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Sharp brings dark and light Star Wars phones to SoftBank in Japan
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Brian Heater
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Around this time last year, Verizon celebrated the long-awaited arrival of fittingly with a couple of limited edition Motorola Droid Turbo 2 handsets with themes tied to the star of the upcoming film. No word on any sort of follow-up promotion for (though the Moto Z would lend itself well to a little space opera cosplay), but in Japan will be able to get their hands on a pair of pretty solid tie-ins . As their name implies, the pair of Sharp-produced Star Wars mobile phones are tied a bit more broadly to the franchise. There’s nothing specific to Death Star plan nabbing here, instead it’s just a pair of handsets tied to the dark and light side of the Force — so choose your allegiance closely, because you’ll be stuck with it for a couple of years at least. The 5.3-inch handsets come in dark and light colors, along with force-aligned Android 6.0 skins and live wall papers (X-Wing or Tie Fighter). There’s a movie player app that gives you free access to , a Star Wars: Force Collection game and themed emojis and ringtones tied to the franchise. The phones also come with metal figurines taken from the upcoming film. As for, you know, actual specs, they’re decent, with a Snapdragon 820, 3GB of RAM, a 3,000 mAh batter and 22-megapixel rear-facing camera. The phones will arrive in Japan on December 2.
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Inside Expa Labs, Uber co-founder’s take on the startup accelerator
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Megan Rose Dickey
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There’s no shortage of startup incubators and accelerators, but there’s always room for improvement and iterations on an old operating model. Expa Labs, a six-month program for startups that spun out of Uber co-founder Garrett Camp’s Expa Studios, has a different take on the startup accelerator/incubator model. Last week, it wrapped up its first batch of startups. Launched in 2013, Expa Studios aims to test new ideas and build new startups. The idea is that Expa partners (Camp, AddThis founder Hooman Radfar, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, Metrolyrics founder Milun Tesovic, former Twitter designer Vitor Lourenço and former Google search lead Roberto Sanabria) team up with founders to explore those ideas and launch them. “Over the last couple of years we’ve built a system — a network,” Selvadurai told me. “We’ve built a lot of shared learnings, we’ve built a process behind the scenes for trying these different studio-level companies out, getting them out to market and user testing. So, we thought, at the genesis of Labs, why don’t we take a lot of that infrastructure and process and bring it to other founders that are not us as partners. Let’s bring it to people that have equally good ideas. Maybe they don’t have the experience that we do — people who are also looking for a vehicle through which they can get their ideas into the world.” What makes Expa Labs different from other Silicon Valley startup programs is the amount of money it invests, the length of the program, and the overall intimate nature of it, which is a result of the small number of startups it chooses to work with at any given time. “The end result is to put more great ideas in the world — change peoples lives,” Selvadurai told me at Expa’s offices in San Francisco. “So you could take a lot of bets or put more time behind fewer bets. That’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re trying to help more people realize their potential vision and so that’s why we’re at six. Five years from now, we still might be under 100.” Thanks to a from investors like Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson and HP CEO Meg Whitman, Expa was able to deploy that money across Studio companies as well as outside companies through Labs. Expa Labs, which its General Manager Eric Friedman told me has a founder-first approach, invests $500,000 in each company and provides six months worth of office space in either San Francisco or New York in exchange for a 20 percent equity stake. Expa Labs selected six startups as part of its first batch: property management startup , in-feed advertising platform , digital marketplace for agriculture in Tanzania , brand-creator platform , smarter phone number app and developer toolkit for location tracking . Two that jumped out at me were Listen, co-founded by Lauren Leto and Cam Hunt, and Ninayo, founded by former Peace Corps volunteer Jack Langworthy. Both Leto and Langworthy told me they’ve gotten a lot out of participating in Expa Labs. In retrospect, Langworthy thought he was much further along than he was before joining Expa. He’s admittedly not a tech person, given that he’s mostly worked in African agriculture. Expa Labs also decided against the traditional Silicon Valley demo day. Ultimately, the team concluded that demo days — which are long and “cattle call in nature” — do more harm than good. Instead of a demo day, all of Expa’s investors receive an email that highlights each of the companies’ milestones, progress and status. As this batch of Expa Labs is coming to an end, the team is looking forward to the next round of startups and beyond. Expa Labs will open applications for its 2017 program, which will run from June to November, in early January. The next batch will enable startups to be based in Vancouver, and down the road, the plan is to expand the geographic reach of Labs much farther. “The idea of a distributed program and having people who aren’t based in one of those cities is actually really interesting to us,” Friedman said. “With a global network of entrepreneurs, you have to start somewhere. We started with New York and San Francisco. Next year will include Vancouver. I think also about where else in the U.S. we can support people. From there, where else can we go outside of the U.S. That’s part of the plan. We’re figuring out that right now. The idea is how can we support these people everywhere.”
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Peter Thiel taps a principal at Founders Fund for Trump’s transition team
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Connie Loizos
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Peter Thiel is famously loyal to his employees, and vice versa. Many of the dozens of people employed by his venture firm, Founders Fund, once worked for Thiel at his hedge fund, Clarium Capital. He even a late-stage venture firm, Mithril Capital, with one former Clarium managing director, Ajay Royan. Little wonder then that Thiel is reportedly pulling one principal at Founders Fund — Trae Stephens — into President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, which Thiel himself officially joined ago. , Stephens, who isn’t expected to take a role in the administration, will help shape defense and vet Defense Department staff. Stephens’s addition to the team seems both peculiar and perfectly unsurprising at once. A comparative studies graduate from Georgetown, Stephens held a couple of internships in Washington as an undergraduate student, then joined LexisNexis as a data analyst for two years, before spending the next five-and-a-half years as an engineer with the Founders Fund-backed analytics company Palantir Technologies. He quit in December 2013 to join Founders Fund. Stephens may be very smart, in short. But like Thiel and numerous other members of Trump’s transition team — including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his children, Eric, Donald, and Ivanka Trump; hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci; and surgeon Ben Carson (who has been offered a post as head of Department of Housing and Urban Development and is whether or not to take it) — Stephens lacks any meaningful government experience. Then again, Thiel has repeatedly suggested that the U.S. government (which accounts for at least of Palantir’s revenue) “ .” He has advocated for “ ,” too, so choosing a Washington outsider like himself is hardly a shock. It also isn’t astonishing that the newest member of Trump’s transition team comes from within one of Thiel’s own companies. Thiel plainly trusts his own hiring abilities, but further, he’s reportedly having a bit of trouble enlisting the help of others in Silicon Valley who operate outside the confines of those circles. According to a recent , Thiel has been cultivating an “editable list of possible candidates” for Trump’s administration, and on his short list are Blake Masters, who co-authored the business book “Zero to One” with Thiel; Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir with Thiel; and Jack Abraham, a serial entrepreneur who is executive director of the Thiel Fellowship program. According to that same Washington Post report, others have turned Thiel down out of distaste over how Trump campaigned and fear that an association with Trump could have repercussions on their own businesses.
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No more pastry panic: Alexa can now talk you through recipes
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Darrell Etherington
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpwcPnqhcTE&w=680] When I cook I make a huge mess and the product is edible about 50 percent of the time, which is why I’m hoping Alexa can help. I lean on the disembodied spirit of Amazon that lives inside my black tube and various small plastic pucks for so many things, so it’s only natural I’d add culinary skill to the list, and the new Allrecipes skill (via ) for Alexa provides exactly that. There’s already an Echo Dot in the kitchen for doing things like setting timers, asking basic reference questions and doing measurement conversions, so it’s only natural that it take the next step and walk me through recipes step-by-step. Allrecipes does that, but it’s also set up to help you find a recipe to use to begin with. You can drill down using filters like your total available prep time, but the skill also tries to take a lot of the fiddly work out of the equation by suggesting a single result up-front for the sake of convenience, based on queries that specify ingredients or the type of food you want to make, combined with user ratings. An iPad in the kitchen with text and images might still be the best possible assistant for hapless chefs, but Alexa and Echo have the benefit of being hands-free, and you can ask it to repeat steps as many times as you want without anyone getting frustrated, unlike if you have a real human sous-chef helping you out. Now, Alexa: Clean my kitchen.
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Mobile shopping hits record numbers over Thanksgiving and Black Friday
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Sarah Perez
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Black Friday has only just begun, but already mobile traffic and sales are breaking records compared with years prior, according to third-party reports and those from major retailers, out this morning. In addition to from mobile devices, top retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Target, have also now released numbers pointing to mobile’s sizable impact on their online sales. According to Amazon, Thanksgiving has now become one of the busiest mobile shopping days on the retailer’s site in the U.S. The company reported that mobile orders on Thanksgiving have exceeded both last year’s Thanksgiving as well as Cyber Monday 2015. Although many U.S. consumers have only just started shopping Black Friday deals on Amazon’s site, the company says it’s on track to beat last year’s sales holiday in terms of items ordered, with Alexa devices, like the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick and Alexa Voice Remote among the best sellers so far. Meanwhile, rival Walmart this morning that Thanksgiving was again one of its top shopping days of the year. It kicked off its Black Friday sales last night at 6 PM. Since then, Walmart has already seen that more than 70 percent of traffic to its website has been driven by mobile, it says. It’s also worth noting that, this year, Walmart took a page from Amazon’s playbook and that it would for the first time offer exclusive deals for mobile app users. On November 10th, those who had downloaded the Walmart mobile application could shop select Black Friday deals early, including those on electronics, like a discounted TV, Xbox One and tablet, among other things. It hasn’t yet detailed the impact this has had on sales from its app, however. Target, too, is on Friday with figures that speak to its own successes on mobile so far. The retailer had a record-breaking Thanksgiving, with both traffic and sales topping Cyber Monday in 2015. Related to this, mobile traffic was also up this year, and mobile sales accounted for over 60 percent of the retailer’s total online sales on Thursday. Like Amazon and Walmart, Target also enticed people to its app this year by offering customers pre-sale deals via its Cartwheel savings application, which resulted in the biggest shopping day ever for new users of the app. Target is continuing to push Cartwheel, which now has 30 million users, by offering app users an additional 15 percent off when shopping with its mobile companion while in-store on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Ebay also reported a surge in mobile shopping, noting that the share of gross merchandise bought on mobile grew to 38 percent versus the desktop this Thanksgiving, up from 35 percent last year.
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John Biggs
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Uber rival Grab’s first CFO is leaving the company after just seven months
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Jon Russell
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Grab, Uber’s archrival in Southeast Asia, is losing its first CFO just seven months after her appointment, the company confirmed. from video streaming company HOOQ in May, where she had also been CFO, but four-year-old Grab announced her departure internally as part of a reshuffle of its financial management team. TechCrunch understands that Grab has appointed an interim CFO from within its own ranks, but it isn’t actively recruiting for a direct replacement. That’s because many of Hoglund’s responsibilities will be transferred to Grab President Ming Maa, who from Grab investor SoftBank in October, and transitioning to that new structure is the immediate priority. Hoglund will stay on for a couple of months to aid with that change. Maa spent more than a decade in investment roles that included a stint with Goldman. As Grab president he is tasked with “managing the company’s overall capital structure,” among other responsibilities, according to a statement made at the time of his appointment. Grab’s internal announcement of Hoglund’s departure said that she’d developed the company’s financial structure and process to enable it to scale further in the future. Her exit, it added, was on account of her desire to return to a more hands-on, operational role. Her tenure was brief, but Hoglund’s time at Grab included , which closed in September at a post-money valuation of $3 billion, and Didi Chuxing’s acquisition of Uber’s China business. That latter development impacted Grab in a number of ways: and adding pressure as and other high-growth potential markets. Grab was founded in 2012 and it operates in more than 30 cities in six countries across Southeast Asia. It claims some 24 downloads and a pool of more than 500,000 drivers. The company has now raised over $1.4 billion and, like other ride-sharing operators worldwide, there’s a big question on its future exit, which could be an IPO in the future. If so, getting the necessary financial systems and structure in place is an important step, and that could well be one of the factors behind this reshuffle. Hoglund’s isn’t the only C-level executive to have a shorter-than-expected stint with Grab. Former Facebook engineer in Singapore. He left his role in August 2015 after only a year and has been involved in over his stock options.
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Level Frames launches AI photo filters so you can be artsy IRL
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Jordan Crook
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Prisma has made quite an impression on the tech world, and Level Frames is looking to capitalize on the trend. The YC-backed company, which offers custom framing of physical artwork via an easy-to-use website, has developed its own AI photo filters for Level users. Level works by letting users upload their posters, art, or even their digital photos, and choose a frame, matting, etc. that looks best with the piece. The website allows users to see what their art would look like in various options to make the best choice. Founder and CEO Josh Hubball said that Level noticed an uptick in the amount of Prisma-style photos going through the platform, and decided to create their own filters for their users. Using Level’s AI filters, users can upload photos from multiple sources (Facebook, Dropbox, Camera Roll), and Level offers a higher-quality resolution for the photo than users would get going through a third-party app like Prisma. Plus, users can crop the photo for different aspect ratios beyond a square, and get prints up to 36 x 36 inches. [gallery ids="1420534,1420535,1420536,1420537"] Since , Level has gone on to launch their own frames, as well as a “Buy It Framed” button for artists and other ecommerce platforms where art/posters are sold. The company says it has grown 15 percent month over month over the past year, and that it plans to reach profitability by early next year. You can check out Level Frames for yourself right .
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story advance ticket sales start November 28
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Darrell Etherington
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It’s getting closer to the end of the year and that means A) 2016 is almost over, which is great because it’s among the worst of years, and B) there’s a new Star Wars movie coming soon, which is also great and may help 2016 redeem itself to the tiniest degree. Now, you can circle Monday, November 28 as the day to get your tickets for , which is arriving in theaters on December 16 in the U.S. is the first spin-off movie from the main story arc of the Star Wars universe, starring Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, member of a rag-tag group of rebels tasked with seeking out the plans to the Death Star in a mission that precedes the events of the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV in the larger chronology). [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9abcLLQpI&w=680] The trailers (like the one above) show a lot of promise, so here’s hoping this one delivers. Darth Vader’s in it, and also Le Chiffre from so how can it go wrong, really? Unfortunately for all the Cyber Monday sales this also means I’ll be doing all my online spending exclusively on purchasing tickets for different showtimes of ; thunder stolen.
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Startup Battlefield application deadline extended for Disrupt London!
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Samantha O'Keefe
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Attention startup hopefuls: It’s time to stop procrastinating and at Disrupt London. Startups from across the U.S. and around the world now have until 12pm PT on October 13th to get their application in front of the selection team. We get it, you’re super busy. Maybe you’ve been working extra hard to push out new features to your users, find the perfect hire or scout office space. Maybe you just forgot when the actual deadline was. Whatever the reason, TechCrunch is giving you another chance to So, why should you compete in the Startup Battlefield? For starters, you’ll get to present your company to the best and brightest entrepreneurs and investors in the world who will give you incredible feedback on how to make your product or service even better. Our European Battlefield Alumni are a very strong group. This summer 26 (formerly Number26) and secured a full banking license. Aircall for its call center software-as-a-service. Olly by Emotech to bring their AI-powered robot to market. Lystable continues to bring on clients at an alarming rate, as well as including Max Levchin. Photomath launched a with the ability to solve handwritten math problems and Hamwells is shipping its . Crate.io, the winner of the Battlefield from Disrupt London 2014, for their next-gen SQL database. This group has been busy. [gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="1246128,1213547,1247388,1248247,1073089,1248200,1389243,1219270"] Since 2007, have raised more than $6.1 billion after appearing on the TechCrunch stage, and 78 have exited. Our alumni also include household names like Fitbit, Venmo, Postmates and . Startup Battlefield participants also receive free demo space in Startup Alley, tickets to VIP events, a Battlefield-only reception and, of course, TechCrunch swag. Prior to the event, startups work with TechCrunch editors to hone and polish their pitches. And the best part? There are absolutely no fees, equity or otherwise, to participate in the Startup Battlefield. TechCrunch recently launched the Startup Battlefield , so there are really no excuses. Sounds pretty good, huh? . All verticals are welcome, including (but not limited to) biotech, security, drones, supercomputing, e-commerce, on-demand services, greentech, edtech, mobile consumer, healthcare, enterprise software, bitcoin, hardware, AI, dev tools and VR. Startups from around the world are encouraged to apply! Disrupt London will take place December 5-6th at the CopperBox Arena. Full details on eligibility can be found . Applications are now open through October 13th at 12pm PT. To apply, head on over to our .
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Online fashion retailer Grana raises $10M led by Alibaba’s entrepreneurship fund
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Jon Russell
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, a two-year-old online fashion retailer based in Hong Kong, has announced that it has raised $10 million in fresh funding led by Alibaba’s entrepreneurship fund. This is the startup’s Series A round, and . The round is led by Alibaba’s Hong Kong-based fund, , and it also includes participation from existing investors (Singapore) and (Hong Kong). In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Luke Grana said that the new funding will be put to work expanding his company’s selection of products — all of which are own-brand — and growing its reach beyond the 12 countries that Grana currently ships to. In particular, Grana is focused on expanding its business in the U.S., which is already its largest market alongside Hong Kong, just ahead of Australia and Singapore. Grana isn’t providing specific business figures at this point, other than to say that it is growing at an average of 15 percent month-on-month. Return rates are single-digital percent, with a flat fee — US$10, SG$10 or HK$20 — charged for a collection direct from the customer. “We’ve experienced really strong growth [and had a] good couple of years that we need to continue,” Grana, who was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, said. Grana sells its own-brand fashion items exclusively through its website. The company produces its own high-quality fashion products, sourcing its fabric from Italy, Peru, China and other parts of the world. It has an offline store in Hong Kong and has run temporary ‘pop-up’ stores in four countries, so far. Grana just moved into a new 18,000 square foot warehouse in Hong Kong where all product is stored and shipped, while its entire 50 person team is based in Hong Kong. Keeping the business in a single country may seem strange when its customer base is global, but Grana explained it is all about efficiency everyone involved. “There are no distributors, middle men or warehouses, so we ship direct to the customer. We cut out all the inefficiencies that we can [so that] customers get a really great product at a quality that they’ve never seen before,” he said. When it comes to business, Grana explained that Hong Kong’s status as the world’s largest air cargo hub, and DHL’s shipping rates, mean that its next-day/two-day delivery service to the U.S. and other countries are on par with any local service. That’s based on both speed for the customer and price for Grana. For that reason, Grana hasn’t opened warehouses in the U.S. or other places to store product locally. In terms of passing on costs to the customer, Grana said most fashion items carry a mark-up of around seven-to-eight times the cost due to the chain of process. But by stripping out the aforementioned middlemen and fees, Grana — he said — sells at just 2-3X mark-up. “We travel the world to find the best fabric to make modern wardrobe essentials: great quality items that a large market can wear,” Grana added. “We want to replicate ASOS but using our own brand.” [gallery ids="1396334,1396335,1396342,1396343,1396344,1396345,1396346,1396347"] There’s no plan to introduce its items via offline retailers, nor will Grana become a sales front for other like-minded, independent fashion brands. The goal is to continue on as is, but grow its reach and scope. Global expansion is on the agenda for 2017, but CEO Luke Grana isn’t being too specific on exactly which countries will be targeted. China is one confirmed name on the list with a soft launch likely to happen “sometime next year.” For that move, Grana is likely to shift its distribution model somewhat and align itself with existing e-commerce portals to gain reach. Grana hinted that Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace could be an ideal entrance point, and he said his company is working closely with the e-commerce giant to weigh up its method of entry into China. “There’s a really good fit with Alibaba, strategically we are leaning a lot about e-commerce in China and getting logistics and infrastructure support,” he said. On the product side, Grana’s range spans 10 fabrics, 90 styles and 3,000 SKUs across shorts, sweaters, swimwear and underwear in both men’s and women’s fashion. Grana said the company plans to expand to sportswear, bags and accessories early next year, while he’d like to also begin producing and selling items like shoes in the longer term.
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Xiaomi’s 4K Android TV box is now on sale in the U.S. for $69
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Jon Russell
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would go on sale in the U.S. in October, and . The Chinese company is best known for its affordable smartphones, but today it launched that looks like great value. , the new Mi Box offers 4K video at 60 FPS and supports Dolby Digital Plus audio playback and HDR content. Xiaomi partnered with Google to integrate Google Cast and Google voice search while there are Android games and apps for the likes of Netflix, HBO, and Showtime alongside support for Sling TV, which itself brings TV shows without the need for cable. The Mi Box comes with a fairly limiting 8GB in storage, but that is upgradable via the device’s USB port. Interestingly, Xiaomi is touting “special perks” from partners which mean Mi Box owners will get their hands on $50 in Sling TV credits, a three-month Pandora trial, and $5 of Vudu credit. Combined with the competitive pricing of Mi Box, Xiaomi might be able to find an audience in the U.S. with this release. There is no immediate plan to sell its smartphones Stateside yet, but this is a first step to building a more visible consumer brand to give it a rolling start when the time comes. Competitors to the Mi Box includes , priced upwards of $29, , and , which doesn’t feature 4K. The Mi Box is available via in the U.S. and in Walmart stores. [gallery ids="1325341,1325348,1325347,1325346,1325345,1325344,1325343,1325342"]
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Stripe payments exits beta in Japan, adds Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company as investor
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the company that lets app publishers, online merchants and other digital businesses include payments features via a few lines of code, is expanding in Asia. After launching in two weeks ago, the startup is now officially for business in . And alongside the Japan launch, Stripe is announcing a new investor. , the largest credit card provider in the country, is taking a stake in the startup. Sumitomo Mitsui and Stripe are not disclosing the amount that is getting invested, but it is strategic: the companies have been partnering since Stripe launched a beta of its service in Japan, in May 2015. Sumitomo Mitsui, which was also the first partner for Visa in Japan (Visa is ), is also working with Stripe on the full, official rollout. It’s helping specifically in areas like multi-currency acceptance: merchants and other businesses in Japan can use Stripe to sell goods in some 130 different currencies — a big advance on current offerings that are restricted to yen. (Doing some simple math, I’m guessing that Sumitomo Mitsui’s investment is at least $10 million and a follow on from its previous round: lists $290 million in funding for Stripe, while Stripe itself, in the it sent out around the funding and launch, notes that it has raised “around $300 million” at a valuation of $5 billion, the same valuation it had around its last funding round in .) The lengthy beta period meant that Stripe picked up a number of customers before its official launch today: they include All Nippon Airways, e-commerce platform BUYMA, event app Peatix, and SmartHR. Globally, Stripe says it has around customers, including large marketplace startups like GoFundMe, on-demand, mobile-first businesses like Lyft and Instacart, and many more. Stripe takes a 3.6% commission on each approved card charge in Japan, similar to its basic rate in other countries; using its API is free. Adding Japan brings the total number of countries where Stripe is live to 25 — and just a day after Japan, , for a total of 26 countries. While Stripe is now on something of a roll internationally, adding Japan is a notable launch for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s a big market for Stripe to tackle: Japan is the (after China) in terms of GDP and one of the biggest globally. There are a number of other payment providers in the market — they include ( in one of Stripe’s competitors, ) and , among others. But Stripe said that its multi-currency feature — its API will let businesses sell to customers in 130 different currencies, not just yen — is a first for merchants and other businesses in the country. In the past, Japanese companies would have had to set up separate bank accounts and business entities to process non-yen currencies, in part because “Japan’s financial infrastructure was built independently from the rest of the world and some of the mechanics have made it challenging for Japanese businesses to expand globally,” in the words of Daniel Heffernan, who heads up Stripe’s business in Japan. “Japan has been a powerhouse in technology for decades, but bridging to the rest of the world economy is an achievement only a small percentage of companies have accomplished,” Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of . “S aims to empower more Japanese companies to export their creativity and ambition to the rest of the world.” The new service in Japan will also include fraud protection and other security features; and as with other markets, Stripe will also build a larger financial services ecosystem around its basic payments service to improve its margins. Those other services include accounting, billing, security, and PCI compliance, as well as access to third-party technologies like Apple Pay and Android Pay. (Some features — like , which was launched last month — are still not available outside the U.S.) Considering that Stripe has had an office in Japan since June 2014, I asked Heffernan why it took so long to launch there. “Rather than launching a one-size-fits-all product everywhere, we think about each new market from first principles, taking our time to get to know the nuances and understand the unique needs and pain points of local businesses,” he said. “This helps us address the most pressing needs of developers and offer the best possible product for a particular market.” It also sounds like it took some time to work out how to handle more than one currency. “We built this feature from scratch for the Japanese market, which involved a considerable amount of time and work to make it available today,” Heffernan said. “Multicurrency has never before been available in Japan, and we wanted to make that happen.” Sumitomo Mitsui’s investment is interesting because it comes on the heels of that the financial services company was looking to invest in rising fintech startups (in other words, there may be more to come). The context here is that there weren’t many fintech investments in the country immediately prior to 2016, in part because of regulation, and in part because of cautious strategies around new financial models in the wake of disasters like the Mt Gox bitcoin exchange, which was based out of Tokyo. To some extent, even the Stripe investment went through some reality checks: “We looked at the most sophisticated global technology companies — Facebook, Twitter, Kickstarter — and they all use to process payments,” says Hideo Shimada, Chairman of Sumitomo Mitsui Card Corporation, in a statement. “ is bringing a new standard of financial and technological infrastructure to Japanese businesses and we are happy to support them.” As for what’s next, Stripe is currently still in beta in Hong Kong, and Heffernan said the company is seeing a lot of interest in Southeast Asia from users (based in countries it currently supports), and it is “in the very early stages” of exploring the market there. “Asia will continue to be a primary focus for over the next few months,” he said. Other investors in Stripe include Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Visa, American Express, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Elon Musk.
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Ingrid Lunden
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Crunch Report | Facebook Launches Marketplace
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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A former Rothenberg exec filed a class action lawsuit alleging “at least 50 employees” still haven’t been paid
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Sarah Buhr
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A former chief of staff of Rothenberg Ventures has brought a proposed class-action lawsuit against the beleaguered San Francisco-based investing outfit, saying it routinely failed to pay contract workers their final paycheck across its four-year history, and that it failed to compensate Fanelli and other hourly workers for overtime. The suit, brought by Katie Fanelli, aims to address anyone who failed to receive final or overtime pay from Rothenberg Ventures Management Company and whose individual claims fall below $75,000. That isn’t an arbitrary distinction. Federal courts may hear suits only where “the matter in controversy ” while California law and statutes protect plaintiffs who are seeking less. Fanelli’s suit employs both colorful prose — and some brow-raising accusations. Describing Rothenberg’s business practices as “lucrative, repressive, and unlawful,” it goes on to say that as part of a “systemic scheme of wage abuse,” Fanelli’s employment was terminated, after which Rothenberg Ventures failed to provide her with a final paycheck covering the hours she had worked in her final pay period. The lawsuit seeks to represent “all California-based employees who worked any time during the four years preceding” the suit and who “were not paid their final paycheck upon separation and/or termination” from Rothenberg Ventures Management Company. Fanelli is also accusing Rothenberg of not paying herself and others deserved overtime wages. The suit observes that, according to California labor law, “any work in excess of eight hours in one weekday and any work in excess of 40 hours in any one workweek . . .shall be compensated at the rate of no less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay for an employee.” It goes on to state that she wasn’t provided additional pay for the extra hours worked, and it suggests her fellow co-workers weren’t either. It isn’t clear from the suit whether Fanelli believes this to be true throughout her employment with Rothenberg, periodically, or during the end of her tenure with the firm, which ended in August. Rothenberg Ventures has found itself over the past several months, . Thirty-two-year-old founder Mike Rothenberg has been accused of several illicit activities, including allegedly , taking out a $5 million loan over Christmas break , and wiring himself a sizable salary from different entities. Rothenberg is also under investigation by the SEC and could come under the watch of the FBI and U.S. Attorney General, according to one source TechCrunch has previously spoken with. An investigation does not mean there’s been any wrongdoing. No formal charges have been brought against Rothenberg. Fanelli isn’t the first employee to accuse Rothenberg of failing to pay her money owed. David Haase, a former employee who joined Rothenberg Ventures in April of this year and says he was tasked with “providing various services of a Chief Financial Office,” against the firm in late August, saying he was asked to run up more than $100,000 in business expenses on a personal American Express account and never repaid. Numerous sources says other former staffers are similarly prepared to take on Rothenberg in court over back pay. Fanelli and her lawyers filed the suit on September 30th. In the state of California, an individual can sue on behalf of others in a group, or class, of absent parties. However, those included in the suit may choose to opt-out if they don’t wish to be involved. While Rothenberg himself was not specifically named in the suit, Fanelli’s lawyer, John Glugowski, tells TechCrunch the names and entities of the defendants in the case are still being worked out. Rothenberg Ventures as Frontier Tech Ventures in an effort to distance itself from its public unraveling. Rothenberg is the sole general partner of the firm, however, and for now, maintains control over the enterprise, its investments and management practices. We reached out to Rothenberg earlier today; we hope to update this post with his comments.
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What happens if we live to be 150?
