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Shiny and chrome! Rendering sparkly surfaces in CG just got massively better
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Devin Coldewey
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| 21
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As the graphics in games and movies edge closer and closer to photorealism, even the subtlest tricks of the light must be simulated. For years an especially tough one has been recreating the sparkling, uneven surfaces of water, metals and other materials — but these glints can now be rendered 100 times faster than before thanks to a new technique from computer scientists at UC San Diego. The problem with rendering these specular highlights, as they’re called, is that they’re just so complicated. Up close, a surface is rarely totally smooth, but rather is covered in microscopic bumps and scratches — and light hitting that surface is scattered all over the place, producing the glittering spots and lines that are so familiar to us. Nature, of course, has no problem rendering where the light goes, but a computer must perform thousands or millions of calculations to create an accurate simulation. There are shortcuts and ways to fake it, but no real solution. “There is currently no algorithm that can efficiently render the rough appearance of real specular surfaces,” . “This is highly unusual in modern computer graphics, where almost any other scene can be rendered given enough computing power.” Using the technique to render all those little scratches only took 1.4x as long as rendering it totally smooth. Ramamoorthi and his colleagues took an unusual path in computer graphics: simulating the phenomenon at an even lower level. Each pixel making up one of these uneven surfaces is considered as a multitude of light-reflecting “microfacets.” Some clever math allows the system to determine which microfacets will reflect light toward the virtual viewer, then generalize that information among similar microfacets according to a normal distribution. Using this “position-normal distribution” technique produces a highly accurate representation of speculars — and because the renderer is spared the trouble of checking how every ray of light interacts with every tiny scratch or bump, it’s far faster as well. Two more samples of the kind of lighting and features this new technique renders so efficiently: The researchers are presenting their work at SIGGRAPH next week, but you can .
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Reddit is still in turmoil
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Megan Rose Dickey
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year since Reddit revolted. When the company cracked down on revenge porn and subreddits containing offensive content last summer, the backlash was swift and ultimately led to the ouster of interim CEO Ellen Pao. Although Pao was seen as the driving force behind efforts to make Reddit respectable enough to appeal to advertisers, the company continued its clean-up after her departure, making diverse hires and keeping up with the instituted during Pao’s tenure. But Reddit, led by CEO Steve Huffman, seems to be struggling with its reform. Over the past six months, over a dozen senior Reddit employees — most of them women and people of color — have left the company. Reddit’s efforts to expand its media empire have also faltered. Reddit let go of at least two key members of its team earlier this week, several sources with knowledge of Reddit confirmed to TechCrunch. Among those who lost their jobs are Reddit’s vice president of marketing, and Reddit’s editorial director, . Also this week, Reddit HR generalist Nicole-Jasmin Clark left the company, , as well as a handful of people from the marketing team. The layoffs follow departures from the network’s video team last month, and the slow trickle of employees exiting the company over the past several months. Back in May, Reddit lost its head of community, Kristine Fasnacht, . In short, female and POC employees have been quietly leaving the company — by way of layoffs and resignations — from many departments, including engineering, marketing, operations and product. in June. “Over the past several weeks, we’ve been reorganizing our communications, editorial, video, and marketing teams,” a Reddit spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As a part of this reorganization, a few employees were let go and others who were offered restructured roles decided to resign and pursue other opportunities. We wish all of our former colleagues well and thank them for their valued time and service to Reddit.” However, sources say Reddit’s internal turmoil can be traced back to the company’s ongoing struggle to leave its antagonistic culture behind. Several employees fended off uncomfortable comments from users and management alike, sources claimed. “Management is terrible, a complete reflection of what the site is like,” one source said. Another source, a former Reddit employee who asked to remain anonymous described a management team with good intentions but poor execution. “Leadership needed to be more organized, focused, and unified,” the source said. “There was a lot of internal conflict and sudden firings that left much of the staff feeling insecure and like we could be fired at the drop of a hat and without warning. For that reason alone, bringing Huffman back was probably the best they could do at the time. Although, if people keep being let go or leaving out of dissatisfaction, it doesn’t appear to have improved much.” One individual speculated that the reemergence of the company’s drinking culture was to blame for the uncomfortable environment. Under Pao’s reign, Reddit tried to eradicate the bro-like amount of alcohol consumption at the office, but that went right out the window following in July 2015. “During all the leadership regimes, there were multiple incidents where employees would drink too much and end up in embarrassing and inappropriate situations,” a source explained. “There were multiple sexual harassment complaints from both female and male employees against female and male employees stemming from incidents that generally happened when employees were drinking.” Many of the layoffs and exits occurred in departments that reported to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who rejoined the company in November 2014 just as Pao was appointed interim CEO. Ohanian was initially appointed executive chairman, but left that role in July 2015 during Reddit’s revolt and became the company’s general manager instead. Ohanian returned to Reddit with a sense of what he called “ ” for the future of the platform and a desire to build the company from the so-called “front page of the internet” into a . Sources confirm that Ohanian was a driving force behind the company’s expansion into journalism, podcasts and video, pushing for the creation of an and building out Reddit’s film team to collaborate with Google on a video series called “ .” As part of its bid to expand the company’s presence in the media world, Reddit called Upvoted in October. The publication started with lofty goals of producing heavy-hitting journalism in mass quantities: Upvoted ran features on the Flint water crisis, homelessness, and the Paris terrorist attacks, and the team planned to produce as many as 40 original articles per day. Upvoted also served as a vehicle to drive non-Redditors to the site, covering AMAs and other popular Reddit threads to make them more easily accessible for readers unfamiliar with Reddit’s format. But Upvoted has since been significantly scaled back. The plan is to relaunch Upvoted “in the next few months,” , adding that the site would be folded back into Reddit instead of appearing as a stand-alone publication. Ohanian said Upvoted was “stockpiling content” for the eventual relaunch, which was delayed “because we’ve been busy shipping native mobile and a variety of other engineering projects.” With the departure of Chang, Reddit’s editorial director, the fate of Upvoted is in question. Reddit’s Upvoted podcast, which Ohanian in January 2015, also appears to be abandoned. Aside from a single episode published in June, the hasn’t been updated since October 2015. The “Formative” video series produced in partnership with Google, which aired new episodes roughly once a month since its launch, has been dark for four months. The dip in media production is in part due to the ongoing exodus of editorial and marketing employees from Reddit, sources claim. But sources say that Ohanian’s leadership also faltered, and that the editorial team clashed with the marketing department over what the role of Upvoted should be. As Ohanian told during Upvoted’s launch, he saw the expansion into media as an opportunity to turn Reddit into a content goldmine. He noticed news sites cherry-picking content from Reddit and wanted in on the action. “There are so many media companies that are so good at harvesting that content,” Ohanian told Inc. “What I want to do is allow those stories — and the story behind their story — to be told by the people who are actually responsible for them.” But re-blogging content from AMAs seems at odds with Upvoted’s mission to produce original journalism, and many of the writers hired in October 2015 were let go just three months later, in January 2016, and Upvoted appears to have featured the bylines of Chang and freelancers since then. Recent headlines are heavily Reddit-focused, including “Redditors Photoshop LeBron James Clutching His Trophy” and “Filmmakers Behind Documentary ‘Salam Neighbor’ Discuss Syrian Refugee Crisis in Reddit AMA.” How recycled content from Reddit can be folded back into the site remains to be seen. The plans to overhaul Reddit’s reputation as a hotbed for harassment and to remake the company as a multi-media publisher have yet to prove successful — at it seems that the departures of senior employees are impacting Reddit’s product and performance. So why can’t Reddit seem to hang on to its employees — particularly women and people of color? The same source who described management issues told us “working at Reddit is kind of like having an abusive boyfriend.” You care deeply for it. You believe in it. You want to make it better. You think you just might be the person that can make that happen. Then one day you realize how hard you have worked to make positive changes only to have it constantly chip away at your sense of self and continue the same toxic behavior no matter what you do. That toxic behavior, including the disturbing content and harassment commonly found on reddit, targets women on the site and within the company at a far greater rate than men. Eventually you have to decide if you want to be a part of that. Is it healthy to continue working there? Many of us have had to seek therapy for PTSD since leaving. I don’t think anyone realizes or acknowledges the emotional damage that can occur from an environment like that. It’s not surprising to me when women leave. Poor retention rates are the root of the lack of diversity in tech. Women, for example, leave tech companies at twice the rate of men, . The most common reason for departure is the working conditions (e.g. no advancement, number of hours, low salary). Hiring diverse employees won’t boost a company’s diversity stats if those workers don’t feel welcome and quickly leave the company — it’s the equivalent of filling up a leaky bucket. “Steve [Huffman] and the people he hired to help with hiring did a better job of formalizing a goal of diversity within the company — not with numbers, but just explicitly stating to the company that it was something we should strive for, etcetera. We were able to screen more candidates because instead of having a single recruiter, we had a team. It led to more diverse candidates, but we still struggled,” a source said. And while sources say Reddit made efforts to hire diverse staff in the wake of Pao’s exodus, many of those employees departed less than a year later. That said, Reddit has never released a diversity report, so it’s unclear how many women and/or people of color currently work at the company. Reddit’s general counsel Melissa Tidwell told TechCrunch in May that the company doesn’t publish diversity reports because it is “too small to be doing them.” (Diversity advocates say it’s never too early to evaluate diversity, and Pao’s recommends baking diversity and inclusion into a company’s culture from day one.) The turnover didn’t just affect Reddit’s overall diversity — it appears to have impacted Reddit’s ambitious plans to build out its media operations, as employees key to those efforts departed. “Rather than harming any particular project, another round of women leaving will hurt Reddit’s reputation and make hiring women and under-represented minorities more difficult again, they are trying to diversify their staff,” the source referenced earlier said. “It appears that leadership roles have gone primarily to men so, in reality, they’ll probably suffer very little.” As employees walked away from Reddit over the past six months, the company removed its team page that listed current and former employees. The page was removed from Reddit on March 2 and replaced with a generic “about” page that does not display profiles or Reddit usernames of any employees. Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, sent an email to the staff about the removal of the page, sources say, claiming that the page needed to be taken down to shield employees from the site’s users. Meanwhile, Reddit’s active user base is fluctuating quite a bit month over month. that it has grown to 243 million visitors a month, up from 164 million a year ago. But the reality of Reddit’s unique visitors is not as clear cut as you might think. As of August 14, 2015, . Reddit seems to have in April 2016 with 244 million unique visitors. The following month, down to 221 million. That was the last time Reddit publicly shared its numbers.
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Monotype will acquire marketing startup Olapic for $130M
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Anthony Ha
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, a publicly traded company focused on font design and technology, announced today that it’s acquiring , a startup that helps brands promote themselves with user-generated photos. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year — at that point, Olapic will operate as a division of Monotype. The purchase price is $130 million, plus $19 million in Monotype stock that will vest over time. “Olapic will extend Monotype’s ability to help brands express their story and engage with customers in a richer, more impactful way,” said Monotype CEO Scott Landers in . “Our value has always been predicated on type, technology and expertise, and Olapic strengthens us on all three fronts. ” Olapic previously raised around $21 million in funding, , from investors including Felix Capital and Fung Capital. It recently .
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Pandora struggles to find new footing as music streaming becomes commoditized
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Matthew Lynley
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Pandora, in a story we’ve seen before with many other maturing companies, is facing an existential crisis. The company now finds itself fighting for its life against competition from the core platforms its service exists on: Android and iOS. Both of them — and Amazon as well — have launched their own music-streaming products, and they’re baked into the core experience. They’re cheap, effective and could even be an inch away from offering a better free experience that serves as an add-on to keep people locked into an ecosystem. Not surprisingly, Pandora’s listener count dropped as the company reported its latest earnings report. Apple Music in less than a year after it launched, while Pandora’s listeners fell to 78.1 million from 79.4 million in the same quarter a year ago. The company had a bit of a wild day, with reports first emerging that the company would be bought out, and then the company . In the past year, Pandora has shaved off more than a tenth of its value. [graphiq id=”edfC3mTDJ53″ title=”Pandora Media Inc. (P) Stock Price – 1 Year” width=”600″ height=”463″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/edfC3mTDJ53″ link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/11470696/Pandora-Media-Inc-in-Oakland-CA” link_text=”Pandora Media Inc. (P) Stock Price – 1 Year | FindTheCompany”] If the story sounds familiar, it should. We saw the emergence of Dropbox and its incredible rise to prominence in the early days of the cloud era in technology. Users adored the dead-simple tools that allowed them to store, access and modify their files across multiple devices. But the notion of what a “file” is has completely changed, and the owners of the core platforms now offer their own spin on what online storage looks like — and it looks a lot different than it did a few years ago. Pandora, too, was a darling. It became one of the earliest ways to stream music online in a unique experience that simply wasn’t available on mobile devices before. Suddenly, listeners had access to an experience that was both comprehensive and rife with the potential of discovering new music. One of Pandora’s biggest strengths was its ability to match up similar types of music and serve up compelling channels, keeping listeners glued to its service. But algorithms mature, data becomes more ubiquitous and finding edges like Pandora’s strength in discovery becomes easier and easier as time goes on. Inevitably a lot of products become commoditized, whether that’s music streaming or cloud storage. Even Spotify, an on-demand music experience, has found itself creating a compelling discovery experience. Pandora has been around for so long, yet let so much competition catch up — including platform owners. In its lifetime, Pandora has seen itself rise to incredible highs (as much as triple its current share price) and low lows (all the way down to a potential buyout that represented less than half that high). Over the course of its life, the company’s shares have net fell about 20 percent. That might not seem like much, but similarities can be drawn between other stagnant companies that start to face existential crises. (Even Microsoft in the Steve Ballmer era might not be a bad comparison.) Dropbox isn’t a public company, but it’s certainly faced its own fiscal criticism. The company has been repeatedly . There is plenty of hand-waving in setting the valuations for private companies, but nonetheless there’s an analogue to be seen between the similar optics between the two companies. What this means for Pandora is that it needs to find a way to diversify its revenue. It’s clearly trying to show that it can. Pandora’s core radio product has two revenue streams: advertising and paying customers. It , which sought to extend the listening experience into the real world by offering a bridge between the app and live experiences. And it — with the hope that it could come out with its own on-demand experience. However, none of those revenue streams appears to be actualizing into a core area of growth. That’s a problem. In this sense, it might make sense for Pandora to exist within a larger empire, either as a loss-leading user acquisition tool or buying enough time for the company to find a logical path to strong profitability. Dropbox has found itself diving deep into enterprise products in order to attract a paying customer base beyond its traditional core cloud storage users. Microsoft gave up locking out its office products on PCs and opened it up to mobile devices outside its own platforms. You can see this happening with many companies at various stages of their lives, and Pandora is simply entering its era where it critically needs to innovate in order to survive. Apple, too, has been working to diversify its revenue streams as its smartphone sales start to sag. So it seems unlikely that Apple would pull the trigger and make the service free. But as a way, for example, to introduce and lock people into the Amazon Prime ecosystem — much more lucrative than just an individual streaming service — a much cheaper streaming option seems to make more sense, and in the end if it’s a comparable experience it’s better for the customer. Dropbox may have found its feet in its efforts to broaden its tools beyond simple cloud storage. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston (though there are probably a couple of ways to interpret that). But, either way, we’ve seen a story similar to this before. And Pandora needs to adapt in order to survive.
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Daimler hits the gas on electric and autonomous driving tech
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Darrell Etherington
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Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler intends to up its spending on research and development, the company revealed during its on Thursday. The high-end car maker is going to route a lot more money toward areas key to the future of driving, including autonomous driving tech, a brand new generation of batteries for electric vehicles and alternative drive systems. Daimler’s CEO Dieter Zetsche said the company is “adjusting” their plan in the electric car field, a change in strategy that reflects increased investment from Audi, as well as Tesla’s quick rise to becoming a kind of high-end electric brand cachet. While Zetsche didn’t put a number on spending into either electric, or into R&D efforts in general, he did say that spending on R&D for 2016 would be “significantly” higher than 2015’s roughly $7.3 billion spent. Already, Daimler’s Mercedes unit is making impressive strides: The company revealed a milestone 12-mile unassisted trip for its autonomous buses, navigating city streets and freeways on a route from an Amsterdam airport to a neighboring town.
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Roger Ailes resigns from Fox News
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Anthony Ha
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Roger Ailes has officially resigned as chairman and CEO of Fox News, according to from parent company 21st Century Fox. The resignation follows a lawsuit , a former Fox anchor. (Ailes claimed that the suit was retaliation for Fox’s decision not to renew Carlson’s contract.) There are reports that an internal investigation uncovered . Matt Drudge two days ago that Ailes was out with a $40 million severance package, though Drudge later deleted the tweet, and Fox said at the time that Ailes was still “at work.” The official announcement doesn’t discuss any of that. Instead, it just says that 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch is taking on the role of chairman and acting CEO at Fox News. “I am personally committed to ensuring that Fox News remains a distinctive, powerful voice,” Murdoch said. “Our nation needs a robust Fox News to resonate from every corner of the country.” Ailes co-founded Fox News in 1996 and is widely credited (if that’s the word) for and bombastic coverage style.
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Katie Roof
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Facebook scraps another Snapchat clone: 24-hour “Quick Updates”
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Josh Constine
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Poke failed. Slingshot failed. But Facebook is still trying to mimic Snapchat with a new Stories-style feature it’s been testing called “Quick Updates”. These 24-hour ephemeral updates are buried in a special part of the app, and won’t show up in News Feed or on your profile. We received these screenshots from our reader of Binary Capital who is one of the users in the test group. [Update: Facebook confirms that this was a product that it was testing with some users. The purpose was giving people tools to share with whom they want, as opposed to wider News Feed broadcasting. However, a spokesperson tells me Facebook doesn’t plan to launch or move forward with Quick Updates. So Quick Updates is basically a stillborn feature you won’t see more of.] Facebook has made recent several attempts to win some of the casual sharing found on Snapchat. It tested a Facebook Messenger feature for . And last month it tried letting people share , with these posts not appearing on people’s profiles. Facebook may have been looking for a way to get people to share more personal content from their lives, as it’s reportedly seen . A lot of that sharing has moved to Facebook-owned Instagram, but also to Snapchat as the Facebook News Feed has become overrun with impersonal news articles. First, if you have the feature, you’ll see a Smiley icon in the top right of the app. Tap that and you’ll get a little tutorial teaching you how you can share old media, shoot something new, or add text to a Quick Update Quick Updates can be old content you’ve uploaded, and they aren’t encumbered by any signal that they aren’t new the way Snapchat’s new Memories feature surrounds old media with a white border. You also have the option to overlay text on media, similar to Snapchat and Facebook previous social app experiment Slingshot. A privacy tool lets you select exactly who can see your Quick Updates. If someone sends a reply, you’ll be able to view it in the Activity tab. Facebook’s been slow to adapt to the way people share content today. Its video uploader is hopelessly outdated, lacking any significant update in almost three years. You can’t stitch together multiple clips, add overlaid text or drawing, or do much of what’s become available in Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube. Facebook has only just begun to provide overlaid doodling and filters for Facebook Live, but uploaded videos still lack creative expression tools. Ephemerality can also encourage sharing by making people feel less self-conscious. If you share something permanent, you have to accept that you’ll be judged by it. But if it disappears as with Quick Updates, you might impulsively share more silly, unpolished, and authentic content. Facebook apparently couldn’t hammer out an interface people enjoyed, so Quick Updates won’t be rolled out to more users, though it could be reborn as a more central part of the traditional status update composer. Personal sharing is critical because it’s not nearly as generic or widely available as link sharing. There are plenty of ways to discover news articles to read. Facebook wants your irreplaceable photos and life updates that will draw your friends back to the app every day.
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Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is reason No. 1 to tune in to the RNC with us tonight
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Sarah Buhr
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Donald J. Trump is, to put it gently, not well liked within the Silicon Valley tech industry — and not because it is the liberal bastion it’s often portrayed to be. Mary Meeker, Meg Whitman and other tech leaders are die-hard members of the Republican Party and plenty of those among the valley’s tech elite, including Marc Andreessen, Sean Parker and Elon Musk in the past. But many in tech’s top tier have been about their contempt for The Donald. As of our most recent tally of Federal Election Commission data, less than 10 people up and down the San Francisco peninsula have to Trump’s campaign — and billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who will be speaking at tonight’s Republican National Convention, isn’t among them. Thiel pledged to back Trump as a California delegate back in May and now plans to take the stage at the Quicken Loans Arena tonight to make history. Although Thiel and Trump seem to differ on , it’s easy to see how they might share the same core belief — that they’re using the power their money has given them to stand up to a powerful establishment. According to , Thiel is expected to say he is proud to be openly gay, a first on stage at the convention and a strange announcement, given that the GOP reaffirmed its opposition to gay marriage in its recent . Thiel will also make the case against Hillary Clinton and his opposition to an expansionist military policy, favoring instead Trump’s view that the U.S. should avoid unnecessary wars. Thiel will be the first gay man to speak at the RNC since 2000, when the openly gay Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona spoke, avoiding mention of his sexuality. But it wasn’t too long ago that Thiel was fighting to keep information about his sexuality private. Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker over the publishing of his sex tape was quietly funded by the billionaire. Gawker’s subsidiary Valleywag in 2007 in a piece titled, “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” According to several reports, Thiel waged the proxy war on behalf of Hogan because he was angry at the publication for forcing him out of the closet. Silicon Valley and Thiel seem to have come a long way since then, but has the conservative GOP? Join Kate Conger and myself as we live blog the event to find out all that and more tonight starting about 5 p.m. PT.
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Bot influencers are the programmatic future of conversational advertising
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Vladimir Klimontovich
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In the near future, ads will just be part of the conversation. Bots, and the AI technologies that drive them, are taking huge leaps forward in sophistication and reach. and recently added bot APIs to their platforms, and Apple Messages will soon allow third-parties to plug in, too. While bots had previously been limited to very specific requests, such as checking a balance or flight status, next-generation AI, like the recently unveiled , will better understand context and integrate — including programmatic advertising. represents a step forward from both traditional websites and mobile apps, using one of the simplest interfaces possible: text. Bots currently allow users to carry out entirely via messaging: transfer money, ask questions, make purchases, book travel and check the weather. Of course, bots also send promotional messages, and soon they may serve third-party conversational ads through programmatic exchanges. As with any new technology, bots first. The more AI seeks to impersonate humans, the more the technology will be judged by human standards of etiquette and emotional intelligence. Relevance will be critical. Overwhelming consumers with promotional messages before bots have proven their worth risks alienating them. No one likes to start a new relationship only to find they’ve been tricked into a sales pitch. Conversational advertising stands to offer several potential advantages while solving many of the current problems with display ads. For example, programmatic RTB auctions can slow down web pages and hog precious mobile data, but this won’t be an issue with bots. Because bots aren’t expected to respond in milliseconds, short pauses are fine. And text conversations use only a trickle of bandwidth. Another key differentiator is that, like human contacts, bot relationships can persist across touch points and outside of the walled garden of messaging networks. The information a bot learns through interactions on Facebook can carry over seamlessly to WhatsApp or to a chat interface in a brand’s mobile app. what it classifies as promotional messaging, but any programmatic auction would likely occur outside of the messaging platform. And, as dialog becomes more natural, these mentions would simply appear organically as part of a larger conversation. Until now, native advertising has been difficult to deliver programmatically. However, as the messaging interface is just text, bots can be programmed with a wide range of contextual responses, or . When an advertiser defines a promotion, the bot can surface that information organically in the conversation using natural language. In fact, IBM is already using Watson to on its Weather Co. property. It might be helpful to think of future bots less as automated text interfaces and more as digital influencers programmed with their own personalities for different audiences. For instance, take two different personal finance bots — one aimed at retirees, the other designed to interact with college students. Both bots might answer a question about reducing debt by mentioning a sponsored balance transfer offer with a low APR, but the exact language would differ: clear and reassuring for retirees versus snarky humor and emojis for the students. This approach has the benefit of being both dynamic in its presentation and completely native to the chat medium — as if a friend were suggesting a product. Moreover, it removes the burden of generating the countless variations of creative elements that would be required for a similarly tailored display ad campaign. With the help of machine learning, bots will begin to understand and remember consumer preferences, allowing for even more personalized experiences. For instance, a traveler planning a trip might inquire about a hotel’s proximity to a city’s landmarks, the local airport and other relevant locations. From these interactions, the bot can understand intent (the user intends to fly to the destination and also wants to do some sightseeing). Then it can use that information to match potential advertisers programmatically, mentioning relevant offers as part of the larger conversation. But the relevance doesn’t need to stop with a single interaction. That same traveler might request a better hotel than last time. Not only can the bot understand “last time,” but also it can learn to filter based on the patterns that emerge throughout the customer relationship. Perhaps the user tends to upgrade to a larger rental car, but only when traveling with family, or frequently asks about the availability of Wi-Fi in the hotel room, but only on weekday trips. Deep learning and predictive analytics will allow the relationship to evolve as the bot begins to understand what each user values, then makes recommendations based on others exhibiting similar behavior. The idea of managing interactions with hundreds of bots might add more complexity than it solves for consumers, but bots talk to other bots, too. Your travel bot will act more like an intelligent agent than a website — potentially coordinating between the JetBlue bot, the Uber bot and the Marriott bot behind the scenes if your plans change. On a rainy day, a weather bot might offer a ride via a conversational ad unit from Lyft or Uber without the user interacting with either of those companies directly. In fact, consumers could choose to interact with numerous services through just a few trusted bots. So don’t be surprised if an arms race ensues as companies compete to build That could end up being Siri, Alexa, Cortana or another as-yet-unknown personal assistant. We haven’t defined standards for conversational ad units, but one thing is clear: they have the potential to solve many of the issues that have plagued digital advertising for the last two decades. What won’t change is the need to strike a balance between delivering value and surfacing advertising. Conversational ads will need to be relevant, contextual and unobtrusive if we want consumers to embrace them.
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PayPal ticks up 2% on earnings, Visa partnership
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Katie Roof
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PayPal after the bell on Thursday, showing $2.65 billion in revenue for the quarter, when analysts were expecting $2.6 billion. Adjusted earnings per share was also in line with Wall Street estimates at 36 cents. “Our agreement with Visa enhances our capabilities, offers the potential to establish new contexts for our consumers and merchants, and lays the foundation for additional partnerships,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, in a statement. Bill Ready, SVP and global head of product at PayPal, said that the goal is “f PayPal also raised its full year revenue guidance to a range of $10.75 to $10.85 billion. They are expecting an adjusted earnings per share between $1.47 and $1.50 for the year. The company returned $300 million to stockholders last quarter, by repurchasing 8 million shares of common stock. PayPal shares are up 13 percent since spinning off from eBay a year ago. The company has a market cap of $49 billion.
