brick and mortar Amazon pickup location. The locations function as little centralized Amazon shipping hubs for normal pickups and returns, but they also enable one-day pickup for a large selection of items available through the online retail giant. The Seattle location will serve the northern part of the city at 14333 Aurora Ave. N. Stopped by Amazon's new pickup location at 11th & Jefferson in downtown Portland, near PSU today. — Anna Marum (@annamarum) The first of these locations in the Northwest, “Amazon@DowntownPortland” opened in Amazon’s southerly neighbor city . Of course, Seattle does boast two , a futuristic no-checkout convenience store and likely whatever other future retail experiments the company delves into. As staffed, standalone Amazon-branded storefronts, the Amazon pickup locations are distinct from the Amazon Lockers found in convenience stores and other locations in many cities. Amazon also notes that these pickup locations offer same-day or one-day pickup for Prime members, in-person assistance and packing supplies for returns. Both flavors of Amazon pickup location are open to non-Prime members, though Prime members also enjoy no order minimums for items sent to a pickup location. Last year, with a little flurry of college-focused “Instant Pickup points,” essentially convenience stores that functioned as an Amazon shipping center but also kept essentials like beverages, phone chargers and personal care items in stock. Those locations were opened across five U.S. college campuses, located in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Columbus, Ohio and Maryland. After the student rollout, Amazon began quietly opening more staffed non-college affiliated pickup locations that offered the shipping perks without the student-friendly stocked items. While it declined to list them all out, Amazon tells TechCrunch that it now has more than 30 pickup locations across the U.S. |
Casio Chairman Kazuo Kashio dies at 89 | John Biggs | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Chairman and CEO Kazuo Kashio passed on June 19, 2018 at the age of 89. The cause of death was pneumonia. Kashio was the third eldest of the four brothers who founded Casio Computer in 1957. Their first product, the all-electric 14-A calculator, led to the release of the Casio Mini calculator in 1972, a product that brought electronic calculators into the mainstream. Casio’s biggest claim to fame was Kashio’s own idea. The CEO looked at quartz watches in the 1980s and saw that they were delicate and easy to break. With a little extra outer cladding and some internal shock resistance systems, however, he was able to create a watch that could truly stand up to heavy wear. The first G-Shock, released in 1983, paved the way for truly rugged watches and the company recently celebrated the 100 millionth G-Shock sold last August. The company, Kashio Manufacturing, began in 1947 with a unique product: a cigarette clip that let users smoke the last bit of each butt. In the 1970s, the Kashio family saw the move to electronic counting machines and brought some of the first portable and pocket calculators to market alongside the ultra popular and the PDA. The company also created the first LCD digital camera, the and the popular Casiotone keyboards. He is survived by his son, Kazuhiro Kashio, who is the current Casio president. |
Questions remain after the CEO of fintech VC Anthemis resigns | Steve O'Hear | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | , the fintech VC fund based in London, has lost its long-time CEO after Nadeem Shaikh handed in his resignation earlier this week. The Financial Times yesterday, quoting Shaikh citing a “shift in the company’s strategy.” However, TechCrunch understands from sources that Shaikh’s decision to leave Anthemis came after a formal complaint by another staff member at the firm and following a subsequent internal investigation. According to people with knowledge of events, an “all-hands” meeting was held at Anthemis’ offices in London on Monday, where the Anthemis team was informed of Shaikh’s resignation, although few details were given as to the reasons why. The VC firm’s co-founder and chairman Sean Park is said to have dialed in to inform staff of the news, including reading out a statement attributed to Shaikh. As conveyed by Park, Shaikh is said to have decided to resign from Anthemis after it was brought to his attention that there was behavior on his part that was not consistent with the values of the VC firm. What that behavior was is unclear. Staff at the all-hands were told that Anthemis couldn’t comment any further for legal reasons. Meanwhile, the news of Shaikh’s resignation is bound to raise eyebrows in the London venture capital and startup community, particularly within the fintech space, where the firm has been one of the most active over the last few years. The Anthemis portfolio includes online wealth management startup Betterment, challenger bank Atom, SME banking startup Tide, trading app eToro and money transfer service Azimo, to name just a handful. The VC is also a backer of FX company Currencycloud, where, according to his LinkedIn , Shaikh is non-exec director. I contacted Anthemis and a spokesperson confirmed Shaikh’s resignation as CEO and from the Anthemis board, as per the FT piece, but declined to comment further. I’ve also reached out to Shaikh and will update this post if and when I hear back. |
Honk, the Uber for towing services, raises $18 million | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | , a marketplace for towing services for consumers and insurance companies, has raised $18 million in a new round of funding a little over a year after with the insurance company, Farmers. The investment was led by Altpoint Ventures, with participation from existing investors Structure Capital and Venture 51. Company chief executive Corey Brundage declined to comment on the company’s revenue, path to profitability or valuation in an interview. Honk basically applies to the towing business the same technology ride-hailing uses, making trucks more responsive and slashing the time that a customer waits to get help when they need it, according to Brundage. As we wrote last year, roadside assistance is a huge, fragmented market. According to the market research firm, IBISWorld, customers spend roughly $6 billion on roadside assistance services. Customers call for a tow directly from Honk via mobile web or the company’s app to find a nearby professional and track the location and estimated time of arrival of their tow truck in real time. Insurance companies, auto OEMs and fleets use the company’s transparent platform to reduce wait times by over 50 percent, improve customer satisfaction, harness their roadside assistance data and receive industry leading net promoter scores, according to a statement. |
Microsoft’s facial recognition just got better at identifying people with dark skin | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Microsoft’s facial recognition tools just made some significant technological strides, though the timing probably couldn’t be . On Tuesday, the company that its Face API, part of Azure Cognitive Services, can now identify men and women with darker skin far more successfully than previous iterations of the technology. The updates particularly improve the system’s recognition capabilities for women with darker skin tones, reducing error rates for darker-skinned men and women by as much as 20 times and reducing error rates for all women by nine times. Microsoft stated that it was able to “significantly reduce accuracy differences across the demographics” by expanding facial recognition training data sets, initiating new data collection around the variables of skin tone, gender and age and improving its gender classification system by “focusing specifically on getting better results for all skin tones.” “The higher error rates on females with darker skin highlights an industrywide challenge: Artificial intelligence technologies are only as good as the data used to train them. If a facial recognition system is to perform well across all people, the training dataset needs to represent a diversity of skin tones as well factors such as hairstyle, jewelry and eyewear.” Microsoft notes that it incorporated bias training, spearheaded by Microsoft Senior Researcher Hanna Wallach, who specializes in AI fairness, accountability and transparency. Another senior researcher involved in the effort focuses on bias in training data that can result in biased systems, like the “underrepresentation of darker skinned women that may lead to AI systems with unacceptable error rates on gender classification tasks.” While the eradication of bias in tech systems is a noble cause, the potential surveillance and policing applications of facial recognition in particular gives many critics pause. Microsoft is currently facing a backlash for its relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), though the company being enacted by the agency. In January, Microsoft announced its intentions to move forward in contracting with ICE after from the agency. The Face API within Azure Cognitive Services is part of a suite of tools offered in Azure Government contracts. “This ATO is a critical next step in enabling ICE to deliver such services as cloud-based identity and access, serving both employees and citizens from applications hosted in the cloud,” . “This can help employees make more informed decisions faster, with Azure Government enabling them to process data on edge devices or utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification.” |
These five trends are rocking the animation industry | Rex Grignon | 2,018 | 6 | 26 |
I’ve been very lucky to have been in the animation industry since the mid-1980s, and I have lived through my share of big disruptions — most of them having to do with new technologies. What’s going on today is as significant as anything I’ve seen before, but it’s being driven by a whole new set of forces. Here’s a quick survey of trends in the animation landscape that have me pretty optimistic about the future. By “vanishing,” I don’t mean going away; I mean disappearing from view. I’ve always said, “When technology can disappear, that’s when creativity can really begin.” For the past 20 years, feature-film animation in particular has been an arms race of studios like Pixar and DreamWorks trying to out-engineer each other to deliver high-end character performances and visual effects that no one had ever seen. As a result, studios spent tens of millions of dollars becoming, essentially, IT companies with teams of creators producing stories to demonstrate their latest breakthroughs. Now, thanks to simpler, more intuitive tools, technology is becoming less intrusive in the creative process and animators can finally get back to doing what they love: telling stories. The explosion of new outlets on cable, over-the-top and online, is creating unprecedented opportunities for animated content in a wide range of styles, genres and formats. Netflix has found an audience for all kinds of quirky original animated programs, and its competitors are following suit. Cable networks are pushing the envelope in all kinds of ways, as well. These new channels are opening up the world to artists and studios. Now anyone can create a compelling story in their basement and the world will have a chance to see it. And if it finds its audience, it can be as big as any studio release. Never before has that been possible. If you love animation and digital imagery, you’re no longer limited to watching it on a screen. It’s spilling out into the world around us on mobile devices, augmented and virtual reality headsets, immersive smart spaces, holograms, giant flat panels and who knows what’s next? The thing is, most of those hardware innovations are still waiting for their “killer app” — that must-have content or experience that pulls audiences to the new ways of experiencing stories. I firmly believe that animation and visual storytelling is going to drive those killer apps, particularly in VR. The idea of a global distributed workforce isn’t new to most businesses, but it’s somewhat new for animation production. Sure, offshore outsourcing has been happening for years, but animation, at its best, is massively collaborative. Teams have to collaborate and share their ideas to help a story reach its full potential. Until recently, the connective technology hasn’t been up to the task. Now, at last, the cloud makes a lot of those limitations obsolete. It doesn’t matter if your teammate is sitting at the next desk or in Seoul, Dublin or Mexico City. And that means… All these trends are lowering the barriers and cost to entry for upstarts around the world. That means we’ll be hearing from lots of people and perspectives that haven’t been part of the animation industry before. In a world where creativity is the coin of the realm, that means we’re all going to be a whole lot richer. |
Audi taps Israeli startup Cognata to accelerate AV ambitions | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Audi is turning to Israeli startup Cognata to help the automaker validate its autonomous vehicles in the virtual world before they head out on the road for testing. , Audi’s self-driving unit led by a team of former Microsoft, Tesla and internal Audi veterans, says it will use Cognata’s autonomous vehicle simulation platform to test and develop its technology. AID says the multi-year partnership will help it bring its self-driving vehicles to market faster. The partnership illustrates the demand for advanced simulation technology as companies race to safely develop and deploy autonomous vehicles. “At AID, we are convinced that simulation is a key tool to increase our development speed and a necessary one for the validation of our product and for proving it is safe,” according to AID CTO Alex Haag, who had a brief stint at secretive self-driving startup Zoox and as a senior manager on Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot team. The deal also highlights the growing ecosystem of Israeli startups, many of which developed technology initially designed for military use, such as drones and other defense applications, only to find a hungry customer base within the autonomous vehicle industry. Cognata, which last year from Airbus Ventures, Emerge and Maniv Mobility, recreates cities in its 3D simulation platform to give customers a variety of testing scenarios. The platform pulls in layers of data to help build these virtual environments. It starts with recreating real cities, then adds AI-based traffic models to simulate real-world conditions, as well as data from the vehicle’s sensors. |
Facebook reverses its crypto ad ban | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | As there’s clearly too much ad revenue potential to ignore, Facebook today it’s reversing its cryptocurrency ad ban effective immediately. The decision comes with a few caveats, however. The company says it will allow ads and related content from “pre-approved advisers,” but will still not allow ads promoting binary options and initial coin offerings. Facebook had first the ban in January, saying at the time that too many companies in this space were “not currently operating in good faith.” While it admitted that banning all crypto advertising was a broad change, the company said that its new policy would “improve the integrity and security of our ads, and to make it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook.” But it had also said the policy would be revisited over time, as its ability to protect deceptive ads improved. Fast forward six months, and apparently Facebook is ready for the crypto ad onslaught yet again. This time around, it’s making advertisers go through an process to determine their eligibility. Facebook will ask advertisers to include on their applications details like what licenses they’ve obtained, whether they’re a publicly traded company, and other relevant background information regarding their business. How thoroughly this information is fact-checked by Facebook staff remains unclear. The company reminded users in the same announcement that they should continue to flag ad content that violates its guidelines. In other words, expect some bad ads to get through. Facebook explains its new requirements will keep some crypto advertisers from being able to hawk their businesses on the social network, but adds that its policy in this area continues to be a work in progress. “…We’ll listen to feedback, look at how well this policy works and continue to study this technology so that, if necessary, we can revise it over time,” says Rob Leathern, Product Management Director, in Facebook’s announcement. Facebook’s original decision to ban crypto ads was by Google in March, when the company the “unregulated” and “speculative” nature of many of the advertised products. Its new begin this month. around crypto ads, with Twitter only showing ads for exchanges and wallets provided by publicly traded companies and Snap allowing crypto ads but banning those for ICOs. The crypto industry is rife with scams, so it makes sense that these major platforms would need some rules around what’s allowed. According to the FTC, consumers lost $532 million to cryptocurrency-related scams in the first two months of 2018, reported on Monday. And an agency official that consumers will lose more than $3 billion by the end of the year. Facebook says the full crypto ad ban is lifted today for approved advertisers. |
CarBlip’s car buying app raises $2 million | Jonathan Shieber | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | , a new car-buying mobile application that’s aiming to compete with has raised $2 million in a new round of financing. The investment was led by Nordic Eye Venture Capital with participation from the startup studio and seed investment firm, . CarBlip chief executive Brian Johnson said that the company’s main purpose was to bring the car-buying experience online. The user just downloads an app and looks for the brands they want that are available in an already geo-located area, Johnson said. Shoppers can submit bids on a vehicle privately and receive counter-offers via the app. Then, when they’re ready, they can head down to a dealership to move forward with the purchase, Johnson said. While Johnson doesn’t have much auto experience himself (outside of marketing), co-founder Eric Brooks and business development executive Kim Lane both spent time in the car business, Johnson said. Brooks founded LA Car Connection, a local car broker, while Lane spent more than a decade at Ford, according to the company’s website. Like the old Wyper ( s) CarBlip touts a Tinder-like interface that lets users swipe to select vehicles they’re interested in; what Johnson says differentiates his business is the ability to negotiate on the platform for the vehicle. It’s a feature that’s bound to attract interest from dealerships because they’re pretty much assured a sale, Johnson said. “We loved the value proposition that they were signing up dealers directly,” said Richard Sussman, the managing partner for Nordic Eye in the U.S. |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 19 | null |
Confirmed: Sequoia has already secured three-quarters of what will be an $8 billion global fund | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | , the 46-year-old venture firm, has secured $6 billion in capital commitments for an $8 billion global fund, according to a in the Financial Times. The report echoes a piece in The Wall Street Journal that reported Sequoia investors had already committed “roughly” $6 billion to the new fund. A source familiar with the matter confirms for us that both stories are accurate. The capital commitments thus far have come from investors with no prior relationship to Sequoia. The firm intends to turn to its previous investors for the rest of the capital commitments, which Sequoia is securing in increments of $250 million or more. Sequoia now makes more than 50 cents from every dollar returned to its investors from its overseas bets, according to a separate source close to the firm, with the firm’s China strategy proving particularly fruitful. Like numerous Silicon Valley firms, Sequoia decided to dip its toe into the market beginning in 2005. Unlike most Silicon Valley firms that opted not to remain in China, owing either to or because of tenuous relationships with local VCs, Sequoia stayed put, empowering the founder of Sequoia Capital China, Neil Shen, to eventually build up offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai — and to assemble a portfolio that is today rife with highly valuable companies. Among the many companies Sequoia Capital China has funded: Meituan-Dianping, the group-discount service that sells locally found products and retail services and just in Hong Kong; Ele.me, the food ordering company that sold a controlling stake in its business to Alibaba in April for ; DJI, the drone company, which was reported to be raising $1 billion in new funding this spring at a ; VIP.com, the commerce platform that in 2012 and currently boasts a $7.2 billion market cap; and Didi, the mobile transportation giant that’s in a race against its U.S. rival Uber to conquer the global ride-hailing market. Sequoia Capital China is also an investor in the electric car company Nio, which for a U.S. IPO last month. Many of the aforementioned companies started as earlier-stage investments for Sequoia, and a source familiar with the matter to says expect the same, no matter how much Sequoia raises. This person observes that the majority of the funds from Sequoia’s first two global growth funds — which were $700 billion and $2 billion, respectively — have been funneled to companies with which Sequoia was already in business, adding that its new funds will also go mostly to existing portfolio companies and new opportunities. The race to gather up an unprecedented amount of money — by Sequoia most notably, but also numerous other firms that have been raising record-breaking amounts this year — is directly correlated to one of the biggest disruptive trends in the venture industry in recent years: SoftBank’s Vision Fund, a $100 billion fund for now, though SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has said expect more gargantuan funds in the not-too-distant future. “The Vision Fund was just the first step,” he told the Nikkei last fall. “Ten trillion yen [$88 billion] is . We will briskly expand the scale. Vision Funds 2, 3 and 4 will be established every two to three years.” As sources close to the Vision Fund to us last fall, its mission is not to produce venture-like returns. The idea is instead to return more money to investors than private equity firms like KKR, whose first 18 private equity funds wound up delivering more than two times total capital invested on a gross basis, and produced a net IRR of 18.9 percent. Said one source in particular, “If someone is investing in [Vision Fund], he’s expecting to get better returns than with KKR and Blackstone.” Indeed, added this person, Shen meanwhile suggests that, SoftBank notwithstanding, the game has changed. As he of Sequoia’s massive new fundraising effort: “The magnitude is different today because the companies are different today . . . To be the lead investor in a company you can no longer just invest $100 million . . . if you want to build a company that is worth several billion. For that you need $400 million or $500 million.” |
Pandora and iHeartRadio subscription streams to impact Billboard’s charts | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Billboard Pandora Premium and iHeartRadio subscription streams to inform its Billboard 100 and Billboard 200 charts, along with other streaming-inclusive charts, the company announced this week. Before, only Pandora’s radio spins were included. to Pandora, the change goes into effect on July 14 and will bring nearly 6 million Pandora subscribers’ spins into the chart, from those who weren’t being counted before. iHeartRadio’s terrestrial radio stations nor its programmed radio streams will be reported to Billboard, and won’t impact chart rankings. Instead, its All Access and Plus subscription tiers will be added to the all-genre Hot 100, Billboard 200 and genre-based song and album charts, says Billboard. These changes are launching alongside a big of how Billboard weighs streaming data for its charts. Starting with the rankings dated July 14, which cover streaming data from June 29 through July 5, Billboard will give more weight in the chart to plays on paid subscription streaming services like Apple Music and Amazon Music, as well as the plays on the subscription tiers of hybrid (paid/ad-supported) platforms, like Spotify and Soundcloud. Meanwhile, plays on ad-supported services like YouTube and the non-paid tiers of hybrid services (e.g. Spotify’s free tier) will be given less weight. Pandora’s radio plays have been a part of Billboard charts, including the Hot 100, since January 2017, but the addition of another 6 million users’ on-demand streams could greatly impact the rankings. As Pandora today, its app has three times the monthly active streams compared to terrestrial radio’s online platform. “The Billboard charts are our industry’s bible,” says Jeff Zuchowski, Pandora’s VP of Artist Marketing and Industry Relations, in a statement about Pandora’s inclusion. “The fact that all three tiers of Pandora streams are now included is a major milestone not only for us and our 72 million monthly active listeners, but also recognizes, in a very powerful way, the millions of fans who listen to their favorite artists via the Pandora platform,” he said. |
Airbnb partners with Century 21 to let Parisians sublet their homes | Romain Dillet | 2,018 | 6 | 26 | Airbnb needs to find new places to list in Paris to keep up with growth. That’s why the company announced a partnership with real estate company Century 21 in France, according to and various French media. Airbnb is in an awkward position in France. It is the company’s most important market, but the Mayor’s Office has also been cracking down on illegal listings. Airbnb now needs to make sure that there’s enough supply for its userbase. Since December 2017, you have to register your apartment with the city if you want to list it on an online renting platform, such as Airbnb. This way, Paris can keep track of apartments and see if they comply with the current law. In Paris, you can’t rent an apartment for more than 120 days a year. As a renter, you also can’t sublet your apartment on Airbnb unless the landlord is fine with it. In most cases, the landlord prevents subletting. But the issue is that many listings in Paris were sublets. A few days after the new rule was enforced, Paris around 1,000 apartments that were not registered with the city, asking Airbnb to remove those listings. And it was just a start as there were tens of thousands of unregistered homes in Paris. That’s why Airbnb is trying something new. In order to incentivize landlords, Airbnb has worked with Century 21 to authorize subletting. When Century 21 finds a new renter, the company will ask landlords if they want to sign a deal with Century 21 and Airbnb to facilitate subletting. If everybody agrees, then renters can keep 70 percent of Airbnb revenue. Landlords get 23 percent of proceeds. Century 21 keeps 7 percent. This seems like an insanely great deal for Century 21 as it’ll generate another revenue stream in Paris. Landlords can also make more money even though rents are already quite high in Paris. But I’m not sure renters will list their apartments on Airbnb if they can’t make as much money and they have to pay taxes on their Airbnb revenue. It doesn’t seem to be the best way to cover part of your rent. But that should still help add new homes to Airbnb. |
Startup Battlefield is coming to the Middle East and North Africa, apply today | Samantha Stein | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | null |
Twitter ‘smytes’ customers | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Twitter today the “trust and safety as a service” startup to help it better address issues related to online abuse, harassment, spam, and security on its platform. But it also decided to immediately shut down access to Smyte’s API without warning, leaving Smyte’s existing customers no time to transition to a new service provider. The change left Smyte’s current customer base stranded, with production issues related to the safety of their own platforms. Needless to say, many were not happy about this situation and took to Twitter to register their complaints. According to Smyte’s website, its clients included Indiegogo, GoFundMe, npm, Musical.ly, TaskRabbit, Meetup, OLX, ThredUp, YouNow, 99 Designs, Carousell, and Zendesk – big name brands that used Smyte’s feature set in a variety of ways to combat fraud, abuse, harassment, scams, spam, and other security issues. While Twitter had earlier told TechCrunch that it would be “winding down” Smyte’s business with existing clients, what that apparently meant was that it was going to announce the acquisition, then effectively shut off the lights over at Smyte and leave everyone in the lurch. According to reports from those affected, Smyte disabled access to its API with very little warning to clients, and without giving them time to prepare. Customers got a phone call, and then – boom – the service was gone. Clients had multi-year contracts in some cases. And again, to reiterate, Smyte is a provider of anti-abuse and anti-fraud protections – not something any business would shut off overnight. In npm’s case, it even led to a production outage. Twitter declined to comment, but we understand it was making phone calls to affected Smyte customers today to match them with new service providers. The decision to an existing customer base the minute the startup joined Twitter isn’t a good look for either company, and is especially ironic in light of Twitter’s promises of “trust and safety” improvements in the months to come. Trust, huh? That’s how it works? Holy shit Twitter bought Smyte and immediately shut it down. We had a 3 years contract with them and they just disappeared overnight. No communication at all, they just turned their servers off, closed our shared support channel and walked away. What the actual fuck — Giacomo Gatelli (@arthens) »Trust and safety as a service«, they said. Now owns , and trust is down the drain. Shutting down their services immediately, not giving their customers any grace period to adjust. Thought was better than that 😡 — Ekaterina Damer (@ekadamer) Wait…so did just shut down it's service entirely today with no warning after bought them? What about their customers that rely on them for advanced moderation and the safety of their platforms? — Michael Ehinger (@MichaelEhinger) A vendor notified us of their acquisition at 6am this morning and shut down their APIs 30 minutes later, creating a production outage for npm (package publishes and user registrations). The sheer unprofessionalism of this is blowing my mind. — Laurie Voss (@seldo) It takes weeks to negotiate and sign an acquisition. You didn't find out at 6am. You couldn't give us a week? Even a couple of hours to take your service out of our critical path and avoid an outage? Fucking shocking behavior. — Laurie Voss (@seldo) Damage is done already anyway. We had the same experience; luckily we were only using them in an async capacity so it didn't take us offline. — Jeff Goldschrafe (@jgoldschrafe) — theredwarrior (@theredwarrior) from : "Twitter tells us that Smyte will wind down its operations with those customers including Indiegogo, GoFundMe, npm" 🤔🤔🤔🤔 — Adam Perry (@dika10sune) Hey , it's a massive bummer that you couldn't give your customers any notice before turning everything off. Is there anything you can do to help us out? — Dennis Hotson (@dennishotson) Thanks for just shutting off service at 615am this morning with 7 minutes notice. — Curtis Schofield (@curtisjennings) This was the worst experience, especially with an acquisition, that we've ever encountered with a partner. We were given less than a half an hour notice before the entire system was shut down, leading to immediate payflow & platform issues with a hefty cost — Kerry Barker (@kerryjunebug) Twitter has released a statement regarding this situation, which was shared via the Twitter account of Mike Montano, VP of Twitter’s Engineering team, just now. He writes “There have been concerns around how we’re transitioning Smyte’s customers. We could have done better and are learning from this experience. Here’s the email I just sent to our team.” The full email and tweet is below: There have been concerns around how we're transitioning Smyte's customers. We could have done better and are learning from this experience. Here's the email I just sent to our team. — Mike Montano (@michaelmontano) |
YouTube introduces channel memberships, merchandise and premieres | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | YouTube creators are gaining a number of new tools to generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising, as well as those that will help them better engage their fans, according to news the video streaming site today at the conference in Anaheim, California. This includes the rollout of channel memberships, merchandising, marketing partnerships via FameBit and the launch of “Premieres,” which offers a middle ground between pre-recorded, edited video and live streaming. Before today, YouTube had offered on YouTube Gaming. This gave fans the ability to sponsor a channel for $4.99 per month, which also gave them access to exclusive digital goods, like a custom badge and emoji. YouTube started testing this program across its larger video network last fall, it said. Those tests led to YouTube channel memberships. Unlike on YouTube gaming, Channel memberships have . Creators will need to have 100,000 subscribers or more, be over 18 and be members of the YouTube Partner Program. However, the price point for backing a creator’s channel remains the same: $4.99 per month, and includes the custom badges and exclusive emoji. It will also allow subscribers to gain access to members-only posts in the Community tab where creators will share custom perks from time to time, like access to an exclusive live stream, additional videos, shout-outs, news of upcoming events, early access to ticket sales and other things. YouTube says it will vet these perks manually, to ensure they meet YouTube’s guidelines and are something the creator can actually deliver. “This tool set is fairly powerful, so we want to make sure that they don’t put products out there, that they really can’t commit to,” explains Director of Product Management, Rohit Dhawan, who heads alternative monetization at YouTube. He says the perks can be almost anything the creator wants to offer, within YouTube’s guidelines. “It’s kind of like a blank canvas…it’s us giving the creators the tools to customize their membership offering and provide whatever perks that they feel is going to be valuable to the fans,” he says. This feature launched in January for select creators, who have already been generating revenue. It will soon arrive for all who are eligible. C omedy creator more than tripled his YouTube revenue, thanks to memberships, says YouTube. S panish gaming channel now has six times the number of members as it did sponsors on YouTube Gaming alone. And is making over 50 percent of revenue from Channel Memberships. Overall, the number of creators earning five figures a year is up 35 percent, and the number of those earning six figures is up by 40 percent, YouTube says. Similar to sponsorships, YouTube 30 percent of sponsorship revenue after local sales tax is deducted, but covers all transaction costs, including credit card fees. In addition to memberships, creators will also be able to sell to fans directly, starting today. In a shelf directly below the video itself, creators with more than 10,000 subscribers can offer merchandise like tee-shirts, hats, phone cases or any one of over 20 different merchandise items that make sense for their channel. For example, the creator of turned his character into a , and sold more than 60,000 units, making over $1 million in profit in just 18 days. This new program is being launched in partnership with custom merchandise platform Teespring. YouTube says that Teespring will retain a cut of the merchandise, which varies per item. Effectively, the way this works is that there’s a flat price per item sold that goes back to Teespring, but the creator can mark up the item to whatever price they want, then keep the upside. For example, a single t-shirt’s base price is $10.22, but creators typically sell them for $22. However, if the creators sells 200-499 t-shirts, the base price drops to $9.82, so the creator makes more money. But YouTube has also negotiated a deal with Teespring where it receives a commission on those sales — a small flat percentage, we’re told — the majority of which is returned to the creator. This is meant to incentivize the creator to sell merchandise through YouTube, as they’ll receive more thanks to this returned commission than if they sold direct. This is also a massive win for Teespring, which only a few years ago was its business and staff. During beta testing, Teespring says there was an 82 percent success rate for YouTubers using the merchandise service, and conversions from views to sales were testing at 2.5 times higher than with standard description links. This led to an average of 25 percent more units sold per user, among early adopters. In addition, creators who have been connected directly with brand sponsorships via FameBit, the , will also be able to use the merchandise shelf to point fans to whatever they’re selling — like video games, apparel or any other product sold online. This feature was announced at VidCon, but hasn’t rolled out at this time. Finally, YouTubers who want to leverage the revenue generation possibilities that come with Live video will have a way to do so without having to actually go live. Instead, they can use a new YouTube feature called “Premieres” that creates a landing page they can promote ahead of a video’s release. This page will also have a chat feature, like Live videos do, which means creators can use Super Chat and take advantage of Channel Membership perks even if they aren’t doing live content. The videos are uploaded in the same interface on YouTube, so there’s no new workflow to learn beyond toggling the “Premiere” switch on. Creators can also join in the chats as the video goes live to engage with their fans around this pre-recorded content, as well as comment on the videos before they start. When the Premiere wraps, it’s posted as a regular video on the site (without the two-minute countdown video YouTube adds). “We’re going to use our search and discovery platform to promote these,” notes Kurt Wilms, Group Product Manager at YouTube, who’s leading Live. “Upcoming premieres can appear on the [YouTube] homepage and in recommended videos,” he says. Premieres will also show in the section where all the channel content you’ve subscribed to displays, we’re told. And Premieres will be in YouTube search and YouTube related videos. “They’re going to appear across all the dedicated discovery portions of our site, which is awesome,” he says. Premieres can be used to promote upcoming videos from creators as well as things like new movie trailers from studios, trailers from video games, or even music videos. But Premieres is not tied to YouTube Music at this time. A number of YouTube creators will be turning on Premieres after VidCon, including , , , , , , , , , , , , and . YouTube also said its version of Stories will arrive for all eligible creators with more than 10,000 subscribers later this year. The announcements come at a critical time for YouTube, as Facebook is trying to woo creators away to its own network and video hub with unique of its own. The news also follows another YouTube made to advertisers this week, about new ways they’ll be able to connect with their audience using a Creative Suite of ad tools. |
