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To honor veterans, focus on careers, not quotas
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Daniel R. Savage
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A few weeks ago, I spoke with a hiring manager at LinkedIn who had just wrapped up a summer term with an MBA intern who had recently left the Army. The veteran was phenomenal, she said—a strategic thinker and tenacious worker who took control of his team and coached them to success with ease. But there was something different about him. LinkedIn’s culture is more informal than what he was used to, and the hiring manager learned that she needed to coach him to speak up in meetings with superiors if he had differing opinions. Everyone valued his input, but he assumed that when senior leaders were having a debate, it wasn’t his place to join. His innate respect for authority came across, initially, as stiffness during interactions. She also noticed that he only reported status updates when things went wrong. If everything was going according to plan, she never heard from him. As a veteran myself, I know that situations like this are not uncommon when veterans transition from the military to civilian life. When the hiring manager explained how the intern didn’t give enough positive updates, I knew exactly what was happening: in the military, you don’t use valuable radio bandwidth to say “We’re doing great!” when someone else might need that channel for a MEDEVAC at any moment. Once I explained to the hiring manager some of the differences between military and civilian culture, a lot of her intern’s mannerisms made more sense, and she better understood the bridges that needed to be built the next time a veteran joins her team. This example illustrates perfectly the next level of how we can help veterans entering the civilian workforce. More than simply focusing on our veteran hiring rate, we need to honor our veterans by making a real investment in helping their career development and professional integration. In the past five years, the unemployment rate for all veterans has been nearly cut in half, with the rates for post-9/11 veterans dropping even more significantly, from 12% to 4.4% during that time. Recent research by the found that hiring veterans has become one of the top three recruiting priorities among American businesses, with 90% of HR professionals citing veteran recruitment as important to their company. So clearly, we are doing something right. But the research also shows that most HR professionals have little to no understanding of the military — only one in five of those surveyed felt extremely familiar with our military and its ranks and structure, and more than half said they had poor to no familiarity at all, which isn’t shocking considering how few Americans (less than 1%) have served in our most recent conflicts. Perhaps fueling this problem, Hiring Our Heroes found that 80% of companies don’t have training to help non-veteran employees relate to veterans. The real question for big business is whether it’s worth the investment to develop programs like these. It turns out that despite the massive investment that corporate America has made in recruiting veterans, nearly half (44%) are leaving their first job out of the military in their first year, which means that veteran hiring initiatives and low unemployment rates aren’t enough. Of those veterans who left, nearly half either found a better job or said that their first job didn’t align with their expectations, while 55% were looking for greater career growth potential. That could be the result of the HR team not placing them in the right role in the first place, perhaps because the company didn’t train their hiring managers to understand the veteran’s qualifications or to understand how to bridge the cultural divide when the veterans started work. If veterans don’t feel at home, they’re not going to stay. The story here is that better corporate education on the front end leads to better careers for veterans on the back end. For challenges like the gap between military and civilian cultures, greater dissemination of tools like the PsychArmor Institute’s is a strong place to start. I challenge you to ask yourself how your company is honoring veterans’ futures instead of just acknowledging the great things they’ve done for us in the past. Are you recruiting veterans simply to fill an open job, or are you laying the groundwork for them to have fulfilling professional careers? Are you training your recruiters to understand the qualifications of their veteran applicants to ensure they are placed on a path to growth, or are they simply meeting your veteran hiring targets? Are you training your hiring managers so they can best integrate veterans into their teams and make the most of this incredible talent pool? While the low unemployment numbers for veterans are encouraging, we cannot be complacent and let our efforts stop there. With the right resources, and the desire to do better, we can set veterans up for lasting professional success in civilian careers. You can learn more about the resources LinkedIn provides to veterans and employers seeking to hire them , and can join in our conversation about how to #HonorOurFuture online.
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Ex-Watergate investigators urge Obama to show leniency to Edward Snowden
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Jon Russell
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Members of a committee that investigated the CIA during the Watergate era have urged President Obama to show leniency on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and strike a deal to allow him to return home. 15 former members of the 1970s Church Committee, led by its former chief counsel Frederick Schwarz Jr. and ex-staff director William Green Miller, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch arguing that Snowden’s actions were a catalyst that helped change secret service policy for the better. “There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform. Whether or not these clear benefits to the country merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency,” the letter reads. Snowden has been living in Russia since he fled the U.S. via Hong Kong in 2013. He is charged with espionage for leaking internal NSA documents to the press and could face 30 years in jail should he return to American shores. While , even in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump nominating a man who once said Snowden should be executed for head of the CIA, the Church committee group said Snowden’s disclosures have been instrumental in enacting much-needed change. The group argued that the information he brought to the public domain resulted in reform of the Patriot Act, a change in how the NSA gathers data from foreigners, and it more broadly alerted the American people to “what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to.” “When intelligence agencies operate in the dark, they often have gone too far in trampling on the legitimate rights of law-abiding Americans and damaging our reputation internationally. We saw this repeated time and time again when serving as staff members for the U.S. Senate Select Committee… that in 1975-76 conducted the most extensive bipartisan investigation of a government’s secret activities ever, in this country or elsewhere,” the letter further argued. Of course, Snowden did break the law with his actions. On the part, the group put forward examples of past cases around the misuse of classified documents, such as National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and CIA Directors David Petraeus and John Deutch. They argued that Snowden acted in a more selfless way than others who were shown leniency for their actions, and that this should be given due consideration. “Snowden’s explicit intent was to raise public awareness about activities that he believed (and that all three branches of government have to varying degrees affirmed) were illegal, or overbroad, so that there could be a robust public discussion about the proper scope of government surveillance. “Snowden did not try to mask his identity, or lie to the FBI. He knew he would pay a personal price. As he has,” the group added. Back in September, activists and lawyers from a number of human rights organizations came together to . This time around, the former Church committee group is asking for leniency since it doesn’t believe that a full pardon is a feasible outcome. It closed its message to the President with the hope that authorities can “negotiate a settlement with Edward Snowden of the charges against him that both sides can accept.”
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Adidas will offer runners gait analysis with shoe-worn sensors at its retail stores
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
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On Thursday, Adidas will open a new flagship retail location on the outskirts of Times Square. It’s the largest of German shoe giant’s stores – and the first in a string of upscale brick and mortar shops soon to include a sizable location opening up soon in London. The company is currently giving some private tours of the space, and it’s all pretty nuts – multiple stories, bleacher-style seating for watching sports events, a cold press juice bar. And lots and lots of shoes. There’s also a station for designing custom kicks, and in keeping with the whole reclaimed Parley for the Oceans theme, several elements, including the clothing hangers are made from recycled ocean plastic. The basement houses a training area, where visitor can get free analysis from in-house trainers – well, free with the inevitable upsell into a new pair of Adidas running shoes, naturally. You’re not obligated to buy a pair, but well, they’re going to try really hard to make sure you don’t leave the place without a something. Central to all that is Run Genie, a system developed in-house that quantifies runners’ gaits. It’s similar to the camera system offered up in other athletic shoe stores, but relies on a pair of wearable sensors that clip onto the laces of each shoe, offering up a more precise metric that relying on video. The system is designed for beginning and intermediate runners – collecting everything it needs in about 40 steps per foot. The Genie will determine whether a runner is pronating or supinating and where their foot is striking when it lands via the action of the built-in accelerometers. That info is emailed to a user (though not stored on a central server as per user privacy concerns) and, naturally, the appropriate footwear to help correct those issues is recommended. The company has rolled the technology out to a few of its German locations and is bringing it to the US for the first time with the grand opening of the New York store later this week.
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Crunch Report | Facebook Messenger Instant Games
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Chris Gates
Chris Gates TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Oura Ring raises €5 million to take its smart jewelry mainstream
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Lora Kolodny
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A Finnish startup called has closed a series A round of €5 million to ramp up production of its smart, health-monitoring jewelry. Oura Ring’s Series A backers included MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito, Jaan Tallinn who was Skype’s founding engineer and a cofounder of Kazaa and the Future of Life Institute, along with other finance professionals and tech entrepreneurs who preferred to remain unnamed. More than 70% of the company’s sales and 75% of its equity funding come from the U.S. according to Petteri Lahtela, CEO and cofounder of Oura Ring. The company’s “wellness ring” and accompanying mobile app track and tell wearers how their body is responding to their daily lifestyle choices, for example, what they eat, how much they sleep and what kind of physical or other work loads they undertake. Based on pulse rate, respiration rate and other physiological data, the app recommends things users can do to improve their sleep and overall health or performance. When they wake, the app tells users if their body is significantly restored or not, so they can put off an intense workout or some other stressful activity until they are better rested if need be, or plan to take on more of a challenge. Lahtela said the startup, which employs about 15 today, will use its funding for hiring, sales and marketing in North America, and to complete clinical studies with sleep researchers around the world. The CEO also wants to collaborate with fine artists and fashion designers for future editions of the Oura Ring, he said. Investor Jaan Tallinn lauded has frequently lauded Oura’s form factor. When it comes to collecting physiological data, arteries on the finger send stronger signals than veins on the wrist where a smart watch or fitness band is worn. That’s one reason why pulse oximeters have become commonplace in hospitals and doctors’ offices where they are used to measure oxygen levels in a patient’s blood, among other things. Additionally, a ring may not be as bothersome to wearers when they sleep as some other sleep monitoring devices, Lahtela said. Oura Ring aims to help its users and their health care teams to encourage healthy habits, and avoid diseases that can be caused by prolonged lack of sleep and over eating especially. Insulin levels and blood pressure spike in people who don’t get enough sleep, the CEO noted. Even though Oura Ring was formed as a consumer tech company, its clients include researchers and health care providers at institutions from the California Center for Sleep Disorders to Mt. Sinai in New York. The company faces tons of competition, when factoring in the wide array of wearable brands, apps and device makers promising to safeguard their users’ health such as , or , respectively Being based in Oulu and Helsinki may give the company an advantage. Along with the venture funding it has raised from outside backers, Oura Ring has been able to take advantage of €1.5 million in government loans for Finnish tech startups, and to tap into the tech talent pool there. The Series A round brings Oura Ring’s total venture funding raised to-date to €7.2 million. The company also previously attained a €300,000 non-dilutive grant to develop its data analytics and other core technology.
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Europe is poised to give Silicon Valley a run for its money, argues a new report
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Connie Loizos
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You might think Europe is treading water these days, with one of its biggest financial centers, London, hamstrung by Brexit and the uncertainty it has fostered. You’d be wrong. So suggests a new survey by the venture firm that persuasively argues that Europe’s tech scene is instead being fast propelled forward by three new trends: a well of so-called “deep tech;” a growing number of tech hubs across the continent; and expanding interest by corporate investors, non-tech companies, and foreign giants in European tech startups. The numbers Atomico cites are eye-opening. With the help of companies like LinkedIn, Meetup, Stack Overflow, Dealroom.co, and the London Stock Exchange, as well as survey responses from roughly 1,500 founders, investors and tech employees, Atomico says that deep tech companies have attracted $2.3 billion in investment over the last 22 months, and that nearly 1,000 related startups have been founded over the same period. Deep tech, per Atomico’s definition, means startups that employ artificial intelligence; are focused around virtual reality or augmented reality; fall into the “frontier tech” bucket, meaning they make drones or robots or nanosatellites or similar; or have sprung up around the Internet of things, from wearables to smart home startups. Some of these companies are in Zurich, including , a big data company backed by Horizons Ventures and Lakestar; , which has figured out how to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and aims to remove 1,000 metric tons a year of the greenhouse gas with its first commercial plant just outside of Zurich; and the computer vision company But a growing number are spread across a number of other hubs, as well. Over the last five years, there’ve been 582 investments in deep tech companies in France alone, for example. In Germany, that number is 480. In Finland, it’s 137. In the Netherlands, it’s 332, by Atomic’s accounting. Indeed, there have been been 282 related deals in such companies in 2016 alone, up from five years ago, when that number was 55. Are those Silicon Valley-type numbers? No, but there’s reason to think that gap in funding — there’s a fivefold difference between the U.S. and Europe — will start to narrow. For one thing, as Atomico notes, a growing number of U.S. tech companies have set up shop in Europe, and those European employees are just as likely as their U.S. counterparts to start their own companies eventually. Alphabet is now in Zurich and London. Facebook is in Paris; London; and Somerset, England. Apple is in Cambridge; Berlin; Lund, Sweden, and Grenoble, France. Conglomerates headquartered in Asia are also planting flags in Europe, including Japan’s Rakuten, which now has an artificial intelligence center in Paris. Another important accelerant: M&A, says Tom Wehmeier, a principal at Atomico and its head of research. “We’re not only seeing teams grow organically across Europe, but we’re starting to see a number of European companies being acquired by Asian companies and bigger tech firms that are local and growing more acquisitive.” Wehmeier cites the last week of Edinburgh’s SkyScanner to China’s Ctrip; Tencent’s Finland’s Supercell Oy back in June; and Softbank’s deal to U.K.-based ARM Holdings. He also notes other, more local activity, like that of U.K.-based Funding Circle, which has begun , as have , , and other big European brands. As in the U.S., Europe is has also begun to see a growing number of corporate venture funds spring up, along with an uptick in the interest of pension funds in backing tech startups. Atomico estimates that there’s at least $2.7 billion in committed capital residing with companies. It says there’s less hard data around the amount of capital that pensions funds are beginning to allot to venture but that it will have some numbers in the not-too-distant future. “A lot of pension funds are by their nature conservative,” says Siraj Khaliq, a firm partner who previously cofounded The Climate Corp. ( by Monsanto). “But it’s baked into their estimates that they’ll be able to [produce a] 5 to 6 percent [return] a year, and they can’t make those ends meet anymore” the ways they used to. “It’s taken these professional investors a while to understand that tech isn’t funny money, but these same people are [awakening to the opportunity]. Generally, people everywhere now recognize that tech is very real.” You can find the .
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Tumblr finally makes SSL connections the default for new blogs
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Devin Coldewey
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Once upon a time, in 2014, that it was adding SSL, the standard protocol for establishing a secure connection on the web, as an option on all blogs. Two and a half years later, it’s finally the default! For new blogs, anyway. Tumblr security engineer Josh Hixson on competing microblogging site Twitter: Thanks to , new blogs have SSL enabled by default! Steady progress towards a bright, HTTPS-only blog network future — Josh Marcus-Hixson (@JoshHixson) Companies have been adding HTTPS and SSL (or TLS) as the default at varying speeds; Twitter and Google started early, while others have dragged their heels. Many, like Tumblr, have added the option but delayed making it the default, because it isn’t trivial to roll out at great scale. You shouldn’t notice anything different if you’re a regular Tumblr-er, although some third-party extensions or browser plug-ins might choke a bit on the updated protocol. Custom domains might also take a bit to catch up, but be patient.
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Thousands of xHamster login credentials surface online
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Kate Conger
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Members of the porn site xHamster should be changing their passwords today after a set of nearly 380,000 usernames, emails and poorly hashed passwords appeared online. The subscription-only breach notification site has published the set of login credentials, which were being traded online. It’s not clear exactly where the database originated, but it contains information for only a small subset of xHamster’s 12 million registered users. While xHamster doesn’t require viewers to register with the site, those who do can comment and make video playlists. Still, the leaked information has the potential to embarrass users — several of the accounts are linked to U.S. Army and other government email addresses. If xHamster’s subscribers reused their passwords on other sites, their accounts on those sites are at risk of compromise, as well. “The passwords of all xHamster users are properly encrypted, so it is almost impossible to hack them. Thus, all the passwords are safe and the users data secured,” an xHamster spokesperson told Motherboard. But a spokesperson for LeakBase disagreed, telling TechCrunch that the passwords were hashed with the MD5 algorithm, which is considered insecure. “MD5 hashes are trivial and easy to crack,” the spokesperson said. “The fact they think the hashes are secure is a blatant example of the faulty security placed in companies even to this day.” LeakBase provided TechCrunch with a set of 60 user credentials in order to verify the breach, and the emails do appear to correspond with registered xHamster accounts.
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San Francisco Muni hacker gets hacked back
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Taylor Hatmaker
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Revenge is sweet, but irony is sweeter. Apparently, the hacker who late last week fell victim to his own horrible personal cyber hygiene. According to security reporter , a separate individual infiltrated the Muni hacker’s own email using nothing more than the ransom note provided by the hacker himself. And he pulled it off using the oldest trick in the book. Demanding 100 bitcoins to un-hijack the transportation system, the Muni hacker last week plastered the message “Contact for key (cryptom27@yandex.com)” on screens across Muni stations over the weekend. The anonymous security researcher in contact with Krebs made quick work of that data, guessing the security question protecting cryptom27@yandex.com, resetting the password and locking down both that account and secondary address cryptom2016@yandex.com, which used the same (apparently flimsy) security question. The anonymous source provided Krebs with a little color from the hacker’s inbox. While the Muni hacker evidently kept good security practices by switching bitcoin wallets frequently, that same vigilance failed to extend to his own basic inbox security. Those same wallets indicate that the transportation hack wasn’t the Muni hacker’s first rodeo: They contain more than $140,000, presumably wrung out of unsuspecting victims in the last three months. Preliminary information suggests that the hacker used internet addresses based in Iran and jotted down some notes which were translated into Farsi. Apparently, the Muni hack was a bit out of character. According to the source, most of the extortion targeted U.S.-based construction and manufacturing companies, the majority of which appear to have complied with the demands and coughed up roughly one bitcoin for each server they were locked out of. “Emails from the attacker’s inbox indicate some victims managed to negotiate a lesser ransom. China Construction of America Inc., for example, paid 24 Bitcoins (~$17,500) on Sunday, Nov. 27 to decrypt some 60 servers infected with the same ransomware — after successfully haggling the attacker down from his original demand of 40 Bitcoins. Other construction firms apparently infected by ransomware attacks from this criminal include King of Prussia, Pa. based Irwin & Leighton; CDM Smith Inc. in Boston; Indianapolis-based Skillman; and the Rudolph Libbe Group, a construction consulting firm based in Walbridge, Ohio.” As Krebs notes, companies would be well advised to create frequent backups of their data, lest they fall victim to bitcoin-hungry online extortionists. And to avoid the hack that hacked the hacker? If a security question demands personal information (mother’s maiden name, name of first high school, first employer, etc.), it’s best to lie or fill the field with an irrelevant answer if not total nonsense. In this case, honesty is far from the best policy.
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Nine requirements for a successful private ridesharing system
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James Glasnapp
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The future of urban mobility is rapidly changing as drivers look for safer and more effortless ways to move from point A to point B. While autonomous vehicles are on the horizon, ridesharing options are expanding beyond Uber and Lyft to incorporate drivers of single-occupancy cars to accept other riders on their commutes. Especially in urban areas, there are a lot of factors that detract from this option: cost, parking and convenience. Experience and research have proven that public transportation doesn’t work for everyone, and even for the people who participate, conditions are often less than ideal. The alternatives started with Uber and Lyft, but now those ridesharing services are becoming more and more saturated. It’s also simply too expensive for employees with long commutes to take advantage of current ridesharing services, even if they’re pooled with multiple people in the car. This brings us to the new mobility frontier: getting drivers of single-occupancy cars to accept rides from other people along their commute. Of course, the idea of carpooling is not a new one. But the idea of using technology to enable carpooling is. I’ve spent the past four years here at studying user needs in the area of mobility. Most recently, I’ve focused my attention on the concept of private ridesharing — specifically carpooling — as I work with our development team, pilot-testing Xerox’s mobility solutions in Los Angeles and Denver. I’ve talked with transit riders in both cities to understand their needs, and I’m now working with our team to conceptualize how our solution might best address the untapped carpooling market. Recently, three different carpooling offerings have been piloted in the Bay Area, too. I’ve simultaneously spent the last two months gaining a deeper understanding into what it’s like to be a carpool driver. I’ve participated in carpooling activities by accepting riders through three different companies in the Bay Area. And based on my research, I’ve developed a set of requirements that a carpooling offering will need to incorporate in order to be successful. This is an exciting time for mobility. We’re launching into an era where we’ll have multiple affordable options for daily transport. As we research adding private ridesharing to our mobility solution, we stand to create one of the first one-stop shopping experiences that are meticulously thought through.
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Hayo is what you get when you cross an Amazon Echo with a Kinect
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Brian Heater
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pitch video could use some work. It’s stilted and strange and has some trouble conveying precisely what the product does, owing in part to holographic representations of the product’s functionality. It’s clear that the product is different and probably compelling — but it’s not exactly clear what it does. Earlier this week, I sat down with the company’s co-founders Gisèle Belliot and José Alonso Ybanez Zepeda, along with Uber co-founder-turned-investor Oscar Salazar, to discuss the product. The company’s ramping up for a formal announcement at CES, in tandem with the launch of an Indiegogo campaign, and it’s still working out some of the kinks around contextualizing its product. We met up at a shared workspace in Manhattan, in a meeting room made up to resemble a living room — except for the big construction paper cutouts of buttons like Play and Pause adhered to different surfaces (another shorthand visualization of the product’s functionality). By way of shortening this elevator ride, I’d describe the startup thusly: It’s Amazon Echo with a Kinect camera built in. In place of voice commands, you’ve got gestures. In some ways Hayo is designed to fulfill similar functionality as Amazon’s hardware — a sort of connected home hub that ties together various smart devices — lights, music, thermostat, etc. When you get down to it, the possibilities are really endless when it comes to gesture controls in a three-dimensional space. The company is, understandably, starting off simply with regards to functionality. At launch, the system will allow the user to designate 10 “buttons” per device. A button here is a point in space — a surface on, say, a wall or table. Each button can be assigned two different functions, which can adjust based on variables like time of day and user. All of that is chosen during the set-up process. Ybanez Zepeda walked me through a rough demo of the company’s app, which provides a 3D image of the room captured by the Hayo. The user chooses where to place the buttons on that model and determines their functionality based on a list of commands pulled from the devices connected on the network. In the demo, touching the table in one place started and stopped music via a connected Sonos player. Tapping elsewhere on the table advances tracks. Touching a wall, meanwhile, turns the connected lightbulb on and off. You get the picture. At the moment, the only fully gesture-based functionality is the slider — the user holds their hand in the air (the system flashes a small blue light when spotted), then moves it up or down to adjust things like volume, lighting or temperature. The full functionality — like pretty much everything else — is very much still in the early stages here. The company will be gauging customer feedback after launch to determine the device’s full suite of functions when it hits retail. Other possibilities include security, like alerting home owners about intruders or setting alerts for unsafe spaces. At present, the system doesn’t rely on facial recognition for detection — rather, it groups users based on their general size. It’s pretty rudimentary and it’s easy to see how height could ultimately be a problematic differentiator when attempting to distinguish the age of users in order to utilize parental controls. Future functionality could rely on a more complete picture/profile of the user or even distinguish people based on gait. Price point will certainly be a factor — after all, a huge part of Alexa’s success was Amazon’s ability to offer up hardware close to cost. Again, we’re still in the early stages, but the company is looking at keeping Hayo “under $300,” an admittedly broad price point — which could potentially be prohibitively expensive the higher up you go. The product’s success will also depend on how much functionality the device launches with — which will be, in part, up to third-party developers. Gaming could certainly be an option for a 3D camera that detects movement, as we’ve seen in the past. And, of course, the company should probably do something about that video.