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Pandora shares drop after it rejects $3.5B buyout from SiriusXM
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Josh Constine
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Wall Street quieted Pandora today following mediocre earnings and news that at about $15 per share from SiriusXM radio owner Liberty Media, according to The Wall Street Journal. That would have been a few dollars higher than its existing price, signaling high hopes for the company from leadership despite this quarter’s performance. in revenue and -$0.12 non-GAAP EPS, compared to estimates of $351.6 million in revenue and -$0.16 EPS. Listener count dropped to 78.1 million, down from 79.4 million last quarter and the same number a year ago. At least listening hours inched up to 5.66 billion compared to 5.52 billion last quarter and 5.3 billion a year ago. Pandora lost $25.1 million, in the center of its $20 million to $30 million expectations for the quarter. Pandora’s share price was down 7.5 percent immediately after the earnings announcement. That’s after a strong quarter, where share prices rose 40 percent thanks to Q1’s solid earnings and revenue guidance increase. Pandora’s algorithmic radio app keeps spinning, but another quarter has gone by without the launch of its on-demand product built from the bones of its $75 million acquisition of Rdio. “We are making strong progress on Pandora’s transformation into a complete music marketplace,” said Pandora founder and CEO Tim Westergren. “We made considerable progress on our product development plans while also improving margins sequentially. Pandora plans to deliver a powerfully differentiated music experience to accelerate growth and deliver value to listeners, music makers, advertisers and ultimately shareholders.” Spotify and Apple continue to build their communities, pulling in more users who’ve never streamed on-demand before. Once they start building playlists and improving the personalization of recommendations, they’ll be hard to pull away. That “complete music marketplace” Westergren talks about can’t come soon enough.
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This amazing search engine automatically face-swaps you into your image results
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Devin Coldewey
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Ever wonder what you would look like with long, wavy hair? I think you’d look great. But how can you try on a few looks without spending a fortune at the salon, or hours in photoshop? I’m glad you asked. All you need is a selfie and , the face-swapping search engine. The system analyzes the picture of your face and determines how to intelligently crop it to leave nothing but your face. It then searches for images matching your search term — curly hair, for example — and looks for “doppelganger sets,” images where the subject’s face is in a similar position to your own. A similar process is done on the target images to mask out the faces and intelligently put your own in their place — and voila! You with curly hair, again and again and again. It’s a bit like . Just as creepy depending on what face you’re putting in what situation. Keri Russell looks great in every style, though, as the diagram below shows. The process by which faces are detected, masked, and replaced. It’s not limited to hairstyles, either: put yourself in a movie, a location, a painting — as long as there’s a similarly positioned face to swap yours with, the software can do it. A few facial features, like beards, make the edges of the face difficult to find, however, so you may not be able to swap with Rasputin or Gandalf. Dreambit is the brainchild of Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, a computer vision researcher at the University of Washington (she also does interesting work in and ). And while it is fun and silly to play with, it could have more serious applications. Kemelmacher-Shlizerman has also created systems that do automated age progression, something that can be useful in missing persons cases. “With missing children, people often dye their hair or change the style so age-progressing just their face isn’t enough,” . “This is a first step in trying to imagine how a missing person’s appearance might change over time.” In an email to TechCrunch, Kemelmacher-Shlizerman noted that the software is still very much in beta mode and as such can’t exactly be used by the FBI. Dreambit and the processes behind it will be presented at SIGGRAPH next week, but you can .
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Impinj soars 28% in internet-of-things IPO
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Katie Roof
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A leader in developing radio frequency technology, or RFID chips, Impinj has found unique partnerships with Coca-Cola, Macy’s, McDonald’s and other corporations who embed these tiny sand-size chips in anything from receipts to product packaging. “Our vision is to connect and give digital life to every item in your everyday world,” CEO Chris Diorio told TechCrunch. The company is often profitable, but this past quarter, it saw its expenses rise, resulting in a net loss of $821,000. Revenue for the quarter was $21.5 million, an increase over last year’s $16 million in the same period.
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Crunch Report | Microsoft COO Leaving Company
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes banned from operating blood testing labs
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Sarah Buhr
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Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood analysis startup Theranos has been banned from operating a blood testing lab for the next two years. Where this leaves the founder of the testing company and how it can continue to operate with her banned from operating a blood testing facility remains to be seen. Holmes’ censure, first noted in the , is based on a regulatory review of Theranos’ Newark, California lab and includes a monetary penalty of an unspecified amount. A company statement over the matter reads: We accept full responsibility for the issues at our laboratory in Newark, California, and have already worked to undertake comprehensive remedial actions. Those actions include shutting down and subsequently rebuilding the Newark lab from the ground up, rebuilding quality systems, adding highly experienced leadership, personnel and experts, and implementing enhanced quality and training procedures. While we are disappointed by CMS’ decision, we take these matters very seriously and are committed to fully resolving all outstanding issues with CMS and to demonstrating our dedication to the highest standards of quality and compliance. The company has also had regulatory approval removed for its California lab. Theranos, a once Silicon Valley darling purportedly worth $9 billion took a dramatic nose dive after coming under intense scrutiny over the last eight months from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Several Journal articles began to raise questions about the accuracy of the startup’s technology used on patients and CMS declared the company was putting patients in “immediate danger.” Theranos voided thousands of its test results taken over the last two years it said were not up to its own standards and was forced to shut down operations at its Newark facility while it tried to get in compliance. Walgreens, the company’s biggest partner, recently severed ties with Theranos as well. CMS suggested months earlier Holmes might be banned from the industry for a time and now it seems that time has come. The ban won’t take effect for 60 days but no lab tests will be conducted out of its California facility in the meantime. Instead, the company will continue to serve customers from its Arizona lab.
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New reports confirm $1.15B leveraged loan raised by Uber at 5%
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John Mannes
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that Uber was in talks to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. The Wall Street Journal is circulating new information that the company has closed . This number comes in on the low side of . Last month, sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had plans to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. Uber initially targeted a 4-4.5 percent yield but ended up settling on 5 percent. In the last month, the company has brought in $4.65 billion in capital from debt and equity investments. A $3.5 billion equity round from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund preceded today’s leveraged loan led by Morgan Stanley. The loan also contained money from according to the Wall Street Journal source. All the capital originates from multinational institutions. This hints that CEO Travis Kalanick plans to add the money to his growing war-chest to fight Chinese ride-sharing rival Didi Chuxing. avoid further dilution. The company has little in collateral to comfort bankers issuing debt. For reference, Apple, a publicly traded mature tech company, has previously issued bonds at a 3.22 percent blended interest rate excluding floating rate debt. One more perk for Uber, private debt, like this leveraged loan, does not have to be publicly disclosed. We have reached out to Uber for comment and will update with information if it becomes available.
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News discovery app SmartNews nabs another $38M, now valued at $500M-$600M
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Ingrid Lunden
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Interestingly, when SmartNews raised that previous Series C, co-founder Kaisei Hamamoto told me that it was in part to expand into the U.S., where it would likely be raising money next. As it turned out, Japan has remained SmartNews’ single biggest market with 10 million users, and so that’s where investors seemed most interested. While the printed newspaper industry has undeniably been in decline, today we’re ironically in something of a news renaissance that is being carried out in the digital world. We get news instantly; and there is a lot of it to read, sometimes too much. Some of the biggest newspaper brands have recreated audiences online, but the bigger development has been about how we discover that news today, and that has been about shifting the consumption platform away from those direct news sources and towards aggregators bringing in several sources at once. But just as there are a ton of primary news sources, there are also a hefty number of aggregators, all taking slightly different approaches. SmartNews competes against biggies like Facebook tapping into its vast social network user base (and as a platform, it seems); Apple News, which found an instant audience by virtue of being preinstalled on its iPhone and iPad devices; and Flipboard, a first-mover with a loyal and large number of readers. That’s before you consider a number of interesting smaller and newer services like Nuzzel, Quibb and Owler that also aggregate, recommend and surface things people are writing and talking about. SmartNews is somewhat distinctive in that sea of competition, in that the company has built all of its algorithms for sorting news from the bottom up. As such it lets those algorithms do all the legwork to surface, suggest, and curate. This is not the case, for example, at Facebook or Apple News, where humans are very much involved in the selection process, . “My In fact, it’s done the same with its ad products, and that is another unique selling point for SmartNews in Japan All this adds up to a good business for SmartNews at home. As it continues to build that business there, we’ll continue to watch to see if it will be enough to break through in more oversaturated markets like the U.S.
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VCs are betting on the great Chinese fitness boom
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Jenny Lee
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As the Chinese economy has boomed in the last decade, millions of people have entered the middle class. And the Chinese aren’t just getting wealthier, they’re getting fitter. China, it seems, is in the midst of a workout craze — and that represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for venture investors to back emerging health and wellness technology companies. In particular, China’s vast millennial population of young people aged 18-35 — — is hitting the gym, running marathons, participating in exercise classes and playing and watching sports in record numbers. This generation, the first to grow up in the “new” capitalistic China, . In keeping with the , they aren’t content with simply a roof over their head and food on the table, as were previous generations who lived in times of communist control and scarcity. China’s highly educated, internet-savvy, global-traveling young people want it all — and that includes being fit. Young women, in particular, are eager to stay trim and cultivate a toned look, sharing photos of their slim physiques on social media. Chinese young people have caught the fitness bug so much that gym and health-club revenue in China has nearly doubled during the past five years, and is expected to total more than , according to research firm IBIS World. Though that falls short of the nearly ., China’s health and fitness industry is far younger and growing far faster. “Only a couple of years ago, it would have been difficult to find Chinese women breaking a sweat while lifting weights or huffing and puffing through strenuous workouts,” read a recent article about the Chinese fitness craze. Now, companies like , Under Armour, Adidas and The North Face are opening stores and growing sales in China at a breakneck clip. When China adopts a craze, the number of people joining is staggering, just by sheer population size. That’s why the on investing in sports and fitness startups, in particular in three categories. This broad category encompasses wellness apps, fitness trackers, content and communities and any other mobile-driven consumer wellness platform. These apps are particularly popular among the 280 million people aged 15-25 in China, who have . Chinese youth are fashion-focused, want to look good and feel healthy and are eager to try global health crazes like yoga, pilates and marathons. They use apps to watch fitness videos, take part in group workouts, track their progress and monitor their eating. that make fitness game-like, goal-oriented and fun are hugely popular with Chinese millennials. Companies in this category include social workout app (a GGV investment), , run-tracker and Yuepaoquan, which helps users find and schedule running groups. Increasingly, Chinese young people are becoming sports spectators, too, and enjoy using apps to follow and comment on their favorite teams. . From wearables that track steps taken or calories burned to devices that help improve your golf swing or soccer kicks, Chinese consumers love to collect data on themselves in their quest toward fitness. As investors, backing these types of device companies is also a “data play.” Once device companies figure out ways to use this data to help people become healthier, save money, lose weight or reach other goals, they’ll become far more than “gadget” companies and more like consumer market research firms. Companies leading the pack in this respect in China include both U.S. and Chinese firms, such as , , and . Chinese young people today believe in an ethos of freedom. They don’t want to be tied down to owning a house or car, and they want to be free to choose their own friends, hobbies and careers. This ethos extends to how Chinese young people play sports and engage in outdoor recreation. Tech startups that facilitate people “getting outside” will be a huge market — everything from apps that help consumers find local soccer and basketball leagues to participate in, to those bringing people together for outdoor bootcamp training sessions. What’s more, this category extends to frontier-tech companies such as GGV investment , maker of an electric scooter popular among urban Chinese millennials who use them not just to navigate the clogged streets of Beijing, but also to get away from the smog and stress. It’s common to see people piloting Niu scooters to the mountains and beaches on the weekends, because hiking, rock climbing and surfing are all outdoor sports young Chinese consumers are eager to experience. Taiwanese company has likewise launched a smart scooter, as well as a battery charging infrastructure to go with it. When you see the gyms and pilates studios dotting Beijing streets or legions of young people hiking mountain trails in their North Face jackets, it’s easy to forget that just three decades ago, young people in China were more worried about getting enough food ration coupons than they were about getting toned enough to wear a new Lululemon outfit. But China has changed at an astonishing rate, and its young people today are just like their counterparts in other developed countries — hungry for self fulfillment and personal success. As Chinese millennials continue to look for new ways to become healthier and happier, investors are clearly banking on the China fitness boom to not only continue, but to accelerate.
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Facebook needs a way to report content as “Graphic But Newsworthy”
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Josh Constine
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Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook Live could illuminate wrongdoing in the world. Facebook still hasn’t explained the details of its policy on censorship of Live video. But today in response to the police shooting of Philando Castile whose last moments of life were broadcast on Facebook, that “The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day.” The comments indicate that Facebook may lean towards less censorship of Live because of its potential to expose injustices. Zuckerberg also expressed his sympathy for the victim, others like him, and their loved ones. “While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond’s, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important — and how far we still have to go” Zuckerberg wrote. The aftermath of the shooting and Castile’s final moments before death were . The video was taken down by Facebook for an hour due to what it claimed was a , then reappeared with an interstitial disclaimer warning users of its graphic content. Still, even the temporary take-down raised questions about Facebook’s role in the future of citizen journalism and censorship. Facebook must determine whether it’s willing to be a serious source of news, even if the content it shows is challenging or uncomfortable for some viewers seeking a more light-hearted experience. While it might seem like graphic content could scare away some users or advertisers, it could also make Facebook a more popular place for consumption and discussion of current events. Right now, the graphic content disclaimer does a good job of shielding eyes from what they might find offensive without suppressing it. But the problem is that the need to add the warning is currently triggered by other users flagging the content. Yet Facebook has no reporting option for important by graphic content, only that something is graphically violent. The best bet might be for Facebook to add “Graphic but newsworthy” as a reporting option, and add the disclaimer without any temporary takedown. Then it could have a member of its team review the content and make sure it deserves the warning. But the fact is that anyone watching a broadcast in real-time can’t be warned of graphic content. No one will see it coming. Facebook may just have to accept that, perhaps add a blanket warning to Live broadcasts, and know that once in a while. some users may be shocked or offended. That seems a worthy price to occasionally pay for Facebook to “shine a light on fear”.
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Tackling systemic racism
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Discussions around diversity and inclusion in the tech industry are not going away. Not on my watch. Earlier today, I sat down with Erica Baker, an engineer at Slack, and Ellen Pao, formerly of Reddit, to talk about their nonprofit organization for diversity, , as well as the systemic racism that exists in the United States. In the last couple of days, two black men have been murdered by police in the U.S., and . Systemic racism, as outlined by these recent killings, are at the foundation of diversity and inclusion. So we can’t talk about diversity and inclusion in tech without talking about what’s going on with race in our society at large. Meanwhile, a lot of the discussion around these horrific events is happening on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. “It’s driving traffic and making a difference for their businesses, but they don’t know how to address these issues in their companies,” Pao said. “The same thing that’s happening on their platforms is happening in their companies.”
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Running through walls: 6Sense’s Amanda Kahlow on values that stick
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Brian Ascher
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For and , one of the most important aspects of the company is its culture. The values of the company have been baked into the operations of the team, how it interacts with itself and its customers. Kahlow says it boils down to family — an acronym for fun, accountability, mindfulness, integrity, love and yes. And as a company, before they start meetings, Kahlow and her team acknowledges a member of the group for embodying the values of the company. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/268154506″ params=”color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Every day, the executive staff acknowledges one of its own for adherence to the values… including Kahlow, who said, “Everybody wants to hear when you’re doing a good job or when you’re embodying love to somebody.” This extremely positive culture even encompasses 6Sense’s approach to firing folks. “Letting someone go is a positive experience for everyone,” says Kahlow. “We like to wish everyone well and leave them with the highest positive intention for their future.” In the tight labor market of San Francisco, the emphasis on corporate culture extends into the hiring process and maintaining a team culture through off-sites. “We actually get to the biggest core issues that we have,” Kahlow says of the company’s multiple off-sites that management uses to engage and attract different views and strategies for the company’s vision and mission. Finally, Kahlow sees her experience as a female entrepreneur has been a benefit rather than a disadvantage. “Find your true self and believe in yourself and love yourself.”
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ZUtA demos its mobile robotic printer
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Katie Roof
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The printer rolls back and forth over a piece of paper, until the on-screen image is recreated in about a minute. The ZUtA Robotic Printer integrates with an app, which enables it to print what you see on your phone. TechCrunch spoke to CEO and founder Tuvia Elbaum in Jerusalem, at ZUtA’s research lab. We also got a demonstration of the printer in action, which you can watch in the above video. People “want to be able to print wherever they are,” said Elbaum. “Even if they are in the office, they are still working from their laptop or their smartphone.” Yet the accessibility of smartphones and efforts to go-green have made it less en vogue to print things out. Elbaum said that while they are aware of this, he still believes there are a variety of use cases for this product. Elbaum thinks that photos, packaging labels and event tickets are amongst the use cases for the ZUtA printer. He says that ultimately developers will be able to create apps that are compatible with the printer. Since it is remote-controlled, they have heard from people who are interested in creating games and art tutorials. The battery just lasts about an hour, but it is rechargeable via a micro USB. It is compatible with Android, iOS and Windows. One ink cartridge can print about 100 pages. Right now, it’s only black-and-white, but they hope to add color printing someday. The device is expected be available this December and will retail for $299. (Kickstarter backers will get the ZUtA printer for $199).
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Make way for more bots: Ex-Evernote CEO Phil Libin leads seed rounds for Butter.ai and Growbot
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Ingrid Lunden
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, Phil Libin, the former CEO of Evernote who is now a venture capitalist at , laid out to fund and support (and maybe even build?) his own startups in the burgeoning world of bots — services that use conversational interfaces and varying degrees of artificial intelligence to provide users with information, products and more. Now those investments are coming to light. — started by a team of ex-Evernoters — has raised a seed round of $3 million from General Catalyst for a productivity app that is still in stealth. And , a messaging bot designed for congratulating co-workers via Slack, has raised a seed round of $1.7 million, with other investors including XSeed Capital and Inventus Capital Partners. Growbot has been in the market for about a year and has using its free bot, writes founder Jeremy Vandehey. A paid version is still in the works. Growbot’s motivational tool essentially works in the background, letting you rack up and chart praise for people, with the service triggered by certain keywords. Butter.ai, meanwhile, should launch later this year, and, according to a (Evernote’s former VP of product who is now CEO of Butter.ai), it sounds like the idea will be to give users a way of finding things in their trove of work documents and other data by asking the Butter bot questions. The two come on the heels of Libin’s first investment at GC, for , co-founded by Ryan Block (a serial entrepreneur who has sold two past companies to AOL, which also owns TechCrunch) and Brian Leroux. That is due to launch in the autumn. But those three are just the tip of the iceberg. As you’ve probably seen, bots have been appearing everywhere of late. Larger companies like , , , , and even to some extent Apple are all trying their hand at ways of providing more to users in an automated way by way of voice and conversational interface. Startups and others are also building hundreds of bots, either as standalone services or as small apps that sit on larger platforms like Slack or Facebook’s Messenger. The rush of bots may be exciting to contemplate — there is a lot of promise in the idea of combining artificial intelligence, natural conversation and super fast computing to make our lives easier. But as with other , the reality so far hasn’t been entirely great: There are too many out there, and way too many not working as planned. Libin told me in an interview that he’s been pitched about 200 bots in the last few months. With that in mind, I talked to him about his new investments, and why he thinks some bots are hot, and some are not. (Interview is edited for clarity.) I think they are a big part of the future. Two it won’t be possible to say, I’m focusing on bots because the underlying ideas will have gone into the fabric of things. But for the next couple of years you can still have a specific set of things that you can call bots and focus on those. I think we are in a relatively slow period right now, similar to 2007-2008 when the economy was slow there was all sorts of turmoil in the world, and people were asking if the important period for tech was over, that all the important companies were already built. But now think of all the brands today, the Ubers, Airbnbs and others established in that period. Now what’s being created is the tech that will power the next wave of innovation. In 2008, it was mobile and social, now it’s AI, messaging and conversational AI. And if you draw a line around it, it’s called bots. Everything with bots is ahead of schedule. It usually takes years to get from the technology trigger, to peak inflated expectations, to trough. But with bots it’s all been compressed. It took weeks. But I’d refer you back to apps. The first generation versions didn’t make any sense. They were trivial and predictable, there were fart and flashlight apps, and they were basically translations of the older paradigm, which was the web, and people were disappointed. But at the same time, there were real world-changing use cases being built. Bots I think are kind of the same thing: You can see how they might become world-changing but for the most part many are not supposed to be serious. You will see more serious use cases emerging in the next couple of months. The three investments I’ve made so far, in Begin, Butter.ai and Growbot, are all around the same hypothesis, which is making it much easier to do work. That is the paradigm they are tackling. But I think we will go through more cycles before this thing irons itself out. I’ve been working on a bot atlas. It’s a way to map what different types of bots there are. There are different dimensions: consumer to enterprise, or human-assisted to fully automated. There are bots on every spectrum. With the human-assisted bots, there are humans who are answering questions and you are getting a mix between human and AI. There are a lot with humans in the mix. For the high-value services, having humans there makes a lot of sense, but I’m not that interested personally in the human-assisted stuff right now. I’m interested in the fully automated bots. In these three that I’ve funded and in the other stuff I’m hatching, there are no humans in the loop. I personally don’t believe that the human assisted models are as good as what you can get with AI eventually. I want bots to be superhuman. One of the other rules I use involves guidelines and standards. There should be a rule about a bot never being deceptive to you. For example, you should never really think you are talking to an AI bot when it’s actually a human. I hope that as the industry matures there will be some clear rules for this. I don’t object to humans helping, but it needs to be transparent. Oh, I don’t think we are very close at all. But I also don’t think that we’ve had the right approach. I kind of think that the industry took a massively wrong turn 70 years ago with the . That we should build a machine as smart as a person is a really damaging idea. It’s hard to do and I don’t believe that the goal should be anything like human intelligence, it should be single-purpose efficiency. The three I’m investing in now are products, yes. I am definitely interested in the full stack, and the tech that powers these things. I’m looking at a bunch of companies there right now, but I am a bit skeptical of these things. I’ve heard 200 bot pitches over the last couple of months. A large percentage of them are tools, and this makes me suspicious: Some of the most interesting products are created the hard way. At Evernote we weren’t using any of the tools that existed; we built it all ourselves. You have superstar apps, and then you get the tech to make it easy to build subsequent versions everywhere. But I’m skeptical of tools that happen before the superstars. That said, there are a lot of tools out there that say we are helping to build bots. But I am very open-minded about this, so if I see some tools that are great I would be happy to invest. I think the real power of bots will come when it’s not just about you talking to an app, but the bot doing things for you, or multiple people talking to each other with the bot inline and helping us. Growbot is a bit like that: it’s an assistant in your team’s Slack channel, which wakes up and collects positive feedback inline with the conversation. If it wasn’t there [picking up in the background], I would never use it as a standalone app.
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Up close with Fujifilm’s new X-T2 mirrorless camera
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Brian Heater
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If you’re going to show off the follow-up to your well-loved mirrorless camera two years after release, you might as well do it in style — classic cars, rail-thin models, terrible music, the whole nine yards. Fujifilm’s X-T2 interchangeable lens camera made its flashy Manhattan debut at the borough’s Classic Car Club, with a slew of different accessories and a number of its 22 compatible lenses in tow. The camera looks an awful lot like its predecessor (if just slightly larger), because why mess with a good thing? Built around what the company calls its “central viewfinder style,” the camera’s textured body weighs in at around 1.1 pounds (battery included), is water and dust resistant and capable of operating at temperatures as low as 14 degrees F. There are plenty of upgrades present here, as one would expect after a two-year gestation period. Chief among them are the ability to shoot 4K video at 24, 25, or 30FPS (the first camera in the X family with that increasingly important feature) and a fancy pants new 24.3-megapixel (APS-C) X-Trans CMOS III sensor (versus the T1’s 16MP), capable of shooting images near comparable to a DSL-R. Inside is an X-Processor Pro chip, designed to offer the shooter more accurate autofocus, with 325 single points. Oh, and one other key spec: $1,600. That’s the starting price for the body alone. Another $300 will get you the kit lens (an 8-55mm). Which is to say, the X2 ain’t cheap, so far as mirrolesses go. That’s a notable increase over it predecessor, but from the time I got to play around with the thing, well, you’re certainly getting what you pay for here. As mentioned above, Fuji didn’t do much to mess with the layout, and the camera’s got a nice, lightweight feel that fits comfortably in the hand. The optional Vertical Power Booster Grip will add significant bulk to things, but it also effectively packs in an additional two batteries, which extend 4K video recording time from 10 to 30 minutes, among other things. Up top you’ve got a trio of big, beefy dials, which are great for on-the-fly shooting. ISO has been bumped up a fair bit, doubling from 6400 to 12800, and as promised, autofocus works ridiculously fast. And shooting great-looking 4K video is a snap. In fact, I’d go so far as to say beginners should pick things up quite quickly. I’m more of a viewfinder man myself, but for those who rely on the display, the three-inch screen has more articulation than before, adding left and right to the old vertical movement, for a total of three-directional titling. There’s a lot to like here. We’ll hold off complete judgment until we get some real quality review time with the camera, but as it stands, Fujifilm has built a worthy successor on top of a solid foundation. It launches in September, so start saving up those bottle caps now. [gallery ids="1349628,1349629,1349630,1349632,1349627"]
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This artificial stingray has a gold skeleton and light-activated rat muscles
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Devin Coldewey
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Mimicking nature’s most elegant designs has become a popular method for creating equally elegant robots ( ) — but using nature’s raw materials, too? That’s what researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have done, creating a tiny light-controlled stingray with a solid gold skeleton that moves using reconstituted rat muscles. O brave new world! The researchers, led by Harvard’s Sung-Jin Park and Kevin Kit Parker, started with the skeleton, working at ~1/10th scale of the batoid fishes (comprising skates and rays) on which it is based, and recreating a simplified version of the creatures’ actual anatomy. They started with the skeleton: Gold is flexible and nonreactive, and they designed the spine and ribs to have a natural convexity. Around the ribs they cultured rat-derived cardiac muscle, genetically modified to instead of the usual electrical signals from the nervous system. The whole thing is encased in an elastomeric sheath very much in the shape of a small ray. The artificial ray next to “a little skate.” Here’s a of the layers and motive forces. NB: In a situation like this, “robot” doesn’t adequately capture the essence of the thing. Yet, despite containing living cells that must grow and feed, it’s not quite an animal, either. Its creators went wild with the nomenclature: “tissue-engineered soft robotic ray,” “biohybrid system,” “artificial animal,” and “bio-inspired swimming robot,” none of which completely satisfies. “Biobot” — or maybe “growbot,” since they’re cultured, not assembled — seems a catchier option. The motion batoid fishes use to get around is simple and elegant: Their bodies are essentially one big fin, which they undulate in controlled waves, sending themselves backwards, forwards or turning to one side. In the artificial ray, the muscles only have to exert themselves downwards when stimulated; the curvature of the gold ribs in the opposite direction provides the counterforce and when the muscles relax, that part of the fin flexes back upwards. Nutrients are provided by the solution in which the whole thing is immersed. Turning is accomplished by stimulating one side of the body more strongly than the other, and the muscles’ photoreactive nature makes them move naturally toward the source of the light. You can see the cyber-critter in action below: Taken individually, each aspect of this little biobot is remarkable, but the synergy created by adding them together makes the whole thing astonishing. Every aspect of the thing is either robotics-built to resemble biology, or biology-modified to resemble robotics. The scope and precision of the researchers’ control over every process is plain to see, and this biobot represents a new bar in a field where the accomplishments are already almost beyond belief. It was enough to get the team a — and it’s so visually striking that the journal ran a whole story on . But let’s not get carried away in hyperbole such as that the researchers have created artificial life or some kind of horrifying “Island of Dr. Moreau”-esque monstrosity — it’s definitely too cute for the latter, and the former overstates the case. For all the expertise and advances contained within this research, the resulting product is, essentially, purely mechanical. There is no nervous, digestive, circulatory, perceptive or reproductive system in place; it truly is a biologically enhanced machine rather than a mechanically enhanced organism. And make no mistake: As difficult and impressive as the creation of this artificial ray was, it represents a collection of solutions to the problems in replicating life’s subtle and powerful tools. Even the simplest nervous systems are beyond our power to accurately simulate, let alone recreate — and the human brain is many orders of magnitude larger and more complex — in fact, it is almost certainly the most complex system we know of. That said, this level of fusion between biological and mechanical engineering is a truly amazing accomplishment. Biomimesis is found at the bleeding edge of robotics and other sciences for good reason: Only very recently have we begun to approach even the most elementary levels of expertise with which nature has crafted her creatures for billions of years.