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Brian Wilcove
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Humans have lived for approximately 8,000 generations, but only in the past four has life expectancy taken dramatic leaps upward thanks mostly to societies addressing some of the most basic life issues, including infant mortality, heart disease, homicide and influenza. In 1907, the average human life expectancy was 46 years; in 1957, it rose to 66; in 2007, it reached 76. But I predict we won’t stop there. Over the next generation or two, I see us living to 150 years, largely driven by breakthroughs in genomics and bioengineering. That might seem like a long-odds prediction, but it’s good to consider outlier possibilities. Too often, startups, or any companies trying something new, are only viewed against existing constructs. If we consider the possibility of fundamentally different paradigms, such as much longer human lifespans, we can see the need for even more innovation beyond what today’s startups are working on. Longer lifespans will deeply impact almost all aspects of society. Financial markets, education and healthcare, to name a few, will need to undergo profound changes to adapt to such severe strain. The financial models used today have a few core assumptions, including the average number of income-earning years (currently pegged at 45, roughly from one’s early 20s to one’s late 60s), a retirement age around 65 and an average life expectancy of 75. As the population starts living past 100, the drive for continued financial returns will be put under pressure. Compounding interest will dramatically increase available capital by extending the time that money is invested (i.e. how long we live). A specific example may help make this clear. At 25, you invest $15,000 at an annually compounding interest rate of 5.5 percent. At 65, when you retire, it’ll be worth around $127,000. That’s a pretty good return, but if you reach 125 before you withdraw it, it will be worth nearly $3.2 million, or 25x as much! Multiply that by millions of people and you can see how a new financial system and new services will need to evolve to handle exponentially more cash and over greater time periods. This influx of capital into the system will drive people to look for alternatives to 401(k)s, investments and even savings accounts. This is already happening in response to the influx of cash into the economy over the past six years. Startups like , an Artiman portfolio company, help create customized real estate portfolios with properties in distant cities and manage them for rental income, similar to an annuity. , and are crowdfunding companies, matching buyers with willing lenders to provide access to alternative methods of financial returns. Another aspect of society that will be impacted by extended lifespans will be education. The baby boomers were the last generation to have one career and one employer. Future generations will likely have multiple careers across their lifespan, so the need to learn new skills will grow dramatically, especially as the time frame of economic productivity gets extended. Terms such as MOOCs (massively open online courses) and nanodegrees are already becoming prevalent, and many startups are addressing career transformation: , , and . The medical and healthcare industries will also undergo a dramatic shift. Technologies such as personalized gene-based therapies and regenerative medicine, sometimes referred to as bio-printing human tissue, will create a step function in human longevity. As people live longer and work for multiple employers, the nature of health insurance may change to corporate-subsidized but individually purchased and priced. Insurers are looking to new devices to help ascertain their subscribers’ health as well as encourage preventative medicine to reduce claims. For example, if you provide your Fitbit information to your insurance company, they will reduce your premium so long as you keep your average heart rate below 100 beats per minute. This could have a profound impact on healthcare devices, monitoring and communications. It’s not just healthcare, education and finance that will change dramatically as the average lifespan moves toward 150. Housing, transportation, entertainment, energy and even agriculture will also have to develop rapidly. With stereotypical “Silicon Valley optimism,” I think that public and private markets will meet the needs of a larger and older population. But making the necessary changes won’t be easy, and we can expect more than a few bumps and failures on the way. So buckle up — those of us around for the next two generations are probably in for an interesting ride.
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Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio and scientist Katharine Hayhoe talk climate change at SXSL
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Lora Kolodny
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At an SXSL panel on Monday, President Obama, actor, environmentalist and philanthropist Leonardo DiCaprio and scientist discussed climate change and what we can possibly due to curb it. Hayhoe, who is the director of the , and CEO of , helps organizations like airports and public water utilities assess the potential impacts of climate change on their infrastructure and plan accordingly. Following the discussion, DiCaprio premiered his new documentary about climate change, , at the festival hosted on the White House lawn. Besides his acting career, DiCaprio has long been an advocate and philanthropic donor to environmental causes, but of late, has also invested in for-profit, for-good cleantech ventures, including an on-demand waste management company; , makers of cultured diamonds; and , makers of a smart power outlet. “If you do not believe in climate change you do not believe in science or facts or empirical truths and in my opinion should not be allowed to hold public office,” DiCaprio said, and thanked the president for recent efforts to protect marine environments. The actor then asked the president to grade the global response to climate change so far. Obama said he was hopeful because India was expected to soon sign the , but he urged greater action to combat carbon emissions. This week, he said, the United States would be negotiating with aviation companies to control their greenhouse gas emissions. “We’re seeing climate changes at the more pessimistic end of the range that [was] anticipated by scientists. So we’re really in a race against time,” President Obama said. DiCaprio then asked Hayhoe what are the most urgent threats to our modern-day civilization, and where the solutions lie. “We think of poverty, hunger and disease and people dying today from preventable causes that nobody should be dying from in 2016,” Hayhoe said. “We think to ourselves climate change, we can deal with that later. We can no longer afford to deal with climate change later.” We will not be able to fix issues around food and clean drinking water, disease and more without stemming the loss of environmental resources, she suggested. DiCaprio then asked President Obama how to inspire businesses to help combat, rather than contribute to, pollution and climate change. “Dirty fuel is cheap, because we’ve been doing it for a long time.” the President said. “We know how to burn coal to produce electricity and burn oil and burn gas,” and it is a hard habit to break, understandably, especially for people living in poor countries. He suggested we’ll have to come up with new sources of energy that are both clean and cheap, which would involve research, investment, startups and innovators, but also time to ramp up new energy sources. “The best way we can spur that kind of innovation is to create regulations that say ‘Figure it out, and if you don’t figure it out you’re going to face a penalty.’ Or we could create something like a carbon tax which gives an economic incentive for businesses to do this,” the president said, admitting the likelihood of a carbon tax was a long way away. He also lauded earlier generations’ regulatory efforts, including the which forced businesses to change their behavior and impact a reduction to acid rain. “We fixed it,” he said, and was reverent about what he called “nature’s resiliency when we do the right thing.” DiCaprio also asked Hayhoe what are the biggest misconceptions she hears about climate change. “Any of us who pays attention to the weather we know we have cold and hot, dry and wet. Then you might say why does it matter if our weather is incredibly variable anyway? But…our heavy rainfalls are getting more extreme,” she said, and further debunked the idea that weather changes all the time anyway, so nothing is “wrong” with the climate. She described a recent, observable “stretching” in weather patterns that leave dry places drier and hotter for a longer period of time than usual, and wet or cold places coping with snow and rain for longer than usual. The president and Hayhoe both discussed the breakthroughs that have already come about in solar and wind technology, and even more disputed energy sources like nuclear power and natural gas from fracking. “On average every year 200,000 people die from air pollution from burning fossil fuels,” in the U.S., Hayhoe said. “Air pollution alone gives us all the reason we need to shift toward clean energy, let alone climate change.” DiCaprio asked, if we don’t take immediate action, “Will things get exponentially worse?” President Obama said, “If we tap the brakes now, then we don’t go over the cliff. When you think about climate change there’s a big difference between the oceans rising three feet or ten feet. Three feet, it’s going to be expensive and inconvenient and disruptive….But it’s probably manageable. Three feet means you move the houses back a little bit from the beach. Ten feet means the beach doesn’t exist.” He emphasized that this is for people living in the United States, environmental impacts in other parts of the world could cause far more profound problems, notably food insecurity, and waves of migration due to climate change, therefore conflicts over migration. “All of which is to say that as hard as it is for us to start acting now to solve a problem that has not fully manifested itself yet, this is going to be a really important test for humanity and our political system,” the president said.
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Social justice activism takes center stage at White House’s SXSL
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Megan Rose Dickey
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rights for black people to the freedom to marry for LGBTQ people, social justice activists have been paramount in changing our country’s discriminatory ways. Lewis went on to say, “Be hopeful. Be optimistic. Never lose that sense of hope,” Lewis said. “Never become bitter, and in the process, be happy and just go for it.” Those words by the historic civil rights advocate were an appropriate kickoff to the panel, bridging the civil rights issues of our past with the ones of our present. Equally fitting were the panelists (Brittany Packnett, VP of National Community Alliances at Teach For America and co-founder of social justice organization Campaign Zero, Carmen Rojas of The Workers Lab and Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry) and the moderator, Anil Dash, a technologist and advocate for inclusion and equity in the tech industry. Back in July, , noting how both Sterling and Eric Garner were killed by police for “bending the law to a far lesser degree” than executives at tech companies like Airbnb and Uber. For Packnett, two things that really galvanize her are freedom and young people, she said at SXSL. Growing up, Packnett said freedom as a young person was an ideal, and it was clear to her that she didn’t fully have it yet. “I am fully committed to the idea and the dream that young people — trans young people, gay young people, black young people, Muslim young people — will be able to enjoy the kind of freedom in which they can define themselves for themselves, as Audre Lorde talked about, and show up as their full selves as we go out and change the world,” Packnett said. “To show up in our red chucks at the White House.” For Packnett, her tipping point came after a police officer in Ferguson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old young black man. That’s when it became clear to Packnett that in order to achieve freedom for young people, we (black people) were going to need to put our bodies on the line in order to make that happen, Packnett said at SXSL. “Ultimately it was going to be our bodies that were going to cause a shift,” she said. “ That’s where the idea for Campaign Zero came in. Campaign Zero encapsulates what Packnett says she likes to call “radical pragmatism.” But getting to a point where there are zero police killings is an audacious goal, Dash said. Packnett agreed, but added that it’s more about how having the audacity to hope in something that big is resistance in and of itself. “Oppression, by design, robs us of our imagination and makes us believe that the only reality is what exists right around us,” Packnett said. She later said that “imagination and dreaming the biggest you possibly can is so important. After the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Campaign Zero launched a widget that would enable people to contact their representatives. Over a thousand people per minute were used the widget for “a certain amount of time” to take action and contact their local representatives, Packnett said. It is our responsibility as citizens in a Democratic nation “to use every single tool we have at our disposal to confront this system, and to make it work for us,” Packnett said. “We are the people from whom this system derives any of its power.” Through Campaign Zero, we all have access to a variety of information and tools to take action around issues ranging from police violence to mass incarceration to unemployment. Just last month, that looked at the data from 91 of the 100 largest police departments throughout the country. The team found that police departments with more restrictive use-of-force guidelines have the fewest officer-involved shootings per capita. While Campaign Zero does do a lot of work around police violence, its mission is much bigger than that, Packnett said. You can check out the full panel discussion below.
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Rover announces $40M round for pet sitting and dog walking
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Anthony Ha
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Last month, we reported that . Looks like the deal has closed — the pet-sitting startup today that it has raised, yep, $40 million in a Series E funding. The round was led by Foundry Group and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Madrona Venture Group — all existing investors. Rover has now raised more than $90 million in total funding. “At Menlo we have been fortunate to back companies like Uber, Siri, Hotmail and Gilead Sciences,” said Menlo managing director Venky Ganesan in the funding release. “Rover is on that trajectory and that’s why we decided to double down and go all in on this investment.” The company expanded from pet sitting to dog walking last year. It now says that it has more than 65,000 sitters and walkers in its network, and that it’s seeing an average of 1 million bookings each quarter. Rover says the new funding will be used “to continue redefining the pet care space through product developments, geographical expansion and continued market growth.” It also says the money could be used for acquisitions.
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Police complaints drop 93 percent after deploying body cameras
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Devin Coldewey
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A study from Cambridge University documents an immense drop in complaints against police officers when their departments began using body cameras. But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not. The data was collected in seven police departments in the UK and US, and represents over 1.4 million hours logged by 1,847 officers in 2014 and 2015; the researchers in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior. Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them at any given time), and had to keep them on during all encounters. The authors used complaints against police as a metric because they’re easy to measure, an established practice in most police forces and give a good ballpark of the frequency of problematic behavior. In the year before the study, 1,539 complaints in total were filed against officers; at the end of the body camera experiment, the year had only yielded 113 complaints. Figure from the paper showing how much complaints were reduced in each experimental site. This would be enough to warrant further investigation or even deployment — complaints are not just indicative of misconduct, but expensive and time-consuming to address — but the study developed another wrinkle that may be even better news. Against all expectations, there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without. Strange, right? It seems logical to expect that when the camera was actually present, it would act, as intended, as an impartial witness, cooling heads on both sides of an encounter. But complaints dropped even when officers weren’t using the cameras. “It may be that, by repeated exposure to the surveillance of the cameras, officers changed their reactive behaviour on the streets — changes that proved more effective and so stuck,” explained the study’s lead author, Barak Ariel, in a . “With a complaints reduction of nearly 100 percent across the board, we find it difficult to consider alternatives, to be honest.” The researchers dub this effect “contagious accountability” — learning to do the right thing even when no one is watching. Specifics on how exactly this is happening are unclear. Is the officer less confrontational to begin with, avoiding escalation? Or are suspects and complainants more wary of their conduct? Is it some combination of the two, or are even more factors involved? To determine these things would be a far more complex and subtle piece of research, but the study does suggest that officer behavior is probably the most affected, and that other effects flow from that. Future research has plenty of directions to take, but the effect demonstrated here is robust and beneficial enough to take seriously and, for some police departments, it may be enough to tip the balance in favor of deploying cameras. Ariel and co-author Alex Sutherland will be discussing their research at in two weeks; if you’re in the area, swing by if you’d like to know more.
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The entrepreneurs behind the new drone economy
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Jay Bregman
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The FAA released some staggering numbers as it welcomed , otherwise known as the rules governing — or perhaps creating — the commercial industry in the U.S.: Within one year, the FAA estimates that will be active in commerce in the United States. Even if you assume every pilot has, on average, 1.2 , that’s still commercial pilots. But where are all these pilots coming from, and what are they going to do with those ? Up until now, the process of becoming a commercial pilot was onerous. First, you had to be (or hire) a licensed manned aviation pilot, then have a lawyer to file paperwork related to exactly how you were going to operate your , often waiting up to six months before you received your certificate. Today, the process takes 10 days. The first step is a $150 test you can take at any of 600 FAA-approved (unless you are one of the few to have a manned pilot certificate, in which case the test is replaced with online training). It may be cheap, but this test is by no means easy, including questions on aeronautical charts, aviation law and the effects of weather conditions on flight. The final step is a TSA vetting, similar to applying for TSA Precheck. The FAA also has set some general rules of the road — you must fly in daylight, away from airports and with your in your line of sight. Yet even these rules can be , and there have already been 76 waivers granted (at the time of writing this). So if you can dream it, you can probably do it under Part 107. That brings us back to the bigger question: Where will these half a million pilots come from and what exactly what will they be doing? Maybe existing pilots will transition to There are currently 171,000 FAA-licensed . Even assuming that every one of them caught the bug and decided to quit their day job (which we all know is unlikely), that would still leave 329,000 who are expected to register as commercial users this year. Because only about 6,000 people are currently registered as commercial pilots, that means there will be more than 300,000 commercial users directly resulting from the regulation. That’s more than the population of Orlando. The natural first question is whether these pilots will be part of larger organizations, small business owners or individuals. Because the FAA estimates that 90 percent of commercial will have an average price under $2,500, think or . And when the tools of your trade are cheap enough for most Americans to afford on their own, there is little incentive to become part of a larger organization. So this leaves about 290,000 sole proprietors and small businesses on pace to register this year. This represents a whopping 52X growth in pilots year over year. But where will all these users come from and what will these be used to do? Typically they started out as consumers — receiving a as a gift, or having saved up for one as a special purchase — and fell in love with flying. They got so good at it that people started asking them to do favors; take a video of a house, do a roof inspection, snap some aerial family photos or perhaps survey a construction site. All it takes is a website and business cards and voilà — they had a sideline enterprise. And how do they find clients? They hustle. They are always looking for ways to add value to their clients through aviation. Part 107 will now put these enthusiasts on equal footing with the manned pilots currently working the skies. By the time this is all over, the number of commercial pilots will easily eclipse the entire manned pilot population in the United States — the only question is: how times over? These lovers are now triggering a wave of commercial applications as early adopters of a trend that is soon to become a mainstream occupation. The rules provide structure for commercial users to operate legally and, in doing so, have leveled the playing field. The winners will be the best — the ones who find innovative ways to scale and delight their clients. Even the equipment is now readily available, thanks to a robust market for commercial-grade at consumer-friendly prices. When people can make back their investment on something they want by doing what they love, great things will happen.
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Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on fixing real problems
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Megan Rose Dickey
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At a panel today at SXSL in Washington, D.C., Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, Transmedia Capital Managing Partner Chris Redlitz, EpiBone CEO Nina Tandon, Coalition for Queens founder Jukay Hsu and Jenna Wortham of The New York Times Magazine discussed technology’s role in solving some of the country’s most critical problems. To some, the U.S. is not the land of equal opportunity, and the so-called American Dream — that everyone can succeed with hard work and determination — is a myth. The existence of systemic racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and anti-semitism makes it so that the American Dream will never come true for so many people. Those discriminatory barriers ensure that only white people have an unencumbered shot at it. So, it’s no wonder why we see that some of the wealthiest tech companies are led by white men. “I bet there’s a couple we could all agree on,” Butterfield said. “Criminal justice reform would be a big one. Equal opportunities would be another one. Climate change would be another one. Those are ones where technology is more or less applicable.” [gallery ids="1396144,1396159,1396161,1396163"] SXSL was inspired by President Barack Obama’s visit to SXSW earlier this year. During Obama’s remarks at SXSW, : making the government work better through tech, tackling big problems in new ways, and using big data, analytics and tech to make it easier to vote. In alignment with Obama’s previous remarks on tech being used for on-demand food delivery, Wortham noted how technology is producing frivolous products like hoverboards and on-demand laundry services. But while some uses of technology are more admirable than others, Butterfield said he wouldn’t want to live in a world where people weren’t able to spend time making seemingly frivolous or silly innovations. He went on to say that Twitter is a good example of that. At the beginning, people were tweeting about what they had for breakfast. “O In order to really impact the world, the tech industry does need to work with regulators, which means that things might not change as fast as we want them to. So, in areas like education, health care and medicine, tech companies have to cooperate with pre-existing regulations. But we’re not going to be able to solve all the problems that are out there if only a small segment of our population has the opportunity to do so. That’s just one of the reasons why Butterfield has made diversity and inclusion a priority at Slack. Butterfield went on to say that the irrational decision making is what leads companies to keep hiring computer science dropouts from Stanford and engage in other types of pattern-matching, which “creates a system that in the absence of deliberate conscious intentional effort, is going to perpetuate itself.”
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WhatsApp races to internationalize Snapchat’s overlaid creative tools
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Josh Constine
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Every member of the Facebook family of apps is pushing to bring copies of Snapchat’s best features to international audiences before Snapchat blows up abroad. There was the , and — and now WhatsApp is cloning Snapchat’s creative tools. Now you’ll be able to add overlaid text with multiple colors and fonts, drawings and emojis . These allow for better visual communication, where you can add captions, highlight certain things, jazz up scenes with silly doodles or augment them with emoji. Snapchat popularized this style of chat, which can feel more fun, inspired and vivid than messaging with just text or unadorned images. WhatsApp has also grabbed Snapchat’s front-facing flash feature for illuminating your face by blinking your screen white, which lets you take low-light selfies. Meanwhile, you can zoom in before taking a photo or while shooting a video by dragging a single finger up and down the screen, which allows one-handed zooming. In the U.S., this move might come off as blatant stealing of features that have become synonymous with Snapchat. Snapchat has 150 million daily users, with 60 million of them in the U.S. and Canada. But WhatsApp has more than 1 billion monthly users scattered all over the developing markets of the world. Many of those countries don’t see much Snapchat adoption, so these people might not associate these creative tools with Snapchat. Instead, they might simply see this update as a big improvement to WhatsApp. Facebook’s latest attempts to clone Snapchat (from left): Facebook’s Camera Feed with selfie lenses, Instagram Stories with creative tools for sharing imperfect images, Messenger Day for 24-hour ephemeral sharing The international messaging juggernaut doesn’t have all the nifty features of Snapchat, like animated selfie lenses, geofilters or augmented reality 3D stickers. But if it can offer decent creative tools for visual communication, WhatsApp’s users might have less reason to stray to Snapchat if the ephemeral app eventually becomes popular in their area. Good-enough features plus being the first app to offer them at scale in a market could succeed better than having the best features but showing up late.
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To beef up in marketing, Salesforce will buy Krux for $340M in cash, up to $750M overall
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Ingrid Lunden
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is making , once again to build out its footprint in marketing and adtech. The company has just that it is buying , a company that tracks traffic (“data signatures”) across multiple devices — e.g. desktop, mobile, tablet, set-top — and channels — display, social, search, video. In a statement to the SEC, Salesforce said it would pay $340 million in cash plus stock. A story giving a heads up on the sale in said the actual price would be between $650 million and $750 million — which appears also to include earn-outs and the value of that stock. Salesforce tells us “approximately $700 million.” “Krux is a leading data management platform that unifies, segments and activates audiences to increase engagement with users, prospects and customers. Following the acquisition, Krux will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company,” Salesforce said in its statement. Krux had raised only in its time as a startup: investors included Accel, Sapphire Ventures and IDG. It currently works with some 200 customers. Krux, co-founded by and , had already been working with Salesforce as a close partner. “As a part of the Salesforce ecosystem, we’ve had the opportunity to work closely with the Salesforce team to create integrations that make our customers even more successful,” writes Chavez in . “Beyond the strategic and technology fit, we believe our companies’ core values, which include innovation, trust, transparency, and most importantly customer success, are in perfect alignment and offer an exciting foundation upon which we can continue building the industry’s smartest Marketing Cloud.” Chavez added that the company seems to want to keep much of their existing business intact and that they “expect to continue supporting our thriving partner ecosystem and integrating with a wide variety of platforms. Both companies share a long-standing commitment to interoperability and broad, diverse partner networks.” The value to Salesforce of this deal is that it helps expand the company’s big data play around marketing and advertising. Salesforce may have originally built its business providing a cloud-based platform for salespeople to better organize and handle their sales operations, but in the last several years, the biggest trend in advertising and marketing is data, and how salespeople can track it better and use that to do their jobs much better. Salesforce, unsurprisingly, has jumped into the trend with both feet. Of the it has made to date, perhaps around a dozen (? I need to count carefully; that’s my quick estimate) have been focused on adtech and marketing tech. Some of the very biggies have included ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6, which are folded into the company’s Marketing Cloud division; and now, Krux. As for Krux itself, it will be adding another feature to Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud, specifically a data management platform. This will bring Salesforce into closer parity with its competitors, which include Oracle (which offers a DMP via its purchase of BlueKai) and Adobe (Audience Manager), and . This also plays into the bigger intelligence piece that the company has been trying to build by way of its new Einstein machine learning platform. But, ironically, you might argue that Salesforce may be skating to the wrong part of the ice in this instance. , Google unveiled a new way to track ads that is based not on cookies (which is the basis of a lot of the DMP tracking today) but favors instead a tracking of users based on “log-in” data, which is considered more complete, and on par with what companies like Facebook have also developed. However, given the rumors that Salesforce might , it may end up having its own social log-in play after all. In terms of the overall price, Salesforce said it would also “issue shares of Company common stock. The aggregate number of shares of Company common stock to be issued will be determined based on the volume-weighted average closing price of Company common stock during the ten trading days ending on (and including) the second trading day before closing of the acquisition (the ‘Company Trading Price’); provided that, for purposes of determining the number of shares to be issued, the Company Trading Price will not be less than $57.25 nor more than $100.18. As a result, if the acquisition is consummated, the Company expects to issue at closing between approximately 3.4 million and approximately six million shares of Company common stock. A portion of the shares will be subject to vesting conditions based upon continued employment of certain recipients following closing of the acquisition.” The acquisition is anticipated to close in the company’s Q4 that ends January 31, 2017. It brings Salesforce’s acquisitions in the last year to .
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How to feed the world with sensors, data and local production
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Lora Kolodny
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Today, food and agriculture entrepreneurs took the stage at the White House lawn for to discuss the potential and limits of technology to feed a burgeoning world population. According to the most recent available estimates from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the world do not have enough to eat today. And with a global population expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, the U.S Agency for International Development (US AID) expects that agricultural production will need to increase by from current levels to serve our nutritional needs. The founder of — a media company that focuses its reporting and events on improving our global food systems — Danielle Gould, moderated the discussion. Gould pointed out that in recent years, consumers have been driving big trends in food production and retail — they want more food that’s produced locally, organically, and with ingredients that are clearly listed by producers. Retailers like CostCo, Whole Foods and Meijer are all selling local and organic food today, Gould noted. While consumer packaged goods juggernauts have lost billions in the past decade as consumers rejected their chemical-laden products, and flocked instead towards brands with more of a natural bent. The founder of , Will Allen, said these trends are a good thing, and could encourage a more distributed and equitable approach to food production. But such consumer demands can only be met if the U.S. makes an investment in new agricultural infrastructure, Allen suggested. Growing Power advocates for and teaches urban agriculture in order to bring nutritious, fresh foods and food-related jobs into neighborhoods that lack access to them otherwise. specifically spoke of indoor, greenhouse, hoop house, rooftop and wall farms, all built using technologies that can partially replace outdated methods that he said are depleting our soil and other environmental resources. He lamented that large, outdoor farms, due to climate change and pollution, have become unsustainable, whether they’re raising fruit in tropical climes and shipping it to cold weather states, or cultivating fish in the oil-polluted waterways of Louisiana. A peach farmer and author named , with , added that inspiration and inclusiveness should be part of the country’s investments in agriculture. She and Allen both referenced the fact that the current generation of farmers are quickly aging and will soon be hoping to retire. While she grew up in the industry, she said, farming has not held a public image as an inclusive industry, welcoming of women and men of different ages, races or sexual orientation. , a co-founder of MEANS database, spoke of accessibility of another kind. “Access to good food can happen in low income communities, but good food is not a given. It is not available to everyone at a price that everybody can afford. It’s really important to recognize that even if we can advance [the production and distribution of] good food for people living above the poverty line, we have to also do it for people living below,” she said. is a tech non-profit in the food recovery business. It works with groceries, restaurants, caterers and other food businesses that have excess inventory to adhere to state and federal health laws, but get that inventory to pantries and other organizations that can feed hungry people. Rose Belding also said, “You should not have to pay to do the right thing,” in order to help feed the world. A director for , Caleb Harper, said he agreed. Too often, discussions about hunger and climate change feel dire and hopeless, he said. He attributed part of that hopelessness to the fact that farmers have lost some of their communal power to corporate practices, namely companies staking out intellectual property claims around technologies that can help produce more or better foods. Harper’s team of researchers and engineers are aiming to infuse some optimism into the industry, in several ways. MIT Open Ag is teaching kids and techies about food, hoping to turn some of them into farmers. And they’re building a massive, open database of agricultural data, and agtech software, so that anyone who wants to get involved in feeding the world can do so without paying a lot to get started or keep a competitive edge. Across the board, panelists said they were eager to see new technologies like sensors and chemical analysis give consumers great information about their food, and to see how an increasingly distributed food system — comprising rooftop, indoor, greenhouse and other farms — could begin to eradicate hunger and create new jobs in urban neighborhoods across the U.S. Photo credit:
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Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products
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Sarah Perez
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Amazon is making a significant change to its , , which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon – not the seller or vendor – to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process. Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews – even going so far as to sue those , as well as , in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers. However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in exchange for their “honest” review. The only condition was that those reviewers would have to disclose their affiliation with the business in question in the text of their review. Reviewers were generally offered the product for free or at a discounted price, in exchange for their review. Although, in theory, these reviewers could write their true opinion on the product – positive or negative – these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated. This is due to a combination of factors – the fact that the vendor or seller has likely sought out those reviewers who are less critical, and the fact that reviewers may believe they would no longer have the opportunity to receive these sorts of offers, if they chose to say negative things. In general, shoppers have begun to distrust these reviews because they believe them to be biased. That’s not just a “feeling,” as it turns out – indicated that the average rating for products with incentivized reviews was higher than non-incentivized ones. (That is, a 4.74 average rating versus a 4.36 average rating, out of 5 stars). Even with this 0.38 star difference, the impact was substantial – boosting products from the 54th percentile to the 94th percentile. Effectively, incentivized reviews could create top-rated products. The study also found that incentivized reviewers were 12 times less likely to give a 1-star rating than non-incentivized reviews, and almost 4 times less likely to leave a critical review in general. Technically, these reviewers are not compensated with cash, but writing reviews has become a windfall of sorts. Those who participate in incentivized reviews have written an average of 232 reviews, the study indicated, while those who have not, only wrote an average of 31 reviews. That’s a lot of free and discounted products for these ‘non-compensated’ reviewers! Amazon says that, going forward, the only incentivized reviews will be those from . These don’t work the same way, however. For starters, Amazon selects who will be allowed to review products, and it does so mainly to boost the review count on new or pre-release products that haven’t yet generated enough sales to have a large number of organic reviews. Vine reviewers are invited to join the program only after having written a number of reviews voted as “helpful” by other customers, and tend to have expertise in a specific product category. “We do not incentivize positive star ratings, attempt to influence the content of reviews, or even require a review to be written,” explains Chee Chew, VP, Customer Experience at Amazon in an announcement about how Vine controls for bias. “And we limit the total number of Vine reviews that we display for each product,” he adds. In addition, vendors don’t have any contact with Vine reviewers, nor do they get to influence which reviewers will receive their products, which are submitted directly to Amazon for distribution. These changes will apply to all product categories other than books, as Amazon has always allowed advance copies of books to be distributed, the retailer notes. Amazon also says it has other ideas about making Vine more useful in the future, but didn’t go into detail. An Amazon spokesperson tells us that reviews that were received prior to the policy change are only being retroactively removed if they are excessive, and don’t comply with prior policy. That means you’ll still see a ton of these seemingly biased reviews live on Amazon, unfortunately. The retailer also says that if it finds anyone is attempting to manipulate reviews by tying reviews to discounted products, it will take action against them, starting today.