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Yes, the U.K. now has a law to log web users’ browsing behavior, hack devices and limit encryption
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Natasha Lomas
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2016 has been a very good year to bury very bad news. And political distractions perhaps explain why has today passed into law in the U.K., never having faced substantial opposition. It will come into force next year, after put in place by the prior coalition government, with even less parliamentary scrutiny than the IP bill was afforded, sunsets at the end of December. It's official. The is becoming law. Royal Assent has been granted, will be coming into force in 2017 — Matt Burgess (@mattburgess1) The Investigatory Power Act, as it now is, creates an updated framework for state surveillance capabilities, enshrining in law investigatory powers that had previously been authorized in the shadows via a patchwork of obscure legislative clauses. Some capabilities were only avowed in parliament in recent years, following the 2013 Snowden disclosures — and deemed by the U.K. intelligence agencies’ own oversight court to have been . The new law also brings in a new requirement: that communications service providers harvest and . This log is accessible to a , not just law and intelligence agencies. Access to the log does not require a warrant. While combating terrorism has been the government’s explanation for the need for the surveillance powers set out in the legislation, they have never adequately explained how a senior exec working in fraud and error services at the Department for Work and Pensions, , might be actively engaged in a War on Terror. Privacy concerns are not the only problem either. A massive security concern is what the legislation implies for encryption — given it hands U.K. authorities the power , or limit the rollout of end-to-end encryption on a future service, raising the specter of — as well as risking the security of user data. The law also sanctions state hacking of devices, networks and services, including on foreign soil. And it allows the security agencies to maintain , including individuals suspected of no crime. Questions remain over how information harvested by domestic intelligence agencies might be shared with foreign equivalent agencies in other countries (and thus vice versa, as a workaround for any domestic surveillance limits). The government claims a “double lock” authorization process that loops in the judiciary to signing off intercept warrants for the first time in the U.K., along with senior ministers, bolsters against the risk of the “most intrusive investigatory powers” being misused. Critics question this, arguing judges will just be rubber-stamping warrants on process, not interrogating the proportionality of the substance. The oversight court for U.K. intelligence agencies also has yet to rule on the proportionality of the law’s so-called bulk measures — it’s due to do that next month, when it will also be ruling on the legality of the powers with the wider European Union context. Rather too late to be factored into the IP bill’s parliamentary scrutiny, however. Challenges to the legislation at the European level are likely, given European courts have ruled against bulk collection. Although the U.K.’s future within the EU is now crowned by a Brexit question mark — so whether U.K. law will be bound by any European legal judgments condemning the new surveillance law remains to be seen. A has already passed more than 140,000 signatures — exceeding the 100,000 signature threshold where parliament must consider debating a petition. But given the lack of debate in parliament the first time round it’s hard to see the majority of MPs who backed the bill suddenly waking up to the fact they sleepwalked into a surveillance state… The dreaded & dreadful was given Royal Assent today. The security services now have unprecedented powers to snoop on us legally. — Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones)
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Lucid Motors will begin manufacturing in Arizona in 2017
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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a new electric car company, announced at a press conference today that it would begin building its manufacturing center in Casa Grande, Arizona, in 2017. Parts and supplies for the facility will come from the state of Sonora in Mexico, which borders Arizona. The company’s headquarters will likely remain in San Francisco. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said that the company expects to bring 2,000 new jobs to Arizona and invest $700 million in the site by the year 2022. Brian Barron, Lucid Motors’ director of global manufacturing, said that Lucid will begin hiring for the production facility as early as next year. Barron noted that he himself is a Navy veteran and that Lucid has committed to training and hiring American military veterans for positions at the new facility. During the parade of local elected officials and Lucid executives at the lectern, two of Lucid’s alpha prototypes rolled into the plaza in front of the Arizona state capitol building in Phoenix, where the event was held. The cars were wrapped in black-and-white graphic camouflage to disguise their exact designs, but the cars did drive out under their own quiet electric power (unlike Faraday Future’s much-hyped ). Lucid CTO Peter Rawlinson noted that the cars will have 1,000 hp, which had been announced, and that a version with a 400-mile range will be available. Lucid had also previously said that the cars, which will be in production in 2018 according to Rawlinson, will have some autonomous capabilities. Rawlinson also said in his remarks that Lucid used the opportunities in creating an electric vehicle from scratch to condense the drivetrain so that the sedan could be “reimagined and redesigned,” particularly regarding interior space. The prototypes that were shown today were fine examples of the sedan form, but they hardly broke any significant new ground in exterior design. Given the resurgence in buyers’ interest in SUVs, it’s interesting that Lucid’s designers chose to work with a four-door sedan as their first vehicle. The show that sales of SUVs and crossovers (which fall into the light trucks category) are all outselling cars as of October. This gap has been widening for at least a year, so it seems that any electric vehicle startup that can develop a zero-emissions small SUV or CUV to better compete with Tesla’s would find a potential sweet spot in the market. That could still be , and it could even still be Lucid Motors.
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The end of the Apple dynasty?
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Chrys Bader
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Apple is misplaying the hand Steve Jobs left them, making themselves vulnerable to competition for the first time since iPod. The company has always been at least one step ahead of the competition in hardware advancements and software experience. It used to be that to switch to Android or Windows, you’d have to give up functionality, user experience and access to the latest and greatest apps. The switching cost to move to a competitor was very high. Apple used this position to gain the upper-hand in partnerships — deal terms were often in their favor. It also gave them leverage on the consumer side. We were more willing to tolerate buying new adapters for their Apple devices because the upside was worth it. This year, they doubled down on the “f*ck you” playbook instead of making major leaps in technology to bolster the position that allowed them to use the playbook in the first place. In 2016, Android phones have surpassed iPhone with higher-resolution displays, better cameras, cloud features, waterproofing and early VR/AR — reducing the switching cost to Android. Now, Apple is playing catch-up with competition. Yet, they’re still making FU playbook moves, like removing the headphone jack, further reducing the overall switching cost and chipping away at the faith of enthusiasts. Android is also dominating global market share. The global market itself is reaching a saturation point, which means the biggest growth opportunities can be found in new platforms — an area in which Apple is behind and the competition is already moving on aggressively. Source: . Apple has always been the leader in new technology platforms, from iPod to iPhone to iPad, but are nowhere to be found in AR, VR or self-driving vehicles beyond rumors ( , ). While Apple is rarely , they have been the and held their ground. Ask yourself now, if Apple does enter the VR/AR market, do you think they will be the ? My guess is your faith has eroded. Apple Watch, the first product launch without Steve, was also the first not to move the needle. Since then, Apple events have become less exciting and more incremental, filled with unprecedentedly long and boring software demonstrations and underwhelming technology like TouchBar, HomeKit and HealthKit. Apple TV isn’t even 4K yet, while Roku is. Siri, which was first-to-market, has fallen behind Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Meanwhile, Microsoft is innovating rapidly under the leadership of Satya Nadella and taking more risks in spaces that Apple is not — for example, — and becoming seriously competitive in the desktop space with . I predict Microsoft will make a bold move in the mobile phone space to follow suit. Apple recently and went through a company re-org. There has also been speculation that Jony Ive is checked out and there’s going to be a big shake-up at the company. These are clear signs of leadership and organizational issues. Some argue that Apple is shifting to being a software company. This bodes even worse, because their software has been declining in usability and stability. The new iMessage and latest version of iOS demonstrate a naiveté about how people actually use software they love. iCloud is notoriously bad. Furthermore, Apple has the wrong culture for software development. Teams aren’t allowed to talk to each other and they don’t learn from data, thus they can’t learn nearly as fast as a real software company. To make a comeback, Apple needs a visionary CEO. Tim Cook is an operator CEO and is doing a great job increasing profit margins and company efficiency, but has yet to show any prescience or urgency to be a leader in innovation. In contrast, Satya Nadella is the visionary CEO that is bringing Microsoft back to relevance while ( ). The App Store was the greatest thing to happen to Apple and it’s keeping iOS alive today. Apple’s most important are the affluent and the enthusiasts. Even though iOS market share in the U.S. has dropped by 16 percent since 2012, the App Store still grosses 4X more than the Play Store. The is that iPhone owners are willing to pay more for their devices, and have more disposable income to spend on apps than the lower-income demographic of Android users. Historically, Android phones have been more affordable, but lacked in technology and apps. But now that they are competitive with, if not better than, Apple devices, we will start to see more of Apple’s key customer-base switch over to Android devices and (gasp) even Microsoft computers. Developers like to be close to the latest trends in technology and also the most lucrative ones. If Apple falls behind on new platforms and developers begin to enter the Microsoft and Android ecosystems, it could be an opportunity for competitors to shepherd developers away from iOS and into their own mobile and desktop platforms. When the developers begin switching over, Apple is in serious trouble. I’m hopeful that Apple swings for the fences and makes some big moves on new platforms. I hope they can continue their excellence in design thinking and product leadership, but given what I’ve seen since Steve passed away, I have major doubts. Apple is not going away anytime soon, but they’re facing the fiercest competition they’ve had in a long time. The ball of inspiration and awe is on the verge of being passed to the competition, and it’s time for a new quarterback. Apple’s latest release, “Designed by Apple in California,” is an amazing picture book that chronicles the breathtaking visual story of Apple’s rise to its current plateau. Maybe they’ll release a special cover for this book available in 14 colors soon. Mine already has a smudge.
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Intel creates a dedicated autonomous driving technology group
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Darrell Etherington
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Intel is following up on news early Tuesday about its partnership with Mobileye and Delphi on self-driving tech with more autonomous vehicle news: it’s dedicated to pursuit of self-driving solution development, called – you’ll never guess – the Automated Driving Group (ADG for short). The new Intel ADG will be headed up by Intel vet Doug Davis, who previously led the IoT group and is putting off his retirement after 30 years with the chipmaker to act as SVP and strategic lead for the group. Reporting to Davis will be Kathy Winter, who comes to Intel from new partner Delphi and will act as VP and GM of the ADG, handling more of the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the team. ADG’s formation is part of a larger management re-org at Intel, but the introduction of a dedicated vertical focused on autonomous driving is probably the most significant of the shifts overall. Intel recently announced that it’s making $250 million bet on self-driving tech via its Intel Capital investment arm, and Tuesday’s earlier announcement regarding its chip supply relationship with Mobileye and Delphi shows it has grand designs on the emerging space. Intel also noted that it will be providing Intel Core i7 processors for use in the Delphi/Mobileye platform, which is making its official debut in a test vehicle at CES in January. The Core i7s being used are essentially placeholders, however – Intel will be shifting the platform to a new, unnamed and more powerful processor the chipmaker is going to officially reveal sometime in the next few weeks (CES seems like a good bet for this, too). Autonomous driving is only part of the ADG’s mandate; it’ll also focus on driver assist technologies, meaning it’ll continue the work that Intel is currently doing with a long list of automaker clients using its chips, including BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Toyota, Tesla and more. When asked about whether this will also lead to increased headcount or other resources dedicated to autonomous driving tech, an Intel spokesperson told TechCrunch that while “Intel has been continuing to invest in automated driving by a series of acquisitions (Nirvana, Itseez, Yogitech), earmarking $250M of Intel Capital funds for automated driving capabilities and continued R&D,” the company is “not commenting on specific headcount at this time.” Intel also provided the following when asked about how it sees the opportunity present in the autonomous driving market: Automated driving is long term growth opportunity for Intel. We believe there is an incredible opportunity to reinvent the driving experience and it will take a global ecosystem for this vision to come to fruition. The new ADG organization will provide the necessary focus and support for our long-term investments needed for our strategic automated driving endeavors.
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Fitz Tepper
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Knotch has patented its color-based feedback system
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Anthony Ha
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promises marketers a better way to collect user feedback about the effectiveness of their sponsored content. Now it’s announcing that it has received a design patent for its approach. Basically, when a sponsored article uses Knotch, a survey question pops up at the end, which is supposed to help advertisers assess your state of mind after reading the article. The big difference is that you don’t answer with words or number ratings, but instead use a “temperature” scale to describe your feelings — the red end of the spectrum reflects more positive feelings, while blue indicates something more negative. This might sound a bit gimmicky, but this has led to a dramatic increase in response rates compared to most user surveys. A traditional survey might only get responses from 1 percent of the people who see it, while Knotch surveys see response rates as high as 25 percent. CEO Anda Gansca said Knotch’s approach is more effective because it’s an intuitive way for users to communicate their feelings. Or, to put it in slightly more grandiose terms, she said temperature works as a “universal metaphor,” and when you see the Knotch temperature scale, “It’s something that taps into your subconscious.” As for the patent (which is not yet available on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s online database), Gansca said it covers “the idea of capturing sentiment in granularity of color.” ( You can now .) She acknowledged that for many in the tech world, patenting an idea seems much less important than actually building a product that people want to use, but she added, “For us, it helps because this is going to deter certain parties from copying us, and it’s symbolic — we get to own something we feel that we discovered.” Gansca also said the patent reflects Knotch’s commitment to design, which goes back to , and the fact that it still has its own chief creative officer, Aron Tzimas. “Data companies are not known for having great design or any design at all,” she said. “They usually have a table of data you’re looking at it and saying, ‘What?’ But we’re keeping ourselves to the same design standards that we [used] for the consumer side of our company.”
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AWS launches new programs to support its partners
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Frederic Lardinois
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Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division is hosting its annual in Las Vegas this week. Ahead of the main part of the event, the company today hosted a keynote for its ecosystem partners who sell tools and services for AWS. During the keynote, the company announced a major extension of its partner programs, as well as a few new features for vendors who want to sell their software, APIs and other services in the AWS Marketplace. In total, AWS announced a few new partner programs: one for businesses who want to and one for partners who focus on helping their customers use specific AWS services like Redshift, Lambda, Kinesis, Machine Learning and others, for example. In addition, AWS and VMware will announce an integrated partnership program in 2017, and companies that build Alexa skills will also get a dedicated partner program. For the most part, being included in these programs will give these companies access to things like market development funds, inclusion in various marketing materials, a badge they can brandish on their own marketing materials and (depending on the program) a featured spot in the new Partner Solutions Finder. These programs are generally open to both tech and consulting partners. In addition, the company is launching a few new programs that show that certain partners have the competency to help users get started with and on AWS. These new programs join the for companies that focus on migration, storage, DevOps, security and big data. Amazon seemed to be especially excited about the possibilities of bringing more IoT solutions to AWS. During today’s keynote, AWS’s James Hamilton even showcased his own internet-connected boat as an example for what forward-thinking companies can do. AWS has a detailed list of requirements for tech and consulting partners that want to be included in these new programs. is the one for the IoT Competency partners, for example.
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Spotify brings soundtracks to Starz’ video streaming app
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Sarah Perez
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Before the streaming era, if you found yourself watching a movie or TV show with a great soundtrack, you may have gone out later to buy the CD. These days, at best, you may remember to look up the soundtrack on iTunes or a streaming service like Spotify. But the premium TV network Starz has a different idea: in partnership with Spotify, it’s putting soundtracks directly into its video streaming app. This collaboration is the first time a top streaming video service has integrated with Spotify like this to connect viewers with the music behind their favorite shows and movies. However, it’s not the first time that music and video content have been combined – after all, Spotify’s own app features a variety of video programs, including its own originals. And YouTube, which is both its own streaming service and source for music, has dabbled in this space for years. The move is meant to make Starz’ app more engaging, in the now highly competitive market for video streaming services. Starz benefits by being able to promote its shows through the new feature, but what’s more interesting about the deal is that Starz will actually use Spotify users’ listening habits to customize Starz video recommendations. The precision of the science behind these music-powered recommendations remains to be seen, but it’s not something that’s really been tried before in the other major streaming services. According to Starz, anyone using its app can listen to 30-second track previews, but Spotify Premium subscribers will be able to authenticate with their account and then listen to the full songs and playlists. You can also save the songs you like and follow playlists from the Starz app, which then makes the music available to you in your Spotify app. The company plans to use Spotify to highlight its original series in particular, but says that music will be available for other premium movie and television content, too. Some of Starz’ more popular shows including “Power,” “Outlander,” and “Black Sails,” and it will soon be home to the anticipated “American Gods.” However, not all these original shows currently have a Spotify playlist available. Instead, the selection at launch includes “Flesh and Bone,” “Power,” “Outlander,” “Magic City,” “Ash vs Evil Dead,” “Da Vinci’s Demons,” “The White Queen,” and “Spartacus.” [gallery ids="1421632,1421631,1421628,1421627,1421626"] Starz itself is not a free service, but it does offer sign-in options for both pay TV and cord cutters in a single app. The over-the-top version of Starz is $8.99/month, or you can authenticate with your cable or satellite provider. For Spotify, app integrations – even unexpected ones – are not uncommon. The company’s music service has been made available within a number of mobile applications, including , dating apps like and , , , , and others. Starz says Spotify has been integrated into all its handheld and tablet applications on iOS and Android.
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DARPA establishes group to standardize robotic space repairs
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Devin Coldewey
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If we’re to keep in working order, the job isn’t going to be done by humans — and DARPA suggests we all get on the same page before we start designing robotic systems to pick up the slack. The reality of satellite design is that if pretty much anything goes wrong, the thing sits in orbit like a million-dollar paperweight (although absent gravity it is technically a paper ) and eventually burns up on reentry. After all, there’s usually no one out there to fix it except the folks on the ISS, and they’ve got better things to do. Robotic platforms are the obvious solution: they can get in range and tighten screws or knock an antenna into alignment… but only if the satellites in question are using the right kind of screw. DARPA wants to get everyone together to talk about getting these standards in order. “We’re inviting the space community to join us in creating a permanent, self-sustaining ‘one-stop shop’ where industry can collaborate and engage with the U.S. Government about on-orbit servicing, as well as drive the creation of the standards that future servicing providers will follow,” said DARPA’s Todd Master in a press release. An exciting graphic showing the flow of information through CONFERS. The group would be called the , or CONFERS, and its decisions would be purely advisory and non-binding. The idea is it would be a clearinghouse for discussion and technical information, not any kind of authority. People build things with 2x4s and use right-handed screw threads because they’re cheap, widely available, and generally good enough. Standards like that (a bit more thorough, of course) could keep costs down for future space platforms that want to allow for the possibility of mid-mission servicing. Got some ideas? Head over to Arlington on December 16 for the agency’s — all citizens are welcome, but you’ll need to go through the usual security procedures detailed in the invitation.
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Ford will begin testing self-driving cars in Europe in 2017
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Darrell Etherington
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Ford’s pushing forward in its efforts to get autonomous cars on the road, with a plan to begin testing self-driving vehicles in Europe next year. The testing is in advance of extending its plans to debut an autonomous car specifically for ride-sharing fleets in the U.S. in 2021 to Europe, sometime in the future following that initial launch. Ford tells TechCrunch it will be testing autonomous cars beginning at its UK-based Engineering Center in Essex, and that it will also begin testing at its Research & Advanced Engineering facilities located in Aachen and Cologne in Germany. The company said it’ll also have more to share about its specific European testing plans in the future, but noted that these facilities are already well-versed in Ford’s current and future driver-assist tech efforts, and so will be well-positioned to lead the autonomous driving efforts in Europe as well. Ford also commissioned a survey of Europeans regarding their opinions about self-driving and what it might lead to in terms of freeing up time for and options for people. The survey of 4,000 found that 16 percent of respondents would trust autonomous cars to ferry their kids to or from school. 72 percent plan to use the time to have those phone conversations no one seems to have bandwidth for anymore, and 64 percent would use the reclaimed hours to eat. Time freed up by autonomous commuting isn’t insubstantial – Ford says its data shows that Europeans spend, on average, 10 full days per year in their cars. You can do a lot with 10 days back … like binge watch all existing seasons of , for instance.
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The future of front-end development is design
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Carson Miller
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Should we make our kids learn to code? This question was posed to me at a recent dinner party. As one of the only people in our social circle who has worked in and around software development for an entire career, I get this type of question often. My immediate response was a resounding yes, and I shared a few superficial reasons why the choice was so obvious. The conversation eventually moved on, but the question stuck with me. Maybe it was the phrase “to code,” which encapsulates such a massive spectrum. There will always be a role for engineers focused on the massive challenges required to build autonomous transportation, virtual reality and any other ambitious future technology that we will inevitably conceive, but I’m not so sure this is what my friends had in mind for their kids. If they’re envisioning a future where their kids code web and mobile apps, I question whether I made the right recommendation. Given the significant innovation in design tools and software development infrastructure, this type of coding is going to look dramatically different in the future. In fact, the line between design and development may no longer exist, resulting in fundamental changes to the skill set and teams required to bring a product to market. Over the past decade, the cost to launch a software product has decreased exponentially. For example, during the original dot-com boom, the cost to launch an internet startup was hundreds of thousands of dollars, due in large part to the capital costs of servers, internet bandwidth, software licenses and office space. Since then, cloud infrastructure (like ), developer tools (like ), open-source frameworks (like ) and bespoke back-end services (like for search) have all emerged to enable rapid digital product development at a fraction of the cost of even just 10 years ago. Today, if you have the time and the design and development skills, it is possible to build and launch a product for a few hundred dollars. While building new products has never been easier, creating products that users love remains a massive challenge. It requires a deep understanding of your intended users and a vision for how to deliver a delightful experience to solve their needs. It also requires a workflow that allows product teams to rapidly test, learn and iterate the product experience, the business model and the value proposition. Over the past several years, iterative product design has become mainstream. Key tenets of the — especially the bias toward getting minimum viable products (MVPs) to market quickly, then learning from real customer feedback — have become widely accepted as a better way to build companies and products. A new ecosystem of tools has emerged to support these new ways of working, enabling product design teams to work collaboratively and more efficiently. Teams have moved from the archaic process of creating static designs in Photoshop to embracing a much more expansive toolset — ranging from collaborative design tools (like , ), dead-simple prototyping platforms (like , ), user testing services (like , and ) and designer-developer collaboration tools (like ). All of these tools support one or many core aspects of a modern product design workflow, and nearly all are able to work seamlessly together. The net result: It has become exponentially faster to turn ideas into immersive prototypes that can be experienced, tested and validated before ever coding a product. Over the coming years, the delineation between “product design” and “front-end development” as separate functions will disappear. Many companies have already adopted this approach, hiring individuals (often referred to as Creative Technologists) who are skilled in product design and front-end web technologies, preventing any required hand-off to bring designs to life in code. This convergence is also happening in the sophistication of tools that product design teams use. It is only a matter of time before design and prototyping tools replace front-end development altogether, seamlessly producing a high-quality front-end code base for your framework of choice (React, Node or other). has already done this for basic websites. provides a drag-and-drop environment for creating interactive content-driven websites. and are doing some interesting things with reusable components and data. All of these are design-first tools, but many allow users to edit or add to the code produced to tweak and refine their products. Imagine where these and other tools might be in five years? This convergence of process, skill sets and tools will lead to several notable changes in product design: So, should our kids learn to code? I can’t argue against the value of every child having a working knowledge of software development. But there is a difference between coding foundational technology and front-end development — and the divide is growing. The latter is going to become extinct in favor of designers and design tools. Kids with an interest in building and delivering better experiences for consumers and businesses should double down on design and business instead of developing deep software development expertise.
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Helpster raises $2.1M to connect employers with blue-collar job seekers in Southeast Asia
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Jon Russell
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, a Bangkok-based company that matches employers with people seeking blue-collar jobs, has banked $2.1 million to expand across Southeast Asia. The funding, which was led by Jakarta-based with participation from , will help the startup grow its position in the Indonesian market, which it recently entered. It will also go toward increasing its presence on home-soil in Thailand, where the majority of its 35 staff are based. Helpster was founded in January 2016 by Matthew Ward (CEO) and John Srivorakul (CTO). Both have been involved in startups for some time. Srivorakul founded Admax ( ) and Ensogo ( ), and was involved with and , where his brother Paul is CEO. Ward was previously CEO of Admax. The service is similar to CornerJob in Europe, which has this year, in that it helps companies seeking blue-collar workers to find candidates, both in temporary and full-time roles. The industries served by Helpster include food and beverage, warehouse, hospitality, customer service and retail among others. Ward and Srivorakul estimate that the industry in Southeast Asia has around 100 million workers and is worth in the region of $200 billion per year in wages. Smartphones are the preeminent internet platform in countries like Thailand and Indonesia, where which is giving rise to new opportunities for business and work. Already, a glut of companies offering to connect consumer with local services — such as plumbers and cleaners — have sprung up across Southeast Asia, including Kaodim ( ), ServisHero ( ) and RecomN ( ). Helpster is hoping that it can capitalize on similar dynamics to disrupt the employment sector. “We started Helpster after speaking with many businesses in [the services industry] who still cite hiring and staffing as their biggest pain point in running their business,” Ward said in a statement. “They were looking for a solution that enabled them to tap into the large labour supply quickly and cost efficiently, and traditional methods such as job boards or agencies weren’t fast enough and just didn’t deliver the quality of workers they required.”
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GuestReady raises $750K to help Airbnb hosts manage their properties professionally
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Jon Russell
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, a service that helps home owners who use Airbnb and other services manage their properties professionally, has landed a $750,000 seed funding. The round was led by existing investor Swiss Founders Fund. , and now, three months later, CEO Alexander Limpert said it is seeing “very good demand” in the six cities where it is present. While Limpert did not provide revenue figures, he said that GuestReady has already performed over 1,000 services for customers. That ranges from sending representatives to check guests in and managing their check-out to handling housekeeping and general tasks and cleaning. “Many of our hosts have tried Airbnb themselves and quickly realized that it requires a lot of dedication and is getting increasingly complex or they are out of town for a while and need someone to look after their homes for them,” Limpert, who formerly worked with Rocket Internet, added. In what may be a reflection of the fact that more serious hosts look for a professional service, Limpert said that the properties that his company services have an average occupancy of more than 80 percent. That’s considerably higher, he argued, than , which varies in the cities where GuestReady operates — from 42 percent in Amsterdam to 58 percent in Paris. London-based GuestReady plans to use this new capital — which included contributions from Switzerland-based real estate firm , and Airbnb executive — to work on its products, create dedicated mobile apps and make new hires.
