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Can AI dominate the web industry and other domains?
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Owais Afaq
| 2,016
| 10
| 28
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2016 has been quite a ride for the players in AI, NLP and ML technologies. From the famous advent of at the end of Q1 to the numerous acquisitions of AI and chatbot companies during the latter half of this year, artificial intelligence has been in the headlines every other day. In August there was an article on TechCrunch asking a very (seemingly) simple question: Being a web programmer who is working on AI and conversational interfaces, this stirred my interest even more and compelled me to check out the services listed therein — and a few others of the same category. My excitement wore off when I found out these AI chatbots were not only at their teething stage, but also made simple tasks much more complex than the DIY builders they are supposed to kill. I researched deeper by checking out similar products of diverse industries, talking to celebrity bots on Facebook Messenger, discussing weather with , doing late night conversations with and talking to Google Assistant on Allo about what the world is like around me. To start, I requested the private beta of , which sent me an invite the same day. It was a very basic experience (especially when you can see through the coding logic) and it failed to convince me that there was a use of AI or machine learning involved in the process. Opla must be working on upgrading their product, so let’s wait for what they come up with. As ’s free trial just let me create a template website powered by an admin panel, my dream of talking to Harley (their chatbot) remained unfulfilled. So, was the next one in line, which asked me to set up a meeting time before they could enter me into their private beta (ain’t nobody got time for that). I searched for more services and found two others doing almost the same thing. One is a California-based startup called , which claims the “death of DIY,” and the other one is based in L.A. and is named . The former takes information from the user in the form of a questionnaire and gives a message that their “digital specialist” will contact you. I am still wondering where did I experience AI in the entire process and how was it different from any other agency that I call for a quote. The latter, RightClick.io, started off well with their open-ended chat approach where the user can type in anything and responses were decent. But as you move forward, their bot also takes support from UI elements instead of a pure conversational format. The editing interface (as the name suggests) was completely based on right-clicking on the elements, which is quite intuitive to use. They also just use the phrase “AI” for their basic attempt toward a product that might be of some intelligence in the future. But it isn’t right now. AI is the new cool trendy phrase of our times. Anything that can respond to your message on its own (even if it is a pre-saved reply) gets labelled as artificial intelligence, which is a disgrace and demotivation to the minds actually working on NLP and machine learning. The wave of conversational interfaces is one of those rising tides that every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to surf without even assessing the needs of their target market. For example, imagine a bot for an e-commerce website that responds on a conditioned pattern and fails to understand the actual user requirements, which (on an e-commerce site) can break into a hell lot of branches. This would not only piss off the user, but also hurt the brand image of the site — contrary to the belief of their marketing team, which tried to keep up with the pace that the industry is going with. So, what’s next? A ray of hope was seeing a recent post about that not only uses rules, but AI as well, to learn conversational patterns and intonation of the target users. This could be a big step toward empowering the entrepreneurs who are eager to adopt a baby chatbot and raise it like their own. On the other hand, we have just said and witnessed a big ripple in the AI ocean with the Google Assistant available within user-to-user chats. Moving forward, a disruptive move by Google would be to announce Allo for Developers, which is most likely to happen sooner or later. To make the market more mature, tech giants are not only focusing on improving their products and acquiring companies to lead in the industry, they are making genuine efforts to educate the public and budding entrepreneurs about how they can contribute to and utilize the growth of the AI industry. One big attempt toward this was the announcement of a between Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and DeepMind. This initiative describes its reason for creation as follows: “Established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.” In conclusion, it is best for business owners to stay on their toes to follow the rapid development in the AI space and decide to make a move when confident about the need of a chatbot in their business model. A smart move would be to integrate the conversational interface in the existing user experience first, rather than forcing the user to put extra effort and time to experiment with a bot that says “Sorry, didn’t get that” in response to every other message.
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FoundersCard members now get three months of free private jet flights from JetSmarter
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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, the membership-based program that offers perks like discounts on hotels, travel and shopping has inked a new deal with JetSmarter. As a refresher is also a membership-based program that lets members book discounted seats on shuttle flights between pre-determined cities as well as book their own private flights. JetSmarter also offers a program called JetDeals that gives members free seats on thousands of empty-leg flights each year. Membership to JetSmarter is pretty expensive – $10,000 per year. But this promotion will give all FoundersCard members three months of membership, including access to JetDeals – meaning all FoundersCard members can book a free seat on private empty-leg flights around the country. An empty leg flight is when a private plane needs to reposition itself to a different city – to meet its owner or pick up new charter passengers. Since this flight is empty anyways, startups like JetSmarter have recently begun programs to let members take advantage of these empty seats. FoundersCard members will receive one free seat per JetDeal flight (with the option to purchase more seats). But before you run to sign up, remember that a seat on an empty-leg flight isn’t the same thing as chartering your own jet. You don’t get to pick where to go (you just select a flight that already has a preset origin and destination) and will need to find your own ride home from wherever the jet takes you. Plus, empty-leg flights are very rarely flown on routes between major cities. That being said, it’s still really cool to get a free seat on a private jet, especially without paying JetSmarter’s $10,000 yearly fee. While FoundersCard members will also get three months of access to other JetSmarter membership offerings like the ability to charter flights and purchase seats on JetShuttle, we imagine that the unlimited free seats available via JetDeals will be the most popular part of this promotion. Oh, and if FoundersCard members end up signing up for JetSmarter, they will get $2,000 in free flight credits to charter a flight or book paid seats on a flight of their choosing.
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Facebook gives users local ballot guides in voting initiative
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Kate Conger
| 2,016
| 10
| 28
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Facebook rolled out a today that gives users a full voter guide, from the presidential candidates to the down-ballot propositions and local politicians, in an effort to “encourage civic participation.” The feature allows users to “favorite” their chosen candidates and initiatives so they can refer to their favorites once they reach the voting booth. As Facebook is careful to specify, this isn’t an electronic voting tool and the picks users make on Facebook don’t count in the actual election, but it is a way for voters to educate themselves about the presidential candidates as well as the other politicians and propositions on their ballots. The vote planning feature is the latest of several election-oriented features that Facebook has introduced. Earlier this year, it’s register-to-vote feature was credited with a spike of 2 million people in voter registration, and the company also recently made it possible for political candidates to add their stances on issues and endorsements to their Facebook pages. But this is the first in-depth political feature from Facebook. While the feature will go live today, most users won’t start seeing it pop up in their newsfeeds until next week. Prospective voters can review information about the candidates’ stances on the issues and view their endorsements, select their favorite candidates, and email their ballot choices to themselves for later reference. The endorsements and issues that Facebook rolled out last week will appear in the vote planning feature. Many users have likely already made up their minds in the headline-grabbing presidential election, but may be unaware of the candidates running for their local city council, or local ballot initiatives. Users can also check to see who their friends are voting for if they are undecided about particular candidates or issues. The vote planning tool will initially show information on presidential and statewide candidates — if users want to see information on local issues, they will need to enter their addresses. Facebook says it will discard all of the voting information after 60 days and won’t publish any polling data gathered from the tool. Users can choose whether or not to make their picks private or allow their friends to view their choices on a case-by-case basis — so you can publicly endorse a proposition, but keep your presidential pick private. “We want to make it easier for people who want to participate to do so, and to have a voice in the political process,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a blog post announcing the new feature. The information on candidates and issues isn’t created by Facebook, which likely wants to avoid allegations of partisanship after its was accused of bias against conservative news outlets earlier in the election cycle. Instead, the data comes from the Center for Technology and Civic Life, a nonpartisan organization that has gathered ballot information from across the country. If users think any of the CTCL data is incorrect, they can report the error to Facebook. Here’s how it works:
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Qualcomm debuts plans to help build more connected cameras
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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A couple of big, roadmappy pieces of news out the Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit, being held in Hong Kong this week, far away from the component company’s sunny Southern California headquarters. Alongside a number of new chips, the Qualcomm is laying out its plans to support camera functionality across a wide set of different form factors. The new technology portfolio moves well beyond the currently supported array of smartphone cameras (billions by Qualcomm’s count) to include emerging camera spaces like 360/VR, IP security cameras, dashcams, bodycams and action/sports cameras (think GoPro competitors). The platform will cater to a slew of different functionality, with built-in support for wireless technologies like 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, deep learning, video analytics, 4K encoding and various security options, because, as the company put it during a call ahead of the announcement, “It may sound like and oxymoron, but the most insecure devices in IOT networks tend to be security cameras.” The system utilizes a Snapdragon 625 processor and features support for Linux OS. All of those elements will also be incorporated into the Snapdragon 625 IP camera reference design (that’s it at the top of the post there), a combination hardware and software platform designed to help manufacturers create cameras based on the company’s offering, developed in partnership with Thundercomm Technology. The reference design will be available to OEMs by years end, with commercial products built around the specifications arriving “shortly thereafter.”
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Crunch Report | Big Changes for Apple’s Car Project
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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Qualcomm shows off three new Snapdragon processors
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Brian Heater
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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While it’s true we don’t all have the pleasure of hanging at the Hong Kong Ritz Carlton for this week’s 4G/5G Summit, we can still bask in the chipmaker’s news from afar. Arguably most fascinating among the San Diego company’s big announcements for the week are its plans to go big into the future of , but it wouldn’t be a proper Qualcomm event without some real processor news. And as it so happens, it’s got a trio of new Snapdragon chips to show off, all succeeding older models. The new Snapdragon 653, 626 and 427 all sport the company’s new Quick Charge 3.0 technology for 4x power delivery, as well as dual-camera support, adopted from the company’s 800 line of processors. Also onboard are a slew of advanced connectivity features like support for higher call clarity and an X9 LTE with CAT 7 modem. For its part the 653 bumps up the CPU and GPU performance of the 652, while doubling addressable RAM from 4 to 8GB. The 626 increases the 625’s performance and boosts antenna signal, and like wise on both accounts for 427 over the 425. The Snapdragon 653 and 626 is set to arrive by year’s end, with the 427 hitting early next year.
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Hemp can’t get you high, but it can get high-tech
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Don Basile
| 2,016
| 10
| 27
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Marijuana is an ancient plant with borderline mystical properties — just ask the who smoke it every year. Hemp, the industrial strain of , has been used for many purposes — food, fuel and textiles among them — for tens of thousands of years. Unlike its sister strain, hemp can’t get you high. But much like the drug, it has extraordinary qualities. America is no stranger to hemp. In fact, Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag with hemp and George Washington farmed it at Mt. Vernon. Unfortunately, its full potential was never realized; drug restrictions that banned marijuana suppressed hemp, too. This spurious conflation quashed the industry for about 60 years, until defined it as an agricultural crop, leaving the door ajar to American farmers. As marijuana laws continue to loosen across the country — and the world — it looks like hemp could be brought back in a big way. With China leading in worldwide hemp production and having capitalized on it during America’s drug war, now is the time to get in the game. In today’s fast-paced and tech-driven world, this means re-adopting the plant for today’s innovation economy. Hemp could make a huge difference in everyday products, certainly. But even more exciting are the groundbreaking research and high-tech products it’s already spearheading. Before we launch into some of hemp’s cooler applications, it’s important to understand just what makes hemp so unique. First and foremost, hemp is incredibly environmentally friendly. Instead of depleting the land’s nutrients, like cotton does, hemp actually puts nitrogen back into the soil. It takes less water, but produces more plants per acre (for reference, one acre of hemp produces four times the paper an acre of trees does.) Its low lignin content and natural brightness reduces the need for pulping and bleaching, meaning fewer chemicals are needed all around. Hemp grows in a wide variety of soils and climates, so it can be harvested in all 50 states (though only legally). It’s one of the strongest plant fibers and is naturally resistant to weeds and pests. It harvests quickly, growing 10 to 20 feet in just four months. Then you have hemp seeds, an incredible source of protein. More than of their calories come from high-quality protein, considerably more than similar foods like chia seeds and flax seeds. Various studies have linked them to a reduction in risk of heart disease and easing of PMS and digestion. Hemp is also ideal for the production of ethanol, the cleanest-burning liquid bio-alternative to gasoline. Combustion releases water vapor and CO , which plants absorb. It’s no wonder hemp is called a smart plant, as it seems almost too good to be true, especially in a world rife with environmental and climate concerns. Considering farmers need the DEA’s approval before sowing seeds, there is still a barrier to entry — for now, anyway. Restrictions aside, preliminary research has yielded results that only confirm hemp’s potential, and not just as an everyday alternative to cotton and wood, but for high-tech innovations. Ever heard of ? Hemp fiber is also incredibly strong and light, and Dr. David Mitlin, a scientist from Clarkson University in New York, says his team has mimicked the nanomaterial’s amazing qualities using hemp waste. According to : Dr. Mitlin and his team were able to recycle leftover hemp-based fiber, cook it down and then dissolve it until carbon nanosheets that resembled the structure of graphene were left behind. They proceeded to build these nanosheets into powerful energy-storing supercapacitors with high energy density, thus creating a hemp based “graphene.” The best part? This graphene-like hemp costs only a fraction of the price of traditional graphene: $500 a ton compared to $2,000 per gram. Dr. Mitlin also suspects the hemp-based product could outperform graphene. Another amazing product is , a concrete made with hemp and lime. For construction, hempcrete is essentially a super-concrete: Its negative CO footprint alleviates the greenhouse effect and improves air quality. Its natural insulation keeps homes warm or cool, reducing need for energy. Its resistance to cracks under high pressure makes it well-suited for earthquake-prone areas. It’s even . Hemp also can be used to create bacteria-fighting fabrics. As early as the 1990s, scientists in China were developing blended hemp fabrics with superior resistance to staph in order to prevent sometimes fatal infections in hospitals. Considering Americans get staph infections when hospitalized, and 90,000 die, this could be a life-saving innovation here in the U.S. Luckily, Colorado company is on it. The company’s has shown in preliminary studies to be 98.5 percent staph resistant and 65.1 percent pneumonia-free. In addition, EnviroTextiles offers hemp fabric resistant to UV and infrared wavelengths, ideal for military purposes. These are just a few of the many high-tech and future-forward applications hemp has. As a form of sustainable agriculture, hemp farming holds enormous potential — for the planet, the economy, and . Once the hemp is produced, it may not get you high, but figuratively, the sky’s the limit. After all, how fitting is it for an ancient plant, used both 10,000 years ago and in early America, to continue its legacy in our modern world? Betsy’s hemp-based flag became a symbol for the country, which is now a leader in technological innovation. It would be foolish not to take the bull by the horns and ride it.
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Judge dismisses riot charges against Democracy Now! cofounder Amy Goodman
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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There may be hope for the First Amendment rights of new media journalists― a North Dakota judge has against cofounder and investigative reporter Amy Goodman. As TechCrunch Goodman was charged for “participating in a riot” after she reported from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, on the long-running protests there against the development of a $3.8 billion energy project called the Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline specifically impacts the tribe in North Dakota and its 8,000-person reservation. Native American advocates say that the project will not only put safe drinking water at risk for the Standing Rock Sioux, but will also destroy their sacred burial grounds. Goodman captured and broadcast footage of Dakota Access-affiliated security guards using pepper spray and attack dogs against Native American advocates and environmentalists. Beyond matters of tribal rights, the pipeline raises profound ecological concerns. Oil and petroleum pipeline spills have been on the rise in the U.S. since 2009, along with domestic oil consumption and production. The spills are caused by everything from corrosion, to welding or equipment failures, but also natural disasters and human errors. Uncowed by the court, Democracy Now! has at the protest front lines. Goodman is not the only journalist state prosecutors attempted to silence over pipeline protest coverage in North Dakota. A documentary filmmaker named Deia Schlosberg was taken into custody, and later released, but with her footage confiscated and still facing possible felony charges in the state. She was arrested while filming demonstrators at the tar sands pipelines in Wallhala, North Dakota. The protestors shut down TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline there. Charges against Schlosberg included “two Class A felony charges and one Class C felony charge, and conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service,” according to a blog post on written by Josh Fox. Schlosberg was a producer for the Fox-directed documentary called We have reached out to Schlosberg for an update on her situation.
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How to win in the game of odds in the next fintech frontier — insurance
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Richie Hecker
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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At the end of the day, insurance is all about risk. Whatever keeps people safest leads to the lowest claims — and the happiest people. Insurance technology is getting very popular among founders and investors, yet, as a category, is little understood. Insurance is one of the most difficult businesses to start, because, well, the regulators don’t actually want new players in the market. The reason for this is risk — insurance is all about having a strong system and balance sheet to manage risk. However, as a result of its difficulty, insurance is now behind the times in terms of technology. This leads to a perfect storm to disrupt the industry. “We see this coming wave in the invested in the sector in the first half of 2016, and we see it in the buzz around industry conferences like , which is expecting 1,000 executives,” says , partner at QED investors and co-founder of InsureTech Connect (disclosure: the other co-founder of InsureTech Connect previously invested in one of my portfolio companies). Insurance is about risk, and the industry moves slowly to play it safe. Oftentimes product development cycles can be 3-5 years. That’s 3-5 In startup world, that’s an eternity and back. Meanwhile, there is in insurance premium written every year in the U.S. Premium is the industry term for revenue. That’s a lot of revenue. Typically, it takes more than a year to launch any kind of new technology, and takes 3-5 years of data to train underwriting models. Meanwhile, more data is available now than ever before — and it’s available in real time. This lag of product development represents the opportunity for startups! The key to unlocking the insurance industry is understanding behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is the study of behavior and how it impacts purchasing. Insurance is a negative expense. If you get your money’s worth, that means shit happened, and if you don’t get your money’s worth, you feel cheated. Lose-lose, right? Not quite. Given the size of the market you clearly can create a win-win situation. For example, in auto insurance, even out of those who shop for carriers, more than of people stayed with their carrier in 2015. “The best analogy to the insurance industry is Blockbuster versus Netflix,” says , co-founder and CEO of BumbleBee. “While the insurance industry is preoccupied with making the widget more efficient, startups are talking to customers and changing the basic structure of insurance. They are radically transforming product, distribution, and technology in a manner that we have not seen in the last 100 years.” Jerry was previously director of innovation at Liberty Mutual and launched BumbleBee to transform rideshare auto insurance (disclosure: BumbleBee is a portfolio company and I am chairman). Meanwhile, there are a number of forces disrupting insurance, including the shared economy, on-demand services, big data, IoT and technology overall. So what will it take to make an insurance technology company successful? There are two schools of thought: build your own insurance company or be a service provider. We’ll explore building an insurance company in this article. Insurance is a game of odds, a bet based on statistical models. So how can you use technology to increase your odds and make your bet pay off in the market? The most successful players in insurance tech will win by rounding the edges on existing products. Don’t reinvent the wheel, take what works and make it work for today. That means making policies be more transparent, providing better user experiences and aligning incentives to adapt to the world in which we live. Many of these policies were designed 100 years ago, before modern technologies and the complexities of a digitally connected, shared world. Design a policy in a way that simplifies the coverage, eliminates exclusions and makes it easy for people to articulate the benefits. Like rounding the edges on a sharp corner, it’s simple to do and makes it less likely for people to get hurt. “Currently, the burden is on the insurance industry to adapt to consumers’ changing needs for increased transparency,” according to Farron Blanc, VP, Innovation Studio Lead at , one of the largest life insurance companies. “Insurance must similarly adapt; whether that is improved transparency in how an underwriter verifies applicant disclosures or the shape and timing of commission payments for advice. Insurance must adapt in order to advance its honorable purpose and change lives for the better.” Insurance is notoriously complicated and opaque. The policies tend to be written by lawyers and bought by regular consumers. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Well, you can disrupt insurance by providing clear and transparent policies to customers. Put in plain English what you are covering and what you aren’t covering. Eliminate exclusions and address the nuances that happen today. If you are a homeowner’s insurer, you should allow for limited use of Airbnb. If you are an auto insurer, you should be allowing for limited use of driving for Uber. If someone is going to make it a full-time job, then it veers into the commercial space — but give people room to dabble with their lives. Make sure your policies are easy to understand and actually cover the issues your customers face. This will lead to people spreading your policies by word of mouth. Design the user experience in such a way to be as easy as possible. Most insurance is still sold through brokers. However, a broker adds an expensive layer, and that money comes out of the customer’s pocket. Allow users to sign up directly with you. Have a mobile application to allow sign up and to process claims. If there is a claim, hop on a video chat with your customer and diagnose the situation. Allow customers to communicate via whichever channel they desire: mobile, SMS or chatbot. Then, once a claim is processed, notify them through the same channel where they contacted you. This will lead to very high customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, incentivize users to collect as much data as possible. Mobile devices and IoT enable a host of ways to collect more data, learn about your customers and further align incentives based on actual real-time behavior. Start training your customers early and eventually it’ll pay off when you learn how to segment them based on their own behaviors. Being able to use your coverage when you need it is the hallmark of insurance. However, insurance is not designed to cover every scratch on your car and every cough you get. Insurance originally was designed for catastrophes — big expenses. For example, Lloyd’s of London would cover you if your ship was stolen by pirates. The small expenses cost the same to process as the big ones. Aligning incentives so the user is incentivized to handle small issues themselves, with zero handling cost, and using their insurance for the big expenses, saves insurance companies a lot of money. This can allow you, as the insurer, to pass on savings to your customers. Insurance represents one of the largest opportunities for disruption. The key to being a successful entrepreneur in insurance is to provide clear policies to customers, make it easy to buy, make it easier to use and align incentives to save people money and cover their asses when they really need it.
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Lobster adds Verizon Cloud to its AI-powered photo licensing arsenal
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Stefan Etienne
| 2,016
| 10
| 17
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Lobster, , is breathing new life into its AI-powered media licensing platform by partnering with Verizon Cloud. Advertisers, publications, agencies and the media will now have the means to license images sourced from social media and now, Verizon Cloud. For every image sold, 75% of the profit goes towards the contributor, ranging in skill from pro photographer to regular Instagrammer. For regular users (you!), this means is that if you sign-up for and upload images to the service from your Verizon Cloud, you can proceed to license and sell them for profit. Lobster’s artificial intelligence engine kicks in by analyzing these images, building a neural network and enabling detailed search methods, thus enabling the discovery of your work. It’s worth noting that image licensing fees are meant to affordable, so Lobster isn’t cut out to be a primary source of income, but instead a plausible way of making money while also protecting the copyright integrity of things you publish on social media. In practice, brands and advertisers contact regular social media users to license their content for advertisements or other creative materials, either via email or social media comment. From there, users can log-into a dashboard that allows them to manage their licensed images, accept offers and purchase images in turn. Thus far, the company has integrated with many recognizable companies that manage large stores of media: Google Photos, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, VK and . By accessing the billions of images on the Verizon Cloud, produced by millions of users, the Lobster AI’s search and auto-tagging capabilities will improve, until Lobster adds another social media source to its catalog.
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Comparing the politics of Trump and his Silicon Valley surrogate Peter Thiel
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Kate Conger
| 2,016
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It’s been a weird year for Peter Thiel. The always contrarian investor has managed to stir up quite a bit of ill will with his shadowy support of the lawsuit that brought Gawker to its knees and his vocal — and now financial — support for Donald Trump. Along the way, each of Thiel’s controversies has led to calls for the companies he funded and advised, like Facebook and PayPal, to distance themselves from him. Those calls renewed this weekend when news broke that Thiel plans to to the Trump campaign and supportive Super PACs, and have been particularly directed at Y Combinator, where Thiel is a part-time partner. Maybe they ran out of official YC and Facebook letterhead to make statements on. I’m out of ideas, and the situation is deeply shameful — Pinboard (@Pinboard) Women applying to YCombinator, take a good look at their principled stand against a partner who supports a sexual predator — Pinboard (@Pinboard) Muslims applying to YCombinator, better hurry! There’s a residency requirement you may not be able to meet soon — Pinboard (@Pinboard) Y Combinator’s Sam Altman wrote in a blog post that the organization is standing by Thiel, even though Altman himself is a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton. “Some have said that YC should terminate its relationship with Peter over this. But as repugnant as Trump is to many of us, we are not going to fire someone over his or her support of a political candidate,” Altman wrote. “As far as we know, that would be unprecedented for supporting a major party nominee, and a dangerous path to start down (of course, if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator).” But Altman is facing plenty of blowback from others in the industry, who argue that Thiel’s ideology isn’t as distant from Trump’s as Altman claims. Project Include’s Ellen Pao said that her organization would cut ties with Y Combinator over its continued association with Thiel. “While all of us believe in the ideas of free speech and open platforms, we draw a line here. We agree that people shouldn’t be fired for their political views, but Slack engineer and Project Include co-founder Erica Joy Baker also called on Y Combinator to break ties with Thiel, and disputed the notion that reasoning with the investor about his long-held beliefs would change his mind. Not only does talking rarely work to change views (as has been proven), but it assumes people haven't *been* talking. — EricaJoy (@EricaJoy) So what should Silicon Valley do about Thiel? Some of his views, like the merits of seasteading, seem outlandish but relatively harmless. Altman certainly seems to see Thiel as someone — he likens Thiel to the other Trump supporter in his life, his grandma — who should be reasoned with rather than cast out. “We should all feel a duty to try to understand the roughly half of the country that thinks we are severely misguided,” Altman wrote. “If our best ideas are to stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us, we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020.” But Thiel’s political stances aren’t vastly different from Trump’s — in fact, the two are aligned on many issues. Altman’s assertion that Trump should be denounced for his views while Thiel should be gently talked out of his similar views amounts to splitting an incredibly fine hair. “The basic problem is that a racist past cannot be undone through more racism. Race-conscious programs betray Martin Luther King’s dream of a color-blind community, and the heightened racial sensitivity they cause is a source of acrimony and tension instead of healing.” The GOP candidate has taken several stances on affirmative action, saying last year, “I’m fine with it,” but adding that it would soon be obsolete and that would be a “wonderful thing.” Thiel to NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration organization, in 2008. At the time, the donation led to calls for Facebook to distance itself from Thiel. FWD.us, the immigration reform advocacy organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg, has NumbersUSA for its “hateful rhetoric, extreme views, and blatant falsehoods — including ties to white supremacists.” Trump famously called for a ban on Muslim immigration and the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump’s immigration platform also calls for a reduction in H-1B visas, particularly in STEM fields, so that tech companies would be forced to prioritize hiring U.S. citizens rather than immigrants. In 2009, Thiel penned an that expressed frustration that women had gained the right to vote. “The vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” Thiel wrote. He later clarified, “It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us.” Trump frequently remarks on his respect for women, but multiple women have recently come forward to accuse him of sexual assault. Trump, in turn, blamed the media for sabotaging his support among female voters and said the lack of support might cost him the election. Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Thiel has been criticized and praised for funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. He once compared Gawker journalists to terrorists, saying, “I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters.” He estimates he has spent $10 million backing various lawsuits against Gawker and claimed the litigation was “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.” Trump has a similarly dim view of press freedom. He’s revoked press credentials from reporters because he disliked their coverage of his campaign, and Trump supporters have attacked members of the press at his rallies. He’s called for expanding libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets he disagrees with and frequently claims that the media operates as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom organization that has previously received funding from Thiel, denounced Trump based on his track record on press freedom. “This is not about picking sides in an election. This is recognizing that a Trump presidency represents a threat to press freedom unknown in modern history,” CPJ chairperson Sandra Mims Rowe said in a . Although Thiel backed away from his assertion that allowing women to vote was a blow to capitalist democracy in his 2009 essay, his primary argument — that perhaps democracy should not exist at all — was left standing. “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote. As his campaign has struggled to respond to sexual assault allegations, Trump has increasingly suggested on Twitter and in speeches that the Clinton campaign, the media and international banks are engaged in a widespread conspiracy to rig the election against him. He summarized his theories on the fall of democracy in a recent speech in Florida, in which he said the U.S. is at “a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government.” Although Thiel’s phrasing isn’t similar to Trump’s, the sentiment of his statements often is. And, as Altman said, “If Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator.” Perhaps, if Y Combinator condemns Trump’s statements, it’s time to do the same for Thiel’s.