Bag Week 2018: Mission Workshop’s Radian rolltop starts simple but grows piece by piece | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | I’ve always been wary of modular, rail-based bag systems. They’ve always struck me as rather military and imposing, which I suppose is kind of the point. Even Mission Workshop, whose other bags , put out one that seemed to me excessive. But they’ve tempered their style a bit and put out the Radian, a solid middle ground between their one-piece and modular systems. is clearly aimed at the choosy, pack-loving traveler who eschews roller bags for aesthetic — which describes me to a tee. Strictly rolltop bags (originating in cyclist and outdoors circles) end up feeling restrictive in where you can stow gear, and rollers are boxy and unrefined. So the Radian takes a bit from both, with the added ability to add bits and pieces according to your needs. : Adaptable, waterproof, well-designed and not attention-grabbing : Simple or lightweight The core pack is quite streamlined, with no protruding external pockets whatsoever. There’s the main compartment — 42 liters, if you’re curious — and a cleverly hidden laptop compartment between the main one and the back pads. Both are independently lined with waterproof material (in addition to the water-resistant outer layer) and the zippers are similarly sealed. There’s also a mesh pouch hidden like the laptop area that you can pop out or stow at will. You can roll up the rolltop and secure it with Velcro, or treat it as a big flap and snap it to a strap attached to the bottom of the bag — the straps themselves are attached with strong Velcro, so you can take them off if you’re going roll style. The “Cobra” buckle upgrade is cool but the standard plastic buckles are well made enough that you shouldn’t feel any pressure to pay the $65 to upgrade. [gallery ids="1661276,1661280,1661279,1661282,1661283,1661278,1661277,1661272"] Access is where things begin to diverge. Unlike most rolltop packs, you can lay the bag on the ground and unzip the top as if it were a roller, letting you access the whole space from somewhere other than the top. The flap also has its own mesh enclosure. This is extremely handy and addresses the main ergonomic issue I’ve always had with strictly top-loading bags. In a further assimilation of rolltop qualities, there’s a secret pocket at the bottom of the bag that houses a large cloth cover that seals up the pack straps and so on, making the bag much more stowable and preventing TSA or baggage handlers from having to negotiate all that junk or bag it up themselves. Of course, a single large compartment is rarely enough when you’re doing real traveling and need to access this document or that gadget in a hurry. So the Radian joins the Mission Workshop , which lets you add on a variety of extra pockets of various sizes and types. Just be careful that you don’t push it over the carry-on size limit (though you can always stuff the extra pockets inside temporarily). There are six rails — two on each side and two on the back — and a handful of accessories that go on each, sliding on with sturdy metal clips. The pack I tested had two zippered side pockets, the “mini folio” and the “horizontal zip” on the back, plus a cell phone pocket for the front strap. They’re nice but the rear ones I tried are a bit small — you’d have trouble fitting anything but a pocket paperback and a couple of energy bars in either. If I had my choice I would go with the full-size folio, one zippered and one rolltop side pocket. Then you can do away with the cell pocket, which is a bit much, and have several stowage options within reach. Plus the folio has its own rails to stick one of the small ones onto. There’s really no need to get the separate laptop case, since the laptop compartment would honestly fit two or three. It’s a great place to store dress shirts and other items that need to stay folded up and straight. [gallery ids="1661272,1661278,1661275,1661281,1661284,1661271"] As far as room, the 42 liters are enough on my estimation to pack for a five-day trip — that is to say, I easily fit in five pairs of socks and underwear, five t-shirts, a sweater or two, a dress shirt, some shorts and a pair of jeans. More than that would be kind of a stretch if you were also planning on bringing things like a camera, a book or two and all the other usual travel accessories. The main compartment has mesh areas on the side to isolate toiletries and so on, but they’re just divisions; they don’t add space. There are places for small things in the outside pockets but again, not a lot of room for much bigger than a paperback, water bottle or snack unless you spring for the folio add-on. As for looks — the version I tested was the black camo version, obviously, which looks a little more subdued in real life than my poorly color-balanced pictures make it look. Personally I prefer the company’s flat grey over the camo and the black. Makes it even more low-profile. In the end I think the Radian is the best option for anyone looking at Mission Workshop bags who wants a modular option, but unless you plan on swapping out pieces a lot, I’m not personally convinced that it’s better than their all-in-one bags like the and . By all means take a look at putting a Radian system together, but don’t neglect to check if any of the pre-built ones fit your needs as well. |
SpaceX nabs $130 million to launch an Air Force satellite with Falcon Heavy | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | SpaceX beat out one other competitor to land a $130 million launch contract with the U.S. Air Force using its Falcon Heavy rocket. The award is an important validation of the Falcon Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets ever made. Under the contract, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based rocket company founded by Elon Musk will launch the Air Force Space Command-52 satellite to its intended orbit. The contract includes launch vehicle production and mission, as well as integration, launch operations and spaceflight worthiness activities, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Department of Defense. The work, which will be performed at SpaceX’s headquarters, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and in McGregor, Texas, is expected to be completed by September 2020. The mission is planned to be launched from Kennedy Space Center. Two proposals were received by the DOD in the competitive bidding process. “SpaceX is honored by the Air Force’s selection of Falcon Heavy to launch the competitively-awarded AFSPC-52 mission,” said SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. “On behalf of all of our employees, I want to thank the Air Force for certifying Falcon Heavy, awarding us this critically important mission, and for their trust and confidence in our company. SpaceX is pleased to continue offering the American taxpayer the most cost-effective, reliable launch services for vital national security space missions.” SpaceX successfully for the first time (with a Tesla Roadster , no less, because… well, Elon.) in February 2018. The rocket has three cores, or first-stage boosters, that work in unison to get the rocket into a low Earth orbit. There are two side boosters and a center core. SpaceX has designed the rocket so that after stage separation all three boosters will land and be able to be reused. The company recovered . |
Bag Week 2018: Chrome’s Yalta 2.0 is a roomy rolltop that keeps up | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | At first, I didn’t know where the Yalta fit in. With a 30L capacity, the Yalta 2.0 ( ) is not a small bag but it’s not massive either. It’s a little bulkier on the bottom than the top, an inversion of most bike-friendly bags that usually crunch most of your carry weight high up on your shoulders. As a classic Chrome bag, I’ve always admired the Yalta from a distance for its unique profile, full side zipper and its decision to opt for a tension hook clasp instead of Velcro or a Chrome buckle (cool but heavy). The Yalta’s adjustable closure hook feels good to use and means that you don’t have to deal with the noise Velcro makes, which if you’re me is definitely not your primary ASMR trigger. TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker I tested the Yalta in two contexts: during the week for my normal routine and on a low-key weekend camping trip. During the course of my normal day-to-day testing, the Yalta turned out to be a surprisingly adept gym plus laptop bag thanks to its strangest design quirk: a large opening that lets you access the space that the waterproof main rolltop compartment sits in. Once you unzip the full-length side zipper you feel a little weird, like you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be, but ride it out. That pocket, kind of an internal bladder around the true inner roll-top compartment, is handy if you figure out what to use it for. TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker For one, you can put your weird filthy stuff in there so it doesn’t ever touch your clean normal stuff, and that’s pretty cool. In my case that meant a full-sized Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi — a huge — and the rest of my workout clothes, plus assorted nerd stuff, like my inhalers and 10 micron pens ranging from fine tip to extremely very fine tip. You can also get to anything in the cavernous side-zip area (again, this is the entire interior of the bag minus whatever is in the rolltop section) super easily, so it’s nice to have two big sections with varied levels of accessibility instead of just one huge main compartment and a side pocket or whatever. The laptop sleeve sits at the very back of the bag, accessible within this full side zip. While side-zip laptop slots are amazing, the Yalta’s did feel on the large side and my 13″ MacBook was safe but not very snugly positioned. TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker For my second trial, I loaded the Yalta up for a day hike to a local rock climbing spot with friends (note: this thing cannot carry a rope). It’s not what the Yalta is designed for, but it’s what I was up to so I figured I’d give it a shot. The bag performed well on the hike in, fully loaded with lunch, snacks, many layers, a raincoat, a small first aid kit, a Sony RX100 II, a really heavy guidebook for the area and a two-liter water bladder, which I stuffed into the strange side-zip area, snaking the hose out through the top of the zipper. I managed to forget my helmet, which I wished I’d had later when a nearby climber dropped a metal carabiner from 60 feet off the ground, but had I remembered it would have clipped on to the closure loops on front of the pack nicely. TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker Surprisingly, the Yalta — much more of a bike bag than a crag bag — did well throughout the day, distributing my weight comfortably enough that I didn’t notice it at all. The front pocket made essentials easy to access and the rolltop waterproof area gave me peace of mind that my stuff would stay dry if it started raining, which it usually does. One gripe: the sternum strap was surprisingly hard to hook and came undone sometimes, but it wasn’t a huge deal. It’s also worth remembering that any rolltop without full side access is going to be tough to organize, and that was definitely the case here. TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker Compared to some of Chrome’s and other less-technical packs, the Yalta is a likable middle ground. The pack isn’t as rain resistant as a bag made out of fully waterproof material and the laptop sleeve could use some structure, but it carries a fair amount and it’s got a nice slender profile that looks and feels good. The Yalta doesn’t really have any quirks or tricks beyond the strange side-zip compartment, and that makes it a good fit for anyone who needs a good-looking, weather resistant mid-sized rolltop backpack for work and what comes before and after. A great multi-purpose rolltop backpack that isn’t too technical. The ultimate gear pack. Full of pockets. |
The future of AI relies on a code of ethics | Matthew Howard | 2,018 | 6 | 21 |
Facebook has recently come under More importantly, it’s a call to action: We need a of As the AI revolution continues to accelerate, new technology is being developed to solve key problems faced by consumers, businesses and the world at large. It is the next stage of evolution for countless industries, from security and enterprise to retail and healthcare. I believe that in the near , almost all new technology will incorporate some form of or machine learning, enabling humans to interact with data and devices in ways we can’t yet imagine. Moving forward, our reliance on will deepen, inevitably causing many ethical issues to arise as humans turn over to algorithms their cars, homes and businesses. These issues and their consequences will not discriminate, and the impact will be far-reaching — affecting everyone, including public citizens, small businesses utilizing or entrepreneurs developing the latest tech. No one will be left untouched. Researchers, entrepreneurs and global organizations must lay the groundwork for a of to guide us through these upcoming breakthroughs and inevitable dilemmas. I should clarify that this won’t be a single of — each company and industry will have to come up with their own unique guidelines. For the of to become as responsible as possible, we’ll need to answer some tough ethical questions. I do not have the answers to these questions right now, but my goal is to bring more awareness to this topic, along with simple common sense, and work toward a solution. Here are some of the issues related to and automation that keep me up at night. With the invention of the car came the invention of the car accident. Similarly, an -augmented car will bring with it ethical and business implications that we must be prepared to face. Researchers and programmers will have to ask themselves what safety and mobility trade-offs are inherent in autonomous vehicles. Ethical challenges will unfold as algorithms are developed that impact how humans and autonomous vehicles interact. Should these algorithms be transparent? For example, will a car rear-end an abruptly stopped car or swerve and hit a dog on the side of the street? Key decisions will be made by a fusion processor in split seconds, running , connecting a car’s vast array of sensors. Will entrepreneurs and small businesses be kept in the dark while these algorithms dominate the market? Driverless cars will also transform the way consumers behave. Companies will need to anticipate this behavior and offer solutions to fill those gaps. Now is the time to start predicting how this technology will change consumer needs and what products and services can be created to meet them. As our news media and social platforms become increasingly driven, businesses from startups to global powerhouses must be aware of their ethical implications and choose wisely when working this technology into their products. We’re already seeing being used to create and defend against political propaganda and fake news. Meanwhile, dark money has been used for social media ads that can target incredibly specific populations in an attempt to influence public opinion or even political elections. What happens when we can no longer trust our news sources and social media feeds? will continue to give algorithms significant influence over what we see and read in our daily lives. We have to ask ourselves how much trust we can put in the systems that we’re creating and how much power we can give them. I think it’s up to companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter — and platforms — to put safeguards in place to prevent them from being misused. We need the equivalent of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for news! Companies large and small must begin preparing for the of work in the age of automation. Automation will replace some labor and enhance other jobs. Many workers will be empowered with these new tools, enabling them to work more quickly and efficiently. However, many companies will have to account for the jobs lost to automation. Businesses should begin thinking about what labor may soon be automated and how their workforce can be utilized in other areas. A large portion of the workforce will have to be trained for new jobs created by automation in what is becoming commonly referred to as collaborative automation. The challenge will come when deciding on how to retrain and redistribute employees whose jobs have been automated or augmented. Will it be the government, employers or automation companies? In the end, these sectors will need to work together as automation changes the landscape of work. It’s true that is the next stage of tech evolution, and that it’s everywhere. It has become portable, accessible and economical. We have now, finally, reached the tipping point. But that point is on a precarious edge, see-sawing somewhere between an dreamland and an nightmare. In order to surpass the hype and take advantage of its transformative powers, it’s essential that we get right, starting with the . As entrepreneurs rush to develop the latest tech or use it to solve key business problems, each has a responsibility to consider the of this technology. Researchers, governments and businesses must cooperatively develop ethical guidelines that help to ensure a responsible use of to the benefit of all. From driverless cars to media platforms to the workplace, is going to have a significant impact on how we live our lives. But as thought leaders and experts, we shouldn’t just deliver the technology — we need to closely monitor it and ask the right questions as the industry evolves. It has never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur in the rise of but there’s a lot of work to be done now and in the to ensure we’re using the technology responsibly. |
PayPal to buy Simility, a specialist in AI-based fraud and risk management, for $120M | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Payment provider continues apace with its acquisitions streak to bring more modern tools into its platform to serve its 237 million customers. Today the company that it is buying , a fraud prevention specialist, for $120 million in cash. PayPal had been an investor in Simility (it owns three percent of the company, it says), along with Accel, the Valley Fund, Trinity Ventures and others. The startup had raised just under $25 million and was last valued at $52.75 million, according to figures from , making this a decent return for its backers. The deal is expected to close in Q3. Online fraud involving either buyers or sellers — and sometimes people — has been one of the to the growth of e-commerce, and that has only become more of an issue as digital transactions have become more mature and spread to more platforms. Simility’s approach is to use a set of APIs and beacons that essentially monitor digital transactions and buying activity wherever they happen to take place: on mobile, web or in physical environments. Augmenting these with machine learning and feeds from other data sources, it creates something it calls “adaptive” risk management: a changing approach and protection strategy based on what the threat of the moment might be. Acquiring a company like this makes sense on two levels for PayPal: not just for its own systems, but for that of its customers, who make PayPal-powered transactions on the web, on mobile and at physical points of sales. “Digital commerce has exploded, and fraudsters have taken note, adapting and developing new methods to carry out their crimes,” said Bill Ready, chief operating officer, PayPal, in a statement. “PayPal has been at the forefront of developing innovative fraud prevention and risk management solutions for nearly 20 years, but until now, merchants haven’t been able to configure those solutions to manage the unique complexities of their businesses. Together with Simility, we will be able to put more control in the hands of our merchants to fight fraud while helping make commerce experiences faster and more secure.” Ready in a separate blog described the company’s strategy currently as an effort to create a for all things commerce, and simplification is also an aspect of this deal: Simility already has a number of customers that also work with PayPal, such as PayPal’s former owner eBay/StubHub, OfferUp, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Rebtel. The acquisition will mean a more integrated approach for them where their PayPal services have a stronger layer of fraud protection on them, and they also get used to help form a bigger picture about the overall state of fraud that the companies. PayPal said that after the deal closes, it will also extend Simility’s tools to the rest of the merchants on its platform. “Our vision for Simility was to create an adaptive risk management platform that empowers organizations operating in a digital world to manage an evolving fraud and risk landscape where data breaches are the new normal,” said Rahul Pangam, co-founder and CEO, Simility, in a statement. “We are excited to enter the next phase of our growth with PayPal and are thrilled to join them to help drive the next generation of payment and commerce solutions while scaling our business together.” PayPal has made a number of acquisitions over the last few weeks, all pointing to adding new technologies and tools to reflect our changing times and how that is playing out in the world of payments. They have included European mobile payments and financial services business , and AI-based CRM specialist . |
MoviePass introduces surge pricing for the summer | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Starting in July, you might have to pay a little extra to see the newest blockbusters when using MoviePass. The movie subscription service has plans to instate surge pricing for non-annual subscribers starting at $2 for movies and times the app deems “very popular,” This comes one day after for a competing movie subscription service called AMC Stubs A-List, coming in June. In MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe’s statement to Business Insider, he seemed unfazed by AMC’s entrance into the subscription game, saying instead it “validates that subscription is really here to stay.” But for MoviePass to stay, it might have to start changing it business plan. The subscription service’s parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics that MoviePass’ monthly losses soared to $40 million in May. The company also expects its cash deficit to reach $45 million by June. These numbers are in part a reflection of the 545,000 new users who joined the service between May 1st and June 15th. In addition to a few additional dollars to see the next or this summer, MoviePass said it plans to roll out two new programs come August that will bring in a little extra money as well. Starting at the end of August, users will be able to use the app to watch IMAX or Real 3D movies for an additional $2 to $6 and have the option to bring a friend (though, they’ll have to pay almost full price for the additional ticket) through the app. To start, these features will have to be applied to separate films, but MoviePass has plans to combine them. |
Microsoft backpedals on VR promise | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | If you were still waiting patiently for the virtual reality features that , then I have some bad news for you. During E3 last week, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for gaming, Mike Nichols, that the company had no plans to fulfill that promise. “We don’t have any plans specific to Xbox consoles in virtual reality or mixed reality,” Nichols told GamesIndustry.biz. This goes against a promise that Microsoft made two years ago when Xbox chief Phil Spencer that the Xbox One X (then dramatically known as ) would support “[the kind of] high-end VR that you see happening in the PC space.” The release of the Xbox One X came and went without any news of VR integration, but in the interim, Microsoft did make strides toward VR and mixed reality tech for PC gaming with for Windows 10. According to Nichols, it seems like Microsoft may be sticking to this PC gaming territory for awhile. “PC is probably the best platform for more immersive VR and MR … but as it relates to Xbox, no,” he said. |
A huge spreadsheet naming ICE employees gets yanked from GitHub and Medium | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | A massive database of current U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees scraped from public LinkedIn profiles has been removed from the tech platforms hosting the data. The project was undertaken by , self-described artist, programmer and researcher in response to around ICE’s detention practices at the southern U.S. border. Lavigne posted the database to GitHub on Tuesday and by Wednesday the repository had been removed. The database included the name, profile photo, title and city area of every ICE employee who listed the agency as their employer on the professional networking site. A more in-depth version of the data pulled all public LinkedIn data from the pool of users, including previous employment, education history and any other information those users opted to make public. The total database lists this information for 1,595 ICE employees, from the agency’s CTO on down to low-level workers and interns. The project accompanied a Medium post about the project’s aims that has since been removed by the platform: While I don’t have a precise idea of what should be done with this data set, I leave it here with the hope that researchers, journalists and activists will find it useful… I find it helpful to remember that as much as internet companies use data to spy on and exploit their users, we can at times reverse the story, and leverage those very same online platforms as a means to investigate or even undermine entrenched power structures. It’s a strange side effect of our reliance on private companies and semi-public platforms to mediate nearly all aspects of our lives. The data set appears to have violated GitHub and Medium guidelines against doxing. Medium’s anti-harassment policy specifically forbids doxing and defines it broadly, preventing “the aggregation of publicly available information to target, shame, blackmail, harass, intimidate, threaten, or endanger.” Because it doesn’t include personal identifying information like home addresses, phone numbers or other non-public details, Lavigne’s project isn’t really doxing in the normal sense of the word, though that hasn’t made it less controversial. GitHub’s own policy leading to the data’s removal is less clear, though the company the repository was removed due to “doxxing and harassment.” The platform’s terms of service forbid uses of GitHub that “violate the privacy of any third party, such as by posting another person’s personal information without consent.” This leaves some room for interpretation, and it is not clear that data from a public-facing social media profile is “personal” under this definition. GitHub allows researchers to scrape data from external sites in order to aggregate it “only if any publications resulting from that research are open access.” While Lavigne’s aggregation efforts were deemed off-limits by some tech platforms, they do raise compelling questions. What kinds of public data, in aggregate, run afoul of anti-harassment rules? Why can this kind of data be scraped for the purposes of targeted advertising or surveillance by law enforcement but not be collected in a user-facing way? The ICE database raised these questions and plenty more, but for some tech companies the question of hosting the data proved too provocative from the start. |
Species-identifying AI gets a boost from images snapped by citizen naturalists | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Someday we’ll have an app that you can point at a weird bug or unfamiliar fern and have it spit out the genus and species. But right now just aren’t up to the task. To help things along, researchers have assembled hundreds of thousands of images taken by regular folks of critters in real life situations — and by studying these, our AI helpers may be able to get a handle on biodiversity. Many computer vision algorithms have been trained on one of several large sets of images, which may have everything from people to household objects to fruits and vegetables in them. That’s great for learning a little about a lot of things, but what if you want to go deep on a specific subject or type of image? You need a special set of lots of that kind of image. For some specialties, we have that already: FaceNet, for instance, is the standard set for learning how to recognize or replicate faces. But while computers may have trouble recognizing faces, we rarely do — while on the other hand, I can never remember the name of the birds that land on my feeder in the spring. Fortunately, I’m not the only one with this problem, and for years the community of the iNaturalist app has been collecting pictures of common and uncommon animals for identification. And it turns out that these images are the perfect way to teach a system how to recognize plants and animals in the wild. Could you tell the difference? You might think that a computer could learn all it needs to from biology textbooks, field guides and National Geographic. But when you or I take a picture of a sea lion, it looks a lot different from a professional shot: the background is different, the angle isn’t perfect, the focus is probably off and there may even be other animals in the shot. Even a good computer vision algorithm might not see much in common between the two. The photos taken through the iNaturalist app, however, are all of the amateur type — yet they have also been validated and identified by professionals who, far better than any computer, can recognize a species even when it’s occluded, poorly lit or blurry. The researchers, from Caltech, Google, Cornell and iNaturalist itself, put together a limited subset of the more than 1.6 million images in the app’s databases, presented this week at . They decided that in order for the set to be robust, it should have lots of different angles and situations, so they searched for species that have had at least 20 different people spot them. still has more than 859,000 pictures of over 5,000 species. These they had people annotate by drawing boxes around the critter in the picture, so the computer would know what to pay attention to. A set of images was set aside for training the system, another set for testing it. Examples of bounding boxes being put on images. Ironically, they can tell it’s a good set because existing image recognition engines perform so poorly on it, not even reaching 70 percent first-guess accuracy. The very qualities that make the images themselves so amateurish and difficult to parse make them extremely valuable as raw data; these pictures haven’t been sanitized or set up to make it any easier for the algorithms to sort through. Even the systems created by the researchers with the iNat2017 set didn’t fare so well. But that’s okay — finding where there’s room to improve is part of defining the problem space. The set is expanding, as others like it do, and the researchers note that the number of species with 20 independent observations has more than doubled since they started working on the data set. That means iNat2018, already under development, will be much larger and will likely lead to more robust recognition systems. The team says they’re working on adding more attributes to the set so that a system will be able to report not just species, but sex, life stage, habitat notes and other metadata. And if it fails to nail down the species, it could in the future at least make a guess at the genus or whatever taxonomic rank it’s confident about — e.g. it may not be able to tell if it’s or , but it’s definitely an anemone. This is just one of many parallel efforts to improve the state of computer vision in natural environments; you can learn more about , and other more class-specific challenges are listed . |
Happn takes on Tinder Places with an interactive map of missed connections | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Dating app , whose “missed connections” type of dating experience connects people who have crossed paths in real life, is fighting back at Tinder. Seemingly inspired by Happn’s location-based features, Tinder recently began piloting something called – a feature that tracks your location to match you with those people who visit your same haunts – like a favorite bar, bookshop, gym, restaurant, and more. Of course Tinder’s move into location-based dating should worry Happn, which had built its entire dating app around the idea of matching up people who could have met in real life, but just missed doing so. Now, Happn is challenging Tinder Places with a new feature of its own. It’s debuting an interactive map where users can discover those people they’ve crossed paths with over the past seven days. Happn founder, French entrepreneur Didier Rappaport, dismisses the Tinder threat. “We don’t see it as a threat at all but as a good thing,” he tells TechCrunch. “Find the people you’ve crossed paths with has always been in Happn’s DNA since the beginning….We are very flattered that Tinder wants to include the same feature in its product. However, we will never use the swipe in our product,” he says. Rappaport believes swiping is wrong because it makes you think of the other person as a product, and that’s not Happn’s philosophy. “We want to [give our users a chance] to interact or not with a person, to take their time to decide, to be able to move back in their timeline if suddenly they change their mind and want to have a second chance,” he notes. To use Happn’s map, you’ll tap on a specific location you’ve visited, and are then presented with potential matches who have been there too, or within 250 meters of that spot. The map will use the same geolocation data that Happn already uses to create its timeline, but just displays it in another form. For those who aren’t comfortable sharing their location all the time with a dating app (um, everyone?), Happn also offers an “invisibility” mode that lets people hide their location during particular parts of the day – for example, while they’re at work. While Happn’s new feature is a nice upgrade for regular users, Tinder’s location-based features – we’re sorry to report – are more elegantly designed. Today, Happn’s invisibility mode has to be turned on when you want to use it, or you have to pay for a subscription to schedule to come on automatically at certain times. That means it requires far more effort to use on a day-to-day basis. Meanwhile, Tinder Places lets you block a regular place you visit – like, say, the gym – from ever being recorded as a place you want to show up for matches. It also automatically removes places that would be inappropriate, including your home and work addresses, and alerts you when it’s adding a new one – so you can quickly take action to remove it, if you choose. Tinder Places is also free. (It’s just not rolled out worldwide at this time). Happn, however, does offer a way to hide your profile information and other details from select users, and never shows your current location in real time, also like Tinder. , which launched back in 2014, now claims nearly 50 million users worldwide, across 50 major cities and 40 countries. It claims to have 6.5 million monthly users – but that’s much smaller, compared with Tinder’s estimated 50 million actives. And with Tinder parent Match Group , , and one has to wonder how much life rival dating apps, especially those of Happn’s size, have left. The app is a free download on the App Store, Play Store and Windows Store. |