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Bonx brings tunes and talk to the slick and slippery slopes
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Haje Jan Kamps
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Electronics and water go together like, well, electronics and water. But how are you going to talk to your friends when you’re knee-deep in snow or plunging down a mountainside on a bike? to the rescue. The Bonx Grip brings group-chat to the masses. Shipping this month, the $139 device is coming to an extreme-sports fan near you. [gallery ids="1417358,1417359,1417360"] The problem the company is solving is one most extreme sports fans will have experienced at some point. There’s a group of you being all sporty and sweaty and happy, but keeping in touch is tricky, because you need both your hands to stay alive. Or maybe you’re wearing gloves and your adventurous streak doesn’t extend to frostbite and hospital visits. The unit is water and shock proof, and the idea is that you stick your phone in a waterproof pouch somewhere in your backpack or in a pocket. The Bonx app, available for and , introduces group chat. There are no buttons to press; just speak, and your friends can hear you shout “ ” or coordinate runs down the mountains. I took a closer look at Bonx Grip at the TechCrunch Tokyo event, and it’s a very clever piece of kit indeed. It is designed to not isolate you from the outside world completely so you can stay aware of your surroundings. The unit features a couple of oversized buttons to make it easy to operate while wearing gloves, too, which is a nice touch. The buttons control volume and can put you on mute. Handy, for when you prefer not to be overheard as you’re recovering from failing to watch out for the aforementioned tree, perhaps. Bonx Grip can be used either as a regular Bluetooth headset to listen to music or talk on the phone, or in conjunction with the Bonx apps to unlock its group-chatting hands-free superpowers.
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Verizon acquires SocialRadar to buff up MapQuest’s location data
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Frederic Lardinois
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We got word earlier today that Verizon had acquired , a mapping startup founded by co-founder that promises to provide its users with far more accurate location data for businesses — down to where exactly a door is. Reached by phone, Chasen confirmed the acquisition. Verizon, the corporate parent of TechCrunch and AOL, will use SocialRadar’s technology in . While you may not spend a lot of time thinking about MapQuest these days (or print out its directions to take on road trips), it’s still one of the biggest online and mobile mapping services on the market. Beside its consumer tools, it has a thriving B2B business and a very large number of developers who use its data in their apps. As Chasen, who sadly declined to divulge the purchase price, told me, the company talked to a number of potential acquirers after it earlier this year. One of those companies was Verizon/MapQuest, but early on, the conversations mostly focused around licensing. Washington, DC-based SocialRadar will keep its existing offices, but the team is already working closely together with the MapQuest team in Denver and other AOL offices to integrate its data and services with MapQuest’s existing tools. Chasen told me he is especially excited about getting his service into the hands of millions of consumers and developers. He also noted that MapQuest’s reach into the developer community will mean that many mobile apps will soon be able to offer far more accurate and responsive location-based features. “We always wanted our tech to be used by as many people as possible,” Chasen said. SocialRadar previously raised $12.5 million in a led by New Enterprise Associates and Growth Tech Ventures. At the time it raised this money, though, SocialRadar was still focused on building a location-based app. As the team built that service, though, it realized how bad the existing location data was. Using street-level imagery, some human interaction and proprietary algorithms, SocialRadar can pinpoint exactly where a business is located (so your Uber driver doesn’t try to drop you off in the alleyway behind TechCrunch’s offices, for example). At the time of the acquisition, SocialRadar had six employees. They are all moving to Verizon now.
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Like by smiling? Facebook acquires emotion detection startup FacioMetrics
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Josh Constine
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Facebook could one day build facial gesture controls for its app thanks to the acquisition of a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff company called . The startup made an app called IntraFace that could detect seven different emotions in people’s faces, but it’s been removed from the app stores. The acquisition aligns with a surprising nugget of information Facebook slipped into a 32-bullet point briefing sent to TechCrunch this month. Regarding its plans for applying its artificial intelligence research, Facebook wrote (emphasis mine): “Future applications of deep learning platform on mobile “ It’s not hard to imagine Facebook one day employing FacioMetrics’ tech and its own AI to let you add a Like or one of its Wow/Haha/Angry/Sad emoji reactions by showing that emotion with your face. That’s probably a long way off, though. For now, Facebook tells me it will use FacioMetrics to enhance its Snapchat selfie Lens-style augmented reality face masks that are making their way into its and : “How people share and communicate is changing and things like masks and other effects allow people to express themselves in fun and creative ways. We’re excited to welcome the Faciometrics team who will help bring more fun effects to photos and videos and build even more engaging sharing experiences on Facebook FacioMetrics’ app can detect happiness in this person’s face There are already some Facebook and Snapchat selfie masks that react to you opening your mouth or raising your eyebrows. FacioMetrics’ tech could add tons of new ways to trigger animated effects in your videos. Facebook is playing catchup to Snapchat in the AR game, and it could use all the talent it can buy. The social giant wouldn’t disclose the price it paid for FacioMetrics, but the startup’s founder Fernando De la Torre, an associate research professor at robots-and-self-driving car college Carnegie Mellon, : We started FacioMetrics to respond to the increasing interest and demand for facial image analysis — with all kinds of applications including augmented/virtual reality, animation, audience reaction measurement, and others. We began our research at Carnegie Mellon University developing state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning algorithms for facial image analysis. Over time, we have successfully developed and integrated this cutting-edge technology into battery-friendly and efficient mobile applications, and also created new applications of this technology. Now, we’re taking a big step forward by joining the team at Facebook. spotted the acquisition, and reports that De la Torre’s research and app could be used to spot drowsy drivers, automatically analyze focus groups, detect depression and improve avatars in video games. That last part could come in handy, because Facebook’s Oculus division is also working on making life-like avatars that convey emotions via For example, shaking your fist in the air inside Oculus would make your avatar’s face turn angry. If Facebook wants to be the home for all our sentimental social content, teaching computers to understand our emotions could definitely come in handy.
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Crunch Report | Snap Preps for IPO
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Chris Gates
Chris Gates TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Intel and Disney paint the sky
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Matt Burns
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isney World’s nightly fireworks show might soon have some competition in the form of hundreds of swirling, whirling LED-lit drones. They flash, fall and flock in unison and are all controlled by one person. I saw them and they were, for lack of a better phrase, absolutely amazing. The drones come from Intel. The electronics giant turned to Disney to showcase its next generation drones. And these drones can do things fireworks cannot. Flying as a fleet, these Intel drones can paint the sky with three-dimensional images that twist and turn and come to life. The drones are called the Shooting Star and 300 are will take the sky above a Disney World lake later today to put on an aerial holiday show. Candy canes will dance, soldiers will march, and everyone will be merry. This is the latest project in Intel’s quest to take drones from individuals to fleets. This is brought to life. Just like in Orson Scott Card’s book, one person commands the group, sending instructions and monitoring the drones’ health. And Intel says its limitless in its scale, able to control as many drones as imaginable. Intel envisions a future where drones fly in fleets to accomplish tasks. The same software that Intel and Disney are using to put on a colorful aerial show could be used in search and rescue operations or inspecting equipment and goods. Imagine a squadron of several drones using scanning software — like Intel’s RealSense platform — to inspect an airplane or water tower. Or a force of these drones creating a floating LED screen. The star of the show isn’t the drones; it’s the software. Built in-house at Intel, a series of programs gives one pilot control over a nearly limitless amount of drones. It’s built to scale, I’m told, and capable of controlling a force of more than 10,000 drones. The software calculates what’s needed to reproduce an image with drones. Input an image, say the TechCrunch logo, and the software will determine how many drones are needed to recreate the green TC. Then input another image. This time the image might take fewer drones so the software will move some drones out of the main cloud and switch off their LED lights, essentially making them disappear into the sky. In between the two images, the software devises movement paths that eliminate collisions. The drones themselves do not have collision detection. The software does that for the drones. The Federal Aviation Administration recently gave Disney the go ahead to use aerial drones at night in its parks. This approval is good through the year 2020. The Shooting Star drone has a bright LED installed under the main housing. Encased in a plastic dome about the size of baseball, this LED is what allows the drones to put on a show. Sadly I cannot show the most impressive part of the whole operation: 600 drones sitting in waiting on their launchpads. Intel didn’t want to talk about these pads so I know little outside of what I saw and I saw very little. Several drones sit an inch apart on each launchpad. The pads appear to be multi-use, but at least one function is to charge the drones. The Shooting Star drones rest in divots designed to cup the round LED housing, which also features the charging contacts for the drones. Sit the drones in these little holes and they’re charging until they’re directed to take off. The star of the show isn’t the drones; it’s the software. And they take off, en masse. One after another, seemingly randomly throughout the cluster of launchpads. A quick moment separates each launch as the drones take their position in the air prior to the show. A drone takes about two minutes to get from the launchpads to its assigned location. Drones do not have a specific location on a certain pad. The setup crew can place the drones in any of the launch locations. The custom software knows the location of each drone and can report back to the operator the overall health and specific information like battery level, location, and operating status. The Shooting Stars do not return to their launch locations, though. The drones are subject to GPS limitations, which is not accurate enough to return the drones to their original spots. Instead, they land around the pads. I wasn’t allowed to see this operation though I’m told the drones land fairly close to their launch location. Safety is a paramount concern and addressed in several ways. The operator’s software defines a geo-fenced area with two borders. If a drone crosses one line, it’s told to return to home. If it keeps going and crosses the second boundary, it’s automatically told to kill its motors, which would cause it to drop. The drones themselves are light and simple. The props are enclosed in a wire metal housing. The prop arms are light plastic and the housing is styrofoam. It weighs 280 grams — about the weight of a volleyball. Seeing this many drones, sitting tightly packed on their launch pads was an awe-inspiring sight. It was quiet, but they would soon take to the air and delight the crowds. The drones didn’t look nervous. And neither did the Intel engineers. Shooting Star project started as hallway chitchat. Several years ago, Intel engineers were discussing the possibilities of recreating the Intel logo out of drones. As the story goes, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich overheard and told them to get to work. In late 2015 Intel partnered with small group of artists and technology researchers at Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria, and sent 100 drones into the air. Four pilots controlled the 100 drones, that launched from four different airfields. Each drone was sitting meters apart when it launched. This feat earned Intel a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. But the record didn’t last long. Last month the company released footage of the 500 Shooting Star drones taking flight light humming fireflies in the skies outside Munich, Germany. The drones didn’t look nervous. And neither did the Intel engineers. A lot has changed since the Drone 100. What used to take months to plan and execute, Intel says can now happen in hours. The original drones flew 6 meters apart; now the Shooting Star drones fly as close as 1.5 meters. More over, those early projects forced the engineers to plot the path of the individual drones, which took weeks to program. Intel says basic shows can be programmed in an hour or two. More complex shows, like the one they’re showing at Disney, can take several days to a week. The “Starbright Holidays” show is scheduled to run over the holidays at Disney Springs. The representatives I talked to avoided talking about if a drone show could be a regular attraction at Disney World. Fireworks can only be used once. These drones are rechargeable and possibly upgradable. They’re capable of flying in slight rain and wind, which is perfect for Florida. And drones are still exciting. Disney likes exciting. From what I saw, and considering the redundancy built into the system, it’s entirely possible that this drone show could stick around and change with the seasons. This is Disney World, the same place that shoots fireworks off every night of the year and can write an irritating theme song for a ride about our small world, after all. The park can probably manage maintaining a couple hundred drones.
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NextEV isn’t giving up on auto ownership
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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Padmasree Warrior, , took the stage at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show to make a case for car 3.0. Noting the car of the future is likely to be electric and connected is not radical, but Warrior’s assertion that individual ownership of cars is not going to completely go away is less commonly heard at tech and auto events anymore. The cutting edge of automotive technology and predictions is leaning toward the shared economy overtaking personal ownership of vehicles in the near future. Large manufacturers like are preparing themselves for it, as are newer companies like , , , and many others. But as Warrior pointed out, “Mobility is a symbol of freedom.” Americans now spend 30 percent of their income on owning cars, and in India and China, households spend more than 100 percent of their income on cars. It’s often the first thing people buy when they get a job, she said, because “car ownership is aspirational.” NextEV asked potential customers what premium meant to them in this future car. It didn’t mean leather seats or more buttons on the center console; the company found that premium meant getting back their time. In addition to the environmental benefits of driving an emissions-free electric car in a large city, the car will learn your normal routine, your favorite settings and your most frequent errands. It will take over what tasks it can (someday, possibly all of them), freeing you to think about or do other things. Many cars and navigation systems can already save time during the commute wherever possible; Warrior says they will only get better at it without merely replicating apps on our smartphones. “Car 3.0 will be the smartest device you own in the next few years,” Warrior predicted. “[It] will be a robot that looks like a high-performance car.”
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Oh, the humanoid! Don’t worry, this blimp-bodied robot can’t crash
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Devin Coldewey
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Generally one thinks of robots as powerful, rigid things packed with motors and actuators. But they don’t have to be like that, and in fact it may be freeing for engineers to work outside those constraints. What if, for example, your robot was almost lighter than air? That’s the concept tested in created by roboticists at UCLA. BALLU, or buoyancy assisted lightweight legged robot, is really more a proof of concept than anything, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. The idea was to challenge the fact that most robots that try to walk… well, end up falling down. What if they fall down? What if gravity went the other way? The result of this little thought experiment is BALLU. The helium-filled body is just barely counteracted by the spindly legs and feet. The feet hide the actuating cables that bend the legs along a single degree of freedom, with very limited force. But it’s enough to put one foot in front of the other, or hop in place and a few other little tricks. “This may be the safest walking robot that exists today,” wrote Dennis Hong, who leads the at UCLA. RoMeLa has created other humanoid and non-humanoid robots both for experimentation and competition. BALLU won’t be doing any heavy lifting, but it would be easy enough to stick a tiny camera and solar cell on there to make a little lightweight ambulatory drone. “Think of this as a walking information device — walk around the house to check on things, take air quality samples in a plant, walking information kiosk, etc.,” wrote Hong. Changing its locomotion style (four legs instead of two, for instance, or giving a bit more power) could allow it to go faster, jump higher, even walk on water — and versions with these capabilities are all being pursued by the lab. Although in all cases there’s the risk of it blowing away. That isn’t the only new robot from RoMeLa. Yet another fundamentally different approach to locomotion is demonstrated by NABiRoS, a bow-legged bot that walks like it’s been riding a horse for too long. If you watch the whole video, however, you’ll see that this unique (if awkward-looking) configuration affords the bot many interesting advantages when getting around. These strange and hilarious robots were presented by Hong and grad student Sepehr Ghassemi at the in Cancun.
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DJI’s Inspire 2 is inspirational
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Jonathan Shieber
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On Tuesday at an exclusive invite-only event on a lot at Warner Brothers studios in Burbank , Calif. DJI announced its two newest drones: the Phantom 4 Pro and the Inspire 2. Clearly, DJI seems most excited about the new features on the Inspire 2, showing the drone’s capabilities for professional filmmaking off in a behind the scenes demo for industry insiders that saw the company create a short film on-site using only the Inspire 2 for all of its camera work. The drone, The Inspire 2 will run $2,999. There’s also a combo pack, including the aforementioned Zenmuse X5S camera, among other things — that will run considerably more at $6,198. That premium combo is set to start shipping next month, while the standalone aircraft and camera will arrive in January.
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A connected lockbox for dropping off keys
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Brian Heater
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Good luck explaining the intricacies of the real estate market to someone living in New York City. In most of the rest of the country, however, lockboxes are very much a thing for realtors — a spot where they can securely leave and pick up keys for access to an apartment or house. The products are also seeing a rise in popularity thanks to services like Airbnb, which require a key hand-off that can often be difficult with one of the two parties out of town at the time. Like everything else these days, the lockbox is getting the connected treatment, in this case courtesy of a hardware startup based out of Dallas. (as in to “tour” a home, not the anonymous software), which is coming off of a successful Kickstarter campaign and appearance, adds Bluetooth and cellular connectivity to the technology in an attempt to offer realtors and home owners a little added peace of mind. With the company’s proprietary app, home owners can schedule pick-ups and approve or reject agents and potential buyers based on their profile. Using the app ties visits to specific users and lets sellers leave guests feedback based on their visit. If they, for example, forget to lock the back door, you can dock them some stars as a warning to future sellers (of course, tying sales and rentals to profiles could raise some issues around discrimination that are worth discussing). The system features a silicone skin in a variety of different colors, a ring of LED indicators and an on-board battery that can last up to three months on a charge, alerting the owner via the app when the power is running low. When the system is engaged, the bottom of the lock opens like a mouth, revealing the storage space inside. The Toor comes in two versions — standard and Pro, the latter of which adds cellular connectivity, so owners can remotely open the lock from afar. The company is also offering a $50 per month monitoring service aimed at realtors that includes the ability to vet gets and set appointments. The Toor runs $149 for the standard version and $199 for Pro. It’s set to start shipping next summer.
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Hyundai partners with WaiveCar for free, ad-supported EV car sharing
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Darrell Etherington
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Every automaker seems to be partnering up for car sharing, and Hyundai is no exception. The carmaker is teaming up with , a startup offering ad-supported car sharing with a pilot program currently operating in Santa Monica. The team-up will see Hyundai’s first EV, the IONIQ, incorporated into WaiveCar’s fleet, beginning in LA. Hyundai is offering the IONIQ to WaiveCar users for up to two hours per trip on-demand for free, with ads displayed on the car’s body and on a roof-mounted display as a way to recoup the costs of driving for WaiveCar. WaiveCar’s top-taunted displays have their own built-in 4G data connection, and change the advertising they show to onlookers based on where the car is traveling and the time of day. After the initial two-hour period, the car can be kept for an additional $5.99 per hour, or returned to a designated WaiveCar drop-off point. For Hyundai, it’s a double-dip marketing campaign: the cars display IONIQ advertising, and they also offer drivers a chance to take one for a spin totally free of charge, with fewer restrictions and more real-world use opportunity than if they’d come into a dealership for a test drive. To start, Hyundai is deploying 150 cars for use with WaiveCar, with availability beginning in early 2017. It’s a smart partnership for Hyundai and WaiveCar both, as it gives the former a car-sharing partner with a unique model that’s a great fit for promoting its EV strategy, and the latter a steady inventory supply with vehicles that are less expensive to maintain than fuel-based cars. Show-rooming vehicles (giving users a chance to see what ownership would be like) is part of every automaker’s strategy with car-sharing services and partnerships, but this one, given the market and the EV angle, seems particularly apt.
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Gadget Story Time with Spectacles
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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by Snap are a lot of fun! Join us as we put them through their paces, try them out, talk to people on the street and just have a really great day. I would tell you more, but I don’t want to ruin it for you. Alright… enjoy the show. Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski, Gregory Manalo, Yashad Kulkarni
for the Spectacles hook-up
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Voice recognition technology is expediting the race to frictionless retail
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Qasim Mohammad
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You’re a sales associate at a big-box retailer and a customer just asked whether the latest iPhone 7 is in stock. You proceed to ask your colleague, Stuart, the same question, and he tells you the product is sold out. But there’s something odd about this scenario: You didn’t move an inch, and Stuart isn’t a person. Stuart is an artificially intelligent assistant that lives in your earpiece. Each day, he saves you multiple trips to the stock room to do inventory checks, because he’s autonomously connected to your retailer’s inventory management and point-of-sale systems. Stuart represents the recent advancements in voice recognition technology, which are poised to transform the retail landscape. The conventionally human task that he’s performing is speech recognition — a critical component of the apex of artificial intelligence. The holy grail of voice recognition technology is to render speech as a natural method of communication between humans and the software that’s proverbially eating the world. The potential impact of voice recognition technology on the retail sector is vast and compelling, and can be understood through two separate lenses: customer experience and productivity. With respect to customer experience, retailers must first evaluate the contexts and situations in which shoppers currently find it difficult to engage in commerce, despite the ubiquity of smartphones. A good place to start is to think about when a shopper may have a fleeting impulse to make a purchase, but lacks the will to pull out their mobile phone or reach for the laptop to initiate the transaction. report by Mary Meeker, partner at venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, examples of contexts in which consumers want to make purchases but can’t include: while at home doing housework; driving a car; or while on the go. It’s still difficult for shoppers to engage in commerce in these situations because hands or vision are usually occupied, they expect faster results and there’s a desire to avoid the difficulty associated with typing on certain devices. Once the context for applying voice recognition technology is understood, the next step is to leverage the shopper’s ability to speak and make it possible for him or her to initiate a transaction more conveniently. Leading technology firms such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are racing to release voice recognition platforms and services that allow software to comprehend human speech and engage in a two-way dialogue with users. The initial application of this technology has primarily been for search-related functions through artificially intelligent personal assistants. Unsurprisingly, early consumer trends are demonstrating rapid adoption of this new capability. Meeker’s report shows that in 2015, 65 percent of smartphone users in the U.S. were using voice assistants. Also, at this year’s Google I/O, the company announced that 20 percent of all searches conducted digitally have voice intent. Making matters more urgent, that by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches. Given the number of searches that are run each day, these statistics represent the growing need for retailers to understand the implications of voice search. Retailers that are keen to take the leap and add voice recognition capabilities to their existing suite of consumer applications can leverage the major voice recognition platforms in various ways. For example, Apple’s Siri is open to developers (via the ) who want to applications to the voice service and leverage its human speech interpretation capability to drive a better user experience for customers. It’s worth noting, however, that the voice recognition platforms and services offered by the tech giants (Google Now, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft Cortana) are tightly linked to the hardware and software developed by each company. For retailers seeking to license a more custom voice recognition capability and don’t want to be limited by choice of hardware or operating system, startups such as are innovating in the natural language processing space and can meet this demand. When it comes to enhancing productivity in-store or through business operations, voice recognition technology can drive sales and make a big impact on a retailer’s bottom line. Retailers invest heavily in human capital and a network of sales associates. As noted in the scenario at the very beginning, delivering a positive in-store customer experience is critical. But this can be difficult when sales associates are forced to deal with disparate sources of information across vast distances. Companies such as are equipping retail staff with earpieces that enable them to communicate more efficiently with one another, but, more importantly, also seamlessly communicate with the critical back-end inventory and point-of-sale software that acts as the single source of truth for all product information. The end result is undivided attention to the customer. In addition to maximizing the efficiency of store associates, voice recognition technology can drive productivity on the customer loyalty front. Many retailers continue to rely on call centers, and startups such as are making them more efficient by increasing the data points around customer feedback, while also making it easier to process the information retrieved. Such companies and their solutions pose broader questions about the wider impact of artificial intelligence on the involvement of human capital in retail operations. Although the advent of smartphones and mobile platforms has made commerce ubiquitous, it still hasn’t made it entirely frictionless. Our ability to communicate with any form of technology has remained largely the same over the years, consisting of entering commands through some type of keyboard and interpreting the output independently by looking at a screen. This can be inefficient, cumbersome and costly. As retail evolves, so does the need for a solution that makes it easier for customers to discover and purchase the products they love, while allowing retailers to become less distracted and more productive. The latest advancements in voice recognition technology are poised to do just that.
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Halo Neuroscience makes its brain-juicing athletic headphones available to all
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Brian Heater
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It’s tough to contextualize a product like Halo Sport, because there really isn’t anything like them out there. They look like your standard pair of over-ear headphones (albeit a bit chunkier than average) coupled with a strange set of spikes that run down the inside of the band and come into contact with the wearer’s head. Those spikes (the neuroprimers) essentially send electrical impulse into the wearer’s brain to help them better learn repetitive activities. Before starting the company, Halo’s founders helped create the NeuroPace, a device implanted into a patients head to help treat epilepsy. The Sport is an attempt to use some of those same principles in a non-invasive consumer-focused product. “Our biggest competitor is people calling BS on us,” the company’s CEO Dr. Daniel Chao said when he stopped by our New York office ahead of today’s news of general availability. The company has been testing the device for the past year with professional and Olympic athletes and now has a quintet of NFL players among its partners. The device works by stimulating the motor cortex with electrical impulse. The particular form factor makes it better for accessing the motor cortex, which plays a key role in athletics. The athlete wears it for 20 minutes as a warm up before practicing the activity they’re looking to improve. It works as a standard set of wireless headphones, even as it gets to work sending impulses through the skull. I tried it on briefly — it’s a bit tingly, not too dissimilar from the sort of needles and pins feeling you get when you lose circulation in your feet. It’s an odd sensation — but I can’t say I actually tried the thing long enough to have any sort of real impact. The system isn’t guaranteed to make anyone run faster or jump higher, but the company claims positive results when it comes to improving the athlete’s learning process during training. Here’s what Chao said by way of explanation when the company participated in back in May, When athletes train, much of the benefit in strength as well as skill comes from the brain learning to use the body better…that’s neuroplasticity. And what Halo Sport is doing is it’s increasing neuroplasticity during that training period so that the brain, which is already getting better during that, gets better a little bit faster during that period of training. The Sport is on-sale now through Halo’s site for $699 (a limited-time discount from the full $749 asking price). More info on the five NFL players — T.J. Carrie, Demario Davis, Gabe Ikard, Marcus Smith and Trevor Bates — can be found .