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John Biggs
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Razer acquires audiovisual icon THX as it explores growth beyond the games industry
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the company that develops hardware and services for gamers and the world of gaming, has made an acquisition to catapult it to more platforms and more people: The company has acquired , the legendary audio and video quality assurance company that was originally founded by George Lucas as part of Lucasfilm. Razer’s CEO Min-Liang Tan said in an interview that the terms of the deal are not being disclosed. But as part of the purchase, 33-year-old THX will be “spun out” and operated as a “startup,” recapitalized by Razer; run independently of it under existing management, led by Ty Ahmad-Taylor out of San Francisco; and focusing on developing new things. Currently, THX employs 50 people, including a number of top audio and graphics engineers and scientists; the plan will be to ramp up those numbers both at the HQ and in other offices in countries like China to tap into the growing market there for films, tech and any other content that could be improved with better audiovisual quality. THX has been through a few ownership phases since being founded in 1983, and the only one of those where a price was publicly attached to the company was when Creative Technologies, a Singaporean company, acquired a , implying a valuation of a mere $13 million. That price was never confirmed, and when I mentioned it to Min, as Tan is known, all I got in response was: “2002 is not today,” and a laugh. (By the time of the Razer acquisition, Min said that Creative Technologies no longer was the majority owner; a PE firm was. Min declined to give specifics about the shareholders involved.) Razer itself has , with investors including China’s LianLuo (Beijing Digital Grid), Intel and Accel. It’s , but has never been public about its revenues or other metrics. This is Razer’s second acquisition, after it software, technology and development teams in an all-cash deal in 2015. You may not know exactly what THX does today, but chances are you would recognize the company’s famous “Deep Note” warp clip at the start of a movie, which indicates when a film has been through the THX treatment. This is the 2015 remastered version: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3lO9Dt3kjA&w=560&h=315] THX was started as a special audio division at Lucasfilm when the company was working on and Lucas wanted to ensure that the sound in theaters was just as the sound engineers had intended it to be. THX was a quality assurance system that essentially highlighted a whole range of features that a theater needed to have in place; it also provided a crossover circuit as part of the standard. Fast-forward to today and the company still focuses on HD quality, but now it works in a range of other environments that span both audio and video. THX Live for performances, for example, is being used as part of world tour. Razer sees a parallel between the kind of work that THX does and Razer’s own position that it holds as a high-end brand in the gaming world. “We’ve been fans of THX for a long time, from the time of the Star Wars legacy and how George Lucas created it,” Min said. “THX has one of the biggest brands when it comes to movies or music. Audio files, films, we think of the THX brand in audio as akin to what Razer is in gaming.” The company, Min added, has a “huge library” of IP in the audiovisual space, which Razer hopes to use toward more and better gaming content and other products. “There is a lot of potential to extend it into newer areas that interest us, like virtual reality and live streaming,” he said. One area, for example, is in developing the acoustics that make virtual reality environments ever more realistic: noises that sound like they are coming from around the very room you might be sitting in. “We’re looking forward to the opportunity to work with their designers and engineers,” Min said. Razer had looked at a number of other audiovisual companies when it decided to focus and ramp up in this area, but when it learned that THX was an option, “It was pretty much a no-brainer for us,” he added. But while Razer will tap into THX to develop its business, THX itself will also continue to build its own standalone projects. “We are focused on our core business,” Ahmad-Taylor said. That will mean business development deals with a number of other companies, some of which will potentially compete against Razer itself. Ahmad-Taylor pointed out working with the competition is a part of THX’s history and how a lot of the film industry has always worked: “We were owned by Lucasfilm and Disney and had no problems working in the distribution chain,” he said. “We are agnostic with respect to platform.” The film industry connection will also be interesting to Razer, given the ever-growing connection between hit film franchises and their gaming components. For Razer, the challenge now will be to make sure that as it continues to make new investments, the company does not lose sight of its core market, or of the focus that has helped it grow to where it is today. There will be yet more external forces on Razer on the horizon: The acquisition comes on the heels of Razer , a new fund to back startups in areas that are considered strategic for Razer, which is initially capitalized with $30 million. The THX deal is not a part of the zVentures enterprise, Razer tells me, although going forward it may be via zVentures that THX receives further investment, which means it could also be a fundamental partner to whichever startups Razer backs in the future.
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Orbital ATK returns to flight with successful Antares launch to the space station
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Emily Calandrelli
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The Orbital ATK Antares rocket – the same rocket that on its way to the International Space Station two years ago – returned to flight today with a much-anticipated launch. Lifting off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Antares rocket is now on its way to deliver the Cygnus spacecraft filled with over 5,000 pounds of cargo to crew members aboard the ISS. Lift off! 's rocket launches to deliver science & supplies to . Keep watching: — NASA (@NASA) Today’s launch was particularly special for , a company contracted by NASA to deliver 66,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS through 2018. After their Antares rocket exploded during a launch in 2014, destroying thousands of pounds of experiments and cargo bound for the space station, Orbital ATK worked for two years to upgrade that rocket and prepare for its return to flight. Orbital ATK Antares rocket explosion on October 28th 2014 / Image courtesy of NASA The most notable change in the upgraded Antares is the main engine. Interestingly, the exact cause of the 2014 explosion was , but Orbital ATK believed it was related to a machining error in the AJ-26 engines used on Antares. Because of this, the company replaced those engines with Russian-made RD-181 engines. In order to satisfy their commercial resupply services requirements for NASA while they worked to upgrade Antares, Orbital ATK hired fellow launch provider to fly the Cygnus spacecraft on two supply missions to the ISS using Atlas rockets. Today, the Orbital ATK was finally able to fly Cygnus on top of their own rocket again. The RD-181-equipped Antares rocket carried Cygnus, which housed science experiments and supplies for the ISS crew, for their fifth operational cargo resupply mission for NASA. One of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft that flew on top of an Atlas rocket / Image courtesy of NASA Along with crew supplies, spacewalk equipment and computer resources, Cygnus will bring over 1,000 pounds of science investigations to the five crew members on the ISS. One of those experiments is , the second Saffire experiment to be conducted inside Cygnus in order to study realistic flame propagation in space. Like , the experiment will begin only after Cygnus has left the space station. By igniting a material and watching how it burns throughout a chamber in the spacecraft, NASA researchers on the ground will analyze how fire moves and spreads in microgravity. The Saffire series are intended to help inform the selection of materials and identify proper flame-mitigation strategies for future missions. Cygnus will spend over a month attached to the ISS. In late November, the spacecraft will be filled with about 3,000 pounds of trash and then released to begin its descent back to Earth. During reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft, along with trash and Saffire-II, will be destroyed.
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AWS launches region in Ohio
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Frederic Lardinois
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Amazon’s today launched a region in Ohio. The aptly-named “US East (Ohio) Region” brings Amazon’s total region count to 14. The region will feature three separate availability zones for increased fault tolerance. AWS now offers 38 availability zones across its data centers. Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels noted in today’s that this means AWS now runs two regions that mainly serve the U.S. East Coast (the other being in Virginia). Because these two East Coast regions are so close — and essentially serve the same user base — AWS won’t charge its users for moving data between them. The idea here is to give users more options to create a highly available infrastructure that is more geographically diverse than using a single region while still being close enough to serve all users on the East Coast. Despite being split into different availability zones, a single region could still be hit by a natural disaster that takes all of these zones out at the same time, after all. The new region will offer all of AWS’s core services like EC2, S3, RDS and the AWS Marketplace. “We strive to place customer feedback first in our considerations for where to open new regions,” Vogels writes. “The Ohio Region is no different. Now customers who have been requesting a second US East region have more infrastructure options for running workloads, storing files, running analytics, and managing databases.” Amazon previously invested in an Ohio wind farm, too. This 100 megawatt farm is currently under construction and will likely go online in May 2017. The company will use at least some of the energy produced there to power its Ohio region.
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Has SDN improved or just Kardashianized your network?
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Leonard A. Giuliano
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Software-defined networking (SDN) has taken center stage in the networking industry for the better part of a decade now. In the spirit of the election season, it’s a great time to ask the question: Is your network better off now than it was before? The answer should be a resounding yes. For network engineers with a specific problem to be solved, there have never been as many tools in the toolbox to solve those problems. Indeed, with all the open APIs/automation frameworks and languages available to program them, the mix of custom/merchant silicon and x86 solutions available today and with the exponential reduction in cost and power consumption of network equipment on a per-bit basis, we may be in the Golden Age of Networking. But for many networks, a stark reality has emerged around SDN. Debates on the merits of esoteric networking technologies have been overtaken by an unending stream of fantastic pronouncements of panacean wonder. With hype trumping substance, networking technologies have fallen irrationally into and out of fashion, with some becoming famous for being famous. This Kardashianization of networking has left many companies crippled with fear of missing out and paralyzed with confusion about what to do next. The following are some of the pitfalls that have befallen carriers and enterprises that have failed to master SDN and have instead become mastered by SDN. It is important to remember that the reality underlying most press releases falls somewhere in a truthiness continuum between padded resume and Soviet economic pronouncement. Trying to reverse-engineer a competitor’s technical solution, or even divine its true intentions, from a press release is fraught with peril. Also, remember your mother’s advice about not jumping off bridges just because everyone else might be doing it. A variation of this pitfall is the But <Insert Cool_Web_Services_Company> is using SDN refrain that usually follows any critical questioning of SDN. Indeed, it is true that some Cool_Web_Services_Companies use SDN, but it is important to understand where they are using SDN and why. Cool_Web_Services_Companies usually have multiple networks, some of which use SDN, while others/most resemble traditional (Pre-SDN) carrier networks. Fortunately, the engineers at Cool_Web_Services_Companies do tend to write long, detailed articles on the technical solutions they use and it is wise to read the whole article to understand the motivations and applicability of the particular SDN technologies they choose. What works within a data center might not be very useful in a network that connects data centers together, or one that peers with the rest of the internet. Perhaps the most frustrating pitfall engineers encounter is when they are told by their management they must do SDN. The motivation to put points on the board to demonstrate compliance with an executive SDN edict does not tend to lead to positive outcomes. Where SDN has been a boon is when engineers have started with the question: What is the problem to be solved? This may seem obvious and self-evident, but too often SDN strategies involve top-down selection of a fashionable solution first and then rigidly applying it to every problem (or worse, to non-problems). The strictest definition of SDN, as described by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), is the physical separation of the network control plane from the forwarding plane, and where a control plane controls several devices. In terms of intuitiveness, this definition unfortunately betrays the practical goals and motivations of SDN — to reduce costs and accelerate innovation and agility in delivering network services. Companies can sometimes get caught up in the semantic debates of what does and doesn’t count as SDN and miss the point of this powerful movement. A better understanding of the spirit and power of SDN could be characterized simply as the marriage of software and networking to solve problems. This opens the doors to a full panoply of options: network overlays, automation frameworks that drive down operational costs and risk from manual processes, open interfaces that reduce the friction of mixing and matching equipment in various roles to drive down costs, etc. One underrated and underutilized SDN application in particular is the use of programmable APIs into the networking devices. These democratizing APIs enable permission-less innovation from the crowd to rapidly deliver new features and functions months/years faster than are typically developed by gear-makers. When understanding the spirit of SDN, beyond merely its literal definition, the potential of this technology becomes limitless. To those of a certain age, the mention of Menudo typically evokes vague recollections of a Latin boy band from the early 1980s that launched the career of Ricky Martin. What most don’t know is that the band included more than three dozen members, spanned three decades and spawned several spin-offs. When it comes to boy bands, certain patterns tend to emerge. While a boy band’s rise in popularity can be meteoric, its demise is almost always inevitable, usually cruel and often amusing. But on rare occasions, a star emerges — Ricky Martin, Justin Timberlake, Bobby Brown, Michael Jackson — leaving in his wake a jumble of mostly forgotten bandmates. Which brings us to SDN, an approach that most believe began in the late 2000s. In truth, the underpinnings of many SDN technologies were introduced in some form or another years/decades earlier. The large cast of SDN technologies includes many that are destined for future Where are they now? musings. But we can expect some stars to have an enduring impact in the industry. Network overlay technologies (for example, VxLAN) appear to be one example. The lesson here is to search for the winners, not just assume every technology with the SDN moniker is equal — there can be quite a difference between Michael and Tito. Furthermore, even finding the star can be counterproductive if used in the wrong application. Ricky Martin in front of a pop audience will have the crowd ; onstage in front of a heavy metal audience and will not be so . The greatest asset, worst liability and most overlooked component of any network is the human element that must design, deploy and operate it. Too often, the raw technical facets of a solution are solely considered to the exclusion of how humans will use and apply the technology. When the hype bubble inflates, critical thinking can grind to a halt, and the results can be calamitous. Opportunity costs can skyrocket as scarce resources pour into dubious misapplications of trendy technologies dominating the headlines, crowding out less fashionable, but far more relevant and productive solutions. SDN has caused great disruption and noise, but has it actually made the network better? The answer to this question is ultimately a reflection of the motivations and goals of those who have sought to deploy SDN solutions. SDN is an umbrella of technologies, some powerful and disruptive, some of dubious value. Careers have been made, as well as broken, by SDN. For those network service providers that have started out with a problem to solve, objectively looked at the bevy of options provided within the umbrella and applied the right tool for the job, SDN has been a godsend. For those that have been caught up in the hype, started with a solution and worked backwards in search of a problem, that have sought to use SDN without fully grasping why, keeping up with SDN has been as productive a use of time as keeping up with the Kardashians.
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In drought-ridden California, a new fertilizer technology from KDC Ag could bring relief
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Jonathan Shieber
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manicured streets of monied Los Angeles neighborhoods, it’s a challenge to think of California as rain-starved and sun-choked. But a trip along Interstate 5 reveals a different world. Miles of browning grass stretch along the roadside, broken by the green clusters of California’s farms, which provide fruits, vegetables and nuts to most American households. California is the top farm producer in the U.S. , vastly outstripping the yields of Texas and Iowa, the second- and third-largest producers. Yet yields are declining, and farmers in the state face a host of pressures that has ravaged California’s countryside. This drought has pushed the agricultural industry to take steps that only exacerbate the problems that the lack of rainfall has caused. To address the depleted water supply, California’s farmers , and at the same time are using more fertilizer (whose production and use that affect the climate, encouraging the ongoing drought conditions in the state). “Climate conditions have exposed our house of cards,” Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist who studies water supplies told in April. “The withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can’t keep doing this.” At the same time, farmers are faced with a problem that they should never be forced to anticipate. The that crops, fruits, vegetables and meat are subject to. Enter , a new operating company that purports to have a solution for both the water crisis affecting farms across the country and our nation’s food waste dilemma. The result of years of research and millions of dollars in investment, KDC Ag is commercializing a technology that claims to solve the three intertwined problems of fertilizer overuse, food waste and water scarcity in farming. If it works, the company has a multi-million-dollar business on its hands. It wouldn’t be the first time for the Kamine family, the founders of KDC Ag. The family has already made . At that time, renewable energy was more of a pipe dream than a reality. But the ) took the problem literally and created a power business that became one of the largest in the Northeast. “My grandfather was a plumber,” says Justin Kamine, who launched the KDC Ag subsidiary for the family. “My father grew up in the boiler rooms and wastewater systems. He started his own business after college and created a business doing wastewater heat recovery. He mortgaged his house four times, but eventually got GE interested in the efforts.” The result was a business that became one of the largest independent power producers on the East Coast. When Hal Kamine sold the business in the early 1990s, his backers returned with a proposition to invest in telecommunications networks. That led to the development of telecom infrastructure in cities across the U.S. and another multi-million-dollar business. Now his sons are getting into the act. Justin Kamine saw the problems that were facing the environment when he graduated from Lafayette College in 2011 and decided that the family’s connections, and skill sets, presented another opportunity for a business venture. So the Kamines went into solar development just as laws in New Jersey were becoming more favorable. Backed by GE Energy Services and other investors, the company extended its influence and grew from power generation in the 1990s into telecommunications and subsequently solar energy, establishing a sustainability-focused That wealth allowed the family to expand into other areas, including the financing of , the developer of the technology that KDC Ag hopes to commercialize. With California Safe Soil, KDC Ag is bringing to market a new fertilizer that is both organic and water-rich, and its commercialization solves three problems that contribute to climate change. It sustainably gets rid of food waste without landfilling (a major contributor to greenhouse gasses), it allows farmers to fertilize their soil organically (without using harsh chemicals whose manufacture contribute to greenhouse gasses) and it enables farmers to use less water, which helps alleviate drought conditions in California (and everywhere else). This miracle fertilizer is the work of years of research initiated by California Safe Soil’s founder, Dan Morash, a former energy executive who got to know the Kamine family through their first business selling waste heat and power. Morash came to the Kamines with an idea for literal energy harvesting based on work he’d done with the conversion of agricultural waste into power. “[Morash] saw the food waste to energy facilities and realized that food has a lot of water in it… So if you burn it, you don’t create the most efficient source of energy,” said Justin Kamine, the youngest scion of the Kamine fortune and the driving force behind KDC Ag. Throughout the first years of the new millennium, government and energy executives were (and still are) grappling with sustainable solutions to the need for combustible fuels in the U.S. One solution they’d hit on was converting agricultural waste into fuels or energy by converting the waste into liquids or burning it for power. Morash thought the liquid conversion was inefficient as a feedstock for fuel, and burning the waste got rid of precious water resources that could be better used not as power, but as a feedstock for crops. Thus, California Safe Soil was born. After five years of research, the product is ready to be brought to a broader market. Kamine said KDC Ag has already contracted with grocery stores across California to pick up their food waste, bring it to California Safe Soil processing facilities and distribute the resulting fertilizer to farmers. [vimeo 114061658 w=640 h=360] from on . Each of the KDC Ag facilities can process 30,000 tons of fresh food waste, creating 6 million gallons of liquid fertilizer. The facilities cost $20 million to develop and the company is in the process of raising money to build additional plants across the country to bring the technology nationwide. Kamine is trusting that the family’s experience developing networks for telecommunications and energy infrastructure can be translated to the logistics of developing and delivering fertilizer. So far, the investments are paying off. The company has already contracted with over 200 Safe Mart stores and is looking to expand into other chains nationwide now that the holding company is set up to develop and commercialize the Safe Soil technology. For grocery stores, it’s a way to get rid of food waste, but for farmers, trials have shown it to be a super-charged engine for crop yields and soil health… all without nitrogen chemicals. Kamine likens the technology to the human digestive tract. Processors act like the stomach, digesting a balanced diet of protein and vegetables, culled from supermarket shelves, and turn it into a liquid that is distributed directly to farms. Because most of the food we eat is primarily water, if farmers use the liquid compost, that means that they don’t have to irrigate as heavily, reducing the need to tap overtaxed water supplies while at the same time providing a nutrient-rich, organic fertilizer for the soil. “We’re closing the agricultural loop and utilizing food waste efficiently,” says Kamine. “That is a liquid, pathogen-free fertilizer that can go through the drip lines or the pivots and increases soil health and increases crop yields and reduces chemical fertilizer needs.” The technology is proprietary and patent-pending, both around its processing and digesting and the enzymes that are used to break down the waste material into a liquid. Currently, the company’s fertilizer is being used on 15,000 acres of farmland, but Kamine expects that number to expand to 75,000 by the end of the year. The Kamine family has already invested $2 million into California Safe Soil to develop the technology, and expects to raise another $75 million for the KDC Ag operating company to roll out the services to farms and grocery stores nationwide. Behind those numbers, are some pretty impressive operating statistics. The company is on the path to profitabaility in California with $1 million of sales expected by the end of the year, according to Kamine. Even better, the fertilizer seems to really work. UC Davis did a study, that using the fertilizer liquid from California Safe Soil can reduce water use by 25 percent while simultaneously improving crop yields. As California — and the world — grapples with a water crisis, the Kamine family may just have a solution. “We are hopefully going to revolutionize the entire agricultural world,” says Kamine.
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Netflix shakes off weak subscriber growth and its stock is skyrocketing
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Matthew Lynley
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Netflix is finally breaking off from its slowing subscriber growth trend as it posted a huge quarter that beat both its own, and Wall Street’s, expectations. Here’s the money chart: Shares of Netflix are absolutely blowing up, now up more than 20% in extended trading after the earnings report came out. With today’s crazy jump in its stock, the company added nearly $10 billion to its market cap. And here’s the chart including the company’s fourth-quarter estimates: So, it looks like the company is not only stepping up its own expectations, but it’s looking at a huge holiday quarter for potential subscriber additions. Last quarter, the company not only posted a soft gain on its subscribers — including international — but it also dropped back its outlook for the third quarter. By going that conservative, it raised a lot of concerns in Wall Street that the company would be able to keep tempo with its international growth as it rapidly expanded to new countries. But it looks like that target was conservative for Netflix itself (the company could have totally been sandbagging Wall Street, of course) and the current strategy in place may be working for the company. Netflix added 3.2 million international subscribers, and 370,000 domestic subscribers. Total subscribers were up to 86.7 million. Wall Street was looking for the company to add 304,000 U.S. subscribers and around 2 million international subscribers. Analysts were looking for earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $2.28 billion. The culprit was pretty much what we’d expected: people are getting excited about its new original content — and that might be enough to entice international consumers eagerly waiting to watch it and catching up on everything else int he mean time. “Our over-performance against forecast was driven primarily by stronger than expected acquisition due to excitement around Netflix original content,” the company said in a statement. However, there’s another point that’s interesting in the report: its cost of revenue exploded year-over-year: The company also posted a very wide beat on earnings, recording 12 cents per share. With today’s report, the company has reversed most of the losses the stock has incurred since January. Slower-than-expected subscriber growth has recently dogged Netflix recently, as it’s made a huge push to try to expand internationally but has run into a series of hiccups. In particular, last quarter Netflix noted China’s regulations would be a significant issue as it continued to expand beyond the U.S. That’s put a heavy drain on optimism around the company as it missed its own expectations and had to pare back future expectations as a result earlier this year. There’s also the issue of enough content being available abroad. Over the weekend, CBC reported that several un-blocker services that would allow international customers to view U.S.-based content — which is a big push for Netflix — . While Netflix continues to deliver a lot of hits in the United States, particularly with its Marvel original series and over the summer, Stranger Things, it is still trying to get that content internationally. Without that, despite expanding widely into new countries, it’s going to have trouble convincing people to shell out money for the service. It’s going to have to also figure out how to get the right local content available in those countries. Netflix has had an extremely bumpy year to say the least. Since January this year, Netflix shares were down around 13% before the earnings report, while in the full year things were largely unchanged. Long-term, Netflix’s strategy seems to be working, but it still appears that there are some tweaks that need to be made in the near term as the company rolls out its expansion plans and places a focus on acquiring new subscribers. With today’s report, however, the company has reversed pretty much all of the losses it’s incurred in the past 10 months. [graphiq id=”3soU5hSoixv” title=”Netflix Inc. (NFLX) Stock Price – 1 Year” width=”600″ height=”463″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/3soU5hSoixv” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/16808888/Netflix-Inc-in-Los-Gatos-CA”]
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Facebook Messenger suggests what to talk about with “Conversation Topics” feature
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Sarah Perez
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Facebook Messenger may have already hit this past summer, but the company is always looking for new ways to increase app usage. The latest attempt is the introduction of “conversation topics” on Messenger – a feature offering suggestions about what to talk about with friends. These conversation starters appear to rely on Messenger’s connection to Facebook’s larger social network, as they reference things your friends have done lately – like where they’ve been, or events they plan to attend, for example. The feature was spotted this weekend on the iOS app by Chris Messina, who to Twitter about the new conversation starters. We understand that this is currently only a small test Facebook is conducting, which is why not that many people are currently seeing this new section in their own Messenger application at this time. Clever: now suggests conversation starters based on things your friends have done recently. — Chris Messina // molly.com/chris (@chrismessina) The suggested topics have their own dedicated section on the homescreen. The conversation topic suggestion appears underneath a friend’s name in the new section. To the right is Messenger’s activity indicator, which shows you when the person was last online. In the example above, Messenger displays places the friend in question had recently visited, like the Grand Canyon. In other cases, the suggested topics might include things like the songs the friend just listened to on a music streaming service, or an event they’ve indicated they’ve said they’re interested via Facebook Events. Facebook have some awesome people working on . It showed @trixieavis 'conversation topics inc what I'm listening to. — Dan Simpson (@iamthedans) The idea behind Conversation Topics is simple: if you’re looking for a way to break the ice with a new Facebook friend or catch up with an old one, these conversation prompts can help you figure out what to talk about. In addition, the feature would have the added benefit of being a more basic News Feed of sorts, as it lets you catch up on friends’ recent activity, without having to scroll through News Feed and its clutter of shared links, posts from Facebook Pages, ads, and other content. It’s also worth noting that this Conversation Topics feature isn’t the only thing Facebook is working on in order to better connect Messenger users with those who share similar interests. In September, Messina had also spotted .” This appears to be an attempt to build public chat rooms on Messenger’s platform around shared topics and interests, and likely has ties to Facebook’s earlier “Rooms” project, now shuttered, which was an experiment in anonymized social networking on Facebook’s part. It’s unclear for the time being if the Conversation Topics are in any way tied to Messenger’s plans to debut public chat rooms, however.