Google StreetView cars to help map pollution in London | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | From next month two Google StreetView cars will be driving around London’s streets fitted with sensors that take air quality readings every 30 meters to map and monitor air quality in the UK capital. There will also be 100 fixed sensors fitted to lampposts and buildings in pollution blackspots and sensitive locations in the city — creating a new quality monitoring network that Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, is billing as “the most sophisticated in the world”. The goal with the year-long project is to generate hyperlocal data to help feed policy responses. Khan has made tackling air pollution one of his priorities. It’s not the first time StreetView cars have been used as a vehicle for pollution monitoring. sensors made by San Francisco startup Aclima were fitted to the cars to map air quality in the Bay Area. The London project is using sensors made by UK company . The air quality monitoring project is a partnership between the Greater London Authority and network — a coalition of major cities around the world which is focused on tackling climate change and increasing health and well-being. The project is being led by the charity Environmental Defense Fund Europe, in partnership with Monitors, Google Earth Outreach, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants, University of Cambridge, National Physical Laboratory, and the Environmental Defense Fund team in the United States. King’s College London will also be undertaking a linked study focused on schools. Results will be shared with members of the C40 Cities network — with the ambition of developing policy responses that help improve quality for hundreds of millions of city dwellers around the world. |
More tickets available to the TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | We hope you’ve saved the date for the on July 27, because we’re releasing our second batch of tickets today. Jump on this opportunity, folks, because our first group of tickets sold out in a flash — and these babies, available on a first-come, first-served basis, won’t last long, either. . If you haven’t attended our classic summer fete — this is our thirteenth year — you’re in for a treat. Enjoy the beautiful grounds and patio deck at August Capital in Menlo Park, lovely libations and a delicious snack or two. And do it all in the company of your peers, celebrating entrepreneurship and possibility. Networking is always a part of every TechCrunch event, and you never know when you’ll meet the perfect future investor, founder or collaborator. True fact: Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ, at a backyard party hosted by TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington. Here are the when, where and how much details for the TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital: Of course, there’s more than one way to enjoy this party. If you have an early-stage startup, buy a . It’s a great opportunity to showcase your business in front of all the right people in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere. Each demo table includes four Summer Party tickets. Learn more about demo tables . Come and share a friendly evening of cocktails and relaxed networking in a beautiful setting. Who knows, you might win nifty door prizes, including TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to The second round of TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital tickets is available now, and you can . We hope to see you there! |
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Disrupting the paycheck, Gusto’s Flexible Pay allows employees to pick when they get paid | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | People should get paid for work they have done. It’s a pretty simple principle of capitalism, but a principle that seems increasingly violated in the modern economy. With semi-monthly paychecks, the work an employee does on the first day of the month won’t be paid until the end of the third week — a delay of up to 21 days. That delay is despite the massive digitalization of bank transfers and accounting over the past few decades that should have made paychecks far more regular. , a payroll and HR benefits provider focused on small businesses, announced the launch of today, a new feature that will allow its payroll users to select when they receive their income for work already completed. The feature, which must be switched on by an employer, will cost employers nothing out-of-pocket today. The launch is limited to customers in Texas, but will expand to other states in the coming year. As Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves explained it to me, a kid mowing lawns in a neighborhood has a much more visceral connection to income than the modern knowledge economy worker. Cut the grass, get cash — it’s that simple. He also pointed out, with irony, that terminated employees experience much better payroll service than regular employees: they have to be paid out on their last day of work outside of the standard paycheck schedule. Reeves and his team wanted to offer that flexibility and convenience to every worker. Flexible Pay allows users to choose when they get paid, outside of typical paycheck schedules The key to this new feature has been Gusto’s increasing data about small businesses. , and it has comprehensive access to its customers’ financial and payroll data. With integrations to time sheet services and proper risk modeling, Gusto is able to predict exactly what salary a worker has already earned, and can front the money at minimum risk to itself. One major challenge for Gusto was how to reconcile the books of the employer with the irregular paycheck schedules desired by employees. Gusto handles all the logistics transparently, including tax withholding, so that for employers, the paycheck distribution looks and feels “normal” on its books. That means that Gusto is effectively loaning money to companies, since it is paying payroll in advance. Gusto is funding those loans off its balance sheet today, but over time, the company expects to create a financial facility to underwrite the product. For Reeves, Flexible Pay is “the right thing to do.” He believes that this new level of flexibility will empower workers to control their financial lives. In the long run, as more users get habituated to the product and its convenience, he hopes that the feature will draw other employers into using Gusto based on employee demand. The unfortunate reality in the American workforce is that , by some counts as many as 80 percent. A bill can come due just a day or two before a paycheck hits, but without cash in a checking account, people often have to resort to predatory financial products like payday loans or high-interest credit cards in order to make ends meet. Flexible Pay is one step in the right direction of fighting for workers to get the money they justly deserve. |
Hinge sells 51 percent of shares to Match Group | Sarah Wells | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Match Group, parent company of dating apps Tinder, OkCupid and Match, . With this new acquisition, Match Group has the right to acquire all remaining shares of Hinge within a 12-month period. Match Group says its interest in Hinge began in 2017 after a redesign in which it did away with the “right swipe” in favor of more detailed profiles. According to a statement from Hinge, its app saw in its user base after these changes. In a dating world often dominated by “hook-ups,” Hinge positions itself as a “relationship app” and Hinge in many ways is the antithesis to Tinder, but Match Group says this is part of the advantage to the partnership, not an obstacle. “Dating isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach,” a Match Group spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We operate a variety of products because people gravitate to different apps for different reasons.” Hinge CEO Justin McLeod says that this merger will help the company expand even further than it could alone. “At a certain point, having the scaling capability of a well-funded and experienced partner [like Match Group] makes sense,” McLeod told TechCrunch. “We want to bring a more thoughtful dating experience to the most people.” This acquisition by Match Group follows a to acquire the dating app Bumble in November. Following the collapse of those discussions, against Bumble in March for patent infringement, claiming that it “copied Tinder’s world-changing, card-swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise.” Bumble followed up with its own lawsuit to the tune of $400 million that alleged Match Group fraudulently obtained trade secrets during its acquisition talks six months earlier. These lawsuits are still being settled. Hinge offers an alternative acquisition for Match, which is clearly looking to continue diversifying its dating offerings. “[Hinge] has been getting real traction with cosmopolitan millennials,”a Match Group spokesperson said. “We hope to meaningfully accelerate [its] growth.” |
Win cash and prizes from Visa and HERE Mobility at the Disrupt SF 2018 Virtual Hackathon | Emma Comeau | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Calling all hackers, programmers and tech heads from around the world: The Hackathon at is a virtual reality. We wanted something truly special to celebrate the so we launched the . Thousands of the most highly skilled developers and coders will go head-to-head. But you only have about five weeks left to sign up and complete your hack, so you’d better hurry and . Here’s how this super-sized Virtual Hackathon works. Show us how you’d produce and apply technology to solve different challenges. Our judges will review all eligible submitted hacks and rate them on a scale of 1-5 based on the quality of the idea, technical implementation of the idea and the idea’s potential impact. Here’s what you receive for your effort: Of course, every TechCrunch Hackathon is jam-packed with sponsored contests and prizes galore, and this one is no exception. We already told you about the , and now we’re thrilled to announce two new hack contests from the folks at and . The empowers developers to transform great ideas into new digital commerce experiences using Visa’s proprietary APIs. Over the last several years, Visa has fundamentally evolved both its platforms and how it works with partners and clients, to encourage a broadening of the commerce ecosystem. From geo-location to real-time alerts and tokenization, the Visa Developer Platform offers direct access to a growing number of APIs, tools and support materials so developers can start building easier, faster and more secure ways to power digital commerce. In this digital age, consumers expect seamless experiences personalized to their needs. Point of sale is no longer a destination — it’s wherever and whenever the customer wants it. Help Visa reshape commerce and accelerate digital payment acceptance. Build an app that enhances the customer journey and helps provide seamless, secure payment experiences. Consider Visa’s unique payment network data to drive your innovation. Think about one of the use cases below or create your own to build a solution: We encourage exploring integrations of Visa Developer APIs with other solutions and capabilities. We’ve got a prize-pool of more than $9,000 for the best three teams that use Visa Developer APIs. More details coming soon! The HERE Mobility SDK provides direct access to the Mobility Marketplace so you can build integrated transportation experiences into your application. With this connection you’ll be able to create door-to-door mobility solutions for your users within your app to increase user engagement, customer loyalty and daily active users. Develop within your platform of choice with our SDKs for iOS and Android or execute calls to the Mobility Marketplace through our web app API. Offer your users advanced mobility services such as ride hailing, booking and ETA tracking, and map and location services covering everything from 2D/3D rendering to forward and reverse geocoding. Request access to the SDK by ; you’ll also need to . Join Adi Rome, Head of the Mobility SDK, on Monday, July 2 at 11 am ET for a tutorial session. During the session we’ll walk you through the Mobility Demand API, and Map & Location package, including sample use cases, workflows and demos. Register . Best Use of the : $6,000 API. Contact: Mobility_developers@here.com Competing in our virtual hackathon is free, and you can participate from anywhere. What the hack are you waiting for? Call your most talented dev friends, form your team and ! |
Plexus gloves bring VR sensations to your fingertips | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Bringing a user’s hands into VR has been a pretty logical move for ambitious companies in the space. The mouse and keyboard just don’t make sense, and while more conventional physical controllers make sense for games like first-person shooters, gloves bring a lot to use cases that require a bit more finesse. We’ve seen glimpses into that Oculus is doing on VR gloves, and hand-tracking tech has been pursued by quite a few other startups, as well. is launching out of Y Combinator’s latest class of startups with ambitions to bring a low-cost solution that puts a flexible glove onto users’ hands that will deliver feedback for AR and VR without leaving them confused and their hands super sweaty. The Plexus glove relies on the existing tracking systems of HTC and Oculus headsets, though they’re also working on their own more svelte solution based on licensed SteamVR tracking tech. Basically, the tracking sensors grab the position of where the hands are in space via the magnetically attached tracker and, after calibrating a resting state of the user’s fingers, individual sensors communicate their position to the game engine. The silicone glove is a pretty effective design. Velcro straps secure the glove at your palm and the individual finger controls hook onto the end of your fingertips with motors that offer tactile feedback to users. I had a chance at a demo and the design makes navigation pretty effortless with most of the weight placed on the back of the wrist. After strapping on a pair of gloves, I was able to hold virtual items in my cupped hands and manipulate the position of objects. There is clearly still some work to be done on the software end in regards to motion latency. Plexus is shipping the gloves with toolkits for Unity and Unreal game engines. It’s clear, though, that a lot of the hardest work to tackle with gloves fall on the software design and the interaction engine that allow the physics of your real-world hand movements to do what you want in VR. Plexus is first approaching users on the enterprise side. It’s understandably pretty difficult to gather traction on consumer platforms that are already complicated enough to figure out on their own. By shipping developer kits at just $249 per pair, the company has a shot at gathering early interest from devs with whom $1,000+ kits have failed. The company is looking to ship its first pairs of gloves in August, though they’re now on their site. |
What to expect from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony at E3 2018 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | |
A Tesla telenovela | Kirsten Korosec | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | Tesla’s was filed just 24 hours ago and it’s already ripe fodder for Hollywood. As CEO Elon Musk has noted in the past, Tesla is a real drama magnet. Get ready, it’s exhausting. Tesla filed the lawsuit against former employee Martin Tripp for $1 million, alleging the man, who worked as a process technician at the massive battery factory near Reno, hacked the company’s confidential and trade secret information and transferred that information to third parties, according to court documents. The lawsuit also claims the employee leaked false information to the media. Within hours, had an interview with Tripp, who said he did not tamper with internal systems and is instead a whistleblower who was compelled to act. Tripp admitted to speaking to the media, but only because he saw “some really scary things” inside the company. Post reporter Drew Harwell later tweeted that Tripp told him Musk emailed him shortly after the lawsuit today to say he was a “horrible person.” Tripp says emailed him shortly after the lawsuit was filed today to say he was a horrible person. Tripp said he responded that Musk deserved what was coming. — Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) An email exchange obtained by TechCrunch, and confirmed by Tesla, suggests otherwise, and shows Tripp lobbing the first written attack. To be clear, the emails viewed by TechCrunch could have been edited or show an incomplete exchange. We’ll update the story as we learn more. Here’s the email exchange, which kicks off rather suddenly:
Date: June 20, 2018 at 8:57:29 AM PDT
To: Elon Musk
Subject: Termination/Lawsuit Don’t worry, you have what’s coming to you for the lies you have told to the public and investors. : Threatening me only makes it worse for you : I never made a threat. I simply told you that you have what’s coming. Thank you for this gift!!!! : You should ashamed of yourself for framing other people. You’re a horrible human being. : I NEVER ‘framed’ anyone else or even insinuated anyone else as being involved in my production of documents of your MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF WASTE, Safety concerns, lying to investors/the WORLD. Putting cars on the road with safety issues is being a horrible human being! : Begin forwarded message:
From: Elon Musk
Date: June 20, 2018 at 10:28:06 AM PDT
To: Marty Tripp Subject: Re: Termination/Lawsuit There are literally injuries with Model 3. It is by far the safest car in the world for any midsize vehicle. And of course a company with billions of dollars in product is going to have millions of dollars in scrap. This is not news. However, betraying your word of honor, breaking the deal you had when Tesla gave you a job and framing your colleagues are wrong and some come with legal penalties. So it goes. Be well.
To: Todd Maron, Sarah O’Brien
Cc: EMDesk
Subject: Re: Termination/Lawsuit Meant to say “no injuries” After Musk and Tripp battled it out via email, the former employee allegedly told a friend he was going to attack the company’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada The friend then called Tesla’s customer service line, according to a source. Tesla notified the police. It’s not clear why this friend turned first to Tesla and not the police. But there you go. And since TechCrunch has been unable to reach Tripp, it’s worth noting that this is one side — Tesla’s side — of a developing and complex story. Tesla confirmed receiving a call. “Yesterday afternoon, we received a phone call from a friend of Mr. Tripp telling us that Mr. Tripp would be coming to the Gigafactory to ‘shoot the place up,’ ” a Tesla spokesman said. “Police have been notified and actions are being taken to enhance security at the Gigafactory.” TechCrunch reached out to Storey County Sheriff’s department, which confirmed they sent deputies to investigate the threat. The deputies found no credible threat. “After several hours of investigation deputies were able to determine there was no credible threat,” Sheriff Gerald Antinoro said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “Further investigation in the origins of the threat continues.” |
Alibaba’s Ant Financial fintech affiliate raises $14 billion to continue its global expansion | Jon Russell | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Ant Financial, the financial services affiliate connected to Alibaba which operates the Alipay mobile payment service, has confirmed that it has closed a Series C funding round that totals an enormous $14 billion. The rumors have been flying about this huge financing deal for the past month or so, with — which has been strongly linked with an IPO — was in the market to raise at least $9 billion at a valuation of upwards of $100 billion. That turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg here. The money comes via a tranche of U.S. dollar financing and Chinese RMB from local investors. Those names include Singapore-based sovereign funds GIC and Temasek, Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Warburg Pincus, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake and General Atlantic. Ant said that the money will go towards extending its global expansion (and deepening its presence in non-China markets it has already entered), developing technology and hiring. “We are pleased to welcome these investors as partners, who share our vision and mission, to embark on our journey to further promote inclusive finance globally and bring equal opportunities to the world. We are proud of, and inspired by, the transformation we have affected in the lives of ordinary people and small businesses over the past 14 years,” Ant Financial CEO and executive chairman Eric Jing said in a statement. Alibaba itself doesn’t invest in Ant, which it span off shortly before its mega-IPO in the U.S. in 2014, but . Ant has long been tipped to go public. Back in 2016 when — — the company has been reportedly considering a public listing, but it instead opted to raise new capital at a valuation of $60 billion. It looks like the same again, but with higher stakes. This new Series C round pushes that valuation up to $100 billion, . (Ant didn’t comment on its valuation.) So what has Ant done over the past two years to justify that jump? It has long been a key fintech company in China, where it claims to serve offer 500 million consumers and offers Alipay, digital banking and investment services, but it has begun to replicate that business overseas in recent years. In particular, it has made investments and set up joint-ventures and new businesses in a slew of Asian countries that include India, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The company was, however, unsuccessful in its effort to buy MoneyGram after . On the business-side, over the last year, suggesting it is more than ready to make the leap to being a public firm. Despite that U.S. deal setback, Ant said today that its global footprint extends to 870 million consumers. I’d take that with a pinch of salt at this point since its business outside of China is in its early stages, but there seems little doubt that it is on the road to replicating its scale in its homeland in many parts of Asia. Raising this huge round only solidifies those plans by providing the kind of capital infusion that tops most of the world’s IPOs in one fell swoop. |
J.J. Abrams and Tencent combine to form Bad Robot Games | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Bad Robot, the media production company headed by famed nostalgia-lord J.J. Abrams, is expanding into the games industry with help from Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. The company will lend its expertise in film to partner developers at both the indie and AAA level. “I’m a massive games fan, and increasingly envious of the amazing tools developers get to work with, and the worlds they get to play in,” explained Abrams in the partnership’s announcement. “Now we are doubling down on our commitment to the space with a unique co-development approach to game making that allows us to focus on what we do best, and hopefully be a meaningful multiplier to our developer partners.” Designers, visual artists and writers from Bad Robot will collaborate with developers, aiming at all game markets: PC, console and mobile. Tencent will presumably provide funding and clout, in exchange for commercial rights to distribution of resulting titles. That probably limits the new company from doing what Abrams is perhaps most famous for, rejuvenating aging franchises with a modern aesthetic and a great deal of lens flare. Many popular AAA franchises — think Call of Duty and Uncharted — are deeply tied to publishers in multi-year or perpetual exclusivity arrangements. Abrams himself won’t be the head of the new endeavor; the reins will instead belong to Dave Baranoff, who has done the gaming and interactive content for Bad Robot for the last decade. This isn’t his first foray into the “real” games industry — he and Bad Robot are currently working with Epic and ChAIR on a mysterious title called . But it is presumably the start of something rather bigger than a one-off partnership or movie promotion. Tim Keenan, who created the amazing , will be the creative director, which is a good sign. No further announcements, such as a first project or development partner, were made — just the formation of the company. We may hear more during E3, though, so stay tuned. |
Facebook cuts down annoying ‘now connected on Messenger’ alerts | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | “‘You Are Now Connected On Messenger’ Is The Worst Thing On Facebook” in a story yesterday. When you friend someone on Facebook or Messenger, or an old friend joins Messenger, you often get one of these annoying notifications. They fool you into thinking someone actually wants to chat with you while burying your real message threads. Luckily, it turns out Facebook was already feeling guilty about this shameless growth hack. When I asked why, amidst its big push around Time Well Spent, it was sending these alerts, the company told me it’s already in the process of scaling them back. A Facebook spokesperson gave TechCrunch this statement: We’ve found that many people have appreciated getting a notification when a friend joins Messenger. That said, we are working to make these notifications even more useful by employing machine learning to send fewer of them over time to people who enjoy getting them less. We appreciate all and any feedback that people send our way, so please keep it coming because it helps us make the product better. So basically, if Messenger notices you never open those spammy alerts to start a chat thread, it will skip sending some of them. Personally, I think these alerts should only be sent when users connect on Messenger specifically, which you can do with non-friends outside of Facebook. The company forced everyone to switch from Facebook Chat to Messenger years ago, but some people are only now relenting and actually downloading the app. I don’t think that should ever generate these alerts, since they have nothing to do with your own actions. Similarly, if I confirm a Facebook friend request from someone else, I know I’m now connected on Messenger too, so no need to pester me with a notification. But for now, if you hate these alerts, be sure not to open them so you send a signal to Facebook that you don’t want more. Facebook does all sorts of this annoying growth hacking, like notifications about friends adding to their Story, “X, Y, and 86 other friends responded to events near you tomorrow,” and all the emails it sends if you stop visiting. If we can properly shame tech giants for the specifics of their most intrusive and distracting behavior, rather than just griping more vaguely about overuse, we may be able to make swifter progress toward them respecting our attention. |
Rakuten acquires mobile commerce startup Curbside | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Tokyo-headquartered , Japan’s answer to Amazon, is acquiring the Silicon Valley mobile ordering and pickup startup , the companies announced today. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed, but Curbside had previously between $40 million and $50 million from investors including CVS, Index Ventures, Sutter Hull Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and others. Founded in 2013 by former Apple engineers with backgrounds in location-based technology, was one of the early startups to capitalize on the idea that e-commerce’s expansion won’t entirely involve ship-to-home deliveries, but could also include the convenience of online ordering with a curbside pickup option at bricks-and-mortar retailers to speed things up. The company first its own mobile shopping app with a limited set of partners, including a shopping center in San Jose and a handful of San Francisco Bay area Target stores. The Target test wrapped up some time ago, and Target instead launched its own Drive Up curbside pickup this year – possibly encouraged by the potential it saw through its tests with the third party. Curbside then went on to power mobile orders and store pickup for CVS, which in the company as a strategic partner back in 2016. The startup also developed an SDK for mobile app developers called that allows retailers to see when customers are arriving at their location for things like order pickup, mobile order ahead, and appointment checkin. CVS, Sephora, Chipotle, Nordstrom, Pizza Hut, Chevron, Boston Market, Westfield, HEB, and Yelp are listed on the Curbside website as ARRIVE customers. For in particular, Curbside is available at thousands of locations across the U.S. for order ahead and pickup. ARRIVE has since become the primary business for Curbside, and now contributes to the majority of its revenue. Curbside CEO Jaron Waldman says half of the top ten QSR’s (quick serve restaurants) are now using ARRIVE, as the restaurant side of the ARRIVE business has really taken off. These operations will continue as planned, Curbside says. Across its customer base, Curbside has powered several million curbside pickups to date, and has over 8,000 U.S. locations, as well as some traction in non-U.S. markets, including Canada and India (Pizza Hut). As for Rakuten, the acquisition opens up a lot of opportunities in terms of connecting retailers and merchants with customers, particularly in order ahead and pickup. “There’s a shift happening in consumer behavior where people want to save time. They want to order ahead on their mobile device and have things ready when they get there – whether that’s in the store or curbside in front of the store,” explains Waldman. “ARRIVE works really well in both use cases…And we’re also helping [retailers] really measure the performance of the individual store,” he says. “The folks that have that physical world touch point needs to ensure that stores are performing the consumers are actually not waiting that long.” Rakuten today reaches over 1 billion members worldwide, including those on its own Rakuten Ichiba online marketplace in Japan. Those online merchants could potentially take advantage of the Curbside technology to offer the option of order pickup for their customers, alongside their existing delivery options. These sorts of integrations may not be limited only to the marketplace itself, however. Rakuten also has other consumer touch points, like communications app and eBates.com, where Curbside could also reach the consumer audience in various ways. And it has investments in companies like Pinterest, Lyft, Cabify, and others, where it could do the same. It also has a with Walmart in Japan in online grocery, where Curbside pickup could get involved. In fact, Waldman says there are at least half a dozen opportunities inside Rakuten it could now pursue. The question is really which ones will it go after first. “I can say there’s a ton of interest to bring this technology to Japan,” he notes. “They already touch 100 million consumers in Japan – their registered users. We could hook up this really big ecosystem of consumers and merchants,” adds Waldman. He’s also excited to broaden the Curbside offering thanks to Rakuten’s expanded resources. “We don’t have an out of the box payment solution. There’s a lot lot in the Rakuten ecosystem that’s going to allow us to to broaden that offering, which means that we can add more value for for our merchants and our retail partners,” he says. And as a part of Rakuten, Curbside can more quickly expand to global markets – something it had just begun doing with smaller launches in Canada and India. “Rakuten was founded on the philosophy of empowering merchants to reach consumers in new ways. In 1997 it was selling on the internet. Today it’s mobile commerce. Curbside has a unique ability to surprise and delight consumers with fun and convenient ways to shop while empowering local merchants,” says Yaz Iida, President of Rakuten USA. “It fits into our unique philosophy and will be a piece of Rakuten’s ecosystem of internet services.” Curbside’s 60-person team, for the time being, will remain in its Palo Alto offices, though it may later move to Rakuten’s offices in San Mateo. Waldman remain as Rakuten Curbside CEO. The startup had raised between $40 million and $50 million, including its in 2016. Before that, it had raised $34.5 million, according to . |