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Rthm wants to be your comprehensive health AI
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Darrell Etherington
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startup MagniWare, you’ve learned some hard truths about the realities of what people will bear in terms of keeping tabs on their general wellness. Instead, Rthm offers informed advice on how to “extend your life” via exercise and meditation. It provides an added level of personalization thanks to a special method of measuring your heart rate and breathing using only the sensors that are already included in your phone. It also plugs into HealthKit for additional info, including sleep and activity levels. And before you think this is yet another startup selling snake oil in the guise of “wellness,” the company maintains that it’s only dealing in practices proven to have a measurable impact on real signals, like resting heart rate. Rthm is a rethinking of MagniWare’s original vision, which, according to co-founder Alexander Mosa, was one of providing everyday people with beneficial access to the results of medical research without the expense and levels of friction often involved. Mosa was pursuing his PhD in Virology at the University of Toronto when he and his founding partner and fellow PhD candidate Miles Montgomery decided they wanted to work on something that would benefit people now rather than only years later. “I became a bit disheartened by how long it would take for discoveries to be translated to citizenship,” he said. “There was an enormous amount of scientific research, an enormous investment from society into that research, but often the delta from the research to the instantiation was really quite long.” Now before you start thinking about certain other health-related companies that wanted to skip a few steps between research and public product (cough cough Theranos), Mosa says that what MagniWare wanted to do was not come up with new, untested tech and deploy it to the public, but rather to unlock the inherent value in existing, academically tested and replicated research. “My perspective is, let’s take the old science, where 20 publications have reproduced the findings, and rather than push it forward, let’s just make it free,” Mosa explains of their approach. “The way that we’re going to accelerate the public access and benefit from [the research] is if we can make it free.” Rthm, more so even than MagniWare’s earlier explorations into inexpensive, convenient wearable sensors, is the embodiment of this perspective. The app, which launched recently on iOS and which is coming to Android later this summer, doesn’t require any wearable accessories. Mosa claims that the sensor data it gathers from your phone is approaching the accuracy of chest-mounted wearables like Polar heart-rate monitors, and is much more accurate than most wrist-worn devices. My limited testing does seem to support those claims. Rthm is also free, with the startup using its own DeepRthm Genetic Analysis testing as a revenue source. The company’s genetic testing (conducted by a fully certified U.S.-based medical lab partner) is anonymized both at the supplier level and for MagniWare itself, so it never directly ties users to their DNA profile results. The genetics information is also used a bit differently than it is with other companies; MagniWare employs it to help provide a more complete picture of user health, so that it can include in its algorithmically generated advice an awareness to which types of health problems a user might be predisposed. MagniWare’s stick-on sensor was clever, but ultimately didn’t catch on with users. Again, Mosa notes that their model is different here than what you might expect. He points out that it’s not useful to people to receive information like “you’re 15x more likely to develop Alzheimer’s,” nor is it even necessarily accurate when not informed by other factors beyond genetics. Rthm will use that information to provide more tailored and useful practical advice about dietary habits or being more active, but it won’t offer stark, misguided prognostications about the way you may potentially die. In fact, Rthm’s whole approach is much more down-to-earth, which is refreshing from a wellness tech startup in today’s climate of rewarding approaches that aren’t necessarily grounded in academic rigor. “We didn’t want to be ostracized by the academic community from U of T,” Mosa said. “At times, that definitely stifled us, because we maybe moved a bit slower because we maybe did too many replicates, maybe took a little bit longer to verify things before we went forward.” Mosa suspects that their pacing was likely quite a bit slower than the average tech startup might be comfortable with as a result. In the end, he said he’s “glad” they leaned on their academic impulse to urge caution, since Rthm is hopefully better poised to withstand scrutiny and live up to user expectations in the long run.
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Carmaker + ridesharing roundup
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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Auto manufacturers are realizing that the future of transportation is not going to be one person, one car. It’s going to be ridesharing, ridehailing and public transit — and these vehicles may not even require drivers. So most major manufacturers have made a turn toward becoming “mobility companies.” It’s been a quick turn, though. In just the first half of 2016, several manufacturers have negotiated that turn by partnering with a transportation company that’s already operating in this brave new transportation world, or by creating their own in-house mobility service, as BMW and Daimler did. As the transportation landscape changes in the next several years, these partnerships will likely become a web of options, including biking and walking, that are accessed by apps to coordinate local travel. But for now, here are the biggest collaborations on the streets:
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Mark Lelinwalla
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If you’re waiting for a self-driving car revolution, keep waiting
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George Arison
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Not a week goes by, it seems, without some sort of development in the world regarding cars. Whether it’s Google going on a as it attempts to accelerate its efforts or General Motors Cruise, a driverless- startup, the subject consistently finds a place in any given news cycle. And now Uber got in the mix, putting autonomous cars on the streets of Pittsburgh. But ‘ for a , better . Sure, the technology is there, but there are plenty of legal and regulatory battles that will have to take place before consumers are being zipped around in autonomous cars. What’s more interesting, and less talked about, is what a world of automated drivers will look like for some of the world’s most disruptive transportation companies — Uber and Lyft — and how these ridesharing companies will become part of a one-sided, commodity marketplace model with complex logistics and low profit margins. Lyft and Uber won the war over driver supply. And I should know; one of the companies that did not win on supply against them is Taxi Magic, a company I founded. The phenomenal success of Lyft and Uber stems from the fact that they are two-sided marketplaces. Both have incredible network effects — more drivers attract more riders, which in turn attracts even more drivers. And this virtuous circle makes the economics of these two companies very different from others in the on-demand ground travel space. But once fully cars are available for widespread use, one side of that marketplace will collapse. Drivers will be replaced with capital, and anyone with sufficient capital will be able to put a fleet of cars on the road. manufacturers, city governments, perhaps Google and Tesla and others will enter the game, massively increasing the supply of cars and flooding the market. With the advent of fully cars, it’s easy to imagine rideshare companies looking more and more like the airline industry. And while some of us have brand loyalty (mostly because of mileage programs), the industry as a whole is fully commoditized and there is little difference between United and American. Airlines all do the same thing (move consumers from Point A to Point B), and primarily compete on pricing in a race to the bottom. this analysis is right, the industry of on-demand fleets will need apps that connect them to consumers, similar to for airlines. This app could be Uber or Lyft, or both, but neither — as one-sided software layer connecting passengers to fleets — would be worth what they are worth now. KAYAK is a very successful company used by millions to find air travel services, yet when Priceline bought KAYAK for in 2012, KAYAK was 1.2 billion searches. That purchase price seems low given the quantity of searches, but it was an accurate reflection of the business’ value. KAYAK is a one-sided marketplace generating revenue through lead gen to service providers (airlines and hotels). That type of one-sided marketplace is far less valuable than a two-sided marketplace that has a locked-up supply and also manages demand. For technology geeks like me, cars are exciting — they will make commuting safer and our daily lives easier. But they also are a long way off, and before we get to use them, there is a lot more technology to create and, beyond that, policy and legal challenges to overcome. When they come into mass use, they are likely to be awesome, creating a new platform for future startups or alternative business models for existing businesses. One thing cars won’t do, however, is help Lyft and Uber (and other two-sided on-demand ground travel companies) maintain their existing business models or the valuations they command. While cars can help these companies create new platforms, it is hard to see how they can help them increase their value or justify valuations that these companies and their current business models now command. As the age of the horse and buggy ended, jockeys faced a rough patch, but the age of the auto mechanic was on the horizon. This time around, we’ going to see the end of as an occupation. And no one stands to lose more than ridesharing companies.
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The NBA debuts its new and improved shot clock
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Mark Lelinwalla
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That 3…2…1 on a 24-second shot clock never looked better than this. On Thursday, the that it has tabbed Tissot for a sleeker and more efficient shot clock, which will debut during Summer League action Friday, before being integrated into all 29 arenas for the tip-off of the 2016-17 season. The new shot clock uses innovative LED glass technology. In fact, it almost looks like a blown-up version of a smartphone screen, with the technology to boot. that the new shot clock could even accept firmware updates. Nice. Besides looking a hell of a lot better than the clunky shot clock the league used for years, Tissot made the league’s new timepiece a lot more efficient on several fronts. For starters, it’s free of cables and conductors and nearly transparent when in use, integrating the 24-second, timeout and game clocks all in one piece a hardware — a first for the NBA. As the clock ticks down from 24, the transition between numbers are instant and undetectable by TV cameras, making for a crisper image for viewers, as well as a more definitive source for league referees and the NBA Replay Center when evaluating critical calls like a buzzer-beater, for example. Thank God for that, because there’s nothing worse than watching a game-winning shot get waved off because refs screwed up the call. Perhaps more important that anything, though, is that the Swiss watchmaker’s system will be uniformly adopted by all 30 teams in the NBA, marking a big change from the way it has been with league franchises using a mixed bag of shot-clock systems from Darktronics and OES — each of which had its own specific controllers. This system sounds headache-free. “TISSOT’s expertise and groundbreaking timing system developed exclusively for the NBA will provide us with the most sophisticated shot clock the league has ever had, enhancing our game on the court and providing a sharper viewing experience for fans,” Michael Gliedman, NBA Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer of Information Technology, said in a league press release. After introducing the 24-second shot clock back in 1954, the league has continuously made enhancements to its systems. But it feels like this Tissot-backed shot clock might stick around for quite some time. And just in case there are any kinks to the new shot-clock system, they should be worked out during the Summer League in time for the regular season.
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Lyft could be working on a music jukebox feature
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Megan Rose Dickey
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You may have noticed whenever you hop into a Lyft, more times than not, the driver asks what you want to listen to. You, like us, might tend to say you don’t have a preference, even though you most definitely do because you don’t feel like racking your brain or going through your SoundCloud to communicate to the driver some obscure track you’ve been listening to. If only there was another way… Well, Lyft might be looking at creating a feature to let drivers and passengers seamlessly collaborate in selecting music to play during the ride, according to a recent granted to Lyft. The patent, originally filed in 2014, describes several ways Lyft could implement a driver jukebox. A source familiar with the matter says the patent was filed from work completed at an internal hackathon but nothing is currently in the works. But Lyft and Uber have a habit of copying features from each other and just last month . Uber also has a partnership in place with Spotify that lets riders pick songs to listen to during the ride. Lyft has yet to do anything in the music partnership arena, so we would love to see something like the driver jukebox make its way into the app. Some variations of the system would let a rider select music upon getting into the car, while other ones would enable both the driver and the rider to select songs. The patent also outlines varying functionality across services like Rdio and Spotify, as well as the option to play tracks from those services based on mutual likes of the rider and passenger. “We hold patents on a variety of ideas — some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t,” a Lyft spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patents.” You can see what the driver jukebox might look like if Lyft does decide to move forward with it. [gallery size="medium" ids="1349512,1349511,1349510,1349509,1349508,1349507"]
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Penn students’ startup XEED puts wearables to work against Parkinson’s disease
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Devin Coldewey
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The internet of things, and wearables in particular, may not be quite living up to the hype, but it turns out they may be just the thing for people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. A pair of engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania have . Sade Oba and Alfredo Muniz, founders of , grew up near one another in Houston and were interested in health-related applications for technology well before they attended Penn. The suitability of wearable devices for Parkinson’s treatment occurred to them during their engineering studies there (mechanical for Oba, electrical for Muniz). “As robotics majors, Alfredo and I were working on a working on a mobile smart home robotic platform,” Oba told me in an email. “People weren’t very receptive to the product when we attempted to commercialize it… We decided to take our advisor’s advice and took a few small sensors from the robot and re purposed them towards precisely tracking movement.” Parkinson’s is characterized by intermittent tremors, which can be controlled both through drugs and physical therapy. But it helps to understand when those tremors occur and what the patient’s activities look like outside of visits to the doctor. XEED’s bracelet-like wearables track the user’s limbs throughout the day, noting both the time and intensity of tremors as well as the extent of their voluntary movements. The data can be accessed by caregivers, but is also sent to a smartphone app that can give instant feedback, suggesting movements or letting users track their progress. “Patients can take this information and figure out exactly how they need to adjust their everyday activities to improve their everyday life,” said Oba in a Penn-produced video. The data are useful for individuals, their physical therapists, and their physicians, but once aggregated, could also form a highly useful database for researchers. “Currently we are designing our third prototype,” Muniz wrote in an email to TechCrunch. “We will be testing the batch of 50 on a small group for two weeks, paying attention to how they put the devices on, whether the LED indicators are useful, whether they remember to charge it, and what modifications need to be done to the phone app.” It may be approaching final form, but the XEED device will still require FDA approval, whether it’s classified as an assistive or Class 1 medical device. That means it’ll be quite a while before it’s deployed at large — though smaller-scale studies are certainly going to continue. As for funding, the pair won Penn’s “President’s Innovation Prize” last year, giving them $200,000 to work with as they iterate on the idea and establish their company. “We have also been contacted by a few investors who would be happy to help us if we got in a pinch,” wrote Muniz, “but we are currently seeking and grants.” XEED is also partnering with a local Parkinson’s rehabilitation center, and will meet later this month with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to discuss options there as well.
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Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra on moving from enterprise businesses to social shopping
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Navin Chaddha
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Manish Chandra began his professional career as an enterprise software executive, but found his greatest successes as a consumer-focused entrepreneur. After going through two IPOs in enterprise software and some small acquisitions, he was intimidated by the prospect of launching a consumer startup. He used a kitchen sink cabinet approach to developing his first success as his own boss with Kaboodle. To develop the company, he brought together a number of different collaborators to brainstorm and develop a prototype. That brainstorming process enabled Chandra to get a sense of what consumers wanted and what the technology could be. Kaboodle was eventually acquired by Hearst and Chandra developed the business internally. In 2011 he launched Poshmark. Throughout the process Chandra emphasizes persistence. He relates how when Kaboodle was raising its Series A the company’s CTO had an accident and was hospitalized. The investors stuck with Chandra, and Chandra stuck with the CTO, who eventually recovered and brought his skills back to the table and eventually to the acquisition by Hearst. Beyond persistence, Chandra emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to have a bigger vision for their company. “Sometimes when you look at a cup of coffee, somebody sees a coffee shop and the other person sees a Starbucks. The opportunity is not the coffee cup. It’s really how you think about that coffee cup,” Chandra said. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/269561397?secret_token=s-WgtOA” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
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Google acquires Anvato, a media streaming and monetization platform for broadcasters
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Frederic Lardinois
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Google is getting deeper into the tech side of the video and broadcasting business. The company today announced that it has acquired , a platform for encoding, editing, publishing and distribution video across platforms. The company says Anvato will join its Cloud Platform team and that Anvato’s technology will complement its efforts “to enable scalable media processing and workflows in the cloud.” Anvato’s technology allows its customers, which the likes of NBCUniversal, MSNBC, CBS, Univision, HGTV, Bravo and Fox Sports, to power , , insert ads and handle pay-per-view, TV Everywhere and subscription payments. With that, it offers an end-to-end service for video publishing and monetization, something Google’s own platform doesn’t currently offer. “With OTT [over-the-top] adoption rapidly accelerating, the Cloud Platform and Anvato teams will work together to deliver cloud solutions that help businesses in the media and entertainment industry scale their video infrastructure efforts and deliver high-quality, live video and on-demand content to consumers on any device — be it their smartphone, tablet or connected television,” Google senior product manager Belwadi Srikanth writes in today’s announcements. Similarly, the Anvato team writes that this acquisition will bring together its technology “with the scale and power of Google Cloud Platform to provide the industry’s best offering for OTT and mobile video.” According to Crunchbase, Anvato raised a total of $2.55 million since its launch in 2007. Google did not disclose the financial details of today’s acquisition. With this move, Google is clearly interested in pushing its Cloud Platform as an option for media companies. Until now, it really didn’t have all that much it could offer broadcasters, unless they were looking to on its platform. Microsoft offers its own set of tools for broadcasters with its . While Amazon offers some , the company also owns , which uses its platform to offers a set of end-to-end solutions that are similar to Anvato’s. Elemental counts ESPN, HBO and the BBC among its customers, for example, and Amazon obviously also hosts most of Netflix’s services. Google says it will have more to share about the integration of Anvato’s tools in the coming months.
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The reality of AR/VR survival
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Tim Merel
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VR will be big, AR will be bigger ( ). But as in most early-stage tech markets, , not straight. There will be a few billion dollars of revenue this year, a progressive ramp in 2017 and a hoped-for inflection point in 2018 (when AR could deliver that magic combination of hero device, long battery life, cellular capability, strong app ecosystem and telco cross-subsidization). But AR/VR is still in the first of the (hype cycle, facing reality, liftoff, sustainable market). Its installed base, from low-end through high-end , is unlikely to top 100 million until 2018. So how can AR/VR startups survive when won’t have the scale they need to thrive for 18-24 months? You just need to know where to look. So let’s look. . Enough said. . Enough said. Existing businesses that intersect strongly with AR/VR are profitable springboards into the new market. Lightfield capture, render and streaming firm ’s founders Jules Urbach and Alissa Grainger have been “working profitably with visual effects, TV, film, technology and games companies for years, whether as a high-end production service or via software licensing. We’re also serving 150,000 customers through cloud-based rendering and SaaS solutions.” So they can afford to invest in “the emerging wearable lightfield streaming business.” chairman Andy Wood is also “accelerating in AR/VR by doing more of what we already do — helping creative minds express themselves with facial animation and tracking, now . So we are experimenting and investing during the early market.” 3D model publishing platform CEO Alban Denoyel “doesn’t need VR to be successful, as our content can be consumed already with critical mass on the web (500,000 3D creators, one million 3D files, four million uniques). VR will take time to reach this scale for us. We make money from creators today, and long term will monetize through advertising and premium content.” The model is pretty standard for the games industry, and is already helping AR/VR games studios build their businesses via development contracts with platform holders. The end product often has some sort of exclusivity at launch, which has not been without . ’s CEO Paul Kellenberger is providing a complete screen VR solution for education. “We’re now installed in over 300 school districts and 130 universities, with hundreds of thousands of users already. Our industry focus has delivered over 300 percent year on year revenue growth since 2013.” CEO Tej Tadi’s focus is on VR in healthcare “for motor recovery solutions post-brain injury. We use a subscription model, where hospitals get our hardware for free and pay for neuro-healthcare exercise/games content and analytics. We also have a subscription-based home product for compliance and training.” Aiming for the strategic high ground as a platform play sounds great, but requires serious piles of cash to make it work. If you’re a division of Facebook, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung or other majors, a parent with deep pockets can see you through the early years. You could also get bought by one (see above). High-end game engine leader CEO Tim Sweeney says that “VR is already a profitable business for us from game developers and enterprise customers adopting VR for design visualization.” AR SDK company president and general manager Jay Wright serves “almost a quarter of a million developers, and over 25,000 apps.” CEO Tomo Ohno says, “We’ve been making money from app development, customized AR engine licensing and AR engine sales and have been able to fill the gap left from when .” VP of business development Ari Grobman explains that “we sell see-through optical display modules that customers like , and use for industrial, medical and enterprise markets. Ultimately, we see ourselves enabling the larger consumer market too.” Natural gesture and body tracking firm CEO Moritz Von Grotthus sees the early market as an investment case. “We started biz dev with OEMs, but that is still an investment. Then custom work with OEMs to generate non-recurring engineering project revenue in 2016/2017. Finally a software licensing model when commercial units are deployed next year.” CEO Jason Rosenthal “rents our lightfield cameras to Hollywood studios, VR video platforms, game developers and sports leagues, as well as enabling processing and editing of digital lightfield data. Third parties might also end up buying our equipment to provide their own production services.” Chipmaker Alliances, content and VR corporate VP Roy Taylor “sells direct to consumers and via OEMs, as well as providing software to make it easier for the entire ecosystem.” Eye-tracking startup CEO Jim Marggraff also makes money “consulting with Head Mounted Display (HMD) makers, creating proof-of-concept projects, and licensing our eye-tracking and eye-interaction tech and IP.” VR entertainment pioneer CEO Brent Bushnell is “focused on brand-funded content. Brands can rationalize this in a marketing budget and get early mover visibility for whatever they’re trying to promote.” VR video livestreaming firm CEO Brad Allen is also focused on sponsorship, but for slightly different reasons. “We’re already seeing sponsorship from major brands for major sporting events, and have had great success with concerts. However we think the resolution, and therefore the experience from AR/VR devices needs to be higher than today for pay-per-view and subscription models to work well.” As an AR/VR , CEO Rish Mitra “engages brands, agencies and media owners to turn static media into AR interactive content, with real-time performance data. We monetize with platform access fees and performance-based pricing.” So enabling other forms of advertising to act as smartphone-based AR advertising is already yielding results. CEO Ralph Osterhout has been selling to enterprises and governments for decades, and that’s what he’s doing now. “We sell ODG smartglasses directly to enterprises, but the largest orders come from our value-added reseller network today. With more Fortune 50 AR pilots underway, our pipeline of direct sales will yield larger orders still. Demand is growing so quickly that we are already back-ordered through 2016.” This theme is echoed by Product Manager Eric Mizufuka for its AR HMD business. “We’re leveraging five years of investment, integrated manufacturing and our brand to sell both directly and via channel partners to enterprises. We’re building a sustainable, profitable AR business in the next year, not in a few years’ time.” Nokia’s head of digital media tech Paul Melin is already seeing demand for the company’s $60,000 360-degree camera from “sports, music, news, entertainment and advertising sectors. We are investing early, and are one of the first companies generating revenue.” Atheer CEO Alberto Torres is focusing its AR HMD exclusively on “medical, insurance, warehousing, oil and gas, utilities, aerospace and manufacturing enterprise clients. Our pilot projects could lead to large enterprise deployments in the next one to two years.” AR/VR-focused managing director Adam Draper thinks that as well as making content for studios, “early-stage developers will make money by selling AR/VR apps for money in the app stores. There isn’t real in-app purchasing yet.” Virtual-world builder CEO Philip Rosedale’s approach to making money is “to build marketplaces and tools that help people share content, and collect fees on those marketplaces. We believe that there will be a Cambrian explosion of 3D content development happening, as people figure out how to build with these new headsets and hand controllers.” business development director Mehrshad Mansouri describes how the company “will make most of our VR revenue from hardware sales direct to consumers. We’re also providing professional solutions from our .” ’s Glyph HMD works with mobiles, consoles and drones already. CEO Joerg Tewes explains that, “We don’t need a new ecosystem, although that will come as an added bonus. We will expand into custom content and games, which will be an additional revenue stream for us.” CEO Franklin Lyons is also going consumer. “We’re making mobile VR HMD revenue from retail sales, as well as some enterprise.” While CMO Simon Solotko describes how it “is selling affordable mobile AR systems. Emerging capabilities like Tango are bending smartphones to AR, while we’re in the market for only $40. Entry-level mobile AR is a massive opportunity.” “It will take time to reach critical mass. I found out in mobile that there is huge value in learning during the early market, because the real opportunity might not be clear yet. Many of the first mobile games companies aren’t leaders today, and the same thing could happen in AR/VR,” says VR games developer CEO Tommy Palm. “There is no ultimate answer, but investors with a good understanding of timing are invaluable. AR/VR project work to help larger companies might be good for revenue today, but you could miss the actual opportunity with resources tied up to deliver short-term profits. The most important thing today is to stay lean.” Partner Matt Huang describes this approach eloquently. “If you’re a startup in a market with uncertain timing like AR/VR, breaking into a curve is safer than accelerating.” VR animation startup CEO Maureen Fan is more emphatic. “We raised a good amount of money from strategic investors who we know will stand by us, but we don’t want to be a unicorn just yet. For now we would much rather be a !” VR/AR animated storyteller CEO Eugene Chung is “focused on business model innovation in the next 18-24 months, rather than legacy monetization models today. Some of the most valuable tech companies today grew by creating revolutionary new models, and AR/VR could follow a similar path. For companies that monetize too early, there’s a danger of becoming addicted to that monetization approach, rather than innovating business models as the industry develops.” It’s worth keeping in mind that AR/VR is still a very early-stage market, with major innovations and upheavals yet to come. In the words of Leon Megginson , “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives. It is not the strongest that survives. But the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
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Eyefluence shows us how we’ll be able to navigate screens with our eyes
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Katie Roof
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The team has been working on prototypes, testing it out with augmented reality glasses equipped with cameras that can assess where you’re looking at any given time. Users can click on icons with a glance. The super secretive team gave us an early look at their technology, demonstrating in the above video how it could be used for everything from online shopping to texting. (They call it eye-messages, ha). The technology “moves as fast as you can think,” said Jim Marggraff, founder and CEO. He said that unlike some of the other eye-tracking technology, Eyefluence works “without winking and without waiting.” It is their emphasis on biomechanics which they think will set them apart. Eyefluence claims they have the first user interface based on the “eye-brain connection.” Eyefluence is said to be working with big brands to integrate their technology into upcoming products, but they are reluctant to share where or when. “We are working with the major manufacturers of head-mounted display devices,” is all Marggraff could say about the augmented reality and virtual reality integrations. Marggraff predicts that there will be both consumer and commercial applications. He estimates that there are 40 million “deskless workers” and sees use cases for everything from construction to a hospital operating room. But some of this may sound familiar to those who heard the early promises of Google Glass, which struggled to gain significant traction. Other smart glasses have debuted with little fanfare. It is also a competitive landscape. While their technology isn’t quite the same as Eyefluence’s, Vuzix and Tobii are amongst the many companies working on hands-free navigation.
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The reward for mining Bitcoin was just cut in half
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Fitz Tepper
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It’s Halvening!!! Bitcoin a major milestone in its short little lifespan. The reward for mining a block (a block = a ledger of transaction data) was just cut in half from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins. This means that assuming a price of $650 per coin, going forward miners will make ~$8,125 per block they mine, compared to $16,250 before the halving. But it’s ok! This is all supposed to happen. Let me explain. When the code for Bitcoin was written, it was designed to be a currency with no more than 21 million bitcoins ever in circulation. And to encourage people to mine (which is what validates and supports the entire bitcoin network), Satoshi created a reward that went along with each block. When Bitcoin was first created, the reward was set at 50 bitcoins per block mined. And, the code specified that every 210,000 blocks mined that reward would be cut in half, until it eventually is reduced to zero after 64 halving events. This exponential halving means that even though the last halving won’t occur for over 100 years, 75% of all bitcoins have already been mined and distributed. So, today was the second ever halving in the history of Bitcoin. The first halving (when the reward was cut from 50 to 25 bitcoins) was back in November of 2012, when the price was around $12 dollars. Ok, enough of the history lesson. You probably just want to know how this will effect the price of bitcoin. In a perfect market the USD/BTC price would have simply doubled, to compensate for half as much bitcoin being rewarded. This logically would make sense, since the cost of mining isn’t changing at all, and without a doubling of price miners are instantly seeing their revenue cut in half. But we all know markets aren’t perfect. So the best we can do it guess. And the most logical conclusion is that any pricing effect from the halving has most likely already happened due to the market anticipating it, and is probably one of the main reason for the huge price increase over the past 6 months. Anyways, enough for today. Everyone enjoy their halvening parties, and if you don’t get the chance to celebrate just remember we have 30 more halvings ahead of us.