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The $5 PoisonTap quickly, completely hijacks even a locked computer’s internet
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Devin Coldewey
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After I learned of this clever exploit from Samy Kamkar, my poor 2012 MacBook Air looks more vulnerable than venerable: Asleep on the table, its USB ports exposed, it could be hijacked in seconds by a malicious Raspberry Pi Zero called . No need for passwords, zero-days or million-dollar back doors — although a little social engineering to get me to leave the room might help. Kamkar’s latest project shows another chink in the armor of our computers’ security: In this case, it’s about briefly tricking the computer into thinking that the entire internet resides on the $5 barebones computer it first met a few seconds earlier. PoisonTap connects to the USB port and announces itself not as a USB device, but an Ethernet interface. The computer, glad to switch over from battery-sucking Wi-Fi, sends a DHCP request, asking to be assigned an IP. PoisonTap responds, but in doing so makes it appear that a huge range of IPs are not in fact out there on servers but locally connected on the LAN, through this faux wired connection. Your computer, being dumb, just accepts this at face value and sends data to the fake IPs on PoisonTap instead of to the actual websites and services. And you don’t even have to be there: pre-loaded items like analytics and ads will be active, and as soon as one of them sends an HTTP request — BAM, PoisonTap responds with a barrage of data-caching malicious iframes for the top Alexa sites. And those iframes, equipped with back doors, stick around until someone clears them out. Meanwhile, cookies and sessions are being collected and converted to the attacker’s own purposes, and the router itself is exposed to remote manipulation. All this remains after PoisonTap has been unplugged, and it all happened in less than a minute, without the computer even being unlocked! This attack gets around many standard security measures: password protection, two-factor authentication, DNS pinning and lots more. It’s basically all because the OS decides to trust a strange USB connection when it says it’s a LAN encompassing the entire internet. Server admins can prevent this basically by enforcing HTTPS at every level. But on the client side, things look pretty dire — Apple and Microsoft only found out about it today. I asked both for comment and have yet to hear back; I’ll update this post if they respond. : Microsoft says: Regardless of operating system, for this to work, physical access to a machine is required. So, the best defense is to avoid leaving laptops and computers unattended and to keep your software up to date. Even Kamkar doesn’t have a 100 percent fix, other than pouring cement in your USB ports. “If I were Apple/Microsoft, I would have network devices (actually, probably any USB device except a mouse or keyboard) ask the user if they want to allow it to operate…at least the first time it’s plugged in,” Kamkar wrote in an email to TechCrunch. It’s possible that having the computer enter an encrypted deep sleep mode that locks down network connections and interfaces could do it — so if you’re in the habit of leaving your computer unattended around DIY hacker-engineers, maybe you should do that. Also, that may not be your only problem. The threat goes deeper, though — it’s silly that the computer should allow an unfamiliar device to completely take over connectivity in the first place, and this USB attack is not the only vector by a long shot. And the fact that these HTTP requests are being accepted for sites that are otherwise secure… we’ve got a lot of work to do. If you want to try it for yourself, , and the software is . Be responsible, now.
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Truffle helps you share food tips with friends
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Anthony Ha
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If you’re about to eat out and looking to choose a restaurant, you’ve got plenty of food and local recommendation apps to choose from first. But Tom Limongello, CEO of , argued that none of those apps really capture the experience of word-of-mouth recommendations — of getting that perfect tip from a friend. With Truffle, on the other hand, you can send friends a message asking them about (say) their favorite ramen restaurant in Brooklyn, or their favorite Mexican place in San Francisco. Then it’s easy for them to respond, because they can just scroll or search through Truffle’s listings. When they find the right one, they can send it along with their own comments. “We believe messaging is a more natural interface for getting recommendations,” Limongello told me via email. He added, “The problem with messaging has been that it’s not set up to pull in your preferences and let you message restaurant listings in the stream, which means you’re always going back to some other app, email or spreadsheet. By curating your favorites in Truffle, we make it easier for you to pull those places into your conversation.” You can also browse your friends’ profiles to see their favorites. And you can bring up a list of spots nearby that they’ve recommended or commented on. If you find a spot that interests you, you can save it, add it to your favorites or just hit a button to make reservations. You might also notice what’s missing from Truffle — reviews and ratings. Limongello said that’s very intentional, because reviews lack the key piece that you get with Truffle messaging. “Previous apps rely on strangers who post a lot … or experts, such as chefs,” he said. “Both of those groups get you content quickly but they create problems because you can’t follow up with them for context in a conversation like you would with a friend.” Limongello said the company will also start holding its own events, so that community members can meet in person (and maybe you can find new friends to swap recommendations with). And it plans to start sharing data with restaurants, who could host events of their own for loyal customers. is free, and currently iOS-only.
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Metallica is back on Napster, so maybe we can all get along after all
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Brian Heater
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There doesn’t seem to be a hell of a lot in the way of hopefulness these days when it comes to bridging our divided society. But if Metallica and Napster can put aside nearly two decades of lawsuits and divisive rhetoric, surely there’s no divide the rest of us can’t cross. Seventeen years after the band (well, Lars Ulrich, really) filed suit against the then legally problematic file-sharing service, Metallica will finally be coming back to Napster with its 10 album, , which is due out this Friday. The new album is arriving alongside the band’s full catalog, joining a very different Napster than the one it unceremoniously exited at the turn of the millennium. Napster has, of course, long since gone legit as a streaming service, eventually getting swallowed and merged into a single service with one-time competitor Rhapsody. And the company’s even managed to start turning a profit, of late. , the deal was negotiated directly with Napster, thanks in part to the fact that Metallica’s master recordings reverted to the band a few years back. Consider this a sort of group streaming therapy and, perhaps, a sign that no matter how divided things get, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us — so long as there’s some profit to be had.
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Toms releases new Apple Watch bands with official steel lugs and buckles
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Romain Dillet
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Shoe manufacturer is releasing a colorful lineup of Apple Watch bands made out of grosgrain fabric and leather. For every band purchased, the company will work with to provide one year of solar light to an individual in need. And these bands are part of the Made for Apple Watch program, meaning that Toms is using genuine steel lugs and buckles. Toms became popular by providing shoes to people in need. Every time someone buys a pair of Toms shoes, the company hands out a free pair of shoes. More than one million pairs have been given, to date. But let’s come back to the Apple Watch bands. There are two different styles of bands — the utility collection and the artisan collection. Bands range from $49 to $75 and are available on and in store. The main difference between the two bands is that the artisan collection features leather backing across the band, while the utility collection only uses leather around the buckle. Bands are available for both the 38mm and 42mm watch and should work for all models of Apple Watches. And here’s what they look like: [gallery ids="1417064,1417062,1417063"]
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Sarah Perez
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When bias in product design means life or death
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Carol E. Reiley
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studies, I developed a voice-activated human-robot interface for a surgical robotic system using Microsoft’s speech recognition API. But, because the API had been built mainly by 20-30-year-old men, it did not recognize my voice. I had to lower my pitch in order for it to work. As a result, I was not able to present my own work. Although I had built the interface, a male graduate always had to lead the demonstration when we showed the system to distinguished visitors at the university, because the speech system recognized their voice but not mine. AI speech recognition systems have improved dramatically since the early 2000s, but there are still many AI products that have these design flaws. It’s something that becomes problematic when it affects your target customers — like when Hello Barbie, Mattel’s artificially intelligent Barbie, the voices of the very children intended to play with it (this on top of the highly controversial and even programmed into the doll). While Hello Barbie and my own AI experience were both disappointing, they point to more profound issues in the larger picture. The lack of diversity and inclusion in AI, and in overall product development, is not merely a social or cultural concern. There is a blind spot in the development process that affects the general public. When applied to products where safety is a factor, it becomes a question of life and death. This is more than a complaint about the lack of diversity in engineering. Because of the dire consequences, the industry must change, especially as AI becomes an increasingly large part of our lives. Every time you step into a vehicle, you’re putting your life into the hands of the people who made the design and engineering decisions behind every feature. When the people making those decisions don’t understand or account for your needs, your life is at risk. Historically, automotive product design and development was largely defined by men. In the 1960s, the vehicular test crash protocol called for testing with dummies modeled after the average male with its height, weight and stature falling in the 50th percentile. This meant seatbelts were designed to be safe for men and, for years, we sold cars that were largely unsafe for women, especially pregnant women. Consequently, female drivers are 47 percent more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. Thankfully, this is starting to shift — — but we are still building on 50+ years of dangerous design practices for automobiles. Gender is only one area where there is a serious lack of diversity in design and engineering. Design bias is equally problematic when it comes to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation and more. For example, Google’s computer vision system labeled African-Americans , while Microsoft’s vision system was reported to fail to recognize . Today, one of the most prominent applications of computer vision is self-driving cars, which rely on these systems to recognize and make sense of the world around them. If these systems don’t recognize people of every race as human, there will be serious safety implications. I hope we never live in a future where self-driving cars are more likely to hit one racial group or prioritize the life of some races over others. Unfortunately, when a single homogeneous group is designing and engineering the vast majority of technology, they will consciously and unconsciously pass on their own biases. Beyond transportation, we are relying on technology for basic needs like food, communication, education and much more. For us to live in an equal society, our technology must serve and treat all segments equally. Let’s acknowledge that there are widespread diversity and inclusion problems with AI today. It doesn’t take more than a quick Google search to uncover a handful of disappointing occasions where we’ve seen AI blatantly discriminate against one group, including: , an AI “teenage” chatbot that learned from interactions. of being exposed to the public, Tay took on a racist, sexist, homophobic personality and had to be taken for an indefinite time-out. Apple HealthKit, which enabled specialized tracking, such as selenium and copper intake, but neglected to include a women’s period tracker until iOS 9. A that concluded that Google’s search engine creates an echo chamber for negative stereotypes regarding race, ethnicity and gender. When you type in the words, “Are women…” into Google, its autocomplete choices are “…a minority,” “…evil,” “…allowed in combat” or, last but not least, “…attracted to money.” Despite these recent blunders, Silicon Valley has simply moved past denial to acceptance. That’s not good enough. We need to take direct and actionable steps toward changing AI culture and creating products that are safe for all segments of society. So how do we do that? Photo courtesy of / A found that 68.4 percent of those who took jobs in the self-driving car space within the last six months were men, and only 5.4 percent were women (26.2 percent are unaccounted for). Of that same group, 42.1 percent were white, 36.2 percent Asian and 21.6 percent undisclosed. Even with missing data, these numbers paint a picture of the severe lack of diversity in a space that will impact the safety of millions. While one segment can have a certain level of empathy when developing products for others, we have seen time and again how having a homogeneous team can result in designs biased toward that particular group. It’s tempting to think that the sheer size of data available can get around the issue. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. These algorithms work by comparing one data model to similar ones from the past — and it takes a healthy dose of human judgment to figure out the right context for a particular data model. Engineering teams have a significant hand in defining these models and, thereby, the resulting technology. Even the most well-intentioned developers can be simply unaware of their own narrow perspective and how that may unconsciously affect the products they create. For example, white men often overestimate the presence and impact of minorities. The that white men viewing a crowd with 17 percent women perceived it to be 50-50, and when it was 33 percent women, they perceived it to be majority women. A simple overestimation like this illustrates how difficult it can be to see the world from another’s perspective. Software engineering, especially in the nascent self-driving car space, is a high-paying career path, so many are advocating that more minority groups should have these opportunities. However, there’s an even more important reason for minority groups to work in the autonomous driving field — the opportunity to design products that will impact and improve millions of diverse lives equally. I encourage all tech companies to first be aware and honest about the current state of diversity in their engineering, product and leadership teams. Then, set trackable metrics and goals quarter by quarter. It’s important to bake-in inclusion requirements from day one and for it to be a key consideration, if not a priority, as the company and product develop. The lack of diversity in AI is not merely a social or cultural concern. It’s really a life or death safety issue. To build safer products that recognize the equal value and humanity of all people, we must first have diverse perspectives and voices from a diverse team. I refuse to believe that it’s harder to hire minority candidates than it is to build self-driving cars.
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Samsung Electronics considers restructure following pressure from shareholders
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Jon Russell
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has revealed that it is considering splitting the company into two following pressure from investors. Stakeholder Elliott Management last month which it believes prioritizes the Lee family, which owns the Samsung Group, over its shareholders. In a statement released Monday, Samsung Electronics said it is assessing whether to implement a new corporate structure — which could see the establishment of a holding company — and the potential to list on additional stock exchanges worldwide. Samsung Electronics is working with “external advisors” to look over the possibilities, it said. Critics argue that the current structure makes it hard to value Samsung Electronics since its assets are intertwined with sister companies and affiliates. A straight split would bundle those relationships into the holding firm, leaving the Samsung Electronics business easier to assess. In other measures, Samsung Electronics will also increase returns to share holders by one-third, return half of its free cash over the next two years and accelerate its share buy-back program. It said it is seeking to add at least one new board member with CEO experience before its annual meeting in March 2017. These changes are aimed at appeasing shareholder concern, but some analysts have argued that a revamped structure could favor Lee Jae-Yong, Samsung’s heir apparent who was . Samsung’s 2016 started with promise following the release of but it ended with a bang — quite literally — as was concerns following cases of explosive batteries. and reputation, and, while it has focused on investor discontent, it remains to be seen how Samsung will address its brand among consumers in 2017.
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Master & Dynamic’s MW50 on-ear headphones are comfy but costly
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Stefan Etienne
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The MW50 are on-ear headphones that perform like a pair of over-ears. . The headphones are lightweight, but are ultimately acoustically inferior to their over-ear counterparts. If you’re looking for a pair of those, Master & Dynamic also offers The design is similar to older M&D models: mesh grilles on the exterior, with great attention to detail in the cushioning, hinges and headband. The new headphones also sport USB-C for charging and firmware updates. On the other driver exists a 3.5mm audio jack, your only wired alternative to Bluetooth connectivity. I tend to steer clear of on-ear headphones. No matter the brand, headphones like these are often restricted by form factor: With less material to encapsulate the ear, music doesn’t sound as warm. Thankfully, that’s not case here: The MW50 does a solid job of pairing the Beryllium drivers with memory foam and lambskin. The feeling of plush memory foam against the ear is really comfortable. The sound profile is nearly as good as the company’s flagship MW60 headphones. Battery life is rated at a solid 16 hours and I can say I’ve nearly gotten that much. This isn’t a pair of wireless headphones that you’ll need to charge every time you use them after a commute, work or generally just for leisure; an international flight seems more likely. Your buying decision really boils down to what materials you’re willing to pay for, along with having Bluetooth functionality. Master & Dynamic has a solid pair of headphones here — even if they cost about as much as a round-trip plane ticket.
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Kwikset’s smartlock converter is available for order
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Brian Heater
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announced the Kevo Convert way back at CES of last year, and now that we’re about a month away from CES 2017 (I know, right?) the company is finally opening up pre-sale orders on its smartlock conversion kit. The system is designed to replace the inside of a standard front door lock, rather than having to change the whole thing outright. So, why only go halfway? For starters, at $149, it’s considerably cheaper than the standard , which is currently going for $229 online, after launching this summer. It also means that that you don’t have to mess with the aesthetics of the front of the door, if you’re married to the way that looks. Otherwise the standard smartlock features mostly apply here. The Kevo Convert unlocks via Bluetooth and will autolock 30 seconds after being unlocked. Users can send electronic keys to guests and lock or unlock from anywhere with an upgrade to Kevo Plus. The kit also works with various other smart home devices like the Ring doorbell and Nest Learning thermostat. It’s currently exclusively from Home Depot. The timeframe on the Homekit-compatible Kwikset Premis, which also launched at CES, is still TBD.
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Crunch Report | Casey Neistat’s Beme Acquired by CNN
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Gregory Manalo
Gregory Manalo TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Vitrima is a hack that brings 3D vision to your GoPro camera
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Haje Jan Kamps
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If there was a product that could make you dig out your dust-collecting GoPro from the “misc” drawer and turn it into a 3D-filming camera, would you buy it? Of course you would; 737 people said “yes, please” in the , backing it to breathe some life into their GoPros. Shipping today, the product is available to order for $145 from . Vitrima teaches an old dog a new trick. With the Vitrima 3D video lens, GoPro HERO3 and HERO4 users are offered the option to add a layer of immersion to their action-camera antics. The product essentially adds a pair of periscopes to your GoPro. On the left side of the camera it films the left eye, and I’ll leave it to an exercise for the reader to figure out what happens on the other side of the assembly. The video can be viewed back without any additional processing; play it on your phone using a Google Cardboard-type setup and you’re good to go with beautiful 3D video. Cheap, cheerful and easy as can be. “With the Vitrima lens, GoPro users are not only recording a video but a full experience that can be relived,” Colin Marshall, vice president of Vitrima told me. “We set out to create a 3D GoPro camera that not only allowed GoPro fans to share their experiences with anyone and everyone, but also is simple to use and affordable.” The Vitrima product is pretty similar to . Incidentally, Kúla recently announced , a version aimed at smartphone users. Alongside Vitrima’s GoPro version, it looks like this market is now filling up with options for fans of lens-splitting 3D photos and video footage. For such a simple solution, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the final result doesn’t look great, but you’d be wrong. Check out the video below, for example, illustrating beautifully how the technology works. The Vitrima has an edge over Kúla’s products, reflecting its action sports credentials: By sealing the unit, it means it’s far easier to clean the lenses when they invariably get covered in snow, mud, water or whatever else the byproducts of your no doubt tech-unfriendly extreme sports life might be.
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How to estimate a company’s health without really trying
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Jeff Epstein
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Within the past few months, , , , and have each been acquired or merged for a combined value of more than $50 billion. At this rate, public SaaS companies may become an endangered species. Clearly, PE investors and larger technology companies sense opportunity and value. is a and management trick to distinguish the best-run SaaS companies at scale from the rest of the pack. The Rule of 40 is incredibly simple to calculate — just add a company’s current growth rate and its profitability. This simple calculation lets you compare a company growing at 100 percent with -60 percent profit margins to a company growing at 40 percent at break-even or a company growing 10 percent but with 30 percent profits. We’re often asked by our portfolio companies and prospective investments how to balance growth and profitability. Naturally, companies are focused on growth, but growth does come at a cost. Therefore, we’ve taken a new approach to the long-standing Rule of 40 to optimize for “efficient growth.” Enter the Bessemer “Efficiency Score,” which measures a company’s efficiency by taking the sum total of a company’s percent growth + percent free cash flow (FCF) margin. This simple calculation quantifies the growth efficiency of a given cloud business. At different stages of a company’s life cycle, their Efficiency Score changes. But for the average public company a few years after IPO, an Efficiency Score above 40 is considered great. For example: Public SaaS companies’ 2016 projections average 28 percent annual growth with 3 percent FCF margins, for an Efficiency Score of 31 percent. Slightly fewer than half of the current public SaaS companies have a combined growth and FCF margin above 40 percent. But does the Efficiency Score actually mean anything, or is it just an easy discussion point at board meetings? In reality, we found that a company’s Efficiency Score has a greater than 70 percent correlation to a public SaaS company’s revenue multiple, which is a company’s valuation divided by their revenue, and a standard metric for how investors price stocks. The top quartile of public SaaS companies by revenue multiple have an average Efficiency Score of 44 percent; the bottom quartile have a score of just 9 percent. Public investors agonize over where to put their money, but with just two numbers and 15 seconds you can have a good sense of how a company will be valued. Chart 1: There is a strong correlation between revenue multiple and a company’s Efficiency Score (Source: CapIQ and BVP) Are companies getting better? Over the past four years, SaaS companies have been surprisingly consistent in their average Efficiency Score — from 28 percent to 31 percent. However, the composition of the score has changed a lot as public SaaS companies have matured. Whereas in 2012 the average public SaaS company was growing at 55 percent a year and losing -28 percent in FCF, by 2016 growth was down to 28 percent and with average profitability at 3 percent. This shift is fairly predictable — as companies like Salesforce and Workday have gotten bigger their growth has declined and profitability has improved. Chart 2: Average growth and FCF margin of public SaaS companies 2012-2016 (Source: CapIQ and BVP) In fact, SaaS companies usually have the best Efficiency Score in the years preceding their IPO. Current cloud companies had an average Efficiency Score of 73 percent three years before their IPO, versus a mid-30s level post-IPO. The best cloud companies (those that go public) are incredibly efficient when they’re young and growing fast. As they mature, FCF grows as growth falls, but companies tend to become less efficient overall as increases in profitability rarely make up for stratospheric growth. Chart 3: Efficiency Score of Public SaaS Companies at IPO (Source: CapIQ and BVP) So what? It’s not just public investors who are paying attention to the Efficiency Score. The following chart is a list of public SaaS companies, ranked by their 2016 Efficiency Score score. Four of these companies, Fleetmatics, LinkedIn, LogMeIn and Marketo, have been acquired (or, in the case of LogMeIn, merged). Three out of the four were in the top 11 companies ranked by their Efficiency Score when they were acquired. These companies were in entirely different industries — fleet management, social networking and remote connectivity, respectively — but their growth and relatively profitability made them top performers. What’s more: All of these companies were trading relatively cheaply compared to their Efficiency Score. The top 10 Efficiency Score companies trade on a median of 8x, but Fleetmatics was trading at 4.8x, LinkedIn at 6.9x and LogMeIn at 6.9x. No wonder strategic acquirers saw a bargain! Chart 4: Public SaaS companies ranked by Efficiency Score (Source: CapIQ and BVP) So, which public SaaS company could be next? Our pick would be , a network security company. Qualys is in the top 10 Efficiency Score companies with 23 percent FCF margins and 21 percent growth, but trading at just 5.5x revenues, a steep discount to where similar companies are trading.
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Uber begins background collection of rider location data
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Kate Conger
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Imagine you’re on your way to a therapy appointment in a downtown high-rise. You hail an Uber and enter a nearby coffee shop as your destination so you can grab a snack before the appointment. In the car, you scroll through Instagram and check your email. You get out, buy your coffee, and walk around the corner to your therapist’s office. If you installed the latest app update, Uber has been tracking your location the entire time. The app update (it’s 3.222.4, for those keeping track) changes the way Uber collects location data from its users. Previously, Uber only collected location information while a user had the app open – now, Uber asks users to always share their location with the ride-hailing company. Uber says that, even though it can harvest your location constantly while its app is running in the background on your phone, it won’t use that capability. Instead, Uber claims it just needs a little bit more location data to improve its service, and it has to ask for constant access because of the way device-level permissions are structured. Specifically, Uber wants access to a rider’s location from the moment she requests a ride until five minutes after the driver drops her off, even if the app is not in the foreground of her phone. Previously, Uber would not collect a rider’s background location during the trip, or her location after drop-off. The company will use this information to improve drop-offs and pick-ups, which have consistently been a pain point for Uber and other ride-hailing services. The most common reason for riders and drivers to contact each other is to communicate their location when the app does not provide an accurate pinpoint, and Uber hopes to cut down on confusion during pick-up. Uber also wants to track how often riders cross the street directly after a drop-off, which the company believes could indicate a safety hazard. Riders shouldn’t have to dart through traffic to get to their destination, a spokesperson explained, and tracking a user after drop-off can help the company detect whether the driver dropped their passenger off in a risky place. “We’re always thinking about ways we can improve the rider experience from sharpening our ETA estimates to identifying the best pick up location on any given street. Location is at the heart of the Uber experience, and we’re asking riders to provide us with more information to achieve these goals,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. Although the new collection of background location data might come as a surprise for some riders, Uber laid the groundwork for this change last year. The company updated its privacy policy last summer to allow for background location data collection, which prompted backlash from privacy groups and a . Uber that background location data would “provide new useful features, such as providing faster loading time when the user opens the app (currently, there is a lag time between opening the app and seeing the available cars in your area, during which time the app is trying to figure out your location).” With the latest app update, Uber is finally following through on last year’s privacy policy changes. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed the FTC complaint against Uber, called the proposed background location collection an “unlawful and deceptive trade practice.” However, Uber says it is getting consent from users before beginning background location collection and disseminating a link that when riders are asked to update their GPS permissions. The New York Attorney General’s Office reached a settlement with Uber in January that addressed some of the concerns raised by privacy groups. Under the , Uber is required to encrypt user location data while it is in transit from the user’s phone or between Uber’s servers and GPS data stored by the company must be protected by multi-factor authentication. But some riders might still be uncomfortable with Uber tracking them after they’ve exited their driver’s car, or while the app is running in the background. Those who don’t want to share the extra location data with Uber can in their phone’s settings — and, although users will be greeted with a notice that says Uber needs their location in order to continue, they can also manually enter an address for pick-up.