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HTC brings its virtual reality storefront to mobile
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Lucas Matney
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HTC really wants VR to happen. For all of their mobile handset woes, the company is keen to grab the next platform shift by the horns and have the ecosystem and infrastructure in place to become an early powerhouse in the space. The company’s VR presence has notably been lacking in the mobile department which has been somewhat confounding given the fact that they seem to understand that mobile is sorta kinda important. Today, the company announced a mobile version of its VR storefront for Android phones. Viveport M is looking to serve as a hub for 360 content and dedicated VR apps that work for users with and without headsets. It is initially launching in China, though HTC says a global rollout is already being planned. The move comes as HTC looks to build itself into the infrastructure of virtual reality content rather than just being a hardware provider in the space. The company’s HTC Vive headset has been the VR hardware of choice for many developers and consumers for months but is facing competition on the high-end as Facebook’s Oculus prepares to release its anticipated Touch motion controllers which bring more advanced tracking to the platform. Late last month, the Viveport VR app store globally for desktop users. As HTC looks to distance itself from Valve and Steam a bit, establishing a storefront presence on a platform which they don’t currently sell a headset for is interesting. It likely has a lot to do with the fact that Daydream is arriving next month along with Google’s Pixel flagship phone, which HTC has assisted in building. Daydream will open up a good deal of attention for VR on the mobile side as consumer experience improve due to the low-latency VR mode available for select smartphones running on Android Nougat. Viveport M allows HTC a bit of flexibility in selling content that works across platforms, but it’s going to be an uphill battle as HTC operates alongside the Play Store which is going to be receiving a lot more developer attention in the coming months as Daydream hits more phones. HTC does have the benefit of being particularly popular among VR developers and this move to mobile VR is definitely one in the right direction, especially as competitors like Oculus double down on content partnerships for the mobile platform.
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Rothenberg Ventures could face fines over setting up its office in a building zoned for residential use
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Sarah Buhr
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Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Mike Rothenberg, the founder of Rothenberg Ventures, which was more recently renamed Frontier Tech Ventures. According to documents obtained by TechCrunch, San Francisco’s Planning Department was notified earlier this month that Rothenberg Ventures has been operating out of two floors in a building that’s not permitted for use as a general office, despite authorizations for two previous tenant improvements from the city’s Department of Building Inspection. Rothenberg purchased the property in 2015 for $4.5 million, according to a source with financial knowledge of the firm. It was described as a multiple tenancy building in a , which said the seller was seeking a “creative type” for the 12,000-square-foot, three-story brick and timber building. The listing said that at the time that the third floor was “occupied by a tenant who could remain with new lease or vacate with notice for an owner-user.” The second floor was vacant when the ad was published. The first floor was being leased at the time to the national restaurant chain Extreme Pizza. Asked how he planned to respond to the Planning Department’s , Rothenberg suggested he was unaware of it, as well as of any zoning laws that the office might be violating. “1062 Folsom has not been converted at any point as long as we’ve been here,” he wrote TechCrunch in an email. “I’m not aware of any zoning laws being violated, and I’m glad you reached out to clear the misconceptions.” The violation, presumably brought to the city’s attention by a person or parties who want to hamstring Rothenberg, looks highly problematic for the beleaguered investor. To correct it, says the city, Rothenberg Ventures must “contact the staff planner listed above to arrange for an inspection of the Property within 15 days from the date of this notice,” marked October 19th — this coming Wednesday. If a “general office use is confirmed [to be in] operation on the second and third stories at 1062 Folsom Street, then you must cease all operations of the general office use,” it continues. Finally, it says, to “prevent further enforcement action and avoid accrual of penalties, the responsible party must provide adequate evidence to demonstrate that either no violation exists or that the violation has been abated.” Rothenberg has two weeks from Wednesday to resolve the issue or face penalties of up to $250 per day. As if that weren’t bad enough, Rothenberg Ventures may be subject to an additional $1,308.00 fine, plus any additional accrued time and materials cost for the investigation. A source close to the matter tells TechCrunch that Rothenberg had carved out most of the building for office use, as well as a co-working space for startups and portfolio companies. , for example, says it occupies 8,000 square feet of the building. Meanwhile, sources close to Rothenberg have told TechCrunch the firm is nearly out of money. We’ve also been told Rothenberg has been looking for outside investments and was recently trying to raise new funding for the firm in Arizona. Rothenberg is further facing a proposed launched by one former employee who says the firm systematically failed to pay employees in back wages. A alleges Rothenberg owes one former employee at least $109,000 for credit card charges made on behalf of the firm. Rothenberg could potentially face a public relations backlash, as well. The tech community has endured a famously strained relationship with San Francisco residents for years, owing to the scarcity of rental units in a flourishing city with very little area for development available. Indeed, with rents in San Francisco soaring to some of the even many high-paid tech workers have expanded their housing searches into neighboring cities, including Oakland.
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Snapsheet raises $20 million for app to help drivers file claims after a crash
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Lora Kolodny
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A Chicago-based startup called has raised a Series C round of $20 million to make life easier for people who have been through a car crash. The company’s cloud-based software is used by auto insurance providers to guide users through a photo- and information-gathering process on the scene of an accident. It is basically white labeled as a mobile app for each auto insurance provider. On the back end, Snapsheet helps the insurance providers virtually process claims without having to send an adjuster to inspect a vehicle. The startup’s Series C funding came, in part, from big names in the insurance world. The deal was led by F-Prime Capital and IA Capital Group, and joined by strategic backers Fosun Insurance Group, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Intact Financial Corp. and USAA. The startup has been working with new school insurance carriers like MetroMile and Turo, and has racked up 35 corporate clients so far, according to a company statement. Snapsheet President CJ Przybyl said claims handling is becoming more sophisticated, thanks to technology like smartphones, crowdsourced photos, telematics and machine learning. It’s integrating all the technology it can into its platform to help insurance providers process claims more quickly, to get their customers paid as soon as possible and back in safe, repaired vehicles. The company will use its new funding for product development, and hiring especially in client support, sales and marketing roles he said. Although he acknowledged that software like Snapsheet’s could be put to use to help other insurance providers analyze damage to homes or other property, Przybyl said auto claims represent such a huge market, the company won’t seek to expand beyond autos. “Insurance tech is winner take most for players that really stay focused and understand how important customer service is,” he said. Snapsheet investor and F-Prime Partner Ben Malka said one big reason his firm backed the company is the effect its technology has on the customers of auto insurance providers. “People who use Snapsheet in conjunction with their carriers claims process end up with a superior customer experience. NPS scores are significantly better most other claims resolution methods,” he said, referencing the “net promoter scores” of auto insurance providers. Additionally, he said, Snapsheet is tapping into new willingness on the part of insurance companies to use tech for a competitive advantage. “The insurance sector is embracing innovation more forcefully than in years past,” he said. Przybyl said one thing Snapsheet intends to develop, given the funding, is machine learning that can predict what a customer’s questions might be, before they ask them, about filing a claim or the status of a claim. With that kind of system in place, the Snapsheet-powered app can deliver information to a customer before they have become anxious about finding it, he said.
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Targeting the untapped market of wearables for elder care
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Rahmat Shoureshi
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Today’s 20-something tech wizards might not worry about the challenges of old age — but they should. Seniors represent a huge untapped market for tech companies. While just 13 percent of America’s population is 65 or older today, that slice will jump to by 2030. One area that holds particular promise? Wearables. Such technology is already supporting healthier lifestyles. More than of Americans are using wearables. Ralph Lauren, Adidas and other top brands have smart wear to help people optimize their workout routines. Wearables that foster healthy aging and independent living will soon fill seniors’ wardrobes. With recent advances in nanotechnology, “smart clothes” that monitor seniors’ health and remind them to take their medications are on the way. Analysts predict that medical applications will soon account for the in the smart textile industry, reaching $843 million by 2021. Until recently, smart textiles weren’t so wearable. Composed of metallic fibers, they were bulky, fragile and often unattractive. But new futuristic threads –called “ “– allow designers to embroider circuits into fabric with super precision, making wearables lightweight, comfortable and low-cost. Wearables empower patients to take active roles in managing their own health. For seniors, that can include new ways to manage such chronic illnesses as diabetes and heart disease. Chronic disease accounts for an astounding of U.S. health spending. More than have at least one chronic condition. Technology that helps seniors avoid complications from their conditions can yield tremendous savings by eliminating unnecessary emergency room visits and hospital stays. Smart watches are already being used to patients when it’s time to take their pills. In the future, seniors with hypertension could put away bulky cuffs in favor of smaller, wrist-worn devices to blood pressure. Seniors with diabetes may soon manage their illness with the help of intelligent footwear. New Zealand startup is collaborating with the University of Nottingham on a pair of sensor-equipped “ ” that can warn diabetics when they are at risk for foot ulcers. T-shirts made by Canada’s , meanwhile, can keep track of wearers’ stress levels, and even send vital signs to family members and doctors. The company its thread-based health sensors will prevent from heart failure to seizures. For the more than who suffer from vision loss, mobility is often a nightmare. Sensors can change that. While canes can help the visually impaired detect obstacles on the ground, they can’t tell users which way to face or when to turn. Technology is coming to the rescue. The of wearable tech relied on tiny speakers that users inserted into their ears to receive warnings — a good first step. But since many visually impaired people rely on a heightened sense of hearing to compensate for their lack of vision, audio signals transmitted by the devices proved distracting. Designers have learned from their earlier efforts and are developing to assist the blind and partially sighted. Sensors that emit ultrasound waves to detect objects can be clipped to clothing or woven into vests. As the user approaches an obstacle, the sensor vibrates, growing in intensity and frequency the closer the obstacle gets. Take ‘ Eyeronman , which employs three different types of sensors to guide the visually impaired. The vest’s sensors communicate with an electronic textile shirt, which vibrates in a particular spot to indicate impending obstacles and their locations. More than anything, wearables can keep seniors safe and independent. Perhaps most important? New technology that can prevent life-changing injuries caused by falls. According to government estimates, every year people older than 65 will suffer a fall. falls will result in a broken bone or head injury. The of treating falls in elderly patients is approximately $34 billion annually, and the problem will only become more prevalent as baby boomers age. Wearable tech can help reduce the risk of falling. Washington-based , which designs technology for runners, recently teamed up with to give seniors some extra support. The partnership is developing a that uses flexible textile sensors to alert wearers when they are about to lose their balance. Coming : wearables outfitted with airbags to cushion users in the event of a tumble. Today’s tech executives are laser focused on millennials. But tomorrow’s tech gadgets will offer revolutionary ways to stave off disease to enhance independence. That’s why, with America’s population steadily and rapidly growing older, it’s time to start thinking about seniors.
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Apple hires CMU professor as director of AI research to smarten up Siri
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Devin Coldewey
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Apple is making a visible push in the direction of AI today by hiring Carnegie Mellon University professor for what appears to be a newly minted position: director of AI research. Salakhutdinov, who , works in the fields of deep learning and neural networks; he’s published dozens of papers in the last couple of years alone. The topics he’s worked on run the gamut, but the main thread is one of human-like understanding of various media: recognizing objects in images, actions in videos, and so on. He linked to an through which people could apply to join his team, though the description is predictably vague: We are looking for exceptional hands-on research scientists with a proven track record in a variety of machine learning methods; from the realms of deep learning, reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and computer perception. You will be joining a world-class, multidisciplinary team and will be participating in cutting-edge research in deep learning, machine intelligence, and artificial intelligence. You will be solving real-world, large-scale problems. PhDs only, by the way. Stay in school, kids! Tim Cook that the company would be establishing a research lab in Yokohama partly dedicated to researching AI. He described AI as “horizontal in nature, running across all products,” saying it was used “in ways most people don’t even think about.” These moves may seem to some like playing catch-up with rivals Google and Microsoft, which have been dedicating serious resources to basic AI research for years. Apple’s name was conspicuously absent from a and Google is in the middle of a full-court press as it looks to integrate its Assistant platform into as many products as possible. But it must be mentioned that, for better and for worse, Apple has always been a more private company when it comes to this sort of thing; its researchers rarely present at conferences or publish papers, and their advances are rarely heard about until they’re being described in the dulcet tones of Jony Ive in a meticulously crafted product introduction video. We’ve contacted Apple and Salakhutdinov for more information and will update this post if we hear back.
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Project Blue aims to snap the first picture of an exoplanet in Alpha Centauri
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Devin Coldewey
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talk of the solar system this year, but as exciting as they are, their existence (as is often the case in astronomy) is more inference than direct observation. A new private effort known as hopes to change that with a satellite built for a single purpose: to directly image an exoplanet in the Alpha Centauri system. “There’s this confluence of scientific imperative with the exoplanet discoveries from Kepler, and the whole community being energized,” said Jon Morse, former NASA program director and leader of the project. “It’s plausible that there are Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits around the two sun-stars in the Alpha Centauri system — and we’re going to go find out.” To that end, Morse and his colleagues started the , a private space research firm. BoldlyGo is working on a few projects, but Project Blue is a collaboration with Alpha Centauri-focused nonprofit . Recent surveys of space by Kepler and other missions have revealed that Earth-like exoplanets are actually fairly common, cosmically speaking. In fact, recent data already suggest there’s one in the Alpha Centauri system – but orbiting the red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri (and it too ). Project Blue will be looking at the other, more sun-like stars there, known as Alpha Centauri A and B. Artist’s concept of how the system might look up close. I can guess what you’re thinking: if we know the planets are there, don’t we just have to point something like the Hubble in that direction? Turns out planets is much easier than actually them. And it’s still really hard! Even the closest stars are so distant that the strongest instruments we have available can barely detect them as single points of radiation — to say nothing of any planets they might have around them. Morse compared it to trying to see a firefly while staring directly at a lighthouse – from 10 miles away. But recent advances in an imaging technique called coronagraphy make it possible. Essentially, you have to very, carefully block out the lighthouse. “The coronagraph, the instrument type, goes way back,” Morse said. “It starts with observing the sun. When people discovered the corona, they did so by blocking out the disc of the sun so you could see faint things next to it. We’re borrowing that technique and applying it to blocking the light of another star so we can see a planet that might be a billion or more times fainter.” The University of Massachusetts Lowell is one of the project’s partners; its scientists have been pushing the boundaries of interstellar coronagraphy. Test flights sent to the edge of space have demonstrated that coronagraph systems can successfully block out the light of a distant star, then make the minute adjustments necessary to their imaging and mirror systems to show surrounding objects. These prototypes will need to be improved by an order of magnitude, probably, but no one expected expanding the frontiers of astronomical observation to be easy. With a general idea of the system and what type of object they’re looking for, they can narrow the search considerably — essentially they’ll look where Earth would be if it was in Alpha Centauri. If it works, the results will be historic – though you probably won’t want to print them out. The planet itself won’t be much more than a handful of pixels. But oh, what pixels! Simulation of what the telescope might actually capture. “We won’t resolve features on the planet. It will be a point source, a ‘pale blue dot’ just like the famous Voyager picture, seeing the Earth offset from the sun,” Morse explained, “but over two years’ time, we will see it move.” Careful observation of that tiny moving pixel will tell us color, which tells us about atmosphere and surface chemistry; orbital characteristics, which tell us about volume, mass, and possible internal composition; other data may tell us about its temperature, the presence of moons or other objects, and so on. It’s only possible because the telescope, floating in low-earth orbit, will be so specific to the task at hand. The satellite won’t be turning its attention to some other system afterwards. Of course, the first direct imagery of an Earth-like planet near a Sun-like star will be more than enough to justify the mission. Project Blue is still far from a reality. It’s in the conceptual design phase — which, it bears mentioning, is different from concept phase for a product. In this case, it’s figuring out the exact parameters of the mission, from the size of the telescope mirror to the likely launch date and orbital path. “We’ll have a mission development program which will look like a , where you have Phase A, Phase B, Phase C/D, launch, then a Phase E science program,” said Morse. “We want to get Phase A going in 2017, so we can have a payload ready for launch by 2019, 2020. Then we’ll spend about two years intensively studying Alpha Centauri A and B looking for those planets.” The cost the project, all inclusive, should be in the “tens of millions” — with a goal of $25 million. Compared to many a mission in the offing, that’s dirt cheap. Being able to hitch a ride on a commercial rocket helps, and the single-purpose design keeps costs down as well. “We do need to find backers, all the way from possible crowdfunding to high net worth individuals,” Morse said. “But we also want to use in-kind contributions from partners, and perhaps could have the government as a partner.” It’s ambitious, but then again, pretty much anything to do with space is. Expect more updates next year as Project Blue hammers out the details.
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Biotech startup Zymergen nabs $130 million from Softbank
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Sarah Buhr
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, a Bay Area startup creating all sorts of materials from genetically altered microbes, just raised $130 million in Series B funding from Softbank. For those unfamiliar, the company makes crazy new materials out of genetically altered microbes. It was busy to make these microbes for mass production of various materials during its last round of funding. CEO Josh Hoffman now plans to use the new funding to continue to grow the business — including adding a bunch of new staff and big name partners. “This is the round that allows us to continue gathering talent, add customers and invest in the long-term as well,” CEO Josh Hoffman told TechCrunch. Hoffman didn’t want to say who his company might be working with but did disclose they’re all in the Fortune 500. Zymergen aims to develop better yeast strains to make foods and fragrances or narrows down the molecular properties to create new types of materials faster and cheaper for these companies. “We’ve got a proven platform that allows us to materially improve the economics of big, mature, at-scale businesses for Fortune 500 companies. And to give you a flavor, they might have a $600 million revenue business and we can improve that margin by three to 5x,” Hoffman said. “A Fortune 500 company cares about that.” It’s a strange new world on the cutting-edge of biology and who knows what these scientists will bid their machines and microbes to make next. But Zymergen is not unique in the space. Ginkgo Bioworks and Novozymes also work with larger companies to make crazy materials using microorganisms. Ginkgo being a small, Boston-based startup with an equally impressive amount of funding at $154 million and Novozymes as the Goliath with over $1 billion in revenue. In any case, there are venture firms, telecoms and financial institutions with bets in the new industry and money to be made. Softbank led the round for Zymergen and was joined by previous investors DCVC, True Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, DFJ, Innovation Endeavors, Obvious Ventures, and Two Sigma Ventures. Zymergen also received funding from new investors Iconiq Capital, Prelude Ventures, and Tao Capital Partners. The Japanese telecom will add key executive Deep Nishar to the board. He will be joined by the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate Dr. Steven Chu.
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Crunch Report | Facebook Launches Workplace for All
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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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Anker is launching a Navdy clone called Roav
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Matt Burns
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Watch out, Navdy. Here comes Anker. The Chinese consumer electronic brand is about to release an in-vehicle heads-up display that appears to be similar in design and execution to the . The , and like the , the device appears to take information from a user’s phone and display it on a transparent screen positioned in front of the driver. The product images show navigation, media playback information, the vehicle’s speed, and caller ID. The Roav sits on a pedestal that apparently sticks to the dashboard — just like the Navdy. Other than a few images, not much is known about the product. We reached out to Anker for clarification but the company has yet to response. The and the were created in late September. It seems like the was made in early October. According to the product site, the Roav is set to ship in November. Navdy is currently shipping its product to test users. General availability for Navdy’s devices has not been announced yet. Doug Simpson founded Navdy in 2013 and has so far raised 26.8M through three rounds of funding. In 2014 the company announced the product in pre-orders. The product was originally supposed to ship in 2015. That didn’t happen. In July 2016 the company started shipping some pre-orders to select users through a beta program. Though revealed three years ago, Navdy has yet to face serious copy-cats. Anker’s product appears to match Navdy step for step. And if Anker’s other products are any indication, the Roav should be decent quality. Started in 2011 by a former Google engineer, Anker is a top electronics brand on Amazon. Search the retailer for portable battery or speaker, and Anker products will be among the top results. The Chinese company sells low-priced power packs, phone cases, keyboards and mice, and products like lamps, oil diffusers and even vacuums under its new home office brand, . I’ve found Anker products to be affordable and reliable. We reached out to Anker and Navdy for comment.
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A hedge fund is now suing Theranos, citing “lies, material misstatements, and omissions”
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Connie Loizos
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(PFM), a San Francisco-based hedge fund that reportedly wrote out a $96 million check to Theranos back in 2014, is now suing the blood-testing startup and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, saying it was duped into its investment “through a series of lies, material misstatements, and omissions,” and accusing the firm of engaging in “securities fraud and other violations by fraudulently inducing” it to invest and to maintain its investment in the company. The in which Partner appears to have participated drove the firm to a reported valuation of $9 billion. Fortune in June 2014 in a flattering feature story about Holmes, for which it later published a protracted correction. , in a letter sent earlier today to its shareholders about the suit, filed in a Delaware court, Partner says Holmes and another former Theranos executive blatantly lied to the hedge fund by claiming it had developed “proprietary technologies that worked” and that it was nearing regulatory approvals. Theranos is saying the “suit is without merit, and Theranos will fight it vigorously.” Theranos announced last week that it’s shutting down its laboratory operations and firing 340 people — about 40 percent of its staff — to focus instead on an initiative to create small medical testing machines. The new miniaturized devices aim to allow lab tests to be “decentralized” and carried out at more locations, but it of scientists, doctors, and lab professionals when unveiled at a medical conference in Philadelphia in August. Researchers began airing doubts about Theranos more than a year ago, arguing that its biggest claims weren’t substantiated in any scientific publications. After the began casting even more serious doubt on whether Theranos’s technology actually worked, federal regulators began scrutinizing the company more closely and in July from owning or operating a medical laboratory for at least the next two years. Theranos has raised at least $750 million from investors since its official founding in 2003, according to numerous reports, including in the WSJ. Its early backers include DFJ, ATA Ventures, Continental Ventures, and Tako Ventures, shows CrunchBase. According to an , some of its later-stage investors include BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Continental Properties Co., Esoom Enterprise of Taiwan), Jupiter Partners, Palmieri Trust, Dixon Doll, Ray and B.J. Cassin. Partner is seeking to recoup its investment; it’s also asking for damages, according to a source who spoke with the WSJ.
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Greylock closes $1 billion fund
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Katie Roof
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Floodgate’s Mike Maples on what makes category kings
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Harry Stebbings
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Category leaders usually capture 70-80 percent of the profits in their market, which is why venture funds need to find them to gain the outsized returns they must generate in order to return their fund. In our latest interview with , founding partner at Floodgate, we discover the characteristics of these category kings and how they change consumer behavior. These category kings don’t just make something to sell to somebody, they introduce the world to a new category of product or service. For example, Maples argues that “Jobs’ greatest genius was his ability to invent three new categories: the digital music player, the smartphone and the tablet.” These products changed the way consumers live. Category leaders have the ability to change consumer spending habits. As Maples highlights, “Before Starbucks, I paid 50 cents a coffee, now I’m happy paying $3.50 for a latte in Starbucks.” In the opposite direction, the rise of AWS has caused consumers to have a fundamental mindset shift in how much cloud services should cost. Both changes allow for Amazon and Starbucks to assert their dominance in controlling consumer spending and ultimately controlling their category. In the opposite direction, the rise of AWS has caused consumers to have a fundamental mindset shift in how much cloud services should cost. Both changes allow for Amazon and Starbucks to assert their dominance in controlling consumer spending and ultimately controlling their category. Ultimately, the greatest category creators do not leave their leadership to chance. They push the boundaries to educate consumers to see the world from their perspective. They acknowledge that markets can only evolve as fast as human behavior can evolve. They time their product strategies, marketing and go-to-market in short bursts to maximize adoption.
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Watch Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain, episode two
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Rebecca Friedman
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Even more fascinating than the idea of a digital currency are those who dedicate their lives to it. A network of miners all across the world, many of whom are in China, run the system. They not only process every Bitcoin transaction, but they also play a large role in governing the platform, for better or for worse. Episode two looks at where these Bitcoin mines are developing and who is behind them. It also explores the role of these miners, the decision power that they posses and the delicate balance of power required for the platform to operate in the way in which it was intended. Check out episode one and episode two above. New episodes will be released on TechCrunch.com or on our daily throughout this week.
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The new world of mobility
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Nir Erez
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The race to rule the autonomous car market is on. , and now have stepped up to the challenge, each with their own vision and ambitions as to what a driverless world will look like. What’s clear is that technology is playing an ever-increasing role — where have stumbled — allowing us to completely rethink the mobility landscape. In the 20 century, the car was king. Henry Ford’s vision that every individual would own their own vehicle and travel as they pleased has certainly come true, but along with it has come congested roads, air pollution and safety concerns. This century, we will see those trends reverse. Cars will be viewed less as a singular source of personal transportation and more as a piece of the evolving transit ecosystem. On-demand access to more than one mode of transportation has become the new norm. “By addressing the first-and-last mile issue related to public transit access, new mobility solutions can potentially contribute to bridging gaps in existing transportation networks and encouraging multimodality,” indicates the in their latest report. Three trends will be important to watch as advancement of the autonomous vehicle speeds up. Our relationship with the automobile is already changing. younger generations are less likely to own a car, and monthly sales data shows that new car sales are slowing. While this data suggests the end of car ownership as we know it is near, a says that Americans are simply taking a more “car-lite” approach, instead of eschewing the auto completely. The report also shows that the latest mobility solutions, such as car-sharing services like and ride-hailing like and , are actually helping existing public transportation. The report goes on to say: “The research conducted for this study suggests that, instead of competing for the same riders, public transit and ridesourcing complement one another by serving different trip types.” New modes of transportation may fill the current gaps in the transit ecosystem, but much of the mobility landscape often still operates in isolation. This won’t be the case for long. As we’ve recently seen with , and in Pittsburgh, the further mixing of automakers, tech disruptors and cities will continue as consumer behaviors and demands shape the transport ecosystem. We’ve even seen this shift in the car-rental market with to appeal to a broader demographic. Above all, what will rule is the aggregation of multiple sources of mobility, with an aim to ensure accessibility to all — connected mobility. A crucial element to connecting all the various mobility solutions is the collection, monitoring and use of data to improve the overall user experience. For example, in China to identify problem areas and predict when more cars are needed on the road. Analyzing this data is the key to unlocking the true potential of changing mobility habits, which lies in deep analysis of user data. How communities and citizens participate, whether via crowdsourcing or behaviors, will become part of another layer of the evolution. We’ve only just scratched the surface of mobility’s potential. The following data point, shared at the recent Intel Developer Forum by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich shows that there is much more to come: “The average autonomous vehicle, by 2020, will produce 4,000 gigabytes per day,” he said in his keynote. He prefaced it by saying that the average person generates about “6-to-700 megabits a day. By 2020, the estimate is 1.5 gigabytes a day for the average person.”
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Duolingo’s new chatbots help you brush up on your foreign language conversation skills
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Anthony Ha
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A lot of startups are talking about the possibilities of chatbots, but recently — practicing a new language. The Duolingo chatbots allow users to hold text message conversations in French, Spanish or German, with the chatbots taking on different personas to discuss different topics. You probably won’t mistake them for real people, but they do allow you to get closer to the experience of conversing with a native speaker. And if you’re not sure what to say next, you can get some suggestions by hitting the “help my reply” button. I did a quick demo of the chatbots (which are currently iOS-only) in the video above. Specifically, I tried the Spanish chatbot, because it’s a language that I can kinda, sorta speak. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you have to complete the first few Duolingo lessons before you get access to the chatbot feature — which meant that as a newbie, I had to borrow my sister’s account ( ). With their bright, colorful characters and their tendency to stick to a single topic, the chatbots reminded me of my Spanish textbook, but hey, they gave me the chance to exercise my conversational skills — frankly, in a way that I haven’t in a long, long time.