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Strike the right balance on drone policy
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Tim Day
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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — more commonly referred to as drones — are on the cusp of a major commercial trial that has the power to save thousands of lives. This pilot program isn’t taking place in the Bay Area or Boise or Boston. Instead, it will take place 7,200 miles away — in Rwanda. UPS and Zipline are working on a project to use drones to deliver blood and (hopefully later) lifesaving medicines to villages in rural and other remote places. If successful, this technology has the power to transform how critical medicines are delivered in both the developing and developed world. Even as Rwanda is exploring new possibilities, a second African nation — Nigeria — is erecting major barriers to the use of UAVs. Nigeria has imposed a $4,000 “drone tax” on operators. The government is also forcing companies to register and jump through legal and financial hoops to be eligible. Essentially, this will halt the vast majority of innovative UAV projects in the country. These divergent approaches mirror a similar debate taking place here at home. How this debate is resolved will, in a very real sense, determine whether UAVs enable us to take a major leap in health and safety within our own borders. For most, unmanned aerial systems are a transformative technology that has the power to save lives, improve health and safety and drive economic growth, while reducing costs. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination and, potentially, regulation. Now — with the FAA issuing the first nationwide drone regulations — getting the balance right is even more important. The California National Guard uses a Predator drone to aid firefighters battling deadly wildfires up and down the state, and has used the same technology to help find missing persons. These systems also are being used to help ensure building safety, such as in a demonstration project on bridge safety in Minnesota, as well as at construction sites around the country. And they have significant commercial purposes, as well — from providing birds-eye photographs, incredible video images for use in movies and, yes, package delivery and pickup, as made famous by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during a 60 Minutes interview. The vast majority of Americans support the deployment of these unmanned aerial systems for safety purposes. A recent poll conducted for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Morning Consult found that 8 in 10 Americans support the use of drones for safety inspections of roads, buildings and bridges, and half of Americans are supportive for general and commercial uses. To be sure, there are very real policy questions raised by the widespread use of these technologies, mostly involving airspace in congested areas. It is critical that we get these questions answered right, and the first step is passage of the FAA Reauthorization bill. Additionally, we need to prevent the patchwork of state laws from emerging due to the inaction in Washington, DC. If divergent state laws are enacted, it could create different standards in all 50 states and harm the safety around these technologies rather than enhance it. We should also strongly resist the efforts of those who want to ban drones entirely or place such stringent restrictions on them that they become all but impossible to use. Ultimately, such a course would be counter-productive, because it would severely limit the benefits that flow from this kind of innovation. Unmanned aerial vehicles represent an incredible opportunity to advance our nation’s technological leadership, as well as to make incredible advances in disaster relief, providing emergency services and in so many other areas. Yes, we have to get the policy right, but we should not foreclose the opportunities that unmanned aerial vehicles present.
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Hype check: Pokémon Go says more about Pokémon than it does about AR
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Darrell Etherington
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Go-ing according to Twitter, and I’m sure basic resources like power and water will soon start to shut down because key staff are out chasing Pikachu. But before we go the Poképoaclypse foretells, maybe it’s best to take a step back and examine the components of Pokémon Go’s success, and its potential pitfalls. The franchise upon which Pokémon Go is based is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. It has sold upwards of 279 million copies of its games to date, including more than 200 million copies of its main series alone (not counting spin-offs like the Mystery Dungeon games). And unlike the all-time leader in game sales (Mario, which predates Pokémon by around fifteen years), Pokémon has also managed tremendous success as a media property (movies and TV) and as a collectible card game. I’d even argue Pokémon’s emotional significance to people born between the 80s and the early 2000s has no real direct comparable in video game history. Other game and media brands have been tremendously possible, of course, but Pokémon is also uniquely suited to the mechanics available to an AR game like Pokémon Go, since it’s always literally been a game about wandering a world and collecting things found in random locations with pocket-friendly devices. Even , the 1999 Nintendo 64 spin-out title featured you traveling around (on rails) capturing Pokémon in the wild via your trusty camera. might be the purest expression of just how apt the AR model is for the mechanics of Pokémon, which are part and parcel of the brand across games and shows where it appears, meaning anyone who’s a fan is instantly comfortable with the basic concept and has been basically fantasizing about acting out their Pokémon dreams IRL for years. I know I have. Niantic Labs’ first game was Ingress, the AR MMO sci-fi game originally created when Niantic was at Google as an internal startup. Ingress launched on Android in closed beta in 2012, and continues to this day. Ingress itself actually formed the basis for Pokémon Go, in that the locations mapped out by players in that previous game inform the Gym and PokéCenter locations in Go. Ingress has a very engaged core player group, but it’s still not a runaway success, and Pokémon Go numbers probably already dwarf those of the now four-year old title. Estimates about total Ingress players vary wildly, and since there hasn’t been much in the way of official clarification, it’s likely that the user population is closer to the low-end estimates of around 350,000 than the high-end ones of over 7 million. The point is that Ingress is a direct comparable example of an AR game with very similar mechanics to Pokémon Go, with a four-year head start, but based on original IP.\ Ingress allowed you to create missions, which is what resulted in many of the locations used in Pokémon Go. Other examples of similar games not based on world-famous IP exist, too. Shadow Cities, once the lead example of success in location-based gaming, shut down in October of 2013. Zombie apocalypse location-based MMO Please Stay Calm isn’t shut down, but doesn’t seem to have a very active user base (and developers seem to have turned their attention to , instead. Ingress, by the way, is not a failure; it’s remarkable what Niantic has been able to accomplish with that group’s core fans, as evidenced by their ability to launch Pokémon Go with such a full game world. But Ingress is also not Pokémon, on any possible comparable metric. In fact, a quick survey of friends reveals that most have never heard of Ingress at all – Pokémon has a 100 percent recognition rate. As much as people are enjoying Pokémon Go, there are a lot of potential downsides they have to overcome to do so. On the light end, those include just overcoming the friction of having to travel places to progress, which is a barrier that rabid Pokémon fans will overcome, but that might prove insurmountable in other cases. I’ll walk three blocks for a chance to catch a Gyarados, because I have an unhealthy obsession with a particular consumer brand, but would I go out of my way if there wasn’t a nostalgia monster waiting for me at the end of the trek? No. A friend working on one of the location-based mobile MMOs I mentioned above once told me that the biggest thing they learned about user behavior was that people wanted to play mostly in once place – without moving around the world. Another more casual pitfall – battery. I mentioned in my original brief piece about Pokémon Go that my . Here’s Daily Dot Tech Editor Mike Wehner’s battery status report after a couple of days with the game: RIP — Myke (@MikeWehner) And then there’s the potential for real, actual injury as a result of being too focused on the game. Ingress . Plenty of people have (and that they would even share that they’ve done that is super insane). Certainly, some of this is being sensationalized for clicks, but behind it there is a real potential for injury – which most would forego, except of course there’s Pokémon to be caught. There are other reasons (though , too) or in . And while most of the danger so far is potential (and also ironically over-hyped), it’s hardly entirely imagined. And Go’s popularity won’t solve these issues for other smartphone-based AR games that hope to follow in its footsteps. Augmented reality is an area which tremendous potential, and the power to be truly transformative. Microsoft’s HoloLens, which offers something very different, is a great example and the mind reels at what HoloLens could become in a few years with a lot more polish and hardware refinement. But to suggest that the kind of AR Pokémon Go employs, using just your smartphone, is currently experiencing some kind of watershed moment, is almost certainly overstating the case. Now I’m going to go catch some Pokémon.
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The end of your undivided attention
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Darrell Etherington
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sought to capture your undivided attention, but that might be the ghost of a goal in today’s reality. And that genie isn’t going back in the bottle, so responsible product design now has to assume a high and growing average level of user distraction. Already, the products that perform well and generate high engagement from users are designed to cater to the idea that what people are interested in is constant distraction. Twitter is an example that’s almost onomatopoeic in its exemplification of our shortened spans of attention. Facebook is little better in terms of sustaining interest, but for many it operates as kind of a default distraction, something to which people reach in order to avoid at all costs the cardinal sin of boredom. You can debate whether they actually caused our ever-higher tendency of distraction, but modern tech products are increasingly designed to satisfy users who are quicker to get bored. UX designer David Teodorescu sums it up in an : We expect speed. We demand no more than a few minutes for Uber car arrivals, same-day deliveries from Amazon, instant upload time of huge images on Facebook and not a single millisecond of buffering when watching a Youtube video. Speed is a competitive advantage when it comes to apps and hardware, and cutting-edge advances turn into also-ran table stakes quickly – which means today’s mercury is tomorrow’s molasses. But speed, while a virtue in some instances, is a significant pitfall in others. One of the results of the trend to design user experiences that appeal to a more distracted user base is a tendency to assume that any kind of media consumption will span multiple channels at once. The easiest example to point to might be the two-screen TV trend that became very popular shortly after the advent of smartphones, wherein broadcasters, TV content creators and others have tried to use devices that potentially distract viewers to amplify their own production. Network shows almost universally have hashtags now, for instance, and almost every major player has experimented with creating some kind of companion app, often employing audio fingerprint tech to sync up stuff from the small screen with what’s on TV. For publications like ours, this also means having a strategy for presenting content differently to audiences across platforms and devices. The earliest identity crisis around this occurred with formatting content for consumption on mobile, and whether it was better to go with a native app strategy or make use of webpages specially formatted for smaller screens. Now, it’s more sophisticated; content is recreated for Facebook, for Snapchat, for Twitter for the web, for desktop video and for mobile audio. Every touchpoint is a renewed opportunity to catch someone’s attention, and on the consumer’s side, attention is configured differently depending on where a user is currently focused. Situational expectations can only vary so much, though. At this point, it’s probably fair to assume that there’s been a baseline shift in how much attention we can expect users to give any activity at any given time. And that includes attention-intensive tasks like driving a car. Or riding a bike. Or just walking down the street. Tesla’s are a recent, stark example of what happens when our attention maybe isn’t fully devoted to the task at hand. And while it’s still mostly fodder for hoaxes posted to Reddit and other obscure corners of the internet, there’s that new augmented reality game Pokémon Go will eventually result in a distracted death. Driver deaths have been steadily decreasing since a peak in the 70s, but are earning an increasing share of the overall number. Governments are trying to regulate away the problem of distracted driving, at the federal and state level, but the question of how well laws can mitigate the risk remain. A from earlier this week notes that, in fact, traffic deaths are up an estimated 8 percent between 2015 and 2014, which is the larger increase in 50 years. Included in the National Safety Council press release regarding the CDC’s findings is the following guidance about how Americans can reverse the troubling trend of increased driver deaths: We must disconnect from any device or system that could take our minds, eyes and hands off the task of driving. It’s hard to fault the logic of that advice. But it’s also increasingly hard to see any reasonable return on efforts to shame people into being less distracted. It’s obviously true that people bear responsibility for their actions – but it’s also true that sticking to a strategy that relies mostly on just telling people to be more mindful when that’s failing to have the desired effect is not only stupid, but also dangerous. General research on the . Often, where labels have proven effective, there are other concurrent factors at work that might also be contributing, including multi-part educational programs. It’s possible that dire warnings, repeated often enough and with significant emphasis, will change behavior – but it’s also possible that UX design which caters to decreased attention spans minimizes the benefits of any advice insisting we pay attention. Debating the relative merits of a more distracted versus a more focused society is about as worthwhile as kicking rocks. We’re better off accepting that, regardless of its merits in terms of , responsible product design should accept it as a new reality for the average user. What does that mean in practice? Expecting that any opportunity your UX presents for distraction will result in divided attention, for one. Here’s a list of what that means: Taking advantage of the growing inclination to avoid even a second of boredom works well enough in the case of most consumer-facing products, but well enough doesn’t cut it across the board. There’s no need to babysit users, but there’s also no reason to deny significant changes in the marketplace. The increased tendency towards distraction has impact virtually everywhere.
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We need to talk about AI and access to publicly funded data-sets
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Natasha Lomas
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a decade the company formerly known as Google, latterly rebranded Alphabet to illustrate the full breadth of its A to Z business ambitions, has engineered which last year pulled in ~$75 billion. And it’s done this mostly by mining user data for ad targeting intel. Slice it and dice it how you like but Google’s business engine needs data like the human body needs oxygen. Most of its products are thus designed to remove friction to accessing more user data; whether it’s free search, free email, free cloud storage, free document editing tools, free messaging apps, a fuzzy social network that no one loves but which is somehow still hanging around, free maps, a mobile OS platform that OEMs can load onto smartphone hardware without paying a license fee… Most of what Google builds it opens to all comers to keep the data pouring in. The bits and bytes must flow. The trade off for consumers handing over data is of course access to a particular Google service without any up front cost. Or getting to buy a cheaper piece of hardware than they might otherwise be able to. Or the convenience of using a dominant digital service. Of course they are ‘paying’ with their data, but few will think of it that way. It’s an abstract idea for starters, and a personal cost that’s far harder to quantify given how unclear it is what Google does with the data it gathers and processes in its algorithmic black boxes. Google certainly isn’t spelling that out. Rather it makes noises about the benefits of it knowing more about you (savvier virtual assistants, more powerful photo search and so on). And without explicit knowledge of what the trade-off entails — coupled with noisy PR about the convenience of data-powered services — most consumers will simply shrug and carry on handing over the keys to their lives. This is the momentum that fuels Mountain View’s ad-targeting empire. The more it knows about you, the richer it bets it can get. You can dislike Google’s business model but you can also argue that consumers do (in general) have a choice about whether to use its services. Albeit in markets where the company has a defacto monopoly there may be doubt about how much choice people really have. Not least if the company is found to have been abusing a dominant position by demoting alternatives to its services in its search results (Google is facing just such in Europe, where it has a hugely dominant marketshare in search, for example). Another caveat is that Google has worked to join up more personal data dots, undermining how much control users have over how they share data with the centralizing Alphabet entity — by, for example, to enable it to flesh out its understanding of each user by cross-referencing their usage of different services. That collapsing of prior partitions between products has also caused Google headaches with European data protection regulators. And contributed to a caricature of it as a vampire octopus with masses of tentacles all maneuvering to feed data back into a single, hungry maw. But if you think Google has a controversial reputation at this point in its business evolution, buckle up because things are really stepping up a gear. The Google/Alphabet octopus, via its artificially intelligent DeepMind tentacle, is being granted access to public healthcare data. Lots and lots of healthcare data. Now personal data doesn’t really get more sensitive than people’s medical records. And these highly sensitive bits and bytes are now being sucked towards Google’s algorithmic core — albeit indirectly, via the DeepMind division, which so far this year has two publicly announced data-sharing collaborations with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The public data in question is tied to the two specific projects. But the most , with Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Trust in London, entails DeepMind applying machine learning to the data. Which is a key development. Because, as noted this week, Google will be keeping any AI models DeepMind is able to build off of this public data-set. The trained models are effectively its payment in this trade — given it’s not charging the NHS for its services. So yes, this is another Google freebie. And the cash-strapped, publicly (under)funded NHS has obviously leapt at the chance of a free-at-the-point-of-use high tech partner who might, in time, help improve healthcare outcomes for patients. So it’s granting the commercial giant access to patients’ data. And while we are told the first NHS DeepMind collaboration, announced back in February with the Royal Free Hospital Trust in London, does not currently involve any AI component, the five-year strategic partnership between the pair does include a in which DeepMind states its hope to also conduct machine learning research on Royal Free data-sets. So advancing AI is the clear objective for DeepMind’s NHS engagement, as you’d expect. It is a machine learning specialist. And its learning algorithms need the lifeblood of data in order to develop and thrive. Now we’re all, as individuals, used to getting Google freebies in exchange for sharing some of our data. But the thing is, the data trade off here — with the publicly funded NHS — is a rather different beast. Because the people whose personal data is being pumped into Google-owned databanks are not being asked for their individual consent to the exchange. Patient consent has not been sought in either of the current NHS collaborations. In the , where the data is being anonymized (or pseudonymized), NHS information governance rules allow for data to be shared for medical research purposes without obtaining patient consent (although NHS patients can opt out of supplying their data to all research projects) — so long as the relevant Health Research Authority clears the project. And DeepMind has applied to be cleared access in this case. In the first collaboration, with the Royal Free, where DeepMind is helping co-design an app to detect acute kidney injury, the patient data being supplied is not anonymized or pseudonymized. In fact full patient medical records are being shared with the company — likely millions of people’s medical records, given it’s getting real-time data across the Trust’s three hospitals, along with five years’ worth of historical inpatient data. In that case patient consent has not been sought because the Royal Free argues consent can be implied as it claims the app is for “direct patient care”, rather than being a medical research project (or another classification, such as indirect patient care). There has been — with health data privacy groups disputing the classification of the project and questioning why DeepMind has been handed access to so much identifiable patient data. Regulators have also stepped in after the fact to take a look at the project’s parameters. Whatever the upshot of those complaints, it’s fair to say NHS rules on information governance are not an exact science, and do involve interpretation by individual NHS Trusts. There is no definitive set of NHS data-sharing commandments to point to to definitely denounce the scope of the arrangement. The best we have is a developed by the NHS’ national data guardian, Fiona Caldicott. And, perhaps, our public sense of right and wrong. But what is is that millions of NHS patients’ medical histories are being traded with DeepMind in exchange for some free services. And none of these people have been asked if they agree with the specific trade. No one has been asked if they think it’s a fair exchange. The NHS, which launched in 1948, is a free-at-the-point of use public healthcare service for all UK residents — currently that’s around 65 million people. It’s a vast repository of medical data so it’s not at all hard to see why Google is interested. Here lies data of unprecedented value. And not for the relatively crude business of profiling consumers via their digital likes and dislikes; but for far more valuable matters, both in societal and business terms. There could be considerable future revenue-generating opportunities if DeepMind’s AI models end up being able to automate and/or improve complex diagnostic and healthcare challenges, for example. And if the models prove effective they could end up positively impacting healthcare outcomes — although we don’t know exactly who would benefit at this point because we don’t know what pricing structure Google might impose on any commercial application of its AI models. One thing is clear: large data-sets are the lifeblood of robust machine learning algorithms. In the Moorfields case, DeepMind is getting around a million eye scans to train its machine learning models. And while those eye scans will technically be handed back at the end of the project, any diagnostic intelligence they end up generating will remain in Google’s hands. The company admits as much in a of the project, though it steers the focus away from these trained algorithms and back to the original data-set (whose value the algorithms will now have absorbed and implicitly contain): The algorithms developed during the study will not be destroyed. Google DeepMind Health knows of no way to recreate the patient images transferred from the algorithms developed. No patient identifiable data will be included in the algorithms. DeepMind says it will be publishing “results” of the Moorfields research in academic literature. But it does not say it will be open sourcing any AI models it is able to train off of the publicly funded data. Which means that data might well end up fueling the future profits of one of the world’s wealthiest technology companies. Instead of that value remaining in the hands of the public, whose data it is. And not just that — early access to large amounts of valuable taxpayer-funded data could potentially lock in massive commercial advantage for Google in healthcare. Which is perhaps the single most important sector there is, given it affects everyone on the planet. If you don’t think Google has designed on becoming the world’s medic, ? Google will argue that the potential social benefits of algorithmically improved healthcare outcomes are worth this trade off of giving it advantageous access to the locked medicine cabinet where the really powerful data is kept. But that detracts from the wider point: if valuable public data-sets can create really powerful benefits, shouldn’t that value remain in public hands? Or shouldn’t we at least be asking if we have a public duty to disseminate the value of publicly funded data as widely as possible? And are we, as a society, comfortable with the trade off of a few free services — and some feel-good but fuzzy talk of future social good — for prematurely privatizing what could be core IP? Shouldn’t we, as the data creators, as the patients, at least be asked if we are comfortable with the terms of the trade? Fiona Caldicott’s, the UK’s national data guardian, happened to publish her third review of how patient data is handled within the NHS just this week — and she urged a . And a proper informed choice to opt in or out. The old rules about information governance — which still talk in terms of shredding pieces of paper as a viable way to control access to data — have certainly not kept up with big data and machine learning. Stable doors and bolting horses spring to mind when you combine these old school data access rules with the learning and evolving character of advanced AI. Access to data-sets is undoubtedly the core competitive advantage for AI builders because really good data is hard to come by and/or expensive to create. And that’s why Google is pushing so hard and fast to embed itself into the NHS. You can’t blame the company for this healthcare data-grab. It’s just doing what successful commercial enterprises do: figuring out what the future looks like and plotting the fastest route to get there. What’s less clear is why governments and public bodies find it so hard to see the value locked up in the publicly funded data-sets they control. Or rather why they fail to come up with effective structures to support maintaining public ownership of public assets; to distribute benefits equally, rather than disproportionately rewarding the single, best-resourced, fastest-moving commercial entity that happens to have the slickest sales pitch. It’s almost as if the public sector is being encouraged to privatize yet another public resource… Inject a little more structured forward-thinking and public healthcare data could, for example, be contributed (with consent) to machine learning research departments in domestic universities so that AI models can be developed and tested ‘in house’, as it were, with public parents. Instead we have the opposite prospect: public data assets stripped of their value by the commercial sector. And with zero guarantees that the algorithms of the future will be free at the point of use. Of course Google is going to aim to turn a profit on any healthcare AI models DeepMind creates. It’s not in the business of giving away freebies. So the really pressing question — roundly ignored by web consumers going about their daily Googling but perhaps moving into clearer focus, here and now, as commercial thirst to accelerate AI advancements is encouraging public sector bodies to over-hastily ink wide-ranging data-sharing arrangements — is what is the true cost of free? And if we’ve inked the contracts before we even know the answer to that question won’t it be too late for us to haggle over the price? Even DeepMind talks publicly about the need for new models of information governance and ethics to be put in place to properly oversee the coupling of AI with data… https://twitter.com/jedgar/status/751185868430409732 So we, the public, really need to get our act together and demand a debate about who should own the value locked up in our data. And preferably do so before we’ve handed over any more sets of keys.
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Deleted Tweet archive PostGhost shut down after Twitter cease and desist
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John Biggs
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was a nascent website that archived the tweets of the famous, rich, and important. The site got popular for finding and storing the deleted Tweets of politicians and even Lindsay Lohan who plead with the English PM to #remain. “We created the website postghost.com to provide the public with a more accurate history of public statements made by the most influential public figures on Twitter. We believe PostGhost provides a fairer and more transparent way of allowing individuals to hold public figures accountable than Politwoops, a website that Twitter has recently reauthorized to publish certain deleted tweets,” wrote the creators. emailed the group threatening to shut down their API access for the crime of displaying deleted Tweets. This crime, which could be traced to European data deletion laws and/or a desire to improve the general popularity of the evanescent Tweet, is banned by Twitter’s terms of service. There are two schools of thought when something like this happens. The first is that it’s Twitter’s prerogative to censor anything and all the things. It’s their sandbox and we just play in it. The second school of thought says that Twitter is free-riding on our time and attention and in exchange for that they should work with their readers and users in a sane way. Public figures say stupid things all the time and, in some cases, its massively important that they aren’t allowed to delete their beliefs especially in matters of state. While it’s not important that J.K. Rowling deleted a politically charged Tweet it is important that an incitement to race war. PostGhost notes that its targets are all public figures and that they can expect a level of privacy until they Tweet out to millions of followers. “Of course, not every Twitter user should have their deleted tweets recorded – most people use Twitter as a personal account, and we firmly agree with Twitter’s commitment to their privacy,” wrote the PostGhost admins. “However, Twitter maintains a list of public figures called verified users – about 0.05% of their user base – for whom Twitter acts as an outsized, instantaneous megaphone to reach vast numbers of followers.” Interestingly the site only existed for a few days – – before giving up the ghost. Sites like are still running because they have a more tacit understanding with Twitter. Turning the firehose upon politicians and public figures, apparently, isn’t part of that understanding.
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Inside the ape cage with Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys
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John Biggs
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If you’re in a startup or even plan to sue one, is the book to read. Antonio Garcia Martinez is a former physics major turned Wall Street quant turned startupper and he’s an amazing writer, able to encapsulate in a few words an era of greed, avarice, and ridiculous button-down-shirt/sweater vest combos. The world in which Garcia Martinez operated wasn’t pretty. His startup, AdGrok, grew out of YC and was sold to Twitter but, along the way, visited the stations of the startup cross: VC offices where he was summarily ignored, a small, stinking apartment with his co-founders, and in law offices where he fought a former boss. When he moved to Facebook his true troubles began. He learned a lot and wanted to share some of his insight. “The harsh reality is this: to have influence in the world, you need to be willing and able to reward your friends and punish your enemies,” he wrote. His vision of the future is a little dark, to be sure, but he’s found the perfect solution to a surveillance society. He’s pulled up stakes and now lives on a boat on Orcas Island. No one, he said, can spy on him there. They barely have Internet. You can and subscribe .