At Apple’s WWDC 2018, accessibility pervades all | Steven Aquino | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Accessibility has long played an integral role at , and it certainly had its presence felt in 2018. There are some constant elements of the week, such as the labs, sessions, and mid-week social that brings together members of Apple’s Accessibility group, developers and others interested in the disabled community to celebrate inclusiveness and accessible design. This year had a different vibe. After attending the keynote and speaking with numerous people at Apple during the week, one feeling that has resonated with me is that accessibility, conceptually, has become a mandatory part of not only how Apple designs its products, but of the Apple ecosystem at large. To be mindful of accessibility is now, more than ever, an expectation. Several student scholarship winners I spoke to eagerly expressed their desire to learn more about what accessibility is, how it works and how to best incorporate it into their apps. They truly want to build tools for everyone. The announcements made this year were less about discrete features for accessibility’s sake and more about how the new features, as Apple designed them, are inherently accessible. The , for instance, has included an accessibility category the last few years, but not so this year. In fact, accessibility has always been part of the criteria for selecting winners, and Apple says this year’s winners have support for accessibility built in. , a calculator app from indie developer Raja Vijayaraman, supports Dynamic Type. As a disabled reporter who has covered the last several Apple media events, I’ve attended enough now that I’ve come to realize there is an interesting (to me) accessibility angle to how the company structures its events and how it supports attendees with disabilities. That is another story for another time, but I found myself thinking about it during Monday’s keynote address. I’ve been to several Apple events. These slides are the most visually accessible I’ve ever seen. — Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) The slides Apple showed were the most readable I’ve seen yet. As someone who has low vision, this is critically important. The white, bold typeface set against the black background made for such high contrast that I had no problems seeing every slide — even the word-cloud ones listing ancillary features. This made my job covering the news easier, because I wasn’t straining my eyes in order to get important information. Accessibility-wise, Monday’s keynote slides were infinitely more visually friendly than the ones used at the March event in Chicago. As pretty and appropriately themed as they were, I found those slides difficult to see; I liked WWDC’s much better. The lesson here is in how pervasive and dynamic accessibility can be. Accessibility is everywhere, and the relevance in this case is that it extends way beyond any new software features. There are a handful of new mainstream features across Apple’s platforms that the company feels has great potential in an accessibility context. This epitomizes the idea of accessibility for everyone—software not built expressly for accessibility, but designed in such a way that users of all abilities can benefit. One such feature is Group FaceTime in iOS 12. , and FaceTime has remained a popular method of communication for many users in the deaf community. Whereas previously the feature was essentially a one-on-one conversation, the arrival of iOS 12 this fall will make it possible to converse with up to 32(!) people at once. For the deaf and hard-of-hearing, the ability to include one’s entire family (or friends or co-workers) should make FaceTime an even more compelling technology for deaf users. Another example is the in watchOS 5. I’ve seen chatter on Twitter that it seems like a frivolous addition, but in actuality it can be practical. Imagine you’re someone who’s a caregiver for a person with severe physical impairments (or simply elderly) and both of you have an Apple Watch. With Walkie-Talkie, you can “radio” each other from separate locations in a home or care facility right from your wrists. No need to iMessage or make a phone call or ring a bedside call button. All you need is your Apple Watch and the Walkie-Talkie mode. Lastly, Siri Shortcuts. While Apple’s marketing materials are pitching Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 as a time-saving, convenient way to get things done, there also are key accessibility ramifications as well. The ability to, for instance, order coffee at Starbucks or Philz without needing to remember to do it—or, crucially, to do it in an app—can be streamlined with Siri Shortcuts. This has major implications for alleviating cognitive load and stress (in addition to being a time-saver), and has enormous potential to positively impact for users who have certain cognitive delays. But it’s more than just cognition; the automation that Siri Shortcuts provides can also benefit those with limited fine-motor skills, who may struggle with the rigor of multiple taps and swipes. In addition to the features above, there is a host of others whose accessibility promise excites Apple. The new dark mode in macOS Mojave, for example, boosts contrast considerably, which should help Mac users see better and guard against eye fatigue or screen glare. There was one notable hardware-specific feature not announced during the keynote. As I , Live Listen — a feature previously only available to compatible Made for iPhone hearing aids — is coming to AirPods with the release of iOS 12. The addition of Live Listen is noteworthy because it will allow someone with limited hearing to better hear speakers in noisy environments or from across a room. This functionality isn’t meant as a full replacement for a professional-grade hearing aid, but it certainly is a huge deal for the hard-of-hearing who want to use AirPods. Now they can use Live Listen to hear better without having to spend additional money on dedicated hardware. Apple says Live Listen is included in the first developer beta of iOS 12, so anyone curious about it can test it out now. Unlike past years, there aren’t any all-new discrete accessibility features across Apple’s platforms this year. This follows with the theme that accessibility is interwoven into the banner features Apple is promoting in their marketing copy. Nonetheless, there is a smattering of enhancements across Apple’s platforms that are worth mentioning. Notable ones include the ability to use the Siri voice on iOS as the voice for Speak Selection, where you highlight a body of text and have Siri read it aloud. The Siri voice is now set as the default. Another enhancement, pertaining to the Smart Annotations feature announced for iWork in March, is OCR support for handwritten notes, which will read them aloud. Blind and low vision users can now hear text markup in documents if they can’t see it. Finally, the Touch Bar. VoiceOver users with Touch Bar MacBook Pros now have the ability to create custom automator scripts right from the Touch Bar with VoiceOver turned on. The work Apple has put into making accessibility a focal point of the conference the last few years is bearing serious fruit this time around. Developers heard the message. |
Apple introduces the AI phone | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | At Apple’s — an event some said would be this year with its software-only focus and new MacBooks and iPads — the company announced what may be its most important operating system update to date with the introduction of iOS 12. Through a series of Siri enhancements and features, Apple is turning its iPhone into a highly personalized device, powered by its Siri AI. This “new AI iPhone” — which, to be clear, is your same ol’ iPhone running a new mobile OS — will understand where you are, what you’re doing and what you need to know right then and there. The question now is will users embrace the usefulness of Siri’s forthcoming smarts, or will they find its sudden insights creepy and invasive? After the installation of iOS 12, Siri’s Suggestions will be everywhere. In the same place on the iPhone Search screen where you today see those Siri suggested apps to launch, you’ll begin to see other things Siri thinks you may need to know, too. For example, Siri may suggest that you: And so on. These will be useful in some cases, and perhaps annoying in others. (It would be great if you could swipe on the suggestions to further train the system to not show certain ones again. After all, not all your contacts deserve a birthday phone call.) Siri Suggestions will also appear on the Lock Screen when it thinks it can help you perform an action of some kind. For example, placing your morning coffee order — something you regularly do around a particular time of day — or launching your preferred workout app, because you’ve arrived at the gym. These suggestions even show up on Apple Watch’s Siri watch face screen. Apple says the relevance of its suggestions will improve over time, based on how you engage. If you don’t take an action by tapping on these items, they’ll move down on the watch face’s list of suggestions, for instance. These improvements to Siri would have been enough for iOS 12, but Apple went even further. The company also showed off a new app called Siri Shortcuts. The app is based on technology Apple acquired from , a clever — if somewhat advanced — task automation app that allows iOS users to combine actions into routines that can be launched with just a tap. Now, thanks to the Siri Shortcuts app, those routines can be launched by voice. Onstage at the developer event, the app was demoed by Kim Beverett from the Siri Shortcuts team, who showed off a “heading home” shortcut she had built. When she tells Siri she’s her iPhone simultaneously launched directions for her commute in Apple Maps, set her home thermostat to 70 degrees, turned on her fan, messaged an ETA to her roommate and launched her favorite NPR station. That’s arguably very cool — and it got a big cheer from the technically minded developer crowd — but it’s most certainly a power user feature. Launching an app to build custom workflows is not something everyday iPhone users will do right off the bat — or in some cases, ever. But even if users hide away this new app in their Apple “junk” folder, or toggle off all the Siri Suggestions in Settings, they won’t be able to entirely escape Siri’s presence in iOS 12 and going forward. That’s because Apple also launched new developer tools that will allow app creators to build directly into their own apps integrations with Siri. Developers will update their apps’ code so that every time a user takes a particular action — for example, placing their coffee order, streaming a favorite podcast, starting their evening jog with a running app or anything else — the app will let Siri know. Over time, Siri will learn users’ routines — like, on many weekday mornings, around 8 to 8:30 AM, the user places a particular coffee order through a coffee shop app’s order ahead system. These will inform those Siri Suggestions that appear all over your iPhone, but developers will also be able to just directly prod the user to add this routine to Siri right in their own apps. In your favorite apps, you’ll start seeing an “Add to Siri” link or button in various places — like when you perform a particular action — such as looking for your keys in Tile’s app, viewing travel plans in Kayak, ordering groceries with Instacart and so on. Many people will probably tap this button out of curiosity — after all, most don’t watch and rewatch the WWDC keynote like the tech crowd does. The “Add to Siri” screen will then pop up, offering a suggestion of voice prompt that can be used as your personalized phase for talking to Siri about this task. In the coffee ordering example, you might be prompted to try the phrase “coffee time.” In the Kayak example, it could be “travel plans.” You record this phrase with the big, red record button at the bottom of the screen. When finished, you have a custom Siri shortcut. You don’t have to use the suggested phrase the developer has written. The screen explains you can make up your own phrase instead. In addition to being able to “use” apps via Siri voice commands, Siri can also talk back after the initial request. It can confirm your request has been acted upon — for example, Siri may respond, after you said or whatever your trigger phrase was. Or it can tell you if something didn’t work — maybe the restaurant is out of a food item on the order you placed — and help you figure out what to do next (like continue your order in the iOS app). It can even introduce some personality as it responds. In the demo, Tile’s app jokes back that it hopes your missing keys aren’t “under a couch cushion.” There are a number of things you could do beyond these limited examples — the App Store has more than 2 million apps whose developers can hook into Siri. And you don’t have to ask Siri only on your phone — you can talk to Siri on your Apple Watch and HomePod, too. Yes, this will all rely on developer adoption, but it seems Apple has figured out how to give developers a nudge. You see, as Siri’s smart suggestions spin up, traditional notifications will wind down. In iOS 12, Siri will take note of your behavior around notifications, and then push you to turn off those with which you don’t engage, or move them into a new silent mode This middle ground for notifications will allow apps to send their updates to the Notification Center, but not the Lock Screen. They also can’t buzz your phone or wrist. At the same time, iOS 12’s new set of will hide notifications from users at particular times — like when you’ve enabled Do Not Disturb at Bedtime, for example. This mode will not allow notifications to display when you check your phone at night or first thing upon waking. Combined, these changes will encourage more developers to adopt the Siri integrations, because they’ll be losing a touchpoint with their users as their ability to grab attention through notifications fades. AI will further infiltrate other parts of the iPhone, too, in iOS 12. A new “For You” tab in the Photos app will prompt users to share photos taken with other people, thanks to facial recognition and machine learning. And those people, upon receiving your photos, will then be prompted to share their own back with you. The tab will also pull out your best photos and feature them, and prompt you to try different lighting and photo effects. A smart search feature will make suggestions and allow you to pull up photos from specific places or events. Overall, iOS 12’s AI-powered features will make Apple’s devices more personalized to you, but they could also rub some people the wrong way. Maybe people won’t want their habits noticed by their iPhone, and will find Siri prompts annoying — or, at worst, creepy, because they don’t understand how Siri knows these things about them. Apple is banking hard on the fact that it’s earned users’ trust through its stance on data privacy over the years. And while not everyone knows that Siri is does not in the cloud, many do seem to understand that Apple doesn’t sell user data to advertisers to make money. That could help sell this new “AI phone” concept to consumers, and pave the way for more advancements later on. But on the flip side, if Siri Suggestions become overbearing or get things wrong too often, it could lead users to just switch them off entirely through iOS Settings. And with that, Apple’s big chance to dominate in the AI-powered device market, too. |
Bloomberg Media Group’s chief product officer sees big opportunities in audio | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Julia Beizer joined Bloomberg Media Group as in January — and since then, she said, “Audio has been a big part of my world.” Specifically, Beizer’s team has been releasing products for different smart speakers, including Apple’s HomePod, Amazon’s Echo Show and, most recently, Google Home, with the launch of the First Word news briefing for both Google Home and the Google Assistant app. Bloomberg has also turned its video news network TicToc ( ) . And by leveraging for text-to-audio conversion, the company now offers audio versions of every article on the Bloomberg website and app. Beizer joined Bloomberg from The Huffington Post (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon’s digital subsidiary Oath). She pointed out that these new initiatives represent a range of different approaches to audio news, from the “beautiful, bespoke, handcrafted audio projects” that you can create via podcasts, to an automated solution like text-to-speech that allows Bloomberg to offer audio in a more scalable way. “What that really represents is utility,” said Beizer, “We want to fit into our consumers’ lives in different ways.” She added that since text-to-speech launched at the beginning of May, her team has found that “the people who use it, use it a lot,” listening to two to three articles per session on average. And beyond the success of individual products, Beizer suggested that these audio initiatives represent a new “culture of experimentation.” “Newsrooms historically thought a lot about what we have to offer to the world,” Beizer said. “That’s a mindset that’s really built for the world when people had morning newspaper habits or watched the 6pm newscast every night. For us to be relevant in consumers’ lives, we have to adapt to how they are consuming media.” That means trying out new things, and it also means shutting them down if they’re not working. “I often say: Launching things is my favorite thing to do, and killing things is my second favorite thing to do,” she said. So it’s possible that some of these audio products won’t exist in a year, though she also argued, “Audio writ large — specific initiatives aside — is something I believe is a trend that isn’t go away.” Not that Beizer is spending all her time on audio. She acknowledged that the “pivot to video” has become a punchline in digital media, but she said that as she looks ahead, she still wants to find new ways to repackage and promote Bloomberg’s TV content for an online audience. She also said that represents “a huge opportunity.” “We’re completely rethinking how we deliver our content — we want it to be essential to users’ lives,” she said. “That ties directly into subscription. I’ve worked in subscription before, and it gives you real clarity about your user and your audience.” |
Essential is releasing a wired headphone jack accessory | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Bonus track: We teamed up with to give new and existing Essential Phone customers a free 3-month TIDAL HiFi subscription. Learn how to redeem this offer and start listening to thousands of MQA tracks today: — Essential (@essential) |
How Facebook’s new 3D photos work | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | teased a new feature called , and it’s just what it sounds like. However, beyond a short video and the name, little was said about it. But the company’s computational photography team has just published the research behind how the feature works and, having tried it myself, I can attest that the results are really quite compelling. In case you missed the teaser, 3D photos will live in your news feed just like any other photos, except when you scroll by them, touch or click them, or tilt your phone, they respond as if the photo is actually a window into a tiny diorama, with corresponding changes in perspective. It will work for both ordinary pictures of people and dogs, but also landscapes and panoramas. It sounds a little hokey, and I’m about as skeptical as they come, but the effect won me over quite quickly. The illusion of depth is very convincing, and it does feel like a little magic window looking into a time and place rather than some 3D model — which, of course, it is. Here’s what it looks like in action: I talked about the method of creating these little experiences with Johannes Kopf, a research scientist at Facebook’s Seattle office, where its Camera and computational photography departments are based. Kopf is co-author (with University College London’s Peter Hedman) of ; they will present it at SIGGRAPH in August. Interestingly, the origin of 3D photos wasn’t an idea for how to enhance snapshots, but rather how to democratize the creation of VR content. It’s all synthetic, Kopf pointed out. And no casual Facebook user has the tools or inclination to build 3D models and populate a virtual space. One exception to that is panoramic and 360 imagery, which is usually wide enough that it can be effectively explored via VR. But the experience is little better than looking at the picture printed on butcher paper floating a few feet away. Not exactly transformative. What’s lacking is any sense of depth — so Kopf decided to add it. The first version I saw had users moving their ordinary cameras in a pattern capturing a whole scene; by careful analysis of parallax (essentially how objects at different distances shift different amounts when the camera moves) and phone motion, that scene could be reconstructed very nicely in 3D (complete with normal maps, if you know what those are). But inferring depth data from a single camera’s rapid-fire images is a CPU-hungry process and, though effective in a way, also rather dated as a technique. Especially when many modern cameras actually have two cameras, like a tiny pair of eyes. And it is dual-camera phones that will be able to create 3D photos (though there are plans to bring the feature downmarket). By capturing images with both cameras at the same time, parallax differences can be observed even for objects in motion. And because the device is in the exact same position for both shots, the depth data is far less noisy, involving less number-crunching to get into usable shape. Here’s how it works. The phone’s two cameras take a pair of images, and immediately the device does its own work to calculate a “depth map” from them, an image encoding the calculated distance of everything in the frame. The result looks something like this: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Google — they all have their own methods for doing this baked into their phones, though so far it’s mainly been used to create artificial background blur. The problem with that is that the depth map created doesn’t have some kind of absolute scale — for example, light yellow doesn’t mean 10 feet, while dark red means 100 feet. An image taken a few feet to the left with a person in it might have yellow indicating 1 foot and red meaning 10. The scale is different for every photo, which means if you take more than one, let alone dozens or a hundred, there’s little consistent indication of how far away a given object actually is, which makes stitching them together realistically a pain. That’s the problem Kopf and Hedman and their colleagues took on. In their system, the user takes multiple images of their surroundings by moving their phone around; it captures an image (technically two images and a resulting depth map) every second and starts adding it to its collection. In the background, an algorithm looks at both the depth maps and the tiny movements of the camera captured by the phone’s motion detection systems. Then the depth maps are essentially massaged into the correct shape to line up with their neighbors. This part is impossible for me to explain because it’s the secret mathematical sauce that the researchers cooked up. If you’re curious and like Greek, . Not only does this create a smooth and accurate depth map across multiple exposures, but it does so really quickly: about a second per image, which is why the tool they created shoots at that rate, and why they call the paper “Instant 3D Photography.” Next, the actual images are stitched together, the way a panorama normally would be. But by utilizing the new and improved depth map, this process can be expedited and reduced in difficulty by, they claim, around an order of magnitude. Because different images captured depth differently, aligning them can be difficult, as the left and center examples show — many parts will be excluded or produce incorrect depth data. The one on the right is Facebook’s method. Then the depth maps are turned into 3D meshes (a sort of two-dimensional model or shell) — think of it like a papier-mache version of the landscape. But then the mesh is examined for obvious edges, such as a railing in the foreground occluding the landscape in the background, and “torn” along these edges. This spaces out the various objects so they appear to be at their various depths, and move with changes in perspective as if they are. Although this effectively creates the diorama effect I described at first, you may have guessed that the foreground would appear to be little more than a paper cutout, since, if it were a person’s face captured from straight on, there would be no information about the sides or back of their head. This is where the final step comes in of “hallucinating” the remainder of the image via a convolutional neural network. It’s a bit like a content-aware fill, guessing on what goes where by what’s nearby. If there’s hair, well, that hair probably continues along. And if it’s a skin tone, it probably continues too. So it convincingly recreates those textures along an estimation of how the object might be shaped, closing the gap so that when you change perspective slightly, it appears that you’re really looking “around” the object. The end result is an image that responds realistically to changes in perspective, making it viewable in VR or as a diorama-type 3D photo in the news feed. In practice it doesn’t require anyone to do anything different, like download a plug-in or learn a new gesture. Scrolling past these photos changes the perspective slightly, alerting people to their presence, and from there all the interactions feel natural. It isn’t perfect — there are artifacts and weirdness in the stitched images if you look closely, and of course mileage varies on the hallucinated content — but it is fun and engaging, which is much more important. The plan is to roll out the feature mid-summer. For now, the creation of 3D photos will be limited to devices with two cameras — that’s a limitation of the technique — but anyone will be able to view them. But the paper does also address the possibility of single-camera creation by way of another convolutional neural network. The results, only briefly touched on, are not as good as the dual-camera systems, but still respectable and better and faster than some other methods currently in use. So those of us still living in the dark age of single cameras have something to hope for. |
GDPR panic may spur data and AI innovation | Ivy Nguyen | 2,018 | 6 | 7 |
If AI innovation runs on data, the new European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations ( ) seem poised to freeze AI advancement. The regulations prescribe a utopian data future where consumers can refuse companies access to their personally identifiable information (PII). Although the enforcement deadline has passed, the technical infrastructure and manpower needed to meet these requirements still do not exist in most companies today. Coincidentally, the barriers to GDPR compliance are also bottlenecks of widespread AI adoption. Despite the hype, enterprise AI is still nascent: Companies may own petabytes of data that can be used for AI, but fully digitizing that data, knowing what the data tables actually contain and understanding who, where and how to access that data remains a herculean coordination effort for even the most empowered internal champion. It’s no wonder that many scrappy AI startups find themselves bogged down by customer data cleanup and custom integrations. As multinationals and Big Tech overhaul their data management processes and tech stack to comply with GDPR, here’s how AI and data innovation counterintuitively also stand to benefit. GDPR covers the collection, processing and movement of data that can be used to identify a person, such as a name, email address, bank account information, social media posts, health information and more, all of which are currently used to power the AI algorithms ranging from targeting ads to identifying terrorist cells. The penalty for noncompliance is 4 percent of global revenue, or €20 million, whichever is higher. To put that in perspective: 4 percent of Amazon’s 2017 revenue is $7.2 billion, Google’s is $4.4 billion and Facebook’s is $1.6 billion. These regulations apply to any citizen of the EU, no matter their current residence, as well as vendors upstream and downstream of the companies that collect PII. Article 22 of the GDPR, titled “Automated Individual Decision-making, including Profiling,” prescribes that AI cannot be used as the sole decision-maker in choices that have legal or similarly significant effects on users. In practice, this means an AI model cannot be the only step for deciding whether a borrower can receive a loan; the customer must be able to request that a human review the application. One way to avoid the cost of compliance, which includes hiring a data protection officer and building access controls, is to stop collecting data on EU residents altogether. This would bring PII-dependent AI innovation in the EU to a grinding halt. With the EU representing about 16 percent of global GDP, 11 percent of global online advertising spend and 9 percent of the global population in 2017, however, Big Tech will more likely invest heavily in solutions that will allow them to continue operating in this market. GDPR mandates that companies collecting consumer data must enable individuals to know what data is being collected about them, understand how it is being used, revoke permission to use specific data, correct or update data and obtain proof that the data has been erased if the customer requests it. To meet these potential requests, companies must shift from indiscriminately collecting data in a piecemeal and decentralized manner to establishing an organized process with a clear chain of control. Any data that companies collect must be immediately classified as either PII or de-identified and assigned the correct level of protection. Its location in the company’s databases must be traceable with an auditable trail: GDPR mandates that organizations handling PII must be able to find all copies of regulated data, regardless of how and where it is stored. These organizations will need to assign someone to manage their data infrastructure and fulfill these user privacy requests. Having these data infrastructure and management processes in place will greatly lower the company’s barriers to deploying AI. By fully understanding their data assets, the company can plan strategically about where they can deploy AI in the near-term using their existing data assets. Moreover, once they build an AI road map, the company can determine where they need to obtain additional data to build more complex and valuable AI algorithms. With the data streams simplified, storage mapped out and a chain of ownership established, the company can more effectively engage with AI vendors to deploy their solutions enterprise-wide. More importantly, GDPR will force many companies dragging their feet on digitization to finally bite the bullet. The mandates require that data be portable: Companies must provide a way for users to download all of the data collected about them in a standard format. Currently, only 10 percent of all data is collected in a format for easing analysis and sharing, and more than 80 percent of enterprise data today is unstructured, according to . Much of this structuring and information extraction will initially have to be done manually, but Big Tech companies and many startups are developing tools to accelerate this process. According to PWC, the sectors most behind on digitization are healthcare, government and hospitality, all of which handle large amounts of unstructured data containing PII — we could expect to see a flood of AI innovation in these categories as the data become easier to access and use. Under GDPR guidelines, companies must let users prevent the company from storing certain information about them. If the user requests that the company permanently and completely delete all the data about them, the company must comply and show proof of deletion. How this mandate might apply to an AI algorithm trained on data that a user wants to delete is not specifically prescribed and awaits its first test case. Today, data is pooled together to train an AI algorithm. It is unclear how an AI engineer would attribute the impact of a particular data point to the overall performance of the algorithm. If the enforcers of GDPR decide that the company must erase the effect of a unit of data on the AI model in addition to deleting the data, companies using AI must find ways to granularly explain how a model works and fine tune the model to “forget” that data in question. Many AI models are black boxes today, and leading AI researchers are working to enable model explainability and tunability. The GDPR deletion mandate could accelerate progress in these areas. In the nearer term, these GDPR mandates could shape best practices for UX and AI model design. Today, GDPR-compliant companies offer users the binary choice of allowing full, effectively unrestricted use of their data or no access at all. In the future, product designers may want to build more granular data access permissions. For example, before choosing to delete Facebook altogether, a user can refuse companies access to specific sets of information, such as their network of friends or their location data. AI engineers anticipating the need to trace the effect of specific data on a model may choose to build a series of simple models optimizing on single dimensions, instead of one monolithic and very complex model. This approach may have performance trade-offs, but would make model management more tractable. The new regulations require companies to protect PII with a level of security previously limited to patient health and consumer finance data. Nearly half of all companies recently about GDPR are adopting technology to detect and report data breaches as soon as they occur. As companies adopt more sophisticated data infrastructure, they will be able to determine who has and should have access to each data stream and manage permissions accordingly. Moreover, the company may also choose to build tools that immediately notify users if their information was accessed by an unauthorized party; Facebook offers a similar service to its employees, called a “ .” Although the restrictions may appear to reduce tech companies’ ability to access data in the short-term, 61 percent of companies see additional benefits of GDPR-readiness beyond penalty avoidance, according to a recent . Taking these precautions to earn customer trust may eventually lower the cost of acquiring high-quality, highly dimensional data. In this post-GDPR future, companies no longer have to infer intent from expensive schemes to sneakily capture customer information. Improved data infrastructure will have enabled early AI applications to demonstrate their value, encouraging more customers to voluntarily share even more information about themselves to trustworthy companies. Unproven upside alone has always been insufficient to motivate cross-functional modernization, but the threat of a multi-billion-dollar penalty may finally spur these companies to action. More importantly, GDPR is but the first of much more data privacy regulation to come, and many countries across the world look to it as a model for their own upcoming policies. As companies worldwide lay the groundwork for compliance and transparency, they’re also paving the way to an even more vibrant AI future to come. |
Google’s new ‘AI principles’ forbid its use in weapons and human rights violations | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Google has explaining the ways it will and won’t deploy its considerable clout in the domain. “These are not theoretical concepts; they are concrete standards that will actively govern our research and product development and will impact our business decisions,” wrote CEO Sundar Pichai. The principles follow several months of low-level controversy surrounding Project Maven, a contract with the U.S. military that involved image analysis on drone footage. Some employees had opposed the work and even quit in protest, but really the issue was a microcosm for anxiety regarding AI at large and how it can and should be employed. Consistent with Pichai’s assertion that the principles are binding, Google Cloud CEO Diane Green confirmed today what was , namely that the contract in question will not be renewed or followed with others. Left unaddressed are reports that Google was using Project Maven as a means to achieve the security clearance required for more lucrative and sensitive government contracts. The principles themselves are as follows, with relevant portions quoted from their descriptions: In addition to stating what the company do, Pichai also outlines what it do. Specifically, Google will not pursue or deploy AI in the following areas: (No mention of being evil.) In the seven principles and their descriptions, Google leaves itself considerable leeway with the liberal application of words like “appropriate.” When is an “appropriate” opportunity for feedback? What is “appropriate” human direction and control? How about “appropriate” safety constraints? It’s arguable that it is too much to expect hard rules along these lines on such short notice, but I would argue that it is not in fact short notice; Google has been a leader in AI for years and has had a great deal of time to establish more than principles. For instance, its promise to “respect cultural, social, and legal norms” has surely been tested in many ways. Where can we see when practices have been applied in spite of those norms, or where Google policy has bent to accommodate the demands of a government or religious authority? And in the promise to avoid creating bias and be accountable to people, surely (based on Google’s existing work here) there is something specific to say? For instance, if any Google-involved system has outcomes based on sensitive data or categories, the system will be fully auditable and available for public attention? The ideas here are praiseworthy, but AI’s applications are not abstract; these systems are being used today to determine deployments of police forces, or choose a rate for home loans, or analyze medical data. Real rules are needed, and if Google really intends to keep its place as a leader in the field, it must establish them, or, if they are already established, publish them prominently. In the end it may be the shorter list of things Google won’t do that prove more restrictive. Although use of “appropriate” in the principles allows the company space for interpretation, the opposite case is true for its definitions of forbidden pursuits. The definitions are highly indeterminate, and broad interpretations by watchdogs of phrases like “likely to cause overall harm” or “internationally accepted norms” may result in Google’s own rules being unexpectedly prohibitive. “We acknowledge that this area is dynamic and evolving, and we will approach our work with humility, a commitment to internal and external engagement, and a willingness to adapt our approach as we learn over time,” wrote Pichai. We will soon see the extent of that willingness. |