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Alphabet reports a strong third quarter despite free-falling advertising values
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Matthew Lynley
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Alphabet’s strategy of trying to stuff the difference between declining mobile advertising value with additional clicks appears to still be paying off as the company once again showed Wall Street that it can make a ton of money and continue to grow. Alphabet (we’re just gonna call it what it is because we’re talking about the core business: Google) reported earnings of $9.06 per share on revenue of $22.4 billion. That’s another 20 percent gain compared to the same quarter a year ago. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $8.64 per share on revenue of $22.05 billion. Google’s business was for some time called into question because the value of advertisements on mobile was not as high as on desktop — specifically desktop search — which was Google’s sweet spot. Indeed, Google’s cost-per-click, a key metric determining the value of an ad, fell another 11 percent year-over-year this quarter. But aggregate paid clicks increased 33 percent in the third quarter year-over-year, showing it’s still able to compensate for that decrease. In the last quarter, Google’s cost-per-click fell 7 percent compared to the second quarter in 2015, and cost-per-click was down 5 percent quarter-over-quarter. Still, it’s going to remain a question mark for some time as its cost-per-click continues at a double-digit decline. Google has to get its ads on as many devices and in as many mediums as it possibly can — whether that’s through a voice-driven speaker, its own phone where it can control the experience or pushing its services across as many devices as it possibly can. Wall Street may tolerate that decline for the time being, but it’s going to have to taper off at some point if Google is going to show it’s going to be a strong core business. For now, because the company’s strategy is working, and that last quarter the company showed it could continue to work, it looks like Wall Street is happy. The stock isn’t going ballistic — it’s up about 2 percent — but it’s not on a wild swing down right now, either. In addition, Google is also authorizing a roughly $7 billion share repurchase program, in another move that is going to return additional value to its overlords on Wall Street. As the years have passed, Google has gone from one of the only online advertising juggernauts to going head-to-head with Facebook, whose advertising business is rapidly expanding and offering a good alternative to Google. Both perform really well at different parts of the marketing funnel — Facebook is great for brand awareness while Google is good for capturing purchase intent with search — but they’re increasingly competing with each other for advertising dollars. And that’s also not to mention emerging platforms like Snapchat which, while it isn’t necessarily a threat to Google , represents a potential additional advertising platform that could suck away the dollars Google is hoping to acquire as it tries to further expand its advertising business. Snapchat’s valuation , and it previously projected it would hit $1 billion in revenue in 2017. So while Alphabet has been trying to rapidly roll out new devices and markets, like Google Home and the Pixel, all eyes are still going to be on its advertising business for now — which is staggering. In fact, questions about the company’s advertising growth were at the time that showed that it could continue to grow that business. [graphiq id=”gSkC7iDYvDD” title=”Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) Quarterly Revenue Last 8 Quarters” width=”600″ height=”525″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/gSkC7iDYvDD” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/8520977/Alphabet-Inc-in-Mountain-View-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] Okay! Back to . Earlier this month, held an event where it , the Pixel, and an Amazon Echo-like device in Google Home. It’s also pushing its voice assistant, Google Assistant, hard across all its devices as it looks to get people closer and closer to using Google for mundane tasks. While not necessarily monetized, there’s plenty of opportunity to do so, and keeping users glued to their devices gives them more eyeballs that they could potentially monetize with ads. But not everything is well within the Alphabet empire. The company’s “other bets” revenue increased only marginally from $141 million to $197 million while still losing nearly $1 billion. The loss declined year-over-year — from $980 million in the third quarter last year to $865 in the third quarter this year — but Alphabet, and in particular CFO Ruth Porat, have indicated that the company is going to be more judicious about its spending going forward. In the past year, Alphabet shares have gone up by around 11 percent. That’s not quite the crazy performance of Facebook — which is seen to be a huge growth opportunity — which has grown around 24 percent. But Google is also worth around $550 billion, and even small-point swings represent an enormous shift in value for the company. At one point, even, Google surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the world. [graphiq id=”6URLAvHXIZT” title=”Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) Stock Price – 1 Year” width=”600″ height=”463″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/6URLAvHXIZT” link=”http://stock-screener.findthecompany.com/l/3759/GOOGL” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”]
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Samsung asks carriers and retailers to halt sales of the Note 7
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Brian Heater
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It seemed unlikely we would make it through the end of the day without some more big news out of Samsung. And now, just after the close of business hours here on the East Coast, we’ve got something . After a string of statements regarding investigations around the safety of replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices, the company is officially calling on carrier and retail partners to stop selling the handset while the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission looks into the growing number of incidents. “Because consumers’ safety remains our top priority,” the statement explains, “Samsung will ask all carrier and retail partners globally to stop sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 while the investigation is taking place.” Rather than issuing yet another replacement plan as it did early last month (didn’t go so great the first time, after all), the company is offering up a full refund for consumers or a refund for a different device, along with a $25 gift certificate or other add-on for the pain of dealing with two rounds of recalls. Along with its note to carriers and retailers, the company is asking Note owners to turn their devices off and take them back to where they bought them. According to the official Safety Recall statement, This marks a major turning point — but perhaps not the end of the saga. The CPSC’s investigation remains ongoing, and Samsung says that it “ A lot has unfolded over the last several days. On Thursday, the first reported case of a problematic replacement unit surfaced, causing an entire Southwest plane to evacuate while waiting at the gate. Since then, a number of other reports have hit the media, leading top carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and, most recently, US Cellular until given the go-ahead by the CPSC. Earlier today, Samsung that it was suspending Note production, stating that was, “temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters.” The same statement contained acknowledgement of carrier actions, stating, “We recognize that carrier partners have stopped sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note7 in response to reports of heat damage issues, and we respect their decision.” As with its announcement in early September, this news doesn’t appear to be an official recall so much as a strongly worded suggestion. The company will likely wait for official word from the CPSC on that front. In the meantime, it’s suggested that users of both the original and replacement Notes surrender their devices. Meantime, more info can be found .
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John Biggs
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Watch the first episode of our new series Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain
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Rebecca Friedman
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We have a new series launching this week called Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain. The six-episode series, produced by , examines the rise of Bitcoin and the tech that allows it to operate. The first episode will answer all your questions about the Bitcoin platform and how it works. Why did futurists want to create a totally digital currency? How would it work? What will the effects of Bitcoin and the blockchain have on the future of our economy? Episode one seeks to explain the blockchain, the technology that allows bitcoins to be transferred between entities, as well as the motives behind its creators. The episode also examines the platform’s future and how it will be received by governments and big banks, the very institutions its creators were trying to sidestep or even overturn. Check out episode one above and episode two . New episodes will be released on TechCrunch.com or on our daily throughout this week.
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The World Economic Forum is setting up a tech-focused hub in San Francisco
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Jonathan Shieber
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role that technology now plays in the global economy, the World Economic Forum to connect tech companies and policymakers in the heart of the world’s technology industry. Building off the Forum’s thesis of a “ ,” the new facility will focus on bringing government officials and tech companies together to create frameworks for more productive legislative policies that can be implemented worldwide. “Depending on the collective choices we make -– as consumers, as communities, as business, government, and civil society leaders -– these technological breakthroughs could give us the power to move into a world that is even more prosperous, while being more sustainable and more inclusive,” reads an early version of remarks prepared by World Economic Forum founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab. “Alternatively, we could end up in a world where our economic, political and social systems are more rigid, more unequal and more conflicted.” Despite their , the relationship between policymakers and the tech companies that have sprung from the civic-minded seeds they nurtured with financing has a thorny or even openly antagonistic one (cf. ). “There’s a policy question about how do you maximize the benefit to humans and minimize the downside” of most innovations coming from technology companies, according to Murat Sönmez, the man who will lead WEF’s efforts in San Francisco. “Already the forum works at a global level with policy makers, governments, and international organizations. They’re all intrigued by and interested in these technology developments,” Sönmez said. “We’re bringing the rest of the world to Silicon Valley.” The WEF’s “Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution” will be home to around 60 employees working on 10 distinct policy areas, ranging from drones and autonomous vehicles to artificial intelligence and robotics to precision medicine. The rapid pace of technological innovation and adoption is creating a global society increasingly divided along an axis of access to technology. In both the slow-growth economies in North America and Europe and the high-growth economies in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the ability to use technology is one of the key factors influencing economic success and failure. Schwab, himself, notes this in his prepared remarks, saying: One of the issues we all should be seriously concerned about is the rising level of inequality. In many developed countries, including the United States, median incomes have stagnated or fallen and many people feel that life will be worse — not only for themselves, but also for their children. Millions of people around the world lack not just economic opportunity but, even more importantly, hope and meaning in their lives. In this sense, we need to take a far-sighted systems approach to avoid the popular backlash that already dominates our political discussions. Some technology companies in the U.S. and abroad recognize these issues and are already grappling with them. Meanwhile, governments are wrestling with the issues, as well. The mounting tension between policymakers and the innovation economy certainly needs to be resolved, and perhaps the forum can help. From their new offices in the Presidio, the working groups will develop recommendations and policy frameworks that can be adopted globally. It’s akin to work the WEF with autonomous vehicles, in a program that Sönmez says other cities around the world are clamoring to replicate. And, Sönmez says, the relationship between government and industry is just as important for the industrial players as it is for the politicians. “As [tech companies] get into the deployment phase, currently the policy frameworks in place can get in the way,” according to Sönmez. For some, seeing the World Economic Forum set up shop in San Francisco could just be another sign of the consolidation of a monoculture of the global elite that extends from Alibaba in China to Alphabet in Silicon Valley (with some stops in Japan, Russia, Korea, India, Germany, France and the U.K. along the way). That criticism is also something that Schwab attempts to acknowledge, as well (at least according to his prepared remarks): Globalization and capitalism are seen as the main reason for people’s anger, but the most profound anxiety comes from disruptive new technologies such as robotization, big data, distributed ledger, artificial intelligence, and many more. We know that these developments hold great promise, but they also raise legitimate questions. The global economy may have entered the “new normal” — as some say — but society is facing the “new unknown”, adding to the general morosity. Ultimately, mapping the uncharted territories of this new unknown will require governments and industry to work in tandem to solve the problems of the day — and address whatever new challenges the global economy will face. Challenges, that in many cases, may be caused by the innovations of the industry itself. Follow the live stream of the WEF’s San Francisco launch .
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Deloitte gears up for the launch of a $20 million XPRIZE to eradicate cancer
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Sarah Buhr
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XPRIZE, the incentivized prize competition for breakthrough science and technology, has announced three new prizes. Among them — ALS, avatars and Deloitte’s Cancer XPRIZE. Deloitte is working in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute and Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to bring some of the best and brightest minds together to rid the world of what is the of death globally. XPRIZE Deloitte’s XPRIZE competition ready to launch last week, but Deloitte’s Beth Meagher, who’s heading the Cancer XPRIZE challenge, tells TechCrunch it will be a couple of months before that happens. In the meantime, Meagher’s team hopes to bring in hundreds of folks eager to tackle the disease using cutting-edge techniques. “Our whole goal is to rapidly, accurately and affordably screen for early cancers where it will reduce human suffering,” Meagher told TechCrunch over the phone from her Washington, D.C. office. Deloitte will be matching up teams of researchers, data scientists, biohackers and the like with those working in advocacy, regulations and other industry experts who can aid them with resources to speed up the process. Similar to the Google Lunar XPRIZE, the winning team to come up with the best way to tackle cancer will earn millions in cash in a grand-prize giveaway. This time, it will be $20 million to the winners (as opposed to Google’s $30 million grand prize), but there will also be a few $500,000 microprizes along the way to incentivize those in the ring. It’s still very early and Meagher and her team are looking forward to announcing who some of the players will be in the coming months, but she said she expects the whole thing to take about three years in total before getting to the grand-prize winner.
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Samsung’s combo desktop/speaker is a weird sort of art
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Brian Heater
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If I’m Samsung, I’m looking for the next big product to capture the public’s attention while my public relations wing is attempting to put out a whole lot of proverbial fires (to go along with the literal variety). This isn’t that. In fact, Samsung just kind of let this one loose into the world without any real fanfare. And it’s got a name to match. The DP700C6A-X01US ArtPC ArtPC Pulse Premium Desktop (ArtPC Pulse for short) is a compact cylindrical desktop PC that looks positioned to take on the likes of the Mac Pro. Kind of, sort of. The 10.7-inch tall device doesn’t really do the minimalist thing all that well, nor does it have the cloth-covered fashionista flare of . It does share one key feature with the latter, however, devoting a portion of its real estate to a speaker—swapping HP’s Bang & Olufsen branding for Harman Kardon. The 360-degree speaker lives up top, alongside some ambient lighting. On the front, you’ll find a whole bunch of USB-C and HDMI ports. Inside, you get an Intel Core i5 processor, 256GB of solid state storage and 8GB of RAM. All of that’s , running $1,200 — firmly between the aforementioned pieces of hardware. It should start shipping at the end of the month.
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How VCs can do more good
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Paul Arnold
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Venture capital does many great things for the United States. Importantly, it fuels the innovation economy, churning out disruptive products, companies and entire new industries. Indeed, venture is extreme capitalism. Creative destruction rolls over incumbents, and society is usually better off as a result. But a good society requires more than just a robust economy — it also demands fairness and morality. While technology innovations can benefit everyone, the venture economy concentrates the direct financial benefits among very few people. Silicon Valley has a perception problem enabled by venture. Tech already suffers self-inflicted wounds around and its well-noted . If we don’t do more, we will have a future where venture capital is mentioned in the same breath as Wall Street — a perceived social ill that requires aggressive political intervention. Venture investors are well-positioned to do more, and more good. We want to stimulate the conversation about some of the ways venture can do more to make the world a better place. If nothing else, we want to highlight some ways individuals can do their part. A natural step is to support entrepreneurs outside the venture ecosystem. Venture investors can be strong mentors to anyone building a business. Defy Ventures is the type of organization that makes this happen. Defy’s volunteers work with prisoners, both incarcerated and recently released, to help them build small businesses of their own. It works. Prisoners are building companies like . The recidivism rate of participants is less than 3 percent. We volunteer with the organization as business pitch judges and mentors. is a similar organization working with small local businesses. Experienced business people volunteer to mentor and support local business entrepreneurs in their community. Around San Francisco, this includes local businesses we know and love, like , , and well over 100 more. Pacific Community Ventures also supports small business loans. Diversity is about much more than appearances or even just trying to do the right thing. It’s about selfish motivations, too. Diverse teams make better decisions, as has been shown time and again by research. And they are good for reasons similar to holding a diversification of different types of investments — diverse teams are more robust and resilient, and when new challenges arise, teams with different voices and perspectives are better equipped to handle them. Tech and venture have dismal track records of diversity. The good news is that there is broad interest in improving the situation. Investors should play their role in making this happen. Firm leaders need to first bring investing partner-level diversity into their funds. The top priority is recruiting and developing the next generation. A glimmer of light in the system is that some of the newer firms have greater racial and gender diversity, but it’s far from ideal. The larger, established funds have even further to go. More needs to be done at all levels. Investors should also recruit diversity into portfolio company leadership. Top hires often come through investor referrals or with investor support in closing the candidate. Investors can drive different types of individuals into the process and leadership ranks. Philanthropy can be aligned with greater impact if VCs focus on what they are good at. Encouraging companies to give their product to nonprofit organizations brings needed technology to their efforts, and leverages our strengths in Silicon Valley. Spending time on efforts where you have expertise, like supporting entrepreneurship amongst disadvantages populations, ensures we will have far more impact than in areas we are less well-versed. The old adage rings true: Play to your strengths. A direct giving program is very easy to put in place. sets a wonderful example with his — a commitment to give 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of time and 1 percent of product to philanthropy. It’s modest, yet meaningful. More venture firms should join the esteemed list that includes the likes of , , and . Firms should encourage portfolio companies to take part too. Funds can uniquely support philanthropy by expressing favor for philanthropic limited partners. There are many, including philanthropic foundations, interested in venture investing. And there are organizations like , which creates a channel for philanthropic investing through funds. The strongest performing funds have their pick of limited partners and should give preference to those whose money goes back toward the common good. Benefit Corporations (“B Corps”) could be used at more startups. Investors should support them. B Corps have a fiduciary duty to generate profits for their stakeholders, but this may also have an accompanying social mission. There is no tax risk for a fund’s LPs either. The IRS taxes B Corps just like any other corporation. Investors can also lean on their existing tools. Having even five minutes spent at board meetings to discuss the company’s social commitment will keep it in focus. Investors can leverage their large networks to make introductions and help founders carry out this aspect of their business. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point. Venture forth — and do good.
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Facebook tests ads in Groups, its next potential cash cow
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Josh Constine
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Facebook’s latest trick to earn more revenue without drowning the News Feed is to serve ads to the 1 billion users of its Groups feature. After people reported seeing notices that “We’re testing ads in Groups,” TechCrunch inquired and Facebook confirmed that mobile and desktop versions of Groups in Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand are part of the trial. “We have started to test delivering ads to people in Facebook Groups, and will be evaluating the response before determining how we will move forward,” Facebook told TechCrunch in a statement. The ads will look the same as News Feed ads. They’ll be targeted by Group topic as well as the standard identity-based targeting. Facebook says it will reach News Feed ad load in mid-2017, which means it needs new revenue streams to continue its revenue growth momentum that’s been going strong for years. Ramping up and today’s launch of its new pay-per-user enterprise collaboration tool could shoulder some of the responsibility. Facebook’s also been testing new forms of and even from businesses in Messenger. But the easiest way to generate extra ad dollars may be simply opening up more of Facebook’s traditional browsing to ad placement, and Groups is a massive treasure chest to unlock. Groups was one of Facebook’s first features, starting as a non-functional way to say you support a cause or idea, from human rights to the joy of stepping on a crunchy leaf. The Groups feature was in 2010 to become forums where people could communicate, not just affiliate. By 2014, Groups had grown to 500 million users and gotten its own . Since then, it’s doubled in size thanks to for commerce and other communities. From families, cliques and silly meme sharing, to hobby clubs, protest organizers and professional discussion places, Groups have blossomed into a major part of the Facebook experience. It’s that diversity of purposes that could boost the value of Groups ads. If Facebook can find a way to reliably categorize the Groups to enhance ad targeting, it could reach people of different interests with highly relevant and lucrative ads. Someone liking the Manchester United football team’s Page is a relatively weak targeting signal compared to whether they frequent a Group for diehard ManU fans. The latter could more accurately indicate someone is likely to buy sports merchandise. Facebook will have to learn to identify the topics of Groups that can be cryptically named or range across a mess of subjects. 450 million people now use buy-and-sell groups each month. Facebook just launched a dedicated feature for them. These Groups could be powerful hosts for advertisers, too. For example, they could allow an electronics brand to show ads to users browsing a group for selling TVs or computers. Of course, the social network will have to avoid showing so many ads that they anger visitors and discourage usage. Facebook Groups flourished by contributing a middle ground for sharing between News Feed broadcasting and private messaging. Now after a decade, Groups will start contributing to Facebook’s bottom line. In case it wasn’t clear, Facebook is willing to play the lonnnnnnng game when it comes to monetization.
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Pre-orders go live for $199 Oculus Touch motion controllers
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Lucas Matney
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Oculus is for their Touch motion controllers that bring your hands and body into VR on their Rift headset. The company announced details regarding the controllers, including the $199 price and December 6 ship date, at their Oculus Connect developers conference last week. Oculus Touch pre-orders are now live! Ships December 6. — Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) To atone for some of the major issues that accompanied the Rift at launch, the company is ensuring that Rift owners who bought the system through Oculus.com get priority access to getting Touch as quickly as possible, as long as they order before October 27, that is. This launch is a pretty major one for Oculus, which is treating Touch as a secondary system launch for the Rift. It’s easy to see why; the VR titles I’ve seen that use Touch are some of the coolest virtual reality experiences on the market. There are 35 new games launching with Touch support on December 6. Additionally, all pre-orders will include two bundled titles that take advantage of the new controllers: and The rather pricey peripherals notably also include a second camera sensor to boost tracking accuracy, as well as an add-on mount to connect the controller to a Rock Band guitar. Users can furthermore also secure an additional sensor for $79 to further strengthen the Rift’s tracking system. Hopefully this launch goes better than the Rift’s…
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Duke neurosurgeons test Hololens as an AR assist on tricky procedures
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Devin Coldewey
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One of the several things that makes brain surgery so difficult is that the brain isn’t transparent. So if you want to get at something deep inside, you either have to peel off a few layers or make an educated guess based on other imagery. But augmented reality may offer a third way. A pair of neurosurgeons at Duke are experimenting with a way to reduce the risk of “blind” surgeries where it just isn’t possible to see what you’re doing. An example would be (skip this if you’re squeamish) inserting a catheter to suck out pooled fluid from deep within the brain — far past what it’s safe to expose. Ordinarily such a procedure would be done with the aid of CT scans and precise measurements, letting the surgeon know where in this particular brain they should avoid stabbing a foot-long vacuum needle. In Andrew Cutler and Shervin Rahimpour’s method, the 3D images gleaned from CT scans can be superimposed on the subject’s head — in it, really — using a Microsoft Hololens headset. The catheter needle itself is modeled and tracked as well, so the operator gets real-time feedback. It’s not the first time this sort of thing has been done, but AR and VR assisted surgery is still in very early stages; technical issues abound, but the precise motion tracking of Hololens prevents things like lag, jittery images, and shifting of the in this case rather critical 3D form’s position relative to reality. “Since we can manipulate a hologram without actually touching anything, we have access to everything we need without breaking a sterile field. In the end, this is actually an improvement over the current OR system because the image is directly overlaid on the patient, without having to look to computer screens for aid,” . It’s a long ways from being used on a real person — is a little janky, though doubtless they’d be a bit more deliberate with a real human — but the benefits seem manifest even in this early form.
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Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling automatic email forwarding
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Sarah Perez
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Following Yahoo’s September of a data breach affecting 500 million user accounts, the company has made it more difficult for Yahoo Mail users to transition to another email service. At the beginning of October, Yahoo disabled an email forwarding feature, which would allow users to automatically redirect incoming emails sent to their Yahoo address to another account. The , citing conversations with several Yahoo customers who sought out the feature in wake of the news regarding the data breach. Disabling email forwarding is a fairly transparent move aimed at stemming a potential exodus from Yahoo Mail to other email providers. When asked about its decision to end support for email forwarding, Yahoo declined to comment and instead to explaining the feature’s status. This message reads as follows: This feature is under development. While we work to improve it, we’ve temporarily disabled the ability to turn on Mail Forwarding for new forwarding addresses. If you’ve already enabled Mail Forwarding in the past, your email will continue to forward to the address you previously configured. In other words, Yahoo Mail users who had already set up forwarding won’t be affected, but anyone trying to forward their mail now won’t have the option. Email forwarding, of course, is a basic feature that all major email providers today offer, and have for years. It’s not something new, or that would need to be shut down in order to be “improved”. Yahoo is simply making it very difficult for longtime Yahoo Mail users to switch to a new service. That, in turn, could potentially keep customers’ accounts active – something that Yahoo may want to do given that Verizon’s deal to acquire Yahoo has not yet closed. (Recent reports indicate Verizon is now for a $1 billion discount, in fact.) Mail forwarding is a crucial part of the switching process – much like forwarding postal mail, it ensures that no new emails will be missed, as you go about alerting your contacts to your new email address. It’s especially critical to those who receive incoming emails from people not already in their contacts list, like businesses who advertise their email address publicly, for example. As a workaround, users who want to make the move to another account could switch on their vacation responder instead to automatically reply to emails with a note about their new address. Others may decide to forego the forwarding process and simply delete their Yahoo Mail account entirely. Well, unless Yahoo disables that option, too. As it turns out, this isn’t the first example of Yahoo making it difficult to abandon its service following the news of the breach. Earlier this month, BT customers, whose email had been outsourced to Yahoo, also found that their ability to leave Yahoo had been disabled. BT/Yahoo customers could not forward their emails nor could they access the option that would allow them to delete their email accounts. Even before the breach, Yahoo Mail had been on the decline, As of this summer, Yahoo its email service supported roughly 250 million monthly active users, a number that has dropped steadily over the years. Update, 10/10/16, 5:30 PM ET – Yahoo shared the following statement with TechCrunch: “We’re working to get auto-forward back up and running as soon as possible because we know how useful it can be to our users. The feature was temporary disabled as part of previously planned maintenance to improve its functionality between a user’s various accounts. Users can expect an update to the auto-forward functionality soon. In the meantime, we continue to support multiple account management. ”
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The TC Meetup + Pitch-off in Seoul goes down in one week! Buy tickets now!
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Jordan Crook
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In less than a week, TechCrunch is packing up and flying to Seoul, South Korea to get acquainted with one of the world’s biggest and brightest tech scenes. And we’re bringing the with us, so get excited! Ten local startups will have exactly 60 seconds on stage to present their product to the audience and a panel of expert judges, including local VCs and TC editors. Judges will then deliberate on a winner, and three of those 10 startups will walk away with tickets to the next TC Disrupt conference. But even if you’re not an entrepreneur looking to present, the event will still be loaded with awesome content (including panels with local tech celebs) and there will be plenty of time for networking before and after the on-stage program. But tickets are selling out fast and I want to meet of you. So if you’re interested in hanging out with TC, meeting your local tech scene, and learning about the latest startups in Seoul, you should most definitely . Applications to the pitch-off are closed, but we’ll be announcing the 10 participating startups and the members of the judging panel very soon. Until then, head over to the and see if this is something you want to be a part of. (Spoiler alert: It is.) See you soon!
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Crunch Report | LeEco Debuts in the U.S.
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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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Is VR a leap back in time for the games industry?