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The two best pieces of early-stage pitching advice
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David Hickson
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Over the past 10 years I’ve been on the first cap tables of three startups for which I’ve been responsible for closing their capital-raising efforts. I’ve been in over 200 investor meetings as part of the operating team, and have raised money from the smallest angel investor to the biggest European VC funds and some of the world’s largest corporate investors. My present role as head of corporate development at Founders Factory has me on the other side of the table, assessing the materials and pitches of many early-stage startups, as well as running the internal Founders Factory program designed to assist our cohort close out their next round of financing. I remember our managing director, Jim Meyerle, coming back from one of the many pitch days he attends, in full wild-eye mimic of a particular startup’s presentation as they asked with syncopated emphasis whether or not we could “imagine a world without pizza.” It’s true, I can’t. And if ever there was a reason to invest, it’s that. But that wasn’t the point Jim was making. At Founders Factory we don’t hire actors to help the cohort present, we don’t prescribe a rigid formula for how they should pitch. That’s as much a function of the type of accelerator we are; we take in fewer cohort members and provide a much more bespoke program to each, as it is a point of principle. But if there has been a complaint of pitch and demo days it has been the sometimes cookie-cutter approach to the pitch; and sometimes that approach has led to the presenting teams delivering an inauthentic, sometimes damaging, caricature of themselves and their product. New founders are ravenous seekers of knowledge — and demand guidance. Generally, anything too equivocal is not well-received. But the truth is, equivalence is the rule when it comes to early-stage tech investing, particularly at the pre-Series A stage. The reason for that is easy to intuit: The success for any early-stage tech business is too sufficiently complex to predict. Even the . Very early-stage technology businesses are not at this stage. Success is almost certainly a matter of irreducible uncertainty; winners sit in — which means even the best investors aren’t able to deploy too much in the way of data to guide their decision. Instead, they say they make their decisions on intangibles: a feeling for the team, the sub-text in the story that speaks to urgency, innovation, size of opportunity and a sense of the . The challenge — and the opportunity — is that these intangibles are entirely subjective. Like a , the salience of the sales message is often in the ear of the beholder. And, whether they know it or not, the decision is likely made at the level of their unconscious, fast-processing, associative, system — — and later justified by their slower, apparently rational but often simply self-certifying System 2… which will throw up ironies like a “too good” pitch alienating the investor because the presenter has focused too much on honing their pitching skills to the point of precision, while forgetting that pitching is not really pitching — it is sales — and sales is subtle. They have failed to do the job of selling. So before we collapse completely into nihilism, what guidance is there for the early-stage pitch? We help our cohort understand that, when speaking to a listener’s System 1, one must deliver a narrative, a coherent story that follows a dramatic arc. One must ping their emotional senses, spark their interest, have them fall in love. They need to believe that you know what you are talking about today and will be able to credibly navigate an uncertain, but potentially industry-altering, future. They need to believe you can inspire employees, partners and investors. They need to trust you, which is where storytelling plays another significant part, because it makes your product more , and therefore more believable. When that is done, your product and investor materials need to be sufficiently robust to allow their apparently logical System 2 to confirm their bias toward you. We encourage you to think of your investor deck in terms of a story: You need to know that what works for one investor will not work for another. That is what subjectivity is all about. It’s entirely natural, and utterly unavoidable, to be rejected by some. Therefore, allow me to offer two canonical pieces of advice when it comes to pitching: Very early-stage tech investors are, by their very nature, embracers of the future. If they weren’t, they’d be more like , waiting and watching for months, even years, before investing — and then only after they’d wrung the decision through many to make sure it isn’t one corrupted by bias. Very early-stage tech investors want to be shocked and impressed in equal measure. They want you to tell them something they don’t already know. They want you to demonstrate that there is some insight in your study and/or your experience and/or your flat-out genius that is just bloody-well bone-crushingly smart. And they want to believe that it is you — and precisely just you — who will deliver on its promise. They want magic. And they want you to be the custodian of it. Your job is to convince them of this. I recall how Gerard and Archie, founders of , managed to change my mind about them in just this way. At first blush, I put Vidsy down as a less-interesting … yet another creator marketplace. But they said two things that I neither knew (although, with hindsight, it was obvious — the best kind of insight) nor was likely to know. Firstly, branded video advertising on the newest social platforms were jarringly anachronistic. Totally tone-deaf. The incumbent creators weren’t creating content that was sufficiently lithe to speak to the constantly shifting consumer zeitgeist: face-swap filters, time-lapses and Chewbacca masks. And second, Archie was a digital film graduate, so he knew there was a swarm of young creatives with the time, energy and desire to spin up volumes of high-quality, platform-consistent content. The team uniquely lived on both sides of their marketplace and helped me understand that the spin they put on their product was the most natural thing in the world to provide the solution. The guys building the product had spent years as a data visualization agency creating jaw-dropping interactives that, for example, animate all the world’s planes or ships or squish countries to show how they compare on any given metric. But here’s the rub: Duncan is a under his belt; Robin is an Oxford-educated Computer Science PhD who, when the flu has him laid up on the couch, finds proofs for N-P quite-hard math problems. They had the hard-won insight, born of real-world experience, that there’s a particular way to to tell stories with data. Over the years they honed that approach until they felt ready to make a tool kit that would let others do the same — because that product, specifically the telling stories bit, does not exist today. I didn’t know that. They understood that democratizing their skills is a much bigger and more powerful idea than hoarding them. This is the single best piece of advice I can give. You can read tons of articles like this and others on the internet. You can ask mentors a thousand questions (and probably receive a thousand different answers) about how to pitch. But I’ll repeat: Pitching is not pitching — it is sales. And sales is subtle; it is about convincing other human beings to buy something. You may have been raising for weeks or even many months, but you have been convincing people all your life. Pitching, like all skills, is better delivered coming from your System 1 approach — not your System 2. Just as is driving, riding your bike and playing your virtuoso violin. Get your , and instead rely on those primitive brain systems that find optimal processes via trial, error, feedback and tweaking: The original lean methodology. your sophisticated subconscious will work out an effective rhythm and pace to your presentation, it will adapt to questions and react to investor un-said cues. Like a good comedian, you can guess what the audience will be receptive to, but you won’t know until it has been tried. Then you tweak and tweak until it is the best it can be, and naturally flows. “System 1 is the superpower behind all the most amazing human feats that we can achieve. With enough practice, you can direct it to take you anywhere you want — whether it’s the Olympic Games, or the most vaunted chambers of Silicon Valley. System 1, when trained and then left to run on its own accord, will put you in flow — a state of sync with yourself and your audience.” — Lauri Järvilehto, CEO of and author of (Springer 2015) The homunculus that believes itself to be in control of yourself is actually an under-performing, over-confident, energy-guzzling, often sabotaging imp that is best deployed only when really needed. So practice, practice, practice — and watch it fall into place. Like magic.
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Westphalexit
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Jon Evans
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As technology advances, a world partitioned into nation-states makes less and less sense. That may sound crazy, if you take it as granted that our world must be divided into nations. But the whole concept of a “country” is a 400-year-old weird hack, riddled with crippling bugs, plagued by contradictions that sharpen each year. It is unlikely to survive this century. So what comes next? In 1648, European nobility and aristocrats got together in Westphalia, northwestern Germany, and which ended both the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War. They also, in passing, laid the basis for the world as we know it today: one in which every scrap of land has been allocated to a “nation-state,” groups of humans defined by of all things, membership in which is the fundamental defining factor in human identities around the globe. If you don’t think that’s true, try being Haitian or Zimbabwean, and see how different that is from your (presumably) rich Western citizenship. Oh, you have a green card? A work permit? An entry visa? Those are just other, lesser but still privileged, forms of nation-state membership. That, more than anything else except perhaps your health, is what most describes, and circumscribes, your life. Does this not all seem a little odd and antediluvian to you, in today’s modern, ultra-networked, densely intertwined, post-geographic world? If you were going to redesign the social architecture of our world from scratch, would you begin with the nation-state as your basic building block? Really? Think about it. I didn’t think so. It may be hard to imagine a post-Westphalian world, given how much of our assumptions are built on the deep foundation of that structure; but to , “We live in nation-states. Their power seems inescapable–but so did the divine right of kings.” Le Guin was actually talking about capitalism: let’s detour to discuss that for a moment. People tend to assume that those who believe in the end of the nation-state must be hardcore anti-government libertarians. This in turn is just evidence of how deeply Westphalia has infected the zeitgeist; people assume that the alternative is, basically, no government at all. What a sad paucity of imagination. In fact the Westphalian consensus has been withering away for many years. The nations of Europe joined together long ago into a European Union; Brexit is essentially a reactionary backlash against the decline of Westphalia. Its victory was mildly disheartening, in that it exemplified the petty, jealous form of xenophobia incentivized by nation-states. But it was also a mere blip in the face of the overwhelming larger trend. Africa is moving ever closer to . It is following the lead of South America, which in 2009 . This increasing transnationalism seems like an inevitable side effect of the switched networks of IP packets and shipping containers drawing the four corners of our world ever closer together. But the EU, the African Union, Mercosur, etc., are still just umbrella organizations of nation-states, still limited by mere geography. That’s so twentieth century. Let us dream a little bigger. Balaji Srinivasan–CEO of Counsyl and 21, partner at Andreessen Horowitz–is doing just that, per this fascinating tweetstorm from February, sampled below and fully available : https://twitter.com/balajis/status/703501984893022208
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/703509764202852352 Consider that finest of human inventions: the city. Both within and across nations, cities, and city people, often have far more in common with each other than with the rest of their nation. London, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, Shanghai, New York, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Cape Town, Sydney — it is easy to feel more at home in of these places than to go from of them to a small rural settlement. This is true of both “elites” (a word now invariably used as a pejorative, outside of military contexts) and the legions of impoverished young students and travel-hungry twentysomethings. Does it really seem likely, given all the above, that land borders and map colors will set the course of all human behavior forever? It seems to me that technology, by shrinking our world and forming ever denser connections all across it, is inciting the growth, in both number and size, of loose-knit transnational organizations which–over decades–will rise in importance until they begin to usurp our notions of national identities. Thus far almost the only such organizations of real scale and importance are, of course, corporations. I’m faintly surprised that Google and IBM don’t already issue passports that holders can use to travel to, and work in, Westphalian nation-states. But of course the Westphalians are jealous of sharing their power, and people are, rightly, deeply mistrustful of transnational corporations. Even–or maybe especially–tech companies. (As a deeply admirable and highly successful tech executive mused to me over dinner the other day: “I really think, at some point, the pitchforks will be coming for us in tech.”) Some other form of transnational organization will have to be first. Only Nixon could go to China. I predict that international groups which initially seem trivial, or even laughable, will slowly grow in stature and importance until they become, in many ways, distributed nations of their own…without the limitations of that ugly hacks called a “state.” I don’t know which will be first, but I suspect it may already exist, in some nascent form. I also suspect that we will see a growing number of new city-states as this century progresses. (Obviously I’m far from the first to predict this. Neal Stephenson did so more than twenty years ago with , in which he described a world divided into dozens of different distributed nations, called “phyles,” each with its own scattered archipelago of territory around the world, along with cities and shared land where laws were dictated by the Common Economic Agreement among the phyles.) Again, all the above may seem dubious, unlikely, or even completely insane, to anyone whose whole life has been steeped in a world defined by nation-states. But if you take a step back and look at that world, and how it’s changing, and the possibilities that new technology provides–I think you’ll find it’s hard not to see some livid writing on the Westphalian wall.
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The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained — Are the brains next?
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Mike Butcher
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As the UK referendum result dropped in that fateful Friday morning, the tech startup world didn’t immediately grind to a halt. Websites kept loading. Apps kept opening. But what left UK technology entrepreneurs aghast was not just that Britain had chosen to leave the European Union after 40 years, but that all those years of trying compete with the giants of Silicon Valley would now be thrown into doubt. Although Europe’s 500 million citizens dwarfs the 323 million in the US, for years European startups had to deal with 28 jurisdictions and many languages. But the EU had at least managed to harmonize (more or less) the processes of company operation, data sharing and hiring. Hiring from a talent base of 500 million people was also an incredible asset to startups, as was raising funding from Venture capitalists. Based in Berlin? No problem. Developers in Slovenia, but the the HQ was in London? No problem. And, after several Eastern European states had joined, suddenly the whole of Europe could tap into the talent produced from Soviet-era education systems built around engineering and maths. The truth is the overwhelming majority of the UK tech startup industry was for ‘Remain’. Industry body found over 80% of companies were in favour of staying in the EU, citing the single market, free movement of labour and economic stability as their reasons. But “Brexit” has now thrown into enormous doubt how all of that will operate in the future. The immediate effects on startups have been incredibly personal. Bewilderment is the word you hear most. European staff suddenly have no idea how long they will be able to work in Britain. They created business ties, friendships, relationships, often marriages. Their kids are in nursery schools and high schools across the country. Furthermore, so many tech startups today are created by young people, who typically voted in droves for Remain. The decision to leave Europe will have disproportionate effects on them and their companies, which, ironically are so often labelled by politicians as providing the jobs of the future. What future now for them? The immediate reaction of some in the sector has been typically entrepreneurial. “ ,” wrote leading investor Saul Klein. Leading voices have been quick to — anything not to ‘frighten the horses’ and potentially spook the pipeline of possible new companies to invest in. Some see it . The UK is ! This, despite imploring everyone to vote for Remain . Klein’s sanguine attitude is reflected by many VCs. Early stage startups are agile and can relocate if need be. Big tech companies are global and not overly dependent on the U.K. But VCs have warned that mid-stage companies too dependent on the U.K. could feel the heat of Brexit. Taavet Hinrikus, Co-founder and CEO ofTransferWise, a declared ‘Remainer’, says he is “ ” from the Brexit decision. His London-based company couldn’t be more quintessentially European: he’s an Estonian immigrant living in London. Half his staff are British, a third from mainland Europe, with others from the US, Latin America and elsewhere. TransferWise also benefits from “passporting”: because it is regulated in the UK by the FCA, it’s therefore regulated all across Europe. For now. But, he blogged, “Five years ago, we chose to base TransferWise here in the UK — and we’ll continue that plan.” And ‘seize the day’ was effectively the message put out by former Number 10 tech adviser Rohan Silva, who that Britain should now embrace the technology future to use Artificial Intelligence to drive its society. Free from the constraints of a ponderous EU, the UK could now go feet-first into a tech-driven future. These were upbeat words from voices who had openly declared they were for Remain prior to the Referendum. It was true that the EU had often lurched towards heavy regulation. Ironically, as the EU Commission had often created encouraging programmes for startups, EU legislators were making laws which could put more and more onerous restraints on startups around data privacy, for instance. There were clearly going to be many arguments worth engaging with if Europe was to compete globally. Arguments which, because of Brexit, the UK will no longer have a say in, of course. Many felt the EU had gone too far in regulation. One startup founder told me the European Data Privacy Regulations could have “ruined” her online advertising business, which relies on being able to transport data between the EU and the US. However, while the sun-lit uplands of a world where the UK fully embraces the advances of technology (and speeds ahead of the EU) could well be a possible future, that ideal is thrown into sharp relief when set against the realities biting today. Some, like Jeff Lynn of Seedrs, were . The day after the referendum I was contacted by three separate startups to say their venture capital funding had been cancelled because they were being financially backed from the UK and were in the EU, or in the UK and backed by EU-based investors. Several more have come to me since with similar news. Uncertainty has left the normally upbeat tech sector reeling. And we’ve been coldly reminded of the complexity of the modern international startup, once seen as a strength, but, post-Brexit, could now become a huge headache. One UK-based founder contacted me: “My entire budget is now completely invalid as we have employees in 3 different EU countries, and in the USA. We are deeply affected by the currency devaluation issue. Every single person that I employ is from a different EU country. Most are based in London and now there is a real feeling of unease and uncertainty as to what will happened to them in the future – which means that this is affecting the day to day running of the business,” she told me. In addition, she was about to embark on a fundraising tour and was hoping to get US investors: “I now think that this will be much more difficult, if at all possible. Which means that the 6 jobs I have created and the 5 more that I need to fill – will be in jeopardy.” The company in question also took on interns from underprivileged backgrounds. That programme will now likely be cancelled because of a lack of funding. “Long term I think I will have to relocate my business to the USA as the market in the UK is just too small to justify staying here,” she told me. What’s that? A market of 65 million too small? Well, yes, when just a fortnight ago it was 500 million. In Manchester, Tom New, CEO of Formisimo, believes startups in the North West and EU-backed UK regions will find it much harder to raise funding because part of their cash was raised because it had that EU cushion underneath. Without that “we would have likely have had to move to the South East and the North West’s tech ecosystem would still be where it was back then,” he told me. The UK also could now face a potential brain drain of talent. Before June 23 London was seen as Europe’s largest powerhouse of startups. Just over a week later an adverting-hoarding truck was seen trawling the startup-filled streets of Shoreditch, extolling the benefits of moving to Berlin (London’s chief tech startup competitor). The van was sponsored by a German political party. Suddenly other European hubs like Dublin, Berlin, Stockholm or Amsterdam look attractive as bases from which to reach the EU single market. Even some London VCs are privately saying that they will invest more on the continent now as a result. Tech companies will no doubt work around it all – moving people and HQs around, knowing they can all still work online. And it may be that the booming nature of London’s tech scene will now have to be spread more equally to Europe’s other tech centres. This much was admitted by Balderton Capital, which plans now to stockpile cash and . Look for talented British entrepreneurs suddenly turning up in Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon and Barcelona. But one of the greatest myths ever told about the tech world is that it’s about technology. The truth is, it’s about people. Extremely smart and talented people. Given that the UK had been part of a single market which allowed for enormous freedom of movement, its access to all that talent in Europe is now in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the march of technology continues, as does the soul searching. Did those of us in London pay too much attention to our hackathons and our Flat Whites to notice that so much of the rest of the UK wasn’t interested in the tech startup revolution? It looks like we just found out. (Picture by )
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Lumo Run’s new jogging sensor launches today – here’s how it stacks up
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Sarah Buhr
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its smart running sensor, , today, and we took it for a spin around the park to tell you how it compares to other jogging tech out there. TechCrunch first caught wind of with the running sensor last October. It was a breakout product from its posture trainer Lumo Lift and a first step into both connected garments and the running industry. You can check out our video review with Lumo co-founder Monisha Perkash . Lumo’s pants needed the sensor to go in a special pocket to work when we last caught up with the company, but now Lumo has separated the sensor from the pants so you can take a run with the tech in any pants you want. Lumo Run’s sensor works by placing it in a special clip provided and then snapping the clip onto the back of your running pants. Make sure the sensor is powered up first before beginning. You’ll know it’s ready when a little light at the bottom of the sensor flashes green. Lumo recommends placing the part of the sensor with the USB plug toward the bottom of the clip for more accurate results.The clip is pretty tight when you first get it so it may take some maneuvering to get the sensor inside. Placing the USB connector at the bottom also makes it more convenient to slip off the clip and plug in again. You’ll then download the Lumo Run app and set up a profile. The app on your phone will locate your sensor if everything is set up properly, and Lumo will begin to guide you on a 10-minute test run to find out all your weaknesses. The app told me in a delightful Australian woman’s accent that I was moving my hips too much from side to side while running and I needed to work on cadence. Perkash, an avid runner herself, told me cadence, or your running stride, is one of the most common things runners need to work on to prevent injury and improve their form. It can also help you run faster. A little bell will ding on the app if you are within your cadence goals. Mine was for 170 strides per minute, but elite runners usually get around . The app knows what you need to hit based on your height, weight, gender and your current fitness level. Lumo Run tracks distance, pace, and running goals in a similar manner to many other fitness devices and apps. However, the main focus is all on improving the way in which you run. Your form is important for preventing injury, as most any running expert will tell you. Poor form leads to all sorts of problems with your back and knees and could mean the difference in race time, distance and how much you’ll enjoy the activity down the road. Perkash told me she actually had bad knees before using Lumo Run but claims the problem went away after using the device. The device also deviates from other fitness trackers like the Apple Watch, Jawbone or Fitbit in that it does not track the calories you burned during activity, your sleep cycle, or overall steps throughout the day – basically Lumo Run snips out any data not pertaining to posture. If calories burned is important to you like it is to me, you could do what I did on my run and combine Lumo Run with the Moves app or RunKeeper to get your overall mileage with the calories and how much of that was spent running versus walking. However, posture is something very few running apps and devices take into account and not something more popular devices like the aforementioned Jawbone and Fitbit even consider. Glance, a running watch by At a Glance, is one of the few other fitness wearables out there aiming to improve your running form while tracking your distance, calories burned, steps and sleep quality. I have not personally reviewed a Glance so I don’t know how the experience compares, but you can purchase one on Amazon for . The Lumo Run sensor goes for online and the men’s shorts and women’s capris with the sensor clip will round you up to . Lumo’s running app will also guide you through improvements as you run and provides coaching videos to show you how to improve your run over time. You can set goals and let the app Lumo Run offers something an app cannot, but it’s not without competition – and the main competitor, Glance, incorporates a lot of other features like calories burned, steps, and sleep quality data for not a whole lot more money. But that’s not to say Lumo couldn’t add those features in. Overall I thought Lumo Run’s sensor was pretty handy and has the potential to prevent serious injury. It’s also cheaper than hiring a running coach to watch your every stride like elite athletes do. Like almost every wearable on the market, I’m not sure I’d use it over time but it’s not a bad price for the data. As a not-very-hardcore runner, I would be willing to buy it with a few more additions. However, the sensor would be a definite and immediate buy for me, if I were about to run a marathon. The injury prevention promise and improvement in overall time would be enough for me to make a $100 investment, and given my overall experience with the product, I would recommend it.
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In Kenya, Safaricom’s Little Cab app goes head to head with Uber
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Jake Bright
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Even as a deal is imminent between Uber and its closest competitor Didi Chuxing in the immense Chinese market, competition in ride-sharing continues to intensify around the globe. Africa is one region where entrants continue to pile in. In Kenya’s tech transit market, which already includes Uber and several other startups, Safaricom, the country’s largest telecom and fintech firm, has recently launched its first ride-hailing app called . The product comes via a partnership with , a Nairobi based software company. Little Cab runs on iOS, Android, and Windows devices and will soon be available for USSD (non-smartphone) users. The new app accepts cash, card, and Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money for payment. It provides live GPS enabled maps for pickups and offers free Safaricom Wi-Fi to passengers. In addition to its unique features, Little Cab could become a homegrown competitor in Kenya’s burgeoning ride-booking market. Uber launched in country in 2015. Other outside transit apps include Dubai owned and recent Estonian entrant, . Locally there’s and , a social media based transit startup. The market has already seen some attrition, with (formerly AIG) backed Easy Taxi Kenya shutting down this spring. What significantly differentiates Little Cab as a ride-hail app is its connection to Safaricom, which has one of Kenya’s most powerful brands and extensive product networks. Little Cab’s media release indicates the Safaricom/Craft Silicon venture has come out swinging against Uber and other competitors. On price it touts itself as “the most affordable option in the market” at 55 Kenyan Schillings (KES) per kilometer (about .50 cents) compared to Uber’s KES 60. Safaricom also zeros in on driver wages, a sensitive aspect of Kenya’s online taxi market. “Little Cab will take no more than 15 percent off driver’s earnings, compared to other players in the market; Uber’s 25 percent…,” states the release. While Uber has been relatively well received in Kenya, its entry has brought some connected to disruption of local taxi operators. On goals, “Little Cab aims to achieve one million rides in the next six months by entrenching and differentiating ourselves as a homegrown taxi app,” said Craft Silicon CEO Kamal Budhabhatti. Led by Little Cab and Uber, the race for market share in Kenya’s ride-hailing space is set. While formal data on the country’s online transit market is sparse, broader factors offer a compelling backdrop. Kenya is Sub-Saharan Africa’s eighth largest economy ( ), sixth most populous country (46 million), and one of the continent’s more tech savvy nations—dubbed for its IT achievements. In the innovation space, Kenya is perhaps best known for the success of Safaricom’s . Launched in 2007, the mobile phone based payments product is used by , has a network of 85,000 agents, and generated $309 million of Safaricom’s $1.5 billion 2015 revenues. As ride-hail apps compete for Kenyan clients, much will come down to what each can offer around cost and features. On price, Little Cab may have already sparked a war. This week Uber will announce a 35 percent fare cut on its UberX cars, confirmed Uber Africa spokesperson Samantha Allenberg. The new plan will lower cost per minute charges, minimum fare charges, and cost per kilometer charges from KES 60 to KES 35. In addition to price, players in Kenya’s ride-booking market (namely Little Cab and Uber) are facing pressure to extend more product options. “Both of them will have to look at what they are offering with bundled services in their vehicles,” said Bitange Ndemo, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi and former national minister of technology and information. “Already for Little Cab, offering Safaricom’s free Wi-Fi will be a pull. It gives people the option to pick up their laptop and do work in our traffic jams,” said Ndemo. “I would not be surprised if Uber ends up deploying Wi-Fi on their vehicles in Kenya too.” Dr. Ndemo also pointed to Little Cab’s advantage in allowing Kenya’s non smartphone users—more than 50 percent of the country’s mobile market—to hail taxis via SMS. Whatever product options find traction with Little Cab (and other apps), expect Uber to counter, and vice versa. Uber has given its Africa managers notable flexibility to adapt service models to local markets (see our June ). Africa is one of the few places in the world Uber is testing cash payments. Uber Africa is also experimenting with unique passenger location services, vehicle security features, and commercial delivery options for small businesses. In Kenya, Uber has logged over 1 million trips and claims 100,000 monthly app openings in Nairobi. For the time being, the biggest winner in the rivalry between ride-booking operators such as Little Cab and Uber could be Kenya’s citizens. Safaricom has a range of additional products, including tablets, mobile phones, its solar electricity kits, and digital TVs. Competition in African consumer based tech is bringing all kinds of new promos and product offerings around online retail, mobile devices, digital payments, and logistics services. The online taxi could become Africa’s 21 century mini-mall for extending these things to broadening markets. Safaricom Business Director Rita Okuthe confirmed that Little Cab’s free Wi-Fi interface “will serve as a platform for our services and our 22 million subscribers.” And if Safaricom can demonstrate significant revenue by directly entering the online taxi market, expect Africa’s other big mobile operators to take notice. Rather than simply partnering with ride-booking apps on payments or mobile services, big telecoms firms such as MTN could simply acquire or create their own.
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Uber China will reportedly merge with archrival Didi Chuxing
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Jon Russell
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Huge news for China’s ride-sharing industry: It appears that Didi Chuxing will gobble up rival Uber China in a merger deal that will value the combined entity in China at $35 billion. The rumor has being doing the rounds for about a month now, with both sides denying but it looks like a deal is happening. Both and the cited sources claiming that a deal has been agreed upon. The timing is interesting, too, since last week that will make taxi-hailing services legal from November 1. Bloomberg reports that the deal will see Didi, after , invest $1 billion into Uber’s global business for Uber China’s operations. In exchange, Uber China and its investors, , will take a 20 percent stake in the newly merged entity in China. ; . This deal means that Didi is now invested in every ride-sharing company of size on the planet, having previously put money into Lyft, Ola in India and Grab in Southeast Asia. We’ve contacted Uber and Didi for comment and will update this story accordingly. This is not the first mega merger in China’s ride-hailing space. Didi Chuxing itself was created when Didi Dache and Didi Kuaidi called a truce on their capital intensive subsidies war in . Uber has spent billions in China — a Bloomberg source said it is losing $2 billion in the country to date — so it looks like the same reasons are behind this second merger deal, albeit that the potential repercussions are very different. Offloading its Chinese unit could put Uber on track to finally list as a public company. The U.S. firm said last month that it is already profitable in Western markets and, with China its biggest money-drainer and weakest market from a competitive standpoint, a major question mark around its business will be removed if this deal goes through.