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Zenefits penalized $7 million in California for insurance licensing violations
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Megan Rose Dickey
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The California Department of Insurance has fined human resources and health benefits company Zenefits $7 million for “multiple license violations,” . The department specifically charged Zenefits with allowing unlicensed employees to sell insurance and with circumventing the required pre-licensing education and study requirements. “Businesses and consumers should have confidence that anyone selling insurance to them in California is doing so in compliance with our consumer protection laws,” Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in a release. “Our enforcement action has resulted in Zenefits paying substantial monetary penalties for their licensing violations and ensures Zenefits complies with all of California’s insurance laws and regulations or they will face additional automatic penalties and sanctions.” Zenefits has settled similar investigations in other states for improper insurance sales methods. Before today’s announcement, , Zenefits CEO David Sacks said at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016. Zenefits’ troubles began last November, that Zenefits let salespeople act as insurance brokers and didn’t have the licenses to do so. A few months later in February, amid the company’s compliance and regulatory issues. In an attempt to get Zenefits back on track, Sacks said he fast-tracked a licensing compliance application when he became CEO. In October, to ensure its sales people were properly licensed to sell insurance in a given state. “In California, we value innovation and new business models, including Internet based start-ups, but we also insist that consumer protections laws are followed,” Jones said. “Zenefits is an example of an Internet based start-up whose former leaders created a culture where important consumer protection laws were broken—a bad strategy that placed the company at risk and that other start-ups should not follow given our strong consumer protection laws and the Department of Insurance’s rigorous enforcement of those laws.” Zenefits has agreed to comply with the settlement, which includes a $3 million fine for licensing violations, a $4 million fine for skipping out on the pre-licensing education and a $160,000 fine in order to reimburse the department for its time spent investigating and examining the violations. Zenefits will only have to pay half of the $7 million fine ($3.5 million) as long as the company continues to comply with licensing and regulatory mandates. “We are pleased to reach a settlement with the California Department of Insurance, which recognized our remediation efforts by suspending half the fine,” a Zenefits spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We now have a clean bill of health from our lead regulator as well as 16 other states. New management has righted the ship at Zenefits. We’ve moved past these historical issues, and now we’re focused on serving our 20,000+ customers and delivering All-in-One HR to small businesses.”
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High-end audio maker Devialet nabs €100M from Foxconn, Jay Z, Rubin’s Playground and more
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Ingrid Lunden
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Make way for another startup that wants to shake up the world of music and audio technology. , the French developer of high-end speakers and the IP behind the sound systems that make them go boom, has raised €100 million ($106 million). This is a strategic growth round that is bringing in a number of high-profile new investors — and with them, a lot more audio opportunities for the Paris-based startup. In the words of co-founder and CEO Quentin Sannie, Devialet’s ambition is to change how we hear sound from any device. “We have developed some very breakthrough sound technology,” he said in an interview earlier today, “and we think it has the ability to be the reference technology for all audio in the future.” The Series C round, one of the biggest ever for a startup in France, was led by Ginko Ventures, Foxconn’s European investment arm, and also included participation from Foxconn itself, carmaker Groupe Renault, Sharp Corporation (now ), Andy Rubin’s Playground Global (which itself is for a new fund), Jay Z’s Roc Nation, and Korelya Capital, an investment fund headed by Fleur Pellerin (France’s former Secretary of State for Digital affairs) in partnership with Naver and its subsidiary Line. Other investors in this round include Qatar’s Future French Champions, CM-CIC Investissement and BPI France. Devialet is best known today for two speakers that it has produced (both made in France): the , which retails for multiple thousands of dollars; and the , a smaller device that sells for around a more “modest” $2,000. These speakers have won a ton of awards and rave reviews for what is a radical approach to producing sound: Devialet has figured out a way of removing all distortion to produce a giant sound with a strong bass line, from what are otherwise pretty compact pieces of kit. Devialet complements this with a slick design and gesture-based controllers. Some may balk at the price. But audiophiles who hear the speakers “fall in love” with them, Sannie claims. “The product speaks for itself, and we seduce our customers. The Phantom is a very emotional experience.” And, if you have the financial means, it seems to also be a very acquisitive and addictive one, too: Andy Rubin has bought 160 Phantom speakers (not just for himself; but to help spread the word about them among his friends). “I am a huge fan of Devialet,” he said in a statement. “I love the technology and the team. I believe Devialet is the most disruptive company in the audio business. It is my dream to work with Quentin and his team to change the way people appreciate media of all types. I am very proud and happy to take part in this financing.” But speakers is not all that Devialet has been building. While the company will continue to expand its brand with its own hardware, it also has plans to embed its tech to work in consumer electronics and other connected devices made by others. This is where the list of strategic investors will come into play. The plan is to embed Devialet’s audio tech in TVs made by Sharp, cars made by Renault, and perhaps do more activities with software-based music services (think , which already has a streaming deal with Phantom, or Naver’s Line Music), smartphones, and the many more devices that complement and compete with these. If they pull it off, it will democratise Devialet’s technology beyond its own high-end, expensive speakers, and make hearing it much more ubiquitous. “You can find sound in more than 3 billion products sold ever year around the world,” Sannie said. Whether the partners that Devialet is securing with this investment will be the ones that can catapult its technology into more hands will remain to be seen — it will take both successful integrations and then consumers to buy the products. But it is a start. While we have heard and seen a lot of development in the area of speech recognition and voice interfaces for AI-based personal assistants, audio services have (ironically) been something of a quiet counterpart. If voice interfaces are a big part of the future of how we will interact with our connected devices (indeed, they already are), you can think of what Devialet is developing as the other side of the coin: the aural experience. The two are, of course, connected. A person will know how to change the tone she or he produces based on what is being heard and sensed: speaking louder in noisy rooms, or more quietly in an emotional or sensitive situation, for example. The same, in a way, could apply to smart audio services. “Devialet is a tech company. We know a lot about signal processing, but the way we are using it is more today to put the signal out,” Sannie said. “But because of our technology we are able to do the contrary to make something inverse… In an autonomous connected car, the entertainment, the audio experience for the sound, the acoustic even for the silence will be more and more important. “You will have an electric car producing silence and this should be perfect. We will need more entertainment, but we will also need to deliver safety information and driving information to the driver or person in charge. The acoustic experience will have to be a part of this industry. Because we are able to provide the sound we can also cancel the sound, and because we can cancel the sound we are also able [single out sounds] like a voice and its commands.” The startup has so far filed 107 patents for its audio codecs, reference designs and other technologies, and it’s adding more to that each month, Sannie says. Other areas where Devialet plans to use some of its investment is to continue building up its retail operation. Today the company has flagship stores in Paris, London and New York City, and it will be adding more of these into key retail locations. The company also struck a plum deal with Apple in 2015 to sell its Phantom speakers in its retail stores. That retail relationship will continue, as any consumer electronics deals that Devialet may sign with its investors or others are not exclusive. Sannie got very tight lipped when I asked if Apple is among those that are working with Devialet on any products. It’s a logical question: with its and interest in Tidal, Apple has demonstrated that it is also keen to develop high-end audio experiences. For what it’s worth, Sannie did note that Apple was aware of the investment as it was being made. This latest round brings the total raised by Devialet to around $155 million to date, and while Sannie would not disclose Devialet’s valuation with this round, we’re still trying to find out. (My guess was $300 million; one source says lower.) While previous investors Bernard Arnault, Jean-Antoine Granjon, Xavier Niel and Marc Simoncini did not participate in this round, they are remaining on the board with this financing. Others joining them are Caroline Giral of CM-CIC Investissement, and Marc Auberger of FFC as observers.
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A prominent Silicon Valley investment banker is suing Theranos, and seeking class-action status
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Connie Loizos
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, the 13-year-old, Palo Alto-based health technology company, is by two more investors who say they were lied to about Theranos’s health and its prospects by founder Elizabeth Holmes and former president and COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was reportedly long one of the Holmes’s . The suit is the third that Theranos has been slapped with in recent months, following a filed earlier this month by Walgreens, a former lab testing partner that’s now seeking the amount of money it invested in Theranos; and a separate suit filed by the San Francisco-based hedge fund , which told its backers that Theranos had fraudulently induced it to invest through a web of “ .” One of the plaintiffs in the newest lawsuit, Hilary Taubman-Dye, is a longtime technical recruiter who now works in investor relations for a TV production company, According to the lawsuit, she purchased Theranos shares on the secondary shares platform SharesPost at $19 per share in August 2015. The suit also describes Taubman-Dye’s failed efforts — along with those of others who’d used SharesPost to buy stock in the company — to cancel the transaction after the WSJ began its many claims. The second plaintiff — Robert Colman — is known in some Silicon Valley circles for having cofounded the once-powerful Silicon Valley boutique investment bank . In the suit, Colman says he invested in Theranos in 2013 through Lucas Venture Group, a venture firm founded by a second-generation VC named Donald Lucas whose other bets include the data analytics company Palantir. Indeed, according to the suit, Lucas “directly solicited” Colman’s investment in Theranos’s Series G round “at the invitation of Theranos and Holmes,” an invitation that was “purportedly a favor to Lucas,” whose father, also Donald Lucas, “originally funded Theranos and ‘mentored’ Holmes.” The younger Lucas, it says, had represented himself to Colman as a strategic advisor to Theranos. His father, Donald Lucas, has been a self-employed venture capitalist since 1960. Now 86 years old, he was at one point the chairman of the board at Theranos. He was also a director on the boards of Oracle and Cadence Design Systems until 2013. Colman has himself retired and now lives in Idaho. The lawsuit seeks class action status for anyone who “directly or indirectly purchased or committed to purchase Theranos securities from July 29, 2013, through October 5, 2016.” A San Francisco lawyer representing both Colman and Taubman-Dye tells the WSJ that there may who could be represented in such a case. In a separate statement to TechCrunch, the attorney, Reed Kathrein of the Seattle-based law firm , writes that: “While Theranos is not traded on a stock exchange, investors who were solicited by venture capital and other funds, or who purchased indirect interests in Theranos securities through third-parties like SharePost, have all been damaged by these public representations. He also suggested the scope of this newest suit could widen. “Fund managers are loathe to sue and forfeit access to start-ups which are their lifeblood. But California law gives us the ability to represent the ultimate investor who has suffered losses as a result of defendants’ publicity campaign. As our investigation continues, we will not be surprised to find others who were knowingly at fault.” The entire filing can be found .
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AT&T unveils its TV streaming service DirecTV Now, which will launch on Nov. 30
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Sarah Perez
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AT&T today officially unveiled its DirecTV Now live TV streaming service at an event held in New York City. The service, which is launching on November 30, was first announced . Many of the details about the new service were reported already, including a starting price point of $35 per month, and a lineup of more than 100 channels, with the option to add on premium networks like HBO and Cinemax. “It’s really important to understand, this is the foundation for how we’re going to do things in the future,” said AT&T Entertainment CEO John Stankey. “For the first time in our history, we have control of our full stack.” DirecTV Now is entering an increasingly crowded market for streaming services, where it will directly compete with rivals like Dish’s Sling TV, Sony’s PlayStation Vue and Hulu’s upcoming live TV service. (We should note that AT&T competitor Verizon owns TechCrunch.) In order to lure customers, these competitors are focusing on various selling points, like tiered pricing, simultaneous streams, user experience, cross-platform support, channel lineups, and other consumer-friendly features, like a cloud DVR for recording streamed TV shows and movies. In fact, Sling TV just its own cloud DVR earlier this morning. DirecTV Now will also offer a cloud DVR starting next year, the company announced. However, it’s currently limited to only 2 simultaneous streams, which puts it at a disadvantage. AT&T aims to initially entice new subscribers by offering free streaming players to those who commit to paid plans. Those who sign up for three months will get a free Apple TV, while those who pay for one month will receive a free Amazon Fire TV Stick. Like its rivals, DirecTV Now is also competing on price point, by coming in lower than traditional pay TV services from cable and satellite providers at $35 per month for more than 60 channels, with pricing plans going up to $70 a month for 120-plus channels. Customers can pay an extra $5 per month each to add HBO and Cinemax. Before you pay anything, there will be a free seven-day trial period, and limited DirecTV Now will be available through a FreeView mode. It’s also offering promotional pricing which will offer its “Go Big” ($60/mo) package of over 100 channels for $35/month. And those who sign up at this rate will be grandfathered in as long as they use the service. What’s interesting is that AT&T service isn’t only personalized to users in terms of its content and recommendations, it will use personalized ads, too. Enrique Rodriguez, Executive Vice President and CTO of AT&T Entertainment, described this as “an entirely new cost structure for AT&T” — which means, in part, keeping costs down through targeted advertising. When asked for more details about how this will work, Rodriguez said, while obeying existing rules around data privacy, the service will “understand what you as a consumer are enjoying and both serve content that’s likely to be relevant to you as well as advertising that will have a higher effect on you.” He added that with DirecTV Now, “Our ability to personalize and to target the advertising to every device — not just every consumer — is significantly higher than it has been in the past.” DirecTV Now will bring over-the-top access to most major broadcast networks except for CBS, and popular cable networks, minus Showtime. Its channel lineup will include top networks thanks to deals with 21st Century Fox for Fox’s cable networks; Walt Disney; Time Warner, and others. Through the Time Warner merger, to HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and the Warner Bros. film studio, home to the Harry Potter and DC Comics franchises. And through Turner, it has rights to the NBA, March Madness and MLB. And there will be video-on-demand options, too — 15,000 titles to start. DirecTV Now will have some exclusive programming, which it hopes will help it draw in new subscribers. This will include its own original shows, like Taylor Swift’s 13-episode series Taylor Swift Now, arriving in a few weeks. In addition, content from Reese Witherspoon’s new production company, will arrive next year. Hello Sunshine focuses on content for women, by women, she said at the event. However, what might be DirecTV Now’s biggest selling point — and one of its most controversial — is that AT&T subscribers can stream from the service to their smartphones and tablets without tapping into their wireless data plans. The FCC has already gotten involved here, ,” as this is called. It’s unclear how this will eventually play out — AT&T might be asked to offer the same zero-rated wireless streaming to competitors, for example. Or it might lose the option to zero rate its own content altogether. AT&T executives also gave a quick tour of the product. The user experience feels more Netflix-like, compared with streaming TV rivals like Sling TV or Vue. Instead of a linear guide, DirecTV Now’s home page showcases live shows as well as those you were previously watching, along with your custom Watchlist. Plus, users can set their own favorites for easy access. It will also feature a number of recommendations, like a row of new shows, those organized by genres (like “Kids”), AT&T Originals, content from AT&T partner Fullscreen, and more. At launch, DirecTV Now will be available at launch via Amazon Fire TV/Fire TV Stick, Android, iOS, Chromecast, Apple TV, LeEco ecotvs and VIZIO SmartCast Displays, and the web. Next year, more devices will be supported, including Roku streaming players and Roku TV models, Amazon Fire tablets, and Smart TVs from Samsung and other brands.
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Yeehaw launches 3D printer for kids on Indiegogo
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Haje Jan Kamps
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The Yeehaw is a aimed squarely at the young geeks market. The company’s , launched today, carries a $249 early-bird price tag and promises to ship the first 50 units in time for Christmas, but there were a few things about the company’s campaign that gave me pause. The printer has been especially designed with safety in mind, with door-open and tilt sensors shutting off the printer right away in case some inquisitive little fingers get a little bit too close to the hot or moving parts. It is also self-adjusting, automatically updates itself and has automatic calibration built in. The printer has a Wi-Fi connection and can be operated using an app or via a web interface. Yeehaw is throwing itself into a market that’s had a lot of activity, but not a lot of success so far. is available at $229, but doesn’t appear to shield its moving parts too well. is an interesting version from the well-known toy giant, but was recently . Kickstarter-funded ran into some delays but is supposedly shipping around the end of the year. What exactly are they made from? No, seriously. The product’s Indiegogo page promises “a library of more than 2,000 ready-to-print toys” and that “All your favorite characters, games, and building blocks are immediately accessible,” which is undeniably exciting. Having said that, the kids I know are pretty demanding about who their “favorite characters” are. While the Indiegogo page does feature a blocky character who looks an awful lot like Mario, there aren’t a lot of recognizable characters from the likes of Disney, Pixar or the other well-loved heroes of kids TV. Attempting to take a closer look (by following the Indiegogo campaign’s advice to “Just search Yeehaw 3D”) resulted in disappointment — the app doesn’t appear to be available on the app store yet. It’s hard to say what the 2,000 models are that will be available. 3D-printed Batman inside the Yeehaw printer. The company says “Yehaw’s [sic] library currently contains about 2000 open-source 3D printable objects that are royalty free under a Creative Commons (Share-Alike) license and that have been gathered from various online sources.” Which makes a lot of sense, but would pretty much guarantee that your kids’ “favorite characters” aren’t going to be available. Copyright laws are pesky like that. The press materials supplied by the company included photos from the and Thingiverse pages, which are both licensed under Creative Commons licenses as long as the models are attributed. Neither were, which is an issue. The models may be licensed under Creative Commons, but the photos themselves may well be copyrighted, which is why I haven’t included them in this article. The Batman bust shown in the company’s Indiegogo video is also unattributed, under an attribution license. It is worth pointing out that nobody can realistically stop you from creating your own “tributes” to your favorite Disney, Marvel and DC Comics characters and 3D printing them yourself, but technically, you risk running afoul of the “derivative works” part of copyright law. Distributing Creative Commons models of Batman figurines through an app is taking that a step further and may prove problematic. DC Comics started last year, and the company has been aggressive in and hunting down the . I am not aware of any cases where character owners have gone after 3D model distributors, but it’s fair to assume that if DC, Marvel and company see a serious downturn in figurine sales, they may just spin up the lawyering machines. That’s… not a time-lapse video, but a 3D-rendered simulation. Why?! The early-bird printers are priced at $250 and the company claims they will deliver in time for the holidays, but if that is to happen, there is a lot of work still to do. The company has a tremendously slick Indiegogo campaign video (embedded below), which weirdly enough doesn’t include much video footage of the kids interacting with the printer, or showing the printer actually anything. In one part of the video, what appears to be a time-lapse is quite obviously a 3D render. I’m not saying the printer doesn’t work — the company’s PR representative showed me a printed figurine — but I’m not sure why the company felt the need to fake a video of the printer in action. I like some of the innovations on the printer; the idea of using “emotion lights” as status lights to indicate what the printer is up to, and making the printer fully see-through for educational purposes is a great idea. The $500 retail price is pretty steep, even if it is kid-safe. I can’t help but wonder whether instead of investing specifically in a printer that’s safe for children, it makes more sense to teach kids some basic safety rules. You wouldn’t let your 10-year-old near the power tools without some basic safety lessons, for example. There are cheaper printers out there, and there are tried-and-tested printers in the sub-$500 category (like the at $499, or the , which carries a $300 price tag), so it’s tricky to see where Yeehaw really fits in. I’m all for a desktop 3D printer aimed at children, but . The company says that it “is working on being COPPA compliant at launch,” but the clock is ticking. So far the company hasn’t gone so far as to put a privacy policy, contact details or SSL certificates on its own website, all of which are for the lengthy compliance process. Ultimately, the campaign itself is setting off a number of alarm bells with me, both in terms of delivery date, whether the printer can do what it claims, what the provenance and availability of the printable models are and whether it is able to legally be marketed to children in the U.S. before it starts shipping. On the whole, I’d be hesitant to recommend it outright, but and make your own judgement. If the project does everything it claims, it would be a present that would literally blow the mind of 13-year-old me.
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Facetune 2 puts a powerful photo editor in your pocket
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Haje Jan Kamps
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The original Facetune app made it easy and fast to make your selfies look next-level awesome. Lightricks just released a fully revamped version 2 of Facetune, complete with automatic 3D meshing built in, which makes it possible to have another level of editing prowess at your fingertips. Facetune 2 is . It’s probably no match for a professional with Photoshop, a Wacom tablet and hours of time, but that’s an unfair comparison. The vast majority of photos are taken with a mobile phone, edited on-the-fly and shared on social media as quickly as possible. Facetune 2 is the closest you’re going to get to fit a professional photo retoucher in your pocket. The app scans a photo for a face, which is step one toward a seriously impressive editing suite. By automatically detecting facial features, it becomes possible to enlarge or ensmallen (that’s totally a word) the subject’s eyes, nose or mouth, or even re-shape a whole face. The toolkit also includes tools to remove blemishes and smooth out wrinkles. Facetune 2’s editing tools include remarkably realistic facial editing and the ability to re-light a subject after the fact. The other interesting feature is that the app now includes live editing, which means that edits you make are reflected as you are getting ready to take your photo. Think a magic mirror of photography of sorts. I can’t quite make up my mind whether this is a gimmick or a useful feature, but from a technical standpoint, it’s incredibly impressive. Speaking of impressive, the app also creates a live 3D mesh of your face based on a single photograph. This means that the app is able to do edits that other apps can’t touch. For example, it can create remarkably realistic lighting effects (i.e. change the direction of the light in the picture). Another interesting novelty is the company’s business model. You can pay to download each individual editing feature of the app, but if you do, you’re racking up a hefty $45 bill from Apple. Obviously, the pricing is not optimized for that behavior; instead, the company hopes you’ll pay $1.99 per month, $6.99 six-monthly or $9.99 yearly to unlock all the app’s features. It’s a big departure from the company’s original Facetune app, which costs $5.99 for all the features and shuns in-app purchases. The early reviews of the app are… let’s say with a 2.5-star average rating across its first 200 or so user reviews. The positive reviews wax lyrical about how awesome the app is (and it really is), but the vast majority of the negative reviews are complaining about the new subscription model. To be expected when you make a big change, perhaps — but honestly, for the powerful editing features you get (and the ongoing incentives for the app-maker to keep supporting and improving the app), $1.99 per month is an absolute bargain. Hopefully the 5 million people who downloaded the original app will learn to love the new business model. Lightricks to continue development on Facetune and . The team tells me they have a ton of other interesting apps up their sleeves, scheduled for release throughout 2017.
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Amazon expands its online gift shop “Interesting Finds,” adds human curation
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Sarah Perez
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Following its debut earlier this year, Amazon quietly launched a revamped and expanded version of Pinterest-like feature called “Interesting Finds,” which is also now available on mobile. Tucked away inside the “More from Amazon” section of its mobile app as well as on the web, the Interesting Finds section offers shoppers a curated feed of products across a number of categories, like items for the home, for men, women, children, or pets, as well as popular sections dedicated to specific products like watches, audio or photo equipment, sneakers, tees, sunglasses, lighting, and more. For years, Amazon has experimented with ways to enable better discovery of products, in order to capture data related to shoppers’ intent with regard to future purchases, in addition to fueling the retailer’s capability to target its customers with personalized recommendations. In 2013, , an image-centric site for saving and sharing favorite items that operated much like its own Pinterest clone. Then in 2015, ,” which organized products for men and women into a feed of thumbnail images you could click to save to your own collection of favorite items. That later . The revamp turned the “Save” button into a heart and gave the site a cleaner, more modern look – similar to the curated shopping service . However, at the time, Interesting Finds was still fairly limited in terms of its filtering and curation capabilities. There were just four sections: All, Women, Men, and Fun. (You can still see that version on the mobile web .) That has now changed. The discovery feature online and in the native mobile app now organizes products into an expanded array of categories beyond the initial handful, and it utilizes human curators, too. Several of these new categories go beyond simply rounding up top products in a single genre, like “Watches,” and instead focus on a theme. For example, the “Daily Carry” section includes toteable items like keychains, wallets, backpacks, water bottles, hats, iPhone cases and more. “Mid Century” rounds up furniture, décor, lighting and even books dedicated to this time frame. Both “Little Kids” and “Big Kids” get their own sections that include toys, games, sports equipment, plus educational items like flashcards and books. As you browse through the sections, you can heart the items you like which are then saved to your “My Hearts” collection. The image-heavy site, which is still updated daily, also inserts links to other curated collections as you scroll. For instance, there are cute pots in “Playful Planters;” there’s a Star Wars-themed “Use The Force” collection; gifts for cat lovers are found in “Here Kitty Kitty;” things made of marble or felt can be uncovered in “Marvelous Marble” and “Felted Finds,” respectively, and so on. Shoppers can also favorite these collections, known as “boutiques,” many of which have been created in-house by Amazon employees (as a simple googling of the curators’ names will tell you.) These saved boutiques are accessible from anytime from your “My Hearts” page. After you favorite items, Amazon says it will show you “more like them tomorrow,” according to the text description at the top of the “Interesting Finds” section. In other words, the shop is combining Amazon’s algorithmic understanding of users’ interests along with human-driven curation to craft its revamped online store. Despite Interesting Finds’ high profile – a banner at the top of Amazon.com’s homepage – the feature is still flying a bit under the radar. And on mobile, it’s also a bit tucked away: you have to tap the navigation menu, then the “More from Amazon” link, then “Interesting Finds.” The revamped feature itself is still being tested, too, as it pops up asking you if you like the theme or to rate the service. You can respond with emoji like happy faces (“Ooh” or Aah!”) or the less-thrilled “Meh.” (It’s unclear how an “ooh” really differs from an “aah,” but hey, it’s Amazon’s system.) Not all customers have the new experience, as some are only seeing the earlier four categories, indicating either a staged rollout or A/B test. While Amazon’s extensive catalog and fast shipping options have made it an internet retailing behemoth, it’s still not really thought of as a site that’s “fun” to browse, or a source of inspiration. That has left room for others, like Pinterest, to build services that are more focused on the “before” side of shopping – when people are signaling about their tastes and interests, ahead of any possible sale. Canopy, too, has worked to fulfill the need for a more curated way to shop Amazon with its easy-to-use site that points to , many of which have now been duplicated at the category level by Amazon’s “Interesting Finds.” “Interesting Finds” isn’t the only way Amazon has begun to curate its products. Also in the “More from Amazon” section on mobile is its fashion trends TV show “Style Code Live,” which links to Amazon products, and “Amazon LaunchPad,” its collection of new products, including those from startups and Kickstarter.