Stitch fix blows out Wall Street’s expectations and announces the launch of Stitch Fix Kids | Matthew Lynley | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Stitch Fix, one of last year’s high-profile IPOs, has had a bumpy ride for the past few quarters — but it blew out expectations this afternoon for its most recent quarter, and the stock went absolutely nuts. There’s also a ton of news coming out from the company today, including the hire of a new chief marketing officer as well as the launch of Stitch Fix Kids. All this is pretty good timing because the company appears to be cramming everything into one announcement that is serving as a very pleasant surprise to Wall Street, which is looking for as many signals as it can get that the subscription e-commerce company will end up as one of the more successful IPO stories. Shares of the company are up more than 14 percent after the release came out, where the company beat out expectations that Wall Street set across the board — which, while not the best barometer, serves as a somewhat public barometer as well as what helps determine whether or not it can lock up the best talent. However, following the announcement, Stitch Fix’s stock came back down to Earth and is up around 4 percent. Stitch Fix Kids will carry sizes 2T to 14, which will be across a diverse range of aesthetics “to give kids the freedom to express themselves in clothing that they feel great wearing,” the company said. Those Fixes will include 8 to 12 items that include market and exclusive brands. Stitch Fix launched Stitch Fix Plus in February last year. “Our new Stitch Fix Kids offering is a testament to the scalability of our platform,” CEO and founder Katrina Lake said in a statement accompanying the release. “We’re excited for Stitch Fix to style everyone in the family and to create an effortless way for parents to shop for themselves and their children. Our goal is to provide unique, affordable kids clothing in a wide range of styles, giving our littlest clients the freedom to express themselves in clothing that they love and feel great wearing.” Stitch Fix was widely considered a successful IPO last year, though it faced some challenges over the course of the front of the year. But as it’s expanded into new lines of subscriptions, its customer base still clearly continues to grow, and the company is still finding newer areas to expand — including the upcoming launch of Kids that it announced today. Like many recent IPOs, Wall Street is likely going to look for continued growth in terms of its core business (meaning, subscribers), but Stitch Fix is showing that it’s able to not set cash on fire as fresh IPOs sometimes do. Stitch Fix’s new CMO, Deirdre Findlay, comes to the company from Google, where she oversaw the Google Home hardware products, which included Home and Chromecast. Prior to that, Findlay has a pretty extensive history in marketing across a wide variety of verticals beyond just tech, including working with Whirlpool Brands, Allstate Insurance, MillerCoors and Kaiser Permanente, the company said. While Stitch Fix is a digitally native company, it’s not exactly an explicit tech company and requires expertise outside of the realm of just the typical tech marketing talent — so getting someone with a pretty robust background like that would be important as it continues to expand into new areas of growth. |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,018 | 6 | 21 | null |
Bad things happen when you train AI using ‘the darkest corners of Reddit’ | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | null |
Facebook launches Fb.gg gaming video hub to compete with Twitch | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Facebook wants a cut of the 3+ hours per week that young adult video gamers other people play. So today it launched — as in the post-competition courtesy of saying “good game” — a destination where viewers can find a collection of all the video games streaming on Facebook. Fb.gg will show video based on the games and streaming celebrities they follow, their Liked Pages and Groups, plus it will display featured creators, esports competitions and gaming conference events. Aggregating gaming content could make sure it doesn’t get lost in the fast-moving News Feed. It could be especially useful for people whose Facebook friends aren’t into the gaming niche. The personalized recommendations based on Facebook activity could help the social network out-curate video-only sites like YouTube and Twitch. And if game streamers feel like they can build a big audience on Facebook, they’ll share there. Still, Facebook is getting a late start here. Meanwhile, Facebook is opening up its new monetization option to more gaming broadcasters. Facebook is launching the for emerging gaming content creators. Available in the next few months, those with access will be able to take monetary tips from their stream viewers in the form of virtual currency. Facebook first announced its in January, but now the virtual currency is called Facebook Stars. For each Star a streamer receives, Facebook will pay them $0.01. We’ve reached out to see if Facebook will be taking a cut of these tips. Stream viewers on desktop can now give Stars to any creator in the Level Up program. [Update 6/7/18: Facebook confirms that it will take a cut of the money users spend on Stars. The percentage differs based on how many Stars the users buy in a pack, which they spend on a creator right away and don’t store up. Update 6/8/18: Facebook has now clarified that its cut ranges from 5 percent to 30 percent, with it taking a smaller cut when users buy larger packs of Stars.] Facebook is also rolling out its Patreon-style monthly subscription fan patronage feature test to more gamers in the coming weeks. Those admitted to Level Up will also get special custom support, HD 1080p 60fps transcoding and a special badge on their profile. Plus, they’ll receive early access to new Facebook live-streaming features and tips on how to build their fan base. Gamers can check out the . Those include having a Gaming Video Creator Facebook Page with at least 100 followers and broadcasting at least 4 hours with sessions on at least 2 days in the past 2 weeks. Gamers have plenty of options to earn money from YouTube ad revenue shares and Twitch’s tipping options. Facebook needs to ramp up these monetization efforts quickly to capitalize on the sudden surge in game streaming. If Facebook can convince streamers it’s not just a place for Pong-aged people, it could turn the video ads on game broadcasts and its cut of Stars spending into some nice little revenue generators. |
Lime brings electric scooters to LA | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | While , Lime is taking its — competitor Bird’s home turf. Although Lime was planning to launch its new model of scooter that it built , it’s now debuting them in the Los Angeles area first. These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, . Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles. “A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.” On the safety side, Lime enhanced its night-light on both the front and back of the scooter, and has added a light to flash below the deck. Lime has also added an additional brake, to have one on both the front and rear wheels. Lime, which also has its pedal-assist electric bikes out and about in the LA area, says this is the first multimodal transportation service in LA. . |
Facebook alerts 14M to privacy bug that changed status composer to public | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Facebook has another privacy screw-up on its hands. A bug in May accidentally changed the suggested privacy setting for status updates to public from whatever users had set it to last, potentially causing them to post sensitive friends-only content to the whole world. Facebook is now notifying 14 million people around the world who were potentially impacted by the bug to review their status updates and lock them down tighter if need be. Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote to TechCrunch in a statement: We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts. We have fixed this issue and starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time. To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before – and they could still choose their audience just as they always have. We’d like to apologize for this mistake. [Clarification: No existing status updates had their privacy setting changed. The composer’s setting was changed, so any posts published by affected users during the bug might have been shared publicly when users assumed their composer was still set to something more private.] The bug was active from May 18th to May 22nd, but it took Facebook until May 27th to switch people’s status composer privacy setting back to what it was before the issue. It happened because Facebook was building a “featured items” option on your profile that highlights photos and other content. These featured items are publicly visible, but Facebook inadvertently extended that setting to all new posts from those users. The issue has now been fixed, and everyone’s status composer has been changed back to default to the privacy setting they had before the bug. The notifications about the bug leads to a page of info about the issue, with a link to review affected posts. Facebook tells TechCrunch that it hears loud and clear that it must be more transparent about its product and privacy settings, especially when it messes up. And it plans to show more of these types of alerts to be forthcoming about any other privacy issues it discovers in the future. Facebook depends on trust in its privacy features to keep people sharing. If users are worried their personal photos, sensitive status updates, or other content could leak out to the public and embarrass them or damage their reputation, they’ll stay silent. With all the other issues swirling after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this bug shows that Facebook’s privacy issues span both poorly thought-out policies and technical oversights. It moved too fast, and it broke something. |
M17 delays IPO debut after pricing this morning on NYSE | Danny Crichton | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | M17 Entertainment, a Taipei-based live streaming and dating app group, priced its IPO this morning on the NYSE and was expected to open trading today . But with just a little more than two hours to go before market closing, , and no one seems to know why. An interview I had scheduled with the CEO earlier this afternoon was canceled at the last minute, with the company’s representative saying that M17 couldn’t comment since its shares were not yet actively trading, and thus the company remains under an SEC-mandated quiet period. M17 has had a rocky non-debut so far. Originally targeting a fundraise of $115 million of American Depository Receipts (shares of foreign companies listed domestically on the NYSE), the company concluded its roadshow raising less than half of its target, for a final investment of $60.1 million. The company priced its ADR shares at $8 each, with each ADR representing 8 shares of the stock’s Class A security. My colleague Jon Russell has . It was formed from the merger of dating app company Paktor and live-streaming business 17 Media. Joseph Phua, who was CEO of Paktor, became CEO of the joint M17 company following the merger. Together, the two halves . M17 provides live-streaming and dating apps throughout “Developed Asia” The company’s main product is a live-streaming product where creators can build their fan bases and brands. Fans can purchase virtual gifts to send to their favorite artists, and those points are proving to be extraordinarily lucrative for the company. The company, , has seen tremendous revenue growth, netting $37.9 million of revenue in the first three months of this year. The company has also been able to attract more live-streaming talent, increasing its contracted artists from 999 at the end of December 2016 to 7,719 at the end of March this year. That’s where the good news ends for the company. Despite that revenue growth, operating losses are torrential, with the company losing $24.8 million in the first three months of this year. The company in its statement says that it has $31.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, giving it limited runway to continue operations without a strong IPO debut. User growth has been mostly stagnant. Active monthly users has increased from 1.5 million to 1.7 million between March 31 of 2017 and 2018. What the company has succeeded in doing is monetizing those users much better. The percentage of users paying on the platform has more than doubled over the same time period, and the value of those users has increased more than 40 percent to $355 per user per month. The big challenge for M17 is revenue quality. Live streaming represents 91.4 percent of the company’s revenues, but those revenues are concentrated on a handful of “whales” who buy a freakishly high number of virtual gifts. The company’s top 10 users represent 11.8 percent of all revenues (that’s $447,220 per user in the first three months this year!), and its top 500 users accounted for almost a majority of total revenues. That concentration on the demand side is just as heavy on the supply side. M17’s top 100 artists accounted for more than a third of the company’s revenue. That concentration has improved over the past few months, according to the company’s filing. But Wall Street investors have learned after Zynga and other whale-based revenue models that the sustainability of these businesses can be tough. Finally, one complication for is the governance of the company. Phua, the CEO, will have 56.3 percent of the voting rights of the company, and M17 will be a controlled company under NYSE rules according to the company’s amended filing. Class B shares vote at a 20:1 ratio with Class A share voting rights. All of this is to say that while the company has had some dizzying growth in its revenue numbers over the past 24 months, that success is moderated by some significant challenges in revenue concentration that will have to be a top priority for M17 going forward. Why the company priced and hasn’t traded remains a mystery, and we have reached out for more comments. |
Speech recognition triggers fun AR stickers in Panda’s video app | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | Panda has built the next silly social feature Snapchat and Instagram will want to steal. Today the startup launches its video messaging that fills the screen with augmented reality effects based on the words you speak. Say “Want to get pizza?” and a 3D pizza slice hovers by your mouth. Say “I wear my sunglasses at night” and suddenly you’re wearing AR shades with a moon hung above your head. Instead of being distracted by having to pick effects out of a menu, they appear in real-time as you chat. is surprising and delightful. It’s also a bit janky, created by a five person team with under $1 million in funding. Building a video chat app user base from scratch amidst all the competition will be a struggle. But even if Panda isn’t the app to popularize the idea, it’s invented a smart way to enhance visual communication that blends into our natural behavior. It all started with a trippy vision. Panda’s 18-year-old founder Daniel Singer had built a few failed apps and was working as a product manager at peer-to-peer therapy startup Sensay in LA. When Alaska Airlines bought Virgin, Singer scored a free flight and came to see his buddy Arjun Sethi, an investor at Social Capital in SF. That’s when suddenly “I’m hallucinating that as I’m talking the things I’m saying should appear” he tells me. Sethi dug the idea and agreed to fund a project to build it. Panda founder Daniel Singer Meanwhile, Singer had spent the last 6 years FaceTiming almost every day. He loved telling stories with his closest friends, yet Apple’s video chat protocol had fallen behind Snapchat and Instagram when it came to creative tools. So a year ago he raised $850,000 from Social Capital and Shrug Capital plus angels like Cyan (Banister) and Secret’s David Byttow. Singer set out to build Panda to combine FaceTime’s live chat with Snapchat’s visual flare triggered by voice. But it turns out, “video chat is hard” he admits. So his small team settled for letting users send 10-second-max asynchronous video messages. launched today with about 200 different voice activated stickers from footballs to sleepy Zzzzzs to a “&’%!#” censorship bar that covers your mouth when you swear. Tap them and they disappear, and soon you’ll be able to reposition them. As you trigger the effects for the first time, they go into a trophy case that gamifies voice experimentation. Panda is fun to play around with yourself even if you aren’t actively messaging friends, which is reminiscent of how teens play with Snapchat face filters without always posting the results. The speech recognition effects will make a lot more sense if Panda can eventually succeed at solving the live video chat tech challenge. One day Singer imagines Panda making money by selling cosmetic effects that make you more attractive or fashionable, or offering sponsored effects so when you say “gym”, the headband that appears on you is Nike branded. Unfortunately, the app can be a bit buggy and effects don’t always trigger, fooling you that you aren’t saying the right words. And it could be tough convincing buddies to download another messaging app, let alone turn it into a regular habit. Apple is also adding a slew of and . Panda does advance one of technology’s fundamental pursuits: taking the fuzzy ideas in your head and translating them into meaning for others in clearer ways than just words can offer. It’s the next wave of visual communication that doesn’t require you to break from the conversation. When I ask why other apps couldn’t just copy the speech stickers, Singer insisted “This has to be voice native.” I firmly disagree, and can easily imagine his whole app becoming just a single filter in Snapchat and Instagram Stories. He eventually acquiesced that “It’s a new reality that bits and pieces of consumer technology get traded around. I wouldn’t be surprised if others think it’s a good idea.” It’s an uphill battle trying to disrupt today’s social giants, who are quick to seize on any idea that gives them an edge. Facebook stealing other apps’ features by prioritizing whatever will engage its billions of users over the pride of its designers. Startups like Panda are effectively becoming outsourced R&D departments. Still, pledges to forge on (though it might be wise to take a buyout offer). Singer gets that his app won’t cure cancer or “make the world a better place” as HBO’s Silicon Valley has lampooned. “We’re going to make really fun stuff and make them laugh and smile and experience human emotion” he concludes. “At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with building entertainment and delight.” |
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is coming to Disrupt SF to talk about how AI will eat everything, especially jobs | Ned Desmond | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | At our upcoming , TechCrunch committed to go deep on artificial intelligence, and we’re pleased to announce a speaker who has few peers in that realm as a technologist or investor. Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the CEO and chairman of , a venture firm based in the U.S. and China, and he has emerged as one of the world’s top prognosticators on artificial intelligence and how the technology will disrupt just about everything. Dr. Lee wrote in last year that AI is “ In his forthcoming book, , Dr. Lee expands on his AI thesis to argue that China has caught up to the United States in AI technology and that the two countries will dominate the AI globally, even as AI radically transforms the work world, necessitating dramatic new social programs. That’s one seriously disruptive investment thesis, and it’s central to Sinovation’s 300 investments in the U.S. and China. Given Dr. Lee’s background, there is good reason to pay careful attention. Equally at home in Taiwan, where he was born, Beijing where he lives and the United States, where he was educated and worked for many years, Dr. Lee completed his PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon by developing the world’s first speaker-independent, continuous system. Dr. Lee went on to work for Apple, SGI and Microsoft, and in 2005 became the founding president of Google China. He launched Innovation Works (later re-named Sinovation) in 2009. In China and Taiwan, Dr. Lee is a business celebrity, thanks to the 50 million followers on his Sina Weibo micro-blogging profile, as well as his education projects, including Sinovation’s AI Institute, the firm’s Beijing-based lab of AI research and talent development. Dr. Lee will also be on our Q&A stage (after his interview on the Main Stage) to take questions from attendees. You’ll need to grab your to take part in Dr. Lee’s Q&A session, as well as all of the other fantastic content exclusive to Disrupt SF attendees this September. and save with our early-bird discounts. |
Here’s what EA announced at E3 2018 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | Good afternoon, downtown L.A.! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the giant banners with gun toting cyborgs have been unveiled. That can only mean one thing: it’s time for E3! Electronic Arts kicked the show off this morning with the first official press conference, and the big news was, as anticipated, Battlefield V. The World War II title will likely get a little more love at the Xbox press conference tomorrow morning, but we did get a look at some compelling gameplay. Notably, the title is getting a Fortnite-style multiplayer, battle royale mode. Bioware’s next title isn’t due out until next February, but Anthem still managed to get a lot of love today at E3. The multiplayer shooter finds players assuming the role of mech suit wearing “Freelancers.” Due out September 28, EA’s big soccer (or football or whatever) title is adding UEFA Champions League gameplay, after picking up the license from Konami. That’s big news for European soccer fans, bringing the annual tournament to the title. The company also announced a free trial for Xbox, Playstation and PC players. The popular football title (the other football) is destined for the PC for the first time in more than 10 years. It will bring with it new, more lifelike player animation when it debuts August 10. It wouldn’t be an EA E3 event without some Star Wars love. Due out during the 2019 holiday season, the title will offer a dark take on the familiar universe, allowing users to play as a Jedi. That’s all we know so far, and sadly, there’s no trailer yet to speak of. No waiting on this one, however. The yarn of a puzzle platformer sequel just dropped today for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. |
Uber is looking to buy the bike-share company behind Citi Bike and Ford GoBike | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | Uber is , the company that makes Ford GoBike’s in the San Francisco Bay Area and Citi Bike over on the East Coast. This comes following reports of . , a dockless, electric bike-share service, earlier this year, for about $250 million. In April, . Once JUMP’s 18-month pilot program with the city is up next June, we can expect to see companies like Motivate, Lime and others apply to deploy their own dockless bikes in the city. Uber declined to comment for this story. Just this week, both Uber and Lyft applied to deploy electric scooters in San Francisco. You can read more about that here. |
How (and when) to watch the E3 2018 press conferences | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | Sure, E3 doesn’t actually officially start until Tuesday, but the big news kicks off this weekend. Here’s of some of the biggest new titles we expect to be shown off at press conferences from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, but there’s a lot more to the show than just the big three. EA started several days of big announcements with a press conference in downtown L.A. this morning, focused on Battlefield V, Fifa 2019 and a bunch more. Microsoft, meanwhile, will be the first of the big hardware companies to hold court with an early afternoon event on Sunday, followed by Bethesda that night. Monday is the most packed day of the week with events from Square Enix, Ubisoft and Sony. Nintendo, meanwhile, has Tuesday morning to itself, opting to again return to its pre-recorded streaming format in lieu of renting out a larger hall. Here’s the full break down. |
Accenture wants to beat unfair AI with a professional toolkit | Natasha Lomas | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | “Most of last year was spent… understanding this realm of ethics and AI and really educating ourselves, and I feel that 2018 has really become the year of doing — the year of moving beyond virtue signaling. And moving into actual creation and development,” “For many of us, especially those of us who are in this space all the time, we’re tired of just talking about it — we want to start building and solving problems, and that’s really what inspired this fairness tool.” “There is no such thing as a perfect algorithm,” she says. “We know that models will be wrong sometimes. We consider it unfair if there are different degrees of wrongness… for different people, based on characteristics that should not influence the outcomes.” “We’re seeing increasing focus on algorithmic bias, fairness. Just this past week we’ve had Singapore announce an AI ethics board. Korea announce an AI ethics board. In the US we already have industry creating different groups — such as . Google just released their … So I think industry leaders, as well as non-tech companies, are looking for guidance. They are looking for standards and protocols and something to adhere to because they want to know that they are safe in creating products. “It’s not an easy task to think about these things. Not every organization or company has the resources to. So how might we better enable that to happen? Through good legislation, through enabling trust, communication. And also through developing these kinds of tools to help the process along.” To boil it down further, the tool examines the “data influence” of sensitive variables (age, gender, race etc) on other variables in a model — measuring how much of a correlation the variables have with each other to see whether they are skewing the model and its outcomes. It can then remove the impact of sensitive variables — leaving only the residual impact say, for example, that ‘likelihood to own a home’ would have on a model output, instead of the output being derived from age likelihood to own a home, and therefore risking decisions being biased against certain age groups. “ n example in the US, where algorithms used to determine parole outcomes were less likely to be wrong for white men than for black men. “That was unfair,” she says. “People were denied parole, who should have been granted parole — and it happened more often for black people than for white people. And that’s the kind of fairness we’re looking at. We want to make sure that everybody has equal opportunity.” However, a quirk of AI algorithms is that when models are corrected for unfair bias there can be a reduction in their In Europe, for example, there are that place an obligation on data processors to prevent errors, bias and discrimination in automated decisions. They can also be required to give individuals information about the logic of an automated decision that effects them. So actively choosing a decision model that’s patently unfair would invite a lot of legal risk. “It can be that your model is incredibly unfair and to correct it to be a lot more fair is not going to impact your model that much… maybe by 1% or 2% [accuracy]. So it’s not that big of a deal. And then in other cases you may see a wider shift in model accuracy.” “If you see a huge shift in your model accuracy that probably means there’s something wrong in your data. And you might need to actually go back and look at your data,” she says. “So while this tool does help with corrections it is part of this larger process — where you may actually have to go back and get new data, get different data. What this tool does is able to highlight that necessity in a way that’s easy to understand. “Previously people didn’t have that ability to visualize and understand that their data may actually not be adequate for what they’re trying to solve for.” She adds: “This may have been data that you’ve been using for quite some time. And it may actually cause people to re-examine their data, how it’s shaped, how societal influences influence outcomes. That’s kind of the beauty of artificial intelligence as a sort of subjective observer of humanity.” While tech giants may have developed their own internal tools for assessing the neutrality of their AI algorithms — Facebook has one called Fairness Flow, for example — argues that most non-tech companies will not be able to develop their own similarly sophisticated tools for assessing algorithmic bias. Which is where Accenture is hoping to step in with a support service — and one that also embeds ethical frameworks and toolkits into the product development lifecycle, so R&D remains as agile as possible. “One of the questions that I’m always faced with is how do we integrate ethical behavior in way that aligns with rapid innovation. So every company is really adopting this idea of agile innovation and development, etc. People are talking a lot about three to six month iterative processes. So I can’t come in with an ethical process that takes three months to do. So part of one of my constraints is how do I create something that’s easy to integrate into this innovation lifecycle.” other kinds of commonly used models”.) More generally, she says the challenge is that many companies are hoping for a magic “push button” tech fix-all for algorithmic bias. Which of course simply does not — and will not — exist. During prototyping, when the researchers were using a German data-set relating to the team realized that nationality was influencing a lot of other variables. And for credit risk outcomes they found decisions were more likely to be wrong for non-German nationals. They then used the tool to equalize the outcome and found it didn’t A paper about the prototyping of the tool |
Airbnb will now let people register as Open Homes emergency volunteers before a crisis hits | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | — the travel startup that lets individuals rent out private homes or rooms in private homes to people as an alternative to hotels — has racked up more than 17,000 nights in its Open Homes program, a voluntary effort where Airbnb hosts can offer their houses and rooms free of charge to people in cities going through an emergency such as a hurricane or flood or other critical incident, either because those people have been displaced from their homes or because they have come to an area to help family who are going through a crisis. Now, the company is a new version of the program to make it even more ubiquitous: Airbnb hosts, and anyone who might be willing to put up people in emergencies, can now register so that they will be available on “standby” lists. The first city that will pilot the new system starting this summer is San Jose, California, and the plan is to roll it out to more cities during the rest of the year, and eventually globally. The idea to expand Open Homes came out of Airbnb thinking about how to make its program more effective and responsive to crises. The company has in total hosted people in nearly 9,000 homes over 90 disasters, but it found that there was a gap in time between when something happened, and the days it would take to recruit volunteers to provide homes. Given the time sensitivity of the need, the company thought it could do something to be more prepared. On the part of the city of San Jose, it became the first city to pilot the program for two reasons. It relied on Airbnb in 2017 to provide homes to people displaced during major flooding, where the city needed to evacuate and find accommodation for 14,000 families, so it understood the benefit of the program. And it generally has a larger impetus to get involved in more tech-led initiatives that better leveraged its own place in the heart of Silicon Valley. “As you might expect, as the biggest city in Silicon Valley, we believe in working in collaboration with tech,” San Jose’s mayor Sam Liccardo said in an interview. “Tech has impacted and changed our economy, but we also know that there is an extraordinary opportunity in having a collaborative approach.” San Jose and Airbnb have worked together before: the city worked with Airbnb on crafting a scheme for taxing hosts to collect visitors’ taxes that were on par with what visitors paid when staying in hotels, and Liccardo noted that this became a template for how Airbnb worked out similar taxes in other cities. While flooding was the reason Airbnb provided Open Homes in San Jose, Liccardo said that earthquakes are by far the more worrisome natural disaster that San Jose wants to be prepared for down the line. Kellie Bentz, Airbnb’s Head of Disaster Response and Relief, says that the company has been working with relief organizations up to now to help coordinate housing options. This new phase of Open Homes will bring it into closer contact with city governments to develop programs. While exact details will be worked out, Airbnb and cities will work together to get the message out to people, since the idea is to appeal to people beyond Airbnb’s own network of hosts. This will include public service announcements and in-person sessions where people can come and learn more about hosting during critical incidents, where they may not get paid, but Airbnb might provide some degree of cost covering for the efforts. Setting up networks of potential hosts ahead of time will allow Airbnb to have more comprehensive data on individual hosts and what their particular offerings and restrictions might be. Bentz is very quick to say that the purpose behind this program is to cosy up to city governments, or to simply expand its network of regular hosts. But I’d point out that both do happen to be potential (if unintended) side effects. City governments have not always been in harmony with Airbnb, which has run afoul of some local regulations that have been built for hotels and to account for Airbnb’s brand of travel accommodation. This gives Airbnb a place as not a disruptive aggressor, but a help. In the case of hosts, there have been plenty who have stayed at Airbnb’s but are reluctant to open up their own homes, and this gives the company a way of introducing the concept in a less all-in way. (Although, to be very clear, the company says it is not expanding this program for either of these reasons. “If we weren’t doing this with integrity, I would not be here,” Bentz said.) While the idea is to bring in more than just Airbnb hosts as emergency accommodation volunteers, so far Airbnb hasn’t worked with any other networks that provide a platform to home owners to rent out their places, such as HomeAway. “We would be open to those conversations,” said Bentz. “But so far we have not had interest from them.” |