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Grab CEO: Didi victory shows we can beat Uber in Southeast Asia
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Jon Russell
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hasn’t even been confirmed, but the significance of the deal has already prompted responses from others in the global ride-hailing industry. Anthony Tan who is the CEO of Grab, the company that rivals Uber in Southeast Asia and , told his staff today that reports of a merger to create a $35 billion ride-sharing giant in China are proof that local competitors can beat Uber. “After more than a year of intense competition, our investor and global partner Didi has effectively won the battle for market share dominance in China,” Tan wrote in a company-wide email obtained by TechCrunch. “Didi’s success reinforces what we have believed all along,” he added. “That we live in a very diverse world and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Localized solutions best solve local problems. Like Didi did in China, we make sure that the unique pain points of users in Singapore or Jakarta or Manila will get addressed because they are prioritised over the competing needs of users in New York or London or Istanbul.” that Uber’s operations in Southeast Asia are already profitable in two markets — Singapore and the Philippines — and that the U.S. firm is making a major move to launch new products across the region. That strategy makes more sense now given today’s reports of a China exit. Along those lines, Tan cautioned that Uber’s withdrawal from China will likely mean that the company significantly ups its game in Southeast Asia. “With the deal in China, we expect Uber to turn more attention and divert resources to our region,” he told Grab staff. “But we have seen that when the local champion stays true to their beliefs and strengths, they can prevail. We see this happening in China, and it will be the same here. They’ve lost once, and we will make them lose again.” Uber is widely believed to be leaving China after finding the country to be unsustainable due, in a major part, to Didi’s significant war chest which has funded a subsidy war that has reportedly cost Uber $2 billion to date. It looks like CEO Travis Kalanick has called time on that battle, perhaps to focus on an IPO next year. The stakes are not so high in Southeast Asia, where online commerce and digital spending is far lower, but a cumulative population of more than 600 million makes it a region that could be hugely significant as its digital economy matures. So, while it isn’t surprising that Tan is rallying his troops with this message, it isn’t clear just how much intel from Didi’s ‘win’ can be applied to Grab’s own battle with Uber. Grab has raised over $650 million to date, including at a valuation of around $1.6 billion. It covers 30 cities across Southeast Asia’s six largest countries where it claims 19 million app downloads and 350,000 drivers. Uber is in 16 cities but it doesn’t release figures. Southeast Asia has generally been a lower priority to its efforts in China and India. Tan’s full memo is below: Dear Grabbers, There has been a development in the global ride-hailing space that I’d like to share with you. Didi Chuxing and Uber are rumored to announce a deal very soon in China. After more than a year of intense competition, our investor and global partner Didi has effectively won the battle for market share dominance in China. Didi’s success reinforces what we have believed all along. That we live in a very diverse world and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Localized solutions best solve local problems. Like Didi did in China, we make sure that the unique pain points of users in Singapore or Jakarta or Manila will get addressed because they are prioritised over the competing needs of users in New York or London or Istanbul. That a team that lives and breathes the markets it operates in makes a difference. Because our users are also people whom we care about – our families, our neighbours, our friends. And not just some digits presented on a business dashboard at the other side of the world in a different time-zone. That we are here for the masses and hence a broad selection of transport options is needed to serve their diverse needs – from the businessmen arriving for a meeting in style on GrabCar+, to the students using GrabBike to beat congestion and reach classes on time; from drivers depending solely on Grab to feed their families, to the car-owners using GrabHitch to subsidise their driving costs and to make new friends. Because we know that we are not here to only serve a privileged segment of users who can afford surge-pricing. These beliefs have served us well. We are everywhere in our region, serving many many people in our cities everyday in our countries and communities. We are driven by the purpose to improve the lives of people in Southeast Asia. We have built a strong team that connects with our region, a team that firmly believes in “Your problem is my problem”. With the deal in China, we expect Uber to turn more attention and divert resources to our region. But we have seen that when the local champion stays true to their beliefs and strengths, they can prevail. We see this happening in China, and it will be the same here. They’ve lost once, and we will make them lose again. Let us seize this opportunity. More than ever before, we must continue to leverage on our strengths. To listen and to put ourselves in the shoes of our users and partners. And ultimately deliver the best passenger transport solution that this region has ever had. God speed
Anthony
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Talking the future of education with Convergent Media founder Rob Anderson
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John Biggs
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This week on Technotopia I talk to Rob Anderson, founder of and a former founding team member at MTV Russia. Anderson has some interesting ideas on education and the necessity for a true way to assess and hire based on personality types and skills. Anderson is constantly hiring for his media company and he’s looking forward to a future when we will all be working a few hours a week at jobs perfectly suited for our aptitudes. While personality is a bit difficult to pin down, talent and skill can be measured and you can be placed on an educational track the could make you more than happy. The mission, then, is the sci-fi-like notion that humans are not one-size-fits-all and that smarter systems will slot us into exactly the right place at the right time. You can or subscribe to the
Incidentally, if you’re looking for something a bit funnier and a lot raunchier (NSFW language), I’d encourage you to visit with Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka, founder of . I didn’t get much about the future out of him but he was funny.
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Brian Heater
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Philips intros a smart health product ecosystem
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Brian Heater
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Philips is no stranger to health. In fact, Philips Healthcare (nee Philips Medical Systems) comprises a big chunk of the multinational corporation, providing some serious industrial equipment for hospitals, from CT scanners to defibrillators. It’s no surprise, then, that the company’s been angling to make progress in the booming consumer wearable space – or that it’s looking to do so in a big way. Today, Philips launched not just a wearable, but a connected ecosystem – not entirely unlike , albeit in one fell swoop. features a number of different smart devices, including a scale, thermometer, two blood pressure monitors (upper arm and wrist) and a health watch that serves as the hub, along with the HealthSuite Health app for iOs and Android. https://youtu.be/FIh5L3tdWDs I’ve been wearing the watch for a couple of days – too soon to offer any sort of profound impressions, though I will say that the device is, unsurprisingly, devoid of the shiny glitz we’ve come to expect from a wearable space dominated by the likes of Apple and Samsung. And while the fitness devices are designed to help wearers institute some key life and health changes like their more mainstream counterparts, Philips’ products are aimed at a decidedly older demographic, designed to offer a fuller and more actionable health picture. In the case of the $250 Health Watch, that means no color touchscreen and (for now), no notifications, in spite of a price point that puts it somewhere been a fitness band and smartwatch. What it does offer, however, is a wide swatch of metrics, including heart rate, activity and sleep pattern, going beyond simple step counting and featuring what the company promises is a higher rate of tracking accuracy. The scale, which appears fairly similar to Withings’ offering, runs $100 and includes BMI analysis and multiple profiles. The ear thermometer runs $60 and the blood pressure monitors cost $100 and $90 for the upper arm and wrist, respectively. All are available starting today.
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A Q&A with DFJ Partner, Bill Bryant, on “unicorn” valuations and startup investing
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Jasper Kuria
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I think the next several months and possibly years will be challenging for raising capital. There has definitely been a reset. The market was over extended in an unhealthy way and we are seeing the impact across the board. The catalyst for this reset has been the collapse of public markets stocks where comparisons versus private startup companies are unfavorable. Smart investors are saying: “Why would I invest in this promising startup that values itself at 10 to 15 x revenue when there are fantastic companies trading for 3 x revenue. It doesn’t make sense.” Does that mean we should all throw up our hands? Absolutely not. We invested in in January 2009, six months after the collapse. It was a great time. They started small with four co-founders. A year after, the company was 8 – 10 people and we raised a responsible $3.75 million to get started. Great companies were created in that timeframe just like they will be today. The good thing about a market like this is it doesn’t attract the wannabe tourist entrepreneur. That is the harsh reality. Unless you can round up necessary capital internally and keep valuations just for optics, new investors will only do deals at lower prices. There is just no way around that especially where companies stretched to get to a valuation that wasn’t warranted, often times giving up term concessions. For example, as an investor I could say fine, I’ll give you your billion-dollar valuation as long as I get 3x senior liquidation preferences on my $10 million. This means my only bet is that your company is worth $30 million. In the event of a sale, I get $30 million first before the entrepreneur gets anything. Valuation alone doesn’t mean much. Many entrepreneurs agreed to onerous terms to get a unicorn-esque valuation and that’s really hard. Any new investor coming into the deal must radically discount the valuation. I always advise entrepreneurs to set realistic valuations at each stage. I hold the notion that as venture investors it is incumbent upon us to identify enduring and iconic companies that are addressing large scale challenges. This is DFJ’s philosophy. We have been investing in technology for 31 years and our focus is to identify entrepreneurs who are disrupting and innovating in large scale industries. Two examples include SpaceX and Telsa where we’ve had successful partnerships with Elon Musk. These are the kinds of opportunities in which you can create true value and build billion dollar companies. You make a good point that clean tech and renewable energy have disappointed. We spent a lot of effort trying to make that work in the 2000’s and learned that these markets are not a venture asset class. The clean tech area in particular, you could demonstrate a new technology for venture dollars but the production and scale up was hundreds of millions of dollars and therefore not a great venture asset class. You asked a question about Facebook and Twitter. I view those as transformative companies as well. While they are not hard-tech the scaling up of a company like Facebook is an incredible engineering feat. It is not just fluffy social media. I don’t think there is a bargain hunting strategy. In venture capital you are really trying to identify the very most promising companies. The entry price into the best companies has not historically mattered. People were thinking investors were crazy to value Facebook at $100 million to $50 billion. Today they are valued at $400 billion? Yes, I don’t invest in themes; rather, I invest in amazing entrepreneurs. There are thematic investors and sector-specific investors. I am decidedly not thematic because, by the time investors like me start prognosticating on what they think is interesting, the time to make those investments is probably 18 months in the past. We are not deep enough. We are not domain experts. We are not living the problems the way the entrepreneurs do. Great entrepreneurs are obsessed about these problems for years in many cases. They are purposeful, they are mission driven and have direct visceral experience with the issues. For example, . Matt Oppenheimer spent 4.5 years in Kenya as a bank manager for Barclays and watched firsthand the challenges that the local population had in receiving money from loved ones abroad. He watched this process play out day-in and day-out said, ‘“I can fix this. We can build technology to these transfers more efficiently”. He then came back to the States and joined the TechStars accelerator program, at the end of which Remitly emerged. This is an individual who started the company from a deep desire to transform how hundreds of millions of workers around the world send and receive money. In contrast, it would be a little ridiculous for me to say ‘remittances is a $600 billion market and is ripe for innovation. Let me see how I can disrupt it’. Matt lived this and thought about it for years. That is the kind of entrepreneur we are trying to back. I don’t know that they are right or wrong but they end backing is people who are opportunistically drawn to sectors. They are reading analysts and saying ‘that’s a hot sector’. They don’t have the deep passion it takes to create great companies. To build a great company, there are many ups and downs. If you are not 100% obsessed with the problem you are solving, it is disheartening and you’ll want to give up. Chef is another example. It started out as an open source project written by Adam Jacob, a sys admin. He was just solving his own problem of “How do you manage servers at scale? The existing tools were crap, so he decided to solve the problem because he faced it daily. Adam Jacob, CTO of Chef (formerly Opscode) The hype in AR and VR in 2015 was well ahead of the market from a timing standpoint. That is one area I’d be cautious about. Bitcoin is overhyped—no one has built a fantastic business yet. Big data has become such a broad rubric that I am not sure means anything. There are a lot of businesses trying to hang their hats on big data but there is no great insight in saying “I am taking a big data approach to this problem.” The smart home/ connected home was an area we looked at and it is probably ahead of itself from a consumer behavior standpoint. I think there are neat ideas out there but consumers are don’t want to use a smartphone app just to turn on lights or the coffee machine. We are investors in Coinbase and have looked at a lot of bitcoin-related companies. There is also Coinlab (based locally) that one of DFJ’s associates has invested in. The whole Bitcoin as currency, I never understood. If you have to read about how a currency is used it is never going to take off in any mass way. Another challenge is Bitcoin hasn’t been stable as a bearer of value. The fluctuation makes it untenable as a transactional currency. That said we are still looking at general block-chain ideas, whether in real estate or IT auditing and so on. I only have three? God, where do I start? First, I never thought startups were formulaic, that you say these three things and then you get funded. What you are trying to judge is does the entrepreneur have this reality distortion field around them and also a sense of what is possible? They need to be visionary and project 7 – 10 years and yet also grounded enough to say ‘here is how we start in the next 6 – 12 months.’ I’ll use Remitly as an example again. Yes, it is a $600 billion market. Can you address it on day one? No, you can’t. It is not possible to even get licenses to operate in all of these markets, so what is a thoughtful approach? That is what Matt brought to the table. He had a broad understanding but he took a Mckinsey-esque approach to dissecting it. This is a market where your success in the Philippines doesn’t carry over to Kenya. There is no overlap of the population so it is a separate customer acquisition education process. So both execution without vision and vice-versa are turnoffs. A second turn off is a basic lack of understanding of business models. I see plans where they say “In my third year I am going to have 78% net margins” or “I am going to drive $50 million in revenue and $42 million in EBITDA” There is no business in the world that yet we hear a lot of pitches that say things like that. The third would probably be the entrepreneur not appreciating that venture capitalists have a business model too. We don’t know which companies will be successful and so for every 10 investments we make, the one or two runaway successes must pay for all the failures. We then price the valuations accordingly. If the entrepreneur is asking for $5 million and projecting a $150 million exit, I need to own a third of the company ($50 million) to get my 10 x or better return. Often, entrepreneurs view us as banks and think we can make do with 6% returns. Backing awesome people makes all the difference. Is it the market, the technology or the people? It is really all three but I’ve made the most mistakes when I got enamored with a concept, a market opportunity or a technology without really confirming that the individuals involved were amazing leaders. Yes, but amazing entrepreneurs do a couple of things. They pick the right market and the right problem. They also hire a great team, create a sense of mission and are culture masters. Those are the other elements. It is not just this heroic Ayn Rand kind of figure but someone who can inspire and motivate others to join their cause while creating an empowering culture that allows talents to flourish. If I were to pick one thing, it would definitely be culture because companies are compilations of individual people who wake up every day and decide I am going to work for company X versus not. Why do they do that? Compensation plays a part but at the end of the day if you are going to spend 10 to 12 hours a day at a place of work you’ve gotta be inspired by what the company is about, the values and so on. At Remitly, the people feel that in some small way they are changing the world and feel good about it. Pursue a startup where you care about the outcome deeply. Startups are inherently hard. If you are successful at a startup you won’t know that for generally 5 – 7 years. Also, pursue a big problem. A small business is as hard or harder than a big-idea business. It is harder to attract people and resources. All things being equal, pursue a big idea even though on the surface it might seem like a smaller one might be more certain.
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It’s a new era for female Israeli entrepreneurs
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Sivan Baram
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The Israeli startup scene has dramatically changed within a couple of years because of the significant increase in investment prospects (i.e. incubators, accelerators, angels), events, meet-ups, competitions, lectures, academic programs and more. Especially interesting are the slowly, yet surely recent alterations in the diversity of the entrepreneurs, with more and more women entering the previously male-dominated startup habitat, turning it into an even more interesting scene. It is a crucial change that should have occurred earlier — but fortunately it is here, and it is here to stay. There have been many debates, with many viable reasons provided, regarding why Israeli women entrepreneurs haven’t been active in the startup scene till now, why they are only now getting recognition and whether they are actually the ones taking more action. Here are a few arguments as to why Israeli women entrepreneurs are starting to blossom. It appears that the male-dominated Israeli startup nation has taken a turn in the right direction. Not to seem too optimistic, though — men still lead the investment front, and they fulfill most key roles in the Israeli startup scene. However, diversity seems to be encroaching upon previous conventions, and there are now several new opportunities that have made it possible, easier and more appealing for women to join the rollercoaster and become startup founders and co-founders, as well as to join startups in key positions. One of these new opportunities is , which at first seemed to be another beautifully designed hub targeting women entrepreneurs, strategically located at the port of Tel Aviv complex. It soon became a ground-breaking success story, however, pushing forward numerous women-led startups that are now fully funded working companies on the rise. (i.e. , and more). According to Merav Oren, CEO and founder of WMN, “WMN is a game-changer for women entrepreneurs. Our mission is to have more women-led ventures. We do this by providing our community members with a co-working space, professional events and workshops, along with mentors and networking opportunities with profound and leading men and women in the industry who want to pay it all forward.” Oren agrees that “the Israeli startup scene (as the rest of the startup world) is still male-dominated. However, a clear shift has become prominent in recent years, and we are seeing Israeli women entrepreneurs just about everywhere: Women are founding startups, winning competitions, leading ventures and venture deal-flows, and leading successful innovative companies.” Oren takes pride in her contribution, but not without admitting the long road ahead: “WMN has an important role in this local shift, and we are extremely excited to see that our hard work is paying off, not only business-wise but socially, as well. Having said that, as someone who is highly familiar with the Israeli startup scene, it is apparent that we still have a lot to do, but the challenge makes it interesting. We will continue with our vision for the betterment of everyone who cares about the startup scene, that will all benefit from this change.” Another program intended for women entrepreneurs or future entrepreneurs is being led by Hilla Ovil-Brenner, a serial entrepreneur in the Israeli high-tech industry. Ovil-Brenner, who started her first startup (which she later sold to a huge corporation) when she was nine months pregnant, is now CEO and founder of a startup called , the first on-demand platform for inbound calls. Ovil-Brenner specializes in reaching out to entrepreneurs and helping them fulfill their passion. She also founded at the Google Tel Aviv campus. Ovil-Brenner describes Campus TLV for Moms as the world’s first baby-friendly startup school for women entrepreneurs. Initially launched at Campus Tel Aviv by Yazamiyot, a social network for women entrepreneurs, it was co-founded by Ovil-Brenner and Google. Campus TLV for Moms provides a productive and educational bootcamp for moms to meet like-minded entrepreneurs and make progress. According to Ovil-Brenner, “with the success of Campus for Moms in Tel Aviv, the program has grown to other campuses around the world, including London, Madrid and Seoul. We have helped hundreds of moms acquire the basic skills required for launching a successful startup — from product, development, branding, pitching investors and more.” Ovil-Brenner explains: “Campus TLV for Moms is primarily aimed at women on maternity leave who are interested in learning more about entrepreneurship. The program is aimed at different audiences — either current or aspiring entrepreneurs or corporate employees with a track record of internal entrepreneurship who would like to know more about leading a successful business. We offer an 8-session cycle with special guests who are top-notch leaders in their fields. We take pride in helping women push forward a startup at what we discovered to be a critical turning point in their lives.” There is quite a small group of Israeli women entrepreneurs who lead successful companies and give inspiration to other female founders, those who want to become entrepreneurs or those taking the first steps to establishing a new startup. One of them is Orit Hashay, who founded , a crowd-recommendation site for choosing and buying brassieres. Hashay started as a software developer who independently launched several successful sites, such as mit4mit, an Israeli consumer wedding services reviews site, and Ramkol, Israel’s leading local reviews. She later joined Israeli VC as an investment manager, pushing forward its portfolio companies and seeking new investment opportunities for the company. Hashay also takes an active part in encouraging Israeli women to aim at the non-existing glass ceiling: “I have lived the scene as an investor as well as a striving entrepreneur. I know how hard it can be, especially in a male-dominated world. However, I consistently ignored the fact that it is hard and didn’t take no for an answer. Any difficulty that I had, I found a way to resolve it.” As to why women entrepreneurs are less represented in startups, locally and abroad, Hashay says she knows exactly why this is the case. “I think the problem lies in early education. I volunteered at an NGO aimed at helping kids ( ) and kept seeing boys freely expressing themselves, even if they were clearly wrong about something, while girls were always less confident, even when they have the right answer. Women should be encouraged to speak up, be competitive from an early age, in the same way that boys are. From a personal perspective, my 4-year-old boy is extremely enthusiastic about working in my company, even though my husband is independent as well. Even though it is very heart-warming and flattering, I constantly tell him that he could create his own company if he would like. Every little boy or girl should be encouraged in exactly the same ways.” As for today, Hashay concludes, “it’s definitely a new era for Israeli women entrepreneurs. The different programs available, the idea that it is not unusual for a woman to want to be independent or to want to start a venture from scratch… whatever the reason is, it’s happening and it’s a revolution that’s super fun to take an active part in.” Shelly Eisen-Livneh is a relatively new entrepreneur who is part of WMN. Eisen-Livneh is the CEO and co-founder of , aiming to help people find compatible matches through playful and meaningful interactions. Aida (Japanese for space between, time between, relation between) is a unique app that captures the space and time between two people — where the magic happens. It’s an app where people can discover each other playfully, bond and gradually form a “togetherness” — as in real life. This way they can stop focusing on searching and start focusing on creating the relationship they want. According to Eisen-Livneh, her app disrupts dating conventions. “aida encourages a new dating culture that invites daters to develop and maintain an “aida” between them, bringing fun, emotion and meaning back into dating — both online and offline.” Eisen-Livneh explains how her app is a convention breaker and introduces a fresh outlook on Israeli women entrepreneurs finally moving into the spotlight: “With aida I set out to create a product that many women felt is missing for years and fix many problems men had but could not articulate. The more I met with investors and accelerators, the more I realized that the crowd I am pitching to is usually comprised of men. Every now and then I meet a women who is a decision maker (about 5 percent of the investors I meet). I wish I could be meeting with more diverse teams.” Eisen-Livneh further explained: “When I talked with my angel investor I asked him at one point ‘How do I convey the pain and explain the solution to someone who has never been in the online dating scene, let alone experienced it from a woman’s perspective? Do you know that 96.6 percent of the VC investors are men?’ His answer actually served as my guiding light ever since. He said, ‘Shelly, it’s all statistics. According to the echo-system statistics — you don’t even exist. But you’re alive kicking and screaming — aren’t you? So go out there, make your own reality and beat the statistics, every bit of it, in every step of the ladder.’ ” And that’s what I think is most important for diversity to happen — simply go out there, be a woman entrepreneur, a business woman, a leader, a founder, a force to be reckoned with. Serve as an example to other women and always help others — of all genders. As in Gandhi’s words, “be the change you wish to see in the world.”
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Understanding Hillary Clinton’s innovation plan
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Andrew Keen
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It’s been an all-Hillary week. But in her Philadelphia acceptance speech, she said next-to-nothing about innovation and absolutely nothing at all about digital policy. So what will a Clinton presidency mean to Silicon Valley? And does she actually have a plan on innovation and technology? Yes, she . Last month, she released her . And last week, the policy guru and best-selling writer published a “ ” of this plan in . Downes says — surprise, surprise — that there’s a “lot of both good and bad” in the plan. It’s good on its commitment to supporting visas for high-tech overseas workers, he suggests. But less good, he argues, on Network Neutrality, where she continues Obama’s support for Chapter II and the idea of the Internet as a public utility. So what role does Downes expect tech and the Internet to play between now and the November election? The big surprise, he suspects, will be that polls don’t work anymore. In spite – or perhaps because of – the explosion of social media, pollsters are finding it harder and harder to determine how people are going to vote. Perhaps this is because nobody has landlines anymore – so pollsters can no longer reach us. Or maybe it’s because we don’t trust pollsters anymore than we trust Wall Street bankers or politicians, so we no longer tell them the truth. As always, many thanks to the folks at for their support in the production of this interview.
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Gillmor Gang: Not Insane
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, July 29, 2016. In 1972, the Firesign Theatre released a film nominating George Papoon as the National Surrealist Light Peoples Party candidate for president. The campaign rallying cry, Not Insane, has never been more appropriate. Plus, the latest G3 (below) with Kristie Wells, Elisa Camahort Page, Francine Hardaway, and Tina Chase Gillmor. @stevegillmor, @Scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @fradice Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor [ustream id=90150876 hwaccel=1 version=3 width=480 height=302]
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Virtual reality will not replay the 3D debacle
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Soumen Ganguly
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In the mid-2000s, everyone was talking about 3D, the “next big thing” in video that would transform the way we consumed TV and movies, even how we communicated. It required people to buy expensive new gadgets and wear goofy eyewear, but we were told that consumers would flock to this new three-dimensional world. VR videos are by no means the only application for consumers. There are applications in gaming, communications, healthcare, education and more. VR also enjoys many industrial uses, including the ability for executives to take an immersive tour of a manufacturing facility from thousands of miles away. VR also is a fertile area for marketing and advertising. , the Chinese mobile device maker with a cult-like following, VR has started to create an important balance of content developed by traditional providers (TV/movies, media, social media) and at-home users. This critical mass of professional and amateur will attract more consumers, many of whom will create their own VR content. While the content is not quite there yet, it is certainly on the upswing: VR content startup has received funding from Disney and other Hollywood players, and fairly soon YouTube could be dominated by VR videos submitted by everyday users. Just a few years ago, VR cameras were prohibitively expensive for most consumers. But recent entries to the market, including the Samsung 360, allow consumers to film their own VR content for less than $400. What’s more, all one needs is a pair of cheap cardboard glasses and a smartphone app to start the VR experience. Many small, innovative companies are popping up to help drive VR growth. While the returns won’t be immediate for investors, venture capitalists haven’t been shy about spreading the love to all types of VR startups.