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Mark Robinson
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When we look back through the annals of time, there, etched in the history books will be “2016: The year of VR.” And what a year it’s been. We’ve already seen the Samsung VR launch to great applause, but with the imminent release of the PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift devices, the VR sector is about to shift into overdrive. But VR is not exactly new. The concept of VR has been talked about for decades, but according to Moore’s Law, which predicts that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, it means that the technology is just reaching a level where it can fulfill the VR vision. However, the VR bandwagon first started rolling in 2014, when Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion. More recently, Microsoft and Sony touted new VR-enabled hardware and there was suddenly the heady mixture of visionary financial success, a global distribution framework and a market that’s been waiting all of its life for this to happen. The perfect storm? Well, Facebook, Microsoft and Sony certainly think so, and will undoubtedly have plans for how to make money out of VR. The analysts also agree, with predicting that VR will have its first billion-dollar year in 2016, with about $700 million in hardware sales and the remainder from content. The majority of this is expected to come from video games, but while the hardware guys can clearly see a future, will the games themselves actually be a leap back to the past when it comes to the player experience? To answer that, let’s travel back to the good old days, when, to make money from video games you just had to get two things right — marketing and distribution. No one knew how much value was derived by the player, because they offered a closed environment, so any notion of player retention or behavioral analysis was strictly for the birds, angry or otherwise. Although this wasn’t always great for the players, it was a model with which investors and industry execs became comfortable. That was until the mobile games revolution, driven by the free-to-play (F2P) model, completely turned the industry on its head and democratized the entire player/publisher/developer relationship. With supply vastly outstripping demand, players suddenly found themselves with the power of choice, able to ditch a game the second they became bored or frustrated. This forced publishers and developers to take player engagement and retention seriously for the first time; something which didn’t come naturally. They soon found that making money in F2P was a granite-tough business. In F2P, it’s common for 50 percent of players to leave a game after their first session, and less than 1 percent ever spend money, while the cost of paid new user acquisition has reached $4. However, while the revenue figures in the games industry continue to grow, according to , at CAGR 6.6 percent over 2015-19 and the share of mobile will rise in that time from 33 percent to 44 percent, which monetization models will prevail and drive the long-term growth of VR, remains to be seen. The F2P sector was created by smartphones and the instant anywhere capability to play games. This instant accessibility drives the session volumes that enable F2P to work on the wafer-thin margins that characterize the model. Google Daydream has explicitly stated they will have global payments and distribution infrastructure in place to support in-app purchases within the VR environment from launch, but most industry commentators see the initial driving force for developers achieving ROI coming from a premium model that requires payment upfront. Then there are ads — which on mobile are all about volume and interaction, which is why native ads are dying on the vine in F2P. Interstitials and rewarded video ads work well, as they fill the screen real estate to fully engage the attention and, in the case of rewarded ads, can be welcomed by players as an enhancement to the gameplay. In VR, this is likely to be different, with concerns over the number of sessions and session lengths that can be played on VR because of motion sickness. This brings product placement-styled native ads back into the picture. So, unless an unknown means of monetization springs up, VR is going to have to mainly monetize on the same basis as premium games, starting the cycle over again — premium to democratization when the technology adapts to everyday life. For investors, it’s probably going to be the transformation of proven titles that have already made the console-to-mobile jump which are likely to provide the safe way forward. But even these are going to find the jump from a 2D screen to an explorable 360° environment heavy on development resource and a giant leap in terms of playability. Static experiences, puzzle games, driving simulators and space/flight combat games, where the player is situated in some sort of cockpit as a form of natural grounding, are by far the best experiences I’ve seen so far. But I think the flow of proven titles to VR will be slow, which will leave a gap for the industry’s innovators to fill. As a result, we may see an indie renaissance and some much-needed innovation and dynamism in the sector, as we saw when PC and video games came to life in the 1980s and 1990s, possibly with more lightweight games that can monetize effectively by combining VR volumes on F2P margins, but without the user acquisition competition that’s around on mobile. The premium model will undoubtedly be the way forward for most, but the lessons learned from F2P about player retention will pervade. This means that in the short term, the winners are likely to be those who prioritize measurement and adaptation of the player experience, while the world gets used to having this technology in their everyday lives.
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Travis Kalanick says Uber has 40 million monthly active riders
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Matthew Lynley
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Travis Kalanick says his drivers’ license is expired — though, of course he has to say that. But in Kalanick’s future, with a fleet of driverless Ubers shuttling people around, it might be that everyone’s drivers’ licenses will expire. His company, Uber, could essentially be a replacement for owning a car for Kalanick, and also for the 40 million monthly active riders the company has. Kalanick revealed that number on stage at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit this year in San Francisco. Kalanick also said that drivers made somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion last month. Those monthly active riders pay around $50 per month, he said. While the appears to continue to be making a lot of money, much of its value is going to be dependent on the company’s ability to roll out its autonomous car program. Uber is going to be competing with many more companies outside of just the simple taxi industry, including other autonomous vehicle companies like Google and even traditional auto makers. Even today, Tesla said it . “Really when you start to automate, you start to do the self-driving thing on our roads, the roads in many ways are the cardiovascular system for our city, you make it a much more efficient cardiovascular system,” Kalanick said. “These cars, when they go into self-driving, you’re now starting to become a robotics company. We’re at the very beginning stages of becoming a robotics company.” To that extent, the company has started . Kalanick said that part of the challenge was taking a traditional scientific approach on a much shorter time scale in order to keep up with competitors. “Things are happening so fast that you need science to be part of that overall product effort that’s happening today,” he said. In all this, Uber, worth tens of billions of dollars, has had to relentlessly re-invent itself even down to its logos. It’s always, of course, had a little bit (or a lot) of criticism as a result of that — even the previous iconic “U” icon that existed for most of the past decade. “When we changed it to that we got so much hate,” he said. “That icon you love, you know how much hate we got?” Beyond self-driving cars, the company has to look at international growth. But Uber’s global expansion has also run into a few hiccups. In China, the company spent around $2 billion before throwing in the towel and merging with Did Chuxing, getting 20% of the company and a board seat out of the deal. Though, Didi hasn’t held any board meetings yet, Kalanick said. “I think the better way to think about it is that in China, the government is involved in business in many different ways,” Kalanick said. “When you go to China you have to rethink how you do everything, you have to start from scratch. If you go into China thinking you know how to do something best you are gonna get your ass handed to you.” Uber, notoriously, has raised a ton of money and doesn’t look like it’s going public any time soon. Kalanick also said he hasn’t sold a single share of Uber. Of course, everyone has to ask when the company is going public, and Kalanick is always going to have an answer. Here’s the answer this time around: “Let’s call it the 9th grade, it’s not time to go to prom yet.”
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Nintendo says it will preview the Nintendo NX tomorrow
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Greg Kumparak
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At long last, it seems like Nintendo is ready to talk about their next gaming console. Nintendo hasn’t said much about the upcoming gaming platform to date, beyond confirming the “Nintendo NX” codename, calling it a “brand-new concept”, and promising that it would be released in March 2017. According to a tweet , though, they’re about to shed some light on things: Be among the first to discover . Watch the Preview Trailer at 7am PT/10am ET! — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) Now, lets just hope this “preview” is in fact more of a and less of a (painfully short and detail-light) “teaser”. Though the tweet doesn’t specify where the trailer will go live, a splash page that just went up on confirms it’ll be there.
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All Tesla cars built from today on have all hardware needed for full self-driving
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Darrell Etherington
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Elon Musk revealed the Model 3 in March, revealing details of the $35,000 base model including a sub-six second 0-60 time and a minimum 215 mile range. The basic picture of the Model 3 inspired a pre-order frenzy unlike anything seen previously in the car world, but now Musk has dropped what he referred to earlier as Part 2 of the Model 3 unveiling after a lengthy pause, as promised, and it’s a doozy. Musk announced that all Tesla cars being produced as of today, including the Model 3, will have . The news means that every Tesla vehicle, including the Model S and X as well as Model 3 cars made after today will eventually be able to achieve full autonomous driving, with what Tesla refers to as “a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver” via nothing more than a software update at some point in the future. The hardware required to make this possible includes a sensor loadout complete with eight surround optical cameras, which can see up to 250 meters out from the vehicle on all sides, and a dozen ultrasonic sensors to assist the optical system. These are capable of twice the range of previous hardware, and can detect both “hard and soft objects” according to the company. Also included is the radar hardware that provides forward-facing detection of hazards even through potentially obfuscating conditions. The biggest change might be the new onboard computer that provides over 40 times the processing power of the existing Tesla hardware, which actually runs the in-house neural net the car maker has developed in order to handle processing of data inbound from the vision, sonar and radar systems. Musk said on call discussing the most recent update to the existing driver assistance Autopilot software that it basically stretched computing power to the limit, which is why the upgraded CPU is required for full Level 5 autonomy. The new GPU is the Nvidia Titan, Musk said on the call, though it was a “tight call” between Nvidia and AMD. The validation required for full autonomy will still take some more time, but Musk said on a call that it’s actually already looking like it’ll be at least two times as safe as human driving based on existing testing. While it’s being developed, the self-driving system will operate in the background in “shadow mode,” essentially working virtually behind the scenes in order to demonstrate where it would’ve been able to avoid accidents that a person driving could not. While the hardware will be included in all Tesla cars made from now on, which includes the Model 3, it will be an $8,000 add-on for vehicles to enable the software. The reason for building in full autonomy capability across the lineup, according to Musk, is entirely to increase driving safety and reduce traffic-related accidents. Musk spoke passionately about this aim going so far as to admonish broad media coverage of Autopilot-related accidents, while the ongoing and persistent issue of human-fault car deaths receives far less attention from press. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported sharp increases in traffic deaths in both 2015 and 2016, and asked for help parsing the data to determine the causes of the rise. And when the Department of Transportation released its federal guidelines for autonomous driving technology, it also strongly indicated that the government believes autonomy in vehicles will ultimately lead to safer roads. Musk said in a conference call in August regarding Tesla’s advancements in creating a car with Level 4 autonomous capability that “what we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind,” and added that “it’ll come sooner than people think.” He’s certainly delivered with today’s announcement.
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IFC makes the first investments from its $30 million Startup Catalyst initiative
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Jake Bright
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The International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, said it has made a $4 million commitment to two new funds as part of its $30 million Startup Catalyst initiative, which backs accelerators and seed funds in emerging markets. The first investments from the Startup Catalyst program will go to the Argentine accelerator , which will receive $3 million, and Egypt’s , which is getting a $1 million commitment. Startup Catalyst is a sub-program of group, which revealed in June it would expand its investment portfolio in emerging markets tech entrepreneurs and innovation to $1 billion. IFC VC has already made direct equity investments in a number of digital companies including Indian healthcare venture and Turkish consumer internet company . The $30 million Startup Catalyst program aims to make 15-20 accelerator and seed fund investments over the next 18 months, according to IFC VC Head Nikunj Jinsi. “The goal is to develop ecosystems and prime the pump for entrepreneurs in underserved, underfunded markets,” said Jinsi. “The digital economy is real …not only [in] developed markets but more than anything in developing markets [where] funding levels the playing field.” IFC VC’s direct equity and early stage investments are meant to “create a continuum” so that the “accelerated businesses that make it can also go further and attract additional sources of finance,” said Jinsi. IFC will initially target startups and seed funds in “medium-sized markets” such as Nigeria, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, and Ukraine, according to Jinsi. A recent report by estimated that greater adoption of digital finance alone in emerging markets could add $3.7 trillion in economic activity and create 95 million jobs. Both and Flat6Labs fund early stage fin-tech startups. NXTP’s seed investments also span ag-tech, media, and enterprise software startups primarily in Latin America. For its part, Flat6Labs has provided funding, mentorship, and training to 102 startups through its Cairo headquarters and through 2 additional offices in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi, according to CEO Ramez El-Serafy. “With the Startup Catalyst funds, Flat6Labs will close a 50 million Egyptian pound fund [≈ $5.6 million]…to accelerate more than 100 Egyptian startups over the next 5 years,” he said. The accelerator will open new locations in Tunisia and Lebanon later this year and is “keen to explore the African market at large in the near future,” said El-Serafy. By expanding its direct equity and accelerator investments, IFC’s VC group aims to play a more prominent role in technology development across emerging markets. Its $1 billion-dollar-size and a planned team of 30 across 6 global offices will make it one of the larger players in the space. As part of the World Bank Group, IFC also holds a unique position as a profit-focused entity with a social venture mandate. “We’ve been largely self-funded and profitable for the last 60 years,” said Jinsi. “Technology investing has the ability to provide a disproportionate impact in developing markets across…e-commerce, digital-health, and ed-tech. We feel we have a role to play in building that ecosystem.” Startups, accelerators, and seed funds interested in IFC VC group’s emerging markets tech activities can inquire directly at their .
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Musk targeting coast-to-coast test drive of fully self-driving Tesla by late 2017
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Darrell Etherington
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Elon Musk is really accelerating the potential timeline for delivering self-driving: The Tesla CEO said on a press call that he hopes to deliver a test ride of fully autonomous Tesla vehicle driving by next year. What kind of test? Not a trip around the block, but a coast-to-coast road trip, he says. “Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York, from home in LA to let’s say dropping you off in Time Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year,” he said on a press call today. “Without the need for a single touch, including the charger.” To put that kind of accomplishment in perspective, current autonomous testing generally doesn’t even cross state lines, let alone the country. It’s a huge goal, and one that will potentially be replicable by every car Tesla makes between now and then, according to the .
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Google’s Android 7.1 Developer Preview starts rolling out to beta testers
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Frederic Lardinois
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No major surprises here: Earlier this month, Google that the Android 7.1 Nougat Developer Preview and its SDK tools would roll out to developers sometime later this month — and now that we have passed the middle of the month, the preview is indeed to those who have signed up for the . While the Android Beta Program is mostly geared toward developers, there’s nothing stopping you from giving Android 7.1 a try if you are simply curious about what this latest update has in store for you. It’s beta software, though, so keep in mind that it may still have plenty of bugs (I wouldn’t install this on my main phone, for example). This is the same Android 7.1 that’s already on the Google Pixel, though, so we’re probably looking at a pretty stable release. Sadly, Google to other devices. That means even though you may have 7.1 on your Nexus 6P, you still won’t get to use the system-wide Google Assistant feature, for example. Google’s plan is to release another preview in November and then roll out the final version in December. If you currently own a Nexus 5X, 6P or Pixel C and are enrolled in the beta program, you should see the over-the-air update very soon. The final release will also come to the Nexus 9, Nexus Player and Android One devices, as well as the new Pixel phones. As for the new features in Android 7.1, (spoiler: There aren’t that many, but the ones that are included are pretty useful).
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New numbers home in on Vive sales
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John Biggs
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A brief in offers us some interesting news about Vive sales worldwide. , China Regional President of VR at HTC, said that the company sold 100,000 units in August, an acceptable if low number for a comparatively expensive consumer electronics product. This month, however, , said the company sold in excess of 140,000 units, a 40,000 rise in just a few weeks. This means a few things. First, it’s abundantly clear that VR is still a niche product; 140,000 is quite high for, say, a piece of enterprise hardware, but not a gaming rig. In comparison, we can estimate that Apple sells 667,000 iPhones per day while all manufacturers combined ship about 422,000 laptops per day. Further, we learn that VR growth will happen in spurts. As users begin seeing better content and visiting friends with the Vive and PSVR, they will start considering the technology for themselves. There are few real analogs in the CE space, but we can look at the rise of 3DTV, another niche tech, over the past few years. According to , sales were minuscule in the first few years, then rose to significant levels by 2015. Again, not everyone jumped onto the 3DTV bandwagon immediately, but waited until they saw compelling content or began simply updating their televisions. But no one will “update” their VR experience. The primary issue is that the Vive requires a very solid gaming PC to play anything of consequence. This adds about $1,500 to the already steep price. Further, while the games are quite compelling, there is no , a situation similar to the early days of 3DTV. But VR isn’t 3DTV. VR, at least as evidenced by VC investment, is on a rocket ship to the virtual moon and 140,000 is a number to crow, not hide. If the next quote we hear in two months is 200,000 then we can be worried. For now it looks like VR is slowly but surely gaining altitude.
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Under Armour brings heart-rate monitoring and a bulky design to its Bluetooth earbuds
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Brian Heater
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First and foremost, a pair of earbuds ought to be comfortable. I mean, if you don’t want to wear the things around, what’s the point, really? But try as I might, I just couldn’t get a good fit with the UA Headphones Wireless Heart Rate – Engineered by JBL. As with the verbose naming scheme, the issue seems to come down to a company trying to cram too much into too small a space. The latest arrival from the joint venture between Under Armour and JBL are designed to stay put during workouts, combining an over-the-ear hook with a strange sort of membranous cover designed to fill the wearer’s concha (look it up). It’s a lot of safeguards designed to keep the thing from moving while the wearer works out. Of course, in order for it to stay firmly in place, you’ve got to get a good fit in the first place. And I just couldn’t find one with the various tips the company included in the box. The addition of heart-rate monitoring to the equation also increases the surface area on the devices, making them bulkier than I’d prefer a pair of fitness headphones to ultimately be. As the name implies, the addition of heart-rate monitoring is the big new feature here. UA isn’t the first to offer the technology — you can currently pick up a pair from Bose and Jabra with similar functionality. Honestly, I’m not sure what the appeal is of incorporating it into a pair of earbuds, as heart-rate detection becomes increasingly ubiquitous on fitness bands, though, as a JBL rep said, “it’s just one less thing” you have to wear on your person. Also, for those who are into constant updates, the headphones will also read your heart rate back to you. It’s a bit jarring at first, and, honestly, I’d prefer to just check the Under Armour app for updates rather than interrupt my music, but, then, no one’s accused me of being an elite athlete of late. The sound is solid for a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. The product seems largely aimed at folks looking for workout-specific buds, due to both the build and a battery that’s rated around five hours. They slot pretty nicely into Under Armour’s existing software ecosystem alongside its existing box of health offerings, so they might be worth looking into for those who have committed to the company’s hardware offerings. They’ll hit retail October 30, priced at $200, joined by the more affordable heart-rate-free UA Sport Wireless.
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Faraday Future says it’s finally going to show us a real car at CES
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Darrell Etherington
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The concept car is basically always a vehicle of pure puffery, and carmakers go above and beyond when it comes to teasing the future. But few are as accomplished on this scale as Faraday Future, the master illusionist of electric vehicles. The company says it’s finally going to show us something worthy of the label “production,” however, at CES in January. CES, which is basically the annual global festival of vaporware. Last year, Faraday went for the concept angle hard, with the , an insane sports car that’s about as far away from a shipping vehicle as you can get while still getting to call the thing a car. But now it’s ready to “unveil the future,” the company says, with a reveal of a car it seems intent on shipping at the annual consumer electronics mega show in Vegas. 1. We founded a company. 2. We created a concept. 3. We joined a race. 4. We unveil the future. — Faraday Future (@FaradayFuture) What will that car look like? Faraday says it’ll be a “premium electric” car that “combines extreme technology, industry leading range, and holistic design” but it isn’t saying much beyond that. Spy shots have captured a car that looks like a Model X-style urban SUV, however, and that does look like it shares traits with the supposed test vehicles spotted earlier. Basically, don’t hold your breath for an imminent launch from Faraday, going on their past performance. But if they do come out with a car that’s actually going to be available for people to buy and drive in the relatively near future, expect a lot more astonishment than when they revealed their 3D Batmobile fan art.
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Someone knows something about this Marco Polo app that we don’t
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Matthew Lynley
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There’s a whisper in the venture community we’re hearing that is growing increasingly louder, and it’s about this video walkie-talkie app called . Investors are suddenly very interested in this app that — so we hear — might be growing in popularity among . We’ve seen this story play out before, most recently with musical.ly. The app was also around for a while, and then out of nowhere exploded. That led to the company . Here’s the thing — it looks like the app’s been around for more than a year, and was largely off the grid for its lifetime. Then, boop: And on Android, it’s even more crazy: There may be some growth hacking gymnastics going on here, as one Reddit user . It also looks like there are some complaints on Twitter. And there are negative reviews in the App Store referring to spamming contacts (see below). But either way, Silicon Valley is buzzing about it. As far as we can tell, Marco Polo seems to have a certain Snapchat vibe to it that’s somehow crossed with Tapstack (though on the App Store page, it says messages do not disappear). Users tap on a friend’s face to start a video conversation. That’s then sent over to the other friend, who can respond right away or open it at their leisure. And then people keep sending things back and forth, and so on, and so forth. And, naturally, there are filters. And when we say this is off the grid, we really mean it. A cursory Google search reveals almost no coverage of this app ( and a couple of vlogs on YouTube). There really isn’t anything that can easily be found throughout the app’s lifetime. And yet, this app has a 4.5-star rating on the App Store with almost 10,000 reviews and has constantly received updates. On Android, it also has a 4.5-star rating, but with more than 50,000 reviews. The app appears to be the flagship from a company called , which looks like it was founded in 2012. It looks like Joya . You can start asking around in the investor community and, at SOME point, this app is going to come up in the conversation. It might be something along the lines of “oh yeah, I hear they’re doing well” or “where did this thing come from.” The reality is, we’re not quite sure either, but it’s here and it seems on the rise. But also, throughout talking to people about this app, we heard another tidbit: early Uber investor and Benchmark partner Bill Gurley put money into it. So, clearly, there must be some potential or business model at play that could be big that we’re not seeing. (Of course, it’s possible that something changed and no deal was done from when we heard about it. Gurley has not yet responded to a request for comment, nor has Joya Communications through a request via their website.) Anyway, we talk to a lot of people about these things, and we’re as to what’s going on here. If you, too, have heard this app pop up in conversations, shoot me a message at lynley@beta.techcrunch.com. (Please don’t use this as an opportunity to pitch your Marco Polo alternative.) Thanks all.
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EBay continues shift to “Amazon-esque” business
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Katie Roof
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While its financials were up, the stock still fell more than 7 percent in early after-hours trading. Some investors were disappointed by gross merchandise volume, which came in at $20.1 billion, instead of the expected $20.3 billion. Adjusted net income was also down from the same period in the year before, as sales and marketing and other costs increased. The company has been doubling down on its marketplace business since spinning off PayPal last year. In particular, eBay has become “more Amazon-esque,” says James Cakmak, analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt. They have expanded their fixed-price merchandise business to offset their shrinking auctions section. “We continued to transform the shopping experience on eBay, delivered more personalization capabilities and began to activate our updated brand messaging,” said CEO Devin Wenig, in a statement. They’ve also been expanding StubHub, their platform for sports and concert tickets. With $1.1 billion in GMV, a 23 percent year-over-year increase, “StubHub is the biggest growth engine for the company,” noted Cakmak. [graphiq id=”czquEvfSBxP” title=”Ebay Inc. (EBAY) Stock Price” width=”600″ height=”628″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/czquEvfSBxP” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/20452465/Ebay-Inc-in-San-Jose-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] The company also repurchased about $500 million in shares this quarter. EBay raised their full-year revenue outlook to somewhere between $8.95 billion and $9.0 billion.
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Apple sends out invites for an October 27th event, hints that new Macs are coming
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Greg Kumparak
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Aaand there it is. that Apple was planning to make an announcement on October 27th. Specifically, we’d heard that they’re finally, going to show some new Macs — something they haven’t done (outside of a refresh of the MacBooks) in over a year. Sure enough, Apple just started sending out press invites to an event… and sure enough, it’s going down on the 27th. Outside of the timing and location of the event, Apple’s invite is detail-light — at first glance, at least. Notice, though, the “hello again” bit — then rewatch this Macintosh ad from 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaFTLrULHwg If you’re in a rush, skip to 0:18 (or just scope out the thumbnail). The word “hello” was a big part of the original Macintosh’s debut — generally portrayed all lowercase, as with this new invite. And then in 1998, with the introduction of the iMac, Jobs tapped the “hello” theme again: Between those little hints and the whispers we’ve been hearing as of late, yeah: expect new Macs on October 27th. Apple has also confirmed that starting at 10 a.m Pacific on the 27th.
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Yahoo asks government to explain email scanning order
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Kate Conger
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Yahoo secretly scanned its users emails at the behest of a U.S. government agency — and now it wants the government to explain why. In a to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Yahoo carefully avoids admitting that it scanned users’ email or that it received an order to do so, but asks Clapper to “clarify this matter of public interest.” The program had access to all incoming email and may have been able to access outgoing mail as well, a source told TechCrunch, and was terminated just days after it was discovered by the security team. The implementation of the program was poor and could have been exploited by external hackers, the source said. The that the program was searching for a specific signature tied to a terrorist organization. Of course, Yahoo can’t fess up to the email scanning or describe the order that led to it — National Security Letters and FISA court orders are typically accompanied by gag orders that prevent companies from talking about the requests they receive from government. Yahoo’s letter is carefully sprinkled with plenty of ifs, most notably in the section where it asks Clapper to clarify several points: “We urge your office to consider the following actions to provide clarity on the matter: (i) confirm whether an order, as described in media reports, was issued; (ii) declassify in whole or in part the order, if it exists; and (iii) make a sufficiently detailed public and contextual comment to clarify the alleged facts and circumstances.” But there are still plenty of hints dropped in the letter, penned by Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell, about what went on at Yahoo during the spring months of 2015, when the email scanning took place. The biggest revelation is that Yahoo was likely ordered to scan users’ email through a FISA court order rather than a National Security Letter. This distinction was previously a topic of debate, with The New York Times reporting that the order had come from a FISA court and other outlets claiming that the email scanning stemmed from an NSL. Although Yahoo is, of course, constrained from clarifying this point, Bell does seem to address it in the letter. “Transparency is critical to ensure accountability and in this context must include disclosing how and under what set of circumstances the U.S. government uses specific legal authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to obtain private information about individuals’ online activities or communications,” Bell writes. Although NSLs and FISA orders can result in similar forced disclosures from companies, NSLs require no court approval and FISA orders do — which means, presumably, that a judge approved the Yahoo order in this case (the FISA court has been viewed as a rubber stamp because it ). Yahoo began scanning all its users’ emails last spring at the behest of the U.S. government, Reuters reported. Bell was reportedly one of the Yahoo employees who approved the scanning, along with CEO Marissa Mayer. The scanning program was implemented by Yahoo’s mail team and was discovered by members of the company’s security team shortly thereafter, a source confirmed to TechCrunch. Security engineers initially thought the program was the work of external hackers and investigated it as a high-severity issue. Alex Stamos, who then led Yahoo’s security team and decamped shortly thereafter for Facebook, reportedly discovered that the program was installed by Yahoo’s own mail engineers. The bombshell led to his departure from the company, and influenced other security team members in their decisions to leave, as well. The email scanning in Yahoo’s biannual transparency report on government requests for user data, but Bell argues in his letter that Yahoo maintains its commitment to transparency and user privacy.