Silicon Valley scooter wars | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | become the hot new area for startups and “innovation.” For those who haven’t been keeping track, there are three main players in the Silicon Valley scooter wars: Bird, Lime and Spin. Bird first launched in Venice, Calif. before expanding into San Francisco in March. It’s worth pointing out that Bird, for now, is strictly an electric scooter company. That’s not the case for Lime and Spin, which both have their own bike-share services deployed throughout various parts of the country and world. That same month — almost in complete lockstep — Lime and Spin deployed their own electric scooters in the city. Fast forward to June and the city of SF has placed a temporary hold on electric scooters until it can review permit applications. As part of a new city law, which went into effect June 4, scooter companies are not able to operate their services in SF without a permit. Twelve companies (Uber/JUMP, Lyft, Skip, Spin, Lime, Scoot, ofo, Skip, Razor, CycleHop, USSCooter and Ridecell) have applied for permits in SF, but the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency will issue permits for no more than five companies during the 24-month pilot program. The program would grant up to 2,500 scooters to operate in total, but it’s not yet clear how many scooters each company would be allowed to deploy. Uber and Lyft’s entrance into the electric scooter space was expected, given that that he had his eyes on electric scooters, and about its permitting process. But it became more official this past week when both companies applied for permits to operate in SF. Uber and Lyft, which have both public transit integration, are clearly vying to become the one-stop shop for all transportation needs. The SFMTA said it’s aiming to notify companies of their permit status by the end of June. If issued a permit, companies must then pay an annual permit fee of $25,000, as well as a $10,000 public property repair and maintenance endowment. Companies must also share trip data with the city. But the scooter moratorium in SF has little effect on the state of scooters as a whole. The last week alone has been filled with multi-million-dollar investments in electric scooter companies like Bird and Lime. and Bird Below, you can see where some of these newer players stack up in comparison to each other. This is just a look at companies that have deployed electric scooters in the United States. California is the main hot spot for scooters in the U.S., but they have also popped up in Texas, Washington D.C., North Carolina and other states throughout the country. Unsurprisingly, regulation has proved to be an issue for many of these companies. In SF, the MTA is currently reviewing permit applications from electric scooter companies looking to operate in the city. The permit process came as a result of Bird, Lime and Spin deploying their electric scooters without permission in the city in March. Over in Austin, dockless electric scooter startup with the city to ensure its service meets the criteria laid out by regulators. Moving forward, GOAT says it’s actively working with other cities to pursue additional operating permits. In D.C., Skip, which worked with city officials and lawmakers to ensure it had the green light before launching. Here’s an overview of where you can expect to see electric scooters throughout the country. Outside of the U.S., Bird is looking at deploying scooters throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In February, Bird brought on Patrick Studener, a former international growth product manager at Uber, to serve as head of EMEA at Bird, . Earlier this week, for a general manager in Europe to lead market management. Meanwhile, a source sent us a photo of a Lime on the streets of Zurich, Switzerland. It turns out Lime is working with the city around some pilot programs with private businesses. Many companies aren’t actually building their own scooters. Instead, they’re slapping stickers and logos on scooters that have been around for years. Lime, Bird and Spin launched using scooters from Ninebot, a Chinese scooter company that has merged with Segway. Ninebot is backed by investors, including Sequoia Capital, Xiaomi and ShunWei. But Lime, Skip, Spin and Bird are looking to change that. In May, to launch its next generation of electric scooters. These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, Lime CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch last month. Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles. “A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.” Lime scooter built in partnership with Segway Bird is also experimenting with some new scooter models, but they seem . When reached for comment, Bird said it didn’t have many details to provide. Meanwhile, Skip does have plans to build its own custom scooters but currently modifies the Speedway Mini4 63V 21Ah scooters. Skip scooter deck With Spin, the company does have plans to build its own scooters, but isn’t ready to announce details. What Spin CEO Euwyn Poon would share with me is that the company has spun up a custom production line and supply chain. GOAT, on the other hand, is deliberately taking the partnership route, having developed GOAT on top of a Segway scooter since the beginning. “This decision was based not only on a superior quality scooter and the ability to maintain this quality at scale, but also our ability to work side-by-side with the Segway team in Changzhou, China and remotely here in Austin,” GOAT co-founder Jennie Whitaker told TechCrunch in an email. “We believe that it’s important to focus on what you’re the best at, which means allowing Segway to produce superior electric scooters while we focus on building technology to solve mobility problems for the world.” Just like ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft created new jobs, electric scooter companies seem to be doing the same. During some March public hearings in SF, companies touted how their respective services create jobs for people in low-income communities. Given that each player’s scooters need to be charged, they’re relying on everyday people to scoop up these scooters at night, charge them and then drop them off early the next morning. Lime, for example, has its . Bird has its program, Spin has its program and Skip has . Spin pays $5 per scooter, Bird pays between $5 to $25 per scooter charged, . And Lime pays up to $12 per scooter, depending on the location. In March, Harry Campbell over at The Rideshare Guy documented what it was like to be a charger for Bird. and he could see how it would make sense for people looking to make some extra cash. Austin scooter parking Moving forward, companies are looking at ways to ease some of its effects on sidewalk congestion, which has been a primary concern for city dwellers and legislators. In March, SF Supervisor Jane Kim said she didn’t envision handing out permits until the city could figure out a better way to dock the scooters. At the time, the SFMTA said the onus is on the companies to ensure proper docking and that it’s willing to work with each company around that process. But over in Austin, the city has taken matters into its own hands. In May, the city that require riders to park in designated areas. This decision was inspired by some action Seattle took around dockless bicycles. Each city will, of course, regulate in whichever way they think is best. But these designated scooter parking areas do seem like a solid way to ensure people aren’t tripping over scooters left in the middle of the street. A fallen Bird in SF In addition to figuring out a way to handle scooter parking, companies also have to worry about and theft. In SF, before the temporary ban, it wasn’t uncommon to see scooters with graffiti, cut wires or with dismembered parts. Companies, of course, account for things like this and are keeping tabs. Lime told me lost scooters and vandalism affects less than one percent of its overall fleet across markets. If you’ve made it this far in the story, I tip my hat to you. Be sure to holler at me if you see scooters behaving badly, launching in new markets or . |
US startups off to a strong M&A run in 2018 | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 6 | 9 | ith Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub this week, we can now decisively declare a trend: 2018 is shaping up as a darn good year for U.S. venture-backed M&A. So far this year, acquirers have spent just over $20 billion in disclosed-price purchases of U.S. VC-funded companies, according to Crunchbase data. That’s about 80 percent of the 2017 full-year total, which is pretty impressive, considering we’re barely five months into 2018. If one included unreported purchase prices, the totals would be quite a bit higher. Fewer than 20 percent of acquisitions in our data set came with reported prices. Undisclosed prices are mostly for smaller deals, but not always. We put together a undisclosed price M&A transactions this year involving companies snapped up by large-cap acquirers after raising more than $20 million in venture funding. The deals that everyone talks about, however, are the ones with the big and disclosed price tags. And we’ve seen quite a few of those lately. As we approach the half-year mark, nothing comes close to topping the , which ranks as one of the biggest acquisitions of a private, U.S. venture-backed company ever. The last deal to top it was Facebook’s $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014, according to . Of course, GitHub is a unique story with an astounding growth trajectory. Its platform for code development, most popular among programmers, has drawn 28 million users. For context, that’s more than the entire population of Australia. Still, let’s not forget about the other big deals announced in 2018. We list the top six below: , a provider of software used by cancer care providers and researchers, ranks as the second-biggest VC-backed acquisition of 2018. Its purchaser, Roche, was an existing stakeholder who apparently liked what it saw enough to buy up all remaining shares. Next up is job and employer review site , a company familiar to many of those who’ve looked for a new post or handled hiring in the past decade. The 11-year-old company found a fan in Tokyo-based Recruit Holdings, a provider of recruitment and human resources services that also owns leading job site Indeed.com. Meanwhile, , a cancer therapy developer that sold to Celgene for $1.1 billion, could end up delivering an even larger exit. The acquisition deal includes potential milestone payments approaching nearly $6 billion. Not all metrics are trending up, however. While acquirers are doing bigger deals, they don’t appear to be buying a larger number of startups. Crunchbase shows 216 startups in our data set that sold this year. That’s roughly on par with the pace of dealmaking in the year-ago period, which had 222 M&A exits using similar parameters. (For all of 2017, there were 508 startup acquisitions that met our parameters. ) Below, we look at M&A counts for the past five calendar years: Looking at prior years for comparison, the takeaway seems to be that M&A deal counts for 2018 look just fine, but we’re not seeing a big spike. The more notable shift from 2017 seems to be buyers’ bigger appetite for unicorn-scale deals. Last year, we saw just one acquisition of a software company for more than a billion dollars — Cisco’s $3.7 billion of AppDynamics — and that was only after the performance management software provider filed to go public. The only other billion-plus deal was PetSmart’s $3.4 billion of pet food delivery service Chewy, which previously raised early venture funding and later private equity backing. There are plenty of reasons why acquirers could be spending more freely this year. Some that come to mind: Stock indexes are chugging along, and U.S. legislators have slashed corporate tax rates. U.S. companies with large cash hordes held overseas, like Apple and Microsoft, also received new financial incentives to repatriate that money. That’s not to say companies are doing acquisitions for these reasons. There’s no obligation to spend repatriated cash in any particular way. Many prefer share buybacks or sitting on piles of money. Nonetheless, the combination of these two things — more money and less uncertainty around tax reform — are certainly not a bad thing for M&A. High public valuations, particularly for tech, also help. Microsoft shares, for instance, have risen by more than 44 percent in the past year. That means that it took about a third fewer shares to buy GitHub this month than it would have a year ago. (Of course, GitHub’s valuation probably rose as well, but we’ll ignore that for now.) Overall, this is not looking like an M&A market for bargain hunters. Large-cap acquirers seem willing to pay retail price for startups they like, given the competitive environment. After all, the IPO window is wide open. Plus, fast-growing unicorns have the option of staying private and raising money from SoftBank or a panoply of other highly capitalized investors. Meanwhile, acquirers themselves are competing for desirable startups. Microsoft’s winning bid for GitHub reportedly followed by Google, Atlassian and a host of other would-be buyers. But even in the most buoyant climate, one rule of acquiring remains true: It’s hard to turn down $7.5 billion. |
Hydrate, intoxicate, caffeinate, repeat: Meet the startups pouring the future | Joanna Glasner | 2,018 | 6 | 30 | hese days, it seems like everyone with extra cash has some kind of pricey drinking habit. It might be fine wine, craft beer or cocktails. Or it could come in the form of coconut water, cold-pressed juice or the latest frothy caffeinated concoction. No matter what your preference, startups and their backers likely have you covered. In a follow-up to our earlier this month about food startups gobbling up venture funding, Crunchbase News is taking a look at beverage companies guzzling capital. We found that while drinkables receive a smaller portion of funding than edibles, it’s still a sector that draws hundreds of millions of dollars in annual investment. Where are investors pouring all that money? Some unlikely places. For instance, it appears the largest funding recipient so far this year is a China-based chain called that’s well known for a specialty called cheese tea. (An unfortunately named, slightly salty iced drink that a Crunchbase News team sampling determined was actually pretty tasty.) Besides cheese tea, we found startups are also raising millions to bottle deep ocean water, customize instant coffee and make your party punch more portable. Bottom line: So long as there are profit margins to squeeze out, the quest continues for new ways to get you drunk, hydrated or caffeinated. Below, we look at what’s trending on all these fronts. Venture investors and startup entrepreneurs are betting there are highly scalable businesses to be built in doling out more exotic varieties of water, coconut-based beverages and other drinks to hydrate calorie-conscious consumers. An analysis of Crunchbase data unearthed developing new varieties of water and fitness drinks that have raised funding in recent quarters. Funding data reveals that investors still see the potential for significant returns from coconut water. The largest round in the hydration category went to , a seller of fair trade, organic coconut water and probiotic drinks that recently raised $30 million. The funding comes as the sector is on a tear, with the U.S. spending alone on coconut water to reach $2 billion next year. We also saw a couple of deals involving startups offering alternatives to bottled or tap water. The most heavily capitalized one to receive funding in the past couple of years appears to be , a Denver-based startup that provides pure water refill stations and has raised about $8 million to date. Meanwhile, bottled water is still generating attention, too, as evidenced by the $5.5 million round late last year for , a bottler of deep ocean water. You may need water to survive, but if you’re looking to secure venture capital, it helps to throw in a bit of alcohol. Since last year, venture investors have poured more than $300 million into an assortment of companies providing alcoholic beverages, drinking gadgetry and services to connect consumers with booze. Crunchbase News highlighted about a that raised sizable rounds, along with one hangover startup. Some of the larger funding rounds are for companies that don’t make alcohol; instead, these startups offer easier ways to select and buy it. These include , a popular wine rating app, as well as and , two ordering and delivery services. There are emerging brands in the mix, too, including , a purveyor of party punch in portable packages; , a producer of organic tequilas and other spirits; and , which has a gadget for dispensing good wine by the glass. If too much drinking makes you sleepy, let caffeine come to the rescue. Venture investors, known to be heavy consumers of caffeine, also seem to like investing in the stuff. Using Crunchbase data, we more than a dozen companies in the coffee and tea space that have secured good-sized rounds in roughly the past year. They range from fast-growing chains, like China’s Hey Tea, to packaged drinks, like non-dairy blended drink maker , to instant beverage innovators, like Sudden Coffee. We even found a blockchain company in the mix, , which aims to connect coffee farmers and consumers directly. It’s not a bad area for exits, either. The most recent significant exit was , a venture-backed brand known for really, really strong brews that sold a majority stake to Nestlé last September at a valuation of over $700 million. One additional beverage category in which we saw a high level of activity was in meal-replacement and nutrition drinks. Overall, we found at least a developing nutritional drinks that have raised funding in recent quarters. In this sector, probably the best-known startup name is , which has raised over $70 million for a line of drinks marketed to consumers who don’t have the time or inclination to sit down for a traditional meal. We also found a potential rival, meal-replacement beverage maker , which secured angel funding last month. The biggest round in the past couple of months for the space, however, went to REBBL, a startup that raised $20 million in May for its line of bottled drinks featuring health-promoting herbs, protein and coconut. Beverage investments, like everything else, aren’t always a home run for VCs. The demise of juicer startup last year offers a cautionary tale that large rounds don’t always translate into compelling business models. That said, beverage purveyors don’t have to worry much about demand drying up. People will always be thirsty. And while we typically quench our thirst with simple tap or filtered water, where’s the fun (or the massive exit potential) in that? Our analysis focused primarily on companies that have secured funding in the past year; however, we also included some rounds outside those parameters that were exceptionally large or noteworthy in other ways. |
The five best reasons you don’t want to miss Disrupt SF this September | Ned Desmond | 2,018 | 6 | 30 | TechCrunch’s (Sept. 5-7) is our most ambitious event ever. And if we’re sure of one thing, it’s that people in the startup scene will extract more insights and inspiration from this Disrupt than any before. Here’s why… |
This box sucks pure water out of dry desert air | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | For many of us, clean, drinkable water comes right out of the tap. But for billions it’s not that simple, and all over the world researchers are looking into ways to fix that. Today brings work from Berkeley, where a team is working on a water-harvesting apparatus that requires no power and can produce water even in the dry air of the desert. Hey, if a cactus can do it, why can’t we? While there are , many require power or parts that need to be replaced; what professor Omar Yaghi has developed needs neither. The secret isn’t some clever solar concentrator or low-friction fan — it’s all about the materials. Yaghi is a chemist, and has created what’s called a metal-organic framework, or MOF, that’s eager both to absorb and release water. It’s essentially a powder made of tiny crystals in which water molecules get caught as the temperature decreases. Then, when the temperature increases again, the water is released into the air again. Yaghi demonstrated the process on a small scale last year, but now he and his team producing real-world amounts of water. They put together a box about two feet per side with a layer of MOF on top that sits exposed to the air. Every night the temperature drops and the humidity rises, and water is trapped inside the MOF; in the morning, the sun’s heat drives the water from the powder, and it condenses on the box’s sides, kept cool by a sort of hat. The result of a night’s work: 3 ounces of water per pound of MOF used. That’s not much more than a few sips, but improvements are already on the way. Currently the MOF uses zicronium, but an aluminum-based MOF, already being tested in the lab, will cost 99 percent less and produce twice as much water. With the new powder and a handful of boxes, a person’s drinking needs are met without using any power or consumable material. Add a mechanism that harvests and stores the water and you’ve got yourself an off-grid potable water solution. “There is nothing like this,” Yaghi explained in a Berkeley news release. “It operates at ambient temperature with ambient sunlight, and with no additional energy input you can collect water in the desert. The aluminum MOF is making this practical for water production, because it is cheap.” He says there are already commercial products in development. More tests, with mechanical improvements and including the new MOF, are planned for the hottest months of the summer. |
The hottest investors at The Europas, & your specially discounted ticket | Mike Butcher | 2,018 | 6 | 30 | In partnership with TechCrunch, , features smaller breakout sessions on key subjects for startups, followed by a show for the hottest startups in Europe, based on voting by expert judges and the industry itself. Plus loads of networking opportunities with investors, and the super-fun Pitch Rolette pitch competition. See below for your special discount offer! Just some of the investors coming to The Europas this Tuesday, July 3, in London include: Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with a selected 800 of the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs. . And here’s 14 reasons to attend The Europas: • Ultra-high quality Investors, speakers & featured guests • New startup founders brought into the eco-system • New deal-flow for investors • Our “Diversity Matters” Free pass bringing in more women and POC • Expert speeches, discussions, and Q&A • Intimate “breakout” sessions with key players on vertical topics • The opportunity to meet almost everyone in those small groups, super-charging your networking • Convivial, relaxed atmosphere conducive to networking • Key press including WSJ, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, attending • A stunning awards dinner and party which honors both the hottest startups and the leading lights in the European startup scene • Content independently curated by journalists • The only truly independent, industry-backed awards in Europe • Percentage of profits will be donated to charity • All on one day to maximize your time in London Plus, as a special offer for TechCrunch readers, we have discounted tickets of up to 60% off: • (£250, 60% discount) (valid all day, July 3rd) – this ticket includes the daytime conference and the awards dinner with ceremony and after party. It includes refreshments and lunch during the conference, and the awards drinks reception and dinner. • (£75, 60% discount) – this ticket includes the afternoon Unconference only. • (£195, 60% discount) – this ticket is for the awards dinner with ceremony and after party. It includes the awards drinks reception and dinner. If you wish to sponsor the events or to purchase a table for 10 or 12 guest or a half table for 5 guests, please contact petra@theeuropas.com The conference and awards are supported by TechCrunch, the official media partner. Attendees, nominees, and winners will get deep discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this year. |
Announcing TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Latin America in São Paulo on Nov. 8 | Ned Desmond | 2,018 | 6 | 30 | TechCrunch is excited to announce that the is coming to São Paulo on November 8 this year. This is the first event TechCrunch has ever held in Latin America, and we are all in to make it a memorable one to support the fast-emerging startup ecosystem in the region. The is TechCrunch’s premier startup competition, which over the past 12 years has placed 750 companies on stage to pitch top VCs and TechCrunch editors. Those founders have gone on to raise more than $8 billion and produce more than 100 exits. Startup Battlefield Latin America aims to add 15 great founders from Latin America to those elite ranks. Here’s how the competition works. Founders to participate in Startup Battlefield. Any early stage (pre-A round) company with a working product headquartered in an eligible Latin American country (see list below) may apply. Applications close August 6. TechCrunch editors will review the applications and, based on which applicants have the strongest potential for a big exit of major societal impact, pick 15 to compete on November 8. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield team will work intensively with each founding team to hone their six-minute pitch to perfection. Then it’s game day. The 15 companies will take the stage at São Paulo’s Tomie Ohtake Institute in front of a live audience of 500 people to pitch top-tier VC judges. The judges and TechCrunch editors will pick five for a finals round. Those lucky finalists will face a fresh team of judges, and one will emerge as the winner of the first-ever Startup Battlefield Latin America. The winner takes home $25,000 and a trip for two to the next Disrupt, where they can exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley and may also qualify to participate in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt. Sweet deal. All Startup Battlefield sessions will be captured on video and posted on TechCrunch.com. It’s an experience no founder would want to miss, considering the opportunity to join the ranks of Battlefield greats from years past, including Dropbox, Yammer, Mint, Getaround, CloudFlare, Vurb and many more. . Here’s the need-to-know about qualifying to apply: Tickets to attend Startup Battlefield Latin America will go on sale soon. Interested in sponsoring the event, |
TraceLink just landed $60 million more to eliminate counterfeit prescription drugs | Connie Loizos | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Just processed by the SEC on this bright Friday afternoon: , a software-as-a-service platform for tracking pharmaceuticals and trying to weed out counterfeit prescription drugs in the process, has raised $60 million in Series D funding. The filing shows that 18 firms participated, including, presumably, Goldman Sachs, whose growth equity arm had led the company’s roughly 18 months ago. Others of the nine-year-old company’s earlier investors include FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital. As TC’s Jordan Crook reported at the time of that last round, TraceLink helps pharma companies comply with country-specific track-and-trace requirements through their supply chain, which has grown increasingly important following the passage of the in 2013. The consumer-protection measure aims to prevent individuals’ exposure to drugs that could be counterfeit, stolen, contaminated or otherwise harmful. At the time of its enactment, it also gave the industry one decade before becomes enforced, meaning the clock is ticking. Also working in the favor of TraceLink: opioids, whose spread has been rising since the late ’90s, creating ever-growing pressure to isolate vulnerabilities in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Little wonder the company looks to be preparing for life as a publicly traded company, including by releasing quarterly revenue and customer growth numbers. Indeed, according to its “growth highlights,” released just a couple of weeks ago, the company’s first quarter revenue in 2018 was than it was in the first quarter of 2017. |
null | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 6 | 7 | null |
Why Microsoft wants to put data centers at the bottom of the ocean | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the second phase of , a research experiment that aims to understand the benefits and challenges of deploying large-scale data centers under water. In this second phase, the team sank a tank the size of a shipping container with numerous server racks off the coast of the and plans to keep it there for a few years to see if this is a viable way of deploying data centers in the future. Computers and water famously don’t mix, as anyone who has ever spilled a cup of water over a laptop, so putting server racks under water sure seems like an odd idea. But as Microsoft Research’s Ben Cutler told me, there are good reasons for why the bottom of the ocean may be a good place for setting up servers. The vast majority of people live within 200 kilometers of the ocean, Cutler noted, and Microsoft’s cloud strategy has long been about putting its data centers close to major population centers. So with large offshore wind farms potentially providing renewable power and the obvious cooling benefits of being under water (and cooling is a major cost factor for data centers), trying an experiment like this makes sense. “Within Microsoft, we’ve spent an enormous amount of energy and time on cloud — and obviously money,” Cutler explained when I asked him about the genesis of this project. “So we’re always looking for new ways that we can innovate. And this idea sort of gelled originally with one of our employees who worked on a U.S. Navy submarine and knew something about this technology, and that this could maybe be applied to data centers.” So back in 2013, the team and dropped a small pressure vessel with a few servers into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. That experiment worked out pretty well. Even the local sea life seemed to appreciate it. The team found that the vessel didn’t heat up the water close to it by more than a few thousandths of a degree Celsius warmer than a few feet further away from it. The noise, too, was pretty much negligible. “We found that once we were a few meters away from the vessel, we were drowned out by background noise, which is things like snapping shrimp, which is actually the predominant sound of the ocean,” Cutler told me, and stressed that the team’s job is to measure all of this as the ocean is obviously a very sensitive environment. “What we found was that we’re very well received by wildlife and we’re very quickly colonized by crabs and octopus and other things that were in the area.” For this second phase, the team decided on the location off the coast of Scotland because it’s also home to the , so the infrastructure for powering the vessel from renewable energy from on- and off-shore sources was already in place. Once the vessel is in the ocean, maintenance is pretty much impossible. The idea here is to accept that things will fail and can’t be replaced. Then, after a few years, the plan is to retrieve the vessel, refurbish it with new machines and deploy it again. But as part of this experiment, the team also thought about how to best make these servers last as long as possible — and because nobody has to go replace a broken hard drive inside the vessel, the team decided to fill the atmosphere with nitrogen to prevent corrosion, for example. To measure the impact of that experiment, Microsoft also maintains a similar vessel on land so it can compare how well that system fares over time. Cutler stressed that nothing here is cutting-edge technology. There are no exotic servers here and both underwater cabling and building vessels like this are well understood at this point. Over time, Cutler envisions a factory that can prefabricate these vessels and ship them to where they are needed. That’s why the vessel is about the size of a shipping container and the team actually had it fabricated in France, loaded it on a truck and shipped it to England to test this logistics chain. Whether that comes to pass remains to be seen, of course. The team is studying the economics of Natick for the time being, and then it’s up to Microsoft’s Azure team to take this out of the research labs and put it into more widespread production. “Our goal here is to drive this to a point where we understand that the economics make sense and that it has the characteristics that we wanted it to, and then it becomes a tool for that product group to decide whether and where to use it,” said Cutler. |
Uber and Lyft apply for electric scooter permits in SF | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Uber and Lyft have officially put their respective names into the electric scooter competition. Uber and Lyft are among the 11 companies that applied to operate an electric scooter-sharing service within San Francisco city limits. The city, however, will only offer up to five companies permits to operate as part of a one-year test program. Uber declined to comment, but confirmed that it has applied for a permit via JUMP, . Once Uber is cleared to operate electric scooters, the plan is to integrate them into the Uber app and continue fleshing out Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s . Lyft also confirmed to TechCrunch that the company applied for a permit, but declined to share any further details. Here’s the full list of companies that applied, via the SFMTA: San Francisco’s permit process came as a result of Bird, Lime and Spin deploying their electric scooters without permission in the city in March. As part of a new city law, which went into effect June 4, scooter companies are not able to operate their services in San Francisco without a permit. The SFMTA said it’s aiming to notify companies of their permit status by the end of June. Ofo has also confirmed its permit application, saying its goal is to get more people out of cars and into more affordable, greener transportation alternatives, and we’re excited for the opportunity to do that right here in San Francisco, where we recently submitted an application to operate our e-scooters. We’re looking forward to continue working with the city and are hopeful to start serving San Franciscans with our best-in-class operations team.” Beijing-based Ofo, , earlier this year asked the SFMTA to consider reopening the permit process and continue giving permits to other startups that fulfill the requirements and show a commitment to improving the city’s transportation system. For more information about electric scooter regulation in San Francisco, be sure to check out my previous coverage. |
Zoetrope effect could render Hyperloop tubes transparent to riders | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | An optical illusion popular in the 19th century could make trips on the Hyperloop appear to take place in a transparent tube. Regularly spaced, narrow windows wouldn’t offer much of a view individually, but if dozens of them pass by every second an effect would be created , allowing passengers to effectively see right through the walls. It’s an official concept from Virgin Hyperloop One and design house Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and in fact was . Now the companies have showing how it would work and what it would look like for passengers — though there’s no indication it would actually be put in place in the first tracks. A zoetrope is a simple apparatus consisting of a cylinder with slits on the sides and a series of sequential or looping images printed on the inside. When the cylinder is spun, the slits blur together to the eye but have the effect of showing the images on the inside clearly as if they are succeeding one another — an elementary form of animation. Want an example? Here’s Pixar breaking down a zoetrope it built for Disney’s California Adventure: The design concept shown is actually a zoetrope, in which the images are viewed not as a loop inside a cylinder, but in a long strip. You may have seen these before in the form of animated advertisements visible through the windows of subways. In the case of the Hyperloop, the tube through which the “pod” moves would have portholes or slit windows placed every 10 meters through which the outside world is visible. At low speeds these would merely zoom by a few per second and might even be unpleasantly strobe-like, but that would smooth out as the pods reach their target speed of 1200 KPH (about 745 MPH). The team simulated how it would appear in the video below: Is it really necessary? You could, of course, just provide a faked view of the outside via LCD “portholes” or have people focus on their own little TV screens, like on an airplane. But that wouldn’t be nearly as cool. Perhaps the windows could double as escape or access hatches; as you can see above on the , there are already such holes, so this may be easier than expected to implement. Of course, it all seems a little premature, as Hyperloop type transport is still very much in prototype form and existing endeavors to bring it to life may in fact never come to fruition. Nevertheless, it is a clever and interesting way to solve the problem of preventing people from thinking about the fact that they’re traveling at ludicrous speeds down a narrow tube. |