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BlackBerry’s security-focused Android identity crisis
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Brian Heater
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about the company, its products, its most iconic features. What comes to mind? Business apps? A QWERTY keyboard? BBM? The once-mighty Canadian smartphone maker is banking on one word standing above all the rest: security. You see, BBM is no longer solely the realm of BlackBerry devices, and the keyboard hasn’t been ubiquitous since the company belatedly responded to iPhone with the Storm in 2008 (a chapter the smartphone maker would likely just as soon forget). Heck, even the productivity focus has taken a backseat as Apple and Android devices have made sizable inroads in the enterprise space. When the company finally launched its long-awaited Android handset late last year, security was front and center. In fact, the product’s name was the first four letters of “privacy.” Security was how BlackBerry envisioned the Priv standing apart from the countless throngs of Android devices. Well, security and a slide-out key. This time, however, the company’s latest device doesn’t even have one of those. The company has taken to calling the DTEK50 the “world’s most secure Android smartphone” — or at least part of a two-way tie with the Priv. In fact, the company just went ahead and named the handset for the privacy app it introduced with its first Android phone. It’s one of a number of qualities the device shares with the Priv — and really, the new handset is a supplement, not successor to that device. The DTEK50 is both a show of faith to the company’s continued commitment to Android and an attempt at wider-scale accessibility with a starting price that undercuts last year’s model by a full $400 — a smart move, given that the Priv’s $699 price tag was among many reviewers’ chief complaints. The new phone is a much more populist device, a fact reflected in the video that opened the product’s launch event, in which the company questioned people on the street about smartphone security. So, with a new take on the company’s new approach, we find ourselves asking the same question we ask each time the company offers a new device: Could this possibly be the one that puts BlackBerry back on the right track? If there’s no physical keyboard, can we really call it a BlackBerry? It’s one of those “if a tree falls in the forest”-style thought experiments. When the iPhone first appeared on the scene, it was precisely the company’s refusal to drop the keys that set it apart. Ultimately, however, the company’s stubbornness is precisely what got it into this position in the first place. Naturally, when it finally embraced Android, the company did so with a keyboard in tow, a nod to the fact that, even as it embraced another company’s operating system in order to open itself up an active app development ecosystem, it maintained a focus on what made it different. When the DTEK50 was first unveiled this week, there were questions around whether or not the device was simply a middling piece of hardware rebadged with a BlackBerry logo. The answer is yes and no. When I first laid hands on the phone, it turned out to be a lot nicer than I’d originally anticipated. As the company notes in its press material, its 7.7mm width makes it the company’s thinnest phone to date. And at 4.7 ounces, it’s also quite light. Really, there’s not much here that screams “BlackBerry.” That could well be because the handset appears to be a refurbished rebadge of Alcatel’s recent Idol 4. The company confirmed as much without actually coming out and saying it when I reached out shortly after receiving the handset. Scott Wenger, BlackBerry’s Global Head of Design, explained the similarities between the handsets suchly, First and foremost, we are focused on meeting the needs of our users — and they want and expect the best in security, productivity, function and design. To meet this demand, we partnered with TCL to manufacture DTEK50 because we saw a great fit between our software solutions and an existing hardware platform to meet those needs. Alcatel’s handset branch is, naturally, owned by TCL. So, the two phones share a reference design and most of the same specs, with BlackBerry offering some customization on top of that. It’s disappointing for a company that has made some of the most iconic pieces of hardware in the handset space, but, well, at least the company chose a solid starting point. It does make one wonder what might have been in the mix had the company started from the ground up. For a company so focused on security, a fingerprint reader jumps out as a possibility. Wenger again, Our goal with DTEK50 was to strike a great balance, providing the user with high performance, Android apps and experiences, and legendary BlackBerry security, all at a compelling price point. We carefully selected hardware and software components to ensure that balance, and will continue to evaluate fingerprint and other biometric authentication means moving forward. In the end, the design partnership/outsourcing was likely an attempt to rein in costs, keeping BlackBerry’s handset well below the cost of last year’s Priv — but ultimately, it’s hard not to see the move as another key step away from the core of what has made BlackBerry (nee RIM) such a unique company as more and more smartphone manufacturers have consolidated around the same operating system and similar design. The DTEK50 has a nice feel. It’s light but solid, and the custom textured backing adds a nice grip. The 5.2-inch display is flanked on top and bottom by thin speaker grilles, which are recessed slightly from the screen’s bezels. Up top is an eight-megapixel camera — the relatively high number is a nod to the needs of a business-minded device intended to do more than just snap selfies. To the left is an indicator that flashes big, white and bright. The front of the device is entirely devoid of any BlackBerry branding — in fact, there’s nothing at all that indicates its connection to the Canadian company. The sides of the device are encased by a metal band, similar in appearance to the one you’ll find on Samsung’s most recent Galaxy devices. At top is a headphone jack and on the bottom is the microUSB slot (no USB-C here). The power button is on the left (which takes a bit of getting used to), with the volume rocker located in the same spot on the right side. Below that is a circular button — what our friends at Alcatel refer to as the “Boom key.” BlackBerry, in keeping with past devices, has deemed it the Convenience key. Whatever the name, it’s a handy feature, serving as a customizable shortcut to launch frequently used apps or other tasks. The device’s rear has a textured, hardened rubber feel. At top is the 13-megapixel camera, just above the flash module. In the center is the BlackBerry Bs logo, the only clear hardware indicator (aside from the company’s name in tiny, barely visible letters at the bottom) that this is, indeed, a product of Waterloo, Ontario. The backing in a nice aesthetic addition to what might otherwise be a bland handset. It’s not exactly a premium feel, but it certainly offers something different in a sea of lookalike handsets. Even so, it’s far from the iconic BlackBerry of yore, one the company finally, symbolically sent out to pasture with the lonesome death of the Classic. The fact is that devices these days are mostly screen — something the company struggled to accept early on, but eventually conceded. What that means, of course, is that a company has to do an even better job setting itself apart on the software front. That, naturally, is easier said than done. Over the years, smartphone makers have struggled with precisely how much of a mark to leave on Google’s mobile operating system, to the point that “Pure” versions of the OS have felt like something of a breath of fresh air. Last year, BlackBerry finally give in and jumped aboard the Android train. While the company has maintained a side commitment to BB10, it clearly saw Google as the path toward a return to mainstream adoption, courtesy of all the apps that seemed they’d never come to the company’s devices by way of its native OS. This is where security comes in — in fact, that’s where the handset gets a name even less inherently pronounceable than the Priv. The DTEK software carries over from that device, offering security as much as peace of mind. As the company rightfully points out, many consumers made the jump from laptop to smartphone and forgot to take all of their security concerns with them. And given the large number of third-party apps we regularly download, we’ve opened so much of our precious information up to both malware and snooping, courtesy of a piece of hardware that essentially amounts to a collection of sensors. What DTEK offers is a handy spot for monitoring those potential points of weakness. And the company has done a good job making that detection as simple as possible. Fire up the app and you get a red, yellow and green gauge, telling you how good a job you’re doing securing the device. That data is based on a weighted 10-point checklist, including such things as data encryption and screen lock (and, to be fair, two of the points are marked as green simply because it’s a BlackBerry device running BlackBerry software). Clicking into APPS and PERMISSIONS drills down on a per-app basis. Each one alerts the user to the permissions they’ve requested, as well as any manner of suspicious activity, including tracking. It’s a handy piece of software, and one BlackBerry ought to consider licensing to third-parties as security and privacy breaches and concerns rise among smartphone users. And on a very basic level, it’s a bit of a wake-up call, breaking down precisely how much information our different apps are requesting. The company has also ported over a number of enterprise and productivity features. BlackBerry Hub offers a centralized location for a slew of different communication platforms like email, social media, text, phone, calendar events and, of course, BBM — handy for those who are overwhelmed by the ever-increasing number of communication fronts. The BlackBerry Intelligent Keyboard picks up the mantle from the company’s iconic physical offering. While, naturally, it can’t replace the tactility of the real thing, the company has gone out of its way to add productivity touches like word suggestions that hover over specific keys, which can be chosen with a swipe up. I found the integration a bit distracting at first, but it grows on you. Coupled with BBM and a few other additions like a productivity sidebar, the DTEK50’s operating system isn’t BlackBerry-skinned Android so much as it is Android with BlackBerry functionality sprinkled in. The additions will likely be largely welcome — and, more importantly, are mostly out of the way when you don’t need them. The 5.2-inch display comes in at 1920 x 1080 resolution, working out to 424 ppi; not bad for what is essentially a mid-tier or even borderline budget handset. The colors are nice and crisp and do a good job for those looking to add a little entertainment on top of their productivity. I can’t really say the same for the speakers. You’re going to want some headphones if you plan on listening to anything but short YouTube clips. Inside, a 1.2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 is coupled with 3GB of RAM; not earth shattering, but more than enough for what most users will want to do with the device. The standard 16GB of storage is less impressive, but that’s where the expandable storage comes in, offering users up to 2TB via microSD. There’s also a decently sized 2610 mAh battery that will get you through a day of use, no problem. I didn’t run into any performance issues during my time with the device, but the DTEK50 does heat up pretty quickly and the backing does little to insulate that. When I met with BlackBerry to pick up the review unit, I asked whether the company would consider licensing its branded security offerings to another manufacturer. The company line seems to be one around a commitment to creating a unified hardware/software solution — and certainly that’s been a defining characteristic for the company. BlackBerry opening itself up to new ideas is a step in the right direction, as far as the company’s future health is concerned, but this handset feels aimless. The DTEK50 is less of a step forward than a move toward a company that is more service-focused, rather than providing the full package. Would a company offering an Android handset augmented by BlackBerry software really feel like that big a shift from this current product? Of course, BlackBerry doesn’t plan to hang its hat on this device. The more premium (and much higher-priced) Priv felt like much more of an attempt to define BlackBerry’s future, and the company has promised more keyboard devices to come. As it stands, the DTEK50 is a decent mid-tier device targeted at users seeking a security suite that won’t cost an arm and a leg.
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Here’s what your boring app would look like as a conversation
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Nir Eyal
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In years to come, conversations will breathe new life into software — particularly the boring enterprise tools millions of knowledge workers begrudgingly use every day. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) work because of our familiarity with messaging. Even the most technically complex interactions can look as simple as getting an SMS text when presented as a conversation. There are three benefits conversational user interfaces have over traditional software, and we believe these lessons can inform and inspire the redesign of countless online services. To illustrate the potential of conversational interfaces, we’ve reimagined what Google Analytics — one of the most widely used (and widely despised) pieces of enterprise software — could look like as a conversation. Before diving into our redesign, it is important to consider some fundamental questions. What is enterprise software for? What job does it do for the user? Fundamentally, enterprise software helps the user answer one or more of the following questions: That’s about it! Not all enterprise software does all three, but it must do at least one. In the case of Google Analytics, the software is heavy on surfacing information in an attempt to answer the first question, light on decision support and provides little in the way of facilitating the next action (with the exception of helping the user buy Google ads). Interestingly enough, the conversational interface answers all three of the above questions better than the software tools we have today. Instead of having to sift through the drop-down menus, tables, functions and buttons found in today’s software, tomorrow’s conversational interfaces will be able to send and receive messages in plain English. By simply asking a question via a conversational interface, the user will get the relevant information they seek. But what happens when the user doesn’t know what they want? What about the valuable insights trapped in the data? With today’s traditional interfaces, like Google Analytics, an alert appears in the top-right corner, annoying the user (at best) or ignored entirely (at worst). Opening Google Analytics reveals an intimidating explosion of charts and graphs full of data, but short on insight. What does it all mean? Is the user in the red? Or is everything okay? Like lots of enterprise software today, Google Analytics is a mess of charts and graphs. By using a conversational interface instead, Google Analytics would ensure important information isn’t ignored, making it more easily understood. For example, the mockup below informs the user of an anomaly; there was a recent spike in the number of visitors to the user’s website. That’s the same information presented in the Google Analytics dashboard, but with a very different effect on the user. A conversational interface can present the same information as a dashboard, but with a much more powerful effect. Dashboards today pump out data and expect the user to do the rest. However, tomorrow’s conversational interfaces will surface insights first, then back them up with data as needed. Notice how Christina, the new face of Google Analytics, prompts the user with a question to move the conversation along. Christina could be a bot, a human or hybrid; it doesn’t really matter to the user, as long as the job gets done. When two friends have coffee together, one might raise a topic to gauge the other person’s interest in further discussion. Perhaps catching up on how the kids are doing, how’s business or a bit of gossip — we test interest to see what’s worth talking about. If the other party wants to talk about something else, it would be rude to stubbornly insist on only talking about one thing. However, that’s exactly what today’s software does. It keeps nagging us with topics we don’t care about because, unlike a good friend, it doesn’t care to learn. A conversational interface, however, can do something no ordinary dashboard can do: it listens and learns. By noting the user’s response to the discrete piece of information presented, the software remembers whether the insight was valuable. If the user continues the conversation about this information, the system learns the importance and raises similar concerns in the future. But if they don’t write back, great, that’s one less notification the app needs to send and one fewer interruption to the user’s day. Unlike a traditional dashboard, the conversational interface gets better at its job of presenting relevant information the more it is used, and therefore becomes a more powerful decision support tool. This concept is called “stored value” and is a key to building habit-forming products (according to the ). Furthermore, the conversational interface can learn from other users to improve the experience for everyone. For example, when Christina points out the spike in traffic is coming from Reddit, the information she presents isn’t just a statement of fact, she surfaces options to consider. To offer intelligent choices, Google could use the behaviors of other users to offer the best next steps. In this example, the assistant suggests a resource for learning how to use Reddit effectively, prompts the user to join the conversation there and offers to help fix the site’s high bounce rate to increase the number of users who stick around. Helping the user figure out what to do next is hugely valuable. The easier the next action is to do, the more likely the user is to do it. The conversational interface easily surfaces the next best actions, saving the user time from hunting and second-guessing what to do next. By combining information from the user’s past conversations and other users’ actions, the new interface provides a better decision support tool to answer the question “What do I do next?” Finally, now that the software has elevated what’s important and given the user options to consider, it’s time to facilitate the actions the user wants to take. Unfortunately, actually getting the task done with today’s software requires navigating a hodgepodge of solutions on disparate screens and sites. A conversational interface can eliminate all of that. For instance, in the example above, when the user asks Christina for help with the site’s high bounce rate, she suggests creating a custom landing page that welcomes visitors from Reddit. Setting up such a page is child’s play for someone who has done it before, but for a novice it can be more work than it’s worth. Thankfully, a conversational interface can get the job done behind the scenes in any number of ways. The assistant can offer upgraded services, summon in-house expertise or incorporate an outside vendor. Instead of relying on the user to get up to speed on yet another software tool, the assistant turns to people or bots who already know what they are doing. The point is, unlike today’s enterprise software that requires the user to figure out how to help themselves (a task most people just won’t do), a conversational assistant can do the work by taking the path of least resistance. Here again, the conversational interface stores value every time a change is made to the site. With each page built or experiment run, the new Google Analytics learns more about the site owner’s goals and past results, making it easier to suggest improvements and making the service truly indispensable. Several workplace surveys we spend between 20 to 30 percent of our day looking for information. Even small reductions in the amount of time and effort spent digging around clunky enterprise software would yield significant dividends. While not ideal for every use case, there are many benefits the conversational interface has over the enterprise software status quo. Fundamentally, it is better at answering what’s important?, what do I do next?, and how do I do it? By adopting this more user-friendly interface, tomorrow’s software has the opportunity to cure the dashboard fatigue infecting the enterprise. It also promises to make solutions accessible to people who just don’t have the time to learn new tools. The future of enterprise software won’t be about complicated dashboards and mind-numbing amounts of big data; it will be about well-designed interfaces that make work a pleasure. Software should be like a good friend — ask and ye shall receive.
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BBC: And then we strapped a helicopter rig to an elephant
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Haje Jan Kamps
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of the BBC’s natural history unit, traveling the world to create some of . Sounds like a dream job, right? I sat down with , the producer on a ton of the Beeb’s best-loved shows, to find out more about the technology and gadgets the team deploys to capture the beasties in action. “I’m sorry, sir, your hand luggage must fit into this gauge.” “People are always developing new equipment,” Cordey says, half grinning, half sighing, as I imagine him waving at an enormous pile of Peli cases stacked in the corner of his no doubt stacked-to-the-rafters office, “which is perfect for us. If you think about it, wildlife hasn’t really changed what they have been doing since we started filming nature documentaries. Instead, we have to come up with new ways of telling their stories.” Coming up with innovative things is kind of his thing. For the most recent show Cordey worked on — , which is currently showing on BBC America — the concept was to try to capture how animals hunt in the wild. Which isn’t that tricky if you’re trying to film a spider rolling up a fly into a little ball, perhaps, but it’s a very different kettle of orcas when you’re talking about large animals careening along the savannah at 55 mph. Is that a Cineflex on the side of your Land Cruiser, or are you just happy to see me? “My favorite piece of equipment we used on this series were the ,” Cordey says, referring to the super-stabilized, basketball-sized, 85-pound mounts usually attached to helicopters. Yes, helicopters. If that sounds a little bit James Bond, and you’re getting all sorts of action sequence emotions tingling your spidey senses, check out the video below. It’s pretty epic. Of course, the team did use the Cineflex mounts as intended — strapped to the side of a helicopter — but they also used the camera extensively in other situations. Well polar bears don’t film themselves, you know! “We were able to mount the camera on a truck and follow the animals as they were hunting,” says Cordey. He explains that the team did have to be a bit more careful than usual; altogether, the gear they tied to the truck costs around half a million dollars. Filming in this manner also meant that the team was able to film a full hunt “for real,” rather than doing it the way it had been done in the past. Which… used to work out pretty much exactly the way you’d imagine. In some nature documentaries, you might notice that the animal that is caught in the end looks slightly different or is a bit bigger or smaller than the animal at the start of the sequence. Of course, that is because they filmed different hunts, often on completely different days and in different locations. Because why wouldn’t you attach a stabilization mount designed for helicopters to the biggest land animal in the world? One innovation was to build a mount enabling the team to film… from an elephant. Which is every bit as bonkers as it sounds, but it isn’t completely “just because we can” — it turns out that it’s the perfect way to film tigers, because unlike drones, helicopters and juicy camera-men, tigers basically ignore elephants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvlmnQ1wHts “Being able to film continuously through the hunt is a complete game-changer for us,” Cordey admits, with more than just a little bit of awe in his voice. This, I can tell, is bloody exciting, even for the 20-year veteran of nature documentaries. “We had an amazing camera man, . He’s really taken to all of the tech, and I had to laugh one night after a shoot, when he pointed out that all the hours playing on his PlayStation finally paid off,” Cordey says, but looking into the tech more closely makes it clear that he’s only partially joking. Operating a Cineflex is an awful lot like playing a video game. Instead of throwing a camera on your shoulder, you have a screen and a remote control, meaning a slightly different skill set is needed to operate the new kit. An awful lot like playing PlayStation… if your PlayStation cost half a million dollars. New technology is a key aspect of the series, enabling whole new aspects of storytelling. “We do have to be very careful, though; drones sound like a swarm of angry bees, which scares some animals, so we can’t get too close,” Corey says, explaining that the team uses drones especially for overview shots and landscape shots. “Elephants run a mile immediately when a drone comes near.” Despite their shortcomings, drones are a favorite and the team often carries drones, launching them whenever they’re needed, rather than getting out a or calling in a helicopter. The other big change over the last 20 years is how good prosumer equipment has become. In the past, you needed specialized equipment in order to shoot in high def for television. The team does obviously still use high-end equipment a lot of the time, but commercially available equipment makes it much easier and cheaper to shoot shows today. “For The Hunt, we used and a lot of the time. For the time-lapse sequences we often shoot with cameras and for low-light, Sony’s has fantastic abilities at night,” says Cordey. “We also use the tiny a lot; they were invaluable for shooting time-lapse sequences of army ants.” “Ultimately, you can’t say that a $2,000 camera delivers the same quality as a $50,000 camera, but it’s horses for courses. If we can use more affordable cameras, that’s fantastic,” Cordey explains. Another big advantage is the availability of camera traps — much like the ones offered commercially by , where the team has built its own gear, powered by a bank of batteries. “Being able to leave a camera out for months at a time makes it possible to capture scenes that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. For very rare animals like leopards, it’s the best way,” says Cordey. Makes sense; leaving a $50,000 camera and a very expensive camera man in the forest for a few months gets very expensive very quickly, but it’s worth taking the risk with a couple of grand’s worth of equipment on the off-chance that you capture a shot worthy of using in the series. The past 20 years have seen a huge leap of technology and the natural history unit veteran reflects on what has changed. “Twenty years ago, you couldn’t film at night without lights and helicopters needed to get within 50 meters of the animals,” Cordey explains. That’s a problem: nocturnal animals shy away from light and you can imagine what happens if you’re casually grazing along, minding your own business when suddenly a 10,000-pound inferno of sound, wind and scary starts following you around.
A lot of the best new tech has come from both commercial outfit and military applications. There have to be easier ways of taking a selfie. “Infra red, thermal cameras and low-light tech all came from the military,” Cordey lists. “They have deep pockets and all the time in the world. Where possible, we take what they’ve done and adapt it for ergonomics so we can bring it to where we need it to be to capture the animals” Security technologies have come in handy more than once, too. “You can’t use white light on most animals,” Cordey says. “But filming in IR gives a pretty nice feel. Best of all, a lot of wildlife don’t see the IR light sources, so we can film them as much as we like. The downside is that it’ll all be in black and white. For some sequences, we’re now thinking about using the next-generation Sony A7 for shoots late in the evening or early in the morning.” Cineflex? More like Eleflex. Not every problem has been fully solved. Camera equipment manufacturers, if you’re paying attention, here’s how to make your next generation of sales. “Every year, drones get better,” Cordey says, but adds that he does have a wish list for improvements. “With a helicopter, we can fly for a couple of hours. For drones, we have to bring them back within six to seven minutes, which isn’t enough. I also wish they were quieter, so I can bring them closer to the animals, and I’d love better stabilization and zoom lenses.” Other tech where the BBC is butting against the edges of what’s technically possible is filming at night. A lot of nocturnal animals haven’t been properly documented and I got the very distinct sense that Huw Cordey and his team would love to do a whole series focusing exclusively on those that only come out at night “Give me a gyro-stabilized long-lens camera on a silent drone and you’ve hit the jackpot,” Cordey laughs. If you want to see in full, tune in to BBC America, Sundays at 9/8c.
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The other pipeline
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Megan Rose Dickey
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never thought he would end up in prison. What he did envision, he tells me, was dying before the age of 25 or 30. “I saw so many people around me dying at such a young age that my long-term vision just wasn’t in focus,” Leal tells me. “I was just focused on what was right in front of me.” Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal
“I saw so many people around me dying at such a young age that my long-term vision just wasn’t in focus.” We have a criminal justice system that is inherently infected with racial bias. The criminal justice system plays a significant, behind-the-scenes role in the lack of diversity in the tech industry today. And we can’t efficiently tackle diversity and inclusion in tech without first examining the criminal justice system. The number of black people under the control of the correctional system is staggering. Today, there are more African-American adults under correctional control — in prison, jail, on probation or on parole — “than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began,” writes legal scholar and author Michelle Alexander in her book “ ,” citing numbers by the .” Meanwhile, between the 1960s and 1980, conservatives began to question welfare, pitting hard-working white people against black people who didn’t want to work. “The not-so-subtle message to working-class whites was that their tax dollars were going to support special programs for blacks who most certainly did not deserve them,” Alexander writes in “The New Jim Crow” (page 48). The turning point came in 1971 when President Richard Nixon called for a and referred to illegal drugs as “public enemy number one.” Crime and welfare ultimately became the major themes of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980, which used racially coded rhetoric and strategies. Demonstrators protesting student segregation, 1963. (National Archive/Newsmakers) Kids attacked during segregation protest, May 1963, Birmingham. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images) Martin Luther King Jr., Philadelphia, 1965 (Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images) Riot aftermath following Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. (Lee Balterman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) President Ronald Reagan followed through with Nixon’s desires. Despite the fact that drug use was on the decline, in 1982 he officially declared a war on drugs, stating that illicit drugs were a threat to national security (“ ” by Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, page 163). Between 1980 and 1984, the FBI’s anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million, according to the Budget of the U.S. government in 1990 (Katherine Beckett, , page 53). In contrast, funding for agencies in charge of drug treatment, prevention and education was reduced. The budget for the , for example, went from $274 million in 1981 to $57 million in 1984, according to 1992 data from the . Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, inner-city communities were suffering from an economic collapse. Black inner-city communities were the ones that felt the impacts of globalization and deindustrialization the most. As late as 1970, more than 70 percent of blacks working in metropolitan areas held blue-collar jobs (William Julius Wilson, ). By 1987, the employment rate for black men dropped to 28 percent (John Kasarda, “ ,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 501, no. 1 [1990]). In 1985, a few years after Reagan announced the war on drugs, crack cocaine hit the streets. Investigations have since suggested that the government on the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods, “The The lack of legitimate job opportunities in low-income black neighborhoods, combined with the infusion of illegal drugs into these neighborhoods, created an incentive to sell drugs. Reagan’s administration jumped on the opportunity to publicize the crack cocaine epidemic, sensationalizing its emergence. These sensationalized media campaigns continued to 1989. During that time, the racism against blacks was fueled by the job loss created by the economic collapse and the crack epidemic that struck the streets of black neighborhoods. With that in mind, white people were in support of “getting tough on crime” initiatives, as well as anti-welfare measures. The war on drugs ultimately gave white people an easy way to discriminate against blacks and express hostility without being accused of racism. This general attitude of getting tough on problems affecting people of color started in the 1960s, and it was mostly conservatives engaging in that sort of rhetoric. But by the late 1980s, Democrats hoping to take political control from Republicans began to participate. In order to do that, they had to win back the swing voters who were leaning toward the Republican Party because of its stance on crime and drugs. With both parties on board the “get tough on crime” train, jail and prison populations dramatically increased. The number of people incarcerated for drug crimes in the U.S. went from 41,000 in 1980 to almost 500,000 in 2014, . The increase in the prison population disproportionately affected the African-American community, with one-fourth of young black men between the ages of 20-29 under the control of the criminal justice system in 1990, . And according to a , 6.4 percent of whites, 6.4 percent of blacks and 5.3 percent of Hispanics used illegal drugs. But despite these similar rates of drug use, black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at more than 13 times the rate of white men. There is a reason for the disparity. When Bill Clinton was , he said he would . During his first term in office, he signed the The bill included the three-strikes provision that mandated a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole for offenders convicted of three felony crimes or more. That $30 billion bill also introduced a number of new federal capital crimes and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of state and local police forces. The Clinton administration’s policies on crime led to the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any American president in history, . President Clinton then turned his attention to welfare policies, signing the . The bill imposed a five-year limit on welfare assistance, as well as a lifetime ban on eligibility for food stamps and welfare for anyone convicted of felony drug use or possession, including possession of marijuana. Clinton also made it easier for the government to refuse public housing to anyone with a criminal history. As a result, millions of poor people, especially the racial minorities targeted by the drug war, ended up homeless. Someone with a criminal record also has and must indicate if they have a felony conviction on their record when applying for jobs. In 2002, more than 2 million people were behind bars in the U.S., . Additionally, as a result of Clinton-era policies, millions more were still held prisoner of the criminal justice system once they were released by way of discrimination in employment, housing and access to education. And given the legal, discriminatory nature of society in the U.S., recidivism rates remain high. Today, black and Latino people comprise about 1.5 million of the total adult correctional system, or 67 percent of the prison population, while making up just 37 percent of the total U.S. population, . That’s because black people are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people. But black people aren’t incarcerated at higher rates than white people because they’re committing more crimes. Five times as many white people are using drugs as black people, for example, but African-Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of white people. Also, blacks serve almost as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as white people do for a violent offense (61.7 months). There are millions of black adults who are thus unable to explore opportunities in tech, whether they want to or not. Meanwhile, youth of color make up over 63 percent, or 22,669, of those committed to juvenile facilities, . That’s not including those who were sent to adult jails and prisons. As of 2014, there were 5,235 youth in adult jails, according to data analyzed by the Sentencing Project. Nationwide, blacks represent 37 percent of youths in jails, which brings that to 1,936 young black men in adult jails. At the same time, young people of color who are impacted by the criminal justice system early in life are more likely to end up incarcerated later in life, are at risk of sexual assault and abuse in these juvenile centers and suffer from mental health issues (almost 70 percent) . As is the purpose of any racial caste system, the function of mass incarceration is to define what race is, and it accomplishes the same thing that Jim Crow laws achieved: segregation of black people from mainstream society. As Alexander writes, slavery in America defined black people as slaves, the Jim Crow era of discriminatory laws defined blacks as second-class citizens and the era of mass incarceration — our present-day racial caste — defines blacks as criminals. In the U.S., the tech industry employs more than 6.7 million people and is a big part of the country’s economy. It has grown consecutively for the last five years, with tech today accounting for 7.1 percent of the U.S. GDP and 11.6 percent of total overall payroll in the private sector, . This year, employment in the tech industry hit its highest growth rate in more than a decade. Black people make up just 2 percent of the employee populations at Facebook, Google and Dropbox. We know this because, in the last couple of years, tech companies have become more willing to release their EEO-1 diversity data and put out . Another recent trend has been the . Unfortunately, these efforts seem to be falling short, as not much improvement has been made in terms of representation of people of color at tech companies. Meanwhile, the number of underrepresented minorities at the board level is even lower. We’re fighting really systemic racism that’s been built into the fabric of not just these companies, but our nation in general. As a result, underrepresented minorities are either locked up behind bars or caught in the grasp of this country’s criminal justice system thanks to institutionalized racism, or they’re locked out of the tech industry thanks to prejudice and several covert acts of individual racism. “We’re fighting really systemic racism that’s been built into the fabric of not just these companies, but our nation in general,” founder Kimberly Bryant . Being under the control of the criminal justice system negatively impacts one’s life chances and makes it legal to be discriminated against when applying for jobs, housing and loans. As a result, thousands of young people of color are missing out on opportunities to participate in traditional school, hackathons, coding schools and internships at tech companies. To ensure that everyone has a fair chance to get into the tech industry, we need to focus on the other pipeline — the pipeline that leads to a disproportionate number of black people and other minorities ending up in prison. Originally sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, Leal served 19 years of his sentence — first at Pelican Bay and then at San Quentin — thanks to both the enactment and amendment of California’s . It’s one thing to be in prison, but to be in prison with a life sentence — I can’t even begin to explain how tough that is because you could literally die in prison. Getting more technology and the tech industry involved in criminal justice efforts pays dividends. “Getting more technology and the tech industry involved in criminal justice efforts pays dividends both for society itself but also directly to the tech industry,” Erlich says.