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AI, autonomous cars and moral dilemmas
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Justin Moore
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You’re a train conductor speeding along when you suddenly see five people tied up on the tracks in front of you. You don’t have enough time to stop, but you do have enough time to switch to an alternate track. That’s when you see there’s one person tied up on the alternate track. Do you pull the lever to make the switch, or stay the course? Any college graduate who has ever stepped foot in an introductory philosophy course is likely to recognize this problem immediately. The question is a classic jumping off point for discussions about utilitarianism, consequentialism and fairness. Subsequent twists on the question — what if the one person standing on the other track was a child? — come with new moral dilemmas and further abstract discussions. There is no clear correct answer. In this ambiguity lies conversation. The tech community as a collective whole is now facing a similar conundrum when it comes to programming machines. This time, though, the philosophical decisions aren’t theoretical — and nobody will be saved by the bell. With the advent of smart machines with learning capabilities powered by artificial intelligence, we need to reach a final consensus for a very practical purpose: We need to teach robots how to be moral. The situation today is marked by groups of computer engineers sitting around discussing age-old philosophical problems. is advancing at an unprecedented rate due to affordable computational power and a concentrated focus on the field by tech giants such as Google, Facebook and IBM. predict that self-driving cars will edge onto the roads , and drones are currently permeating everything from the to farming. Questions about morality are becoming more urgent, yet remain unsolved. Perhaps most surprising is that defining answers in regards to philosophical judgments, at least for now, is being left up to the tech community. In the 2016 , released jointly by the Department of Transportation and the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, even the government organizations themselves seemed apt to admit that they simply don’t have the expertise nor the authority to create comprehensive legislation, noting that “it is becoming clear that existing NHTSA authority is likely insufficient to meet the needs of the time.” Companies like Google are practically begging for guidance and official regulations so they can move forward, but are coming up empty-handed. Given the financial rewards of being first to market, there is certainly an urgency involved in coming to final conclusions. Yet even those who stand to benefit the most appear to be holding back. Many industry leaders are asking questions, but few are stepping forward with clear and specific proposals. That’s a good thing. Despite newfound abilities to advance intelligent technology quickly, industry leaders should not give in to pressures to move at an unhealthy pace. Questions should come first, otherwise the industry releases poorly considered intelligence, which is a recipe for chaos. Take, for example, an autonomous car self-driving along the road when another car comes flying through an intersection. The imminent t-bone crash has a 90 percent chance of killing the self-driving car’s passenger, as well as the other driver. If it swerves to the left, it’ll hit a child crossing the street with a ball. If it swerves to the right, it’ll hit an old woman crossing the street in a wheelchair. Autonomous cars are sure to face this type of challenge at some point, and their creators need to decide how to program them to react to these no-win situations. Engineers need to come up with clear rules for navigating difficult situations so the robots don’t get confused and malfunction or select the wrong decision. The easy answer would be to protect the driver at all costs. If we can assume that drivers are all selfish and would always default to the action that contains the least risk for them, wouldn’t we just replicate that in the autonomous driver model? The very fact that the decision to date has not proved easy is a good sign. Ultimately, no matter what the experts decide, any final product and its underlying moral code must be palatable to the public at large if autonomous cars are to be a success. The MIT Media lab, whose scientists I had the privilege to spend time with at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos earlier this year, are struggling with how to make moral robots. One thing was very clear — there is no clear answer. They have created a website tool that gives us insight as to what, exactly, the public expects and wants from autonomous cars. The website invites users to judge between two competing outcomes in an inevitable car crash, with more than a dozen different scenarios to judge. Overall, the results showed that people strongly prefer utilitarian outcomes: the fewest total number of lives lost. These results align with other surveys where participants consistently say that a more utilitarian model for autonomous cars is a more moral one. Herein lies the trouble: While people favor utilitarianism in the abstract, their feelings become muddied when they’re the ones who might be making the sacrifice. As reported by , just 21 percent of people surveyed said they were likely to buy an autonomous vehicle whose moral choices were regulated, compared to 59 percent of respondents who said they were likely to make the purchase if the vehicles were instead instructed to always save the driver’s life. In an age when technology and decreased face-to-face interaction is blamed for causing people to feel dispassionate and disconnected from one another, the very fact that the discussion on robot morality is so vibrant is a clear demonstration that compassion is alive and well. In 1942, Isaac Asimov provided one prevailing take on robot morality with the three laws of robotics featured in his famous novel . His outline was simple: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But, as the characters discover in the novel, sometimes harm is simply unavoidable. What if the question instead mutates to what is preferable, letting the young or old live or sacrificing one to save many? The most advanced technology isn’t going to be released until we as a society figure out collective answers to these puzzling questions. Governments around the world will look to the United States to set a regulatory precedent, and we need to make sure that we get things right the first time around. These are important discussions, and government leaders, tech leaders and ordinary citizens must all have a say, so that as a society, we maintain a moral system of checks and balances. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle.
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Ron Miller
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HP’s OMEN 17 is an epic gaming laptop that needs just a tweak or two
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Stefan Etienne
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The PC gaming space is dominated by a few enthusiast brands and is further supplemented by far more serious custom builds. HP Inc. isn’t a name that comes to mind when you think of “enthusiast PC gaming system,” but the more endearing folks at HP think that recent tweaks made to OMEN gaming brand can change brand perception in the eyes of PC gamers, like myself. It turns out, they’re eerily close to gaining gamers’ respect with the OMEN 17, but there is some room for a little more. The best thing about using a highly capable gaming PC is the initial feeling that arises, telling you that you can throw anything at it. Think about it: there’s tons of storage space, a fast quad-core processor, a 4K screen and a respectable GPU — play games, I shall. In the OMEN 17’s case that meant loading and a press copy of The goal: run them all at native 4K resolution with G-Sync and maximum settings (via preset, not custom input). All three of the aforementioned are military simulation/first-person shooter games with high hardware requirements, namely and Still, it worked out pretty well: Siege ran at a buttery 60-80fps, while Arma 3: Apex a still comfortable 40-65 frames per second. But of all three titles is the latest and most visually impressive, excluding scale, where has it beat. Running in DirectX 12 mode, with all settings cranked up, the OMEN 17 ran it and it looked . There’s no doubt that this particular OMEN configuration can do a lot in the gaming space — and that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, for those of you who don’t play games or aren’t interested in VR, or even more strangely, want a gaming computer for the high processing power and nothing more, then the OMEN 17 will do all of that on Windows 10. Battery life isn’t anything to speak of, and there’s no optical drive, but HP does bundle an external USB DVD-RW drive in the box, which I think is rather thoughtful (and almost unheard of) and definitely useful, since you can use it with any other computer hardware you may have. Let’s cut straight to the icky stuff and speak of them in detail. The touchpad, screen hinge and power brick are among some of OMEN 17’s most glaring errors. The rest fall into obscurity (like lack of USB-C ports) once you get used to the idea that despite all of its power, a laptop is still restricted to its chassis. Which is interesting, because the only faults I have with the OMEN are with its build. Carbon fiber lid and palm rests are great, don’t get me wrong, but a wobbly screen hinge isn’t. Considering HP makes the x360 laptops with 360° hinges, I thought that at least some of that knowledge would be imparted here. In most cases, it might not matter, but if you’ve upgraded the OMEN 17’s screen to 4K quality, then you eventually won’t be fond of it. Next up, the touchpad: for gaming, it’s useless. This goes for almost any gaming laptop, but especially here, so the best thing would be to invest in a gaming mouse — any gamer would, you should be no different. The last of my gripes: the power brick. It’s bigger than any power brick for a laptop I’ve ever seen. Besides the electrical requirements, I’d say that this is HP’s way of saying keep the OMEN 17 at a desk and never move it. By all means, if you have no reservations about the size and weight that a GTX 1070-equipped, 17-inch laptop provides, then take aim at the OMEN 17. You can upgrade your RAM in the future (via a user-removable latch on its underside) while also being mildly comforted that both the processor and GPU will be capable of running through many DirectX 12-enabled titles for at least 1-2 years, without grinding to a sputtering halt. I personally would delegate the $1,800 price tag of this system toward building a custom gaming desktop, but if your requirements are for a gaming laptop that can act as a desktop replacement, then here is your vessel.
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Social payments app Circle adds two more European markets
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Natasha Lomas
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Circle has lit up two more European markets as it works to rapidly build out its presence in the region. Users of the P2P payments app in Spain and Ireland can now connect any Spanish or Irish bank account to the app to send and receive money within their own countries and across borders (with native Euro support in those markets). As well as no fees for transfers, Circle touts having “the best exchange rate available to consumers” — exchange rate is “typically” around 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent above the market rate versus 3-4 percent “typically” charged by banks (or the 1-2 percent typically charged by startups). The U.S. P2P payments startup only rolled into Europe in , when it launched for U.K. users — with sterling its second fiat currency after the dollar. It’s also since taken in a , and set up a separate China operation, called Circle China, with ambitions to help Chinese users send money overseas — which is another reason to expand its reach in Europe. A spokesman said next on its priority launch list are large markets such as France, Italy, Germany, adding: “Others will fast follow.” Notably, though, Circle is still not disclosing user metrics, more than a year after the U.S. beta launch of its payments app. And payments are a contested space, with many players offering services — from the likes of TransferWise’s feeless cross-border transfers to ‘s push into social payments via its messaging app. Circle will only say that it’s “on pace” to do a billion dollars’ worth of volume transaction this year, and that user growth in the U.S. is 832 percent YTD, while the U.K. average quarterly growth rate is at 119 percent. Prior to launching its Circle Pay app to try to grab a slice of the mobile social payments market, the startup had a bitcoin wallet. It now prefers to talk in terms of the power of blockchain technology, using bitcoin as a route to settle any cross-border payments into currencies where it does not yet have a local banking partner.
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Meet Yousif Ashoor, the creator of these of amazing automatic sunglasses
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John Biggs
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF4J4e7vOC8&feature=youtu.be] If you’re a gamer you’ll recognize the trope: a hero steps into the harsh glare of a desert planet or a blasted cityscape and her sunglasses automatically slide into place over her face. These futuristic shades are handy, they look badass and they keep your corneas from being sandblasted by interstellar debris. Well, a young man named Yousif Ashoor has 3D-printed his own automatic sunglasses and popped them up on , where I found him and asked him to film a demo just for us. The project, while still in its nascent stage, is one of the coolest gadgets I’ve seen in a while. “I created these glasses on a whim after seeing some trailers for Deus Ex,” he said. “I thought it would be cool to have something like the augments Adam Jenson has so I used my knowledge of 3D printing and design.” The system senses UV light and simply slides the lenses into place when things get too bright. Ashoor is working on sharing the design, but didn’t say anything about selling these things. However, it’s a great little project and a great design. “I have only been doing this kind of stuff for about 2 years,” he said. He’s in between web design jobs but he’s enjoying some tinkering time while he’s out of work. He’s a great sport and his glasses, I must admit, are really amazing.
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Carousell prepares to monetize after acquiring automotive classifieds startup
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Jon Russell
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Singapore-based Carousell has complete its second piece of M&A following . Today, it announced it has acquired , a fellow Singaporean company that operates a classifieds service for used cars. The deal is undisclosed like , but this time the purchase is less about bringing on talent since there’s a strategic element to it. In addition to taking on its 11 staff, Carousell has acquired Caarly’s “relevant” automotive products which its CEO Quek Siu Rui told TechCrunch “paves the way for a monetisation strategy.” “We’re focused on building revenue streams using high-value verticals starting with cars, while concurrently enhancing the experience of buying and selling on Carousell for our users,” Quek said via email. “Carousell has grown over the last 4.5 years, and so have our users. Over 50 percent of them in Singapore are now over 25 years old, and have significantly more purchasing power. We’ve seen how their evolving needs have resulted in more listings and greater demand in higher value verticals like cars,” he added via a public statement. To give further shape to that monetization push, Carousell has hired former Komli Media exec Rakesh Malani as its CFO. That’s a move that Quek said will help Carousell begin making money in the early part of 2017. To date, the company has not monetized its product, instead relying on the $40 million-plus that it has raised from its investors, which include Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten and Sequoia. Also joining the startup is Winnie Khoo, former MD of PropertyGuru. Earlier this year, Carousell nabbed another prominent executive in the form of ex-Airbnb Southeast Asia lead JJ Chai who is tasked with overseeing its international expansion plans. Initially, Carousell will use Caarly’s business in Singapore — which is the only market where the younger startup had been present and Carousell’s largest base of users — but Quek indicated that there are expansion plans for its fledgling automotive business. “Singapore is our most mature market, and its infrastructure and diversity make it an ideal testbed for our projects and experiments. We intend to use our learnings from Caarly in Singapore, to explore opportunities in other markets,” he said. Carousell is currently present in six countries — Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia — across which it claims to have handled a total of 41 million listings and 19 million transactions to date. Two-year-old Caarly’s only fundraising activity was an undisclosed round in 2015 that included participation from .
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Samsung’s profit plummets 30% following the Galaxy Note 7 crisis
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Jon Russell
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The struggle is real for Samsung. The Korean electronics giant’s operating profit plunged 30 percent year-on-year as the effects of the Galaxy Note 7 crisis begin to take a financial toll. a KRW 5.2 trillion ($4.6 billion) operating profit for the third quarter of 2016, that’s down one-third on the KRW 7.3 trillion that it posted this time last year. Revenue for the quarter came in at KRW 47.82 trillion ($42.03 billion), down 30 percent year-on-year also. It specifically said that revenue for its IT and mobile business “declined due to the Galaxy Note7 discontinuation” — which, in case you have spent the last two months or so living under rock, was due to . Samsung, which , recognized that it needs to do a lot of brand building to get over this disastrous episode. “Regarding the mobile business, the company will focus on expanding sales of new flagship products with differentiated design and innovative features, as well as regaining consumers’ confidence,” it said in a statement.
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Designing mindful machines
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Jason Tan
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Facebook recently fired the entire Trending Topics team of human editors amid accusations they were promoting specific agendas and biasing what news was deemed “important.” Now the company is relying on machine learning algorithms to manage Trending Topics — and finding that keeping the results free of isn’t always easy. The social media giant recently that it was working on new technology that would help prevent untrue or satirical stories from being labeled as legitimate news we should follow. But even that move can’t seem to win the public’s trust. Some people are , an unarmed black man shot by police in Tulsa, wasn’t trending when people are clearly talking about it. Others question what role Facebook has in labeling stories about 9/11 conspiracy theories as “untrue.” Now we have to ask ourselves, can machines really do better? This is hardly the first time questions of bias have arisen in the realm of machine learning and AI — and it won’t be the last. Remember when researchers found that ? Or when Microsoft’s chatbot Tay was ? Human activity provides the data that trains the machine. But that means it inherits the biases of people. In the case of Trending Topics, when enough people share a story — fake or odious or not — the algorithm deems it important and promotes it in popularity. In the case of Tay, human trolls turned her into one of them. There’s no easy solution for preventing bias. But does that mean machine learning is doomed to fail? No, not at all. It simply means that any company employing machine learning should take proactive steps to make sure it doesn’t happen in the first place, and then course-correct if and when it does. We should — and can — do better. The great promise of machine learning is that it’s better at making decisions than humans. By “better,” we mean faster, more efficient, less prone to error. However, are those decisions aligned with the right values? This is the question we should be considering alongside questions of accuracy and performance metrics like engagement and click-through rate. Before you even start creating a machine learning system, your goals for that system should give you some clues about potential biases that could result. Let’s say you’re a bank building a machine learning model to predict who will be most likely to repay their loan quickly. To avoid discrimination, you’d want to be careful about what type of demographic data you include. The algorithms used to produce Trending Topics were undoubtedly created against a backdrop of growth-inspired goals and metrics, like increasing engagement. But product teams also can balance these with other metrics designed to (say) minimize offensive content, and then provide feedback loops to facilitate this. Facebook already provides an opportunity for users to give feedback to its News Feed algorithms by reporting offensive content. And Trending Topics includes an “x” for each story on hover, which gives the algorithm a signal about what readers don’t want to see. But not all companies consider these checks and balances when they’re first developing products — most likely because they involve trade-offs in engagement. When should you start thinking about how to mitigate potential biases? From day one. Including people with diverse opinions and backgrounds is important at all stages of the product development process, and machine learning is an example of where having the right people at the table can truly matter. Thinking back to Tay, did anyone consult a person from a marginalized group about the potential pitfalls? The trolls’ predictable (in hindsight) behavior may never have occurred to someone who has never been bullied on social media. The data you choose, the sources you pull from and the features you include are all places where bias could be introduced or proactively prevented. When the data supports an underlying hypothesis, you should always be suspicious. Is it possible you’ve inadvertently trained the model based on your own assumptions? When we ask customers to buy or use a machine learning solution, we are in essence telling them to trust a “black box.” Users may be making decisions based on the recommendations of a system they don’t understand, without any way to gain greater insight. For example, earlier this year that risk assessment algorithms incorrectly flagged black defendants as future criminals at twice the rate of whites. Findings like these are extremely worrying when you consider that public policy decisions could be made based on them. However, some of these concerns could be curtailed if you work with your end users to give them tools to interpret the results. We should aim to give as much insight as possible into how the machine made the decision it did. It shouldn’t be a situation where you receive a result without context. Think about how Netflix provides context for why it’s making a particular recommendation that you might enjoy Stranger Things (because you watched The Goonies), or how Amazon provides the reasoning behind its personalized product suggestions. End users should be able to see exactly what criteria was used in an algorithm, so they can use their judgment to determine whether it’s actually a good recommendation. Where it makes sense and is possible, “showing the math” of machine learning can also help prevent suspicion and allay concerns. Although Facebook trends are personalized, the feature doesn’t give details about why a given topic is recommended beyond the sheer number of people “talking about” a given topic. To the casual user, the topics may not always make sense. This opacity can unnecessarily fuel suspicions of bias. Facebook is doing the right thing by continuing to iterate, applying the lessons learned from improving News Feed to making Trending Topics as useful for its audience as possible. This is a company that has successfully improved its algorithms to the point where people don’t typically notice them anymore. (Remember when everyone was complaining about seeing all kinds of updates from people they didn’t care about? When was the last time that happened?) While it’s easy to blame machines for our mistakes, the answer is really to be better humans. We must be aware of our biases, empathize with our users and commit to constant improvement.
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A founder seizes on anti-Trump sentiment to market women-friendly workflow software
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Connie Loizos
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Earlier this year, Kristen Koh Goldstein merged two of her companies, three-year-old Scalus and six-year-old BackOps into a new company called , a back-office-as a service startup that also sells fully automated workflow software. From the start, the company has aggressively marketed itself to both customers and employees who are women, and it’s smartly playing up to them right now in a presidential election season where talk of sexism has often (yes) trumped talk of education, defense, and the war on drugs, among other national issues. Explains Goldstein of HireAthena’s workflow software, on which the company appears to be focusing most of its time and attention: “Our software levels the amount of self-advocacy among a team of people who have to get something done together” by making it easier to follow exactly who committed to do what and when. “Too often, you have skilled, hard-working women who are subject-matter experts having to deal with the Trumps of the world yelling over us,” says Goldstein, who worked earlier in her career as an analyst with both Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. “Our software enables the shy voice to work with the bold voice to get work done. Our engagement is high because women are saying, ‘I have to use this product; it keeps me from being blamed for stuff that isn’t my fault.'” Whether or not that’s true is hard to know. Goldstein doesn’t disclose many metrics about her business other than to say that it is profitable and that investors have expressed interest in providing HireAthena with more capital. (Goldstein’s earlier companies had raised a collective $10 million from Sherpa Capital, GV, Data Collective, Naval Ravikant, and Max Levchin among others.) Either way, faced with endless reports about Donald Trump’s history of dehumanizing women, and women outside of his sphere coming forward with their own stories of harassment, Goldstein is honing her recruiting and sales efforts around a specific pitch: that HireAthena’s workflow software “brags and blames” for its users, so they don’t have to worry about colleagues who, presumably like Trump, might run roughshod over them otherwise. How does HireAthena “equalize the environment,” as Goldstein describes it? Transparency, she says, pointing to investment management firms that use it to show investment decisions and cash transfer controls and real-time compliance as it’s happening across functions and organization. She says HireAthena’s software is particularly well-suited for any industry that’s heavily regulated and whose participants want to demonstrate fairness and consistency — and to be able to demonstrate it easily. For example, she says, “You want to show that you didn’t discriminate against someone applying for a mortgage because you didn’t like their last name, but it’s hard to show that you’re consistent.” Features like the ability to track and manage recurring and repeating tasks and an auto-generating audit trail go a long way toward keeping companies out of hot water. The software also integrates with communications platforms like Slack. HireAthena currently has 30 customers using its workflow software. Many of them are focused on client accounting services, bookkeeping, payroll, taxes and advisory services. Many have historically employed higher percentages of women, too, notes Goldstein. “They love being able to quickly and easily identify the derivative thread,” she says of these customers, adding, “A lot of psychology went into this product.”
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‘The Engine’ is MIT’s incubator for tech and science companies straight out of the lab
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Devin Coldewey
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MIT is getting into the incubator business in a big way with aimed at nurturing early-stage companies solving big, difficult problems in tech and science. After The Engine raises its targeted $150 million fund, up to 60 companies at a time will benefit from the university’s equipment, services and considerable pool of expertise. While many details are yet to come, it’s clear this is serious business for the Boston-area mega-school. The language of the announcement indicates that establishing the city as a hub for commercialized innovation is a major secondary goal. A familiar final paragraph in many a story on our own front page about an amazing new technology reads along the lines of: “It’s not clear when or how the technology will be commercialized or manufactured.” How exactly do you put your , or into the hands of consumers or — how do you even keep working on them at all once your grant money runs dry? The Engine takes dead aim at the valley of death between the lab and the market. There won’t be cohorts, but companies will come in for 6-, 9- or 12-month periods to receive a variety of help. MIT’s resources are many and various, of course, and companies will have access to lab spaces, specialized equipment and likely things like online staging and supercomputing time, as well. Administrative support for things like business management, patents, taxes and so on will also be provided. In fact, these resources are many and various that MIT is setting up an entire online ecosystem for providing, requesting, renting and otherwise managing the many clean rooms, laser sintering machines and gene sequencers (plus, presumably, the grad students to operate them). It’ll be called the (an extended metaphor is announced) and although it doesn’t say exactly this, it almost certainly has designs on becoming an international tech and science resource-sharing platform. But the average startup comprising a handful of engineers and a great idea doesn’t just need micropipettes, it needs , with which one can buy micropipettes. And coffee. To that end, the MIT announcement is less than specific. An investment arm of The Engine will oversee financial contribution, which, while terms will surely differ between companies, will be in the form of what they describe as patient capital. The Engine venture funds will demand less equity in startups than is typical, allowing founders to maintain more control over their companies. The Engine is also actively exploring avenues to support nonprofit startups. I’ve asked for specifics and will update this post if I hear back. I’ve also asked how The Engine will work with existing university commercialization and IP infrastructure — that can be very tricky. As for the $150 million with which it plans to fund this endeavor, details are forthcoming there, as well. MIT itself is chipping in $25 million, with the rest to come, hopefully soon. (Another thing I’ve asked about — are they looking for private investment? Public? Recurring? Foundation-like?) , the university’s president L. Rafael Reif praises the ambition of the idea, but also notes that it will be operationally independent; in an , he sells the idea to the city at large. A community event for questions and concerns will be held on November 30th. Applications aren’t open yet and there’s no word on when they will be. You don’t need to have anything to do with MIT to apply to the program, but you’ll probably want to be in the greater Boston area, since that’s where all the great stuff is. and you’ll hear more when there’s more to hear.
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Tesla touts reliability and production improvements as reasons for Q3 success
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Darrell Etherington
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Elon Musk began Tesla’s earning call regarding its : He suggested that Q4 will also be strong for the company, deflating some analyst commentary that the results for this most recent reporting period might’ve been up at the expense of the next one. “We currently believe Q4 will be profitable excluding non-cash stock-based expenses,” he said on the call, noting that “there’s a chance — just a chance — this will be true even including non-cash stock-based expenses” and adding that the results for Q3 represent “one of the best moments ever in Tesla.” Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler explained that Tesla made a lot of deliveries at the very end of the quarter, which will carry over to Q4, helping with that quarter’s receivable balance. Musk also noted that contrary to some analyst supposition, the numbers for this quarter were not accomplished via discounting, which has actually been “absolutely shut down to zero” at this point, and which were “few and far between” even leading up to now. Musk discussed how production of the 100 kWh battery pack used in the new P100 models has also improved, from only “limited” volume during the last quarter, and sold represent “a pretty significant portion of the mix” for the upcoming reporting period. 100 kWh production is currently one of Musk’s top priorities, the CEO noted, adding that he has a progress call on the subject “seven days a week.” Wheeler also cited reliability improvements for cars coming off the line as a driver of cost improvements, since there are fewer warranty-related costs as a result. Musk characterized reliability improvements as “massive” and Wheeler specified a 92 percent improvement in warranty costs for the Model X specifically since its launch. This is promising news considering Consumer Reports just released a report . Musk also addressed general productivity improvements, noting that they’ve reached their 2,000 vehicle per week target in part by Elon Musk camping out in the “friggin factory” to improve delivery — along with the help of key members of the Tesla team. Tesla CTO JB Straubel also noted on the call that Tesla has put “a huge amount of engineering intention” into bettering the overall capital expenditure cost of vehicle production lines. The rosy financial picture led Musk to reiterate and elaborate on an assertion he made previously on Twitter that he doesn’t anticipate the need for a capital raise in the near future, either for Tesla or for SolarCity. “Take this with a grain of salt (as in speculation or best guess), but our current financial plan does not require any capital raise for Model 3, at all,” Musk said. “That’s different from saying whether we should raise capital or not, to account for uncertainty, to have a larger buffer or to de-risk the business,” he cautioned. “It seems like we probably won’t want to do a capital raise even in Q1,” he added. “I’m not saying we won’t, but it’s not looking like we will.” The Model 3 line is designed to be a cash generator as production ramps up, Musk said, which should help improve Tesla’s overall cash position through next year. That, combined with Musk’s prediction on the call that capital expenditure should be higher this year than next overall, should help improve the company’s financial picture further going forward.
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Musk on Tesla Network: “It’s not Tesla vs. Uber, it’s the people vs. Uber”
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Darrell Etherington
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When Elon Musk revealed Tesla’s plan to ship all Tesla’s made going forward with all the hardware they need to achieve full autonomy, the company noted that car owners would not be able to use their future self-driving Teslas to drive for Uber or Lyft. Instead, they’d be able to rent out their cars on demand using Tesla’s own Tesla Network for ridesharing. On Tesla’s Q3 earning call, Musk addressed claims this was a shot across Uber’s bow. Asked on the earnings call whether Tesla Network was designed as a revenue-generating line of business for Tesla itself, or more as a value-add offering designed to incentivize vehicle purchases and grow market share, Musk noted that it was actually not just one or the other. “It’s a bit of both really,” Musk said on the call. “This would be something that would be a significant offset on the cost of ownership for a car, and a revenue generator for Tesla as well, but the majority of the revenue would go to owners.” Musk also then addressed observer characterization that this might be Tesla’s plan to compete with Uber (and other ride-hailing services directly). “This has been characterized as Tesla vs. Uber,” he said. “But it’s not Tesla versus Uber, it’s the people versus Uber.” Clearly, Musk sees the Tesla Network as a way to give vehicle owners a way to control monetization of their own vehicles, in an arrangement that likely will drive more revenue generation for vehicle owners than might be derived from working through with Uber or Lyft and subsequently offering those services a percentage of revenue derived from providing their vehicles.