Airbnb creates $10M fund to cover cancelled reservations in Japan after regulatory shift | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | has been one of the breakthrough stories in the wave of shared-economy startups that have emerged out of Silicon Valley, with a valuation of $30 billion for its travellers platform that lets people book private homes as accommodations, as well as other services. But even so, it’s not immune to the force of regulation and the impact it can have on its business. Airbnb has had to , after a change in local laws required hosts to have specific licenses, but some have failed to get these ahead of the deadline set by regulators. It’s not clear how many people or hosts have been impacted — the numbers are shifting as hosts receive their licenses — but Airbnb says that it has set up a fund of $10 million to cover any travellers who might get put out as a result of the rules. Some have estimated that as much as of bookings have been impacted by the changes. As Airbnb , the cancellations and its resulting moves are a result of changes to the country’s Japanese Hotels and Inns Act. to include people using private homes for tourist accommodation for up to 180 days/year, those hosting now have to register and display a license number alongside their listings. The tourism authority (JTA) had set a deadline of June 15 to do this, and those who hadn’t received a license by June 1 had to cancel reservations booked before June 15, and Airbnb has extended this to cover the gap of other travellers so that they have time to make alternative arrangements: “Any reservation scheduled for guest arrival between June 15 and June 19 at a listing in Japan that does not currently have a license has been cancelled,” Airbnb writes. “Going forward, unless the government reverses its position, we will automatically cancel and fully refund any reservations at listings in Japan that have not been licensed within 10 days of guest arrival.” The $10 million fund, Airbnb said, will Those who are unable to find alternative Airbnb places to stay for their trip will be put in touch with a travel agency in Japan, JTB, to find alternatives. For those who are impacted by this news, Airbnb will be sending you step-by-step instructions of what to do next, or you can find them . This is not the first time that Airbnb has had a stumble on the heels of regulatory changes. In Amsterdam, regulators are preparing to the number of nights a property can be let out to 30 nights per year starting in 2019, from 60 nights currently. and have also tried to limit the platform’s growth with their own regulations. |
IBM and the DoE launch the world’s fastest supercomputer | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) today unveiled , the department’s newest supercomputer. IBM claims that Summit is currently the world’s “most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer” with a peak performance of a whopping 200,000 trillion calculations per second. That performance should put it comfortably at the top of the when the new list is published later this month. That would also mark the first time since 2012 that a U.S.-based supercomputer holds the top spot on that list. Summit, which has been in the works for a few years now, features 4,608 compute servers with two 22-core IBM Power9 chips and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs each. In total, the system also features over 10 petabytes of memory. Given the presence of the Nvidia GPUs, it’s no surprise that the system is meant to be used for machine learning and deep learning applications, as well as the usual high performance computing workloads for research in energy and advanced materials that you would expect to happen at Oak Ridge. IBM was the general contractor for Summit and the company collaborated with Nvidia, RedHat and InfiniBand networking specialists Mellanox on delivering the new machine. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory “Summit’s AI-optimized hardware also gives researchers an incredible platform for analyzing massive datasets and creating intelligent software to accelerate the pace of discovery,” said Jeff Nichols, ORNL associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences, in today’s announcement. Summit is one of two of these next-generation supercomputers that IBM is building for the DEO. The second one is , which will be housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sierra, which is also scheduled to go online this year, is less powerful at an expected 125 petaflops, but both systems are significantly more powerful than any other machine in the DoE’s arsenal right now. |
GitHub’s epic exit, Domo’s dicey math and Dataminr’s big raise | Alex Wilhelm | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Hello and welcome back to , TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This time ’round we had and on hand with , a longtime partner with Venrock down in Palo Alto, Calif. It was a surprisingly busy week, so we had our work cut out for us. Without further ado: Here’s a fun question: What will Equity sound like when the market turns and we cover the slowing of venture and the compression of valuations instead of venture acceleration and towering new post-money figures? All we know today is that the venture world is investing like that reality is far-off. We’ll see. Hit play, and we’ll be right back. |
Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | It’s the end of an era for Yahoo Messenger, one of the first instant messaging apps on the market. Today, Oath (which also owns TechCrunch) that it would be winding down the service on July 17 as it continues to experiment and consider how and if it can have a relevant place in the messaging landscape amid huge domination from Facebook and others in mobile apps. “There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo . You can request access to the beta . Yahoo has not broken out active users of Messenger for some time, and theoretically anyone logged into any Yahoo property is logged into Messenger. Cumulatively over the last 20 years, hundreds of millions of people have used the service, the company said. The company says your Yahoo ID remains intact for other services like Mail and fantasy sports. The company is not specific about its reasons for shutting down Messenger, but the writing has been on the wall for some time, given the dominance today of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat and a number of others. Notably, Oath also . “We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind,” it notes. “As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.” Alongside that, the company, as a part of Oath, is now owned by Verizon, the telecoms behemoth. Ironically, it’s the telcos of the world whose revenues have been cannibalised in part by over-the-top messaging services, although Yahoo Messenger’s demise is far likely less related to that, considering that it is not one of the most popular services on the market today. Yahoo says that you can download your chat history on Messenger for the next six months by . Files go to your computer or device — but not specifically to another messaging app. Yahoo Messenger first made its debut as Yahoo Pager way back in 1998, at a time when instant messaging was the terrain of PCs, as an alternative to email and SMS on basic mobile devices. It was an early hit and popularised the idea of “over the top” messaging that was not tied to a specific service provider. But like other services in that first generation of messaging, Messenger’s role and functions were swiftly surpassed by faster and more functional mobile-based services, and specifically mobile messaging apps. Notably, WhatsApp was created by ex-Yahoo employees. In the years since, Yahoo has had moderate (but far from blockbuster) success with Yahoo Messenger on mobile, which today ranks at 160 on and 117 on in the social networking category, according to . Other attempts at have . Oath, and its owner Verizon, are clearly in the midst of a big shift organizationally and strategically. The company today also that Lowell McAdam would be stepping down as CEO of Verizon, to be replaced by Hans Vestberg, the Ericsson ex-CEO who has up to now been Verizon’s CTO. Last week, Oath announced its latest leadership change, hiring as its new communications head. It’s also gearing up for a big video and content later this year, which could also be one of the reasons behind today’s Messenger news. Under new owner Verizon, Oath and its businesses are gradually shifting away from communications services to focus more on what’s being whizzed around those networks. More to come. |
Hans Vestberg to take over as Verizon’s CEO in August | Matt Burns | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Verizon today announced CEO Lowell McAdam is stepping down from his post as August 1, 2018, seven years to the day he took the spot. He will stay on as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of 2018 and as Non-Executive Chairman thereafter. Hans Vestberg, Chief Technology Officer of Verizon as well as Executive Vice President and President of Global Networks (that’s a long title), will take over as the Chief Executive Officer of the telecom giant who also owns Oath and therefore TechCrunch. McAdam has led Verizon as its CEO since August 2011 and became Chairman on January 2012. In addition to various mergers and acquisitions in the telecom industry, McAdam acquired AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017 to form a digital media and advertising subsidiary. Vestberg is relatively new at Verizon. He joined the company a year ago. He was previously the chief executive of Ericsson until he was when he proved ineffective in turning the company around. Vestberg spent most of his career working for Ericsson. From 1998 to the end of 2009, Vestberg has mostly been the Chief Financial Officer of various Ericsson divisions around the world. He was Ericsson’s CEO from 2010 to 2016. For many years, Ericsson was a key player when it comes to telecommunications infrastructure and equipment. But the company had to face competition from Huawei and other infrastructure companies which led to disappointing performances. He’ll have a different task at Verizon. Verizon is currently riding high as one of the top telecom companies in the United States but is eager to find new growth opportunities while transitioning to 5G networks. The fact that the CTO is taking over as CEO proves that Verizon cares a lot about 5G. The technology is going to be key to gain a competitive advantage against other telecom companies. In pre-market trading, (NYSE:VZ) are currently trading down 1.06 percent to $48.48 compared to yesterday’s closing price. Lowell McAdam the following message: V Team, I have something I’d like to share with you. I’ve been with our company and its predecessors for 35 years, and your Chairman and CEO for the past seven. Today, marks the beginning of an important series of events for Verizon. We are announcing that Hans Vestberg will succeed me as the Chief Executive Officer on August 1st. I will serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, and then continue as Chairman of the Board in a non-Executive capacity starting in 2019. This is an exciting period for Verizon, and I believe there is no better time for this transition than now. It is my pleasure to hand the reins over to Hans. Hans is a recognized executive in the telecommunications and technology industries, and since joining Verizon in early 2017 he has demonstrated his ability to innovate and execute. I know that he has the right expertise, experience and business acumen to lead us forward and build on our strategy. Importantly, Hans is an inspiring leader, with high energy and a passion for delivering on the core values that truly make Verizon the world leader it is today. When I look back at the milestones throughout my career, the one that stands out most is Verizon’s transformation into a world-class technology company. Today, Verizon is one of the world’s leading providers of communications, information and entertainment products and services to consumers, businesses and governmental agencies. Our goal has always been to improve lives through innovation. As I think about the power of 5G, I am convinced that this is a significant and pivotal time for Verizon and our entire industry – and now is the time to bring Verizon into its next chapter. It has truly been a pleasure and a privilege to lead this great company. I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished together. I look forward to continuing to play a part in its future as Executive Chairman of the Board, and I have tremendous confidence in where Verizon is headed with your support and Hans’s leadership. Thank you for your dedication to Verizon. And never forget, there’s always a higher gear. Sincerely,
Lowell |
Apple needs to play nice with Spotify | Lucas Matney | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | With WWDC a couple of days out, we’re coming up on one year since Apple first showed off its glitzy answer to the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. It took more than 8 months from then for the to finally hit shelves, and it took up until a couple of days ago for all the promised functionality to arrive. Four months since launch, it’s clear Apple delivered some awesome hardware, but there are plenty of features I want to see the HomePod pick up when Apple comes to the stage at its annual developer conference to talk iOS 12. For all the criticisms levied against the device, the most weighty has been the fact that there isn’t even a vague reason to consider buying the speaker unless you are an Apple Music subscriber. For Apple Watch users who want to listen to non-Apple Music tunes the same is true to a lesser degree. At the very least, the company needs to introduce some functionality to third-party music services through SiriKit that opens up voice commands to play specific songs and user playlists while leaving premium functionality for Apple Music where users can say stuff like “play more songs like this,” and “play something I’d like,” etc., etc. No one is expecting the Apple hardware to be designed around listening to Spotify, but it’s frustrating and confounding that Apple won’t play ball at all. Apple Music has 50 million subscribers, including those on three-month free trials. Spotify has 170 million monthly active users, 75 million of which are paying for the Premium service. That’s an awfully big chunk of music fans to be ignoring. As nice as I think the HomePod is, it’s a bold (and misguided) strategy to think it’s enough to convince entrenched Spotify playlist lovers that they just need need need to switch so they can buy this $349 speaker. To be fair, the company seems to have had enough struggles making the speaker work for its own ambitions. Airplay 2 was announced at WWDC last year and was only released a few days ago with the functionality that brings stereo playback to users that have a couple of HomePods. iOS 12 would be an opportune time for Apple to showcase that the HomePod is open for business to third-party developers — though hopefully in a way that’s more gated than the gimmick dump that Alexa Skills has become. Siri has been pretty light on third-party action for a while now, but it made some notable strides in iOS 11, though that functionality has largely been screen-dependent and thus not available to the HomePod. It’s time to change that, or at least share how they plan to improve the experience over the next year. Apple hardware giving preferential treatment to Apple services isn’t exactly a surprising turn for the company, but building a smart speaker that asserts fantastic audio as its central premise while ignoring any shred of support for playing songs from the most popular streaming service seems a little anti-consumer and out of Apple’s best interests, as well. It’s taken Apple long enough to bring Siri to the rough place it’s at now on the iPhone, hopefully they can speed up the progress on HomePod and Apple Watch to make life easier for third-party integrations on devices that have so much unrealized potential. |
Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 6 | 8 | Sometimes you acquire a company for the assets and sometimes you do it for the talent. Today announced it was buying Rallyteam, a San Francisco startup that helps companies keep talented employees by matching them with more challenging opportunities in-house. The companies did not share the purchase price or the number of Rallyteam employees who would be joining Workday. In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects. “With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt announcing the acquisition. Rallyteam, which was founded in 2013, and in September 2014, helps employees find interesting internal projects that might otherwise get outsourced. “I knew there were opportunities that existed [internally] because as a manager, I was constantly outsourcing projects even though I knew there had to be people in the company that could solve this problem,” Rallyteam’s Huan Ho at the launch. Rallyteam was a service designed to solve this issue. [gallery ids="1055100,1053586,1053580,1053581"] Last fall led by Norwest Ventures with participation from Storm Ventures, Cornerstone OnDemand and Wilson Sonsini. Workday provides a SaaS platform for human resources and finance, so the Rallyteam approach fits nicely within the scope of the Workday business. This is the 10th acquisition for Workday and . Chart: Crunchbase Workday raised over $230 million before going public in 2012. |
Geoffrey Starks nominated as FCC Commissioner to fill Democratic gap left by Clyburn | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | The President has officially Geoffrey Starks as his pick to fill the FCC Commissioner role left open by Mignon Clyburn’s . FCC Chairman Ajit Pai confirmed the news, rumored over the past few weeks, . “I congratulate Geoffrey Starks on his forthcoming nomination to serve as a Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission,” said Pai. “He has a distinguished record of public service, including in the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, and I wish him all the best during the confirmation process.” Starks isn’t exactly a well known figure, but in public service that’s actually something of a compliment. He has worked in the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau for three years and is currently . Previously he was at the Justice Department, which makes sense, as the Enforcement Bureau’s responsibility is “to investigate and respond quickly to potential unlawful conduct.” It’s unclear as yet what his position is on the various measures currently being addressed by the FCC, from net neutrality to the revamping of media regulations. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly settled on Starks as long as a couple months ago, the interim no doubt being spent on due diligence, cultivating endorsements, and so on. The Senate will have to confirm Starks, but there’s no timeline on that yet. Commissioners generally serve five-year terms. The FCC is kept at an uneven split between the two parties, ideally 3:2 in favor of the current administration. At the moment it has three Republican Commissioners and one Democrat, Commissioner Clyburn just a few weeks ago. I’ve asked the FCC for more information on Starks and no doubt his nomination will trigger considerable scrutiny by press and politicians alike. |
Google quits selling tablets (Update: Just a bug) | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | : Apparently it was just a bug that utterly erased tablets off Google’s Android sites in many languages and localities (I couldn’t check them all), and the tablet section has now returned. False alarm! But don’t be surprised when it happens for real some time soon. Google has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the “tablets” heading from its Android page. Perhaps it hoped no one would notice on a Friday and by Monday it would be old news, but Android Police . It was there yesterday, but it’s gone today. We (well, Romain) , which was probably a little premature, since of them shipped last year — but even so, it’s not much of a life they’re living. Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chrome OS side of things, where it has inherited the questionable (but lucrative) legacy of netbooks. They’ve also been working on broadening Android compatibility with that OS. So it shouldn’t come as much surprise that the company is bowing out. Sales have dropped considerably, since a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. I, for one, have been using the third-gen (1st Retina) iPad since its release approximately 500 years ago and have never felt any compulsion whatsoever to get a new one. Cheap Kindle tablets from Amazon have proliferated somewhat, presumably as distractions for kids who would otherwise get fingerprints all over mom’s new phone, or for ultra-compact time-wasting on airplanes. Google’s exit doesn’t mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They’ll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn’t selling them, it probably isn’t prioritizing them as far as features and support. Fortunately tablets aren’t subject to quite the same feature mania as smartphones, so it won’t really matter if your new Galaxy Tab or what have you doesn’t do all the cool new Google Assistant things. It plays a few games, stores your Pocket articles and lets you watch Netflix in coach. Something cheap along those lines will always be available, but Google’s done with that whole scene. I’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update if I hear back. |
Google reportedly backing out of military contract after public backlash | Devin Coldewey | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | A controversial Google contract with the U.S. military will not be renewed next year after internal and public outcry against it, . The program itself was not particularly distasteful or lucrative, but served as a foot in the door for the company to pursue more government work that may very well have been both. Project Maven, as the program was known, essentially had Google working with the military to perform image analysis on sensitive footage like that from drones flying over conflict areas. A small but vocal group of employees has repeatedly called the company out for violating its familiar (but now deprecated) “Don’t be evil” motto by essentially taking a direct part in warfare. Thousands of employees signed a petition to end the work, and several even resigned in protest. But more damaging than the loss of a few squeaky wheels has been the overall optics for Google. When it represented the contract as minor, and that it was essentially aiding in the administration of open-source software, the obvious question from the public was “so why not stop?” The obvious answer is that it isn’t minor, and that there’s more to it than just a bit of innocuous support work. In fact, as reportage over the last few months has revealed, Maven seems to have been something like a pilot project intended to act as a wedge by which to gain access to other government contracts. Part of the goal was getting the company’s security clearance fast-tracked and thus gaining access to data by which it could improve its military-related offerings. And promises to Pentagon representatives detailed far more than facilitation of garden-variety AI work. Gizmodo’s sources say that Diane Greene, CEO of Google Cloud, told employees today at a meeting that the backlash was too much and that the company’s priorities as regards military work have changed. They must have changed recently, since discussions have been ongoing right up until the end of 2017. I’ve asked Google for comment on the issue. Whether the expiration of Project Maven will represent a larger change to Google’s military and government ambitions remains to be seen; some managers are surely saying to themselves right now that it would be a shame to have that security clearance go to waste. |
What to expect at WWDC 2018 | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | calendar, it’s somehow already June. That means Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is just around the corner. As matter of fact, things kick off in San Jose on Monday morning at 10AM PT (1PM ET). As ever, the main thrust of the show will be focused on developers — it’s right there in the name — but Apple also loves to use yearly spotlight as an opportunity to make some big announcements on the consumer side, as well. iOS and MacOS will no doubt be the focus of the show per usual, but ARKit, Home Kit, Watch OS and some hardware are likely to make strong showings at the event, as well. Apple’s certainly surprised us before, but here’s our best (educated) guesses at what the company will be showing off in the next week. The company dropped the latest update to its mobile operating system just week. 11.4 provides some key insight into the state of the ecosystem and, perhaps, a glimpse into where Apple is going as it continues to build connections between its various software offerings. The home was the key this time out, as the company added AirPlay and improved HomePod functionality, among others. A glimpse at iOS 12 could well be on the schedule for Monday morning. From the sound of leaks, rumors and the like, this latest major upgrade is more about increasing the overall stability of the operating system, rather than focusing on the latest flashy features — including bug fixes and helping improve the updates introduced in its predecessor. That said, there’s likely to be at least a few interesting new, consumer-facing additions to iOS this time out. NFC-based door unlocking is one of the more compelling rumors, this time around, bringing even more highly personal functionality to Apple’s handsets. A bigger push into personal health seems like a no-brainer, given everything that Apple’s been focusing on with its wearable. Just this morning, word of a new digital well being features made the rounds, bringing into sharp focus the amount of time users spend on their devices. If does get added here, it will join the likes of Facebook and Google in a push to give users more insight into their hardware habits. Apple’s desktop operating seems poised to get a little less love that its mobile counterpart, this time out — but honestly, what else is new? In fact, the biggest rumor on this front is the addition of so-called “Universal Apps,” which further blur the line between desktop and mobile. The system would essentially provide seamless syncing between apps on the two operating systems, allowing users to switch between devices, picking up where they left off. WatchOS
In spite of a recent rename, Wear OS got virtually no love at Google I/O the other week. But Apple’s own wearable initiative has been a much more consistent success story for the company. While the company seems unlikely to actually show off a newer version of the watch itself, we’ll probably get a glimpse at Watch OS 5. What, exactly the wearable OS will look like, however, is strictly conjecture at the moment, though the long-awaited addition of Spotify has been rumored, and fitness features, as ever, seem like a no-brainer. Speaking of no-brainers, Apple could use some news on the augmented reality front, after a full year of hype. ARKIT 2.0 has been rumored for the event, bringing the ability for multiple users to share the same AR environment, to facilitate IRL multi-person games and other activities. This being a developer conference, hardware is never the primary focus for the event, but it always seems to sneak its way in. After all, Apple’s already got the eyes of the tech world on it this week, so why announce some new gadgets? New MacBook Pros seem like a reasonable candidate for the event. New Intel processors under the hood are the likeliest addition on that front. And then there’s the whole keyboard bit. The new switches have been a headache for the company since they were launched back in 2016, including reports of increased failure rates and the looming specter of class action suits. Now would be the perfect chance for the company to introduce a new-new version of the QWERTY. Rumors have always been floating around with regard to a new MacBook Air — a product that’s been MIA for some time now, particularly in the wake of the new standard MacBook. A cheaper version of the once revolutionary laptop is said to be coming at some point this year, and WWDC could be just the right launching pad. iPhones seem pretty unlikely here, given the release schedule the company has adhered to, but much like the MacBook Air, the iPhone SE is due for a refresh. Perhaps the company will mix things up by tossing the four-inch iPhone into the mix. AirPower is yet another wildcard. The company announced its all-device wireless charging pad in the fall, and we’ve not heard hide nor hair of it since, which is pretty unlike Apple. Maybe we’ll actually get a release timeframe this time out? Also potentially on the list are a refreshed iPad Pro, which was missing at Apple’s recent education event and a cheaper HomePod. The latter seems the least likely of the bunch, but Apple’s smart speaker will likely get some love this time out. |
Dating app Hinge is ditching the Facebook login requirement | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | , the dating app that a better set of prospects by suggesting matches who share Facebook friends, is about to radically change its course: it’s ditching its requirement that users log in with Facebook. The change will go into effect on Monday, June 5th on Android, followed by a June 12th release on iOS. While the option to use Facebook won’t be fully removed, users will instead be able to choose to authenticate using their phone number, the company says. The decision was prompted by ongoing requests from users who have asked for a non-Facebook login option, Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod says. This is especially important to the company as people “move away from Facebook and onto other platforms,” he notes. But Hinge isn’t the first dating app to go this route. Bumble it was removing the Facebook requirement, in response to user feedback. In Hinge’s case, however, the decision changes the dating app’s fundamental value proposition, which was focused on matching singles with people they were already connected to by way of Facebook friends, up to three degrees away. The premise was that this would make online dating feel less creepy. And, because you shared mutual friends, you’d be less concerned that the person was a total nut. This also helped Hinge stand out in a space that’s dominated by Tinder, which could often seem random and filled with those not in search of “real relationships,” let’s say. Over the years, Hinge doubled down on this brand position with call-outs like in its marketing materials. Its user profiles, meanwhile, focus less on users’ looks — unlike the Hot or Not-ish Tinder. Instead, users answer getting-to-know-you questions and share fun, personality-revealing facts on their profile, along with photos and . But the goal is to present not just the person’s face or body, but their goals, interests and way they view the world. Hinge had also experimented with features that make online dating less frustrating, ranging from to an app that for you. (This has since shut down.) It’s unclear how well these moves have paid off for Hinge in the long run, as the company won’t share user numbers. It will only say the active member base has doubled since the beginning of the year. However, Sensor Tower estimates Hinge has more than 3 million worldwide downloads across both iOS and Android, 94 percent of which are in the U.S. The removal of the Facebook requirement, not at all coincidentally, comes at an interesting time for dating app businesses in general, which have just learned Facebook now aims to compete with them directly. In May, Facebook announced that would allow people to meet non-friends. Hinge took notice, as did others. “Facebook Dating Looks a Whole Lot Like Hinge,” , for example. Our team watching the conference: — Hinge (@HingeApp) “It’s interesting to see a company facing so many privacy concerns enter one of the most intimate spaces in tech today,” McLeod says of Facebook’s dating plans. “We’re flattered they chose to copy our designs, but ultimately we’re not worried about them as a competitor – our members are increasingly moving away from Facebook as a platform.” The updated Hinge app will offer users three ways to use Hinge: 1) they can continue to log in with Facebook as usual, 2) they can log in with their phone number, or 3) they can log in with a phone number, but use an option in the app to import select bio information from Facebook, for convenience. After filling in the profile, users can disconnect from Facebook without losing the imported information, Hinge notes. Hinge doesn’t believe the move away from Facebook as the underlying network will have an ill effect. Because of its robust profiles, which allow for the liking of individual pieces of content, it thinks its machine learning algorithms have advanced to the point where they can surpass “friends of friends” as a predictor of compatibility, the CEO says. “Friends of friends is a symbol for what Hinge truly stands for: humanizing modern dating and fighting against the culture of shallow swiping,” says McLeod. “As the Hinge community continues to grow and evolve, we’re not relying on a single feature to best match our members; instead we’ll remain at the forefront of product development and double down on giving our members’ the best offline experience,” he adds. It’s not hard to get on board with Hinge’s overall vision, but its app is still dwarfed by Tinder, which is now estimated to have more than 50 million users. Rival Bumble is growing as well, with some 22 million+ users. And because dating is ultimately a numbers game, Hinge needs the no-Facebook-needed policy to really boost its own. |
Hulu re-org sees departure of Content Chief Joel Stillerman, top SVPs | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | On the heels of Hulu’s news of its growing live TV business, which has now , the streaming service today announced a major re-organization of it business focused on four strategic priorities, effective immediately. These include “the subscriber journey, technology & products, content and advertising,” says Hulu. The changes see three major execs departing: Chief Content Officer Joel Stillerman, Senior Vice President of Partnerships & Distribution Tim Connolly and SVP Experience, Ben Smith. In addition, Hulu has hired two new executives to help it with its goals: CTO Dan Phillips, previously of TiVo, and Jaya Kolhatkar of Walmart Labs, who will claim the newly-created Chief Data Officer role. Phillips had previously led TiVo’s engineering, product and professional services workforce of more than 1,000 members, and helped TiVo shift its business from being known only as a DVR maker, to a cloud services provider as well. He also previously worked at Uniscape, Crossworlds Software, and co-founded enterprise software company Metasystems, Inc. At Hulu, Phillips will oversee a now unified Technology & Product organization, which includes engineering, Hulu’s data center operations, its network and broadcast operations center, I.T. and program management, plus product management, user experience, and product development. Hulu’s Santa Monica, Seattle, Marin, and Beijing teams will report to Phillips, who’s based in Santa Monica, on his first day, June 4. Meanwhile, Jaya Kolhatkar, previously Senior Vice President, Global Data and Analytics Platform for Walmart Inc., is being appointed to the newly created executive management role of Chief Data Officer, which reports directly to CEO Randy Freer. She will also be based in Santa Monica as of July 2. At Walmart, Kolhatkar oversaw a large global team responsible for its enterprise data warehouse, big data environment, real-time predictive analytics platform and business intelligence tools, Hulu says. She also previously held senior roles at PayPal, eBay and Amazon. At Hulu, Kolhatkar will now be responsible for all Hulu’s data decisions, including customer intelligence and data governance, and will help Hulu make data-driven business decisions. The “Subscriber Journey” priority – meaning everything from user acquisition to viewer experience and research – will be a focus for an expanded marketing organization, led by CMO Kelly Campbell, a Google marketing vet who Hulu last year. Meanwhile, Hulu’s current SVP Experience, Ben Smith, will retire in July. Smith had led the somewhat controversial revamp of the Hulu’s app, which saw the company retroactively responding to about the layout and organization of items in its user interface. It later rolled out updates to address some of these concerns, like , for example. The Content organization is also being re-organized into two groups, one focused on acquired on-demand and live content partners and another on Hulu Originals. Senior Vice President of Content, Craig Erwich, who will report to Freer, will run the Originals side. Senior Vice President of Partnerships & Distribution Tim Connolly and Chief Content Officer Joel Stillerman are leaving Hulu as result of these changes, and Hulu is now searching for a new head of its Content Partnerships group. The Chief Content Officer role is being dropped. “Ben, Tim and Joel have all played a significant role in getting Hulu to the strong position it is in today. They will forever be a part of Hulu’s success story, and we wish them the very best in their next endeavors,” said Freer. The combination of live TV and subscription video on demand (SVOD) content licensing, acquisition and business functions, into a single organization reflects Hulu’s interest in making more unified deals with content providers, instead of addressing all live TV and SVOD content separately. Hulu says it will also bring more premium add-ons to its service as a result. (It currently carries HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime.) Hulu’s ad sales group will continue reporting to Senior Vice President of Ad Sales Peter Naylor, and Hulu’s shared services functions – Finance, Legal, Corporate Communications and Talent & Organization – will continue as usual. This is the first major change to Hulu’s operations since Freer joined as CEO in October, replacing Mike Hopkins. It indicates a desire at Hulu to grow its business into even more of a major player, beyond the 20 million total subscribers it has today. The company has benefitted from the increased exposure provided by its Emmy winning , but has largely failed to establish itself as a truly viable competitor to Netflix, in terms of originals. Stillerman, who was president of originals at AMC and Sundance TV, had helped developed , and its spinoff, and the prequel But Hulu hasn’t had a series of its own hits of that scale. The changes also come as the future of Hulu seems uncertain. With Disney’s to acquire Fox’s TV and movie business, it would also gain its 30 percent stake in Hulu. Combined with its own existing stake, Disney would become a majority owner – that could be a concern for Hulu’s other shareholders NBCU and Time Warner. And Disney is launching a Hulu / Netflix rival of its own in 2019, muddying the waters even further. “As one of today’s top direct-to-consumer entertainment brands, led by technology, innovation and data, Hulu has an enormous opportunity to lead the media and advertising industries into the future,” said Freer, in a statement. “By adding new expertise and capabilities to our executive ranks and creating greater alignment around our customers, we are positioning Hulu to grow more rapidly, innovate more quickly and connect consumers even more deeply with the content they love.” |