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Spoken Editions goes live on iTunes so you can listen to your favorite websites
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Sarah Perez
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As we , iTunes has today launched a new section called “ ,” which will feature narrated content from a number of online publishers in the form of audio-only podcasts. These Spoken Editions are available both in the iTunes storefront, as well as in Apple’s Podcasts app, for easy access. We first spotted the Spoken Editions in the wild, during testing. At the time, a handful of publishers appeared to be trying out the new format. But with today’s official launch, there are now over 40 Spoken Editions available from a number of publishers, including the Huffington Post, Reuters, Slate. .Mic, Wired, IGN, Bustle, Fusion, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, TIME, Skift, Playboy, and others, including TechCrunch. The podcasts are powered by , a company that has developed a service that quickly turns a publishers’ RSS feed of articles into audio recordings that can be distributed anywhere – in iTunes, on SoundCloud, on the web, or any other audio platform. The idea is not only to allow consumers to “hear” from their favorite websites instead of reading them, but also to give each publisher’s brand its own distinctive voice. “We have a distributed network of voice-over talent that is tagged and managed,” SpokenLayer CEO Will Mayo, previously to TechCrunch. “The voice and style of any brand is in its writers and the reporting it does. That’s unique for every publication, and that uniqueness is honored,” he said. In other words, a brand whose target demographic was a younger audience may be voiced by a younger voice actor, for example. In addition to giving consumers a new way to digest the news, SpokenLayer also opens up an additional ad-based revenue stream for publishers, thanks to the included audio ads. The move comes at a time when podcasts are as is voice computing in general. Amazon recently made similar, short-form audio recordings from publishers available to Prime subscribers for free, through its Audible Channels platform. Meanwhile, many consumers are asking their connected speakers, like Amazon Echo or Amazon Dot, for news from their own favorite publishers by way of add-on apps for the Amazon’s Alexa voice platform. With Apple now aggregating and organizing a sizable group of audio news recordings, some may believe that lends more credence to the about Apple building an Alexa/Echo competitor. SpokenLayer says that, going forward, it will produce hundreds of episodes per week for these Spoken Editions, which will make it one of the largest podcast producers in the world. You can view the new recordings here at .
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Mophie’s modular case brings everything but a headphone jack to the iPhone 7
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Brian Heater
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Of late, Mophie seems to be intent on letting the world know that it’s more than just charging cases – but hey, at the end of the day, there are worse things to be than virtually synonymous with a given space. And hey, when Apple unveiled its first proprietary charging case a year or so back, everyone was quick to drop the hardware startup’s name like it was going out of style. The company’s latest offering splits the difference – taking a note from Otterbox’s most recent play with a modular phone case that brings a slew of swappable functionality to the back of the iPhone 7. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear why Mophie opted not to become one of the uniVERSE’s third-party accessory providers. Unlike Otterbox’s offering, Mophie’s gone magnetic (a la the Moto Z and its various offshoots) with the , with plates built into the two base cases. As of now, there are three accessories, a 4,000mAh battery (naturally) that features a swappable microUSB/lightning port for charging, along with folio and wallet cases for carrying around credit cards and the like. It’s a pretty small selection at the moment, but hopefully Mophie will look toward third-party partners to expand the ecosystem further. Meantime, all of the above offerings are available through Mophie’s site. The base cases run $40, the battery is $50 and the folio and wallet are $20 a pop.
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White House’s SXSL shows what it’s like to be in the criminal justice system
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Megan Rose Dickey
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The criminal justice system in our country is broken. Just imagine if technologists put their resources and knowledge toward solving some of our country’s biggest issues, instead of toward the next dating app. Today at South by South Lawn, the White House’s first-ever festival of art, ideas and action, I got a glimpse of what that world might look like. My first stop was to 6’x9′, a virtual reality experience that shows you what it’s like to be in solitary confinement. Created in partnership by The Guardian and The Mill, 6’x9′ puts you inside a virtual 6-foot by 9-foot prison cell with just a bed, toilet and small area to put down some books. The nine-minute experience was designed using game engine technology and first-person accounts for the cell design and audio capture. Even though I was only “in” solitary confinement for nine minutes, it was intense. In the U.S., there are between 80,000 to 100,000 people held in solitary confinement for over 23 hours a day, which cannot possibly be good for someone’s mental health. “There’s been lots of work done on what that does to someone’s brain and irreversible mental issues associated with it,” Zu Alkadiri, executive producer of The Mill told me. With 6’x9′, the goal is to use technology to effect social change, Alkadiri said. “It’s the perfect use of the medium to create an empathetic connection to a problem or situation that 99.9% of the human race never have to experience — thank goodness,” Alkadiri said. “It’s an important story to tell and this is a great use of technology to tell it.” Another exhibit that stuck out was one by , which lets people step into the role of a judge and make decisions about how many years someone should get for a crime. At the end of the scenario, you see what the actual — usually grim — outcome was. “As opposed to hitting people over the head with stats, this invites you to play a part.” Jesse Inman, the lead developer of Justice For Us told me. “The goal is then a variety of these experiences, like being a police officer, being someone awaiting trial, being the warden of the prison and what it’s like to make decisions like cutting education programs and profit and those kind of things.” Another goal for this project is for it to live beyond the team and ultimately get it to the point where it affects policy, Inman said. But it’s ultimately about educating people around what’s going on in our criminal justice system and how decisions are being made. “The majority of people are unaware of the brokenness in our criminal justice system, especially the people most enabled to do something about it,” Inman said. “The people who can do the most about it know the least. If we can give people the experience of being a member of the criminal justice system in America, that could help them better understand its brokenness from a very different angle.” [gallery ids="1396042,1396043,1396046,1396048"]
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The TC Meetup + Pitch-off is heading to Seoul, SK on October 27
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Jordan Crook
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Get ready for the in Seoul, because we’ll be there soon. On October 27, the TC team will descend on South Korea to hold one of our world-famous pitch-offs, in which 10 companies will show off their wares onstage. After all the startups have completed their 60-second, rapid-fire pitches, a panel of expert local VC judges will decide who wins. First place will get a table in Startup Alley at the next TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Second place will get two tickets to the conference and the Audience Choice winner will get one ticket to the big show. Applications to the pitch-off close on October 11, so make sure to And if you just want to see what all the fuss is about, we encourage you to come check out the program. Alongside the pitch-off we’ll also be hosting some folks from the local tech scene for fireside chats. And, of course, there will be plenty of time before and after the stage show for networking. We can’t wait to see you!
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What the new NHTSA guidelines mean for self-driving cars
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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In September, the issued for the testing and [PDF] vehicles. The important thing to remember for now is that these are merely guidelines and not rules. Complying with them is voluntary on the part of automotive and hardware manufacturers, as well as app developers. “Firms can make the decision to not comply and be within their rights to do so,” said David Strickland, general counsel for the , who was also an NHTSA administrator between 2010 and 2014. “This is evidence of the agency’s willingness to find tools that move more quickly than traditional rule-making, which can take four to eight years.” The document had a lot of ground to cover. “Not everybody is a well-capitalized automotive manufacturer with risk assessment built in, and not every company is a sophisticated ride-sharing company or mass innovator and disruptor,” Strickland said. “You have to build a regulatory structure that applies to four engineers in a garage. NHTSA guidance has to take into account all of that.” Katie Thompson, who served as general counsel for the agency from 2013 to May of this year, told me that the guidelines signal how the Department of Transportation wants to work with developing tech. “There’s an admonition to people developing tech to be mindful of people who will use it — designed to take that into account. If it’s unsafe, [NHTSA] will determine it’s a failure and ask you to recall it.” Or as President Barack Obama said in an , “Make no mistake: If a self-driving car isn’t safe, we have the authority to pull it off the road.” Any company developing autonomous vehicles is being asked to sign a 15-point safety checklist to pre-certify their vehicles, similar to the FAA’s system for airplanes. The NHTSA list (page 15 of the guidelines, for those following along at home) includes everything from privacy and system safety to post-crash behavior and object and event detection and response. Even ethical considerations are on the list. Each item can be marked as meeting the guidance, not meeting it, or not applicable. The agency acknowledges that pre-certification does not prevent humans from doing dumb things (and likely uploading it to YouTube), which Thomson alluded to in our interview. The guidelines do recommend that manufacturers provide consumer education and training on how to use the new technologies “properly, efficiently, and in the safest manner possible.” NHTSA also asks that black-box-type data be “stored, maintained, and readily available for retrieval by the entity itself and by NHTSA” for the purpose of reconstructing crashes. The agency wants this data to be available regardless of whether there was a crash or an event was successfully avoided. This data, and all other data collected by the vehicles, needs to be anonymized, according to NHTSA. “Generally, data shared with third parties should be de-identified (i.e. stripped of elements that make the data directly or reasonably linkable to a specific HAV [highly autonomous vehicle] owner or user).” The treatment of data is the most significant piece of the guidelines, in Thomson’s opinion. “NHTSA is dead-on accurate,” she said. “This is borrowed from the FAA and their safety management systems. All the information is de-identified, but it enables the agency to proactively identify trends and risks in the system before something happens.” But Thomson was doubtful that private automotive companies will fully comply while these guidelines are voluntary. She wondered if proprietary and security issues would trump the government’s request for data. Strickland said NHTSA is working on another document to address data privacy and cyber security beyond what’s set out in these guidelines. “Self-driving vehicles collect personally identifiable information, geographic information, and now biometric information, and that must be protected,” he said. NHTSA does request that cybersecurity data be shared with the agency and with other manufacturers. “Each industry member should not have to experience the same cyber vulnerabilities in order to learn from them,” the agency wrote. Strickland agrees. “The manufacturers are as protective as they can be, but how well do you foreclose an attack? Or rectify when it’s discovered?” NHTSA wants very badly to avoid the “patchwork of inconsistent laws and regulations” that the states have already started stitching together. Instead, “DOT strongly encourages states to allow DOT alone to regulate” autonomous vehicles and their technologies. , among others, issued a statement noting its concerns that California’s strong regulations in this arena could be pre-empted. Avoiding a patchwork without undoing states’ regulatory innovations was Strickland’s biggest concern as well, but he’s pleased with how the guidelines dealt with the issue. “I’m happy that they listened to advisers,” he said. “The challenge for NHTSA is, will they be able to process all of this?” Thomson said. The pre-certification process alone is a new load of paperwork for the agency to keep up with, and the technology is moving fast. But the process of creating the guidelines and creating a fluid framework for autonomous vehicle safety is worth the trouble, Strickland says. “The promise of the technology is transformational,” he said. “I can’t think of an innovation that’s bigger than this. If we can reduce the number of people that lost their lives in 2015 [more than 35,000], it’s beyond the value of the investment.”
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Crunch Report | Everything Google Hardware 2016
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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Play this killer self-driving car ethics game
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Josh Constine
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Should a self-driving car full of old folks crash to avoid puppies in the cross-walk? Is it OK to run over two criminals if you save one doctor? Whose lives are worth more, seven-year-olds or senior citizens? In, This from MIT’s researchers, a car’s breaks fail and you have to choose whether it crashes into a barrier, killing the passengers, or swerves into the cross-walk, killing pedestrians. The game lets you make the calls in the famous and see analytics about your ethics. Thinking about these tough questions is more important than ever since engineers are coding this type of decision making into autonomous vehicles right now. Who should be responsible for these choices? The non-driving passenger, the company who made the AI or no one? The Moral Machine poses basic choices like whether AI should intervene at all if it will save more lives, or if it should stay passive instead of actively changing events in a way that makes it responsible for someone’s death. But the scenarios also raise more nuanced quandaries. Should pedestrians be saved instead of passengers who knowingly got into an inherently dangerous speeding metal box? Should we rely on the air bags and other safety features in a crash instead of swerving into unprotected pedestrians? If you think these decisions are tough with clear-cut situations, imagine how tough it will be for self-driving cars amidst chaotic road conditions.
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Hands-on with Google Home
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Frederic Lardinois
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is to Amazon line’s of voice-powered Echo devices. After announcing Home at its I/O developer conference this spring, the company today unveiled both its price ($129) and shipping date (November 4) at its annual hardware event in San Francisco. Maybe more importantly, though, we also got a first chance to try out Home ourselves. Home is powered by the , which is basically a re-branded version of Google’s voice-powered search and Google Now. It’s smarter and more conversational, but for the most part you will get the same results from using “OK Google” on your phone today as from the Google Assistant (minus features like booking OpenTable reservations with your voice). Unlike Google’s current voice-powered assistant, Home also integrates with music apps like Spotify and Pandora. Soon, it’ll also allow you to cast Netflix videos to any TV with a Chromecast attached to it. All of that intelligence is in the cloud, though. As far as hardware goes, Home is all about how well it can recognize your voice and how solid the hardware feels. The good news here is that even though Home only has two microphones (compared to Amazon Echo’s seven), it still worked really well in the noisy demo environment after Google’s keynote today. It easily understood my questions when I was standing next to it and its speakers were more than loud enough to make it stand out over the loud chatter around it. After things quieted down, I also started issuing my “OK Google” commands from 10 feet away and, again, Home didn’t hesitate to answer. It doesn’t seem like having fewer microphones than the Echo is really an issue here, but we still have to test Home in a real home environment to be sure. As far as the hardware goes, the Home feels pretty solid and is definitely heavier than it looks. Most of that weight is probably due to the speaker, which is at the bottom of the unit and sits in an interchangeable cradle that attaches to the Home with the help of two magnets (those bases will retail for $20 each). How well does the Google Assistant work on Home? Based on the little time we spent with it, the answer currently is “pretty well.” It handles all the usual Google queries without issues, but it also does a good job at finding music to play. I asked it to play some hipster music and it happily obliged. Same for playing songs from individual bands. Google also demoed integrations with Philips’ Hue lights and the Nest thermostat. All of that worked as expected. One thing that struck me, though, was that you can’t really have a conversation with the Assistant without starting every sentence with “OK Google.” That works really well to start up the Home, but when you ask follow-up questions, it starts feeling like work. “OK Google. Who is the president of the United States?” “Barack Obama is the president of the United States.” “OK Google. How old is he?” “Barack Obama is 55 years old.” “OK Google. Where was he born?” Other than that, though, Home feels like it will make for a solid entry into this market. Once Google opens up the Assistant to third-party developers in the way Amazon has already done, it’ll basically have feature parity with its competitors. At that point, it’s all about how well Google handles your queries — and while all the major tech companies are pushing their AI services pretty hard, Google has already shown that it can easily compete (and often outperform) most of its competitors in this arena. Google Home will set you back $129 and is available for pre-order now. It will start shipping on November 4.
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Amazon should think outside the box
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Alexia Tsotsis
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Scoop gets Bay Area cities to pick up the tab for carpooling to alleviate traffic jams
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Lora Kolodny
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A startup that matches riders with drivers for paid and pre-scheduled carpooling, , has inked a deal with two big towns in the increasingly congested commuter hubs in the San Francisco Bay Area, Foster City and San Mateo. With this deal, each city is subsidizing carpoolers’ rides so that passengers only have to pay $2 each way, and will ostensibly refrain from driving solo or taking taxis, which and can contribute to poor air quality. Drivers see 50 percent to 100 percent of their expenses reimbursed through Scoop, generally, based on how many people ride with them. Before becoming a Scoop driver, a vehicle owner has to go through a motor vehicle history report ensuring they have a clean driving record. The city-subsidized rides will kick in on October 10, but Scoop riders can begin booking their discounted carpool trips today. As TechCrunch has , with Scoop, passengers book a ride in a car with an available seat as late as 9 p.m. the night before their commute. And they can book a ride home as late as 3:30 p.m. the day of the return trip. The company is venture funded by , , and . The company currently operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, and between Los Angeles and Century City. According to co-founders (and brothers) Jon and Rob Sadow, Scoop has plans for national expansion, and hopes to partner with other city transit offices to encourage carpool usage, reduce traffic problems and, of course, grow the app’s user base. Scoop works with large employers to subsidize their employees’ carpooling, too. Riders can specify whether or not they want to ride with a specific colleague or friend, or after they have taken a ride, whether they’d prefer not to ride with a particular driver or passenger again. The company’s corporate partners have included Tesla, Cisco, Workday, Stanford Research Park companies, Salesforce and Applied Materials and Creative Artists Agency. The company has recently surpassed 100,000 trips across eight towns in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles metro area, Jon Sadow said. Each carpool takes an average of 1.5 riders, besides the driver, per car. The company faces significant competition in the market for paid carpooling, not just from or which tend to focus on shorter distances, but Google’s new
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Twitter, Microsoft, Google and others say they haven’t scanned messages like Yahoo
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Kate Conger
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Yahoo is under scrutiny today after former employees claimed the company to enable U.S. intelligence agencies to scan incoming emails to all of Yahoo’s millions of users. The allegations, first published by , raise questions about the constitutionality of such dragnet surveillance and about the legal means used to compel Yahoo to build the software. Other major tech companies were quick to distance themselves from the report, stating that they have not received similar requests for custom software from the government. “We’ve never received a request like this, and were we to receive it we’d challenge it in a court,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Separately, while federal law prohibits companies from being able to share information about certain types of national security related requests, we are currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more information about government requests.” Twitter’s against the Justice Department is ongoing. “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch. in an effort to improve transparency around government requests for user data. A Google spokesperson said that Google has also never received a demand for such software. “We’ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: no way,” a spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch. Apple, which successfully fought an FBI demand to create custom software to unlock an iPhone connected to the San Bernardino shooting, said that it would continue to oppose requests for custom software. “We have never received a request of this type,” an Apple spokesperson said of the Yahoo case. “If we were to receive one, we would oppose it in court.” We posed the same question to Facebook. “Facebook has never received a request like the one described in these news reports from any government, and if we did we would fight it,” a spokesperson told us. Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, reportedly resigned from his former position as Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer when he discovered the email surveillance program. Yahoo did not confirm or deny the reported surveillance. A spokesperson told TechCrunch, “ is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.” Like other companies, Yahoo has engaged in legal efforts to curb government surveillance. It initially fought the NSA’s effort to compel the company to participate in broad surveillance in 2008, and only backed down when threatened with . Yahoo also recently several of the National Security Letters it has received over the years, a first for a major tech company. But recent news reports have suggested that security took a backseat at Yahoo as users drifted away from its mail service. Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo are among the many tech companies that publish transparency reports about government requests for user data, and none of the listed companies’ reports reflect the kind of widespread data sharing that is alleged to have taken place at Yahoo. Even Yahoo’s own transparency report claims that the company only with the U.S. government during the time period when the program was reportedly developed — a relatively low number for the company, which has shared data on up to 51,499 users during a similar six-month period.
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Due diligence is a responsibility for investors, an opportunity for startups
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Dr. Nancy Markley
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Many startup companies begin with either an idea or a proprietary technology. Sometimes this technology is straightforward and easily explained; other times, it is novel and revolutionary. For some founders, the latter can be a double-edged sword, especially once they begin to seek outside financing. If your technology is new, it can be hard to explain and prove. But if it is potentially disruptive, it can attract significant attention from potential investors. The latter is what happened with the disgraced healthcare startup . Founder raised massive rounds of financing on the promise of a new way to test blood that would transform medical testing for all of mankind. Investors threw money at Holmes and , leading to a valuation of $9 billion at a 2014 financing round. As the media has recently reported though, it would appear that few of had any experience in the medical and biopharma industries. Rather, those with ties to the technology industry came from software backgrounds, and the others were strong political players in the U.S. These investors most likely did not perform their due diligence on Theranos and its technology. Because of their backgrounds, it’s possible that they did not even know what to look for. Theranos was known to keep their cards close to their chest, and was secretive about their technology and data. Regardless, investors kept coming and giving money to the company. Were they investing without doing their own homework on the technology, instead relying on earlier investors they believed had performed due diligence themselves? In a , marketing professor Kent Grayson explained this phenomenon as trusting “credence goods”: For Theranos, these kinds of endorsements were made by a number of high-profile investors, such as software giant, Larry Ellison, and a prestigious board, which included high-profile lawyer, David Boies, and former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. When well-respected people buy into something, we often assume that they’ve done our homework for us. After all, would they risk their reputation without doing their own due diligence? Some excuse Theranos’ secrecy as merely protecting their intellectual property and technology, in addition to desiring confidentiality for their company. Having worked in the biotechnology industry for many years, and having raised capital for a medical products startup, I can say that that argument does not hold water. Founders must be open to the scrutiny of due diligence. If your potential investors are bringing in scientists and experts to audit your company, you must trust them as they analyze your technology and data, especially in the medical sector. There are confidentiality agreements as well as other protections that you can put in place during the due diligence process. If you don’t trust these people to keep your secrets under a confidentiality agreement, then you shouldn’t be in business with them. There’s no reason why you can’t share your data and have it externally validated. In Theranos’ case, it’s possible that investors invested in a technology that may ultimately not deliver what was promised. Unfortunately, this scenario does happen. Companies may oversell their technology by overstating its capabilities, or they may fail to pursue rigorous scientific procedure with respect to the efficacy of their technology. Sometimes investors get caught up in the narrative of the company. Theranos, in particular, was a media darling before The Wall Street Journal’s last year. It’s worth noting that, for the most part, well-known investors in the biotechnology and life sciences spaces, especially in Silicon Valley, did not invest in Theranos. Because these investors often have the expertise and the experience in their fields, they knew what to look for. In this case, biotechnology investors thought that Theranos’ technology seemed . Even as Theranos continued to raise money and announce new applications of their technology, they remained unwilling to share their data. This was a red flag that told savvy biotechnology investors to stay away. For medical startup companies, being able to share your data (under proper confidentiality agreements), having your technology validated in clinical trials and peer-reviewed in medical journals should be a welcome. It is a good thing to be able to prove the effectiveness of your product. You want to be able to show investors that your product works and has valid applications. Founders should always be open to third-party validation. We took the time to have our first product — a medical device for treatment of snoring and sleep apnea — undergo clinical testing and peer review. By the time we took the product to market, and as we raised capital later on, we had data to share that showed that our product was clinically proven and that the technology was scientifically sound. At the same time, due diligence is the responsibility of investors. If they don’t perform their due diligence, and they’re simply relying on the credibility or the pedigree of the management team, they risk investing in products or technology that is ultimately proven unsound.
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Google’s Daydream VR platform plays it safe — and that’s okay
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Lucas Matney
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Those hoping for Google to deliver more details of a quantum leap toward next-gen virtual reality may have been a bit disappointed Tuesday when the company chose to promote wide user accessibility above cutting-edge features in its VR headset. The Daydream View doesn’t have any buttons or embedded sensors; you just stick your phone in it and VR happens. Google is really targeting this device toward the average smartphone user and less so toward the inspired VR early adopter. In order to make this appeal, Google took everything that has worked on mobile VR: 360 video, 360 photos and games, and then it showed it off like it was all new again. There wasn’t an attempt from Google to ship its conception of a VR killer app; instead, it seems the company feels that promoting a Cardboard+ experience is enough to convince prospective Pixel patrons to pay $79 for the View. I had a chance to go hands-on with it after Google’s event today and it’s clear that the company is framing this as more of a successor to its Cardboard platform, rather than a total reinvention of it. The form factor is much more palatable, but the philosophy is the same: bring the masses simple VR. The first thing you notice about the headset is its comfort. Google went out of its way to prioritize a design that wasn’t too bulky, wasn’t too complicated and was soft to the touch. The fabric exterior seems quite breathable and was quite a bit more comfortable to use than Samsung’s updated Gear VR. The ergonomics are generally awesome, though I did notice some light sneaking in from the rigid edges of the View, causing some unfortunate glare on the lenses. Unlike the host of Cardboard headsets made for the platform, this one has a head strap, which was pretty simple to adjust. Overall it feels great. The next thing you’ll notice is that the Daydream experience isn’t nausea-inducing. Google seems to have really gotten VR mode in Android Nougat right for the compatible phones that support it. Sub-20ms latency is what keeps the image on the screen corresponding with your head movements. It’s a more noticeable difference than you might think, but it really allows you to engage with content for much longer than a couple of minutes. This is clearly the highlight of Daydream and it really is a marked upgrade. [gallery ids="1396866,1396867,1396868,1396869"] A couple of the content pieces I got to try out integrated the View’s new Daydream controller. It’s pretty cool, though if you’ve used any high-end systems like the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or PS VR, you’ll probably be annoyed by its constraints. With the high-end systems, the controllers are positionally tracked in-space; meanwhile, the Daydream controller is about as powerful as a Wiimote. This means you can use the controller’s accelerometer to manipulate an object or select interface items like a laser pointer, but you certainly won’t be using the controller as a lightsaber in any titles. The controller slots into the headset when it’s not in use, but I still bet a lot of people are going to lose this in no time. Bringing the controller into the mobile VR experience will really allow Daydream content to expand much further than Cardboard apps ever could. Virtual reality is currently in a position where it’s being defined by the influencers and insiders rather than regular consumers. Google wants to change that schema, but how it influences the industry as a whole depends on the standards developers choose to adopt. Thanks to the extensiveness of the Android platform it seems like Google can pretty much do whatever it wants, but if a company like Oculus can show off a mobile VR solution that gives developers more creative freedom, say a mobile VR headset with positional tracking, then it’s a little more up in the air. We don’t know what Oculus, which helps make Samsung’s Gear VR, has up its sleeve in terms of a renewed strategy for mobile, but we’ll likely hear more later this week at the company’s Oculus Connect 3 developer conference. Overall, the Daydream platform seems to be an updated version of Cardboard that actually works well. The headset is totally cool and, while it would’ve been nice to see Google push the innovation envelope a bit in terms of its first broad offering for Daydream, it’s clear that they’re aiming to satisfy the average user — even if that means hugging to the VR rulebook a bit.
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Pinterest lagged behind leaked revenue projections in 2015
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Matthew Lynley
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Today, Pinterest , Todd Morgenfeld. However, there’s a more interesting footnote that’s reported in The Wall Street Journal’s story about the hire: last year, according to the report. You may recall that last year TechCrunch reported, , that the company was projecting around $169 million in revenue for 2015 (and $2.8 billion by 2018). We reported the story in October last year, and the information was used by Andreessen Horowitz to solicit limited partners to invest in a special investment fund for Pinterest earlier in the year. So, what’s going on with the discrepancy here? Facebook’s advertising business continues to . We also reported that a noted that the company had estimated that revenue would be between $250 million and $350 million for 2016, and could have been as high as $1 billion for 2017. Both of these mobile advertising strategies appear to not only be working, but growing really quickly. Was Pinterest, in the end, still a little bit of a question mark for marketers? Most of the content that appears on Pinterest comes from businesses, and it possesses a large user base. But it may be that advertisers are still apprehensive about shifting budgets from other services like Facebook — or even emerging ones like Snapchat, which could pique greater curiosity because of their rapid growth and engagement. (Snapchat .) Some of these tools exist to some extent on other services like Facebook and Snapchat, but Pinterest at first blush would seem to offer a comprehensive platform for marketers. The company has a plenty large user base — in September last year, , and it’s pretty likely that that number has gone up. Pinterest in the same leaked documents also said it was projecting 151 million monthly active users by the end of 2015. But is it enough to woo advertisers and larger marketing budgets? Pinterest tries to offer a different value proposition for marketers. Brands are able to touch its users at multiple points of their buying cycles. Users can discover products through advertising tools, making them aware of their existence. Marketers can also tap into a user’s intent to potentially purchase through search. And finally, they can also hit them at points where they are ready to finally make a purchase of those products (or download an app, for example). To be sure, Pinterest has been very methodical about expanding its business, slowly opening up advertising tools to wider and wider audiences over time. It may be that the company put the brakes on certain ad and commerce product releases until it felt like they were ready. Our reporting pointed at the projection coming from earlier in the year from when we published our story. Perhaps the company may have been a little ambitious in its plans. This isn’t, of course, unheard of. Companies sometimes may offer a wide range of potential projections — such as the case of Snapchat, which the leaked deck shows its 2017 revenue could range . Snapchat, too, has slowly been rolling out its plans for working with marketers, meaning that the final numbers that may land may end up partially (or wildly) different from the estimates offered to investors. New advertising formats are also emerging on Pinterest, but are sometimes coming out quite a bit later than other platforms. In August, the company finally released following . Facebook, meanwhile, has had a robust video ecosystem and is clearly figuring out ways to monetize it. That’s likely the reason why Pinterest is investing so much in its visual search tools. At an event earlier this year, Pinterest revealed that it would soon give users the ability . One of Pinterest’s perceived edges is its heavy research and development in visual search, and it also recently began expanding those tools into video. Pinterest needs to find an obvious edge that can convince marketers to pull their budgets away from search (Google), Facebook and other advertising platforms. It’s also expanded very aggressively into international markets. And it’s continuing to release more and more advertising tools. AND it continues to not only acquire companies for talent, but . All of this is, of course, feeding into the company’s intent to become the visual search engine of record on the internet. Then, there’s the case of its commerce plans. The company is trying to offer as many commerce tools as possible for its companies — and potentially to attract influencers — with things like the Buy button and showing products below videos. But buyable pins on Pinterest , and it’s hard to create new user behavior (much less get people to put in a credit card), and it’s only been a short while since launch, relatively speaking. The hiring of a CFO can, sometimes, signal ambitious plans to organize an inevitable initial public offering. A Pinterest representative told me over email that the company has “no plans for an IPO right now, as we focus on growing the business.” So Morgenfeld’s task may be to get things in order as it continues to try to woo advertisers and marketers. We reached out to a Pinterest representative about the discrepancy, who said the company does not comment on revenue.