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Despite recent setbacks, LeEco has big retail ambitions in China
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Darrell Etherington
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LeEco may have had , with news coming from the company that it had overextended itself financially in some areas, but the Chinese electronics maker and service provider is still doing ambitious things in retail, starting with a new flagship store it opened at its Beijing headquarters earlier this year. We toured the store, and spoke to LeEco VP of retail Steve Zhao about some of the inspiration for the retail space and its intended purpose. A , so the focus is on building a store that provides experiences and examples of how LeEco devices and services might work for a consumer in their daily lives, rather than on stocking shelves with as much inventory as possible. From flooring and furniture materials to layout and staff, the LeEco store feels like an Apple Store, which isn’t surprising given its aims and intent. But this is also only the first iteration of what’s to come; Zhao told me that their first major retail location in a shopping centre will dwarf the current flagship in size and scope, with a launch planned for sometime later in 2017.
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There’s more than one way to share your car
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Alon Bonder
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Over the past several years, the popularity of “sharing economy” models has skyrocketed — driven largely by stratospheric valuations for companies like Airbnb and Uber. The key to success has been finding a category with high demand but low capacity utilization, then relentlessly focusing on the customer experience to improve accessibility and trust. Although vehicles are among the most expensive assets purchased by consumers, their historical utilization rate has generally hovered around a . Rideshare operators, dedicated to making on-demand transportation both cheaper and more accessible, represent the best current opportunity to start chipping away at this massive inefficiency. Within the next decade, the arrival of autonomous cars will supercharge this trend, with some estimates pointing to average vehicle utilization rate of nearly 10X today’s levels. However, focusing solely on a vehicle’s use in personal mobility overlooks another, more immediate, opportunity to drive shared value. As the latest generation of vehicles rolls off the lot with native internet access and a host of advanced sensors, their data and communication infrastructure can provide a distinct opportunity for new services. Some estimates show that by 2020, of new vehicles will ship with internet connectivity as a standard feature. In fact, this connectivity is not only something consumers are increasingly demanding in order to access premium services, but also as an important precursor to autonomous functionality. The next generation of self-driving cars will use the internet to transmit coordinates to each other, communicate with local infrastructure and signal authorities in the event of emergencies (in addition to a host of other infotainment-driven functions). According to one estimate from Hitachi, connected cars will upload of data to the cloud per hour. As we approach higher rates of internet connectivity among vehicles on the road, we can unlock new opportunities to drive value from the network as a whole. For example, companies like are looking to turn a fleet of connected vehicles into a mesh network with the capability of blanketing a city with internet access. In Veniam’s case, this is being done by installing Wi-Fi hotspots onto government-owned vehicles driving predictable daily routes. By comparison, a network of private cars has the potential to provide a much denser footprint with higher fidelity. Another potential source of value is visual data collection. While today’s new production vehicles are increasingly being stuffed with high-quality cameras and sensors, their use is mostly restricted to supporting safety features like collision avoidance or adaptive cruise control. However, by combining real-time data with the capability to send data to the cloud, a distributed network of private vehicles can generate a broader set of insights. We saw the first order of this phenomenon play out using mobile phones to map traffic patterns, with Waze as a standout winner. The second order will entail deeper integration with embedded vision systems — providing real-time tracking of things like roadside accidents and availability of parking spots. Aside from the visual data, there is also tremendous value in behavioral data. As every major car company scrambles to build its own autonomous navigation software, companies like Google and Tesla continue to extend their lead from ongoing pilots. The reason is that these companies prioritized data collection early on — standardizing internet connectivity in their vehicles and monitoring driving behavior as soon as rubber met the road. Conversely, while companies like Ford and GM have far more cars in public hands, they have neither the infrastructure to collect the associated data nor the human capital to analyze it. Even Uber, which monitors behavior at the fleet level, lacks consistent access to camera feeds, which makes it difficult to put that behavior in context. This could all change with newer model cars. For example, Ford might ask a driver to take a slight detour on their route home in order to model their behavior at a tricky four-way stop sign. Similarly, insurance companies could ask to observe ongoing driving behavior in order to determine a personalized risk assessment. The result of this approach would be a much more accurate window on consumers, which could be used to accelerate learning and improve the product experience. While fully autonomous cars might still be some years off, it’s not too early to start thinking more broadly about the role that cars play in today’s society. Expanding access to on-demand transportation is certainly a step in the right direction, but still represents just one component of a much larger (and more exciting) picture of the shared economy.
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Charge trucks tackle race tracks
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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Charge, an Oxford, UK-based electric vehicle company, is testing its prototypes in the most time-honored way: at the races. Since the dawn of the automotive age, inventors and manufacturers have taken their cars to the track to test their capabilities. These trucks aren’t racing, though; they’re the official support vehicles for the all-electric racing series. Formula E provides a particular advantage for : the series uses urban street courses rather than tracks, the exact environment where Charge vehicles will be operating when they’re ready for the market. Charge plans to build small delivery vehicles and larger, full-sized trucks to fit a variety of fleet needs. The description of the vehicles seems to hint at a plug-in hybrid powertrain, since the trucks will all be zero-emissions for the first 100 miles, but a “dual mode” will allow for a range of up to 500 miles via a motor that recharges the batteries. The trucks are also designed to be modular, and Charge says that it will take one person four hours to assemble one truck. According to Charge’s math, ten men working two shifts a day could build 10,000 trucks annually. What this means to Charge is that it should be easy to scale their operations and manufacturing globally, allowing small facilities to build trucks closer to where they’ll be used rather than shipping them globally from a hub in the UK. It’s an idea both and are investigating as well. Charge’s involvement in racing doesn’t end with ferrying goods around race courses. The company is also involved in , the autonomous support race that will begin in earnest next season. Charge is helping the series develop the Robocar’s power electronics and motors. The first Charge factories will open in 2017 near the company’s headquarters, with a goal of producing electric (or hybrid electric) trucks at a price “in line with conventional trucks.” Check out the video below to see a Charge DHL delivery truck with a Formula E race car on board. https://youtu.be/dYoVn4JB1Fk
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San Francisco transit system hit with ransomware
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Kate Conger
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San Francisco’s public transit riders were greeted with an unusual message at ticket kiosks over the weekend: “You hacked.” The city’s light rail system, MUNI, was compromised in what appears to be a non-targeted ransomware attack, and riders were given on Saturday until the issue was resolved. The attacker claimed that MUNI’s data was encrypted and demanded a ransom in bitcoin. The individual initially said they didn’t expect media attention and would back off if he or she didn’t get a response from MUNI officials, but later from the city’s transit agency. “our software working completely automatically and we don’t have targeted attack to anywhere ! SFMTA network was Very Open and 2000 Server/PC infected by software ! so we are waiting for contact any responsible person in SFMTA but i think they don’t want deal ! so we close this email tomorrow,” the attacker wrote in an email to the . 'You hacked' appears on Muni screens across San Francisco — San Francisco CA (@SF_CA_RR) A MUNI spokesperson said that agency is investigating the hack and is not ready to release further information.
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Sarah Perez
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Welcome to the future of work
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Brooks Rainwater
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With advances in information technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence develop Photo courtesy of
they will revolutionize our commercial interactions and expand possibilities like never before. Photo courtesy of .
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Final Fantasy XV is finally here, celebrate with a branded Walkman
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Brian Heater
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What better way to celebrate the passage of a decade or so spent waiting for the new installment of a popular video game franchise than with ? A fitting homage to a series that dates back to the late 1980s. Sony’s marking tomorrow’s long awaited release of Final Fantasy XV with a limited edition version of its A-Series Hi-Res Audio-friendly Walkman. As , the FF XV Walkman is the latest in a marketing bonanza around the Square Enix title that also includes, of all things, a $470,000 branded version of the Audi A8. There’s not a lot to the cross over here, beyond a big “XV” and quartet of characters etched on the back pixel-style, along with a commemorative box to mark the occasion. The 16GB version of the audio player runs ¥33,880 (or about $300) in Japan and goes up from there. Cheaper than an Audi, certainly. Sony’s also bringing the XV to its headphone and Bluetooth speaker lines, along with special Hi-Res audio version of the game’s soundtrack, the latter of which runs a cool $53. All of the above look to be Japan exclusives at the moment.
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Amazon Prime Video is finally going global to give Netflix some serious competition
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Jon Russell
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, Netflix has sat alone as the sole video streaming site to be available in (almost) every country in the world. That situation looks like it will change very soon, after Amazon teased a major international expansion of its own, rival service. Amazon Prime Video is presently only available in five countries — the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria and Japan, — but Amazon dropped a heavy hint that it will expand to cover 200 markets worldwide from December. There’s a slight catch here, though. Right now only one show — The Grand Tour, — is confirmed for global audiences. But it seems likely that Amazon will either launch other shows at the same time, or at least bring them to market internationally very quickly to capitalize on the popularity of Top Gear, which was said to have an audience of 350 million worldwide at its peak. That seems to the plan at this point. A citing Amazon sources said the video service is “on the verge of a massive global rollout.” The Grand Tour itself, for which became available in current Prime Video markets yesterday, and will go global from December, according to from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and a YouTube video from the stars of the show. Already, it looks like Amazon is quietly making its shows available in some additional countries this week. that users in Australia can now access the service on the web — though mobile apps are not available locally yet — and it could be that other countries have also been let in without fanfare. If not now, then in the near future, certainly. Netflix is rivaled by a number of niche players, such as (independent films) and (Southeast Asia), but Amazon will bring some much needed competition to global markets. Amazon’s music service might be the next to expand. , arriving in the U.K., and — with , and — its media services could help give it the edge on local e-commerce rivals.
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Fresh from raising $175M, Indian chat app Hike clones Snapchat
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Jon Russell
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In its first act since in August, India-based messaging app Hike has become the latest to clone Snapchat. The Tencent deal, which valued Hike at more than $1 billion, may have raised eyebrows, but this week’s update is less surprising. Hike is in good company in taking “inspiration” from Snapchat. — — while Korea’s Snow, with 80 million downloads and , is the most notable of many Snapchat clones to emerge worldwide. launched this week introduces Stories (think Snapchat Stories, but without private messaging right now), a new camera design (think Snapchat camera) and live filters (think Snapchat filters.) Hike, which claims 100 million downloads, admits that it drew inspiration from Snapchat. But CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal told TechCrunch that the focus is on localizing the service and scaling it in India. “We’ve been thinking [about adding these features] for over a year now,” he said in an interview. “The idea isn’t new but our content is localized which makes it more fun, that’s something we’ve got good at thanks to stickers.” Originality aside, he believes Hike will enjoy first-mover advantage in India, a country that Snapchat has not prioritized at this point. “We will be the guys who bring this idea to India at scale first,” he said. Hike’s localization includes setting the duration of stories to 48 hours, unlike Snapchat’s which are set at 24 hours before they disappear. Bharti Mittal said this gives Hike users a full weekend and helps cater to data issues that some users in India are constrained by. There are also locally relevant filters, including one that turns your face into Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The crown live-filter is our way to celebrate our honourable Prime-Minister. — hike (@hikeapp) While Hike has cloned Snapchat here, for sure, Bharti Mittal argued that the changes are a result of observations that his team has made. (The recent funding helped bring the updates to market faster than expected, he said.) For one thing, Hike’s social timeline — a Facebook-like timeline inside the chat app — was no longer working as initially hoped and it has now been killed off. “While [Timeline] has done pretty well, we started to notice that as the like count increased [on photos and posts] there was more pressure to post great photos. It really went against the idea that we built Hike upon, that a user can be yourself. We started to question the role of timeline and began looking for a new social group that would complement stickers,” Bharti Mittal said. Coupled with that, the launch of and the development of other carrier’s services has meant that now one-third of Hike’s users are on 4G. “The majority [of our users have] access to 4G and Wi-Fi,” he added. “India is a sight and sound market, [so] with 4G coming in and becoming cheaper it was clear to us to bring photos and videos to the center.” Putting these new features into the app, coupled with others features and services that were inspired from other chat apps — such as games from LINE, and official accounts from WeChat — makes Hike a very different service to WhatsApp, which is India’s dominant chat app. India is also WhatsApp’s largest market, so it stands to reason that Hike must differentiate itself. Bharti Mittal, unsurprisingly, said he believes that already the two apps are “fundamentally different.” He believes that most major markets have space for “two or three” messaging apps. “We’re on a different path altogether,” he said. “These new features takes us one step more towards becoming this social messaging app.” “The camera plays a very large role,” he further explained in what seems very Snapchat-like rhetoric. “Most people think of the camera as a small app that can take photos and videos, [but] smartphones are getting eyes that can see and understand what is happening. “The camera becomes the new keyboard… the camera is by far the most frictionless way to engage with anything around you.” The Hike CEO refused to discuss what features we can expect to see in the app next, but he did say that Hike Stories would receive iterative updates to include more content, a public story option, private messaging, geotagging, etc. — nothing out of the ordinary there.
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Handshake nabs another $20M to make the job hunt more fair
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John Mannes
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Speaking from experience, finding jobs outside the region you went to college in is incredibly challenging. Sure, large Fortune 100 companies have programs in place to make it easy to recruit for offices in disparate cities, but if you are looking for a job at a company that doesn’t fit that profile, you will spend hours cold-emailing people you dug up online. This creates a world where many students just give up trying to secure their dream job and end up underemployed. , a fast-growing company servicing higher education career centers to help solve this problem, just nailed down $20 million today from to add to its already active year of fundraising. Megan Quinn, a partner at Spark, is joining Handshake’s board. Back in February, Handshake raised $10.5 million in a round led by that had participation from other high-profile investors, including , and . All of these investors joined Spark in today’s round. Garrett Lord, CEO of Handshake, explained to me that Handshake’s mission is to help college students get great jobs no matter where they live. The 43-person team has already put their product to use at more than 170 schools and is planning to target 200 more universities next year. The additional capital is going toward growing staff at the company to manage widespread demand for the platform. Today, students use Handshake, provided by colleges and universities, to manage interviews, message with recruiters and identify and pursue job and internship opportunities. The system replaces platforms that have been in place at schools for years that artificially limit where students can recruit. Trying to find a job in oil and gas in Texas, for example, would be arbitrarily difficult for a student coming from a university in California surrounded by tech companies. Handshake gives companies a single tool to post jobs across a number of schools. Everything about this entire process pretty much sucks. The value proposition for each school differs depending on the problem it is trying to solve. An engineering school, like Carnegie Mellon, might want to use Handshake to give extra prominence to liberal arts students who could otherwise fall through the cracks. Larger schools, like the University of Michigan, might want help differentiating groups studying within the same major. Lord noted that he really sees his company as a partner to university career centers. For him, the relationship doesn’t stop when a deal is signed. The two continue to work together as universities around the country begin to focus on student data and its role in improving the recruiting process for all stakeholders. Because universities have massive troves of student data at their disposal, they can take proactive steps to improve student outcomes in ways that networking platforms like LinkedIn cannot. Most career websites put the onus on users to fill out their profile and keep it up-to-date. Handshake, with its close relationships to universities, can jumpstart accounts, by populating them with data, to immediately support students. For example, the platform’s newsfeed feature can display relevant opportunities immediately upon the first login if the university provides a student’s major and year. Data holds incredible potential for recruiters, especially if it can be cleaned and standardized across schools. Recruiters will pay serious money to be able to sort computer science students by the courses on their transcript. This would require a system powerful enough to organize classes by sub-field, like data science, or even by programming language, like Python or R. Handshake is all too willing to grab on to this trend and work with universities to make the entire process more efficient.
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Crunch Report | Tesla Acquisition of SolarCity Approved
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Chris Gates
Chris Gates TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Apple addresses ‘Touch Disease’ with reduced cost repair for iPhone 6 Plus
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Devin Coldewey
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Many an iPhone 6 Plus has been struck down by the scourge known as “Touch Disease,” but Apple has not acknowledged the problem was systematic or widespread — until now. In what we have to imagine is as close to a mea culpa as Apple is likely to offer, iPhone 6 Plus devices exhibiting flickering displays and touchscreen issues are . Apple is careful to note that this problem mainly appears “after being dropped multiple times on a hard surface and then incurring further stress,” though that the problem could also be due to the phone’s infamous . Either way, some force must be exerted on the phone, resulting reliably in a critical touchscreen component being damaged or unseated — and that makes it, like it or not, at least partially a user-caused issue. Apple declining to call it a design flaw or manufacturing defect seems to be a point of pride on their part. Phones with Touch Disease will be repaired for $149, and if you previously had it repaired or replaced for similar symptoms — which might have cost you upwards of $300 — Apple will reimburse you the difference. iFixit pointed out in an email to TechCrunch that this price is about what third-party repairers have charged in the past to fix the issue, and considering refurbished phones are subject to the same problem, the 90-day warranty is rather short. Notably, the program is only for the iPhone 6 Plus, and although a similar problem has been seen on the 6, we can probably trust Apple’s numbers and say this was primarily an issue with the Plus. It certainly took long enough: It’s been more than two years since the 6 Plus was announced, and Apple never addressed the Touch Disease issue, despite it being quite common — and despite quietly reinforcing the next generation of iPhones to prevent the problem (the one they didn’t publicly acknowledge) from occurring again. In fact, it was long enough that a alleging that Apple knew the problem existed and failed to provide adequate support to affected users. I contacted the law firm leading that suit to see if the repair program affects it in any way, and will update this post if I hear back. Better late than never, though, and covering previous repairs is generous by Apple standards. Drop by an Apple store or authorized dealer, or talk to tech support to get your afflicted iPhone 6 Plus back in action.
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These Adidas shoes are biodegradable
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Brian Heater
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These Adidas kicks are woven from Biosteel fiber, a material designed to replicate spider silk that was developed by a German biotech company. The material is lighter than other synthetic materials and is quite strong. It’s also, perhaps most notably, 100 percent naturally biodegradable. Fittingly unveiled at the BIOFABRICATE conference held at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, the concept shoes were born out of the same drive toward increased sustainability that recently gave birth to the limited edition , which were created using 95 percent ocean waste. That line was limited to 7,000 shoes in its first run, with a larger run version arriving next year. [gallery ids="1417738,1417739,1417740,1417741,1417742"] VP James Carnes took to the stage at the event to outline the company’s partnership with Munich-based biotech company , the latest entry in Adidas’s forward-looking Futurecraft line. The shoes, while still prototypes, are an attempt to reach the next level of sustainability, moving beyond recycled material to a human-created material that can go back into the Earth. “In Germany, the idea of organic food is a bit of a mystery, so the idea of being environmentally friends and sustainable is also natural,” the executive told the crowd. “We thought we needed to do something that has a great impact on the world.” The material is a sort of biomimicry inspired by spider silk. The Biosteel yarn is created using natural carbon sources that are fermented and converted into a white powder. It’s already been rolled out in a number of forms for medical serves like implants and surgical meshes and has been utilized for beauty products. The company’s third division is focused on textiles, which is where Adidas comes in. The spider-inspired fabric is 100 percent biodegradable and bio-sourced. And, unlike other materials used in shoe production (see: leather), it’s completely vegan. After the presentation, the company pulled the curtain back to reveal the shoes with a bit of theatrical flair. The sneakers retain a similar aesthetic as their predecessors in the Futurecraft line. The protein-based Biosteel yarn forms a knitted top — a beige color, in the case of the shoes on display — that’s met at the bottom by large textured white soles. The material itself is hard to distinguish from other synthetic yarns at first glance and touch. It’s flexible and has a good amount of give, which should make for a decent running shoe, particularly when coupled with its tensile strength and breathability offered by the porous structure. The shoes will be available at some point in 2017. No word on pricing, but we’ll likely see a rollout similar to the one Adidas put in place with Parley, offering them up at a pricey limited edition, with a more mainstream version arriving later. They will be produced at the Speed Factories the company has been opening in the U.S. and Europe.
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Salesforce looks surprisingly good headed into the end of the year with a strong Q3
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Matthew Lynley
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Despite a weak second quarter and a lot of eyes on the end of the year, Salesforce is already starting to look pretty good again to Wall Street. The company beat analyst expectations today in its third-quarter earnings report across the board. Salesforce reported earnings of 24 cents per share on revenue of $2.14 billion. Wall Street was looking for earnings of 21 cents per share on revenue of $2.12 billion. Shares of the company, already up 2 percent on the day, shot up another 6 percent once the report came out. That’ll come as a welcome relief to the company, which . Still, the company has yet to enter the critical end of the year, and it’s going to have to show that it can offer a more complete suite of tools than emerging competitors on all ends of the spectrum. The company has had to face the reality of trying to ignite growth, whether that’s from expanding into new businesses or acquiring them. Salesforce, as part of the earnings release, said it was raising its guidance on the year by $50 million. [graphiq id=”hFAj8HcYzYh” title=”Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) Revenue & Growth Rate – Last 5 Quarters” width=”650″ height=”594″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/hFAj8HcYzYh” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/9286813/SalesforceCom-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] To partially get that done, Salesforce has been on a complete acquisition binge. This year it’s picked up and , and was even looking to shell out more than $20 billion for LinkedIn, though it inevitably lost that to Microsoft. That still hasn’t stopped it from trying to keep things difficult for Microsoft, which had just acquired one of the largest customer acquisition channels on the planet. Here’s the scorecard for the third quarter: Overall, Salesforce’s stock hasn’t seen many huge swings, though the last quarter was not a friendly one. But given that the company showed some positive signs this quarter, it looks like industry watchers can ratchet up their expectations headed into the fourth quarter. [graphiq id=”5EmS5t2P53L” title=”Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) Stock Price – Year to Date” width=”600″ height=”463″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/5EmS5t2P53L” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/9286813/SalesforceCom-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”]
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Zesty, facing stiff competition, replaces its CEO and restructures
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Lora Kolodny
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TechCrunch has learned that there has been a management shakeup at , a business catering service that’s health-minded and tech enabled. Funded by Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Forerunner Ventures and Y Combinator, Zesty has raised $20.7 million in venture funding to-date. Cofounder stepped into the CEO role in July, after the departure of his cofounding partner and Oxford University classmate David Langer, the company’s original CEO. Hollindale was originally Zesty’s CTO. Hollindale said Langer’s departure was a personal choice and declined to elaborate further. Langer, who we contacted by email, also declined to share details of his departure. He said that he is personally working on a new venture but was not yet ready to disclose details. Investors in the company could not be reached for comment. At the time when Hollindale took the reigns as CEO, Zesty restructured its teams, giving new titles to different existing employees and clarifying managerial responsibilities, he said. While the current CEO acknowledges that several employees left, following the organizational changes, he said Zesty has not laid off employees. The company bills itself as the only office caterer that is health minded and connects businesses with food prepared by local fine dining establishments. The company’s competition has ramped up in recent quarters, with raising a of venture funding this summer, and raising this spring. Both companies operate in Zesty’s back yard, the San Francisco Bay Area. Following the departure of David Langer from Zesty, Hollindale says the company has maintained its focus on offices in and around San Francisco. It has also been working with and recruiting star chefs (including ) to improve its products and operations. Keller has been helping Zesty better predict how much food is needed, on a per order basis, to keep customers happy without wasting any, Hollindale said. Food waste is not only environmentally problematic, but erodes profits both for Zesty and the restaurants it works with to make nutritious meals for its customers. Hollindale expects, no matter what is happening economically or politically in the U.S., California employers will keep offering meal perks, long-term, to appeal to millennial workers, and remain competitive from a recruiting standpoint.