How Instagram’s algorithm works | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Instagram users were missing 70 percent of all posts and 50 percent of their friends’ posts before the app ditched the reverse chronological feed for an algorithm in July 2016. Despite backlash about confusing ordering, Instagram now says relevancy sorting has led to its 800 million-plus users seeing 90 percent of their friends’ posts and spending more time on the app. Yet Instagram has never explained exactly how the algorithm chooses what to show you until today. The Facebook-owned company assembled a group of reporters at its under-construction new San Francisco office to take the lid off the Instagram feed ranking algorithm. Instagram product lead Julian Gutman explains the algorithm Instagram relies on machine learning based on your past behavior to create a unique feed for everyone. Even if you follow the exact same accounts as someone else, you’ll get a personalized feed based on how you interact with those accounts. Three main factors determine what you see in your Instagram feed: Beyond those core factors, three additional signals that influence rankings are: Instagram’s team also responded to many of the most common questions and conspiracy theories about how its feed works. TechCrunch can’t verify the accuracy of these claims, but this is what Instagram’s team told us: Today’s Instagram whiteboard session with reporters, its first, should go a long way to clearing up misunderstandings about how it works. When people feel confident that their posts will reach their favorite people, that they can reliably build a public audience, and that they’ll always see great content, they’ll open the app more often. Yet on the horizon looms a around 2015: competition reduces reach. As more users and businesses join Instagram and post more often, but feed browsing time stays stable per user, the average post will get drowned out and receive fewer views. People will inevitably complain that Instagram is trying to force them to buy ads, but it’s a natural and inevitable consequence of increasingly popular algorithmic feeds. The more Instagram can disarm that problem by pushing excess content creation to Stories and educating users about how the feed operates, the less they’ll complain. Facebook is already uncool, so Instagram must stay in our good graces. |
Telegram says its iOS app is updating again, a day after the CEO decried Apple’s block | Ingrid Lunden | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | What a difference a day — one with a public lament — makes. Today the CEO of Telegram Pavel Durov that the messaging app is updating again on iOS, putting to a close a six-week freeze, where Apple had stopped allowing Telegram to ship newer versions of the app globally, even while continuing to allow the app to live in the App Store and allowing push notifications to those who already had it installed. Apple has also confirmed to us that it’s now allowing updates of the app again. “Amazing news – Apple has just successfully reviewed our latest update for Telegram iOS, and we were able to ship a new version with long awaited fixes and improvements to the AppStore,” he wrote earlier today. The change in course comes just one day after Durov there were some glitches in the app after the release of iOS 11.4 because Apple had stopped letting Telegram’s developers ship iOS updates globally. The lack of updates also meant the app was not compliant with GDPR regulations. But what is still not completely clear is why Apple blocked the updates in the first place, nor what happened in the last 24 hours to change things. Durov has claimed the freeze on updates was tied to the Russian government’s attempts to crack down on it: it came directly in the wake of regulator Roskomnadzor (RKN) to request it to remove the app from the App Store, and to stop allowing push notifications from the app for those who had already installed it. (In fact, RKN only about this days ago.) However, Apple never removed the app, nor did it comply with the request to stop push notifications, even as it seemed to stop allowing Telegram to push updated versions. “Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store,” he wrote yesterday. Google’s, Microsoft’s and Apple’s Mac app stores were not affected through all of this. We have reached out to Telegram to see if it can explain the change of course. Apple has declined to comment specifically on this point. The development today is the latest in a many-weeks saga that started with RKN announcing a after the app refused to provide it with a way of viewing the encrypted messages on the app. Russian law requires any apps or services operating in Russia to provide a way to monitor data in the app or service in question, by hosting servers in the country or providing other means of data access. It mandates this in the name of national security, although many third parties have disputed the requirement, and some like Telegram have said that apart from the ideological opposition to the rule, it would be impossible for the company to provide such keys. Durov had run afoul of authorities with his previous company, the social network Vkontakte.com, over freedom of expression on the site, and that was part of the motivation for building Telegram in such a way. Telegram’s solution for the last several weeks has been to by appealing to people to use VPNs to access the service, and also by hopping on different IPs at hosting companies sympathetic to its attempt to continue offering its service without sharing data with Russian authorities. Up to now, services like AWS and Google Cloud Platform have not asked Telegram to stop the hops, even despite some of the side effects: the IP hopping had the unintended consequence of RKN knocking out entire swathes of IP addresses to stop Telegram, rising to and causing a number of other services to go down, including some of Google’s itself. The situation has also , with the app and the story going viral in the process. Telegram has some 200 million users globally, with around 14 million users in Russia. |
Apple Pay tests ‘order ahead’ for drinks at music festivals | Josh Constine | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Apple is fixing one of the worst parts of the concert experience: waiting in line for a beer while you miss your favorite song. Last week’s BottleRock music festival near San Francisco was the first to try a new “order ahead with Apple Pay” feature that Apple hopes to bring to more events. You just open the festival’s app, select the closest concession stand, choose your drinks, Apple Pay with your face or fingerprint and pick up the beverages at a dedicated window with no queue. Check out our demo video below. BottleRock’s upscale wine and oldies music fest, 100 miles from the tech giant’s headquarters, has become a testbed for Apple Pay. Last year, every concession stand got equipped with the Square’s Apple Pay-ready point of sale system and special fast lanes for customers who used it instead of cash or credit card. Thirty percent of all transactions at BottleRock were made with Apple Pay, according to an Apple spokesperson, proving people wanted a faster way to get back to the show. With order ahead, your drinks are ready for pick up so you don’t even have to break your dance stride. Having gone to 14 Coachellas, I’d learned to forego booze rather than risk losing my friends or a chance to hear that hit single while stewing in the beer garden lines. But Apple Pay powered the best concert commerce experience I’ve had yet. I’m sure I’m not the only one who knocked back a few more drinks last weekend because it was so convenient. That’s why I foresee music festivals jumping at the chance to integrate into their apps order ahead with Apple Pay. They and their vendors will see more sales, while attendees see more music. Meanwhile, it’s a smart way for Apple to reach a juicy demographic. Apple Pay is especially helpful when you’re in a rush, but festival goers will return home more likely to use it day-to-day. Often times, music festival tech, like friend-finding apps and location-based alerts, can interrupt the moment. Apple Pay succeeds here by fading away, keeping you in harmony with the present. |
Spotify backs off ‘hateful conduct’ policy amid backlash | Brian Heater | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Spotify also promised to continue working with artists and advocates in order to continually shape the policy. |
Lyft is reportedly close to buying the company behind Ford GoBike and Citi Bike | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Lyft is getting close to acquiring Motivate, the company responsible for Ford GoBike in the San Francisco Bay Area and Citi Bike in the New York City area, . The deal will reportedly be worth at least $250 million. Lyft declined to comment and Motivate wasn’t available for comment at the time of publication. This deal would put Lyft ahead of Uber in terms of bike sharing. , a dockless, electric bike-share service, earlier this year, for about $250 million. JUMP’s footprint is currently much smaller than Motivate’s, but Uber is certainly working to grow JUMP’s presence. Photo by MRD/TC In April, . Once JUMP’s 18-month pilot program with the city is up next June, we can expect to see companies like Motivate, Lime and Scoot apply to deploy their own dockless bikes in the city. Just this month, for example, , lock-to electric bikes in Barcelona. Scoot CEO Michael Keating told me he wants to deploy in San Francisco, but currently can’t due to the exclusive permit the city has with JUMP. This comes shortly after news hit that . Lyft has reportedly been in talks with San Francisco city officials to discuss applying for a permit, and has drafted some prototypes of scooter designs. Uber is also eyeing the electric scooter, . What’s happening right now is that both Uber and Lyft are aggressively trying to become multi-modal transportation companies. That means they no longer just want to offer ride-hailing services, but seek to become a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs. Uber, however, is a bit ahead of the game at this point, given its recent partnership with public transit company Masabi, car rental service Getaround, active deployment of electric bikes and plans for uberAIR. |
Google is taking a Home-branded putt-putt course on a US tour | Frederic Lardinois | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | If you’re in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Atlanta, you’ll soon be able to (or putt-putt, as some people apparently like to call it) and learn about the Google Home product range in the meantime. Sounds like a corporation’s idea of a good time. “We wanted people across the country to feel the magic of what Google Home can do in an environment that’s slightly more exciting than your typical living room,” a Googler connected with this project says in the announcement video. “Everything you can do here, you can do at home,” another Googler says. “We just took your home, and put it into a mini-golf course.” [gallery ids="1649422,1649419,1649420,1649421,1649418,1649417"] Unsurprisingly, part of the gimmick here is that you have to talk to the Google Homes spread across the course to navigate the obstacles. You can also “win stuff,” which seems to involve lots of Google-branded socks and Home Minis. And it’s all family-friendly, of course. The New York course is now open for business, with the other cities following in short order. You can reserve your tee time . All joking aside, Google is clearly riding the positive news around Home right now, which includes the fact that Google Homes are now . It still doesn’t want to talk about its at I/O earlier this year, but feel free to ask the Google Home devices at the Google Home Mini Golf course about that. : If you live in Portland, just come to and play some putt-putt without all the corporate branding, because that place is about as Portland as it gets — and it’s free, too. |
Facebook kills its ‘Trending’ section | Sarah Perez | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Facebook doesn’t want to be a media company. The social network this morning it’s removing its often controversial “Trending” section from its site next week, in order to make way for “future news experiences,” it says. These experiences include things like a dedicated section for news videos on its video hub Facebook Watch, a breaking news label publishers can use on their posts, and a dedicated section called “Today In” which connects people to news and information from local publishers in their city along with updates from local officials and organizations. Over 80 news publishers are currently testing the “breaking news” label, which allows them to opt to flag their Instant Articles, mobile and web links, and Facebook Live video as breaking news, the company tells us. Facebook says that the early results from this testing have led to a 4 percent lift in click-through rates, a 7 percent lift in Likes, and an 11 percent lift in shares. The product is still in what Facebook calls “alpha” testing, which indicates it’s very early days for this feature – an alpha test precedes a beta test, which itself is ahead of a public launch. Meanwhile, the “Today In” feature is in testing in 33 U.S. cities across the U.S. Facebook says publishers featured in this section are seeing an average of an 8 percent incremental increase in distribution – meaning outbound clicks. The company didn’t provide a time frame for when Facebook’s news-focused video hub would go live, but said that “soon” 10 to 12 U.S. publishers will be launching news shows in Watch, focused on live coverage of breaking events, daily shows and weekly shows. These efforts will be funded by Facebook itself, the company said. However, the company declined to provide a list of publishers or details on the funding. The changes arrive at a time when Facebook has been held accountable for allowing the spread of fake news across its network, and it has responded with a host of fake news-fighting features like , adding , the addition of , fake news in the News Feed, and other initiatives. However, the “Trending” section in particular has been a source of concern ever since the company its Trending editors, leaving the selection of stories to its algorithms. And, because algorithms are not perfect, they repeatedly goofed up, allowing fake news stories to spread across the network by factually inaccurate links that were going viral as well as other content. Even as Facebook addressed the issues around fake news, Facebook CEO – something he’s been saying for . When recently testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he insisted again that Facebook is a tech company. “I consider us to be a technology company because the primary thing that we do is have engineers who write code and build product and services for other people,” he told Congress. And in nearly the same breath, he then went on to admit that Facebook pays to “help produce content” – as it’s doing now with these new news videos. It’s unusual for a site that’s used for search, like Facebook, to not manage a trending section. Google offers a whole suite of products around tracking trends, and Twitter offers trends, even down to a local level. Facebook didn’t announce any plans to bring back Trending, or some version of it in the future. Trending is being pulled from Facebook next week and it will also remove products and third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends API, the company said. “People tell us they want to stay informed about what is happening around them,” wrote Alex Hardiman, Head of News Products at Facebook, in an . “We are committed to ensuring the news that people see on Facebook is high quality, and we’re investing in ways to better draw attention to breaking news when it matters most,” Hardiman said. |
Announcing All Raise roundtable workshop, AMA and office hours at Disrupt SF | Ned Desmond | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures) and Susan Lyne (BBG Ventures), undraising, recruiting strategies, company culture, sales and marketing strategies, board/investor management, M&A and more. |
‘Upgrade’ director Leigh Whannell talks low-budget worldbuilding | Anthony Ha | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | story of Grey Trace, a man in the near future who’s left quadriplegic after a car accident and mugging. Following an interlude that sees Grey struggling with his new disability, an experimental computer chip called Stem is placed in his spinal cord, where it doesn’t just give him control of his limbs again — it turns him into something close to a superhuman, ready to track down the men who paralyzed him and murdered his wife. The film, which comes out today in the United States, may sound like a straightforward revenge plot, but it was written and directed by Leigh Whannell, who’s best known for writing Saw and Insidious. (More recently, he made his directorial debut with Insidious 3.) He explained that he wasn’t interested in turning this into a superhero movie. Instead, he wanted to tell the “Taxi Driver version” of this story. Without getting into details, it’s fair to say that Upgrade doesn’t feel far removed from Whannell’s horror films. It also includes plenty of visceral action scenes and touches on bigger questions about our relationship with technology. I met with Whannell in New York City last week to discuss the film, and an edited transcript of our conversation follows. There’s one passage that gets a little spoiler-y, but I’ll warn you when we get there so you can skip ahead. Whannell shot Upgrade in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia, so we started by talking about the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Leigh Whannell I’ve lived in L.A. for 12 years now, so I no longer care about Sydney-Melbourne. We shot this film in Melbourne but we actually edited in Sydney. I was in Sydney for a few months and I absolutely loved it. I insisted on living in an apartment on , which was not practical at all to the location of the editing room, but I didn’t care because I was like, “Look, if I was going to walk on ice, then I’m going to tap dance.” If I’m going to live in Sydney, I want to live on Bondi Beach. So the big science fictional idea of Stem, where did that come from? The idea really just came into my head, the way all my ideas do. It’s a very random process, and in its randomness it’s frustrating, because I feel like I’m always trying to think of movie ideas. And most of the ideas aren’t good, and they instantly get filed away in the drawer for terrible ideas. Every now and again, something will pop into my head when I’m driving or I’m in the shower, you’ll just get an image and it stays with you. It doesn’t have to be much, it doesn’t have to be a story, it could just be an image. But it won’t leave your head and that’s when you know you’ve got something. That’s how this started. It wasn’t like I read a magazine article about where tech is going. I was in my backyard, I remember that, and it was a nice day like this, and I just suddenly had this image of a quadriplegic in a wheelchair who stood up out of the chair and was being controlled from the neck down by a computer. That image and that scenario wouldn’t leave my head and I started reverse engineering a story into it. I kept writing away and making notes and then, cut to many years later, I’m sitting here talking with you. It’s interesting that it came from your imagination, because in some ways it feels very prescient. We had our own robotics event a couple of weeks ago and one of the big moments onstage was . So the exoskeleton that helps people with paralysis walk and move, this movie is the internalized version of that, where it goes one step further and there’s nothing exterior. It’s a chip. It has been interesting to watch the world catch up to my script. Because when I wrote the first draft of this script, automated cars and smart kitchens were still science fiction. And in the ensuing years, they’ve become ubiquitous. I mean, my wife’s car parks itself and talks to her. And my daughter thinks it’s perfectly normal to have a voice talking to her in the kitchen, and she asks it to play songs and it does. So in a way I feel like I’m living in the world of the movie I wrote all those years ago. And when was that? God, the first draft was probably at least six years ago. You said a lot of ideas will come to you, and you’ll think: Some of these are bad, some of these are good. Obviously, you’re known for horror, so in this case, when you think of a science fiction idea, does that create any trepidation? There was a bit of trepidation on my part as I was gearing up to direct the movie. Not so much when I was writing it. But I started to worry about science fiction fans because I’m very well-versed with horror fans, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of them, I feel like I’m in that community, and I was a horror fan myself. But I realized that science fiction has its own community of these staunch fans who pick apart things like Star Trek and Star Wars. And I did remember having a moment where I thought, wow, are they going to see this and think that I’m a fraud, that I’m a tourist in this world? I’ve just gone through a two-week trip around the country, screening the movie in different cities, and afterwards I’ll always chat to people. And in the acceptance of the movie, I realize that these genres, they’re not the province of any one type of person. What I feel like science fiction fans respond to is just people trying to hit them with something new, something they haven’t seen. And if you do that you’ll be okay. When you were directing [science fiction], did you feel like you were using a different skill set? The mechanics of making a horror film are so specific that I obviously wasn’t using any of that. Those quiet moments in a horror film where you really lean on the anticipation of things, this movie wasn’t using any of that. But I felt like some of the rhythms and filmmaking beats that I’d learned in horror, I think they’re just naturally ingrained in me. So, for instance, I liked creating moments of silence that were suddenly punctuated by action. And I think I must be subconsciously looking for that vocal reaction that you get from a horror film. It’s almost like I was putting those horror beats into a sci-fi context: Build, build, catharsis. Build, build, catharsis. So maybe that’s in there, just ingrained. That’s certainly true to my experience. For a lot of it I was incredibly tense, and the moment when his head gets cut open, I just screamed. [laughs] In the operation? No, in the first kill. Ah, yes, the Pez dispenser! God, yeah. That was very upsetting. If you look at that scene and you analyze the structure, there is kind of a horror-esque metronome to it, where it’s quiet, it’s tense and then there’s an explosion of something. And in watching it, it’s been interesting to see that that scene gets a vocal reaction. It’s not the same reaction that a horror movie gets, that sort of scream in the audience, but it’s almost like an adrenaline rush, and when he gets up off the floor, I see people clapping along. I’m like, “Oh cool, this is a spectator sport, they’re getting into it as participants.” When I read the description of the film — obviously, the marketing is emphasizing this dystopian, almost horrific element, but you still think, “Oh, he’s basically going to become this superhero, and there’s maybe going to be this dark side to it, but it’s still going to be this ultimately triumphant story.” Whereas throughout the whole film, there’s this darker undertone that feels very different. I feel like the superhero version of this movie where somebody is given something — a power or a computer chip, whatever it is — that’s been done, especially in this age we live in, it’s been done a lot. So I found what was more interesting was to do the Taxi Driver version of this, to do the version where you realize the bad guy is in your body and the fight is not between you and external forces. It’s actually two entities fighting over the same physical body. That was interesting to me. One of the things you also mentioned in the press materials was this idea of having the freedom of an independent film but also having the scope of a larger science fiction film. I don’t know what the budget was, but I assume it wasn’t Avengers-scale. [laughs] Very low. What was the overall approach you took to saying, “Well, we don’t have all that money but we’re still going to try to build a world that has scope”? It’s just been a real goal and a dream of mine to do that. To make a movie that enjoyed the worldbuilding of sci-fi but took advantage of the creative freedom of an independent. The problem is that one is supposed to cancel the other out. You’re supposed to need studio money if you’re going to go off and make the future-set action movie. So I really was trying to have my cake and eat it, but I was obsessed with doing it. As a model, I used ’80s sci-fi films that I grew up with. I used the original Terminator as a great example, because if you really study that movie scene-by-scene, the science fiction and the tech is doled out very judiciously and sparingly. It’s kind of this lean-and-mean, slash-and-stalk movie that is dressed in this sci-fi skin. And I loved that. I feel like, if they can achieve that sort of sleight of hand in the ’80s, then we could do it now. Especially with the new advantage that they didn’t even have back then, of CG. We could use CG to augment some of the scenes. We couldn’t go bananas with it, but we could utilize it at certain moments. And I guess I’m too close to the movie, I’ve spent too long with it to know if we really succeeded, but I’m hoping that audiences feel like they’re watching a bigger movie, you know? That they’re part of a bigger world. Right, and there’s a couple of things in the beginning that feel very big — Like, here’s the world! Which, if I go back clinically and watched it, I would see that those are doled out very strategically. But it does the job. And it also is an interesting constraint because it means that in a lot of the other scenes, you have one or two science fictional elements, but you’re using primarily a real-world location or set, rather than a created world. Absolutely, and that was something that was a very conscious decision. Not just budgetary, but a creative decision for me was: Let’s set this movie in the very near future. Let’s build a world that the audience can see themselves in. Also, the world doesn’t change completely overnight, it happens incrementally. In 30 years time, you’ll still have buildings from the 1800s in New York City. They’re not going to knock them down and build a glass tower. So what you’re going to end up with in 30, 40 years is a landscape in Manhattan that is the future sort of jammed on top of the past, and it’ll be this hybrid. And people will still be driving older cars! That’s another thing that you see in a lot of future movies, all of a sudden everyone on the road is driving the future car. And I’m like, well no, there will still be people 20 years from now driving around in early ’90s Hondas, crappy cars, you know? That scaling of the world was important, but a bonus prize was that it helped us budgetarily. You mentioned that this is something you started writing six years ago. In that time, the technology has evolved, but also the ways in which we talk or think about disability, and the ways we talk about being quadriplegic or paraplegic has changed. To what extent was that part of your research, things like talking to disability activists? I didn’t talk so much to activists. When I was writing the film, I wanted the idea that a chip could cure paralysis, I wanted that to be a tangible thing and I talked to a surgeon and he said, “Look, what you’re talking about is hypothetical, but in theory, it could be done. That gap between our brain and our nerve endings could be bridged by a computer.” And that was great to walk away with, the knowledge that the tech was credible. Certainly when we were preparing to shoot the film, we took the quadriplegic side of it very seriously. Logan [Marshall-Green], who plays Grey, he worked with a guy who was a quadriplegic who was nice enough to spend a lot of time with Logan, share his life with him, talk to Logan, let Logan see what his daily rituals were like, let him actually use a chair. And Logan had a lot of integrity about that. He felt he owed this gentleman that he had worked with the responsibility of portraying that realistically, and he was really watching it, the way he held his hands. It’s not a long moment in the film that he spends as a quadriplegic, but it was important for us, for that moment to have as much integrity as anything else in the film. Especially with something that in real life, people are experiencing. You don’t want to push back at them some wonky cinematic version of the real thing. Part of what I’m getting at is, is there’s this opening image that you mentioned of him rising out of the chair. It’s this incredibly moving scene because you’ve been through all of these terrible things with him. But at the same time, you can imagine somebody who is quadriplegic watching the film and you don’t necessarily want them to look at themselves and think — Them thinking, “Oh, you’re presenting this as triumphant, as if that’s much better.” Yeah, that’s interesting, that is part-and-parcel of putting films out into the world, isn’t it? The world reflects back at you and I think you just have to take those slings and arrows. Nothing was done with any malice. And I don’t think we were trying to present the idea that quadriplegia is this hellish situation that only being able-bodied can cure. What I think we were doing is speaking to the story of a guy who hates technology becomes technology. The way that we were enabled to do that in the story was through his condition, his quadriplegia. So it’s the result of an accident, he’s given this chip, and now he’s completely reliant on it, you know? It’s totally a story point for us. And again, without getting into too many spoilers, you said that this is the Taxi Driver version of the story. How much of that was trying to express your own concerns about people becoming more automated? I think a lot of it. First and foremost, I’m trying to tell this genre story, I’m trying to build a unique movie. And then the themes and the questions of the film sit underneath it. But I have a foot in both camps with technology. Especially in researching the script and reading books by Ray Kurzweil and authors that talk about the singularity and the point at which humans and tech will merge. Because I didn’t want to make a robot film. A robot film has been done before and I wasn’t really interested in that. I was interested in human beings putting tech into their bodies voluntarily. That was something I felt I hadn’t seen a lot of. Through my research and reading these books, I saw both sides. I saw the wonderful side of our reliance on tech in regards to medicine. If we can install something in our bloodstream or our bodies that cures cancer, that’s obviously going to be an amazing, wonderful thing. But there’s the other foot in the other camp, which is our overreliance on automation. I’m wondering if our cars do the driving for us and our kitchens do the cooking, are we actually designing ourselves into irrelevance? That’s an interesting road to look down. It seems to me the human instinct is to always make things easier. We’re always leaping towards convenience: “Oh, wouldn’t it be better if a machine could do that?” I’m wondering where that road ends. The movie was definitely a reflection of that, too. The last thing I’m going to ask, which I think I’m sort of required to ask, is to what extent is this meant to be a completely standalone experience? Have you thought about a potential sequel? I haven’t. The thought enters my mind and I push it away. Because this is an independent film, and it’s really hard in today’s media landscape to get people to pay attention to things. We’re releasing the movie in summer, surrounded by giant movies. I can’t imagine what the marketing budget for is. To compete against that is almost foolhardy, so I feel like planning a sequel is an assumption of success that I’m not ready for. Sitting there being vexed about where to go with a sequel would be a great problem to have. Well, it certainly doesn’t feel like a movie that was written with a sequel in mind. No, it definitely wasn’t. I remember when James Wan and I did the first Saw movie, a lot of people would say to us, “Well, you left the door open for a sequel.” And we would say, “No, we literally closed the door!” We thought it was a nice ending. Little did we know that the producers had other ideas once the film was a hit. To us, the ending to that movie, in our opinion, was the very definition of a cut to black, no more story. But then we got a lesson in commerce. |
Helm moves out of Kubernetes’ shadow to become stand-alone project | Ron Miller | 2,018 | 6 | 1 | is an open source project that enables developers to create packages of containerized apps to make installation much simpler. Up until now, it was a sub-project of , the , but as of today it is a stand-alone project. Both Kubernetes and Helm are projects managed by the (CNCF). The CNCF’s Technical Oversight Committee approved the project earlier this week. Dan Kohn, executive director at the CNCF says the two projects are closely aligned so it made sense for Helm to be a sub-project up until now. “What’s nice about Helm is that it’s just an application on top of Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an API and Helm accesses that API. If you want you to install this [package], you access the Kubernetes API, and it pulls this many containers and pods and [it handles] all of the steps involved to do that,” Kohn explained. This ability to package up a set of requirements allows you to repeat the installation process in a consistent way. “Helm addresses a common user need of deploying applications to Kubernetes by making their configurations reusable,” Brian Grant, principal engineer at Google and Kubernetes (and a member of the TOC) explained in a statement. Packages are known as “charts,” which consist one or more containers. Kohn says for example, you might want to deploy a chart that includes WordPress and MariaDB in a single container. By creating a chart, it defines the installation process and which pieces need to go in which order to install correctly across a cluster. Kohn said they decided to pull it out as a separate program because it doesn’t always follow the Kubernetes release schedule, and as such they wanted to make it stand-alone so it wouldn’t necessarily have to be linked to every Kubernetes release. It also allows developers to benefit from the community, who could build Charts for common installation scenarios. “By joining CNCF, we’ll benefit from the input and participation of the community, and conversely Kubernetes will benefit when a community of developers provides a vast repository of ready-made charts for running workloads on Kubernetes,” Matt Butcher, co-creator of Helm and principal engineer at Microsoft said in a statement. Besides Microsoft and Google, other project sponsors include Codefresh, Bitnami, Ticketmaster and Codecentric. The project website states there are currently 250 developers contributing to this project. By becoming part of CNCF that will very likely increase soon. |
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