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Clinton Foundation denies hack claims by Guccifer 2.0
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Devin Coldewey
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The hacker who claimed responsibility for the Democratic National Committee claims to have breached the Clinton Foundation’s servers and retrieved a number of files potentially damaging to the Democratic Presidential nominee — but the Foundation denies any such breach occurred. The hacker, Guccifer 2.0, posted screenshots and spreadsheets they claimed were from the foundation’s servers. “Hillary Clinton and her staff don’t even bother about the information security,” he wrote. “It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server.” No secret was made of the political motivation of the supposed hack, and the author even included a shout-out to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Both were widely criticized earlier this year for releasing what many considered to be private information of citizens alongside the revealing internal emails of the DNC. Experts have speculated that the hacker in question is in fact . That would make this the latest entry in a low-key cyber-skirmish likely aimed at affecting the outcome of next month’s election. When contacted for comment, the Clinton Foundation was unequivocal in denying the validity of the hack. “Once again, we still have no evidence Clinton Foundation systems were breached and have not been notified by law enforcement of an issue,” the organization said in a statement sent to TechCrunch. “None of the folders or files shown are from the Clinton Foundation.” The foundation’s president subsequently echoed this (twice, actually) in a tweet: https://twitter.com/DonnaShalala/status/783411801958457345 The Hillary Clinton campaign also responded to our inquiries, denying the documents were taken from the foundation. Many of the files appear to show information that — donations to PACs, for instance. A few entries I checked tallied with documented donations, but that doesn’t speak to the claims of the hack. (and Ars Technica ) that the documents are more likely to be from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which reported a breach in July, as well. One document appears to have been authored by the DCCC’s deputy research director in 2009, for instance. (I previously wrote that the document was by someone who didn’t work at the DCCC at the time; my mistake, this has been fixed.) We’re investigating the posted documents further and will update this post with more information as we find it.
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Google’s new smartphones are about Google, not Android
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Darrell Etherington
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Google a lot of new devices today, but at the core of nearly everything was a commitment to Assistant specifically, and to showing off what Google’s range of service offerings can do. I sat down with Google Canada’s Head of Public Affairs Aaron Brindle after the satellite keynote event here in Toronto to discuss what hardware means for Google now, and how its work in artificial intelligence and machine learning fits in with the device side of the equation. “One of the most important messages of today is that Google is taking hardware very seriously,” Brindle said. “What we’ve seen with the Android ecosystem is that the pace of innovation there is amazing — there are now 1.4 billion daily users on Android. However, this is not about bringing the best of Android to our users — it’s about bringing the best of Google to our users. So that’s taking in all of the investments and research that we’re doing around AI and ML, and packaging it front to back in hardware.” Brindle says that while there’s plenty of great work being done by Android OEM partners, Google still sees places where it can supplement the options available to consumers. He also suggested that Google is looking at more than just the hardware and software side of being a device company — they recognize the importance of the sales and marketing experience on that side of the business, too. “The reality is that one size doesn’t fit all in the Android space, and we recognize that there is a big opportunity to create something from nuts to bolts,” he said. “Not only in the software and the hardware, but in the marketing, in the support, in the retail piece, and we felt there was something missing there.” Whether that means we’ll see full brick-and-mortar retail remains to be seen, but already Google is rethinking its web-based device sales with new installment-plan payment options for devices it sells directly via the Google Store online for over $150 in the U.S. The retail experience is part of Google’s new approach to hardware. As for how Assistant plays in, and where it gets its impressive smarts, Brindle says it’s core to the Pixel devices, and has been made possible thanks to very recent improvements in the capability of Google’s AI. “You heard the Assistant come up throughout this piece, and it is central, it is the marquee piece in the new phone,” he explained. “That is based on advances in AI — I mean tremendous advances, not just in the past year since the last Nexus phone, I mean in the past several months. Advances in translation, and image recognition, for example.” Brindle says that Google’s operation in Canada is actually a core part of these efforts, given the country’s research leadership in the field. “All of that research comes from the work that we’re doing in AI, and some of the best researchers in AI are based here in Canada,” he said. “So [Google Distinguished Researcher] Geoffrey Hinton’s work on machine learning, particularly the integration of his work on neural nets and how that has shaped our AI advances, it’s all in there.” Google’s approach is about more than just owning the phone experience end-to-end — it’s about crafting a comprehensive approach to delivering the next generation of its platform, which will be based around AI and ML and will look to devices like the Pixel and Pixel XL as perfectly suited delivery vehicles. It’s not quite a pivot, but this definitely signals a sea change in Google’s approach to its own identity and business.
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Report: Yahoo scanned users’ email for U.S. intelligence agencies
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Kate Conger
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Yahoo’s trust with users is damaged today by a that claims the company developed a custom program to search all users’ incoming email for specific queries given by U.S. intelligence officials. “We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says in the opening to the company’s , in which it documents government requests for user data. But it appears that Yahoo subverted user trust by creating the custom program, and excluded information about it from its transparency report. The dragnet surveillance of Yahoo’s email customers was initiated last spring and was confirmed to Reuters by former employees. The former employees claimed that the software was developed in response to a classified government order and led to the June 2015 resignation of Yahoo’s then-Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos. Mayer and Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell directed email engineers to create the program, which was discovered by Yahoo’s security team in May 2015, Reuters reports. Stamos and other security team members initially thought hackers had compromised the company’s email security, and Stamos resigned when he learned that Mayer had approved the program. “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States,” a Yahoo spokesperson told TechCrunch. A spokesperson at Facebook, where Stamos is currently Chief Security Officer, declined an interview request for Stamos. The surveillance program has already been condemned by and members of Congress, who have called the government order received by Yahoo unconstitutional. “This is big brother on steroids and it must be stopped,” Congressman Ted Lieu said in a statement. “If true, the government’s directive to Yahoo to write a software program and search all of its customers’ incoming emails for certain content is a gross abuse of federal power.” Between , the period in which Yahoo allegedly implemented the program, the company says content from 21,000 – 21,499 user accounts was requested under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and content from 0 – 499 accounts was requested via National Security Letters. (Until the passage of the USA Freedom Act last year, companies were only allowed to disclose FISA and NSL requests in ranges of 500. Now, companies may disclose more detail on FISA requests, with a tradeoff of an additional six months’ reporting delay.) Yahoo says that it requires “valid legal process” in order to turn over user data, except “in the rare instance where we conclude that disclosure without delay is necessary to prevent imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person.” It’s not clear whether the scope of the email-scanning program is much smaller than reported by Reuters, or if Yahoo purposefully withheld information about the program from its transparency report. The most accounts Yahoo said it ever turned over since it began publishing biannual transparency reports in 2013 was 51,000 – 51,499 accounts between July and December 2013. But even those numbers pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions accounts that may have been accessed by the customized program. It’s not the first time that Yahoo has been accused of providing customer data to U.S. intelligence agencies. by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that Yahoo provided access to the content of users’ emails and other data through the NSA’s PRISM program, beginning in 2008. Yahoo’s general counsel, Bell, later revealed that the company had resisted joining PRISM because it thought the government’s demands for user data were “unconstitutional and overbroad.” However, if it did not comply, with that fine set to double each week until compliance began. “Forcing a private sector company to search emails is even worse than the NSA’s bulk collection program because now the federal government is seizing and searching content, not just meta data, without a warrant,” Congressman Lieu said. Mayer reportedly did not believe that Yahoo would win a legal challenge against the demand to develop the custom program, and chose not to fight it. But Yahoo has previously had some success in fighting to make NSLs public, and became the first tech company to publish NSLs when it released in June. Apple also had in this area earlier this year, when it fought the FBI’s demand that it create a custom program to help investigators unlock in iPhone. Yahoo has also recently struggled with cybersecurity, disclosing last month that data from at least was stolen by a hacker. The announcement stirred speculation that the breach could cause trouble in Yahoo’s sale to Verizon (Verizon is the parent company of TechCrunch) and to investigate whether Yahoo properly disclosed the breach to its users and its buyer. The delay in disclosing the breach to users and initiating a password reset was that any mention of a breach would drive users away from Yahoo’s already-faltering email service. As , the demand for a search on Yahoo users’ email coincides with an issued by President Obama that categorized cyber attacks by individuals outside the U.S. a national emergency, and the executive order may have been used as justification for the program. It’s worth noting that Yahoo and other free email providers scan users’ email for their own business purposes — Gmail, for instance, serves ads to users based on keywords found in their email. Still, allowing all email data to be accessed in real-time by an intelligence agency is a shocking move.
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Nike will raffle off its super-limited-edition ‘Back to the Future’ kicks for a good cause
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Brian Heater
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When Nike said it was making the 2016 version of its -inspired shoes , the company wasn’t messing around. Only 89 pairs of the self-lacing shoes will be released to the public (likely not a coincidental nod to the year the futuristic sequel was released), . As with the 2011 version of the project, the new Nike Mags were designed for a good cause. In order to be in the running for a pair, interested parties to the . Individuals can donate as many times as they want, with proceeds going to help fight Parkinson’s disease. The drawing starts October 4 and is open primarily to the U.S. and Canada. Winners will be notified on October 17. Nike will also be holding live auctions in Hong Kong, London and New York in coming months. Those who don’t score one of the extremely limited pairs, meanwhile, .
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Pinterest hires former Twitter exec Todd Morgenfeld as its first CFO
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Matthew Lynley
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Pinterest has hired its first chief financial officer, Todd Morgenfeld — who was most recently vice president of finance at Twitter — the company said today. He was at Twitter for about a year and a half before joining Pinterest. Generally, these kinds of hires can signal a few things. One is that, more simply, the company is getting more ambitious about getting its finances in order (the company has around 40 people on its finance staff, ) for more general reasons. But sometimes the tea leaves reveal greater ambitions: getting things in order for a potential initial public offering. A representative from Pinterest said the company has “no plans for an IPO right now, as we focus on growing the business.” “We are excited that Todd is joining Pinterest as CFO,” CEO Ben Silbermann said in a statement. “Todd brings to the company a wide range of experience from HP to the military to a fast paced environment like Twitter. He believes in our mission and the strong business opportunity it presents. We are committed to building our company for the long term and thrilled that Todd will be an integral part of continuing this growth.” Pinterest has been aggressively expanding its advertising and commerce tools as it looks to begin generating a healthy amount of revenue. In 2015, around $169 million in revenue, as well as a forecast of $2.8 billion in annual revenue in 2018. The company was most recently valued at $11 billion in a financing round. Of course, these forecasts can change as the year progresses, and the documents were released earlier last year. Still, things might be a little challenging for Morgenfeld. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that Pinterest generated roughly $100 million in revenue, which could mean it fell below the forecast laid out in the previously leaked documents. The company has released a large number of advertising tools as it looks to offer marketers an alternative option than Facebook and Google, banking on giving marketers access to multiple parts of the purchasing cycle. Twitter, too, was in a challenging position under Morgenfeld. The company since its initial public offering has had to deal with stalling growth and a frustrated Wall Street, as it tried to put together a strong business proposition that would keep it an independent company. Earlier this month it was revealed that a number of companies, including Salesforce and Alphabet, as it might make sense in the context of a greater tech empire. (Obviously Morgenfeld wasn’t running the show at Twitter, as Anthony Noto serves as the company’s CFO.) The social media site has raised over $1.3 billion in capital from investors, including SV Angel, Rakuten and Bessemer Venture Partners.
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Everything you need to know from Google’s Pixel event
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Devin Coldewey
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of new products and services today at . The company was all about making things easy and seamless, so we thought we’d do the same. Here’s all the stuff you need to know, in one place. CEO Sundar Pichai came out first to set the stage, touting the company’s advances in artificial intelligence. Google’s research has yielded improved , and translation capabilities — and Go skills, though those are less useful in the average home. “AI is going to lead the way,” he said. Well, it certainly did today. Every product had some kind of intelligence baked in — though whether that’s a plus or a minus is up to you. . These sleek devices are “the first phones designed by Google inside and out.” The accuracy of that claim is perhaps debatable, but the devices are definitely focused on the pure Google experience. [gallery ids="1396728,1396654,1396851,1396863,1396862,1396861,1396860,1396859,1396858,1396857,1396856,1396855,1396854,1396853,1396852,1396850,1396849,1396848,1396847,1396846,1396845,1396835,1396820,1396700,1396682"] The specs are flagship-level, with a 12.3-megapixel camera that scored higher than even the mighty iPhone 7 in DxOMark’s labs. “No unsightly camera bump” either, teased hardware head Rick Osterloh. A new camera app means microscopic shutter lag, intelligent HDR photos and anyone buying a Pixel gets unlimited storage of full-resolution images in the Cloud. It runs Nougat, the latest version of Android, and sports a shiny new , which is clean, round and very Google-first. An omnipresent Google bar slides out from the top, a long hold on the home button brings up the Google Assistant and, of course, the company’s new chat app comes pre-installed. Options are blue, black and silver (white, really), a 5″ or 5.5″ screen and 32GB or 128GB. They start at $649. (And yes, there’s a headphone jack.) . Google also demonstrated its Assistant, the AI that will soon live on all its devices — and perhaps others, as well. It’s meant to be a powerful and relatively open system that can be used not just as an “OK Google” thing, but as a chatbot, in connected speakers, TVs and so on. The vision is Google Assistant anywhere, whenever you need it, for whatever you need at that moment. [gallery ids="1396869,1396709,1396870,1396868,1396867,1396866,1396786,1396789,1396711,1396699,1396708,1396714"] The Pixel phones also fit into another area Google is excited about: VR. VP of VR Clay Bavor came out to show off the new , which uses the new devices (or other compatible ones) as its display — you just slot them in and it takes care of the syncing, orientation and so on. The headset is made of a ; “We weren’t inspired by gadgets, but by stuff people actually wear,” Bavor said. It comes in three colors. But is it washable? There’s also a compact VR controller with motion sensors and a clickable trackpad. Demos of a Harry Potter game (a timely “Fantastic Beasts” tie-in, naturally), a space shooter and some video apps put Daydream through its paces. You’ll be able to buy the Daydream View in November for $79. Switching gears to the home, was next to be introduced. Much like the Eero, it’s a puck-shaped router that you buy a few of, scatter throughout your house and enjoy perfect wireless signal forever after as they intelligently switch your signal up. These things cost $129 each or $299 for a three-pack. A companion app lets you see what devices are connected to your network, and turn them off if you’re suspicious of them or it’s just time for Junior to quit watching Twitch and come down to dinner. Chromecast got a minor update: adds 4K, HDR image and Dolby Vision — all of which should mean something to you if you’re a TV or movie buff. The new device also has an Ethernet port built into the power brick, if you can believe it, so you can hardwire it — $69 in November. [gallery ids="1396837,1396838,1396775,1396752,1396746,1396744,1396762"] , which was teased back at I/O, got an official price and ship date: $129 and November 4. The Home is very much an answer to Amazon’s popular Echo, and many of the use cases demonstrated on stage are common between the two: asking for recipes, playing a specific song or album, getting a summary of your day in the morning and so on. One nice addition is Google’s knowledge graph, which fetches info for lots of factual queries — who was the first person in space, what’s the biggest breed of cat, etc. In a concession to privacy, the only actual button is a mute that cuts off the mic, so you can be sure you’re not being listened to. It’s hard to be sure, but it looks like that wasn’t present at I/O; Google definitely never mentioned it before today. The Home has a nice little speaker set built in, comes with 6 months of YouTube Red and hooks in with your Internet of Things, should you have one. Nest, Samsung SmartThings, Philips Hue and IFTTT are the only partners so far, but more are coming. Naturally, it works with Chromecast and can interact with your phone. And that’s all! Google was really stressing interconnectivity today: The more of their gadgets you have, the better they all work together. Not that that’s a unique proposition. We’ll be sure to get our hands on all of Google’s goodies soon for full reviews, so stay tuned.
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Hands-on with the Google Pixel and Pixel XL
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Darrell Etherington
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The Pixel is a device with a 5-inch display, and the Pixel XL has a 5.5-inch screen, but both actually feel (and are) slightly smaller than the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in terms of footprint (though slightly thicker, too), thanks to a lack of any hardware buttons on the face, resulting in a device that feels smaller in the pocket and in the hand. Displays on the Pixel (1080p) and the Pixel XL (Quad HD) both look great, with deep blacks thanks to the use of AMOLED screens, and both benefit from the new Pixel Launcher, which makes the software navigation buttons present in Android smaller, and which also has smaller, rounder icons throughout and a new Google launcher that takes up less space. The end result of all these changes is a focus on just how much real estate the screen has to offer, which works well with rich images used as backdrops. [gallery ids="1396864,1396863,1396862,1396861,1396860,1396859,1396858,1396857,1396856,1396855,1396854,1396853,1396852,1396851,1396850,1396849,1396848,1396847,1396846,1396845"] The backs of the Pixel phones might represent Google’s most unique design choice, with a broad, glossy plate occupying the topmost portion of the back of each. The fingerprint sensor is located in the middle of this, while the camera is located up and to the left corner, where it manages to occupy a smaller space than you’ve probably seen on smartphones in recent memory — and which doesn’t include any kind of bump jutting from the phone, as Google was quick to point out in their presentation today. Throughout the OS, performance was snappy, more so than I can recall on any other Android device. Google taking ownership of hardware design and tailoring software to components like processors probably has a lot to do with this general UI smoothness. Likewise, the new Google Assistant system-wide features are fast and responsive. They handled queries well even in the loud demo area, and I was impressed especially by the contextual features that let you ask follow-up questions — I couldn’t confuse it in my limited trials. Assistant seems almost like a game in , the standalone messenger app launched by Google recently, but as a system-level feature, it feels much more like the beginning of a significant UX shift. The other standout feature here was the camera, which did very well in conditions that were far from optimal for taking pictures. Below, you can see an image of me dancing like an idiot in low light that looks great, with next to no visible noise. The Pixel and Pixel XL are both very compelling devices, and definitely mark a departure point for Google’s Android hardware. Whether that’s enough to make them hot sellers when they start shipping October 20 remains to be seen, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
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Union Square Ventures endorses Hillary Clinton
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John Mannes
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, Union Square Ventures formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. This marks the first time that the 13-year-old fund has endorsed a candidate in a presidential election. In the brief 375 word statement, the firm addressed both the risks of a Trump presidency and the qualities that would make Clinton ideal for the job. Collectively, USV acknowledged that technological change has had a profoundly positive impact on the world, but that its benefits have not touched everyone evenly. “We are not surprised that many feel the urge to reboot the whole system.” However, USV believes that progress can only be made by embracing diversity and working together on equal footing to address challenges. “There is no wall big enough to protect us from a changing climate or the unintended consequences of new technologies like artificial intelligence or DNA manipulation.” The firm cited Clinton’s “temperament and experience” as two of the key traits that will help her to address a uniquely global problem. USV also took the moment to support and to reject the idea of a protest vote, even linking to . The post also gave attention to , backed by Y Combinator’s Sam Altman. Fred Wilson, a partner at USV, Tweeted this morning that the decision to endorse Clinton was unanimous. We had unanimous support in our firm for this endorsement. — Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) The prominent New York firm is not the first fund, and certainly not the first investors, to take a stand against the Republican nominee. In late August, in a highly visible “Fuck Trump” campaign on the fund’s home page. That campaign was more about protesting Tump’s immigration stance than endorsing Clinton. In a slightly less partisan move, CRV opted to create a program to cover the costs of U.S. visas for CRV company founders in addition to creating a new fellows program to provide office space for immigrant entrepreneurs. High profile investors like Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures and Sam Altman of Y Combinator have Tweeted prolifically throughout the election cycle. Just this week, Suster even encouraged fellow investors who had previously endorsed Trump to jump ship. Peter Thiel remains one of the highest profile investors . The Founders Fund partner and serial entrepreneur endorsed Trump publicly back in July at the RNC. in the tech world, but has from wealthy founders and early-stage investors. , I speculate most firms have tried to remain non-partisan to avoid alienating founders and limited partners. While USV is the largest and most prominent fund to have endorsed Clinton as a collective to date, we still have another month before the election, which leaves plenty of time for more surprises. We have reached out to interested parties and will update this post with any new information.
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Here’s what went down at South by South Lawn
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Megan Rose Dickey
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hosted its first-ever festival in President Barack Obama’s backyard, the South Lawn. Dubbed , the one-day event celebrated art, ideas and action, featuring guests from all parts of the spectrum, including Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, technologist and activist for inclusion in tech Anil Dash, music group The Lumineers (pictured above), Brittany Packnett of social justice organization Campaign Zero and actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Shortly after arriving, I was able to sneak into a VIP media tour for network news (CNN, CBS, NBC) to get a brief tour of the White House and check out some intimate performances from and . [gallery ids="1396550,1396551"] After the private tour I ended up on the South Lawn, where the majority of the magic that day happened, or where I lost my shit a couple of times. The first was when President Barack Obama caught us all off guard and decided to casually stroll through the lawn. I promptly lost my shit, which you can see via TechCrunch’s Instagram account . It took me a few minutes to collect myself, but once I did, I went over to the . The exhibits touched on the criminal justice system, the future of cancer care, diverse founders, the future of food, immigration and more. A major theme throughout a lot of the exhibits was virtual reality, which I once thought was a frivolous activity until I began to see people using it for good. One exhibit that really grabbed me was 6’x9′, a virtual reality experience that shows you what it’s like to be locked up in solitary confinement. It was intense to experience, . [gallery ids="1396565,1396573,1396570,1396568,1396569,1396572,1396567,1396566"] Later in the day, I went to two panel discussions. The first was on . My big takeaways from the panel came from Butterfield. He spoke a lot about how it’s important to have a society that enables people to use their time however they please, because the good results that we want come from “that unfettered exploration of all the possibilities and people trying out different things.” The other panel I attended was all about social activism. It kicked off with remarks from Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights leader and one of the organizers of the March on Washington. He urged young people today to get into trouble, “what I call good trouble,” . “Necessary trouble. It is time for each of you as young leaders to get in trouble — good trouble. Get in the way and make some noise. You have the ability. You have the capacity to do it. Just do it.” The panel featured Carmen Rojas of The Workers Lab, Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, and Brittany Packnett, co-founder of social justice organization Packnett truly blew me away. Here’s just a taste of what she had to say: “What we are incredibly clear about is police violence is a branch on a larger tree that is rooted in systemic oppression and racism,” Packnett said. “And coming out of that tree is inequitable housing, issues of employment, mass incarceration, healthcare, inequitable education. So the radical dream is not just to break off the branch of police violence but to uproot the entire tree.” You should definitely to learn more about Packnett and her insights. [gallery ids="1396159,1396161,1396269,1396268,1396302,1396259"] Later in the day, to talk about climate change and how important it is that we deal with it now, not later. At one point, Obama said, “If we tap the brakes now, then we don’t go over the cliff. When you think about climate change there’s a big difference between the oceans rising three feet or ten feet. Three feet, it’s going to be expensive and inconvenient and disruptive….But it’s probably manageable. Three feet means you move the houses back a little bit from the beach. Ten feet means the beach doesn’t exist.” At the end of the day, the White House pulled off a badass event that left me feeling optimistic that maybe our country can change and learn to do the right thing. It’ll take time, that’s for sure, but I think we can get there. “Be hopeful. Be optimistic. Never lose that sense of hope,” Lewis said. “Never become bitter, and in the process, be happy and just go for it.”
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John Biggs
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Prepaid card users will finally be protected from fraud and crazy fees
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Fitz Tepper
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If you’ve been out of touch with the FinTech market recently you may have missed how popular prepaid cards have become. This is especially true when it comes to “open-loop” cards, which are prepaid cards powered by a processor like Visa or MasterCard that can be used anywhere a credit or debit card is accepted. These accounts now look and feel increasingly similar to an actual bank account, but haven’t been regulated nearly as much. Until now. Today the , an arm of the federal government, finalized its for prepaid cards. These rules have been in the works for a few years and will finally give prepaid card users the type of protections that a bank would have to offer. Interestingly, these rules will also apply to digital prepaid accounts like Venmo and PayPal. Here are the most important changes: The new rule will require card issuers to reimburse users for withdraws or purchases made if their card is lost or stolen. The issuer will have to reimburse consumers in a timely fashion for all fraudulent transactions past $50. This is almost identical to the fraud protections that actual banks have to offer. Previously, prepaid card issuers didn’t necessarily have to offer any fraud protection at all, meaning if your card was stolen and the balance was spent before you could cancel the card you were out of luck. The rule also requires issues to make account information like balances available for free by phone, online and in writing. While this seems standard some shady prepaid card issuers have previously charged users to just see basic information related to their account. Since prepaid cards don’t have to provide monthly mailed statements to users (like a bank does), this rule will help consumers actually understand what’s happening to their account. Issuers will also have to cooperate with customers to resolve errors in their account in a timely manner. Previously there were no hard rules on how an issuer was supposed to respond to complaints. This rule requires issues to create a new short, easy to understand form that informs customers about the fees associated with an account. These include withdraw fees, reload fees, periodic fees and more. Prepaid card issues have been known to secretly charge fees every month and even charge you to reload your account. So while this rule won’t necessarily stop that from happening, it will force the issuers to make it very clear to consumers what fees they charge. The last major rule is interesting because it was a hotly contested issue when the rules were being written. Currently prepaid card issuers are allowed to issue credit to users (meaning they could spend more than is in their account and pay it back at a later date). Even though this sounds exactly like a credit card or overdraft offering, prepaid issuers have been allowed to do it without any of the protections that credit card companies or banks are forced to offer. It’s a contested rule because some people wanted the CFBP to ban prepaid issuers from offering credit all together, since the point of a prepaid card is to limit spending to what is in the account. But the bureau decided to continue allowing it as long as issuers agreed to some new safeguards. These safeguards include not offering credit to consumers unless the issuer has evaluated the customer’s ability to repay the loan (potentially via a credit check) as well as making sure customers have a reasonable time to pay back their debt before they are charged a late fee. Overall, the new rule and associated safeguards are good for consumers. If the government is going to let prepaid cards essentially act like bank accounts, they need to at least implement rules like these to make sure prepaid card issuers aren’t taking advantage of the unbanked and underbanked – two groups that tend to comprise low-income . The rules won’t go into effect until October 1, 2017, but are considered final after today’s announcement.
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Crunch Report | Blue Origin has another Successful Rocket Launch Test
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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Theranos closes its labs and wellness centers, lays off 340
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Devin Coldewey
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Theranos is closing its labs and wellness centers, CEO Elizabeth Holmes . And this isn’t a temporary closure: the “approximately” 340 employees running them are out of a job. “After many months spent assessing our strengths and addressing our weaknesses, we have moved to structure our company around the model best aligned with our core values and mission,” Holmes wrote. The company pivoted away from working on its closely held “nanotainer” technology to a “miniLab” in August. The boxy device — unveiled at the conference — collects small samples of blood and urine and then uploads them to a centralized system for further analysis. And it’s a far cry from what the company, once valued at $9 billion, set out to do. According to several experts whom TechCrunch spoke to at the unveiling, it might not be very innovative, either. Although Theranos didn’t want its new device referred to as a “lab on a chip,” that’s essentially what these experts the miniLab was. And that . The new device hinges largely on FDA approval — something Holmes said she’d hoped to fast-track under the for Zika detectors. That plan didn’t go so well, however. The Theranos approval after finding the company failed to use proper patient safety protocols. The miniLab may not be the world changing plan Theranos set out for and will still need to overcome a few regulatory obstacles, but it may have been the only safe option for the company’s survival. The news Theranos is shuttering its labs and wellness centers and laying off nearly half its workforce comes after a series of shocking revelations over the past year involving faulty test results and improperly trained workers. The company is now facing numerous lawsuits, was forced to shut down it’s California lab facility, lost its main partner Walgreens and was subject to a Congressional inquiry. Finally in July from stepping foot in her own labs. Sanctions were announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after the company’s blood testing methods were found to be lacking in accuracy. Among other things, the sanctions prohibited Holmes herself from owning, operating, or directing a lab, and removed the possibility of funding from Medicare/Medicaid systems. This would greatly complicate and limit the labs and testing side of the business. Theranos announced in August that it was , but that doesn’t seem to have panned out yet — although the CMS has not enforced them on the timeline set out in July. We contacted Theranos for more details on the prospect of operating under the sanctions and when the locations will be shut down, but a representative declined to comment beyond what Holmes wrote in the post. The company says it will “return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform,” which seems like a good idea.