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Shareholders approve Tesla acquisition of SolarCity
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Darrell Etherington
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Tesla and SolarCity leapt an important hurdle Thursday: getting shareholder sign off for the proposed acquisition of the latter by the former. Respective at both companies signaled a green light for Tesla’s plan to take over the solar energy technology provider, which Elon Musk first proposed in June. Even minus Musk and “other affiliated shareholders,” Tesla shareholders voted 85 percent in favor of the deal, and Tesla expects the transaction to close “in the coming days.” Sign-off from shareholders was essentially the last big barrier to the deal, which aims to bring together a company Elon Musk leads as CEO with one founded by his cousins where he acts as Chairman of the Board. Already, Tesla has been treating the companies as essentially unified, with an event last month that highlighted a new that was co-presented by Tesla and SolarCity execs, but treated mostly as though it were the product of a single, encompassing Tesla. In addition to the event, which included a reveal of the solar tiles along with Tesla’s new and improved Powerwall 2 home energy storage solution, Tesla at the beginning of November articulating the reasoning behind the combination of the two companies. Basically, as Musk has repeated many times, Tesla’s interest is in building an “integrated sustainable energy company,” which covers every step from energy creation, to storage and ultimately to consumption and transportation, too. Tesla also expects SolarCity to actually contribute positively to its cash balance, adding over $500 million to Tesla’s balance sheet across the next three years. Meanwhile, it says Tesla itself is in its best financial shape ever, putting it in a good position to execute on the acquisition. The tie-up between the two company’s is driven by a vision Musk maintains of a unified sustainable energy stack, and Tesla also sees it as an opportunity to promote adoption of SolarCity’s products more broadly via Tesla’s existing global relationships with loan providers, which can help finance installation of new consumer solar setups, in more places than SolarCity currently operates. Musk also anticipates a future where the market for the Powerwall and other home storage batteries far outstrips demand for Tesla vehicles, including in areas that are underserved or hard to reach for traditional grid-based power providers. A side benefit of the union could be cross-over “ , where satisfied customers of one become new clients for the other.
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Oculus is giving away its mesmerizing VR painting tool, Quill
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Lucas Matney
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VR has quite a bit to offer creative types in terms of building worlds and images that would be impossible otherwise. Oculus Story Studio is looking to redefine the concept of a digital art with their latest effort, . Oculus announced today that it will be releasing a beta of the application for free on December 6 in time for the launch of the Touch motion controllers. The input devices, which will cost $199, allow Oculus Rift users to have their hands tracked in VR experiences, something that’s pretty essential for artistic creation in VR. Oculus Quill, which I was able to play around with a bit at Oculus’ Connect developer conference last month, was built as a custom tool for Art Director Wesley Allsbrook to shape the visual style for the Oculus Story Studio original film . Much of the product was actually built during a hackathon last year by the lead engineer on the project. The product has seen a few changes since TechCrunch earlier this year. Take a look at the hauntingly cool artistic style of the yet-to-be-released short film below. The application allows for much more than doodling with sophisticated editing tools and layering options that make the most of the new Touch motion controllers. Compared to a product like Google’s Tilt Brush, which is currently only available for the HTC Vive, though a version is in the works for Oculus, Quill allows users to create a distinctly unique style that feels much more like a 3D oil painting. The product exists alongside another artistic tool, , which allows users to sculpt solid, sophisticated 3D models. The two seem to share much of the same DNA in terms of mechanics, but perhaps differ a bit in their philosophy. As opposed to taking a creation and just showing it off as an observable object, Oculus Story Studio is really trying to enhance a narrative with their artistic tools through Quill. Quill be available for free on December 6 in the Oculus Home Store and will require the new Touch motion controllers.
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Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom for computing advances
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Devin Coldewey
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President Obama awarded the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to a batch of 21 deserving recipients, . Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who died in 1992 and thus is awarded the medal posthumously, was a major figure in the development of fundamental computing systems. She worked on some of the earliest computers ever made, like the Mark I, programming and performing research alongside the likes of Howard Aiken and John von Neumann. She aided in the construction of UNIVAC and created the first working compiler. If she had retired then, in 1952, she would already be considered a critical part of the development of the modern computer. But she continued her work, under public and private auspices, leading to the creation of many of what could be considered the first modern programming languages (you see the COBOL book in her hand above) and helping the Navy standardize and modernize its computing infrastructure. She’s even credited with popularizing, if not inventing, the modern definition of “debugging” after a moth was found in Harvard’s Mark II computer. Her forward-thinking attitude is crystallized in a phrase that is now commonplace: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” It should come as no surprise that this led to the nickname “Amazing Grace.” Margaret Hamilton came onto the scene a bit later, when programming computers was less a confidential government initiative and more a niche scientific pursuit. She had studied math, and got a job as a programmer at MIT to support her husband (who was attending Harvard) and daughter. Her capacity was quickly recognized and she was tapped to work with the Apollo program, creating the mission’s onboard flight systems. Apollo 11 ran her software, and at a critical moment during the lunar landing demonstrated its reliability — and also the importance of good documentation — when it activated alarms related to receiving more input than it could handle. The astronauts and mission control recognized that these errors in particular were something a computer could handle, though — the program prioritized critical systems, as it was designed to do, instead of shutting down or delaying calculations, and the landing was accomplished successfully. “Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. We had to find a way and we did,” “Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.” Hamilton has continued working on software engineering — she coined the term, by the way — in the private sector ever since. That they were women in fields and cultures at the time utterly dominated by men only adds to the luster of their achievements; Rear Admiral Hopper and Hamilton are inspiring figures for anyone looking to enter the fields of computer science and engineering. They’re joined by Frank Gehry, Bill and Melinda Gates and a host of others in this batch of recipients. The medals will be presented on November 22.
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President Obama on fake news problem: “We won’t know what to fight for”
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Darrell Etherington
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President Barack Obama spoke in Berlin Thursday during a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and during his remarks he addressed concerns about fake news circulating via social platforms like Facebook. On the subject of fake news, Obama noted that the ease with which we can make false information seem like genuine facts on platforms including “a Facebook page” means there’s great risk for audiences. Media Matters of Obama’s address in the following video, with a transcript that follows: President Obama: "There's so much active misinformation" on Facebook that looks identical to real information — Media Matters (@mmfa) Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. We won’t know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted. Obama’s comments suggest he believes that the propagation of fake news through outlets like Facebook and Google News represent a true threat to some of the fundamental building blocks of U.S. society. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed has renewed discussion of the impact of false news spread via Facebook on the U.S. election with a spanning the three months prior to the vote, which found that false headlines outperformed genuine ones in terms of engagement.
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Alexa will soon be able to send text messages through AT&T
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Brian Heater
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Alexa’s on a quite a roll of late. Amazon’s AI assistant is adding new skills all the time, and this week the company’s adding one of its highest profile partners. On November 19, Alexa will get the , allowing AT&T subscribers to text one of ten predetermined contacts using their voice. The skill works pretty much as you’d expect. Ask Alexa to text a friend on your contacts list and she’ll prompt you to speak the message, freeing you up to wash the dishes, your plants, play the glockenspiel and whatever it is people do with their hands while not sending a text. There’s not really a heck of a lot more to it than that, really. The skill marks the first of its kind from a carrier, and looks to be part of a bigger deal between Amazon and AT&T that will also make Echo and Echo Dots available through the carrier’s retail stores on November 18.
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How mixed reality and machine learning are driving innovation in farming
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Jeff Kavanaugh
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Farming is, by far, the most mature industry mankind has created. Dating back to the dawn of civilization, farming has been refined, adjusted and adapted — but never perfected. We, as a society, always worry over the future of farming. Today, we even apply terms usually reserved for the tech sector — digital, IoT, AI and so on. So why are we worrying? The Economist, in its , proclaims agriculture will soon need to become more manufacturing-like in order to feed the world’s growing population. crops will soon need to become more drought resistant in order to effectively grow in uncertain climates. Farms, , will soon need to learn how to harvest more with less water. And they’re right. If farms are to continue to feed the world’s population they will have to do so in manners both independent of, and accommodating to, the planet’s changing and highly variable climes. That necessitates the smart application of both proven and cutting-edge technology. It necessitates simplified interfaces. And, of course, it necessitates building out and applying those skills today. Fortunately, the basics for this future . For example, vertical farming, a technique allowing farmers to grow and harvest crops in controlled environments, often indoors and in vertical stacks, has exploded in both popularity and potential. In fact, this method has been shown to grow some crops . , capable of withstanding droughts and floods, are making harvests possible even in the driest of conditions, like those found in Kenya. But managing such progress, whether indoors or in the field, is a challenge unto itself. Monitoring acidity, soil nutrients and watering time for each plant for optimal growth is, at best, guesswork or, at worst, an afterthought. But it’s here new interactive technologies may shine. A small family of sensors can monitor a plant’s vitals and provide real-time updates to a remote server. Artificial intelligence’s younger cousin, machine learning, can study these vitals and the growth of some crops to anticipate future needs. Finally, augmented reality (AR), where informative images overlay or augment everyday objects, can help both farmers and gardeners to monitor and manage crop health. Plant.IO* is one system that shows how it can be done: A cube of PVC pipes provides the frame for sensors, grow-lights, cameras and more. A remote server dedicated to machine learning analyzes growth and growth conditions and anticipates future plant needs. A set of AR-capable glasses provides to the user an image, or a representation, of the plant, regardless of location. If the AR device is capable, like the Microsoft HoloLens, it also can provide a means to interact with the plant by adjusting fertilizer, water flow, growth lights and more. This methodology, when paired with gamification, may lend itself to a new, simplified form of crop management. Together, AI and AR make it simple and fun for everyone from adults to adolescents to monitor and manage their own gardens from home and afar. This idea is at the heart of Plant.IO: a fun, workable solution for an agriculture-based scenario where digital information can overlay a physical object or area without losing context. In fact, this sort of management system could extend beyond gardens and farms. Any scenario where a physical environment exists alongside measurable data could, potentially, benefit from an AR/AI deployment. Industrial operations, such as warehouse management, are a promising area. Industrial farming, where the combination of AI and infrared cameras to measure a field’s health, is another. With the right formula of AR and AI, users can monitor and nurture plants from virtually anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter if they’re growing plants on their kitchen counter, or preparing for their next harvest. Better yet, they can do this with the latest information on a plant’s acidity, nutrient, watering levels and more in an environmentally sound manner. The first industrial revolution helped us go from the fields to the cities with the productivity gains from machine farming. This industrial revolution is using machine learning and other digital “implements” to take farming even further — and to feed the world.
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Student’s iDentifi app puts object recognition in the hands of the visually impaired
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Devin Coldewey
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For someone who is blind or partially sighted, everyday tasks can be a pain — choosing the right can from the pantry, for instance, or picking up the right book from the table. A smartphone could help them with this kind of problem, of course, if it knew how to identify objects and describe them to the user — which is precisely what does. , lets users point the camera at an object and receive a description of it shortly after: “Red headphones,” or “a bottle of Darigold milk on a wood table.” It isn’t the only app out there that can tell what it’s looking at, but it has the advantage of being aimed at visually impaired users and multiple languages from the start. Anmol Tukrel began working on it a year ago after learning about the possibilities of machine learning and computer vision. He started making his own neural network, but found that publicly available APIs provided enough speed and accuracy that he could focus on the other parts of the app without having to start from scratch. iDentifi uses Google Vision, CloudSight and Google Translate, so the AI bits are trusted resources. They also have been trained on a wide variety of objects and expressions, so it won’t be stumped easily. The rest of the app is carefully designed to be operable by someone who has limited or no sight: bright colors and large regions with spoken cues when you tap them make it easy to navigate the main menu, a familiar camera interface and options to change object recognition mode (fast or accurate, basically) and text read-off speed. “Feedback from the visually impaired community has been overwhelmingly positive,” Tukrel wrote in an email to TechCrunch. “They find it useful in doing day-to-day tasks, reading and browsing the web. For example, if they went grocery shopping and wanted to find out if the can of soda they were holding was Coke or Pepsi, normally they’d have to find someone and ask, however, with iDentifi they can just take a picture of the can and get an audible description within a few seconds.” The app also reads text, so signs, menus, pages of books, magazine covers and other things that might have required close inspection or the help of someone nearby can be identified easily. Braille is a great standard, but not always present or easy to find. iDentifi has been on Canadian TV and radio, and has collected accolades from a number of universities up there. Tukrel also has been working with several organizations representing the visually impaired, which he says have been happy to collaborate with him. Although the app is out today, Tukrel plans to keep developing it. “My short-term goal for this app is to bring it to Android,” he wrote. But beyond that, he suggested a number of features he’d like to add: “Finally,” he wrote, “I hope to keep this app completely free, in order for it to help as many people as possible.” We hope so too. , and I’ll update this post when an Android version is available.
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Airbnb is turning itself into an ‘experience’ machine beyond just booking places to stay
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Matthew Lynley
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Airbnb is looking to move beyond the simple experience of booking a place to stay — moving part of the responsibility of figuring out what to do in those places to Airbnb and its hosts instead. That’s the goal of the company’s new ‘experiences’ feature in the Airbnb app. In addition to booking places to stay, hosts and locals can offer different tours, events and other things along those lines. The goal, CEO Brian Chesky said onstage at an event, was to give travelers guidance on what they are supposed to do when they finally get there. This has been in the works for a while. As of June, . For Airbnb, at a company level, this gives the company another way to give a layer of interaction with the travel experience. That gives it a way to monetize additional parts of the experience, which could help it continue to grow into a more full-fledged company. While traditionally competing with hotel companies like Marriott, Airbnb can move beyond just being a booking and stay service into something more. If you’ve traveled — domestically or, in particular, abroad — the process of figuring out what to do can be paralyzing at times. “Go see this museum,” or, “you have to try the food,” can be incredibly vague and generalizations of the overall experience. Airbnb wants to focus those down into more targeted recommendations for things to do. Airbnb users can basically craft these experiences — which in the app are displayed through a sort of carousel of cinematic posters — and sell them. Most of the experiences cost under $200, Chesky said. The experiences show a kind of preview for them before users end up booking them. Example experiences could be walking tours or lessons in astronomy in the area, the company demoed on stage. This, also, gives hosts the ability to make money beyond just booking their homes — or even in lieu of that. With the gig economy increasingly growing, this is a new way for locals who are experts in the area and good at building experiences a way to generate some additional cash on the side. Airbnb, beyond that, seems to be trying to capture the complete trip experience down to booking reservations at restaurant. Users can also browse their previous trips, as well. When anything is booked, the reservation goes into an itinerary — places, experiences or meet-ups for example — and users can basically check their phone as to what to do next while they’re traveling. Getting beyond just the booking experience is going to be doubly important for Airbnb as it continues to face increasing pressure from regulators. Last month, Airbnb over legislation that would make it illegal to advertise accommodations that can’t legally be rented out for less than 30 days. That could help it, in the end, not grow into its $30 billion valuation, but help it continue to grow beyond that. It gives it a way to expand the overall scope of the company to one where it not only competes with hotels, but also control the fate of the tourism agency in general. The changes are currently live, Chesky said. The company is starting in 12 cities.
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Romain Dillet
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Senior benefits platform Renew.com raises $3 million to help retiring baby boomers
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Sarah Buhr
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has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Venrock, Expa and others to launch a platform aiming to give the baby boomer generation adequate information on their benefits after retirement. American companies started to shift away from pensions and healthcare benefits packages for retirees in the mid-1980s, leaving the last bit of the boomers without the same compensations their parents enjoyed at the sunset of their careers. Add that to the fact that roughly 10,000 people in the baby boomer generation are expected to retire between now and the next decade and you can imagine there’s a lot of work about to go into helping them with the shift to their golden years. Renew says it wants to help baby boomers get the right benefits for them. “Retirees used to leave work with a host of benefits… They now leave with a cardboard box with a few picture frames from their desk,” co-founder Kevin Nazemi told TechCrunch. Nazemi built Renew.com with his friend Tony DeGangi after seeing how difficult the transition was for many of the people using a site he previously co-founded, Oscar Health. “The consistent thing was everybody was confused — including my mother, who’s a doctor herself,” he said. Nazemi wanted to create something he’d feel comfortable sending his own parents to. But the real market for the company is in getting human resource personnel to tell transitioning employees about the site. Though it might not be much of a struggle to sell HR on the idea. As Nazemi explains, the transition often takes up a lot of time and resources in that department. Also, it’s not ideal for retired employees to get on COBRA as it’s costly for the company and the retiree. How it works, once the employer agrees to use the site as a resource, is the retiree signs up on the site and then the employer sends a lot of the retiring employee’s info to Renew. Renew then curates a list of recommended benefits to suit the retirees’ particular needs. The retiree then chooses the package they think works best for them and Renew walks them through the process to get set up. The site is free to both retiring employees and to the employer, but, similar to Zenefits and other cloud benefits platforms, Renew makes its money off brokerage commissions. So far the startup has hired a team of 20 in Venice Beach, California to build out the brand. It plans to roll out its initial product in the latter half of 2017. WTI, Madrona, Refactor Capital and various other angel investors also participated in the round.
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iCloud stores your iPhone’s call history for four months
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Romain Dillet
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If you share the same Apple ID with your family, you may have noticed that the call history gets synced between those devices. and found out that Apple stores this log on its servers for up to four months and law enforcement could take advantage of it. Apple wants you to be able to browse your missed calls on multiple devices. That’s why the company is using iCloud to sync this data between all devices associated with the same Apple ID. As soon as you activate iCloud, your iPhone will start uploading this log. Even if you disable everything (calendars, contacts, etc.) and just keep iCloud activated, your call history will get synced. With iOS 10, VoIP apps, such as FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp and Viber also now appear in your call history. You can manually delete a call and it will get deleted on iCloud’s servers and all your devices. That’s not necessarily an issue, until you remember that Apple holds the iCloud encryption keys. So it means that the FBI could ask for this data, and Apple is able to comply. Apple plans to to keep the government away by handing you the encryption keys, but it’s not ready yet. Also worth remembering, if you activate iCloud backups, your iPhone will send to iCloud — your text messages, your call history, your notes… Given that it’s quite a popular feature, many already accepted to hand out their call history to Apple. But there are still a couple of issues. First, four months seem like quite a long time for a call history. I don’t know anyone who browses back so far in the past to figure out who called them four months ago. Second, Apple should explicitly tell you what gets synced to iCloud’s servers once you activate the feature. Many features are quite obvious thanks to settings toggles. But Apple should still educate its users about what is synced by default, even when everything seems off. Finally, the notion of encryption keys is quite complicated. Many people don’t understand how encryption works. Sure, a hacker can’t simply hack Apple’s servers and download your iCloud data. But many people don’t know that Apple can actually decrypt their backups without your approval. Here’s a quick rundown of what a government entity or a hacker can do to access your data. With a court order, Apple can share your iCloud data with a government entity. Apple has to access iCloud data. Many governments can also access metadata information by asking phone carriers. Without a court order, a hacker needs your login and password to access your iCloud account. Applications like lets you then download some or all of this data. That’s why it’s important to enable for your Apple ID and be aware of the content of your iCloud account. An Apple spokesperson has provided the following statement: “We offer call history syncing as a convenience to our customers so that they can return calls from any of their devices. Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ data. That’s why we give our customers the ability to keep their data private. Device data is encrypted with a user’s passcode, and access to iCloud data including backups requires the user’s Apple ID and password. Apple recommends all customers select strong passwords and use two-factor authentication.”
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PlayStation Vue’s TV streaming service arrives on Apple TV
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Sarah Perez
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Apple may not have yet launched its own TV streaming service, but there’s now another way to watch live television on Apple’s set-top box: Apple TV application . The service, which is available on Apple TV 4th-generation devices, offers all of Vue’s standard features, including its cloud DVR and support for simultaneous streams, and it works with the Siri Remote, the company says. Sony has been working to bring the service to more platforms in recent months, in order to make the streaming TV service more accessible to those who don’t have a PlayStation gaming console. In October, for example, , and this month, it for Mac and PC users. However, Apple TV support remained one of users’ top requests, says Sony. A competitor to Dish’s Sling TV, and soon, Hulu’s live TV service, as well as AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Vue has been focused on promoting its feature set and user experience as its biggest differentiating factors. While the service unfortunately just , Sony still believes its larger selling points like its cloud DVR will give it an edge over rivals. In addition, compared with Sling TV, Vue lets you watch on more devices at the same time, making it a better fit for larger families where several people want to watch different programs on their own devices and TV sets. With Vue, you can watch on up to five devices at once, while Sling’s best plan (Sling Blue) only allows up to three simultaneous streams. The availability of the live channels — like NBC, Fox, ESPN, NFL Network and others — will depend on where you live. But you’re also able to add on premium networks like AMC, FX, HBO and Showtime, to round out the experience. And PlayStation Vue offers a few different pricing tiers ranging from those who want a more basic experience to those who want all of Vue’s channels, including sports, movies and premium networks. The Apple TV app is straightforward to use. Tabs at the top let you move in between the programming guide, access search or adjust your settings. And its simplified layout is much easier to navigate that the messy interface offered by Sling TV, in terms of aesthetics. Though ultimately, the choice of which streaming TV service will come down to a number of factors beyond looks. With Vue’s continued expansion to support more devices, higher number of simultaneous streams and other unique features, it’s definitely one that should be considered when cutting the cord for good.
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Crunch Report | Snapchat Starts Selling Spectacles
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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You could become a pilot in the Drone Racing League if you’re good at this racing simulator
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Fitz Tepper
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Today the , a league that has to broadcast races this season, launched a . And perhaps even more interesting, the league will be teaming up with Bud Light to host Drone Racing League tryouts on the simulator, with the winner receiving a $75,000 contract to compete in the 2017 season. The simulator itself is pretty basic – it’s available for PC and Mac, and can gives you a first person view of a racing drone flying on different courses. You can control the drone with the arrow keys (not recommended), a bluetooth controller or Xbox controller, or specialized drone controller that can be connected to your computer. The game itself offers a tutorial (which teaches you how to fly as well as the rules of drone racing), free flight mode, campaign and even a live multiplayer mode. You can also see the time trial rankings for the official tryouts from both within the game and . [gallery ids="1414522,1414523,1414524"] I first tried the simulator (which is a downloadable game) on my MacBook with no controller, and while the slender laptop was able to power up the game it ran at a really low frame rate, it was basically unplayable. I then switched over to the gaming PC I use to power my Oculus Rift setup, where it ran flawlessly. Once running on a powerful PC with a connected Xbox controller I actually had a lot of fun playing. The graphics were great (comparable to a high-quality PC game) and it’s probably a game I’d actually pay money for. That being said, actually flying a drone and racing without crashing in the game was insanely hard, even with controller. But to be honest it actually mimicked my experience flying real FPV racing drones, which are also insanely hard to fly. A tip if you decide to try playing yourself: be extremely gentle with the joysticks! In terms of the tryout component, DRL says that the top 24 participants (who complete the simulation course in the shortest amount of time) will be invited to compete in a live finals simulation tournament in January, with the winner of that getting the $75,000 racing contract. While this is definitely at least partially a marketing gimmick, it’s actually smart to use a simulator as a way to scout out future pilots from around the world. The barrier to entry for real drone racing is extremely high (you need a lot of money and a lot of open space), so there are definitely people missing out who could actually be really good pilots. You can download the simulator if you want to try it out. The league also launched its first commercial tonight, which aired during a race tonight on ESPN.
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AfterShokz adds some wires to its Trekz bone conduction headphones for a big price drop
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Brian Heater
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Bone conduction has been around in some form or another for some time now, but the technology still hasn’t managed to crack the mainstream. New York-based hardware startup AfterShokz may have come the closest with its line of crowdfunded Trekz wireless headphones. The Bluetooth sport bands offered up good design and patented bone conduction technology that manages to vibrate their wearer’s skull at sufficient volume — one of the biggest issues with the technology in the past. Of course, the $130 asking price is probably a bit north of what some are willing to pay for a pair of workout headphones. The company has released wired headphones in the past, but the new essentially brings all that was good about the Trekz, but adds a cable to the proceedings, effectively dropping the price $80 in the process. The headphones feature a similar fit, coupled with a sweat-resistant, titanium-based build and the same audio technologies that power the Trekz. While they’re wired, the do still require a charge in order to actually power the bone conduction, but should get about 12 hours per — double the time of the Trekz. They come in two varieties, with and without mic, priced at $60 and $50, respectively.