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Verizon acquires subscription video service Vessel, will shut it down on Oct. 31
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Anthony Ha
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Verizon is buying Vessel, the subscription video service founded by Jason Kilar (Hulu’s former CEO) and Richard Tom (its former CTO). Vessel , offering early access to their videos for $2.99 a month. It from investors, including Benchmark, Greylock, Bezos Expeditions and Institutional Venture Partners. Tom will remain after the acquisition, but Kilar won’t, at least not long-term. As the Vessel founders put it in , “Jason’s focus will be to ensure a smooth transition through the end of this year.” “At the heart of this transaction is the Vessel technology, product and team that we have built,” the post continues. “These three things will be married with Verizon’s ambitions in online video. Though the team and the actual tech + product will live on at Verizon in ways that will become apparent in the months and years ahead, sadly we will be sunsetting the Vessel service at the end of this month (October 31).” Verizon, meanwhile, has been moving into media, for example with its acquisition of AOL, which owns TechCrunch, and more specifically into video, with its mobile app go90. However, , so the company is probably looking to rethink its strategy. Verizon Entertainment General Manager Chip Canter (which ) that the company plans to merge some of Vessel’s social features into existing Verizon products and to explore subscription business models for its video content.
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A maturing OpenStack looks to the future
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Frederic Lardinois
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, the open source cloud computing platform that allows enterprises to essentially run their own version of AWS in their data centers, was founded by NASA and Rackspace in 2010. Today, it’s being used by the likes of Comcast, PayPal, Volkswagen, CERN, AT&T, China Mobile and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the U.K. The OpenStack Foundation’s bi-annual developer conferences now regularly attract thousands of developers and while the project started with only a few core services (compute, storage and networking), it now features and about 60 small projects under its umbrella. After 14 releases in the last six years, it’s clear that OpenStack is now a pretty mature project; that definitely showed at the project’s latest developer conference in Barcelona, Spain this week. A few years ago, the question everybody asked at these OpenStack Summits was whether anybody was actually running the software in production and whether it was ready for the enterprise. Both of those points are now moot. According to a study by 451 Research, most OpenStack-powered clouds are now between 1,000 and 10,000 cores in size — and five percent top 100,000 cores. The majority of the project’s enterprise uses run their infrastructure services, business applications and big data workloads, as well as web service and e-commerce applications on the platform. Even though OpenStack has reached this level of success, there is still occasionally an air of insecurity around the project. After the startup ecosystem around the project bloomed a few years ago, the inevitable consolidation set in last year, with the shutdown of Nebula, a company that sold hardware and software based on OpenStack, being the main bellwether. In addition, a few other startups in the OpenStack ecosystem also recently shut down. And while HP and later HPE remain major backers of the project, HPE recently laid off many of its OpenStack engineers, even though it’s still actively trying to sell OpenStack to its customers — especially in the telco world. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told me that it’s time for a reality check for OpenStack and the vendors in its ecosystem. He’s probably a bit more pessimistic about OpenStack than I am, though. Time and again, this year’s Summit focused on OpenStack’s telco customers and the fact that they are using the software to replace a lot of their expensive proprietary hardware with software (the buzz acronym here is NFV — network function virtualization). Those users include Deutsche Telekom, AT&T and numerous telcos in China, where OpenStack is growing especially quickly. Indeed, China Mobile and Deutsche Telekom both became gold-level sponsors of the project this week. While telco’s are more agile today than they were only a few years ago, this is still a very conservative industry, with long sales and deployment cycles. The simple fact that these companies are betting on OpenStack — in addition to everybody else who is already on board — gives me plenty of confidence in the project’s long-term prospects. Rackspace CTO is probably more positive about OpenStack’s future than I am, though. He told me that he believes all Fortune 100 companies will use OpenStack in some form or another within the next three years (half already do today). He does think, however, that awareness of the project in the C-Suite is still lacking, but that having major backers like Comcast and Walmart means we’ll see a trickle-down effect where even mid-sized companies will take a look at OpenStack in the long term. As Rackspace’s general manager for its OpenStack private cloud business Bryan Thompson also noted, the company is now seeing more mid-sized enterprises interested in OpenStack and its current customers are often growing their OpenStack commitment and either expanding their existing clouds or launching new ones in different geographies. For the longest time, the OpenStack community also discussed how to integrate (and whether they were a threat that could eventually bring down the whole house that Rackspace and NASA built). At this point, that discussion seems settled. OpenStack now features multiple services that make running containers on OpenStack easier. Indeed, it seems like the OpenStack community is making a pretty big bet on containers and, while it’s not taking sides, Kubernetes seems to be at the top of mind of the community as a whole. While working with the container community seems to have come naturally, though, the project’s executive director (and hobby cattle farmer) Jonathan Bryce admitted that the community should do more to reach out to other open source projects so it can benefit from the innovation that happens outside of its immediate scope. Rackspace’s Engates told me that last year, he predicted that this would be the year that OpenStack would become boring — not because it isn’t a successful project anymore but because it’ll be stable, there won’t be any drama and because it’s chugging along just fine. He’s probably right. But the team behind the project is also clearly looking to keep innovating because standing still is obviously not an option in technology and we’ve already seen that OpenStack (like the Borg) is at its best when it assimilates new technologies like containers.
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The TC Meetup + Pitch-off in Seoul goes down TONIGHT!
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Jordan Crook
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The big night is ! At 6pm, the TC Meetup + Pitch-off is going down in Seoul, South Korea. We’ll be joined by some of the brightest minds in the local tech scene to discuss , and then we’ll dive straight into the Pitch-off itself. Each of will have exactly 60 seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of expert judges, including local VCs and TC editors. We don’t have many tickets left, but there are still a few available. So please . Can’t wait to see you there!
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Deep learning tool lets you pick your pastiche: Mostly Monet, a dab of Doré and a pinch of Picasso
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Devin Coldewey
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For years we’ve been skeptical, and rightly so, of the “art filters” you can put on your photos, webcam videos and so on. But Google may have made them relevant again — or at the very least, interesting — by letting you using a single specialized neural network. If you painted your cat in the style of Van Gogh, first of all, congratulations, that’s great. You might call it a “pastiche,” which is a conscious application of an existing style or creator to a new work. Pastiche is difficult because you really have to learn the style of the original artist, and make it recognizable in the new work. Difficult tasks like this are irresistible to artificial intelligence researchers, who deep in their hearts believe there’s nothing a human can do that a computer can’t do better — or at least faster. Systems have been created for “style transfer,” neural networks trained on big databases of an artist’s work or analyzing a single work in great detail. But it proved to be difficult computationally, as well, requiring lots of number crunching to interpret a single new image in the style of, say, Claude Monet. The latest work from Google Brain, however, makes style transfer almost trivial to compute, making it possible not just to apply in real time to video, but to mix different styles together. While normally the neural network would repeatedly recreate the target image (your cat) until it elicited a similar feel to the source image (the painting), the new system moves up a level. Instead of learning the look of a single painting, the new style transfer network learns the style shared by multiple paintings by the same artist. Several Monet paintings and their effects on several examples — the system keeps track of the underlying similarities. For Monet, that might mean a certain color palette, or stroke style — that sort of thing. It may not be as specific as making something look just like one work in particular, but it still manages to capture the overall feel. You may be thinking, wait, don’t I already have this on my phone? And certainly Prisma and other apps create a similar effect. The difference is that those apps use a separate, specialized network for every art style — you select it, the app’s servers do the calculations on the Van Gogh system and spit out the result. In this case, it’s all being done by one super-efficient neural network that knows and can combine dozens of styles based on lower-level features. That may sound academic, but it’s actually a major step forward — a highly generalizable model. And as you can see in the video, it can be done quickly and mixed together with other styles — though whether impressionist and cubist techniques to be blended is another question altogether. The paper describing the new technique is ; hope you like Brad Pitt! He’s in almost every example image.
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Russia’s Busfor raises $20M to wrap up bus ticketing across Eastern Europe and Asia
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Mike Butcher
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While Uber and others fight over private car transportation, there remains an elephant in the room which has simply not been disrupted yet and which actually carries far more people on the planet: Buses. You may laugh at the idea, but we are not talking about creating an “Uber for buses” here. The complication for passengers is not the bus coming to you, but the ability to travel farther than most disconnected bus companies will allow. Sorting out the hell of a medium, or even long-distance journey by bus would drive most people mad. Time tables are unconnected, as are ticketing platforms and, of course, prices. Perhaps this is why Berlin startup has raised $146 million to create a multi-mode search tool that compares and combines rail, air, bus and car for European destinations. But it turns out that emerging markets are ripe for the highest levels of disruption, because this is where buses are used most. And while the world ruminates over other issues with Russia, Moscow-based marketplace startup has been quietly getting on with the job. The startup has a platform for finding and buying bus tickets across Russia and plans now to expand in Eastern Europe and Asia. Because they can implement any tickets’ seller they don’t compete with the bus companies. They just give companies and customers an easier way to find the tickets, which are sold on commission. It’s now raised $20 million from two Russian PE funds, and . At the same time, Russia-based fund has increased its existing investment. This takes Busfor’s investment to $25 million in total. The investment will be used to accelerate Busfor’s growth in domestic markets and enter new markets. It’s aiming to hit 20 percent of the Russian bus ticket market by 2019. Founded in 2012 by ex-racing driver Ilya Ekushevskiy and ex-developer Artem Altukhov, Busfor entered the market because more people travel by bus in CIS states than by any other means of transport. And they do this even though online bus ticketing is a mess in most of these countries. The company enables carriers and bus stations to easily sell tickets to the customers searching for them online. So far it operates in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Thailand. It’s partnered with 5,000 bus companies, and claims to serve 2 million customers per month. Competitors include Germany’s Flixbus and India’s RedBus. But Busfor has mixed those two models, meaning bus companies can access a bigger market. This tends to lead to investment in better, more comfortable, buses because the bus companies have to compete on a more level playing field. Handy.
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Tesla says it actually posted a profit this quarter
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Matthew Lynley
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Well that was unexpected — Tesla reported today in its third-quarter that it had earnings of 74 cents per share, compared to Wall Street’s expectations of a loss of 54 cents per share. In other words: Tesla said it actually made a profit this quarter on a GAAP basis. Tesla shares quickly jumped around 5.5 percent following the company posting a rare profit for the quarter. “Furthermore, we expect this to continue into Q4 and project positive GAAP net income (excluding non-cash stock-based compensation) despite [Zero-emission vehicle] credit sales in Q4 likely being negligible,” the company said in a statement. “We set new records for vehicle production, deliveries and revenue, which led to GAAP profitability and positive free cash flow (cash flows from operations less capital expenditures). At the same time, GAAP total automotive gross margin and gross profit per car increased substantially.” Tesla still said it planned to ship around 50,000 vehicles for the second half of the year, with 25,000 planned shipments for the fourth quarter this year. The company also said it still plans to be on track to deliver 500,000 vehicles in 2018. The company had originally targeted that shipment goal by 2020, but it bumped it up earlier this year accompanying an earnings report and a large number of pre-orders for the Model S. Throughout the year, Tesla has made a lot of aggressive moves, including working to expand its self-driving car efforts, and ramping up its car shipments. Earlier this month, Tesla . Tesla actually revised that estimate slightly upward by around 300 cars. Tesla is still in a tricky position as it works to push through its acquisition of SolarCity and deals with some delays in satisfying the full demand for the Model 3 — which . It’s also trying to increase spending to ramp up production of the Model 3 and Model X, and . Tesla shareholders . Tesla said it brought in $2.3 billion in revenue, compared to Wall Street’s estimates of $1.98 billion.
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23andMe reportedly no longer working on next-gen sequencing
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Sarah Buhr
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won’t continue with next-generation DNA sequencing and has reportedly laid off the lab working on the project. About half-a-dozen workers were laid off from the Salt Lake City, Utah-based lab, according to , which first reported the news. By our own count based on LinkedIn, at least five members of the lab have been let go, including its chief medical officer, Dr. Jill Hagenkord, who was hired to head the project in 2014. The company will continue selling its core product, a $199 kit testing for genetic markers having to do with health and ancestry, and founder told TechCrunch it would be making a bigger effort to gather more and better genetic information from more diverse populations around the world. But a more modern type of sequencing technology, commonly referred to as next-gen sequencing, won’t be a focus for now. Next-gen sequencing is a sort of catch-all term for a number of methods offering a more detailed overview of your genetic code. The new technology has dramatically dropped in price in the last few years and gives researchers a closer look at potential diseases. Companies like Helix, Color Genomics and Genos have started to crop up, as a result, offering this more comprehensive approach to discovering what makes you, “you,” as well as any genetic issues you may need to know about. 23andMe began looking at the technology , starting with a pilot study on exome sequencing. The company noted the success of the study at the time and said it would, “prepare for the day when full-genome sequencing will be an affordable possibility for everyone.” So far, 23andMe has not gotten back to TechCrunch when asked why it dropped this line of pursuit, but founder Anne Wojcicki told BuzzFeed it had nothing to do with slowed demand, money or regulatory issues. Instead, she said, “we have our hands full,” and that it was maybe just a bit too complicated to deal with for now. “We spent a lot of time pursuing sequencing, and I think as we started to understand it better and better and understand the complexities, we decided to focus on our core business,” she told BuzzFeed. We’ll be sure to update you if and when we get more information on this development.
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Groupon is buying LivingSocial, plans to downsize business to 15 markets from 27
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Ingrid Lunden
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Some significant consolidation is going down in the world of daily deals — going down being the operative phrase here. Today, it would acquire , its onetime big rival that was partly owned by Amazon, for an undisclosed sum. Lest you think that this is a power move made by companies at their peak, think again: the news comes as a quiet sidenote in Groupon’s Q3 earnings results, which on revenue of $720.5 million and earnings per share of -$0.01, but showed a continuing net loss for the company, of $35.8 million for this last quarter. Groupon today also said it plans more downsizing of its overall business, on top of the several closures and layoffs of the last few quarters. In Q2 the company was operational in 27 markets; the plan will be to bring that down to 15. “We are pursuing strategic alternatives and other options to exit the remaining countries, which we expect will continue into 2017,” the company noted. The LivingSocial deal, which is expected to close in November 2016, is “not material” to Groupon’s earnings, meaning it is small enough that Groupon does not have to disclose the price. This is a whimper of an ending for LivingSocial, which once competed hard against Groupon for both merchants to list deals for their goods and services, and consumers to buy those offers. The company had raised an eye-watering $928 million in venture funding over the years, including notable investment from , and it spent much of that funding aggressively trying to expand. It failed to find a sustainable market for its platform, and went several of and , leading to today’s final deal. Groupon has fared only somewhat better. As demand for daily deals fell off drastically, the company has tried to spin one idea after another in areas like mobile commerce and building out specific vertical businesses, for example around restaurants and travel. It even looked to capitalize on LivingSocial’s downsizing at times, for example when it acquired from its rival in Korea in a bold Asia play, only to just over a year later. The company continues to quietly work on rebuilding its business and points to underlying signs that there is a market for its brand and its role in offering customers more offers from merchants local to them. The company says it added 1.2 million customers in the last quarter and posted gross billings of $1.43 billion. “Our strategy continues to deliver results with double-digit growth in North America local billings and our highest quarter for customer acquisition in over three years,” said CEO Rich Williams . “We are looking forward to a strong finish to the year and further progress on our mission to make a daily habit for consumers.” However, trends are not going in the right direction right now. Those gross billings are actually down 2 percent on a year ago, and gross profit of $314.1 million was also down on $328.9 million from a year ago, weighed down by international.
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Sarah Perez
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Snapchat is reportedly looking to raise as much as $4B in its upcoming IPO
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Matthew Lynley
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In May earlier this year, Snapchat raised around $1.8 billion in a financing round that valued it at around $18 billion — and now it looks like that valuation could double in its upcoming IPO. Bloomberg is reporting that Snapchat is that could value it as high as $35 billion. Previously, the company , though, as usual, all these things are subject to change. There are a couple of important footnotes in these kinds of situations. First, these discussions seem pretty early in the process, and we probably won’t know where things finally land until the IPO is priced closer to its listing. So setting these kinds of early expectations is often a tactic used to entice potential investors to the IPO. The company has chosen bankers, according to that report, but it’ll still take a couple of months to pan out before we see some final details. Second, as a result of them seemingly being pretty early in the process, everything could change wildly. According to leaked documents attained by TechCrunch, the company is . It’s already hit 150 million daily active users, making it one of the fastest growing and most appealing new platforms for advertisers. But we still have to see if the plans fully pan out. Snapchat’s 2015 revenue was $59 million, according to those documents. In addition, those documents suggested that Snapchat estimated it would generate between $250 million and $350 million in revenue this year. A $25 billion to $35 billion valuation is quite a large range, but given that the discussions seem quite early, it looks like bankers are still working to nail down the overall appetite for Snapchat’s IPO. Raising that much money wouldn’t be outlandish for a company like Snapchat, however. Facebook, in its IPO, raised around $16 billion, while Twitter raised around $1.8 billion. Obviously the former has proved to be more successful than the latter, but if Snapchat can capture early interest and raise a large amount of capital, it can get ahead of future potential waning interest. Raising that much money is also important to work on its hardware plans, like its Spectacles sunglasses, and making large acquisitions like its reportedly $100 million acquisition of Bitstrips.
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Microsoft’s Surface event and Apple’s Mac event preview: Listen to TCBC 7 with Romain Dillet
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Darrell Etherington
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This week’s TCBC podcast is all about events: Microsoft’s and Apple’s, both of which happen this week and both of which will be covered by Romain Dillet, who joins as my guest for the episode. We’re fresh from watching and writing about Microsoft’s event earlier today, where it revealed its and a host of software improvements coming to Windows 10 with the Creator’s Update. Romain provides some perspective on Microsoft’s and mixed reality, as well as some insight into what the company hopes to achieve with its new Beam game streaming services. We also talk a bit about the historical appeal of the Surface lineup, and how the Surface Studio might change that target audience. As for Apple’s Mac event, we don’t have to wait long to find out what’s revealed, but we provide a pretty good summary of what to expect from tomorrow’s event. We also talk about AirPods, but keep in mind this is just before our esteemed boss revealed that they . We still get to look forward to , however, and that’s a very exciting prospect, given how long it’s gone without an update. You can listen via the stream embedded above, or (and leave a review), or in your podcast player of choice.
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Microsoft’s Paint 3D is a simple entry into rudimentary 3D modeling
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Brian Heater
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Strange is it sounds, Microsoft Paint is once again a Windows focal point. Thirty-one years after its introduction with the first version of the operating system, the software giant has given the application one of biggest revamps, putting it at the center of a 3D content ecosystem that will play a key role in future hardware and software offerings. When you get a chance to sit down with latest version of the operating system in all the hardware glory that the , it’s important to keep in mind that Paint 3D, for all of its demo panache is still Paint. That means we’re dealing with an entry level graphics editing app – albeit one that can do 3D now. The tools will be mostly familiar to anyone who has spent any time with an older version of the app (a list, one assumes, that includes anyone who has touched a Windows machine), but now there’s an additional tap that lets you add some depth to those rudimentary images you create with a finger or stylus. As advertised, it’s pretty simple to use right off the bat. Adding an extra dimension to an image is as simple as a pressing a button. Once you’ve done that, you can take a full trip around the picture by swiping a finger on the access below – it’s similar to the sort of 360-degree product sliders you see on retail sites. Of course, the issue with Paint is the same it always has been – it won’t make you a good artist. So, while your doodles are in 3D, they’re only as good as you can make them. There are some work around for simple images – you can create perfect shapes by selecting a tool and dragging it to your size preference. Microsoft also provides 3D models from 3D parties that you can drag and drop in, letting another artist do the heavy lifting. Once you’ve got an object on the screen, you can drop stickers onto it – simple stamps that add two dimension details to a 3D object, like, say, a smile for the Emoji I built in the demo. You can also use the standard color tools like brush and fill – though be forewarned that it doesn’t work great with the complex 3D images from third parties (though that bowler hat on my emoji probably didn’t want to be red anyway). The app also suffers the fate of other basic 3D modeling software, in that it’s hard to get a good sense of depth with an object on a 2D plane, making it hard to align objects. And, of course, this is an extremely simple app at that, so there’s really not much here for people who already know CAD software. Instead, Microsoft’s play is getting the uninitiated interest in the form – and the Remix social element of the application will probably help on that front.
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Airbnb’s female employee representation down since last diversity report
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Airbnb , showing a 57% white workforce (last year, Airbnb was 63% white) and 43% female workforce — a 3% decline from last year. Although Airbnb lost some female employees, the company noted that it has doubled the number of women in senior leadership roles and increased the number of women in technical roles. Regarding underrepresented minorities, Airbnb’s workforce is 6.5% Hispanic and 2.9% black. Next year, Airbnb’s goal is to increase its overall percentage of employees from underrepresented employees from 10% to 11%. In order to get there, Airbnb says it has expanded its efforts to recruit people from historically black colleges and universities, as well as from schools with large Latino populations. Airbnb also recently started working with diversity recruiting startup Jopwell to source candidates from underrepresented groups. Lastly, Airbnb is implementing a new policy to require that women and people of color are included in the candidate pools for all of Airbnb’s senior level positions. This report comes at a time when Airbnb is in the . In September, Airbnb unveiled its plan to tackle those issues, which entailed guaranteeing short-term bookings for people who have been discriminated against, deemphasizing the use of user photos, blocking out availability if a host claims a space is taken when it really isn’t and working to increase the number of Instant Book listings, which don’t require hosts to approve specific guests, to one million by the beginning of 2017. Airbnb also released a new non-discrimination policy, developed under the guidance of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Meanwhile, Airbnb is suing several cities including New York, San Francisco, Anaheim and Santa Monica.
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Crunch Report | Huge DDoS Attack on Major Websites
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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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Lifestage, Facebook’s teens-only app, hits Android
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Sarah Perez
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Lifestage, designed to counteract the Snapchat threat by giving younger users a place to connect outside of Facebook’s larger social network, Previously an iPhone-only application, this experimental app represents Facebook’s attempt to woo the high schooler crowd, while also testing other features like video profiles, gamification elements, and more. These things could make their way into Facebook’s main application, even if Lifestage itself later fails. Lifestage is now one of many ways Facebook has been targeting Snapchat’s user base. In particular, the company understands that Snapchat’s camera-first design mechanism is one the social app’s key draws. To engage Facebook users in similar ways, the company acquired photo and video filtering app MSQRD, then alongside on top of the News Feed. It also with an offer of tools that would allow for third-party creation of profile filters, and it .” More recently, Facebook has been testing , and it rolled out ” which has become fairly popular. Lifestage, therefore, is just one weapon in Facebook’s arsenal when it comes to competing with Snapchat. And, from the look of the early numbers, at least, it may not be one that lasts. The app by its nature is limited to the high school crowd primarily. Technically, it’s for 21 and unders, but Facebook is hoping for viral spread through high schools in particular. [gallery ids="1407382,1407383,1407384,1407385"] In Lifestage, users answer bio questions with videos, which then unlocks more questions. And when you update your profile, you get a little sunglasses-smile emoji next to your name. If you don’t update, the smile turns to a frown, or even the poop emoji. This is meant to encourage regular engagement with the app. In addition, users can show off what they like and dislike by adding it to their profile – a feature that caters to the ever-changing interests of younger users, who often latch on and then drop new trends more quickly than their older counterparts. , Lifestage has so far failed to find significant traction, however – it’s not a viral hit. According to App Annie’s metrics, the app has dropped to #1289 in the Social Networking category on iTunes, which hits at slow adoption. (Of course, without the Android app, its potential reach has been limited until now.) It’s also, of course, targeting a narrower audience than most social apps. Lifestage blocks users over a certain age, which means it would never really climb to the top of the charts, even if it became a hit. (There is from signing up, which will become a larger problem as the app scales. It’s not likely the go-to destination for predators right now, though, given its small footprint.) Still, even if Lifestage doesn’t ever find its footing as the , Facebook can take what it learned here, then incorporate those elements into its other products. For example, though Facebook’s news-reading app Paper failed, it taught the company how to do Instant Articles. And via Lifestage, Facebook may discover how to better improve user profiles with video – something that is not yet working on Facebook itself, where video profiles are an option, but haven’t been widely adopted. In the meantime, users of a certain age can .
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Announcing the startups pitching in the TC Pitch-off in Seoul!
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Jordan Crook
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TechCrunch is coming to Seoul next week for the TC Meetup + Pitch-off, and today we’re proud to announce the startups participating in the pitch-off. These companies will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of expert judges, including TC editors and local VCs. First place wins a table in the Startup Alley at TC Disrupt London. Second place gets two tickets to the conference, and the Audience Choice winner gets one ticket to the show. Here are the companies presenting on October 27: We’ll also be joined by to talk about going global, and about fostering an inclusive environment for female founders. It’s sure to be a night to remember, and we can’t wait to see you there. Buy tickets to the TC Meetup + Pitch-off in Seoul on October 27 .