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Pixel’s best features aren’t coming to the new version of Android
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Sarah Perez
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At , the new version of the Android operating system, Android 7.1 (Nougat 7.1), was barely mentioned. As it turns out, there was a reason for that: some of the ‘ best features won’t be arriving in the new OS. This includes features like , the built-in customer support service, , Smart Storage, and more. Details on which features were “Pixel-only” were previously reported by , citing a changelog provided by a Google source. Google confirmed to us those changes are accurate. Some of the omissions make sense. For example, only Pixel phones will ship with the new, “ that makes it easier to move your data from iPhone to Android. That requires hardware in the form of the adapter cable. The Pixel’s Camera app is also tied to the phones’ new hardware – that is, the Pixel sports a 12.3-megapixel rear camera which lets you shoot 4K video, and offers special modes like “Smartburst” for taking several photos in succession, among other things. Plus, the Pixel features a Sensor Hub processor with tightly integrated sensors and connectivity (i.e., Wi-Fi, cellular, GPS). One could even argue that bundling the free, unlimited photo and video backup service, via Google Photos, is just good marketing. It makes the Pixel smartphone more appealing to photo enthusiasts, who are looking for a reason to upgrade their current Android device, or perhaps pick the Pixel over the iPhone 7, where iCloud storage still costs money. However, some of the missing features are more surprising. Most notably, Android 7.1, the updated version of Nougat that powers the Pixel and Pixel XL, is lacking . This smart virtual helper is Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa. It’s a lot more robust than Google Now, the current digital assistant that ships on today’s Android devices and in the standalone Google app. Google Now is already fairly powerful – it lets you talk to it using natural language, and offers a variety of assistance, similar to rivals. This ranges from sending you alerts of information you care about – like how long it will take to get home on your commute, or when to leave to catch a flight, when your package will arrive, as well as weather, sports and stock information, or reminders of upcoming events, and more. It can also serve as a jumping off point for Google searches, by answering questions about nearby places, like restaurants or shops, or simply searching the web. And it offers more utilitarian functions, such as adjusting device functions, sending texts and emails, placing calls, or creating reminders. But Google Assistant is like an upgraded, smarter Google Now. It can do everything Now does, but its underlying A.I. technology is capable of having a two-way conversation with you, and can learn and recall personal details you share with it, then recall them in future chats. You can ask it to give you daily updates on information you want to track through a subscription feature. It also works with Chromecast and other Google Cast-enabled devices, and offers the ability to control smart home devices from Nest, SmartThings and Philips Hue. Plus, it will work with third-party services which can integrate with it via Actions (basically Google’s version of Alexa’s “Skills.”) Given Assistant’s increased prowess, it’s disappointing that it’s not immediately replacing Google Now in the Android 7.1 update. That doesn’t mean it won’t ever arrive on other Android devices – limiting Assistant to Pixel indefinitely would be crazy – but it’s definitely not coming via a free Android update in the near-term. Says a Google spokesperson: Our goal is to make the Google Assistant widely available to users, and we’ll continue to launch new surfaces over the course of the next year. Meanwhile, in terms of the and user interface, only the Pixel smartphones will feature navigation bar icons that make room for accessing Assistant, SysUI accent color theming, the new look and feel of the set-up screen, the new wallpaper picker, and the dynamic calendar date icon. That being said, Android 7.1 will come with at least a few new goodies. This includes Night Light with hardware acceleration support, touch and display performance improvements, Moves (the new fingerprint gesture to open and close the notification shade), the seamless A/B system updates, Daydream VR mode, and several new APIs for developers like the app shortcut manager APIs and circular app icons support. Android 7.1 will launch as a Developer Preview later this month. Google wouldn’t confirm when it will begin to rollout to consumers’ smartphones, or which will receive the update first.
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The silent evolution of domain names
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Alan Dunn
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Verisign recently that the number of registered dot-com domain names exceeded 128 million for the first time. With a wholesale price of $7.85 each, this means $1,004,800,000 in annual fees, and that’s before factoring in reseller prices, country code domains and alternative extensions to measure the domain-name industry as a whole. The internet has come a long way since the first domain name, Symbolics.com, was registered in 1985. Even longer when you consider it was only 1994 when Joshua Quittner (a WIRED writer at the time) McDonald’s to see if they were interested in registering mcdonalds.com, and, well, got nowhere. The state of the domain-name industry has vastly changed. Almost everyone with a business online has tried to register a dot-com domain name — only to find their first and best choice was gone. Most great domains were grabbed years ago by investors like Kevin Ham (CNN dubbed him, “ ”). Even Lana Del Ray’s father is an iconic domain-name investor, and members of a Middle Eastern royal family own one of the largest portfolios in the world. It wasn’t just people buying domain names over these two decades, either. Companies like Hearst, AOL, CBS, Salesforce and Amazon have collectively paid tens of millions of dollars for domain names; with many of them still not in use. More recently, acquiring portfolios of premium domain names from private owners. What was once an industry comprised mainly of individual investors and service providers is now attracting corporate money like never before. Industry giants have hundreds of millions for auctions and infrastructure. Big brands like Amazon, Google, Verisign and WordPress are investing heavily to own and operate entire domain-name extensions. Even company-branded extensions are now going live. Barclay’s is already using , and new domain-name extensions for both BMW ( ) and Travelers ( ) have been delegated. One may even say it’s a natural evolution of media, where brands finally want to own the channel versus renting a space. On the surface, it may sound crazy. After all, how many people will buy a .blog or .app domain name? How many domain names do people or companies really need? These sound like fair questions, right? The thing is, domain names are not a zero-sum industry. Very few people believe or can make any solid case that dot-com will lose its majority status (myself included). However, success is not always defined by millions of registrations. and very profitable models exist when you own a registry. Think about it. A low-cost, high-profit product, with cheap infrastructure, recurring revenue models, possibilities for scale, global reach and more. In a world where technology leads venture capital investment, and a 10 percent ROI will win you Wall Street rewards, owning a domain-name extension may not be one of the craziest investments around. No one knows for sure. But it’s big. Millions of new domains have already been registered, for a variety of different reasons. Some companies use them as complementary domains to an existing brand (Slack is using slack.help for support); others use them as a primary URL; some see a marketing purpose, others have defensive reasons. Many sales are also at premium prices. reported that Hanes spent $30,000 to acquire T-Shirts.store (yes, with the hyphen), Visual Dynamics purchased and . At an individual level, it becomes even more plausible that many of these new extensions can grow. There are thousands of people called Joe, yet there is only one — if you don’t have a pocketbook the size of Manhattan, then you probably will never have a chance to own . However, you can choose from joe.live, joe.social, joe.link and more. The concept of using these new domain-name extensions for personal use has never been more apparent, especially when relevant extensions provide an opportunity to brand ourselves in a way .com never did. It’s not even just about use. Some of these domain-name extensions have become more like commodities, traded between investors, rather than having a traditional use. According to a CNBC interview, that 54 percent of these new domain names are owned by Chinese registrants — a market that already owns many of the world’s best two- and three-letter dot-com domains. Not everybody needs another website, but the numbers speak, and they say lots of people can use another domain name. It’s not uncommon to spend well over $100,000 for a premium domain name. However, buying an extension is a whole other league — a league in which brands have only been too happy to play. For example, the rights to .BLOG were purchased by for $19 million, paid $25 million for .APP, paid up to $10 million for .BOOK and Verisign backed a for .WEB — and most of these companies have acquired the rights to more than one new extension. Now, combine these investments with the reach of these brands. They have billions of users collectively, and driving adoption to an already loyal consumer base is a lot easier than starting from scratch. For Q1 2016, Verisign some staggering statistics, including the total number of domain names across all top-level domains has grown to 326.4 million, and the collective number of new GTLD registrations (which first launched less than three years ago) now exceeds 16 million domains, accounting for 4.9 percent of all domain names registered. Think about that. In less than 25 months, these products, which many people doubted, now collectively account for nearly 5 percent of a product that has primarily been on the market for more than 20 years. Five percent market share. That is huge. And, ironically, McDonald’s now owns the .mcdonalds and .mcd extensions. Twenty- , it’s likely fair to say everybody is lovin’ the internet a little more than they did in 1994.
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Creating a new architecture of government through tech and innovation
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Hollie Russon Gilman
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“Innovation” has become a buzzword in government, industry, and society. Yet, scaling innovation for public policy is rarely discussed. The 2016 presidential transitions teams have the opportunity to build upon the innovation agenda of previous administrations to advance a culture of innovation that is supported and enabled by cutting-edge tech throughout government. Structuring new tech-enabled approaches to governance can help streamline entrenched bureaucratic processes, build greater efficiency into how government operates, reinvigorate the federal workforce by attracting a new cohort of employees, and through improved communication and engagement with the public. A more transparent government can rebuild the American people’s trust. Our research shows that innovation is not the provenance of a single political party, nor is it just about people with hard data skills, or those who exclusively champion open data, or about a government that is more transparent, bigger or smaller. Rather it is about finding to do things in a systematic way by thinking creatively and engaging the best talent and resources from across sectors and from across party lines. There is an important distinction between innovation as a concept for transforming digital service delivery, and innovation applied more broadly as a method to identify, iterate and scale new approaches. Embedding innovation within the federal government requires an integrated, long-term approach to create solutions at scale. Upon completing more than fifty interviews with executives across sectors and party lines (government, nonprofit, academia, industry, and civil society) a consistent message emerged. In order to build a better public sector for the twenty-first century, government must embrace innovation, and build the necessary architecture and structure to promote and institutionalize its use as a key means to achieve better outcomes. Building a twenty-first-century government requires a governance structure that enables an internal ecosystem of innovation that invests in technology, better use of data, and partnerships that can measure and deliver results. From enabling unprecedented transparency, to active progress in open government and open machine readable data, innovation funds that scale what works, new types of public-private partnerships, and precision medicine, the Obama administration has made great strides to expand and prioritize innovation-driven policy. These new programs and offices have been nodes in triggering conversations about the culture of innovation throughout the White House and at agencies. Capitol Building. Photo courtesy of Flickr/ These initiatives have produced some insightful developments: innovation funds within agencies; the creation of the White House Data and Digital Cabinets; United States Digital Services, 18F, and the Presidential Innovation Fellows; evidence-based policy conversations; the use of prizes and challenges; small, critical changes in technology procurement processes; and the attraction and recruitment of new talent to government. Now, the opportunity is to move beyond these individual successes and create structures that prioritize new methods and approaches within the White House, enable communication and collaboration across agencies, and, most importantly, enable the federal government to better serve the American people. Our research identifies four key areas to help organize innovation in the next administration: (1) White House and Agencies; (2) Policy Innovation Offices and Public-Private Partnerships; (3) Cities as Incubators of Innovation; (4) Recruitment, Hiring, and Training. Inside the White House, the next administration can help ensure that technology, innovation and data are a core part of decision-making. This includes ensuring data policy questions are integral to a range of policies and that experts with dual skillsets in technology and policy are empowered in senior leadership positions. For example, cybersecurity is a critical, crosscutting area, though a thorough consideration of the structures needed to manage cybersecurity at the White House is beyond the scope of this report. It would be critical to bring in leadership that is not only able to craft effective policy, but also possesses practical, real-world experience in managing and solving cybersecurity crises. An office or strategy for innovation in government (or government transformation) should be focused on culture change—providing the room to “fail forward,” to take risks and make (small) mistakes, to experiment, launch, and reiterate—and once something works, to ascertain how it can be scaled. Each individual agency should be able to self-determine their needs. For some agencies this may include their own Digital Service unit or others it may take the form of “innovation sprints” with a specific agency, groups within an agency, or as a collaboration of agencies working on a problem together within a limited time frame. A current obstacle to policy innovation is the procurement system, which does not necessarily incentivize new actors or speedy results. More flexible procurement policies can support the need for stability and innovation in government. They provide a level of accountability and risk management while supporting an environment of experimentation and innovation across government and among government vendors. Similar shifts toward more flexible procurement methods and policies are happening at all levels of government. The federal government does not need to do it alone. In fact, there is much to be learned from cities across the country that are incubating and scaling programs and redesigning public systems to be more effective. In many cases, city government has become the locus of innovation, leveraging data, technology, social impact bonds, and other tools. Increasingly, US cities are leveraging technology to engage with citizens, demonstrating the potential of government innovation units and civic innovations such as participatory budgeting to improve government. Public and private actors can work together to create open civic spaces, such as Superpublic in San Francisco, Startup Seattle, or Civic Hall in New York City. These types of spaces can bring civic innovators, entrepreneurs, technologists, and philanthropy together to find solutions for the public good. These interdisciplinary civic spaces and co-working hubs are cropping up across the country from to Austin to , attracting new talent and people interested in solving local problems. Finally, in order to truly leverage technology and innovation into government, the hiring and recruitment process must reflect 21 century work force realities. The public sector can strategically recruit more inclusive tech talent to reflect America’s population. For instance, hiring and training programs situated in local communities, such as the , can combine federal funding and private sponsorship with community partners and local employees to build stronger, more inclusive networks. Expanding the availability of flexible hiring structures can improve hiring efficiency and put people to work sooner. For example, by utilizing Schedule A hires, the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, expert or consultant appointments, term appointments, and the like, much-needed human capital can be engaged in government work more quickly and, in some cases, without the restrictive requirements of career positions. The next Presidential Administration has the distinct opportunity to institutionalize data and technology both within and beyond the White House. Taking the time to change the narrative of public service can foster trust for new approaches and can illustrate the many exciting opportunities within government.
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Udacity open sources an additional 183GB of driving data
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John Mannes
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last month, founder Sebastian Thrun announced that the online education company would be building as part of its self-driving car nanodegree program. To get there, Udacity has created a series of challenges to leverage the power of community to build the safest car possible — meaning anyone and everyone is welcome to become a part of the open-sourced project. was all about building a 3D model for a camera mount, but has brought deep learning into the mix. In the latest challenge, participants have been tasked with using driving data to predict steering angles. Initially, Udacity released 40GB of data to help at-home tinkerers build competitive models without access to the type of driving data that Tesla of Google would have. However, because deep learning models drink data by the pond rather than the gallon, The complete 223GB package contains data and both sunny and overcast footage from over 70 minutes of driving spread over two days in Mountain View. The variety of footage will bolster the quality of submissions and give participants more realistic data to work off of that better represents the challenges of real world driving and changing road conditions. The videos have also been pared up with matching data like latitude, longitude, gear, brake, throttle, steering angles and speed. All of this information will fuel the creation of convolutional neural nets, ultimately enabling cameras paired with deep learning to get you safely from point a to point b. “By letting the car figure out how to interpret images on its own, we can skip a lot of the complexity that exists in manually selecting features to detect, and drastically reduce the cost required to get an autonomous vehicle on the road by avoiding LiDAR-based solutions,” the company said in its Challenge #2 blog post. While 223GB sounds like a lot of data, it still pales in comparison to the massive libraries that companies like Uber and Tesla are accumulating with their self-driving cars. Some reports show that complex capture systems can generate and the aforementioned companies have By nature, these Udacity data sets will be considerably more compact in size because they only contain rudimentary data and video footage, but the context underscores just how important data will be in fueling the creation of next generation automobiles. Of course this challenge in particular is not just about building a car, but learning along the way. If the challenge sounds interesting, where you can access Udacity’s data set.
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Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by the creators of Apple’s Siri
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Matthew Panzarino
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to acquire , an AI and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. The three left Apple in the years after the acquisition and founded Viv in 2012. Pricing information was not available, but we’ll check around. Viv has been . Viv will continue to operate as an independent company that will provide services to Samsung and its platforms. The first of two main pillars to Viv’s special sauce is its interconnected nature — other agents like Siri are only starting to allow multiple silos of information across apps and services to start talking to one another and become links in a user’s command chain. This allows more conversational and complex queries that more closely resemble how people actually talk. The second is the programmatic nature of Viv’s back-end systems. Utilizing “breakthroughs” in program synthesis, Viv says its AI is capable of writing its own code to accomplish new tasks. This “software that builds itself” is not new in many other verticals, but Viv was one of the first big splash announcements using the technique that we had seen in AI. Viv calls this “dynamic program generation,” and it allows Viv to understand the intent of the user and to create programs to handle tasks on the fly, even if it’s never heard that particular one in the past. The system was shown off in its . “Instead of having to write every code instructed, you’re really just describing what you want it to do,” said Kittlaus in an . “The whole idea of Viv is that developers can go in and build any experience that they want.” When Kittlaus left Apple, he wrote an article called “ ,” and later wrote that there would be a “ ,” enabling the technology to power many existing and new systems. Ubiquity, Kittlaus said in an interview, is the reason Viv is trundling into Samsung’s bosom. Specifically, when I asked him why Samsung, he said this: “They ship 500 million devices a year. You asked me onstage about what our real goal is, and I said ubiquity. If you take a look around what’s going on in the market these days, and our readiness to really expand on our distribution, it made perfect sense when we discovered that our visions are so completely aligned, and our assets using the core technology in this huge distribution, the opportunity that now is the right time, and Samsung’s the right partner.” Samsung, of course, has been locked in a battle with Apple over the very top shares of the smartphone sales volume market. As a single manufacturer, it is the only competitor on the planet giving them any fight (and it’s still not even close in the actual profit department). Samsung has seen its smartphone fortunes wane and then wax recently as its slumping sales recovered with two solid models. Unfortunately, those sales have been marred by a recall of the Galaxy Note 7 due to exploding batteries. Outside of that, though, Samsung has been looking at a larger struggle as it wrestles with how to take control of its own software destiny. Google is becoming more and more of a direct competitor (or at least making a sincere attempt) every day. Whether it uses Tizen or some other software package based on Android, Samsung’s future looks much brighter when it owns the hardware and what runs on the hardware than when it is beholden to Google for updates and features. “This is an acquisition that is being done by the mobile team, but we clearly see the interest across our devices,” says Samsung SVP Jacopo Lenzi in an interview. “From our perspective and from the client’s perspective, the interest and the power of this really comes from taking advantage of the Samsung scale overall, as well as the richness of the touch points we have with consumers.” Acquiring Viv gives them an honest-to-god competitor to Siri and Google’s Assistant . With the caveat, of course, that Viv — making it impossible to tell how it will hold up in real-world usage just yet. As we’ve seen over the past 12 months, such an AI-powered assistant is going to be instrumental for any mobile platform. Apple’s AirPods work incredibly well with Siri given how easy they are to wear for long periods and the multiple beam-forming microphones that make input more accurate. If Samsung wants (duh) a competitor in this space, it could do worse than Viv and its team. Though this acquisition is being made by the mobile group, there are opportunities beyond that, as well. The Amazon Echo, Google’s Home and the smart home hub Apple has been preparing are good examples of how big companies are fighting tooth and nail to secure a place on your counter top. Samsung’s release explicitly calls out areas like home appliances in addition to mobile and wearables. Samsung, of course, purchased SmartThings for around $200 million back in 2014. Viv as a cross-platform agnostic brain that can power the half-dozen or so main SmartThings verticals makes a ton of sense. And Samsung has washers, refrigerators and all kinds of other home appliances. We’re seeing more and more that the “Internet of Things” play is less about the “Internet of Things” — which is a dumb term that should actually die in a fire. Instead, it’s about what happens when nearly everything is to have some sort of microprocessor and radio and how those devices recognize you, their context and their integration into your life. “Without talking about specifics, we do see the evolution of the customer experience being enabled by AI particularly as we continue to add devices to their system, to IoT, and the importance of something like this to really allow you just to engage with technology in the way they really want to which is simple conversational interface,” says Lenzi. And those smarts are not about the devices, but about the brain that controls them. A brain that could easily be powered by Viv. I asked Kittlaus specifically about whether Samsung would be locking Viv away inside its ecosystem, to bolster its differentiation from Google’s flavors of Android or iOS. “No, definitely, the system and the philosophy are to keep this as open as we can and to add value everywhere possible. Clearly we will take full advantage of Samsung’s presence in both services and of course the devices and the integrations that are possible to make the experience really good,” he said. “The whole idea here from day one was to make this system where the word can plug into it and create this incredible new market place that as we discussed on stage really becomes the next paradigm, websites, mobile apps, and then this. “Having an open system is required to take it from today’s basic versions of what you see in the market and having people in a self-service way plug-in, in all the different markets around the world in all the different devices. Imagine how that affects the scale of what this assistant will do for you. “You are going to go from a few dozen capabilities to thousands, tens of thousands or more over the coming years. In order to do what it is to get to that scale you need to have thought through all those technology and platform choices that you’ve made. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last four years.” If, in fact, Samsung is looking to go beyond just “adding an AI assistant” to its platforms, there are plenty of signals to see here. The press release even says flat-out that “with Viv, Samsung will be able to unlock and offer new service experiences for its customers, including one that simplifies user interfaces, understands the context of the user and offers the user the most appropriate and convenient suggestions and recommendations.” That’s PR-ese, but there are tea leaves to be read. When I asked Kittlaus about what kind of differentiation Viv might bring for Samsung software across its devices he said, “one way to think about this is that you’ve got this massive app ecosystem out there. What you’ll find in this effort is that we’re going to be slowly moving over to this post-app world.” “Samsung is clearly…very well positioned to take a leadership position in that space because for this entire new space of things — vision, having this assistant everywhere, the seamless interactions and conversational commerce, and all the things that we’ve talked about — it requires a new backbone. Pull these together, we’ve got an opportunity to create critical mass around that.” Samsung’s purchase of Viv, then, might be less about creating a voice-powered assistant to rival Apple or Google’s offerings and more about a voice-powered that remains the same across all of its devices, from phones to home hubs to doorknobs to refrigerators. That would catapult it directly into the very, very small group of companies that are vying to use AI as a way to acquire and retain customers. If Apple, Amazon and Google can boil the frog on the concept of AI as the core operating system and devices as , then why can’t we, is Samsung’s question.
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eBay acquires visual search engine Corrigon for less than $30M
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Ingrid Lunden
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— the soup to nuts marketplace for new and used goods — has made another acquisition to build out its search and discovery technology for customers to find what they need among the items that are listed on the site. The company today that it has acquired , an Israel-based startup that has is a specialist in computer vision and visual search technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed by eBay. Israeli newspaper is reporting a price of $30 million but our sources tell us the deal was for less than that amount. Corrigon has been around since 2008 and was cofounded by Avinoam Omer and Einav Itamar. It’s not clear how much the company had raised in funding. Omer himself is a repeat entrepreneur. He also founded machine learning company Zoomix, which was acquired by Microsoft. Corrigon’s speciality is searching and identifying specific objects within an image and matching that with other images or links to products. In the case of eBay, it will be used to match images to products. “Corrigon’s expertise and technology will help match the best images to their products so that shoppers can be confident that what they buy is exactly what they see,” eBay writes. Essentially this will mean that eBay can offer sellers an catalogue of images with better quality than what users will provide for a product when it gets listed. Similarly, a consumer can use the same feature to find the right product for sale on eBay. Corrigon’s site takes you through for how its tech can be used. For example, in a large picture with multiple images, you can hover the pointer over different parts of an image and you get pop-up links to where you can buy that object, with Corrigon’s technology essentially automating that search and creating that link. eBay has been making a number of efforts to build out its search functionality with machine learning and big data capabilities. They include the and , an AI company, both in May of this year. eBay has been working for years on making its platform more visual and smarter, and Corrigon fits into that strategy. eBay has, in fact, been offering elements of visual search since , specifically in mobile apps, where users might be using a smartphone camera to identify an image of something they would like to buy. In 2013, the company also unveiled a redesigned, Pinterest-like interface, based around images, as part of a drive draw in a wider audience of consumers that would have been turned off by eBay’s old-fashioned, text-based approach. But moves like this require much more advanced tech to discover, search and interact with those images. eBay says that Corrigon’s tech will be used not only for image recognition, but also for classification and image enhancements “as part of its structured data initiative.” “As we continue to evolve the eBay shopping experience, Corrigon’s technology and expertise will help buyers find the best results when shopping on eBay through experiences that were not possible a year ago, before our investments in structured data,” said Amit Menipaz, Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay, in a statement. Corrigon’s team looks like it will all be joining the company, and it will continue to operate out of Israel, where eBay already has a structured data group in place in Netanya. “Corrigon’s state-of-the art visual search technology enables fine grained product detection within images. We look forward to applying our expertise and technology to eBay’s platform, which has more than a billion product images,” said Avinoam Omer, co-founder and CEO of Corrigon. “Working in partnership with eBay’s structured data team, we will help eBay sellers list more efficiently and eBay buyers find what they are looking for faster in order to increase customer sales conversions.”
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The NBA’s first hackathon: How is the future coming for the league?
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Stefan Etienne
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The NBA recently held an invite-only event in Midtown Manhattan: . Their goal: establishing a new way of looking at game stats. But that goal entails far more than just a new software hack. America has many favorite sports, it seems. Baseball is one of them; MLB (Major Baseball League) stands as a good example of having stats analysis and predictions hitting, fielding, pitching, errors, etc. — there really is no end to it all. Meanwhile, the NBA has been increasing its stats know-how for commentators, coaches and players in recent years; this hackathon is an example of wanting the edge. This is a foray by the league to be more aware, but also more analytical. But where this matters most is through public perception: the viewers. Future viewers will be exposed to far more data than ever before if the NBA keeps its eyes and ears open to producing more statistics. Knowing this adds context as to the NBA’s sudden desire for new players — not on the court, but behind the laptops. If you ask the programmers at the event, the NBA was more or less sampling: 200 programmers within three skill brackets, each containing teams that the league hoped would approach the challenge differently. The micro-management of the event had a presence; it could be felt, not just seen. The NBA’s audience development team explained this one: the separation was one of skill, and consisted of undergrads, graduates and PhD laureates. The rules of the hack were simple: Data used for the analysis that each team would provide was preset by the NBA and wasn’t to be tampered with — or risk disqualification. Oh, and there’s a time limit: Coding started at 9AM and ended at 5:15PM — eight hours and 15 minutes. Seems fair enough. My first question about the event wasn’t just what the end-product might be (it would have to be good, after all), but what was going through the heads of these 200 people. Indeed, this intrigued me; as a sophomore computer science major in college, I was watching some diligent minds at work, doing what interests me. So, I had to ask questions. Post-hackathon, I had email conversations with the teams, and asked them a few clarifying questions. After all, there was over 5GB of data for the teams to analyze, so you had to be more than up for it. After all was said and done, I had to question the team with the No. 1 spot: To The Case Against Hero Ball. The team consisted of Columbia University graduates Alex Wainger and Zac Robertson, with undergrads Ella Kuzmenko and William Robbins from NYU and Pace University, respectively. : We spent the first hour or two of the hackathon looking through all the different datasets. There were some suggested prompts, like creating a defensive efficiency formula or analyzing factors that make a shot more likely to go in, but we wanted to take a different approach. Just the sheer volume of data was probably the biggest challenge. With over 5 gigabytes of data ranging from shot stats to possession stats to player tracking data down to the 1/25th of a second, choosing a topic that was both interesting and feasible to complete in a day was difficult. It sounds like an impressive job and a fun day, coming from the winners, but it wasn’t all that seamless: Robertson dropped me a line after I asked how long it took the team to finish. “I think we submitted with around 2 minutes left on the clock,” he said. The analysis that bought them a smile from the NBA? Looking at a tactic any coach worth his salt would know is a terrible idea: hero ball. : We analyzed player tendencies in the regular season as opposed to the playoffs for behavior that fit in with what people call “Hero Ball”— things like excessive dribbling by one player, less passing, and more standing around. Our hypothesis was that in the regular season, there is a more team-oriented style of play, whereas in the playoffs there is a more selfish style of play. We built a d3 application showing regular season stats on one axis, playoff stats on the other, and a 45 degree line that represented behaving the same way in both scenarios. You can choose a stat and interactively see the team data move around on the chart. We found that among eventual playoff teams, their playoff stats involved 15% more dribbling, 10% more standing around, 4% less passing, and 4% fewer points per possession. What more could you want? Take away all the data-crunching and target analysis and try to boil it down to one reason for you to take on a programming challenge. For me, it might be curiosity. After all, 200 people wouldn’t travel from all over the United States (or maybe take the dreadful 1 train) and sit down for more than eight hours without some innate desire to be there. Curiosity may be just one of those reasons. For me, the one thing that drew me to the Hackathon was the learning potential. I’ve always been a stat geek in terms of the NBA, I’m much more interested in the behind the scenes portion of the sport (coaching and data analysis), compared to actually playing. I saw the Hackathon as an opportunity to make new connections, meet some of the brightest minds in analytics, and further my own knowledge. So the desire to learn and network, basically. If you asked, “what takes the most time?” when wondering about the building of a basic analytics program, the answer might be visualization. When speaking to Alex Wainger from Columbia University, his answer was similar, but with great detail. : We spent at least half an hour brainstorming what we wanted to do after seeing the prompts. We floated a lot of ideas on the provided prompts, but ultimately settled on a prompt of our own — analyzing the differences between regular season and playoff basketball to see if the concept of “hero ball” really exists. We did some quick exploratory data analysis to see if there was actually anything significant in the data that could drive our project, and when we found some interesting differences between the playoffs and regular season, I went to work on an interactive visualization. The visualization took the majority of my time — I built it using d3.js, a JavaScript library, and hosted it online with Github Pages. The rest of my teammates focused on diving deeper into some data I generated with a Python script, and ultimately found that teams moved the ball a lot less in the playoffs, and also scored fewer points per possession. They threw together a PowerPoint to present our findings and we handed everything in with literally a minute to spare. As you hinted at with one of your questions, I think time was probably our biggest challenge. Once we settled on our topic, the longer we spent working, the more ideas we had about different avenues we could have taken the project down (incorporating differing levels of defense, controlling for close games versus blowouts, analyzing individual players’ tendencies, etc.) and if we had an extra few hours, or even another day, we would have tried to incorporate some additional complexity into our project. Now, as the writer, let me be honest, with you, dear reader: I don’t ever watch basketball games; I grew up playing in tennis tournaments and studying martial arts. More often than not, I was characterized as being interested in basketball based solely on appearance; that’s a different discussion, for another time. But just think on it: A sport like basketball, with its immense requirement for physicality, might soon be grabbing a cloak that grants it more technical, critical analysis of professional games. But that reality is still some time away, so if you’re interested in seeing what the team’s winning visualization looked like, look no further than this .