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Zuckerberg denies Facebook News Feed bubble impacted the election
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John Mannes
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In the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at Techonomy16 to Zuckerberg insisted that more can always be done to improve the , but that Facebook could not have influenced the outcome of the election. “Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, of which it’s a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said. He continued by saying people are looking for a narrative to explain the election. However, he believes that a narrative that implicitly assumes Trump supporters are dumb enough to be manipulated by Facebook is insulting to those voters. In his view, It was just as likely for News Feed to highlight fake news about Clinton — but the media remains steadfast in ignoring that Trump supporters ultimately believed their candidate can bring them a better life. “People are smart and they understand what’s important to them,” noted Zuckerberg. Rather than placing blame on the accessibility of facts, he pointed to content engagement as the problem. Zuckerberg noted that Trump’s posts got more engagement than Clinton’s on Facebook. Facebook research shows that nearly everyone on the platform is connected with at-least someone that has opposing ideological beliefs. The real question for Zuckerberg is how to influence the way people react when they see a post they disagree. The key is to stop them from brushing it under the rug. To get there, Facebook is making efforts to involve humans more deeply in the creation of the ranking algorithms the company uses for content. News Feed now has a human quality panel that is used to hone in rankings. Humans are given stories and asked to rank them to get a better idea of what makes a particular story fulfilling for the user. Zuckerberg had previously only addressed the election in a Facebook post featuring a photograph of his daughter Max. He noted at that time that, “We are all blessed to have the ability to make the world better, and we have the responsibility to do it,” but didn’t elaborate on what that meant specifically for him and his company. Adam Mosseri, VP of Product Management for NewsFeed, , though his brief comments were notably less skeptical of the importance of removing propaganda. “We understand there’s so much more we need to do, and that is why it’s important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation,” Mosseri noted. Despite all of the global concern about Trump’s win, Zuckerberg did take a moment to make it clear that he doesn’t believe any single person can fundamentally alter the arc of technological innovation. The following transcription has been edited slightly for readability. It contains the largest chunk of Zuckerberg’s commentary about the role of News Feed in the election. If you want to see the entire talk,
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Yahoo admits employees discovered hack in 2014
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Kate Conger
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Yahoo admitted today that some of its employees were aware of the as early as 2014 — years before Yahoo publicly acknowledged the hack. The hack, which Yahoo has attributed to an unnamed “state-sponsored actor,” occurred in late 2014, and according to with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems Yahoo detected it early on. “In late July 2016, a hacker claimed to have obtained certain Yahoo user data. After investigating this claim with the assistance of an outside forensic expert, the Company could not substantiate the hacker’s claim. Following this investigation, the Company intensified an ongoing broader review of the Company’s network and data security, including a review of prior access to the Company’s network by a state-sponsored actor that the Company had identified in late 2014,” Yahoo said in the filing. Yahoo also reported that 23 consumer class action lawsuits have been filed in response to the breach, but that it’s too early to estimate monetary damages. It estimates the hack has led to a loss of $1 million so far. The question of when Yahoo learned of the breach is essential to its planned sale to Verizon. Verizon has reportedly asked for a in light of the breach, which was not disclosed until after the September sale even though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer allegedly learned of the breach in July. (Disclosure: Verizon owns TechCrunch.) In today’s filing, Yahoo says it has formed an independent committee to review “the scope of knowledge within the Company in 2014 and thereafter regarding this access, the Security Incident, the extent to which certain users’ account information had been accessed.” Senator Mark Warner has asked the SEC to investigate what Yahoo knew about the breach and when it knew it, citing an earlier Yahoo filing that claimed the company was not aware of any security breaches. “Yahoo’s September filing asserting lack of knowledge of security incidents involving its IT systems creates serious concerns about truthfulness in representations to the public,” Warner said in a .
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Slice makes it easy for you to order from your favorite pizzeria
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Anthony Ha
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Does the world need another food ordering app? No? Well, what about an app that’s all about pizza? The startup formerly known as MyPizza has already been working with independent pizzerias by helping them to accept online orders. (It’s also provided pizza at TechCrunch meetups.) Recently, it as and . The goal is to make it as easy as possible to order pizza on your phone. When you open the app the first time, you get a list of nearby pizzerias and once you’ve chosen one, you can create a custom pizza order. While you can still find new pizzerias when you make subsequent, the app also makes it easy to order the exact same pizza from the same pizzeria with just the tap of a button. CEO Ilir Sela told me that Slice could also be useful in a much broader range of locations than most food ordering apps. If you don’t live in a big city, there might not be any restaurants nearby that offer delivery via Seamless — but chances are there’s a pizzeria. Watch the video above to get a quick walkthrough of the app.
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Five industries that should take a cue from Netflix and crowdsource parts of its tech
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Devin Guan
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In 2006, Netflix took a long, hard look at its world-class Cinematch Technology. Cinematch was as straightforward as it sounds: With user-submitted data, the technology could predict which movies a user may or may not enjoy. With it, Netflix created personalized movie recommendation lists, custom-built for each individual user. Cinematch worked, but behind the scenes, Netflix worried it was not operating at full potential. So, in a move completely unheard of at the time, Netflix made public a huge set of its anonymous rating data and issued a global challenge: develop an algorithm that could beat it. The Netflix Prize, as it came to be known, was the first large-scale public crowdsourced competition of its kind. The competition helped draw attention to the value of recommendation engines across the world. Soon, e-commerce companies were touting similar technology, and, as a result, the internet became a better place for consumers and for brands. The Netflix Prize opened new doors for data science, and pushed it to new heights. Now, nearly 10 years since we handed out the million-dollar Netflix Prize, I think it’s time for five more industries to issue a “Netflix Prize” of their own. By crowdsourcing for solutions using machine learning to utilize the abundant data available across these five industries, we can find relevant signals and patterns among the noise and make these industries not only more efficient, but also more integral to improving our lives. The security industry, and specifically methods around risk and fraud detection, is a very rules-driven market. When consumers make purchases online or in stores with a credit card, the card issuer will run a quick approval process that involves questions such as: Is the consumer’s account in good standing? Is the card being used at a merchant that’s relevant to the consumer? Is the location of the store in line with locations of recent purchases? Based on these (and several more) data points, the transaction is either approved or denied. These rules-based authentication systems are woefully incomplete, and often unable to adapt the changing nature of data. There is so much more data about consumers and their devices, both online and offline, that can be taken into consideration. A crowdsourced competition, like the Netflix Prize, could provide the opportunity to expose user patterns across devices, time and location to uncover unique user behavior that provides a more complete view of the purchaser. Ultimately, applying machine learning to the security industry could allow security teams to build adaptive learning strategies to not only make fraudulent transactions less likely, but also ensure legitimate transactions aren’t flagged. Data is the key to saving lives, but right now, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers largely operate in their own silos. This is a poorly designed system for solving critical health issues. A crowdsourced Netflix Prize for medicine and healthcare could produce radical results. In fact, there is already evidence to support it. In 2012, the pharmaceutical company Merck hosted a contest wherein it shared data on the chemical structure of thousands of different molecules, and tasked the scientific community to identify which might lead to new and better drugs. The winning result demonstrated a 17 percent improvement over the industry standard benchmark, and blazed new avenues for pharmaceutical research aided by machine learning. Beyond chemical data, patients have generations’ worth of family data we willingly provide to doctors. From heart-rate records, urine samples, family history, blood pressure and pages and pages of doctors’ notes, the body is one large data science dream. If we apply big data machine learning techniques to all of that data, while complying with HIPAA patient confidentiality, could medical professionals detect patterns and susceptibilities in families and individuals before they become a problem? Likewise, if we were able to input every piece of data from every drug study, we could potentially make better predictions about drugs, beyond even the Merck example. In the world of advertising and marketing technology, a big gap that every brand, agency and enterprise faces is digital identity. The issue stems from the global phenomenon of device proliferation. Between our smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected TVs, smartwatches and even connected cars, our digital lives are extremely fragmented, and customer experiences on the internet are largely broken. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others have “solved” this by forcing a login. For example, my Facebook News Feed is identical on mobile and desktop; Amazon recommended products that are consistent across devices and unique to me. But what about the rest of the internet? What about the time I spend online and in apps where I’m not logged in? The good news is that the internet, by definition, is a boundless sea of data. Browser data, device data, location data, usage data, network data — enough data to keep an army of data scientists busy trying to resolve identity by using these signals. Several companies are already addressing this question of digital identity, but there are few, if any, open standards and very limited collaboration. If solved by a crowdsourced data science competition, digital identity can revolutionize online experiences for both brands and consumers. Recommendations and content can be personalized, and marketing can be automated. Cross-device attribution becomes simple, and the marketer’s view of consumers becomes holistic. Think of all the data we issue every morning while combating our daily commutes. We input data to Waze, share our location and speed with GPS, drive through speed monitor zones and even provide license plate information and traffic patterns with intersection cameras and toll booths. There’s data coming from millions of drivers, and even more from buses and trains. What if there were a crowdsourced “Netflix Prize” to produce an open-source program that could tell us exactly when to leave our house to minimize our commute time or arrive precisely when we want, beyond what Google Maps can do today. If all of this data was more widely available to data scientists, a data science challenge could help determine how many lanes to have open at a given time of day, how to fluctuate tolls dynamically based on traffic needs, how to monitor and rate the changing of traffic signals and much more. Machine learning in this realm could vastly improve traffic flows and create a more efficient transportation environment and experience. , Earth will be home to nine billion people. That’s a 35 percent increase from today, or two billion additional mouths to feed. Can our current agricultural practices keep up with that demand for food without wreaking havoc on the planet? Agriculture has become one of the most contested practices when it comes to environmentalism. Crops take water, emit carbon dioxide, require pesticides and send runoff nitrogen and other waste into our precious water. It’s time for a more data-driven approach to farming. From weather patterns to soil nutrient levels, even insect life and plant growth records, agricultural data can be used to determine not only which crops to plant, but also when to do it, where to do it, how to harvest and even how much to irrigate. The Farmer’s Almanac and human hunches have been trusted sources for centuries, but at this crucial turning point, is it possible to make the industry a more precise science, and potentially save our race? By implementing a crowdsourced solution that fuses machine learning with innovative engineering, we could build sustainable solutions to support generations to come. Ten years ago, the Netflix Prize used data and science to change recommendation engines for the better. Algorithmic intelligence changed the things we watched on our screens. What would happen if we applied those same concepts to other industries? These five are just the beginning.
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Snowden says tech companies should protect privacy no matter who is president
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Devin Coldewey
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an extended interview today touching on numerous topics, from the Trump Presidency to his own future. Overall his message was clear: it’s not about thwarting one leader or even one government, but using technology that guarantees rights across borders and administrations. In other words: don’t hate, innovate. One of the early questions in the interview, which lasted a bit under an hour and was sponsored by Startpage.com, was posed by Phil Zimmerman, creator of the PGP encryption protocol. Trump, he said, would be inheriting a powerful surveillance infrastructure — something that worries many. “We should be cautious about putting too much faith or fear in elected officials,” Snowden said. “We’re never farther than an election away from a change in leader, from a change in policy, a change in the way the powers we have constructed into a system are used. So what we need to think about now is not how do we defend against a president Donald Trump, but how do we protect the rights of everyone, everywhere, without regard to jurisdictions, without regard to borders?” “Ultimately,” he said, “if we want to see a change, we must force it through ourselves.” Of course, until we do, there are good and bad ways of going about the business of communicating online. Snowden suggested that we need to look for companies “that see you as their primary customer.” In other words, not Facebook or Google. “Everything you type into that Google prompt is being saved forever,” he pointed out (to the evident glee of his interviewer, who represents a Google alternative). Whereas in the case of encrypted messaging app Signal, which fought and triumphed over a government gag order to reveal orders to turn over information on a user. Because Signal is end-to-end encrypted, all it could turn over — even had it wanted to give more — was a phone number (which the government already had), an account creation date, and a last login time. “The best way to defend against it,” Snowden said, in reference to the surveillance apparatus, “is to make sure you do not collect information, as a business, that you do not need.” His voice joins a chorus of others calling for companies to rein in data collection ahead of Trump’s inauguration, after which many expect an expansion of powers in law enforcement and surveillance. Snowden had very little practical advice other than using encryption and two-factor authentication. He did endorse Signal more than once, however, as he has done before. As for himself, he downplayed the idea that Trump and Putin would change the existing stalemate regarding his asylum. “I don’t worry about it,” Snowden said. “It would be crazy to dismiss the idea of this guy who presents himself as a big deal-maker, trying to make a deal. But the President of Russia has said on camera that the people of Russia consider me a human rights defender, and regardless of the position that we have on Russian politics — which obviously have a lot of problems — they said that Russia is not a country that extradites human rights defenders.” He also discussed where work needs to be done in the future. “Encryption protects what you said on a phone call as it crosses the internet, it protects what was written in a text message, it protects your picture so no one can see it,” he said. “But it does disguise the fact that you sent a photograph or made a phone call. These things on their own can be very dangerous. Metadata of your activities can often be collected even without the involvement of a court. This means you can create perfect records of private lives without ever reading what was actually said.” His suggestion: “We have to find a way to protect not only the content of communication, but to disguise the fact that the communication ever happened at all. The fact that phone called phone should be invisible to the vast majority.” Tor is a start, he said, but crude, like the first wheel. The very nature of how information is broadcast over radio frequency may need to be questioned, he mused. But the greater problem, in his opinion, is that we even to think about this stuff. “You as an individual should not have to make these decisions,” he said. “Privacy is the foundation of all other rights,” and as such should be fundamental. Waxing philosophical, he continued, saying that privacy has little value for the majority, the people in positions of power who don’t need to watch what they say. “Minorities, vulnerable populations, people who don’t fit in — if you disagree with the majority opinion, you are the ones privacy is for. If you argue that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, that’s no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say. It’s an antisocial argument.” To protect this right, Snowden returned to the concept of privacy being enforced not through legislation, but technology. “When the law fails, when we find out that the law is not enough, that the law is only the smallest guarantee of our rights, support technology, corporations, groups, and individuals who are trying to enforce your rights directly,” he said, “through science, through math, through technology, to ensure that any government anywhere must respect your rights — because no amount of violence, no amount of military force will ever solve a math problem.” Although Snowden largely avoided addressing the risks of a Trump Presidency during his talk, the mask did crack slightly as he led up to an inspiring finish to one of the later questions. “”Despite the challenges we have in the United States, despite the changes in government, despite some of the concerning statements made by our new President-elect, this is a nation that will strive to get better,” he said. “This is a dark moment in our nation’s history – but it is not the end of history. and if we work together, we can build something better.”
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Luke Beatty departs AOL
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Sarah Buhr
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AOL’s president of media brands is stepping down from his position today to spend more time with family. Beatty ran AOL’s tech blogs — including TechCrunch and Engadget — as well as several other online media properties for the company. He came to AOL from TechStars after serving as Yahoo’s vice president and general manager. Beatty also founded Associated Content (which Yahoo acquired). We should note Verizon, AOL’s parent company, is currently in for a Yahoo acquisition and there are likely many moving parts with this position in the future. But now it seems Beatty, who’s been with AOL for more than three years, is ready for a break. AOL tells us Jared Grusd will be stepping up in Beatty’s absence to oversee iBrands, in addition to the Huffington Post. “Luke Beatty has been a champion for iBrands and AOL for the last three years. We owe him a huge thank you for his passion and leadership. He will be missed,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. While it’s not clear how the change affects TechCrunch (if at all) our editor-in-chief (aka my boss) Matthew Panzarino also gave his condolences, “Luke was a great partner and friend, and I wish both he and the fish he is about to terrorize all the best. Whoever lands at his desk has big shoes to fill.”
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How auto unlock makes the Mac more accessible
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Steven Aquino
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A USB stick that can test HIV levels in under 30 minutes
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Brian Heater
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PillDrill gets $3 million in funding for its medication tracking system
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
| 11
| 10
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Announced earlier this year, the PillDrill is a simple system designed to take some of the pain out of remembering to take medication – taking things between those big plastic pill boxes with the help of a little 21 century connectivity. The system is built around the Pill Drill Hub, which offers up an audio/visual reminder when the time comes to take a dose. Once the pills are taken and a barcode is waved in front of the scanner, the WiFi connected system sends updates to friends and family members, keeping them abreast of the user’s daily dosage. The Las Vegas company, which launched the system back in April has closed a $3 million round of angel investor funding, courtesy of undisclosed parties. The money is set to go toward distribution for the $200 at-home medication device. PillDrill is also using the occasion to announce that it’s scored an innovation award at next year’s CES and added retired MedVenture Associates founder Annette Campbell-White to its board of directors.
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What it’s like to use Snapchat Spectacles
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016
| 11
| 10
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Snap’s Spectacles are having a spectacular debut today, with (at least) hundreds of people lining up at their first in Venice Beach. We got the chance to speak to a few of those lucky enough to have grabbed some today, and they told us what it’s like to use the clip capturing face wear. , co-founder and CEO of AR startup , shared his pics and video of what it’s like to buy Spectacles from Snapchat’s adorable vending bot, and also shared some of this thoughts with TC about using them via email: So I’m not a huge Snapchat user, but I’m building an AR startup, so clearly I need to be playing with these. And they’re a blast. I actually think this is going to get me to use Snapchat more. They’re about as simple as possible. You pair them with your iPhone over Bluetooth. Just point them at the QR code on your phone. Then you give them a name. Once that’s done, put them on, tap the button, and it records 10 seconds of video. The LED lights spin while you’re recording. HD video requires you to set up wifi to import. Specs has a dedicated button on the camera screen underneath the main photo button. Tapping it takes you to the Specs section of Memories. Everything syncs up pretty quickly (in SD over Bluetooth). You can pick a Story and then edit it with stickers, 3D stickers, text, etc. It doesn’t look like you can do any Lenses, including World Lenses, which makes sense because those are activated before you shoot on the regular Snapchat. The circular video is super cool. Being able to rotate your phone and see more is pretty awesome. Here's some video of people waiting inline to buy Bot. Ignore my weird laugh. — Jameson Detweiler (@jaymstr) , an , found setup and use equally easy, and had the following thoughts about Spectacle’s potential now and in the future: So [Spectacles are] extremely easy to use – press a button and it records. It feels like it will be second nature for people who wear them consistently. There’s no friction, very simple. Watching the footage back just feels like watching a memory because of the wide-angle lens. It’s similar to a GoPro (obviously lower resolution), but it also removes the camera from being in front of what you are looking at. So in a way, you get more of the real experience and it removes the phone from being in front of your face, too. If you’re at a concert or the beach or wherever, there is nothing between you and the moment. Friction is gone, and the moment is much more raw and real, which has always lent itself better to Snapchat vs. Instagram, etc. Snap is smart to have made it a toy and relatively affordable. Even on their Twitter account they are retweeting people making fun of it. They’re keeping it light, not taking themselves seriously (look at the vending machine for the Spectacles) and just having fun. That removes any stigma, as it should be about fun anyway – which is where Google Glass failed in part. The potential of the tech is what is really fascinating: imagine an iteration or two from now where the camera is always recording and buffering and you press the button to save what you just saw. You don’t always have a camera on you to capture moments that happen or it’s too late by the time you pull your phone out, but in theory you could always just press a button to lock down a moment. These buffers exist in cameras used for news/documentaries/etc. That hardware basically just has a set amount of storage that constantly records (if you have the setting turned on), and when whatever moment happens you’re waiting to capture, you just press record and it’s saved. That could lead some to picture to the scary dystopian future often seen in movies, of cameras everywhere recording everything all the time, but in reality i think we are probably headed in that direction regardless. Spectacles are designed as a toy and made for fun, and that’s the way a lot of good tech starts out. Time will tell how much they stick, but the way Snap seems to be handling this rollout feels good. They aren’t taking themselves too seriously and that makes people more comfortable with the product and their vision as a camera company. Martin’s appraisal of Snap’s approach to this rollout is spot on; it’s keeping everything about the product, from design, to use, to distribution, light and breezy. It’s on brand and it’s a clever and decidedly fresh way to do a hardware product launch in the era of the grand Apple keynote. We’ll have more first-hand impressions of Spectacles coming up shortly, but for now it sounds like the company did what it set out to do pretty nicely.
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#Calexit is Silicon Valley’s plan to pack up its toys and leave
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Kate Conger
| 2,016
| 11
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California’s reliably-blue votes gave Hillary Clinton a boost on election night, but they weren’t enough to carry her to the presidency. Now, Californians angered by Donald Trump’s win have proposed a ballot measure to begin the process of secession — and the referendum is receiving funding from investor and Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar. The movement for California’s independence is being billed as #Calexit, a play on the campaign that led to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June. One group that’s already been at work on the project, , that lays out nine reasons for California to become its own nation — but Pishevar says his efforts will be documented on a yet-to-launch website, NewCalifornia.com. https://twitter.com/shervin/status/796234706022842368 The #Calexit proposal laid out by YesCalifornia follows in the footsteps of Texas secessionists who have long advocated for the Lone Star State to leave the union. Their movement picked up some momentum after President Obama’s reelection in 2012, when a petition for what we could now call #Texit earned more than 100,000 signatures and a response from the White House. (The tl;dr response was no. White House director of public engagement Jon Carson that the founders enshrined in the Constitution “the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot” but not “a right to walk away from it.”) Still, some Texans continue to to this day. The irony of Silicon Valley liberals proposing a California independence movement after they routinely mocked Texas’ petition to leave isn’t lost here, and Tim Draper’s plan to in 2014 was also deeply criticized. But California’s economic power — the state is regularly ranked as the sixth-largest economy in the world, but — means that #Calexit could be economically feasible. Pishevar has characterized his movement as a “temporary withdrawal” rather than a permanent exit. Rather than forming a new nation, his plan hinges on using California’s economic contributions — which are in no small part fueled by Silicon Valley companies — as leverage to force political change. “Removing Electoral College would be one of the changes needed,” Pishevar tweeted. “Small states with little diversity shouldn’t determine Presidency.” https://twitter.com/shervin/status/796235801780744192 7/Removing Electoral College would be one of changes needed. Small states with little diversity shouldn't determine Presidency. — Shervin Pishevar (@shervin) “As Madison affirmed there is an extraconstitutional right to rebel if there is oppression. I believe those conditions of oppression have been met through systemic problems that persist in America and that the election of Trump is a symptom of those system problems. If California votes to become a New California and the rest of the states affirm it then it would legally stand,” Pishevar told TechCrunch. YesCalifornia lays out the for its exit: first a measure on the 2018 ballot would need the approval of California voters. Then, movement organizers envision seeking the consent of the other states, a move they believe is laid out in , an 1868 Supreme Court case that found states could only leave “through revolution or through consent of the States.” Since YesCalifornia explicitly bills itself as a “nonviolent campaign,” that means revolution is out of the picture. The legal legwork required means we probably won’t be seeing a #Calexit. Even if California decides it’s a good idea, the rest of the country isn’t likely to be too pleased about losing access to California’s economy. Still, some Californians are all too happy to leave: We'll just take our avocados and legal weed and go — lil thought (@LeasLame)
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This is what it’s like to buy Spectacles from Snapchat’s vending machine
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016
| 11
| 10
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It’s Spectacle day. Snapchat surprised everyone this morning by that sells Spectacles right along the beach in Venice. The machine will only be there for 24 hours, and there are already crazy lines. We got some hands on video from , who actually got to use the machine to buy a pair of spectacles. Some hands-on footage of actually using the vending machine, from . Post coming soon — Fitz Tepper (@fitztepper) The machine itself has a screen, three big buttons to push (one for each color of glasses) and a place to swipe your credit card. And of course an opening from your Spectacles will be dispensed. And as you can see in the video, the screen can be used to try on the glasses using augmented reality – a virtual pair of the glasses will appear on your face on the video screen – similar to how the AR “lenses” feature works inside Snapchat itself. Here’s one more video showing the process from further away. One more: — Fitz Tepper (@fitztepper) The machine actually ran out of glasses when Jameson was in line, but Snapchat came to restock them. A truck pulled up behind the machine and put a white curtain around the whole thing so no one could see them working on the machine. [gallery ids="1414395,1414396,1414397,1414398,1414399"] We’re working on getting some more hands-on footage of someone opening and using Spectacles, but If you want to read up on in the meantime, check out our .
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How long until Facebook Frames?
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016
| 11
| 10
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Snapchat’s are already causing huge lineups and mild millennial frenzy in LA now that they’re on sale via super-exclusive Snapbot vending machines. It’s almost inevitable that Facebook copies this, too, so gird your nose bridge for Facebook Frames. Here’s our exclusive (and very fake) early preview of their promo site copy, which : Facebook’s exclusive eyewear conveniently . It’s rose-colored glasses but for whatever colors you prefer – and only those colors. See something you don’t like? Press the button on Facebook Frames to make it go away. In its place, you’ll see a comfortable and comforting fiction. You no longer have to worry about giving thought to or articulating your opinion of what people are saying to you. Facebook Frames will read your mood and display an appropriate Reaction emoji on your lenses. Got the world looking exactly how you like it? You can share those creative interpretations of what you’re looking at directly to Facebook, where others like you can see it, too. Need to charge up your Frames? They actually charge ambiently as you wear them – converting the latent power present in sound waves from echoes off of surrounding surfaces into usable juice. Again, Facebook Frames aren’t real so don’t go scouring Venice Beach for a . But I wouldn’t be surprised if they are a thing you can actually get some day, given Facebook’s product pipeline of late.
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