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Six reasons to be hyped for the Nintendo Switch (and four reasons to worry)
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Devin Coldewey
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Yesterday saw the introduction — after many leaks and rumors — of the , the company’s next game console. It isn’t due to arrive until March of next year, which is infinitely frustrating because it looks amazing for several reasons, not all of them obvious. Here’s why I’m more excited about the Switch than for any Nintendo product in a long time. The Wii was a blast, and sold like hotcakes. But the Wii U was a strange and some would say lazy upgrade that attempted to squeeze more money out of the same ideas. In the end, their entire strategy was compromised and they lost both players and games. The Switch jettisons all that baggage, cutting things off clean except for useful accessories (more to come) like the Pro Controller. This fresh start means Nintendo can start a completely new dialog with gamers, developers and consumers, all of whom have been somewhat abandoned over the last few years. While Nintendo distanced itself from… well, itself, it also managed to keep separate from the competition. It does things neither the PS4 nor Xbox One does, while those two systems are, in many ways, almost identical. What that means is that, while very few people are going to buy both Microsoft and Sony’s consoles, it’s totally possible people will want a Switch the “traditional” console of their choice. Perhaps the failure to launch in time for the holidays was a strategic move: steer clear of the marketing push by the 900-pound gorillas and strike later, when people are looking for something new (and have recouped their holiday expenses with a few paychecks). With the Wii, people “got” it when they put their hands on it. “Oh, you actually move around!” With the Wii U, people… didn’t get it. I still don’t get it, and I have one! “It’s a second screen? But also the main screen, sometimes? But you have to be in Wi-Fi range, because it’s not the actual console? And sometimes you have to look at both screens?!” With the Switch, people will get it as soon as they see it. “Oh, you can use it anywhere, and the controllers come off!” If people can imagine a way to use it, Nintendo probably already thought of it and put it in the reveal commercial. There are a few questions remaining, of course, but the basic idea explains itself. That’s a plus. Here’s a picture of my coffee table. Hmm, there’s… actually a lot going on there, but mainly I wanted to show that I love playing awesome Nintendo games on my couch so much that I’ve literally never put away the SNES I got as a kid. Couch co-op (or competition) is in Nintendo’s DNA, more so than perhaps any company in the world. It’s something Nintendo cares about deeply, and has always made a priority. The Wii and Wii U emphasized couch multiplayer, and the Switch does too, but so fundamentally that it’s literally built into the console itself, off the shelf. That’s a great sign. Nintendo may finally, be , but that raises the question of whether something like the 3DS is even necessary. The Switch is the answer to that question. You don’t use the Switch in the same places you use your phone. It’s not for wasting time while you wait for your sandwich to come up, it’s for when you might otherwise pull out a book, watch a show or listen to a podcast. It’s just as powerful as your home console, because it is your home console. And that also means that, unlike the Vita or even 3DS, you’re not getting ports or handheld-first games — yet games that are better on handheld will be just as much at home. Count the number of kids shown in the . Go ahead, I’ll wait. Did you get zero? Good, that’s what I got. Nintendo knows that its real user base is an aging cohort of gamers attached to the franchises it holds. They don’t need to show a thing like with the Wii U, where Junior can play Mario while Dad watches the game. More likely is a situation where Dad’s playing Mario while Junior is playing Gears of War. Yet the simplicity and flexibility of the setup (and ease of replacing individual pieces, it bears mentioning) means they definitely were keeping kids, especially smaller ones, in mind when designing it. Bring it in the car so the kids can play Smash on a road trip. Easy cleanup, no cords, no wrist straps or arguing over who gets the Wiimote Plus. Now, I said I was hyped, but I didn’t say I don’t have any reservations. The announcement was a little short on details, in that special Nintendo way, which leaves me wondering… No one touches the screen in the reveal video, and Nintendo has refused to comment. No touchscreen would be a big change for them, since the Switch is meant to encompass both home and handheld gaming, and the last million or so DS iterations had touchscreens. People expect screens they handle to be touchable, and Nintendo wants the device to be easy to relate to. My guess? It has a touchscreen but they’re not sure whether it’s going to be resistive or capacitive, and the stylus situation is similarly unanswered. Let’s hope, anyway. How else will we get Mario Maker Switch? This comes up pretty much any time Nintendo releases anything — and with good reason. Are we going to get 60 frames per second? What resolutions will it drive? What are the modern conveniences developers will appreciate, or the bottlenecks they will curse? We’ll know more later — my feeling is they are hammering out the nitty-gritty details and seeing what they can get to fit under a $300 price point (the logical price) by March or whenever they ship. Nintendo knows one of its strengths is its huge collection of games stretching back three decades. They’re not going to abandon that — but they might have to abandon the last five years or so. The Switch is just too different from the Wii or Wii U to port over games, meaning great games from those consoles will stay there. Can we expect Switch-specific remakes of Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, and others? The Switch will also be an amazing platform for playing your old NES and SNES games — expect the interface from the to appear here — but will we have to re-buy everything? Is it going to be a fuss? How much from our old accounts and Nintendo consoles will carry over? The Switch is a handheld, but will it be Nintendo’s only handheld? In some ways, it makes sense: unify everyone under the same strong brand, hardware and message. In other ways, it’s completely insane: Nintendo’s handhelds are among the best-selling systems of all time and they, too, are part of the company’s DNA. Does the Switch signal a change to the home/handheld divide that Nintendo has held for so long? Will its smartphone division pick up the pieces? What will mega-franchises like Pokémon and Monster Hunter do? I can’t imagine Nintendo leaving the dedicated handheld market behind, but I also don’t know what they can do to keep it fresh and distinct from the Switch. Even with the uncertainty around some features and the future of the space Nintendo is defining, I think the Switch is a hugely positive move for the company. It focuses on fun and sharing that fun with friends, while avoiding questionable gimmicks like 3D and whatever you’d call the Wii U. Instead, it makes an advance others have yet to try, as did the original Wii and DS, both of which added something unique and intuitive to a games market that needed it. I can’t wait for it, and not just because of the new Zelda. And the new Mario. And the newish Splatoon. And, God willing, a new Metroid. But because I want to see Nintendo a household name again, and I think the Switch may just be the platform that makes that happen.
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With its first VR series, CollegeHumor gives a completely accurate overview of presidential history
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Anthony Ha
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How do you make things funny in virtual reality? That’s the question is exploring with 1600 in 360°, a new video series depicting some of the, um, highlights of U.S. presidential history. Apparently, Google approached IAC-owned CollegeHumor about creating 360-degree content for YouTube and for . Sam Reich, president at CollegeHumor’s production studio Big Breakfast, told me Big Breakfast considered some of the constraints — mainly the fact that the camera should be stationary to avoid giving viewers motion sickness. And because the series would be stuck in one room, they asked themselves, “What is a room where you would love to be a fly on the wall?” Their answer: The Oval Office. The series will feature six presidents, starting with . As you watch, you can spin the camera around and look all over the room, which is full of gags and jokes. (Yes, there’s an obligatory Hamilton joke.) Asked about the challenges and opportunities of the new format, Reich said, “I’m going to get really comedy nerdy here. Comedy dating back to Buster Keaton has been about playing with the frame, sort of making use of your body in space. That’s what makes VR so intimidating … There’s not the same amount of room to play around with framing.” Put another way: It’s harder to pull off a visual joke when you don’t know where the audience is going to be looking, so the dialogue had to carry more weight, both plot- and humor-wise. The script had to be much more detailed than usual, because it was both describing the main events and what’s happening on the other side of the room. And because the video is just one continuous shot, they couldn’t cut between different takes. “We rehearsed for a full week, did five or six takes and then used the best take,” Reich said. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K689uuzHq9o&w=560&h=315] The next episodes will tackle Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Nixon — plus an episode planned for Election Day, which Reich said they’re keeping as a surprise. He added that he’s proud of the show’s “non-traditional casting.” John Adams, for example is played by Siobhan Thompson — not exactly the old white guy you’d expect. “We realized that if we weren’t thoughtful, all of these roles could go to white men — American history is chock full of them,” Reich said. “So we had to get a little bit more thoughtful and creative about it. A lot of these roles went to women and minorities.” As for whether there’s more VR in CollegeHumor’s future, Reich said the company is waiting to see the response to this first show, but he added, “We have a big appetite for VR in general.” And hey, they could even keep going with U.S. history: “We’re only tackling six presidents here. There’s clearly room for more.”
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Airbnb sues New York City
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Kate Conger
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Another city, another Airbnb lawsuit. Airbnb sued the city of New York, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Mayor Bill de Blasio today over legislation that would make it illegal to advertise accommodations that can’t legally be rented out for less than 30 days. The bill was passed in June and signed into law by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier today. New York housing law restricts short-term rentals for certain housing, and housing advocates in the city argue that many of the units listed on Airbnb are illegal. Although these hosts can already face steep fines, the new law would make it illegal for Airbnb to allow listings for these units on their platform. Airbnb claims the law is a violation of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for content posted by their users. In the suit, Airbnb says that application of the law to Airbnb “would hold Airbnb liable for the content of rental listings created and posted by third-parties on Airbnb’s platform. As such, the Act unquestionably treats platforms such as Airbnb as the publisher or speaker of third-party content and is completely preempted by the CDA.” In addition to violating the CDA, Airbnb also argues that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the company and its users. Airbnb has similar lawsuits against the cities of San Francisco, Anaheim and Santa Monica. The lawsuit is an about-face for the company, which offered to work with the city of New York to address concerns about Airbnb’s impact on affordable housing. Airbnb proposed several new rules for hosts, including a “three strikes” rule that would boot hosts from the platform if they listed illegal units three times. Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, who sponsored the legislation, called Airbnb’s olive branch “preposterous” and a “PR stunt.” “In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — the price-gouging hotel industry — and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. A majority of New Yorkers have embraced home sharing, and we will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the people, not the powerful,” Airbnb’s head of New York public policy Josh Meltzer said in a statement. Meanwhile, the ShareBetter Coalition praised Cuomo for signing the legislation. “Airbnb has broken the law for years, making billions off their exploitation of the housing market while tenants have paid the price with higher rents and less affordable housing. This bill will give law enforcement the tools they need to crack down on illegal short-term rentals that deprive our neighborhoods of precious units of affordable housing and destabilize our communities,” the Coalition said in a statement.
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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the key to equality
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing today to talk about diversity and equality. This comes just weeks after Salesforce brought on board Tony Prophet, . Equality, Benioff said, has to be something that Salesforce stands for, just like it stands for growth, innovation, new ideas and creating new technology. “[Equality] is a huge issue for the world,” Benioff said. “This is not just about Salesforce or the tech industry or just industries. We are in a world that we can see inequality everywhere we go. We know a lot about income inequality. We know a lot about racial inequality. We know about inequality with women. We know about LGBTQ inequality.” He went on to say that inequality is a “multi-faceted beast” and that it’s something we all need to become experts on. Not just leaders like himself, but everyone. “We’re fighting this beast,” Benioff said. “It’s out there.” In order to fight the beast of inequality, Benioff said, we need to better understand why we’re seeing more inequality in the world. We also need to recognize that the solution to inequality is equality, he said. In response to a question about his , Benioff talked about the importance of seeing ourselves in each other. Even though he identifies as a white, heterosexual man, he said he’s also a lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans. “I am all of our employees,” Benioff said. “I am the whole rainbow. I have to represent everybody. I also feel like I am the one who is being oppressed and repressed, but I am also the oppressor. I am trying to have a consciousness where I understand how my employees feel.” He later added, “I think that we all have to see ourselves in each other. We all have to see that at some level we are all the same humanity. That is the key to equality, when we all see ourselves as equal.”
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The reality of AR/VR competition
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Tim Merel
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Virtual, augmented and mixed reality have a competition problem. But while most AR/VR companies will tell you how much better they are than their nearest direct competitor, they’re picking the wrong fight. The main event isn’t between Oculus, HTC, Sony, Samsung and Google for VR, or Microsoft, Magic Leap, Meta and ODG for AR (including mixed reality). There are far bigger and scarier competitors out there. People spend almost 11 hours a day using electronic media. That means out of the average 79 years folks spend on the planet, more than 34 of them are devoted to media. What could be so fascinating that we give almost half of our lives to it? AR/VR leaders
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Zwift merges indoor fitness with massive multi-player online gaming
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Felicia Shivakumar
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At its core, is indoor cycling software. But layered on top of its functionality is a community that in the two years the company has been operating has grown in both scale and sheer strength. At an event at cycling in SF, I found myself surrounded by core users proudly flaunting their team names and meeting, often not for the first time. Even showed up to the happening little shop to check out what Zwift had going on. Without trying it for yourself, it can be difficult to wrap your brain around how the gaming, fitness and social aspects tie together. It’s a cycling community, built on gaming software, that connects to indoor training. Put simply, Zwift has built software that, from the comfort of your own home or local gym, allows you to feel like you are riding alongside your friends on your favorite scenic road. Zwift has grown steadily this past year, with 170,000 accounts, 2.5 million rides and 45 million miles ridden to date. According to the team, the average ride is longer than an hour, which is impressive. If you’ve ever spent time on a bike at home or the gym, you know that anything more than 20 minutes and you start to feel like a hamster (or at least I do). So why have so many people never heard of Zwift? The company isn’t new. With 17,000 , 100,000 and a half million , Zwift has had little mainstream press coverage recently outside of the cycling circuit. A month or so ago, Mark Zuckerberg did post his support of Zwift when he found himself using it as a recovery option after breaking his arm. Turns out there are many other tech execs on the platform, including , and Uber’s . But the biggest barrier as to why the company isn’t more well-known in tech circles is that until you try it yourself, it’s hard to really grasp what’s so great about it or when and where you would use it. [gallery ids="1405241,1405236,1405238,1405240,1405237,1405248,1405247"] Zwift isn’t hardware or a device you can just buy. It’s a subscription-based service where you pay $10/month and BYOBike. Unlike Peloton, which requires you to to ride or take their classes, you can use any road bike on any indoor trainer regardless of its age or fanciness, simply by adding some sensors. Trying Zwift for yourself still requires some setup with fairly high-end sports equipment or belonging to a gym that has the above. Zwift is hard to come by, despite technically being an accessible platform to fitness enthusiasts. When you see it in action, though, you immediately want to saddle up and try it for yourself, regardless of what you are wearing, which in my case was jeans and heels. Digging into the software itself, Zwift does two things. First, it tracks your activity and performance stats. “There’s actually real data behind all this. It’s not just a game. We measure everybody’s watts, their heart rate recorded, we have their cadence, the rate that they are peddling the bicycle. We log it all to a real data file, and industry standard fit file, and it also uploads to all the standard services like Strava,” says co-founder and lead developer . Second, it connects to compatible hardware to adjust the tension of the bike and mirror the ride experience of the course you see in front of you. “When you are going up or down slopes in Zwift, certain trainers, which is the thing the bike mounts to, have a smart feature where they can actually change resistance. So we support every smart trainer out there to control the feeling. So when you are going up a steep mountain, you are going to feel it. When you are going down a descent, if you do want to pedal it’s going to be very easy. We also use that controllable feature so that when you are doing a workout we can make it so you are putting out just the correct amount of effort so you get perfect structured training intervals every time.” True to the gamified nature of Zwift, you have a profile with your stats and an avatar you can customize, selecting not only your jersey, but also which brand and model of bike you ride. In 2017, the company expects to improve character customization to include mustaches, goatees, jewelry and more. Also slated to roll out in the coming months is voice interaction, which will help build on the social aspects by allowing you to talk to anyone on the platform. Zwift’s iOS app, currently in beta, is expected to go public, making the service mobile and much easier to use. With the introduction of this new app, all you’ll need is a heart-rate monitor to run or ride on Zwift. Then, there is, of course, running, which will be introduced in beta to current users as early as Christmas. At launch, running will be alongside existing cycling courses. But there is huge potential to build a dedicated experience for trail running, marathons and possibly even spin it out to become its own subscription service. To support these new endeavors, Zwift is closing a $25 million round in early November. Though the company is unable to disclose exactly who is involved, the round is being led by a private equity firm based in London with other investments in the video game space. The funds will be used to further product development and to lay the foundation for future growth. Prior to this Series A round, Zwift has quietly raised starting with a friends and family round at launch and their first angel round earlier this year. Zwift’s biggest challenge to date has been waiting for hardware to catch up. VR, for example, is something the company has built and made available, but headsets are still bulky and aren’t designed for fitness in VR. Smart trainers, which are core to the company’s functionality, still average around $1,000, and there is a finite supply of popular modules. Zwift’s CEO, , says to expect hardware partnerships in early 2017. “Our vision is to create the most engaged and socially active fitness platform.” The company is talking to manufacturers of stationary bikes and eventually treadmills that will be Zwift compatible, making the service more available and easier to use. “If you work long hours, if you live somewhere with limited access to the outdoors, places where there are weather issues, you always have the opportunity to ride your bike with a fun group of people in Zwift,” says VP of Product and Olympic cyclist, . “It doesn’t take away outdoor riding. It just gives people the opportunity to ride more.” Personally, I am bullish on Zwift and hope to see them grow into the virtual fitness future that they have the potential to lead. Despite living in perfectly sunny and temperate San Francisco, I find indoor workouts more convenient. You can sweat at home or at your local gym, hit the shower and get back to your day. There is also the added safety element of not wanting to ride or run at night, especially as a woman. For urbanites like me, it also removes the risk of getting hit by a car, which happens far more than any of us know. The social aspect of Zwift is also intriguing. If I could catch up with my friend in Berlin, while we virtually ride next to one another on the same loop, I might work out more. With more than 500 community events a month, there are plenty of group rides you can join. But what I find most motivating is that, despite being stationary on a bike, you feel like you are going somewhere. Zwift’s integration with shows the virtual path you completed, and seeing the map and incline stats for the path you rode gives you a sense of accomplishment that a calorie count or heart-rate stats just don’t. Take all these reasons and add running to the mix, and I think there is massive potential for Zwift to tip over into the world of mainstream fitness.
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This smart sock adds sensations to prosthetic limbs
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Devin Coldewey
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The future of prosthetics is fast arriving, with 3D-printed construction, advanced materials and embedded sensors replacing the unadorned wood and plastic of yore. But like the rest of the future, it’s not equally distributed. In order to bridge the gap for users who can’t afford or get at these fancy new prostheses, Austrian researchers propose smartening up dumb prosthetics with sensor-packed garments. The proCover, from the University of Applied Sciences in Linz, was at the Association for Computing Machinery’s UIST conference, where it was selected as one of the best papers. “The design and construction of prostheses that can emulate a natural sense of touch is of growing research interest,” reads the paper’s introduction. “However, many of the exciting innovations in this field will likely remain out of reach for most people… Our vision is to introduce a low-cost sensing wearable that can be applied retroactively to prosthetics to address this gap.” Their solution lies in the fact that many users of prostheses put socks on them just like any ordinary foot. Why not make this sock out of smart fabric? So that’s just what they did. Layers of conductive fabric sandwich a piezoresistive layer, creating a pressure-sensitive grid covering the entire foot and ankle. This was in turn connected to a ring of vibrating motors that can be worn wherever the user finds convenient. Pressure on a certain part of the foot would cause certain motors to vibrate at different frequencies. The researchers also tested a version that transmitted the angle at which a prosthetic knee is bent. It’s a flexible (in many ways) and low-cost way to sense the pressure and position, and the non-invasive feedback mechanism means no surgery is necessary. Initial testing of the prototype with several participating amputees showed that the device worked and provided fundamentally useful feedback, but could do with more customization. Fortunately, it’s easy to adjust things like position and intensity of feedback, or swap out the motors for something else, like one that applies increasing pressure rather than vibrations. Next for the team is reducing the complexity of the sock even further, and developing a glove version that can be worn on prosthetic hands.
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Applications are open now for our Hardware Battlefield at CES 2017
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John Biggs
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Do you make the hardest of things, hardware? We want you to compete in our Hardware Alley, our premier startup competition at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. You will have the chance to show your amazing products to representatives from major retailers, VCs, and other notables and you’ll climb far above the usual CES noise. Hardware Battlefield is part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield series, but with a few small differences. We require that participating companies must have a hardware component to their product. That means everything from IoT devices to 3D printing, health wearables to drones are accepted. And, of course, robots. Hardware Battlefield takes places at CES in Las Vegas, Nevada. Battlefield contestants still have six minutes to pitch to our judging panel followed by six minutes of live Q/A. Judges include hardware investors like Rob Coneybeer, Highway1 and HAX, top designers like Yves Behar and product experts like Susan Paley of GM. Martha Stewart and 50 Cent have also been known to stop by. You can apply for the Battlefield . The rules are simple: you need a functional prototype to show off at the show and you could win our coveted Metal Man prize and $50,000. It’s a great opportunity for a young and scrappy hardware company. So apply today and we hope to see you on the ground in Vegas where (hardware) dreams really do come true.
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Lenovo’s Yoga Book is a fascinating attempt to reinvent the hybrid tablet
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Brian Heater
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No mainstream electronics manufacture is making more interesting, innovative and downright bizarre products than Lenovo. Between its contorting efforts under the Yoga banner and the modular handsets being produced by Motorola, the Chinese company is taking the sort of form factor risks we rarely see outside of hardware startups. Nowhere is this better embodied than in the . If nothing else, it’s impressive that the company has managed to produce yet another fascinating take on the well-trod world of the hybrid. This time out, the company leans heavily on the notion that handwriting is one of the great unsung casualties of the rise of the tablet. In fact, the system is built around the return of pad and paper, incorporating the analog-to-digital output of devices like kind offered by Wacom’s budget Bamboo line into a high-end, $500 device. When we spoke to the company ahead of its launch, they saw it as primarily as a play for college students – a combination note taking device and standalone computer all in one. It’s a bit of a gamble, as these sorts of radical form factor departures always are. But if nothing else, it’s an utterly fascinating piece of hardware from an industry that too often defaults to more of the same. The Yoga Book is thin as hell. It’s 9.6 millimeters thin. That’s 0.38 inches, compared to the Macbook’s 0.52 and 1.5 pounds to the Apple laptop’s 2.03. It’s perhaps a somewhat unfair comparison, given the difference in screen sizes, but it does drive home how remarkably compact the device is. And indeed, it really does feel like a marvel of engineering – it’s thin and light enough to slip into a backpack with little notice, while maintaining the sturdiness of a full laptop. The solidness of build quality is due in no small part to the hinge. It looks a bit gauche and out of place at first, like a metal watchband connecting the two panels. It’s perhaps not aesthetically consistent with the other understated pieces, but it manages to contort the system to nearly 360-degrees, never wobbling the whole time. Closed, the system takes on the appearance of a scaled down ThinkPad – albeit one largely devoid of ports. All you get is a single micro-USB (not USB C, mind) for both charging and plugging in accessories and micro HDMI – more inline with its tablet roots than laptop aspirations. Sandwiched between the two is a micro SD slot. On the other side are the device’s sole physical buttons: power and volume, along with, yes, a headphone jack. Inside the book are two completely flat panels. Up top is a fairly standard squared touchscreen display surrounded by a thick black bezel, with a two-megapixel camera up top and a silver “Lenovo Yoga Book” logo in the bottom right corner. The bottom panel, however, is where things get really interesting. It’s also where Lenovo tries to be everything to everyone. Powered off, the bottom panel is entirely black, with the ghostly suggestion of a keyboard. Once on, the keys illuminate. It’s a nice effect – the Halo keyboard. It looks good, and it certainly goes a way toward shedding a few fractions of an inch from the Yoga Book’s profile. But the drawback is equally apparent. You’re typing on a flat surface, and all of the haptic feedback in the world won’t change that. Granted, I’ve only been using the Yoga Book for a limited period, but I really don’t think the experience is for me. A little give is important to the typing experience, and that much haptic buzzing is more of an annoyance. Again, Lenovo’s banking on younger users for this device – including high school and college kids – whose formative typing experiences largely occurred on touchscreen phones and tablets. The Android experience also has the added bonus of offering up predictive text as you type, akin to a mobile device, which some users may find to be a plus. Experience will also come down to precisely how much typing you plan to do on the thing. After all, that bottom black surface houses another key feature. Hold down on the little pen icon above the keyboard and you’ll fell a haptic buzz before the surface goes black. The included stylus is the size of a standard pen and features a variety of different tips, both standard plastic stylus and a ballpoint ink variety, so users can write directly on the surface or magnetically snap a pad of paper on top and write the old-fashioned way. Either way, the surface serves as a display surrogate, with text appearing on-screen in real time, as you write. Using the Note Saver app, you can switch between a trio of thickness options, ballpoint/fountain/pencil, and six colors. It’s fairly simple with an MS Paint-like interface, but it does the trick for note taking. Unfortunately absent from the app is OCR – which converts handwriting to text. The Lenovo rep I spoke to said the company just didn’t believe the technology was accurate enough to employ this time around – a pretty big downside for those of us with abysmal handwriting that’s only gotten worse as we’ve moved more and more to the keyboard. At the very least, it’s a less roundabout way to incorporate the sorts of analog to digital note taking capabilities from companies like Wacom and Livescribe directly into a device. For the moment, however, the demand for such functionality still feels about as slim as the device itself The unit we received runs Android (a fairly old 6.0.1 – with Nougat arriving somewhere down the road). Another $50 will get you the Windows 10 version – probably a worthy upgrade for anyone seriously looking to integrate the Lenovo Book into their daily computing life. If you opt for the Android version, be forewarned that it comes with all of the limitations of that platform. Both version of the device run on an Intel Atom processor, coupled with 4GB of RAM. It’s enough to get most day-to-day functions accomplished, but don’t look toward the device to do any heavy lifting. The Yoga Book is better suited for in-class/office devices, rather than a full-bodied laptop replacement. The battery, meanwhile, is a hefty 8500 mAh, which ought to get you through a full day’s use, no problem. The Yoga Book isn’t for everyone. But then, Lenovo’s approach has never been one-size-fits-all. It’s a well designed piece of hardware (though you’ll want to find a spot for your notepad and stylus, so there’s no room on the device itself), that seemed likely doomed for a fairly narrow user-base. Students and others who have long searched for a well-made tablet with integrated pen and paper note taking capabilities may just have found their dream device. For most of us, however, it’s a tablet oddity. It’s fascinating and a bold attempt to bring yet another take to the hybrid space, but as it stands, it’s not ready to set the tablet world ablaze.
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Weekly Roundup: Tesla’s self-driving tech progress, Apple announces MacBook event
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Anna Escher
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This week, Tesla made a major announcement about the availability of its self-driving tech, Apple revealed when its next MacBooks are going to be announced, and we reviewed Google’s new Pixel XL. These are the top stories to catch you up on this crazy week in tech. Elon Musk made an announcement that as of now, in the future. The self-driving system will be an $8,000 add-on for vehicles to enable the software. Musk also announced that he’s targeting a by late 2017. All Tesla cars built from now on have all the hardware needed for full self-driving http://tcrn.ch/2ebZosr Posted by on Thursday, October 20, 2016 Apple announced it will be holding a . Hints started to appear about a brand new that could be called the Magic Toolbar and would replace the function row on the keyboard. A against an internet directory caused an outage for many popular sites like Twitter, Shopify, Spotify, Reddit, Vox Media, Airbnb and the New York Times. The outages are the result of a DDoS attack on the DNS provider Dyn. We , concluding that the $796 device feels like a bridge to the future of the company. Chinese tech company . The company introduced a line of TVs, , along with a slew of other consumer electronics and a Netflix-type streaming service. Go big or go home, right? Nintendo announced its next home gaming system, the . As rumored, the system appears to be something of a home console/portable console hybrid. Here’s . We also got to go , which ships just in time for the holidays on November 11. With Theranos, the . The company swiftly fell from grace after lawsuits and criminal investigations. It’s an ideal scenario for the SEC, which is investigating Theranos and widely expected to use a case against it to expand its mandate into Silicon Valley’s startup ecosystem. Facebook is embracing utility with a . From Facebook Pages, you’ll now be able to order food, request an appointment with a business, or buy movie and event tickets without ever leaving Facebook. Former Braintree founder Bryan Johnson invested , a new project with the sole purpose of building hardware and software to augment human intelligence. Kernel is still very much in the planning stages, but the idea is to facilitate communication between brain cells by hacking the “neural code” that enables our brain to store and recall key information. High profile investor Peter Thiel is said to be , despite recent controversies. Thiel is also . One question remains: Jobs and recruiting marketplace Glassdoor released a new tool to help people better determine their worth in salary compensation. aims to help people gain insight into how much money they make in comparison to other people working with similar jobs. A telehealth startup called over a law that bars people from getting a glasses prescription with an online eye exam. An attorney on the case said that the law is particularly troubling because it appears to be driven by a wish to protect business interests rather than public health and safety.
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