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Gotcha! Norwegian prime minister caught playing Pokémon GO during parliamentary debate
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Devin Coldewey
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Pokémon GO fever may be receding in the U.S., but in Norway it’s still raging. The country’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, was caught red-handed playing the game in parliament. PM Solberg had her phone out not during a break or boring filibuster, but during an active debate while another minister was speaking. Looks like she just caught something, too. That looks like maybe 200 XP she’s gotten, and I don’t see no Pokéstops. Haha, herregud. spilte pokemon Go i Stortinget under … mens sto på talerstolen! — Eivind Trædal (@eivindtraedal) In fact, , the very minister who was at the podium, Trine Skei Grande, was caught in August playing the game during a national security meeting! Is the process of governance really that boring? Or did she receive a tip from their intelligence service that a Blastoise had spawned nearby? Now, I know it’s a different culture over there, but on this side of the Pacific , all of politics is a game with no winners but the corporate overlords selling scraps of the Constitution for the political equivalent of Pokécoins. Now that I think of it, Norway’s style of approaching the process in a human, relatable way is probably better. Turns out Grande wasn’t mussed, though: hun hørte nok hva jeg sa 😉 vi damer klarer to ting samtidig veit du. — Trine Skei Grande (@Trinesg) Translation: “She heard what I said 😉 we ladies can do two things at once, you know.” Not everyone can, though: in related news, the town of Kerkrade aimed at preventing zombielike Pokémon players from wandering into the road and being struck by cars. Be safe out there, trainers.
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Evercar mashes up car sharing and ride hailing
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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Say you’d like to make a few extra bucks by driving for ride hailing services and or on-demand delivery services like , but your old car won’t pass muster with these companies. Or maybe you don’t want to put the miles on your personal car. Or maybe you don’t even have a car of your own. That’s where comes in. It maintains a fleet of shared vehicles in Los Angeles and, as of September, San Francisco and Oakland. All the vehicles are preapproved by major on-demand and ride hailing companies, while drivers need only submit an application and a $25 nonrefundable fee. Once you’re clear, Evercar will give you the documentation you need to sign up as a driver with a service, as well as access to the fleet and instructions on how to use the cars. Then you can use an Evercar for whatever service you like for $5 to $8 per hour, depending on your location, which covers fuel, maintenance, and insurance with no mileage limits. You can’t take an Evercar home, unless you reserve it for that time and pay the $8 an hour to have it sit in your driveway, which defeats the service’s purpose. But you can pick up and drop off an Evercar from its home garage any time of day, so night owls can definitely apply. The service is headquartered in Los Angeles, where it began, and where it has 1200 members sharing a fleet of more than 100 vehicles, which they’ve driven more than a million total miles. The fleet is mostly Toyota Priuses, with a smattering of Nissan Leafs available in LA. The number of cars in the LA fleet as of May 2016 was only 43, which shows how quickly the company is growing. According to a press release, Evercar already has financing in place to buy up to 3,000 more vehicles in the next year, some of which will be EVs for the Bay Area, plus further bulking up of the Los Angeles fleet and expansion of its services.
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This ‘ballbot’ is like a real-life BB-8
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Devin Coldewey
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It isn’t quite as lovable as the spherical droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but this robot from Carnegie Mellon University has the benefit of being more than a special effect ( ). And believe it or not, it basically has no moving parts. Now, you may be thinking, “the headline of says ‘two moving parts,’ you handsome fool.” But read closely (and thank you!). One of those moving parts is the robot itself when it moves around the room; you don’t say a paper airplane has moving parts when you throw it. The other is the ball it moves on, and it’s not even connected to the top part! So I’m sticking with zero despite the experts. Here, am the expert. Anyway, the robot is actually an evolution of a decade-old design: created the “ballbot” long ago, but it was driven mechanically. The way it worked is actually quite easy to picture: imagine a mouse ball, but instead of the ball moving the little rollers inside, the rollers move the ball. Carefully controlling these motors lets the robot essentially balance on top of the ball while also rolling it in any direction. The trouble was the same as with those mice: the rollers wore out or got dirtied up, and had to be replaced, and the motors recalibrated. The spherical induction motor, inverted to show details. The solution wasn’t to remove the ball, as we did with mice, but to remove the . The new version uses an induction motor, which magnetically drives the sphere (solid iron, with a copper shell) with stators, the way other induction motors would drive a rotor. This reduces wear and increases the level of control over the ball, since there are fewer mechanical forces to worry about. Just adjusting the voltage and the magnetic force on the ball propels it where you want it to go. Onboard systems keep it upright and balanced, and it can recover from being pushed around — not as much as a legged robot, but still. The SIMbot (for spherical induction motor) is still very much a lab-bound experiment, but its omnidirectional motion and sophisticated yet elegant control mechanisms are likely a source of envy to robots that use legs or multiple wheels to get around.
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Zenefits makes licensing compliance app available for free in the Salesforce App Exchange
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Ron Miller
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announced this week, it was making a licensing compliance app it created in-house to ensure its sales people are properly licensed to sell insurance in a given state, available for free to anyone to download from the Salesforce App Exchange. Last winter Zenefits was sailing along providing HR services in the cloud for small and medium businesses when a bombshell hit. inside of Zenefits and the story blew up. It soon became apparent there were issues around following proper state health insurance licensing requirements and other questionable practices. It seems that Zenefits salespeople were selling insurance in states where they weren’t always properly authorized to do so, and allegedly faking their online training requirements, according to Buzzfeed. That scandal led to . David Sacks, former CEO at Yammer, took over. Thrust into what had to be a chaotic situation, Sacks set about righting the ship with investors and regulators before it was too late. Sacks says that before he even stepped into the CEO role, a project was under way at Zenefits to build a licensing compliance application that would prevent anyone from selling if they weren’t properly certified to do so. It would leave nothing to chance or human intervention. The system would determine if the proper credentials were in place. When Sacks took over he says he fast-tracked that project. The idea was to build this system on top of Salesforce.com, the company’s CRM provider. By tying it directly to the sales system, and connecting to the insurance industry licensing database, it would in theory prevent anyone from selling without proper licensing. The company , but this week, it took that a step further at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s customer conference: it was making the app available for free to anyone to use. “The app integrates with Salesforce and the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR), the authoritative source on license. So this is one of things that helped us move forward and reset things with regulators,” he said. Sacks is clearly trying to make lemonade from lemons here by taking a very negative situation and spinning it into a more positive outcome. As he said in an interview in San Francisco, he’s trying to find a way to move on from the events of last winter. “The way to win trust is to just make right a situation, whatever mistakes you’ve made previously,” Sacks said. “Our attitude at Zenefits today is to be very transparent and forthright about what happened, it’s not to double down on something wrong in the past, it’s to admit it, fix it, and move on,” he said. While it seems to have placated regulators, and since the news first surfaced. This week’s move is one more step at quieting that situation and steering the company past the scandal.
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Madefire, a digital comics startup with an eye on virtual reality, raises $6.5M
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Anthony Ha
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Just in time for , is announcing that it has raised $6.5 million in Series B funding. Madefire co-founder and CEO Ben Wolstenholme said the funding — which was led by Santa Monica-based Plus Capital — will help his company build more connections with the media and entertainment world. It’s not that Madefire (which from investors including True Ventures) was totally lacking in those relationships before, but Wolstenholme said the company is “moving from being all about building technology” to building up a big content library as well. The firm connected Madefire with some of the other big names who ended up investing in the Series B, including Kevin Spacey (!) and Drake (!!). Visual effects studio Framestore also participated in the round — Wolstenholme said Framestore will be building Madefire-specific content. “I think the Madefire team are visionaries, building a platform that creates impactful ways to tell stories,” said Plus Capital founder and managing partner Adam Lilling in a statement. “At Plus, we believe Madefire has one of the best platforms for creators to introduce and experiment with their IP, and scale their audience so creators can have more control over their future.” While Comixology ( ) remains the best-known platform for digital comics, Madefire is trying to do something a bit different. Instead of just bringing print comics to digital formats with minimal changes, it adds animation, sound effects and music to the mix. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4iMslz3VwY&w=560&h=315] The company describes the resulting product as a motion book — not exactly the same thing as the motion comics that publishers have experimented with in the past. Wolstenholme emphasized that despite the multimedia bells and whistles, Madefire’s motion books should still be an active reading experience, not a passive viewing one, the key distinction being that the text isn’t just replaced with voiceover. “We want to be the best book, not the worst video,” he said. Madefire started out by (including Wolstenholme’s own book, ), but it’s now like DC, IDW and Kodansha — Wolstenholme said it’s on track to have more than 40,000 books in the store by the end of the year. Madefire also , allowing comics publishers to create their own storefronts and apps, and it’s even explaining the new App Store review guidelines. Wolstenholme added that the broader goal is to create a “native digital experience,” whether that’s on phones, tablets or internet-connected TVs. In fact, the new money is intended, in part, to fund an expansion into virtual reality and augmented reality, although Wolstenholme said it’s too soon to offer any details.
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Industrial giants borrow a page from the tech playbook
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Pat Mascia
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If you’re an executive at an industrial company, you’ve likely been grappling with the . The rapid development of technologies that connect every part of our lives has moved from our smart phone to the jet engine. There’s perhaps no greater testament to the importance of this connectivity than General Electric’s massive effort to rebrand itself as the to attract the world’s best technologists. IoT’s emergence is causing leading manufacturers to rethink their go-to-market strategies and take a page from the technology playbook: subscriptions. Historically, manufacturing companies and OEM providers have operated in a capital expense (CAPEX) environment, meaning their revenue has come from selling a certain component or product to another company in a one-time, upfront transaction. The shift to a subscription model, or operating expense (OPEX), means manufacturing companies and OEM providers can now generate recurring, long-term revenue from the successful operation of, rather than the sale of, their products. This new approach creates a smoother stream of cash flow for providers, while customers are assured that they have the most up-to-date products and that they’re only paying for what they need. Think of it as the Zipcar model for manufacturing. Customers are not purchasing the vehicle, and thus are not responsible for the risks associated with ownership (repairs, insurance, storage, etc.); they simply pay for the operational benefit of having a car. It has already proven successful: Gartner’s report shows that “about 35 percent of global industrial enterprises project[ed] five percent incremental revenue from subscription-based services in 2015.” The subscription model will only be successful if the manufacturer offering the subscription has a way to track and manage the performance of that part or product remotely. If a company is paid on the successful operation of their product, it has to ensure that quality never slips. Here are a few early success stories that show the impact this model is having on the sector: As IoT advancements shift the economy toward an outcome- and performance-based model, industrial companies will increasingly explore commercial strategies pioneered by global tech and software innovators. The transformation is underway, and the companies that invest in this new model now will ultimately reap the rewards.
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Svetlana Dotsenko
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Stash’s app is a better way to bookmark the web
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Sarah Perez
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There are a number of ways to save links from the web for later access, whether that’s marking articles to read later via apps like or , pinning shopping inspiration to , creating playlists on YouTube or even just using a browser’s bookmarking feature. But a new app called , available for both and , wants to offer a better link-saving service by making it easier to save, organize, search and share any content you find and want to keep. Unlike a simple bookmark manager, like those built into some web browsers, Stash has developed technology that will automatically categorize your links based on the type of content they include. That means instead of just saving articles to read later, for example, Stash can organize a range of items into their own categories, like places, books, recipes, files, movies, songs, videos, products and more. Stash also addresses other issues with some rival bookmarking services — moving content between devices and actually to revisit the items you’ve saved at a later time. With Stash’s “push to device” feature, you can quickly send an article you’ve saved on the web to your smartphone, to your tablet or vice versa. Meanwhile, by enabling notifications, you can also choose to set alerts on individual items so that you’ll make time to return to them later. For instance, you could alert yourself on Sunday morning to read that long, multi-page feature article you didn’t have time for during the week. This is something that fans of “read it later”-style services will likely appreciate, as we all too often save web content for later perusal, but then promptly forget about it. The app itself is fairly simple to use, though it does have to walk you through a few steps during setup, like enabling access in iOS’s share sheet for use in your mobile applications, enabling notifications in the web browser via its Chrome extension or adding other devices to your account. Once set up, you can also search your saves in Stash using filters or share them with others via an “Inbox” feature, in addition to saving and sharing. Stash was developed by Cornell students Rahul Shah (CEO), Chris Goes (CTO) and Sachin Rudraraju (CPO) following a pivot from their earlier attempt at building analytics software for media publications called Speare. The classification technology they developed for Speare now powers Stash in order to automatically categorize and tag the web pages users save. That tech gets better over time, as more people use Stash, and correct its data. [gallery ids="1397646,1397645,1397643,1397642,1397638,1397637"] “We built Stash with the idea that there’s a lot of content on the web that we want to save, but current save-for-later services focus mainly on articles. There are also the songs we find on Soundcloud, the places we want to eat at on Yelp, the books we want to read on Goodreads — just to name a few,” explains Shah. “We wanted to build one place to store all of that information, while effortlessly keeping it organized,” he says. Of course, there have been a number of attempts at reinventing bookmarking over the years since the fall of top social bookmarking services like . Five years ago, for instance, a debuted its “Instapaper on steroids,” which let you save any content to its app, including not only text, but also media like audio and video. (Spool was later by Facebook). Facebook since launched its own “read it later” feature, with the launch of its Save button. Other apps like , , , and more have also tackled bookmarking from various angles, while niche services have focused on verticals, like location, as with , , and , to name a few. None has ever had the breakout success that Delicious once had during the Web 2.0 heyday, which raises the question as to whether universal, smart bookmarking tools are in huge demand among today’s consumers. Stash is available as a free download and isn’t yet generating revenue. The company is backed by $20,000 in from Dorm Room Fund, as well as friends and family contributions.
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CRISPR loses Nobel to tiny machines
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Sarah Buhr
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CRISPR, the gene-editing technology revolutionizing the biotech industry, has failed to take home the Nobel prize in chemistry for the second year in a row. Instead, the went to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa – three men who developed the world’s smallest machines using molecular physics. Each will share equally in the 8 million Swedish kronor, or about $930,000 prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. the prize went to three other European scientists for their work in mapping out how DNA repairs itself. Not to diminish the work of these other scientists, but it’s quite a shock that what seems the scientific discovery of the century has failed to take home the prize yet again. CRISPR has the capacity to dramatically reshape the world as we know it in food, medicine and materials science, acting as a sort of DNA scissors, allowing scientists to precisely cut pretty much any gene — like those that make on white button mushrooms or cause a particular hereditary cancer. So where does this leave this ground-breaking invention? While there is no such thing as a runner-up for a Nobel prize, CRISPR could get another shot next year. Meanwhile, the much-lauded scientific discovery is steeped in a heated patent war, pitting MIT’s Feng Zhang against Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and her colleague now at Berlin’s Max Plank Institute, Emmanuelle Charpentier, over the rights to the proprietary technology. CRISPR was first discovered in 1987 but proved viable by Doudna and Charpentier using in 2012. But MIT filed faster than Berkeley and Zhang and his colleagues have formed their own biotech firm Editas Medicine to come up with new solutions to using the tech. Meanwhile, Doudna and Charpentier have also created CRISPR companies — Doudna at the helm of Intellia and Charpentier at CRISPR Therapeutics. Editas and Intellia went public earlier this year and Charpentier’s CRISPR from going on the stock market, too. And there are other players on the scene for that Nobel — Zhang is one of them and holds the lion’s share of the patents associated with the Cas9 technology. Then there are those building upon CRISPR as a platform, using Cas9 to get it there. , a scientist at Stanford University, came up with a technique to use CRISPR Cas9 as a sort of platform for turning certain genes on and off instead of snipping them. Also, George Church, Harvard professor, and father of the Human Genome Project, and one of the co-founders of Zhang’s Editas medicine came up with a way to using Cas9. Depending on , the CRISPR credit either goes to Doudna and Charpentier or to Zhang, but many, many people contributed to the invention of CRISPR Cas9, its myriad future uses, and subsequent ethical debates. Unfortunately, the Nobel prize will only allow three people to claim the award for their work. But eventually, someone will get the award for their work on CRISPR. Whom that might be is still up in the air.
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WTF is a mirrorless camera?
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Devin Coldewey
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tend to fall under one of two categories: SLR or mirrorless. What’s the difference? And why does it matter? To find out, let’s take a quick trip through the history of the medium. It turns out that many of the changes to how cameras work have been attempts to solve a simple problem: How do you show what’s in front of the lens to both the user whatever’s recording that image? Originally, photographs weren’t on film; instead, you’d coat a metal or glass plate with a photosensitive liquid. This would be placed behind the lens — before you did so, however, you looked through where the plate would later be to frame the photo. To speed up the process, a second lens was added near the first, through which framing and focus could be adjusted without fiddling with the primary one. Although these offset lenses only offered an approximation of what the primary lens would see, the design persists to this day. They’re called “rangefinder” cameras, and the lens you look through has been given additional functionality, notably the ability to determine the distance to the subject for the purpose of setting focus. Top down view of a Yashica-635 Twin Lens Reflex. Mirrors were added around the turn of the century (the last one, to be clear), allowing for two new camera types. One was a “twin-lens” setup where the mirror bounced the image from the extra lens upwards onto a small translucent screen; a second, similar lens just below opened onto the shutter and the film itself, and focusing the first would also focus the second. In the other design, the mirror went directly between the lens and the film, reflecting the image through a prism that, in turn, refracted it into your eye. But when you hit the shutter button, the mirror flipped up out of the way and the shutter opened on the film. This was known as the single lens reflex, or SLR. The design was not only more compact, but since the user looked through the primary lens, you could switch that lens out and still see exactly what the film would see. It was the most popular type of camera for decades, even until film was replaced by a digital sensor (whence the D in DSLR). But then the camera was born. In a way, mirrorless cameras are very much like the familiar point-and-shoot cameras, in which the lens sits directly in front of the shutter and film or sensor. This solves the problem of how to get the view from the lens to both the user’s eye and the image capture mechanism: the image hits the sensor, which then relays that image to the LCD facing the user. The main way to frame a shot on point-and-shoots is via the display on the back, but because of poor quality screens, lenses and sensors (everything, really), the cameras were never taken seriously. For serious photography an SLR was still mandatory. However, as sensor and image processing technology matured and shrank, it became possible for these cheaper cameras to do the job which had traditionally been filled by larger, more sophisticated pieces of equipment. So while the early digital point-and-shoots we had in the late 90s and early 2000s were mirrorless after a fashion, the term is now usually used to refer to cameras with interchangeable lenses, manual controls, and often an electronic viewfinder — a small eyepiece in which a tiny display is put, so the user can frame and shoot just like in the old days. In fact, an early term for mirrorless cameras was EVIL – “electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens.” But some didn’t have EVFs, some didn’t really have interchangeable lenses, and so on. What they all had in common was — you guessed it — no mirror. Inside an Olympus mirrorless camera – notice nothing intervenes between the lens and the sensor except the (invisible) shutter. The primary advantage of mirrorless camera systems is their compact size. Because they require few or no moving parts inside (some retain a mechanical shutter, for instance), they can be thinner and lighter, or add other functions, like in-camera image stabilization. There’s also a motivation to use high-quality displays and intuitive touch controls, since they will be relied upon more than in SLRs. Smaller cameras, however, tend to have smaller image sensors — which can, but doesn’t necessarily, adversely affect image quality. This differs from camera to camera and often depends more on the quality of the lens; but that’s a WTF for another time. Another drawback is that electronic viewfinders and LCDs aren’t necessarily preferable to an optical viewfinder. After all, when you are seeing the light as it comes through the lens itself, there is no lag or color bias. On the other hand, since you’re getting info direct from the sensor, what you see is what you get, minimizing guesswork in exposure and focus. Lastly, smaller bodies also mean less room for the switches, dials, and other old-school physical controls prized by many photographers. It’s largely a matter of taste, but it’s also hard to deny the utility of controls you can handle without looking at them. Mirrorless cameras have helped invigorate a flagging photography market long divided into “cheap” and “serious.” Compact, powerful, and intuitive, the mirrorless camera is in many ways the best of both worlds.
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A new private space race as Boeing CEO says he’ll beat SpaceX to Mars
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Darrell Etherington
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Competition breeds progress, so it’s a bit thrilling to hear Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg say that he’s going to beat SpaceX to Mars in terms of delivering real humans to the surface of the red planet. Muilenburg said that he’s “convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” speaking at a conference in Chicago Tuesday, according to . Boeing is working on a heavy-lift rocket project called the Space Launch System that would aim for a similar goal to what SpaceX is hoping to achieve with its Interplanetary Transport System, the details of which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared last week in a keynote presented at an international aeronautics convention. Boeing and SpaceX are already close competitors when it comes to commercial spaceflight contracts from NASA, and Boeing’s approach to its system designed for reaching Mars reflects similar tensions to those present in the ongoing battle between the two for space missions closer to home. Boeing’s plan involves at least $60 billion in NASA-funded development prior to a human-crewed Mars mission in the late 2030s, at the earliest. Musk’s approach with SpaceX will seek to reduce costs to more manageable levels of around $200,000 per person by the time proper colonization begins, sourced from a variety of places, including potential public and private funding (including from Musk himself). Provided this isn’t just boastful public remarks and Boeing really does hear SpaceX’s footsteps, hopefully this will set in motion competition that pushes forward both endeavors, which should help make Mars a more realistic destination in the end.
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This tiny high-def display could double the sharpness of VR
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Devin Coldewey
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Virtual reality is pretty convincing when you’re all jacked in and wired up — but even the best headsets today aren’t particularly sharp. Sharp, taking notice of this, has produced a display specifically for VR that’s double the resolution of what’s out there right now. It’s still a prototype, of course, and was on display at CEATEC in Japan. , where the tiny screens were being shown in both rectangular and circular forms. At 2160×1920 (for the rectangle, naturally; the circle is likely 1920 in diameter) and just about 2 inches across, these displays have an impressive pixels-per-inch rating of over 1,000. The 5-6-inch displays we have on our phones are generally in the 300-500 range, and that’s also the case for the panels being used inside the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It’s not the highest PPI ever, though — panels with over 2,000 PPI have been made, but this one is tailored to VR. Assuming these Sharp displays are at least as good in terms of color and response time — and their IGZO method suggests that should be the case — they could lead to a huge improvement to the VR experience. Remember the iPhone before and after Retina display? That kind of huge. One other device on display caught my eye: this 5.2-inch, “Free Form” HD panel with rounded corners used to create an impressive edge-to-edge phone prototype. I’d definitely rock that. for more from Sharp’s booth.
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Hamwells raises €1.2 million for the connected e-shower of the future
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Samantha O'Keefe
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When you take your next shower, the water flowing from the faucet may just be recycled. That’s the vision fueling , a Netherlands-based startup that launched in the at Disrupt London 2015. In the Battlefield, the company presented their e-shower with a re-circulation mode that recycles each drop of water 7 times, significantly reducing the waste that’s inherent in the showering process. About 150 people from around the world pre-ordered the device after Disrupt, and the company will begin shipping to these backers this week. Hamwells’ Director of Marketing Wouter Chömpff tells TechCrunch that the company has also raised €1.2 million from a group of suppliers and angel investors. Today, Hamwells is ready to launch its e-shower more broadly. The company is now accepting orders internationally, with orders to customers in the Netherlands delivering within 2 weeks. International orders, however, won’t ship until the second half of 2017. For customers looking to add a single unit to their home, the e-shower will cost €2,890. Businesses ordering in bulk, defined by the company as over 100 units, will pay just €1,500 each. [gallery columns="1" ids="1395166,1395167,1395168"] Hamwells admits it can’t quite manage large volumes of products across the world from its base in Europe. The company is actively looking to solve that problem for at least one region — the Americas — with plans to launch a subsidiary in the United States as soon as 2017. Focusing on the U.S. could help locations like California, which in 2016 faced another year of record-setting drought across the state. Solutions like the Hamwells e-shower, which can significantly reduce the amount of water people use when they take their daily showers (by up to 90 percent, the company claims), can help locations like California reduce how much water they need and help stave off future droughts. In addition to mass-producing the e-shower so the company can get it in the hands of the most people, Hamwells has plans to further enhance the product. Specifically, Chömpff tells TechCrunch that the next iterations of the e-shower will have options to add things like speakers, aromas and steam functionality. And, like with any connected or “smart” device, the e-shower will have apps. Chömpff says the company plans to build an application platform for the e-shower’s screen, beginning with a weather app that will be available this week. With the app, users will be able to check the weather while taking a shower so they are able to mentally pick out their wardrobe for the day while soaping up.
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What makes IoT ransomware a different and more dangerous threat?
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Ben Dickson
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has already managed to carve itself a niche as . As individuals, organizations and government agencies, we’re taking precautionary steps to against malware that can encrypt files beyond our reach. What we’re ignoring though, is , which will not target our files, but rather our IoT devices, which can be more dangerous and damaging, given . IoT ransomware has been mentioned and discussed on , including , but has not been given serious consideration because it is being examined in the same light as the more traditional breed of malware. Here’s what makes IoT ransomware a different and possibly more dangerous threat. Famous brands of ransomware such as Cryptowall and CTB-Locker are aimed at finding and locking valuable files on targeted machines. Aside from their anonymity, their main strength is their irreversibility — victims have no other choice than forking over the ransom money if they want to regain access to their files (unless they’ve taken , of course). Therefore, the general opinion is that files and sensitive data have financial value, and where they go, ransomware will follow. For the most part, IoT devices store little or no data, which would logically make them financially irrelevant to ransomware attacks, right? Wrong. “While traditional ransomware affects your computer and locks your files, IoT ransomware has the opportunity to control systems in the real world, beyond just the computer,” says Neil Cawse, CEO at , a manufacturer of IoT and telematics for vehicles. “In fact, due to the many practical applications of IoT technology, its ransomware can shut down vehicles, turn off power, or even stop production lines. This potential to cause far more damage means that the potential for hackers can charge much more, ultimately making it an appealing market for them to explore.” Some argue that in most cases, IoT hacks can be reversed with a simple device reset. However, the incentive to pay for IoT ransomware will not stem from irreversibility but rather from the timeliness of the attack and the criticality and potential losses of losing access to critical devices for any amount of time. In fact, with IoT increasingly powering critical devices (such as drug infusion pumps and pacemakers) and industrial systems (such as power grids and water pumping stations), the financial value of locking down IoT ecosystems — and the damage resulting from not unlocking them in time — will rise exponentially. “Holding data for ransom is one thing,” says Rob Conant, CEO at IoT and cloud platform provider , “but shutting down the electricity grid, cars, or traffic lights is quite another. Entire cities or regions could be impacted.” “Most concerning is the threat against organizations who rely on IoT devices for Industrial Control Systems (ICS),” says Dave Larson, Chief Operating Officer at . “This can include electric grid, hospitals and large scale automated manufacturing operations among others.” Proof of concept ransomware attacks have already been presented at the consumer IoT level, which includes smart homes and offices, connected (and soon autonomous) cars and wearables. This August, two researchers from U.K.-based security firm showed how they could and force the owner to pay the ransom or have the device locked at 99 degrees. Also, in , SVP at Intel Security Chris Young speculated on how ransomware can affect transportation. “Let’s say you get in your connected car in the morning — or your autonomous vehicle — and you get a pop-up that says, ‘If you pay me $300 I’ll let you drive to work today,’” he said. While he did mention that it isn’t a scenario that is likely to happen today, he emphasized that “it’s certainly not going to be outside the realm of possibility from what we might face.” There’s also the possibility of malicious actors stealing critical data and private information that is being sent to the cloud, such as video feeds from connected cameras in homes and data generated by health devices, and to avoid the publication of the embarrassing or harmful content. It’s still too early to say the threat of ransomware in smart homes and connected cars is imminent, even though consumer-level . The hodgepodge of software and hardware that constitute the consumer IoT industry actually make it hard to stage widespread ransomware attacks. “Currently, the IoT industry is fragmented, lacking a standardized approach, operating system, and communication system,” Geotab’s Cawse says. “This has made it more difficult for ransomware criminals to conduct a generalized attack. Each attack would need to target a specific type of IoT device, which reduces the number of devices that can be targeted at the same time.” We can thus conclude that for the moment, the cost-benefit balance of staging ransomware attacks against consumer IoT devices might not be motivating enough for malicious actors. But this is a situation that is likely to change in the future, as IoT becomes more pervasive in homes and offices. However, industrial IoT ecosystems already have every characteristic of an attractive ransomware target. This can include any of the critical infrastructure that affect the lives of thousands and millions of people and have huge operational costs. For instance, this year, that disrupted their operations by denying them access to pertinent file systems. IoT ransomware attacks can be even worse, especially as IoT technology . “If a dark-actor compromises a hospital’s IoT systems, patient health could be at risk — and the value of a life pales in comparison to a ransom demand — so the potential of initial pay out by the hospital might be high because they need to buy time to remediate the infiltration,” says Corero’s Larson. This scenario can also play out in facilities such as manufacturing plants, Corero says, “where the ability to suspend operations of high value could prompt a payment if the loss of productivity is too substantial.” Another big target of IoT ransomware can be power plants and electricity grids. Cirrent’s Conant refers to the as an example, which, although not a cyber attack, was . The disaster cut off electricity for more than 55 million people, caused 11 deaths and resulted in an estimate $6 billion damage. “Most don’t attribute this sequence of events to a bad actor, just a series of bugs and bad coincidences,” Conant says. “But a similar series of events could be caused by bad actors, and these bad actors could create these events for their own economic gain. Would electric utilities pay to prevent this kind of damage? Would politicians? Would businesses?” Ransomware for the IoT could easily create impacts that are even bigger, Conant says, “and ransomware developers may want to find out.” While there’s no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution to protecting IoT devices and ecosystems against ransomware attacks, experts do believe that some general guidelines and practices can help organizations and manufacturers improve their defenses against IoT ransomware. Cawse from Geotab emphasizes remote firmware updates as a decisive factor to creating devices that are more resilient to IoT ransomware, because “security is a journey not a destination, meaning that a device is not built secure forever.” According to Cawse, every IoT product should be updated “very easily and effectively, but also securely.” This is especially true because, if not secured, update channels can themselves become mediums to infect devices with ransomware. As Cawse explains, secure updating means “using well-known industry best practices, i.e. locking the processor and firmware and encrypting the communication with our devices.” A robust OTA update mechanism can also serve as a means to recover devices that have fallen victim to IoT ransomware malware. Conant underlines the need for a firm authentication mechanism to protect against IoT ransomware attacks. “In some cases, IoT devices are not even authenticated, which makes it trivial to spoof a product,” he says. “Doing this at large scale could disable millions of products — a problem not just for the companies, but for their customers.” Device spoofing can become especially problematic in a ransomware scenario when a server that connects millions of devices becomes infected with the malware. Conant proposes to mitigate security risks through authentication and certificate life-cycle management, and standardized code base for network security, which “prevents a number of the attack vectors that ransomware hackers may otherwise use to bring a system down.” The IoT security landscape will continue to remain complicated and thorny while the industry is still going through its development phase. For the time being, malicious actors are still weighing and exploring the possibilities and financial value that this hot new phenomenon might offer. Meanwhile, the efforts made by manufacturers and adopters of IoT devices leave a lot to be desired. This will probably change when hackers learn to monetize IoT vulnerabilities and decide to take full advantage. Let’s hope we’ll be ready when they do.
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We are all responsible for closing the gender gap
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Sue Siegel
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the United States, we are on the eve of potentially electing our first female president. Yet as much progress as we’ve made, we still have a long way to go to achieve gender parity – especially in business. It’s likely that a woman reading this today will soon be passed over for a deserved promotion or miss out on funding for a game-changing idea. The state of women in the workplace is well-tread ground, and the statistics remain bleak. Fortune 500 companies have a woman CEO. Between 2010 and 2015, only one out of every 10 global venture dollars went to startups with at least one female founder. And earlier this week, LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company finding women are still underrepresented at every corporate level and hold less than 30% of roles in senior management. What the statistics ultimately tell us is that, as women, we face challenges big and small because the system we operate in was built predominantly by and for our male colleagues. But behind these numbers I see — and feel every day — a surge of great optimism. Because the keys to the solution are at our disposal. We all play a role in solving this problem, and we’re moving in the right direction. Complicated problems require complex solutions, but the way I see it, there is a solution if we take responsibility in three key ways. mother is a self-made Filipina woman who worked her way up to become a well-respected principal of a school system. As a young woman, she earned multiple degrees and accolades, including a United Nations scholarship to Yale University. On my first visit to Yale, when I was 14, I walked halls filled with old photographs of men in black suits. One lone woman stood among them: my mother, in a white dress, looking so bright and brave. That’s how I learned she was the first woman to earn a graduate degree from the Yale School of Forestry. It gave me a whole new perspective on her, and how hard she must have worked to get there. The journey toward gender parity doesn’t mean one prescriptive path for every woman to follow or one definitive list to check off. Each of us can make it her own—what you do may be different from what your co-worker does, or your friend, or even your mother. What matters is that you’re doing something, anything, that pushes you beyond your comfort zone. My mother found her own way, and encouraged my sisters and me to carve out our own paths. Many times when I attend events it’s just me, a 4’11 Asian woman, in a sea of people who look and sound different than I do. I’ve developed some techniques to navigate the room. For every event I attend, I have a rule: Introduce myself to three people, then I can go home. I can’t wave a magic wand to change what the room looks like, but I’ve found a way to make it work for me. And that’s what I urge you to do, too. Find the way that works for you, and you’ll inspire others to do the same. addition to having a responsibility to ourselves, we also have a responsibility to each other. For women that means when you climb a rung on the ladder, or walk through a door of opportunity, you have a responsibility to bring other deserving women along with you. I’m proud to say GE Ventures had the most female venture capitalists of the 812 corporate, private, and accelerator funds surveyed last year. But frankly, I’m less excited about the fact that the women on my team happen to be women than I am about the fact that they are excellent at their jobs. I urge you, as women, to share the lessons you’ve learned so that others can learn from your mistakes; it’s just as valuable as sharing your successes. Early in my career, I made what I consider to be one of my biggest mistakes. When I had my first child, Christopher, I didn’t give myself a break at all. I took only two days of maternity leave. My dad flew in to stay with my son, and as soon as he landed,I charged right back into the office. That was a terrible idea. My body had yet to heal, and my mind was still reeling from the hormonal surge. The worst part was that I missed out on time with my son that I‘ll never get back and I sent a bad signal to women who were planning to take maternity leave, and men who wanted to take their paternity leave. People in leadership positions need to model that it’s OK to take time for yourself and your family. Otherwise, others feel like they can’t, either. can’t afford to leave talented women on the sidelines. Our competitive advantage depends on leveraging all of our smartest talent, male or female. That means that gender parity isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s an issue that affects all of us. That means that men have to be part of the solution, too. In my experience, I have found most of my male colleagues are completely willing to be allies, if we let them. It’s no longer ahospitable environment for people who are outwardly and intentionally sexist: that kind of person is an endangered species. I truly believe that most of the men I work with and have worked with are well-intentioned men who just want do the right thing. My suspicion is that overt misogynists are becoming increasingly rare. Instead, you’re more likely to encounter what I like to call accidental misogynists. A man who is in favor of all of the right policy positions when it comes to gender equality, but isn’t as aware and as well read on gender issues as women are. He has no desire to be part of the system that’s holding so many of us back, yet he doesn’t see the little ways in which he’s being harmful, like invisible barriers he doesn’t see, and the unconscious biases he’s failing to challenge. I have two sons. From their point of view, women can do absolutely anything men can. I’m so proud of them, but I tell them they have a responsibility to make sure that society doesn’t put barriers in women’s way. I tell them to be aware of the ways the playing field isn’t even yet, and that all of us — men and women — must do our part to level it. Because, while it’s great to have fewer men be part of the problem, we need a lot more men to become an active part of the solution. Every time you find yourself with a seat at the table or a voice in the conversation, use it for good. Use it to point out unconscious bias when you see it. Use it to point out a that your pool of candidates doesn’t reflect the diverse world we live in. Use it to remind your colleagues that talent comes in all kinds of packages, and that women’s ideas and perspectives are an enormous and necessary value-add to all our teams. The way forward is a diverse chorus of voices speaking up for diversity.
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Stanford, MIT lead in graduating funded startup founders
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Joanna Glasner
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Watch: Marc Andreessen on Twitter, secondary sales, pulling the plug, and more
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Connie Loizos
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On Thursday night, at an insider event I’d organized in my second but closely related life as the founder of , I interviewed famed entrepreneur-investor Marc Andreessen, whose most recent headline-grabbing maneuver (intentionally or not) was to one week ago. I talked with Andreessen about why he has had enough of the social media platform for now, along with a lot of other things. For those of you without the time or inclination to watch the entire 50-minute interview, I’ve broken out some of what I asked Andreessen, and where you can find his specific answers. (I’d write out his comments, but anyone who has seen Andreessen speak can attest that he talks in wide-ranging paragraphs, so we at TC thought this might make more sense.) Twitter stuff. Andreessen suggests he left for now owing to today’s highly politicized environment, saying he feels “free as a bird” as a result. My colleague Katie Roof, who attended the event, wrote a . We talk about whether he still believes that there are 15 companies per year that will go on to create at least $100 million in annual revenue (and that those are the firms top VCs must back to stay on top). It’s the thesis around which Andreessen’s venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz, was founded in 2009. My question more specifically is whether that number has grown larger or smaller or remained static. I asked if more of the winners — no matter their number — are being created outside of the U.S., Silicon Valley-focused Andreessen Horowitz is perhaps missing them. Here, Andreessen answers whether too much money is finding its way to Silicon Valley and what the impact might be if so. Andreessen answers why today’s private companies — which Andreessen has argued can better compete with public companies (versus other public companies) — won’t run into the same exact constraints as their public company counterparts when they eventually go public, too. Here, I bring up Bill Gurley’s that once Uber goes public, it will be expected to be profitable, and its well-subsidized, still-private competitors will undercut it on price and try to steal market share. I ask whether this is a concern for Andreessen-backed Lyft and others of its portfolio companies. : Andreessen talks about why it’s easier but not absolutely necessary for founders to implement a dual-class structure in order to maintain control of their companies once public. I’ve just asked Andreessen why, despite an uptick in M&A by nontraditional tech acquirers (think General Motors and the many private equity firms to go shopping this year), we aren’t seeing more acquisitions by Google, Facebook, or Amazon. Now we’re getting into specific questions about Andreessen Horowitz, starting with whether or not Andreessen thinks the firm changed the game on the field by paying more for deals than Silicon Valley investors had ever seen. I note that Andreessen Horowitz missed what seems to be the biggest winner of the last decade: Uber. I ask how that impacts the firm. He doesn’t love this particular question, and steers the conversation down the path of why it makes sense to lead more than one round in a winner (which also came up in my question). I reference a 2015 of Andreessen, which noted the daunting amount of capital the firm will need to produce for investors who’ve given the firm a whopping $6.2 billion, assuming they expect a venture-like 5x to 10x return. He tells me the firm is “elephant hunting,” a firm he has used frequently to describe Andreessen Horowitz’s investing style. (Evidently, that explanation is sufficiently convincing to the firm’s investors for now.) : Here, I ask a question about whether or not he thinks Andreessen-backed Airbnb could possibly catch up to the valuation of Uber. (Btw, in the course of this answer, he says that Andreessen Horowitz has backed Airbnb “primarily in one round,” so make of that what you will. TC has reported that Airbnb is currently raising another .) Astute listeners might also note that in a reference to Sequoia Capital’s Alfred Lin, I accidentally refer to him as “Alfred Lee.” I sometimes have verbal dyslexia. Has Andreessen Horowitz sold stakes via the secondary market? (He takes his time here, but the answer is yes. I missed the chance to ask where/when, because of his lengthy reply, though the that the firm sold some of its shares in the ride-share company Lyft earlier this year. ) Andreessen talks here about the firm’s philosophy about selling after an IPO. (“Our LPS are very clear with us, which is that they’re paying us to manage private, not public, money.”) His answer is characteristically more nuanced than that, but it sounds like they distribute stock to their investors faster than other VCs might. I share an observation that I’ve heard from entrepreneurs, which is that they are sometimes disappointed by how little time they get with the AH partner who leads the investment in their company, and that they are sometimes passed off to non-investing partners quickly (and sometimes, those non-investing partners’ junior staffers). He responds. The WSJ recently reported that AH’s returns , but because it’s frankly too soon to know how it will stack up, here I ask Andreessen how he measures the firm’s success in the meantime, and what makes him think his firm’s whole agency-style network set-up is working. Here, I ask how AH decides to pull the plug on an investment. This is the last question (I was dinged by an assistant for running over our allotted time): Andreessen, whose son was born last year, answers how fatherhood has surprised him.
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Tech companies and the global rise of e-sports
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Don Basile
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The latest sports phenomenon sweeping the globe wasn’t represented at the in Rio; it doesn’t require an intense physical training regimen or even traditional sports equipment. We’re talking about competitive video gaming — and the opportunities for huge windfalls for players and advertisers are immense. Corporations plan to spend on sponsorships and marketing of this year, hoping to reach gaming’s huge millennial demographic as the sport goes viral. The idea of publicizing video game competitions is nothing new. In 1972, Stanford University invited students to an “Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics” for the game Spacewar. The prize? A year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. These days, prize pools for major competitions, like Call of Duty, are at least in the six-figure range, and crowdfunded prize pools boost those paychecks into the millions. Beyond advertisers and gamers, the real money up for grabs here is for the that can successfully bring these competitions to a worldwide audience in a mainstream media format. With the industry projected to generate more than , there are various rising players to watch as this fierce competition heats up. Recently emerged from stealth mode, startup has the lofty goal of creating “revolutionary broadcasts.” By bringing interactive elements and multiple camera angles into live-streamed games, co-founder Jacob Navok hopes to hook a whole new audience with more compelling broadcasts and greater opportunities to monetize competitions. The challenge is that video games are built with players, rather than spectators, in mind. Genvid hopes to solve this problem by enabling developers to control camera angles during live-streamed games as if they were in the editing booth at major sporting events. This would create a more compelling narrative with built-in storytelling and emotion — something that would be appealing to sponsors, advertisers and viewers. Genvid hopes to challenge Twitch, the leading streaming platform for , which has a staggering 45 million monthly viewers. Twitch’s single-camera perspective, Novak says, is like “watching a Major League Baseball game from the viewpoint of a GoPro camera strapped to a player’s back.” It’s pretty easy to see the huge potential for profit if Genvid is successful with its current free demo phase and upcoming beta tests with . ESPN performed some unexpectedly successful beta testing of its own last June when it became the first sports magazine to dedicate an entire issue to . One of the issue’s featured stories on a top gamer received more than 1.1 million page views on ESPN.com. Realizing professional coverage of this burgeoning arena would have a , ESPN launched a dedicated vertical this year. ESPN2 even televised an entire live competition called last year. We can expect to see the sports juggernaut roll out even more coverage of in coming months. We can’t have a conversation about without discussing its mobile applications. An app that improves the players, not the game? Germany’s got that. Technology is making it even easier for aspiring players looking to cash in on the huge prizes available to top gamers with , a Berlin-based startup with plans to turn gamers’ smartphones into an coach. Through advances that combine machine learning with in-play data, Dojo Madness has created a coaching app that raised $4.5 million in its first round of funding. Initially targeting , the app offers strategy before and during the game, and analyzes performance in a post-game recap. This second-screen technology will be huge in the age of big data. League of Legends, among other games, offers open APIs, enabling to pull in gameplay data, which in turn makes in-game coaching possible. The company’s League of Legends app, called LOLSumo, is already the top app for this game, with more than half a million downloads. Another big player in the area is , a company hoping to “activize” more cash in their cache. Earlier this year, in a , Activision Blizzard acquired Major League Gaming, an early organizer of competitions. Valued at $27 billion, Activision is already a leader in the industry as the publisher of leading franchises, such as Call of Duty, but this move signals that they want more than the game — Activision wants to dominate the entire arena of . According to chief executive , Activision hopes to create “the ESPN of ” by bringing mainstream viewing away from the internet and onto traditional cable TV channels. This could be tough competition, as ESPN still intends to be the ESPN of may the best company win! Kotick hopes to tap into an even bigger audience than the online community by bolstering televised broadcasts with the same kind of coverage that traditional sports receive. In the spirit of the Games, Activision and Genvid Technologies should play on the same team instead of as opponents. The budding startups, big and TV channels planning to capitalize on are just the beginning of the sport’s . The (IeSF) even took steps to be in February, and was provided the necessary route to become an official sport in April. Indeed, could be on the Olympic stage before we know it — but until then, there will be no shortage of players getting their heads and wallets in the game.
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Gillmor Gang: Bait and Switch
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Saturday, October 1, 2016. The Gang announces its version of the Alexa Prize, TrumpBot: an undisclosed amount of virtual tax breaks to the first person to create a chatbot that speaks intelligently for 20 seconds. Believe me, it will be great. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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HBO’s Westworld is the robotic cowboy headtrip that you didn’t know you were waiting for
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Anthony Ha
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Expectations are ridiculously high as rides onto HBO tonight. The first season cost to make, and it’s being pitched in some quarters as . When you’ve got any TV show with that much hype, some disappointment seems inevitable, but judging from the first two episodes, is even better than anticipated. Based on a 1973 film of the same name (written and directed by author Michael Crichton), takes place at a Western theme park populated by lifelike robotic “hosts” who interact with “newcomers” — humans guests who’ve paid a hefty price tag for their visit. The activities of the newcomers (freed from the constraints of everyday society and morality) are disturbing enough, but it quickly becomes clear that Westworld’s owners have their own hidden agenda, as does a mysterious guest known only as the Gunslinger (played by Ed Harris). This new iteration of was created by husband-and-wife writing team Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Nolan is best known as co-writer of some of his brother Christopher’s films, including , and also as creator of the science fiction surveillance drama . He’s obviously a formidable screenwriter, but he’s also one with a weakness for painfully on-the-nose dialogue. (To be fair, I’m not sure whether to blame him or his brother for ‘s long, awkward speeches about the power of love). isn’t entirely immune to that tendency — Jeffrey Wright and Anthony Hopkins, who play the park’s key technical minds, both get to deliver expository monologues about weighty topics like the course of human evolution. But the actors are talented enough to pull it off, and perhaps because of the show’s more mysterious structure (or the contribution of Joy, ), the dialogue feels nimbler and trickier than in Nolan’s past work. Which brings me to another one of the show’s executive producers — J.J. Abrams, who’s famous for loving mysteries. Before bringing back to movie screens, he co-created and gave on the pleasures of the “mystery box.” Anyone disappointed by the ending of (or of Abrams’ second film, ) might be wary of another show with unanswered questions at its center. But even more than , seems comfortable with mysteries. The first episode, in particular, is structured like a Philip K. Dick novel, constantly destabilizing viewers and forcing them to question what they’ve been watching. So while I hope there’s some sort of plan for the endgame, I’m already enjoying the almost delirious unfolding of the mystery, regardless of the solution. also premieres at a time when morally ambiguous robots and artificial intelligences keep popping up on-screen, most notably with last year’s release of that this recent spate of movies may have less to do the current state of AI research and more with our general anxiety around technology — namely, all the information that we’re sharing with online services and the businesses behind them. Similarly, Joy told us that is “ .” On both the Western frontier and the scientific one, the rules of morality and society might seem a little less certain, which is exactly what is interested in. Even with those aforementioned monologues, the show doesn’t go into much detail about the technology powering its robotic hosts. It’s more interested in the philosophical and ethical questions that the hosts’ existence raises. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuS5huqOND4&w=560&h=315] On one level, the deck might seem to be pretty stacked in any “Are they human?” debate — the empathetic performances by the actors, including Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton, will make it difficult for anyone to be as blasé Westworld’s guests and employees about the brutal things that are often done to the park’s hosts. However, there’s still plenty of room to explore the exact nature and degree of their consciousness — not to mention what that consciousness will mean for their makers. And there are other, promising questions around and the extent to which virtual worlds can push us to reveal our true selves. The trickiest thing that ‘s first episodes pull off is making us question the distinction between host and guest. Naturally, this makes for exciting, suspenseful viewing, but I suspect it’s also the key to the show’s moral design — helping us see ourselves as not merely the victims or the victimizers, the watchers or the watched, but both. I hope that distinction will only get messier as the show goes on.
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Should your startup take the public benefit or B corp route?
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Mick Bain
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While most founders want to make a boatload of money, achieving a stunning exit is hardly the only driver for most entrepreneurs. More often, they’re fueled by the challenge of solving a problem or producing something meaningful, whether it’s an app or an ice cream. Some want to make a corporate commitment to social responsibility by organizing their business as a public benefit corporation under State law, with a mission to do good written into the governing documents. Still, others may want to take the step of having their company certified as a B Corp. Customers and job candidates might even prefer mission-driven products and employers over competitors. But do investors? The B Corp certification route has been a boon for some. , , and are among the best known of more than 1,800 businesses in 50 countries that are B Corps, meaning they’ve completed a rigorous and sometimes costly process that confirms their claims of being environmentally friendly, socially conscious and worker-friendly. Certification earns them the right to use the increasingly familiar B Corp on their cartons, hang tags and websites. In , forming as a benefit corporation or obtaining B Corp certification might help founders raise capital from like-minded investors and be a differentiator in a crowded marketplace. But will it scare off investors who don’t understand it? People tend to be cautious about putting capital into models they don’t comprehend — and rightly so. Some investors incorrectly assume benefit corporations operate like nonprofits, which is hardly a compelling model for attracting funds for growth-oriented businesses. Others may worry that conforming to B Corp standards will limit the profitability of the venture. Even investors who respect the principles that guide these businesses may hesitate to open their wallets. They may fear that a commitment to social causes might undermine the VCs’ all-consuming quest for profits. It’s not that investors are cold or heartless; rather, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their own investors to achieve the best returns possible on investments. And they themselves operate in a competitive marketplace that is largely driven by financial returns. Perhaps the best thing you can do as founders of a benefit corporation — or a startup pondering B Corp certification — is to communicate your priorities clearly to one another, to your team and to prospective investors. There’s nothing inherently evil about wanting to be profitable, and there’s no virtue in embracing a lofty vision while your business tanks. Several VCs have invested in benefit corporations or in certified B Corps, so going this route and raising capital are not inconsistent. But be prepared for questions from investors who want to understand how you’ll balance your social mission with the imperative to maximize profits and returns to your shareholders. Let’s say your company is fielding two acquisition offers. The $500 million offer moves all jobs overseas to factories that underpay their workers and produce emissions that pollute the environment. The $450 million offer keeps your loyal team in place in their LEED-certified offices. You can see the complexities in squaring your decision with your values as a benefit corporation, your obligation to your investors and your ethical mission. And remember that opting to incorporate as a benefit corporation doesn’t mean your business must by default espouse greed, selfishness and wanton destruction of natural resources. In fact, many certified B Corps are not incorporated as benefit corporation under State law. Regardless of the type of entity under State law, y ou can adopt as many earth-friendly and employee-friendly practices as you and your team wish if they are reasonably justified as being in the best interests of your shareholders. Use only compostable products in your kitchen and restrooms. Give your staff paid time off to tutor in public schools or build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Hold a canned food drive, host blood drives and commit a percentage of your profits to humanitarian causes. All of these actions can be justified on the grounds that they help you attract and retain the best talent, which in turn makes your company more valuable. The benefits that your startup provides to the community may not be written into your certificate of incorporation, but there’s no reason they can’t be a critical component of your mission.
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Gil Penchina on angel investing, market timing, and his ambivalence to venture capital
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Jasper Kuria
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I was one of the early folks at eBay and by 1999 it was completely overrun by consultants from McKinsey, Bain and BCG. It went from being a cool fun startup to an MBA factory. Angel investing was an outlet for me to hang out with people I liked– startup founders doing crazy stuff! I was lucky enough to have made some money from eBay, but in the early days I would negotiate to invest as little as I could– $5,000 to $10,000 at a time when CEOs didn’t want to take less than $25,000. I did this to gain experience and meet people, not because I thought I was going to make money. God knows, I’ve talked to hundreds of angel investors and money is usually low on their list. They invest because they want to give back, are excited about the company or personally like the CEO. Sometimes they do it to learn to be a professional investor. There are lot of ways people get non-economic payback–learning, networking and relationships. These drive most angels more than the money. The result is we back things that VCs won’t touch. For instance, we invested in Cruise, a self-driving kit you install in your Audi when everyone thought it was crazy. “Who is going to use an unsafe amateur self-driving kit with no manufacturing partners?” they asked. It turns out the company exited for over $1 billion! We also invested in a company that is reinventing furniture design, rather than just software companies. I don’t think that’s why. It’s because our group (the 4,000 angels who back us) have a more diverse set of interests than a bunch of Harvard MBAs. They’re interested in taking risks on a different set of things. We’ll find out in a few years which of those things were good. I would say they are really good at marketing. They say this because they want you to pick their VC firm, but the reality is most companies succeed or fail because of the founders and the market timing. I’ve never seen a VC take over a company and help fix it. Sure, they have input because they’re your boss and are proud that they get to boss you around! Reid offers a ton of practical advice and a fantastic network. David Hornik at August Capital is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and one of my favorite investors. I have never heard either take credit for an entrepreneur’s success. We passed on Postmates and Instacart. Those are probably my two favorite oopses. Again, I think people underestimate how much the market, timing and luck matter. I have an old saying, if you walk around in the rain a lot it doesn’t mean you’ll get hit by lightning. But if you stay home, you definitely won’t be. A lot of it is being agile enough to take advantage of the luck when it happens. Classic investor questions we ask are A mistake I’ve made is investing in my idea rather than the entrepreneur’s. Sometimes I’m excited about an idea that is similar to the entrepreneur’s idea – but not the same. A smart entrepreneur will convince me it is the same, until I write a check! I’ve also learned that I am not as smart as I think I am. There may be some truth to that but often the founder is doing something and the real opportunity is five degrees away. Something small has changed and it turns out giving software away for free and making money selling insurance is a genius idea, where last week selling software was the right idea. It’s about launching your product and then finding the right combination of things that the market is ready for. How many mobile app companies were doing WAP and WHTML in the late 90’s? They thought mobile would be big and they were right, but were just off by ten years! I wish I knew but it’s like the old joke about a judge and pornography, “You know it when you see it.” I can’t define what’s hyperbole and what’s lying. You just sort of know when you see it. When AngelList launched syndicates, most of the people with the tenure and track record I had decided to become VCs–Reid Hoffman, Josh Kopelman and Jeff Clavier, to name a few. People trusted me because one of the only angels left, with a proven track record. Now we have 25 syndicates where we partner with executives who look a lot like I did ten years ago. Whether it’s Jocelyn Goldfein, ex-VP of engineering at VMWare or Merlin Kauffman the CEO of Soothe. We help these executives who are already angel investing become better and write bigger checks. Each of our 25 partners has their own unique relationships, networks and knowledge. That is a source of proprietary deal flow and competitive advantage. AngelList has changed and our deals are now private. This allows the companies to share more information and those who back us get access to proprietary deals from several dozen syndicates. Focus. It’s powerful to do just one thing and pour all your energy into it. You’ll get lots of advice but you should disregard most of it. Heaven knows, all sorts of people told me the thing I was doing on AngelList would never work! They said I should be more careful and build more infrastructure but I did it as fast and as simply as I could. This notion of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) applies to investors as well. Lastly, call us. If you are a serious entrepreneur we are here to help.
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Talking diversity, going global at the TC Meetup + Pitch-off in Seoul
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Jordan Crook
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You might have already read about our forthcoming . But what you might not know is that we’re integrating more content into the program so you can hear from some of the most intelligent minds in the industry. As per usual, we’ll be holding the TC Pitch-off, where 10 companies will have exactly 60 seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of expert judges. But before the madness begins, we’ll be hosting two panels. The first is about Going Global. Most startups find it difficult to tackle the unique challenges of each new market, from naming to distribution to marketing, not to mention local regulations and governments. Is it better to hire someone that knows the local market or knows the business? We’ll tackle these questions and more with the help of 500 Startups partner Tim Chae and MangoPlate CEO Joon Oh. Tim is a Partner at 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley based seed stage VC fund with companies like Twilio, Grab, Talkdesk, Intercom, Udemy in its portfolio. Tim manages 500 Kimchi, a $10M+ fund of 500 Startups focused on Korea, leading its investments and ecosystem building initiatives. Since joining 500S in 2013, Tim has made 30+ investments into companies like Famebit (acq’ by Google), AutoLotto, PeopleFund, Althea, and Finda. For his work, Tim was named to Forbes Asia’s inaugural 30 Under 30 list in 2016. Prior to 500S, Tim founded several bootstrapped and venture backed businesses including PostRocket (500S Batch 3 company), a social media marketing optimization software, to nuFlw Entertainment, a nightclub for high school students. As an entrepreneur, Tim was named by NFIB/McKelvey Foundation as one of the top Youth Entrepreneurs in the US in 2009. Joon Oh is the Chief Executive Officer of MangoPlate, a restaurant discovery service in South Korea. MangoPlate was founded largely due to Joon’s lifelong love for good food and a long-held dream of running his own startup. Despite severe competition in the food-tech industry, the company achieved significant growth in 2015, receiving a sizable investment of $6.1 million USD from global VCs, including SoftBank Ventures Korea, Qualcomm Ventures, and YJ Capitals. Joon’s next project is to expand business to restaurant management starting with wait list management solution. With the expansion, MangoPlate aims to establish a platform to make dining more convenient enjoyable through technology. Prior to founding MangoPlate, Joon led the Global Partnership Group at Samsung Electronics in Korea, where he led deals with global companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Bloomberg, ESPN, and Accuweather. Joon also worked as a corporate / digital strategist at HP in Palo Alto, and as a management consultant at Monitor, BCG, and PwC. He has a B.A. in Economics and East Asian Studies, Masters in Computer Science, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Rebekah runs the Seoul office of FiscalNote, a Washington D.C.-based startup offering a legal analytics platform to take control of government strategy for all businesss with machine-learning technology. FiscalNote predicts the outcome of bills introduced from both federal and state governments and currently serves Fortune 500 companies as clients. Rebekah previously founded MyCandidates in Korea. MyCandidates was acquired by FiscalNote in 2015 and is planning to be updated under FiscalNote’s Asia strategy. Hyemin has always been passionate about finding opportunities and building business. While earning her B.A. at Korea University, she interned at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade based on experience in Universidad de Pontificia Católica de Chile, realizing so many potential businesses in unexplored countries. In order to elaborate business skills, she worked at STX corporation as a project manager for new strategic business development and investment for STX Group with honored registration as a member of ‘Knowledge experts group’ of Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Hyemin joined Rocket Internet and successfully co-founded their first subscription business model, Glossybox, and led expansion to 6 Asian countries. With a kindred spirit to expand business, she established People & Co, an e-commerce and marketing consulting startup, with the co-founders of Rocket Internet as CEO and awarded as the IT start-up of the year. As soon as she met co-founders at Noom that is a healthcare app based on AI, its healthy and global vision moved her so she brought Noom from NewYork to make Asians much healthier in a smart way. In 2012 Dec, she founded NoomKorea where she contributed to raise USD 30 mil with a record of top grossing app in the both Android and iOS for 2.5 year. To support to build Korean startup ecosystem, she also contributes as a venture advisor of 500 startups and as a mentor of Google campus Seoul. Inspired to start-ups by mentoring at Google campus and by moderating Eric Schmidt as a representative serial entrepreneur in Korea, she determined to build her startup again and is currently running Finda(www.finda.co.kr), an online financial product comparison platform at Google campus Seoul. Finda has raised $1.5 Mil in 2016 from US and Korea. We can’t wait to see you at the event on October 27.
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Crunch Report | Nintendo’s Next Gaming Console
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Yashad Kulkarni
Yashad Kulkarni TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Swarms of tiny, cute robots will one day bring you your phone, like this
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Devin Coldewey
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Robots are taking over factories and warehouses, but their next stop might be your desktop or kitchen counter. These tiny “Zooids” work together at high speed to act as tools, display information or move things around like little ants. The bots, named after the individual creatures that make up colonial organisms, were presented earlier this week at the Association for Computing Machinery’s . Their creators, a multi-university group of roboticists, propose them as the beginning of a new type of “swarm user interface.” Each robot has little wheels, a touch sensor and gyros, and an optical sensor on top that monitors its position by watching patterns coming from a projector overhead. They don’t operate independently, rather taking instructions on where to go from the computer tracking them. There’s no shortage of possibilities. The robots can arrange themselves into shapes to display information, and you can interact directly with them by grabbing one and spinning or moving it — imagine an EQ materializing in front of you, or dials scooting over to your fingers when you open a certain app or game. They can manipulate real-life objects themselves, as well: in the video, they push a phone closer to a user, and one can imagine them tidying a desk when nobody is around, or coming out of a hole in the wall to collect crumbs and put your slippers away. The researchers really love the idea of these things, . They’re also excited for others to try making and testing them, and provide everything needed to do so (save the parts themselves) .
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A short list of some games we want to see on the Nintendo Switch
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Matthew Lynley
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Nintendo showed off its new console, the Nintendo Switch, . It’s basically a tablet to which you connect two controllers when you’re carrying it around, and then you use a regular controller when the tablet is plugged into the TV. In other words, it’s a kind of hybrid console where you can play both while you’re on the move and comfortably on your television at home. It’s a pretty cool concept, though there’s a lot we still don’t know about it, like what the battery life is like. We got a , so it looks like we’ll have a much wider array of games than we saw on the Wii U. But truth be told, there are a bunch of games we want to see on the console, so we’ve listed a few below. Nintendo, please make (or partner with developers that will make) these games!
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Enjoy the return and watch for unemployment
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Mike Lobanov
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Those of us interested in marketplace lending have recently observed many pejorative headlines about P2P lending platforms. These headlines mostly reported on Lending Club’s , but also criticized other platforms and the P2P lending model more broadly. Very few people anticipated this kind of a problem less than a year ago as investors were competing for allocations on platforms. More often than not, it has been very challenging to purchase loans, particularly on the more established platforms. Indeed, the limiting factor for the growth of volumes has been the lack of borrowers. Platforms have had to compete with each other and ramp up marketing expenditure in order to attract borrowers. Even the biggest skeptics of the marketplace lending sector would not have imagined the extent to which the situation would change in 2016. In Q1 2016, leading platforms significantly decreased originations ( , 12 percent; , 27 percent) — and this was only the beginning. After Renaud Laplanche, the former CEO of Lending Club, had been dismissed, the loan amounts issued by Lending Club dropped dramatically: Q2 originations dropped to $1,955 million from $2,750 million in . Other platforms were hit even more significantly — Prosper originations dropped 50 percent YoY, from $912 million$in Q2 2015 to $445 million in . However, after taking a hit, Lending Club stock was one of the best performers — climbing from a low of $3.51 per share on May 13, 2016 to $6.43 on September 16; that represents an 83 percent increase ( that to 4.5 percent increase in S&P 500 Index). The market slowly understands that things are not as bad for marketplace lenders as reporters or bloggers mistakenly infer. I personally believe there is one thing that is crucial for the success of the marketplace lending industry in the long run, and it is loan performance. Should investors get what they have anticipated, sooner or later money will flow into the industry. One can argue that in the long run we are all dead, and it is important that investors continue purchasing loans sooner rather than later for marketplace lenders to be sustainable. In my opinion, there are few good reasons why investors will continue buying loans and we will soon see an increase in originations: All of the above means that returns for investors in loans originated by platforms are likely to stay high. And high returns always attract those willing to take a risk. The key question in my opinion is “what is the risk that I am taking when investing in P2P loans and what indicators should I follow in order to try to predict what is going to happen next?” A lot is written about risks of investing in P2P loans, but what are the indicators to watch for? In my opinion, the best proxy for P2P loan defaults is the credit card default rate. This is because a significant portion of loans originated by P2P platforms are used by borrowers to refinance credit card loans, with P2P platforms typically offering lower interest rates. While there is limited data available on the performance of P2P loans during recessions (though for the marketplace lending industry), credit card default rates are available since 1985. An by Stephen Cecchetti and Kermit Schoenholtz analyzes the relationship between credit card default rates and unemployment rates. As expected, the article suggests a strong dependency — default rates are expected to increase by 0.55 percent for each 1 percent growth in unemployment. However, the regression described in the article also exhibits a strong autocorrelation, which can lead to incorrect conclusions.* To evaluate the presence of autocorrelation, the Durbin Watson test is commonly applied. If the value of the test is close to zero, there is strong evidence of autocorrelation. Upon replicating the regression presented in the article, we found strong evidence for autocorrelation — the Durbin Watson test was equal to 0.16. The function of the regression is presented below: To eliminate the autocorrelation, we built a regression using the change in the default rate and the change in the unemployment rate (i.e. the first difference of the underlying variables) and we get the following function: This result indicated that 1 percent increase in unemployment is likely to lead to a 1 percent increase in default rates (not 0.55 percent as the article cited above states). In this case, the Durbin Watson test statistic is close to 2, meaning that no autocorrelation is present. However, the regression exhibits a rather low R , indicating that changes in the unemployment rate only partially explain changes in the credit card default rates, and there are other factors that should be taken into account, as well. The graph of the unemployment rate and the credit card default rate clearly demonstrates the relationship described by the regression above. What does this tell us about the potential increase in the default rate if the U.S. economy experiences another major recession? The graph above demonstrates that the credit card default rate increased from an average of 3.53 percent in 2006 to 10.43 percent in Q3/Q4 2009 – Q1/Q2 2010, a 2.95x increase. Meanwhile, the default rate increased from 4.35 percent in Q2 1999 to 7.81 percent in Q1 2002, a 1.8x increase. From these observations we can estimate that the default rate will likely increase 2-3x depending on the severity of the recession. Orchard Platform published a very good that discusses potential consequences of such increases in defaults. Page 11 of the white paper states “ ” This gives a good representation of what to expect, and I strongly encourage those of you who are interested in understanding this topic in detail to go through that white paper thoroughly. History tells us that the most lucrative investment opportunities arise during major capital outflows from the markets. Does investment in P2P loans bear significant risk? It certainly does, but I hope the analysis provided above sheds some light on that risk and key factors to consider — watch the unemployment closely and enjoy the return in the low-yielding environment. *For analytics lovers: Autocorrelation is a common problem of regression analysis. It occurs when data sets change inherently in one direction, not because one variable depends on the other, but due to an external factor. The autocorrelation of regression residuals leads to poor estimation quality of the regression parameters and to overstatement of test statistics that are used to test the significance of coefficients.
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Kate Conger
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A failed lander and a working orbiter – everything we know about ESA’s ExoMars mission
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Emily Calandrelli
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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With the help of NASA, ESA has located their failed Schiaparelli lander. NASA’s , a Mars-orbiting satellite equipped with cameras, was able to image the Schiaparelli landing site. In the before and after images above you can see a large dark dot above a smaller white dot. Preliminary analysis suggests that the smaller white dot on the bottom is the parachute and back shield that were jettisoned away from the lander. The larger feature is likely to be the bigger-than-expected impact site of the lander. Schiaparelli probably free fell for too long and, when it landed, it kicked up dust and debris, creating the impact feature we see in the image. . Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged changes on surface linked to — ESA (@esa) Next week, MRO’s high-resolution camera, HiRISE, will be used to image the location and hopefully reveal more about the scene of the landing. Yesterday morning, the hoped to become the second entity in history to operate a robot on Mars. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. ESA’s Schiaparelli rover is on the surface of Mars, but all signs point to a hard landing and a broken robot. The good news, however, is that Schiaparelli was only one part of ESA’s mission. Schiaparelli, which has been described as an experimental lander, was joined by an orbiter known as the Trace Gas Orbiter. TGO was successfully inserted into Martian orbit and is working properly. ESA’s ExoMars 2016 mission with the Trace Gas Orbiter (left) and the Schiaparelli lander (right) / Image courtesy of ESA With TGO, ESA now has two operational satellites around Mars, providing scientific data to scientists here on Earth. Even though the Schiaparelli lander seems to have been a failure, ESA was able to collect engineering data from the spacecraft during its descent. This information will enable the ExoMars engineering team to understand what went wrong, and what they’ll need to do differently in the future. ESA needs more time to make sense of the wealth of data they’ve collected, but suggests a problem occurred in Schiaparelli’s final moments of descent, specifically when it was scheduled to jettison its parachute and heatshield, and when firing its thrusters before touchdown. Here’s what was to happen: Over the course of six minutes, the lander had to decelerate from traveling 21,000 km/hour at an altitude of 122.5 km to traveling around 7 km/hour at just 2 km above the surface. Schiaparelli’s descent plan / Illustration courtesy of ESA Schiaparelli actually achieved most of this deceleration (from 21,000 km/hour to 1,700 km/hour) simply by moving through the Martian atmosphere. The lander was protected during this violent phase by an aerodynamic heatshield. This first phase went as planned. After that, Schiaparelli had to deploy a large parachute to further slow its descent. This stage also went accordingly. Once the lander moved down to 7 km above the surface, its front heatshield was supposed to separate from the lander and a radar altimeter on board was designed to tell Schiaparelli how fast it was moving and how far away from the surface it was. Then the time came when Schiaparelli was supposed to jettison its parachute and the remainder of its heatshield. It’s at this point when things went awry. “Following this phase, the lander definitely did not behave as expected.” Andrea Accomazzo, Head of the Solar and Planetary Missions Division at ESA In a , ESA stated that the ejection seems to have happened earlier than expected. In a nominal descent, after the parachute and heat shield were jettisoned away from the lander, Schiaparelli would have fired its thrusters to slow itself to around 4 km/hour. At this point, the lander was supposed to turn the engines off and free fall the rest of the way to the ground. It’s crushable structure on the bottom of the spacecraft was designed to cushion the fall. Data suggests that Schiaparelli’s thrusters did, in fact, fire, but that they switched off sooner than expected. Right now, they’re not sure how far away from the surface Schiaparelli was when this all happened. What we know for sure is that ESA landed a robot on the surface of Mars, but things didn’t go as planned, and that robot isn’t working at this moment in time. Unfortunately, this scenario is all too familiar for ESA. Nearly thirteen years ago, ESA sent an orbiter and a lander to Mars as part of their . While the Mars Express orbiter was successfully inserted into orbit, the Beagle 2 lander was declared lost after repeated attempts to communicate with the robot were unsuccessful. The Beagle 2 lander was identified on the surface of Mars from NASA’s MRO satellite / Image courtesy of NASA Unfortunately, no concrete reason was found for why the Beagle 2 landing didn’t go as planned. For scientists and engineers, that doesn’t really help when it comes to innovating and refining their methods for the next go-around. What’s different about Schiaparelli is that the ESA team was able to obtain more engineering information about its descent. This is incredibly important, as it will help them understand what worked and, hopefully, what went wrong. ESA can use that information to better their chances of a successful landing in the future. Landing on Mars is incredibly difficult for a few reasons. To get to Mars, a spacecraft must travel at incredibly high speeds – ExoMars, for example, was traveling at 21,000 km/hour. Then, the spacecraft has to decelerate to 0 km/hour (landing) – without destroying itself ( -landing). Now, to do that, successful missions have used a combination of a few technologies: parachutes, retro-thrusters, sky cranes, and air bags. To understand why you need a combination of descent technologies you need to know that Mars has a thin atmosphere. While it’s about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, the Martian atmosphere is still thick enough to rough-up your spacecraft as it zips through at thousands of km/hour (requiring a heavy heatshield that will later need to be jettisoned). And although parachutes are very effective in slowing down and stabilizing a Mars rover, the atmosphere is too thin to rely on them alone. This means that, in addition to a heatshield and parachute, a lander will need something else to bring it safely to the ground. Additional components add complexity and additional ways the mission can fail. Not to mention the fact that all of these things have to happen at precise moments, in a precise order, extremely quickly, and autonomously. If all you needed was a heat shield and a parachute, ESA may have an operational robot on Mars today. But that’s not the case, because Mars is hard. In fact, only seven spacecraft in history have successfully touched down on the red planet – all of them from NASA. The failure of Schiaparelli, shouldn’t overshadow the success of TGO. After traveling for seven months and 300 million miles, TGO was successfully inserted into orbit around Mars. ESA now has operational satellites ( is the second) orbiting a planet that’s millions of kilometers away, and is an incredible feat. Update from Deputy Flight Director Micha Schmidt: is in excellent shape this morning! — ESA Operations (@esaoperations) TGO’s orbit will bring it to within 400 kilometers of the Martian surface in order to collect scientific data from the atmosphere. For reference, the International Space Station orbits the Earth at an altitude of 400 kilometers. I’ve detailed the science goals of TGO in a previous . TGO and Schiaparelli made up Phase 1 of the ExoMars mission. is scheduled to launch in 2020 and will deliver a European rover and a Russian surface platform to the Martian surface. It will be interesting to see how, if at all, information from the Schiaparelli failure will affect the landing strategy for ExoMars Phase 2.
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Weebly hacked, 43 million credentials stolen
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Kate Conger
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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The web design platform Weebly was hacked in February, according to the data breach notification site LeakedSource. Usernames and passwords for more than 43 million accounts were taken in the breach, although the passwords are secured with the strong hashing algorithm bcrypt. Weebly said in an email to customers that user IP addresses were also taken in the breach. “We do not believe that any customer website has been improperly accessed,” Weebly said in the notice to users.” The company also said that it does not store credit card information, making fraudulent charges unlikely. LeakedSource said it received the Weebly database from an anonymous source and notified Weebly of the breach. In addition to the customer notification emails, LeakedSource claims that password resets are being issued — but, if you’re a Weebly user and you don’t receive a password reset, you probably want to change your password anyway. Meanwhile, LeakedSource also identified data from Foursquare, claiming that 22.5 million accounts were compromised in December 2013. The social media company disputes the findings, claiming that email addresses were simply cross-referenced with publicly available data from Foursquare. The data includes emails, usernames and Facebook and Twitter IDs, which could have been scraped from Foursquare’s API or search. “We have done an internal investigation and no breach has occurred,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. This is just the latest in a string of megabreaches. Yahoo recently revealed that data for , and breaches of Dropbox, MySpace and Tumblr have all come to light this year.
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Customers are still waiting for their folding DJI drone
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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As GoPro took to the stage in Squaw Valley to show off its long-awaited Karma Drone, DJI’s PR rep smirkingly tweeted, “I’m watching a competitor unveil a new product. I ain’t worried about a thing.” Within a matter of weeks, the company was showing off its own answer to the foldable drone — a smaller and more feature-packed offering that indeed afforded the opportunity to gloat. DJI’s fanbase — and the drone community in general — was whole-heartedly impressed. But now, a full five days after was set to start shipping (and three days before the Karma is set to take flight), early adopters are getting antsy waiting for the drone to arrive. Some early reviewers have gotten their hands on a unit, but customers who have already plunked down a substantial deposit at a number of retailers haven’t heard a peep. DJI attempted to cut this one off at the pass a few days back with from the company’s Global Director of Communications. Since unveiling the Mavic Pro, we’ve had amazingly strong global demand. Production is in full swing, and we will be fulfilling orders as fast as we can. Not a heck of a lot in the way of details in that letter, though the culprit seems to be manufacturing delays as the company attempts to meet demand. Two days after that initial posting, delays seem to still be widespread. We’ve reached out to DJI and will update when we hear something official.
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XYZPrinting’s CEO still believes in 3D-printing ubiquity
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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Three years ago, the entire industry was bullish about the future of 3D printing. The future seemed astronomical, the possibilities limitless. The technology took over a floor at the Consumer Electronics Show and pundits were regularly discussing a future populated by 3D printers in every home like so many replicators. But things stalled. The industry has largely been considered a victim of its own hype, the promise of science fiction-esque technology while the consumer versions offered little more than plastic trinkets. When I spoke to the CEO of 3D printing pioneer 3D Systems earlier this year, he told me, “I don’t think the consumer business is real, because there’s no use for it.” It’s a 180 for a company so invested in the consumer-facing side of the business only a few years back.
“I believe that everyone will have a 3D printer at their home and office and factories,” Shen said during a recent visit to our New York office. “Just like the self-driving car, 3D printers will be everywhere in 20 years.” Shen believes that the industry isn’t at a dead-end, so much as a holding pattern, waiting for the next major technological shakeup to get consumers excited again. “Thirty years ago, more than 100 companies were making notebook PCs,” he says. “How many companies are doing it now? Probably not more than five. That’s the nature of competition. If you have resources, investment and new technology, you will survive and flourish. This is the nature of the evolving of the technology. We’re just waiting for the next evolution of the technology. If they can do it much faster, more precise and easier, that will bring more people to 3D printers. Not waiting for four to six hours for a print, but 40 to 60 minutes.” The Taiwanese company’s success has been astronomical — or as close as one can get in such a still niche space. XYZ, a subsidiary of electronics conglomerate New Kinpo Group, launched in earnest three years ago, leveraging the corporation’s expertise in paper printing to take on the likes of MakerBot, finding success through a combination of low-cost devices and user-friendly interfaces. This past year, the company has expanded to education, finally finding a foothold in China, where, accordingly to Shen, the DIY community isn’t quite as pervasive as in the States. The next step for the company, as with much of the competition, is moving into the professional and manufacturing spaces. “In the past two years, we’ve only focused on the consumer retail channel,” Shen says. “This year we started to focus more on educational channels. Next year, we’ll focus on the professional.” If the company is going to succeed on that front, the executive explains, it needs to adhere to the same model that put it on the map in the first place — low price and simplicity — both elements traditionally lacking in 3D printing. “Our mission for our engineers is that the products must be very easy to use,” he says. “A-five-year-old kid must be able to operate it. They must be able to open the software, draw something and print it out.” Until there, there’s always
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Obama roasts Samsung over burning phones
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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The president just made a joke about Samsung’s during a speech. If this isn’t peak Note 7, I don’t know what is. President Obama was speaking at Miami Dade College, mainly in defense of the Affordable Care Act. At one point he was talking about the bumps in the road encountered in deploying the law, and used troubled tech roll-outs as an example. When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone, and it has a few bugs, what do they do? They fix it, they upgrade. Unless it catches fire and then they just, then they pull it off the market. But you don’t go back to using a rotary phone! You don’t say, well we’re repealing smartphones — we’re just gonna do the dial-up thing. You can watch the whole speech , or just watch the joke portion in this tweet: This is a simultaneous 🔥🔥🔥 on Samsung, Republicans and rotary phones. — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) He likely knew the college crowd would eat that up. Earlier he even mentioned selfies. He doesn’t really need that millennial vote any more, but at this point it’s probably automatic. Samsung isn’t laughing, though.
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Opternative sues South Carolina for the right to give online eye exams there
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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Telehealth startup filed a suit against South Carolina today over a law that bars consumers there from getting a prescription for new glasses or contacts with an online eye exam. Technically, the lawsuit is a constitutional challenge to the state’s statute. As , Opternative’s app generally allows users to take an eye exam from the comfort of their own home using their smartphone and a laptop or personal computer. Data gathered by Opternative’s platform is reviewed by human ophthalmologists, who then deliver prescriptions through the app so their patients can get new contacts or glasses. Opternative blatantly instructs users not to consider their app as a replacement for a full, medical eye exam. The company recommends that users have a full, in-person eye exam every two years, following the most conservative recommendations of the American Optometric Association. Users who are not within the age range of 18-50, and who are at risk for the development of eye health or vision problems, are not permitted to use Opternative according to the company’s terms of service. Opternative also restricts use of the app to people within a certain prescription range. You can’t, in other words, use it to get new trifocals or lenses that would correct for extreme near- or short-sightedness. The , which is known as a libertarian law firm, filed the suit on behalf of the Chicago startup. The senior attorney heading up the case, , explained in an e-mail to TechCrunch why his firm was keen to work on this matter. “Patients and doctors, not the state legislature, should be in charge of managing their healthcare decisions. And patients and doctors should be in charge of deciding how best to use new technologies to expand access to care. By effectively prohibiting ophthalmologists from using Opternative’s technology, South Carolina is using government power simply to protect the profit margins of favored businesses. That’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional,” the attorney wrote. IJ has been one of the law firms advocating for the rights of drivers and newer transportation companies that have challenged incumbent taxi cartels around the country. In a , taxi business owners sued the City of Chicago trying to force the city government to kick out ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. A small group of independent drivers, represented by IJ, contended that the taxi businesses had no legal basis to keep them out of the market. The drivers won in the . McNamara said South Carolina’s law is particularly troubling because it appears to be driven by a wish to protect business interests rather than public health and safety. The state recently that legalizes telemedicine broadly, as long as doctors using this technology meet a certain standard of care in their treatment of patients. McNamara said, “Although telemedicine is actually generally legal in South Carolina…the state has a law on the books banning online eye exams specifically. That’s not because telemedicine is more dangerous for ophthalmologists than it is for dermatologists and their patients. It’s because private businesses successfully lobbied the state legislature to keep Opternative out.” Asked if the startup has plans to file suits in other states, like Georgia or Indiana, that limit the use of apps like Opternative, said, “I have every hope that we can find ways to work productively and legally in all 50 states without litigation. But we absolutely believe in our constitutional right to earn a living free from arbitrary government interference.”
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WikiLeaks reveals Barack Obama’s pre-presidential email address
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Devin Coldewey
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| 20
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R.I.P. Barack Obama’s inbox. Among the many secrets and not-so-secrets exposed by WikiLeaks in the dump of Clinton campaign head John Podesta’s emails is the president’s personal email address. It’s out there now and if it’s still active will probably be shut down immediately, so I see no harm in repeating that the address is… bobama@ameritech.net. An email I sent to check it (sorry, Mr. President) didn’t bounce immediately. If you were expecting something fun or unusual, sorry. Ameritech was one of the baby Bells, responsible for a big piece of America’s breadbasket, including Obama’s home state of Illinois. It got rolled up into SBC in 1999, then AT&T back in 2006, but customers clearly got to keep their old email addresses. A handful of emails were sent to bobama over the period covered by the hacked emails, but he only replied once, as a follow-up to a staffing question from Podesta. His signature indicates it was sent from a Blackberry on AT&T Wireless. Like any other public figure, Obama probably has at least half a dozen email addresses. This one may have been out of use for years, considering the restrictions placed on presidential communications, or it could be a preferred point of contact for non-official queries and off-the-record chatter. Hard to tell; I’ll update this post if the president gets back to me.
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360 photos and videos are coming to Facebook’s Instant Articles
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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Facebook’s — the format that when accessed by Facebook users on mobile devices — are about to get more interactive. The social network today that these articles will now support 360 videos and photos — meaning, publishers can include 360 content in-line, which users can then navigate by turning their mobile device, or tapping and dragging. 360 videos were , and 360 photos arrived this June. Both technologies offer a different way of exploring a scene in a more immersive way, on both mobile and web. Since then, these have been popping up across users’ feeds, offering VR-like experiences where you can tilt and rotate your mobile phone to see more of the action, or click and drag the scene when on the desktop web. Already, 360 photos and videos have been adopted by major publishers and news media to enhance their reporting and other shared content. For example, NBC’s Saturday Night Live and millennial-focused news organization VICE were among the first to roll out 360 videos, while publishers like The New York Times along with space agency NASA launched some of the first 360 photos. Now, Facebook will allow journalists and other content creators to include 360 videos and photos directly in their Instant Articles as inline content. When a user sees the media in the story, they can immediately begin interacting with the photo or video by tilting, clicking or dragging. The USA Today Network and BILD have already been testing these additions in their own Instant Articles, ahead of today’s formal launch, Facebook notes. The former combined a voice-over by Ken Burns with a 360 video to create a narrated tour of the U.S. National Parks, while BILD used the videos in an article that offered a tour of the USS Harry S. Truman vessel, says Facebook. You can view either of these examples for yourself, by searching for Instant Articles on your smartphone, heading to the in the search results, then locating the stories from the publishers. As news articles push toward more multimedia and high-bandwidth media, support for 360 photos and videos in fast-loading Instant Articles may make the format more attractive to publishers. But on the flip side, it raises questions about how publishers should handle including this content for those readers who access their site in a standard web browser, off of Facebook’s network. It seems that Instant Articles will now have better technology behind them than the publisher’s traditional CMS. That could get messy, as a publisher might reference the 360 photo in their post, but that photo doesn’t appear correctly for all their site visitors. Publishers may be able to embed the 360 photo or video from elsewhere on Facebook into the post, but then there’s a question of whether or not that content could slow down their regular website or mobile site. Of course, slowness wouldn’t be an issue for the Instant Articles that appear on Facebook, but despite the fact that many people today get their news on Facebook (for better or for ), publishers still have a responsibility to make sure their site performs well and is usable by a wider audience.
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Microsoft’s Surface business skyrockets as the iPad’s slows
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Matt Burns
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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Microsoft saw revenue from its Surface line jump 38% over last year’s total, . Released today, the states that Surface revenue hit $926 million during the last quarter, up from $672 million last year. Even at this level, Apple’s iPad business is still much larger, though growing more slowly. Apple’s iPad business is still dramatically larger than the Surface, though. During Apple’s last quarter, iPad revenue was $4.9 billion up from $4.4 billion compared to the same quarter the year prior. That’s a growth in revenue of 11% year over year, but the first growth Apple’s iPad business saw in ten quarters. The substantial jump in Surface revenue was on the back of just two products: the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. Microsoft has been pushing these hard with a major ad campaign and key partnerships like with the NFL — . It’s said Microsoft is set to release new Surface products at an event next week, which should mean Microsoft will have a fresh line available for purchase in time for the holidays. A better picture of the iPad vs Surface fight will come into view next week when Apple announces its latest quarterly earnings, but as it stands right now, Apple should take notice. The Surface is coming.
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PayPal ramps up mobile payments business
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Katie Roof
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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However, some investors were disappointed to see that PayPal missed on total payment volume, a metric of total transactions on its platforms. The company brought in $87 billion in TPV, below the expected $88.3 billion. PayPal revealed that it expects full year revenue to be somewhere between $10.78 billion and $10.85 billion. Shares first dipped and then traded up about 3% in early after-hours trading, following the earnings release. “We are further expanding the ubiquity and value of the PayPal brand and moving deliberately towards achieving our vision of becoming an everyday, essential financial service for people around the world,” said CEO Dan Schulman, in a statement. With 192 million active accounts, PayPal has long been a leader in online payments. The company has greatly benefitted from the rise in e-commerce. And since spinning off from eBay last year, the company has doubled down on its mobile business, focusing on its Braintree and Venmo brands. Braintree powers the payment transactions for Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest and more. This means that every time someone takes an Uber, PayPal makes money. Venmo is the peer-to-peer mobile payments app, that is particularly popular with young people. It digitizes the “IOU” and makes splitting bills easy. The transactions are free for consumers, but Venmo has recently begun working with businesses, in an effort to monetize the service. Earlier this year, PayPal announced a change to the way it does business with Visa and MasterCard. Instead of directing consumers to use the standard ACH bank account payments, PayPal now makes it clear that credit cards are compatible with its service. [graphiq id=”5huDuJC3FZj” title=”Paypal Holdings (PYPL) Stock Price” width=”600″ height=”586″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/5huDuJC3FZj” link=”http://stock-screener.findthecompany.com/l/9344/PYPL” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”]
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Microsoft’s cloud business bets pay off in Q1 as stock hits an all time high
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Jordan Crook
| 2,016
| 10
| 20
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today for its first fiscal quarter of 2017 (because fiscal quarters don’t have to correlate with the all-governing force of time). Long story short: Azure and other office-based products are fueling revenue growth, as Microsoft mostly gives up on mobile. Also of note: Shares popped to above $60 in after-hour trading on news of strong growth in the cloud business, which is above its all-time high set in 1999.
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