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It’s okay for Pikachu to watch you — as long as you want it to
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Denelle Dixon-Thayer
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Millions who downloaded the new Pokémon Go app are living in a brave, new, augmented reality world. For the early adopters (meaning apparently ) on iOS devices, it meant unknowingly granting Pokémon Go the permission to fully access their Google accounts. You’ve got to risk it all to catch ‘em all, right? Wrong. Thankfully Niantic, the company that developed Pokémon Go, acknowledged the mistake and issued a fix. Pokémon Go modified its implementation to request only “basic profile data” — user ID and email address — from Google accounts. This brings me some peace of mind as my 15-year-old roams the park, my office, the supermarket and the park again in search of furry creatures. Yet, although the company’s is thorough, I am left with the lingering sense of unease I feel with almost every other app. I am okay with their treatment of my son’s data today, but it’s up to the company if they want to change the way they use or share his data tomorrow. Developers need to collect data from users to create apps and experiences like Pokémon Go, but we often feel resigned to choose between Pikachu or privacy. A University of Pennsylvania published last year found that 58 percent of Americans have come to accept that they have little control over what companies can learn about them, even though they would like to be in control. It doesn’t have to be this way. Businesses must be intentional, responsible and clear about the data they collect, and provide their customers with real choices. Powerlessness breeds mistrust, and a system based on mistrust benefits no one. On the other hand, earned trust drives adoption and lasting success. There are three simple steps companies can take to earn trust: This doesn’t mean consumers are off the hook. We shouldn’t just shrug and breeze through privacy notices accepting whatever permission levels are required. We don’t realize just how powerful we can be if we take full ownership of our data. Replace “data” with the word “dollars” and the value exchange becomes a lot more tangible. Indifference and inaction toward data collection become a lot more absurd. Information is currency. As the lifeblood of any business, consumers have a unique opportunity to leverage their trust as a way to regain control of their data. Opting out is the most direct path, but not necessarily the right one for you (or the most fun). Here are a few other things people can do to take back control of their data: Today I am choosing to trust Pokémon Go with my son’s data, because I have read and understood the terms. But I am just one person, and I happen to be a lawyer. In the long term, we need a commitment from both companies and consumers to make conscious choices about data.
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In what contexts should messaging be the UI?
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Kyle Samani
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The current messaging hype is overstated. There are certainly some interesting and unique opportunities for messaging as an interface, but I contend the number of practical use cases is a fraction of what the current hype cycle suggests. Facebook and Microsoft in particular have been pushing messaging because their proprietary messaging platforms give them a way to gain some leverage and autonomy on top of iOS and Android — but this reasoning is supply-driven, not demand-driven. One of the key premises of messaging as a UI is that users may not have or don’t want to install an app to interact with a given service. By abstracting the UI to a messaging interface, the tech giants are trying to solve the “go to the App Store and download the app and create a username” problem. This should, in theory, increase .
Although messaging can help in these scenarios, there’s no reason this problem can’t be solved in the current app model on iOS and Android. Case in point: Google just showcased : partial, on-demand app downloads with integrated identity services. They have blurred the lines between HTML and native apps to offer the best of both worlds. Apple is likely working on a similar solution for iOS. That function, coupled with persistent OS-level logins for Facebook/Google/Twitter/LinkedIn/iCloud/Apple Pay can easily solve the “go to the App Store and download the app and create a username” problem. I’m therefore not convinced that a messaging interface should exist to circumvent the “go to the App Store and download the app and create a username” problem. Although messaging can help with this challenge today, this problem will be addressed at the OS level. Apple and Google are not oblivious to this. So the question is, when does messaging as a UI make sense? I’ve developed a couple of litmus tests to answer this question: In Facebook’s first messaging bot demos, they showcased ordering flowers and pizza via a messaging interface. Both are simple, straightforward transactions with a few customization options. You don’t need to talk to a sales rep to purchase flowers or pizza. Perhaps if you’re in a store, you may want to speak to a florist because she’s there and you want her opinion. But if you’re buying flowers online, all you need to do is select an occasion, look at some pictures, then select a type, number of flowers, a vase and write a personal message. The number of options to choose from are limited, and the options themselves are easy to understand. That interface be delivered in a graphical way, and not as a messaging conversation. Or put more simply: Would you rather buy flowers over the phone, or via an app? The app is clearly the superior choice. The same can be said of purchasing pizza: a linear transaction flow and a few customizations. Neither of these transactions warrants human conversation in the real world. Why should users try to engage in these transactions as if they were talking to a human? However, there are really interesting messaging use cases where I, as a user, want to “talk” with someone. I have money with a private wealth manager at Morgan Stanley. I like talking to him because I can get his feedback on what’s going on in the markets, and discuss the rationale behind asset class allocation decisions. I also have money with . Using Wealthfront, my entire asset allocation decision effectively boils down to a few multiple choice questions that can be approximately simplified to: “How much risk do you want to take?” The computer decides the rest. Although I can look at the transaction details and determine which trades the computer is making, it’s hard to get a summary sense for the reasons behind decisions, and future outlook. A conversational UI would be awesome in this context: “Hey Wealthfront, I’m concerned about the recent market volatility in the wake of Brexit. What’s going on in my portfolio?” “Great question Kyle. In light of recent volatility, we’re doing X and Y and Z, and our outlook is A and B and C. I’ll give you another update in 2 or 4 weeks. What frequency would you like to be updated?” Or … “How are falling oil prices impacting my portfolio?” “Well you don’t have any direct exposure to the energy industry. But you do have lots of exposure to the airline industry. Low oil prices reduce fuel costs, boosting airline profits.” Right now, all I get is a single line graph showing the aggregate value of my portfolio. Any further analysis is virtually non-existent. I’m sure Wealthfront is trying to address this fundamental problem programmatically, but the UI complexity to pull this off is likely impossible. There are simply too many questions an investor could ask given the massive number of investing options. A messaging-driven UI makes a lot of sense here, given the vast breadth and depth of questions that a user may have. (BTW, whether the messaging interface is delivered in a generic messaging app or in the Wealthfront app is immaterial for this use case.) Or take . They are a messaging interface between patients and the front desk of a doctor’s office. Well automates appointment reminders, sends patients forms to complete before visits, helps patients reschedule appointments, manages insurance information, gets prescription refills, requests copies of medical records, manages bills/payments, etc. There are 1-2 dozen types of transactions a patient may have with the front desk of a physician’s practice. A graphical UI for navigating 12 different types of transactions will become unwieldy quickly. A messaging UI addresses this by letting the user simply drive the conversation naturally. ATMs probably represent the limits of graphical UIs. ATMs today give users 3-6 options: check balance, deposit check, deposit cash, withdraw cash, cancel, etc. But as the number of transaction types balloons past ~10, UIs become unwieldy. Messaging can address option-overload. As we increasingly use our phones to interact with the world around us, messaging as a UI will prosper. But today, messaging is overhyped. Companies are trying to offer messaging UIs where one isn’t really necessary. Many are too focused on circumventing the “go to the App Store and download the app and create a username” problem, as it’s no doubt a huge source of drop-off in the customer acquisition funnel. But Apple and Google will solve this problem at the OS level. Messaging should not exist simply to circumvent a temporary shortcoming in mobile OSes circa 2016. Messaging apps should instead focus on areas where users want to feel like they’re actually talking to a person. This is a much harder technical problem, but, once solved, it will unlock enormous value.
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Serious privacy flaws discovered in Glow fertility tracker app
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Lora Kolodny
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There are scores of startups making fertility tracker and family planning apps today, but a has singled out for serious security and privacy flaws. First, Consumer Reports’ team was able to access very personal information including data and comments about users’ sex lives, history of miscarriages, abortions and more, through a privacy loophole having to do with the way the app allowed couples to link their accounts and share data. Additionally, Consumer Reports found that Pregnancy Glow community forums transmitted personal data about its users including their full name, e-mail address, approximate location, birthdate and number of other health details they’d logged within the app. The data was easily unearthed and parsed using a free-to-download security testing app, and online calculators, the report said. Glow reportedly made immediate moves to fix the security problems with their app and issued a satisfactory update to their app after Consumer Reports notified them of the vulnerabilities. And as Glow investor and executive chairman Max Levchin specified after our story initially ran on Saturday: we have corrected the potential issues & there is no evidence to suggest that any data was compromised — Max Levchin (@mlevchin) However, it’s a bit unsettling the startup hadn’t thoroughly tested its own systems enough to find and fix those flaws first. Consumer Reports set up dummy accounts to test the app for privacy and security flaws, and did not access users’ private data. Glow CEO was not immediately available for comment. It will be interesting to see if the scrutiny aimed at Glow, and the flaws exposed, inspire a wave of security-oriented updates across fertility tracker apps on iOS and Android. Glow’s competition includes a hefty number of websites, mobile apps and even wearables to help couples get or avoid getting pregnant. Venture funded competitors include SOSV-backed , which works in conjunction with a smart thermometer called Wink to measure basal body temperature; Union Square Ventures-backed ; and , which is backed by Bonnier Media Growth. Fertility tracking apps have been found, so far, to be “generally inaccurate” in a study by researchers with Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, published in the July issue of the journal . That’s not good news for people relying on them for family planning. And it’s definitely not good news for women who do not want to become pregnant and fail to use other methods of contraception along with the tech.
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Tech trends that will impact your home
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Agnieszka Wilk
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Imagine walking through the bathroom door at and the shower starts itself at optimal water heat and pressure. The thermostat adjusts when you enter the room. Want a new bathroom tub? What if you could 3D print it? High-tech homes are about to revolutionize the way we live. While interior design once relied on color schemes and playful accents, new tech trends are completely revamping how we design, build and live in our spaces. Even more, they’re having a social impact, enabling users to reduce their carbon footprints and increase efficiency as they go about their daily lives. 3D printing, virtual reality and the Internet of Things (IoT) have just recently began to appear in our houses, but they’re making an incredible impact. So what capabilities do these tech trends have? And what will they look like further in the future? 3D printers can create car parts and prosthetics. They can even build entire houses. Amsterdam boasts the , a 13-room building and museum built entirely by a giant 3D printer, called the KamerMaker. is currently underway, and prints an area about as tall as a water bottle every second. An is also working on building a 3D-printed house, and believes similar ones could be built in developing countries where sturdier structures are needed. So while we may not see entire neighborhoods being built by 3D printers just yet, it’s something to look forward to in the future. It’s not to say that 3D printing isn’t mainstream yet. It is. Companies like have users design and order their own 3D-printed items. Customers may design their items using 3D sketch apps like , send it to Shapeways and have their items sent directly to them. What’s more, the company lists dozens of ready-made items for the home — from book shelves to wall art — at prices comparable to High Street stores. Most items are less than US$40. “You’ll have a say in what materials you will use, what your materials will look like, and how they are made,” said Peter Limburg, Head of Business Development and Sales at Shapeways. “Mass-manufacturing is made to eliminate as much variety as we can. With 3D printing, we are allowing things to be more personal. The joy from our products will be a lot higher.” 3D printing also means we don’t rely on factories that are oceans away. Shapeways’ factory is located in Long Island, NY, and ships out 200,000 unique items each month. Additionally, 3D-printed items produce less waste — the process uses exactly the amount of material necessary to make a product and no more, reducing an individual’s carbon footprint. People involved in the industry have been forward-thinking entrepreneurs. However, as 3D printing moves to the mainstream, larger companies are jumping on the bandwagon. have both announced they will release printers, too. Limburg says these larger companies will help bring down prices and drive innovation, benefitting the entire industry. It’s confirmation, he says, that 3D printing is here to stay. VR and AR will soon play a critical role in helping people make better decisions in regards to interior design and online shopping. The tech tools will help consumers choose big-ticket items, allowing them to see how all the elements will fit into their homes without having to purchase them. Furniture companies in particular are using AR apps. have developed AR apps that act like a personalized catalog. Instead of having to visualize how a piece of furniture will look in their home, users can scan their room with their camera and virtually place the furniture in 3D. , a company that uses technology to manufacture highly customizable interiors, uses a VR app in their furniture showroom, increasing their in-store experience. Alper Guler is the founder of , a company that develops AR and VR apps. He says that people are now starting to try Google Cardboard experiences at home because they are very affordable and available through most mobile phones. However, people will be more likely to try devices such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in physical stores and showrooms because those devices require expensive computers to run. The headgear itself cost more than US$500, as opposed to $15 for Google Cardboard. “Retailers will benefit from this by helping their customers visualize better. These technologies will help them sell more, and I think faster,” said Guler. AR and VR also helps clients better imagine their newly designed spaces. Without these technologies, designers working online have problems with presenting to their clients, said Guler. “They make the [whole] design with 3D modelling tools, but when it comes to presenting it… they only take a snapshot of their 3D model… and send those images to the client,” he said. However, with AR and VR, people can see their newly designed 3D homes from any angle. VR in particular will put clients in their newly designed spaces before they even exist, offering an experience far beyond viewing flat images of their designs. Facebook has even showcased its , which allows people to interact in VR together. It may seem far-fetched — reports show it will take for VR to go mainstream — but Facebook’s social VR pushes the boundaries. The whole notion could soon become a reality for clients and interior designers, enabling them to meet and discuss designs in VR from miles away and feel as if they are in the same new room. IoT encompasses a wide range of in-home capabilities. From thermostats to lightbulbs, ordinary objects have been given serious upgrades with IoT technology. And widespread adoption of this technology will lead to substantial energy savings. According to a study by the , IoT could help avoid up to 100 million tons of CO2 emissions, and reduce energy consumption in each household by 10 percent. Voice-activated platforms have been popular among larger tech companies. it would launch a voice-activated home device integrated with Google search capabilities. This would be similar to , a device that sits in your home and acts as, really, a personal assistant. The Amazon device is powered by Alexa — when you speak to her, she’ll do things like turn on lights, play music and set up your Wi-Fi network. just built the device, a product made to simplify the IoT space. Any connected device can be integrated into the MATRIX — it’s a central hub for all the smart devices in a home. The device downloads apps just as a smartphone would — such as ones that detect when you’ve gotten out of bed in order to turn the shower on, for example — allowing for hundreds of capabilities within the home. The technology is also touchless: users only have to gesture with their hands to turn the lights out. However, it’s not on the market yet — the company is just finishing up fabrication and has been taking pre-orders. “It’s going to change the home because it’s going to allow people to interact with technology without having it impair their life,” said Isabella Mongalo, Brand Manager at AdMobilize. “[It’s] creating a really natural way for people to interact with technology and to have a smart home in a way that is really seamless and touchless.” The average home may not yet see 3D-printed items or smart devices, but they will soon. More and more AR, VR, 3D printing and IoT will enter our homes — and stay. The devices will alter and improve the way we interact with and customize our homes, until we won’t be able to remember a time before we weren’t able to 3D print a new bathroom tub.
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VR needs a hit
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Jon Evans
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I believe virtual reality is going to be huge. …Eventually. But when? Are we talking years, or decades? I visited this week, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’re still in the very early days of the medium. It’s amazing! It’s thrilling! And it’s still kind of the Stone Age. When do we get to discover bronze? People talk about a “Cambrian explosion” of VR content over the next year or so. I sure hope so. Because there is a very plausible future in which a hard core of VR enthusiasts build systems and worlds that whet the appetite, tickle the interest, and fan the flame of true belief in a tiny minority — but spend a decade failing to break through to the larger population. Most VR experiences so far are more curiosities than they are compelling. One exception, for me, was Leap Motion’s no-controller motion-tracking experience, which simply tracks your hands in real time such that you seamlessly, perfectly, wield them and use them in a virtual world. It doesn’t just work, but it’s close enough that the weightlessness of virtual objects is actually instinctively disconcerting. Of course, on the other hand… Hmmm. OTOH, correlation != causation, but I have felt kinda wobbly and nauseated ever since that experience, which is generally unlike me. — Jon Evans (@rezendi) But write those caveats off as glitches fixed in the next generation, or the next. The question remains: what might the first real breakout, crossover VR hit be? When can we expect it? And how will it get to us? The obvious answer is “games.” Unless you count Google’s Cardboard headsets — which on the one hand are popular, but on the other hand seem to tend to languish unused after brief experimentation — gamers are VR’s first major (consumer) target market. A compelling, you’ve-never-experienced-anything-like-this-before VR-only game / world would go a long way towards drawing in the proverbial masses. VR gaming rigs are expensive, yes, but I predict capitalism will make its usual lemonade from that lemon, and we’ll soon see a rebirth of the arcade culture of the 1980s … except this time all the arcade gamers will be wearing headsets and gesticulating wildly at nothing in little pay-by-the-hour booths. I suppose completeness compels me to mention possibility for the VR killer app: OH Guy 1: "I think porn is the most realistic use case." OH Guy 2: "Actually I'm going to a VR event tomorrow night at Kink!" — Jon Evans (@rezendi) …and I suppose time will tell; but again, I’m talking about a hit, one that stakes out territory in our collective cultural commons. (It helps that VR fiction like — — has already built a bit of a bridgehead there.) Until we see one of those, VR will be like nuclear fusion: it is the future, sure, but it has been the future for decades, and it often feels like it will always be the future, never the present. That future will not happen in a culturally meaningful way until better hardware, better software, and more creativity come together to create something new. Not an adaptation; not just a new dimension; but a game or experience that can work in VR. One so compelling that it drives ordinary people to use and buy VR hardware, rather than merely preaching to the choir of early adopters searching for content to justify the hardware they bought out of habit. One that spreads by word-of-mouth, until middle-aged couples who wouldn’t normally be caught dead in VR arcades find themselves lining up to try this hot new thing. One that inspires a censorious moral panic — you know you’ve really made it when you trigger a moral panic. It’s a mug’s game to try to predict exactly when that will happen, or what it will be. But I think it’s a fairly sound prediction that (consumer) VR will languish as a minor curiosity appealing largely to a few die-hards — think compared to — until it does.
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Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of Europe
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Conrad Egusa
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can seem like a country of the past, one whose very charm lies in the fact that its best days are behind it. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed almost 100 years ago, and, with it, the aspirations this landlocked, Central European nation of 8.5 million had to control the global stage. Perhaps that’s why the Austrian startup scene has been so easy to overlook. With Germany to the north and beyond that, few have paid attention to the rapid changes taking place on the other side of the Alps. Austria, this country of old charms, is beginning to position itself as one of the most attractive bases in the world to launch a new company. And in light of recent successes, including the biggest exit in Austrian startup history — of the fitness app — there’s reason to believe the startup scene could take on a big role in Europe’s future. Austria has a number of natural advantages its entrepreneurs are hoping to channel into a lasting infrastructure. It’s located in the heart of Europe, within a three-hour trip of every major capital on the continent. Costs of development are low, meaning it’s cheaper for companies to make mistakes early on — which is why various mobile phone carriers use Austria to test and roll out services. And while investors have been hesitant to embrace the startup market, Austria, a traditionally wealthy country, won’t lack for resources once the overall mindset catches up to that of the emerging entrepreneurial generation. Many locals feel there’s no better place for businesses looking to raise early-stage capital. Though perhaps a bit exaggerated, that boast is substantiated by a recent study by the , which found Austria to be the strongest country in Europe for public pre-seed investment. In 2015 the government devoted €289 million (about US$325 million) in grants to 3,715 startups, a commitment that has in turn encouraged a number of potential entrepreneurs and students to start new ventures. Last year, the most recognized venture capital firm in the country, Vienna-based , raised €90 million (about US$101 million) for its second fund. The startup culture is young, especially in light of its historic surroundings. But Austrians sense they’re on the cusp of a qualitative leap forward, and as long as private backers continue to build on what the government is supporting, they very well might be right. There had always been a collaborative spirit in the Austrian startup scene, but 2011 marked the start of something different. That was the year some of Austria’s foremost contemporary entrepreneurs met at Startup Week, and VC pitch forum put on with support from Speedinvest, whose initial $10 million fund had opened that same year. Participants went their separate ways following the conference, but several leading startup founders later described it as the first time the Austrian scene felt like a real ecosystem. A second milestone came in 2012, when co-founded the (AAIA), along with Selma Prodanovic. One of the world’s richest countries per capita, Austria didn’t lack for money. But “there weren’t enough people who knew about how nice it is to invest in startup companies,” Hansi explained. The group started as a gathering space for those few who did, but has expanded to bring together more than 200 investors from across the country to discuss promising opportunities at monthly meetings. As interested investors have multiplied, so too have the events showcasing emerging Austrian businesses. Founded in 2013, is a nonprofit startup association that aims to increase the visibility of local entrepreneurship and improve the ecosystem. It started connecting members via a Facebook group, and later published a “vision paper” on the future of the country’s ecosystem. Today it has a presence in all nine federal states across the country, with regular events that draw hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and curious members of the general public. was founded by , , , and . Startup Week itself has since become , a world-class conference hosted in Vienna’s . This year, more than 2,500 entrepreneurs from around the world came to talk up their ideas with more than 400 investors. Pioneers Festival co-founders and also launched the venture fund , and are two of the most recognized members of the country’s ecosystem. Pioneers Festival in Vienna Runtastic, the fitness app acquired by Adidas last year, was already up and running by 2011. But many of Austria’s most dynamic companies are more recent. , founded in 2013, is a Y Combinator-backed transcoding service that improves the quality of online video. , an intuitive SQL interface that sets up distributed database clusters, was founded in 2013 and won just a year later. Last year, the government appointed as State Secretary, the individual tasked with fostering the development of Austrian entrepreneurship. A former angel investor himself, Mahrer has earned the nickname “Mr. Startup” for the ambitious agenda he’s set for the country’s trajectory. Earlier this year, he brought together more than 400 policymakers, scientists, business leaders and civil society figures for an Open Innovation Strategy Stakeholder Workshop to chart the course for Austrian innovation going forward. With a population of 1.8 million, Austria’s capital is the European Union’s seventh-most populated city. It’s sometimes referred to as the City of Dreams, in homage to Sigmund Freud, who expounded his theories on psychoanalysis through his clinical practice in the city. But the title could just as easily be a reference to Austria’s startups, roughly two-thirds of which anchor their visions in Vienna’s cosmopolitan business scene. Vienna was the logical choice when serial investor returned to Austria in 2008 looking to found a Silicon Valley-minded VC fund with a distinctly local feel. , the firm he founded in 2010, set itself apart with a “Work for Equity” approach, whereby the investment team takes hands-on roles in the startups they partner with. One such company, , an alternative investing platform also based in Vienna, recently completely a round of fundraising. Part innovation lab, part incubator and part community center, Vienna outcrop is another local pillar with an international perspective, offering everything from accelerator programs to scaling mentorship and social impact awards — all oriented toward promoting sustainable solutions to pressing issues through startup entrepreneurship. The co-working space , which includes a community of entrepreneurs, is also recognized as a central part of the city’s startup ecosystem, in addition to , a hacker space. This city’s startup community is known to be collaborative. “People are willing to share their experiences and help each other out. You might notice this when visiting one of Vienna’s traditional coffeehouses,” said Can Ertugrul, a co-founder of AustrianStartups. “They would go unnoticed from the outside, but as you sip your ‘Wiener Melange’ you could find yourself sitting next to founders, investors, corporates and now also increasingly government officials, discussing ways to help improving the startup ecosystem.” As is usually the case with national capitals, Vienna is home to much of Austria’s public startup infrastructure. (FFG) offers national funding for industrial research on both the national and European levels. (AWS) is a finance service that disperses first-stage, pre-seed and seed funding to companies, including through specific science and creativity grants. Some of these subsidies are quite small (about €5,000), but on the upper end, they reach €1 million. In 2015, the 3,613 startups with €218 million and the FFG funded 102 startups with €71 million. AustrianStartups provides a list of federally available grants . AustrianStartups founders (left to right) Vlad Gozman, Christoph Jeschke, Patrick Manhardt, Daniel Cronin, Adiam Emnay and Can Ertugrul For the local city government, the is a point of contact for national and international companies. Leaders in Vienna’s startup community include of Conda, and of i5invest, Harald Katzenschläger of Dreamacademia, Andreas Klinger, CTO of Product Hunt, of sektor5, of Impact Hub, of Pioneers and investors Michael Ströc and . Austria’s second-most important startup hub is its third-largest city. Linz has just 200,000 residents — but what it lacks in size it makes up for in deep industrial traditions and a flourishing creative economy. Named Europe’s by Unesco in 2009, Linz is well-known for its flair for the digital arts and industrial engineering, in particular. It should perhaps come as no surprise then that Linz produced what is by far the country’s most successful app. Launched in 2009, Runtastic started as a school project at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. At the time of its acquisition in 2014, it had more than 140 million downloads. Runtastic is still being run by co-founders , , and . Also located in Linz is accelerator , which was founded by Michael Eisler and Bernhard Lehner and includes a network of close to 100 entrepreneurs who are active in the city’s ecosystem. also is a popular hub for startups and creative people. Investor Hansi Hansmann (left) with Runtastic CEO Florian Gschwandtner (right) The same concentration of capital and innovation that makes Vienna such an attractive location for entrepreneurship has left the rest of the country largely bereft of meaningful startup culture. There are signs, though, that things may be shifting. Bigger than Linz but not as wealthy, Graz is an old city with a young feel. The Unesco World Heritage site is home to six universities and a thriving student population. The challenge of integrating modern buildings into the historic city has elicited world-renowned urban design innovation. Close proximity to, and deep cultural ties with, Slovenia presents unique opportunities for the city’s startups. is a prominent local organization promoting entrepreneurship in the city, and , run by Maria Reiner, is a popular space for startups and cultural activities. Innsbruck is an interesting startup city because of its location. Located 150 km from Munich and 40 km from the Italian border, it is positioned in a key location for trade. The people of Innsbruck are from the mountains, where the winter is much longer. It is harder to survive there and the people are said to be the ideal entrepreneurs. , the first startup event on skis, has become a popular event. Situated on the German border with a population of 150,000 and home to headquarters, the state of Salzburg is regarded for its , founded by . The investor community is very limited in the region; however, the initiative was founded to foster the community. Promising startups include , a search engine for doctors that was recently named the most promising e-health startup in Europe. Red Bull’s headquarters in Salzburg (Photo by Sergio Fernandez / Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0) Some of the prominent difficulties facing startup culture in Austria are what you would expect in any developing scene. Apart from Speedinvest, there’s a lack of large venture funds past the seed stage of funding. Few entrepreneurs have experience growing companies at the pace demanded by international VC, so up-and-comers are often left to find their own way, without strong examples to point to or thought leadership to draw from. Austria will also need to compete with startup capital Berlin, which is bound to pull entrepreneurs from the neighboring nation. Many of the most successful startups with Austrian co-founders are now based in Berlin and London, including with , and with . Said , founding editor of and one of Europe’s most well-regarded technology journalists, “While it’s increasingly true that great companies can be built anywhere, I believe the reality in Europe today is that for most companies based in small ecosystems are often better off looking for a nearby major hub to scale up, which requires a large pool of talent to tap from, a wide range of investment options, and the ability to attract senior management.” Austria could offer those things, as well, but much of what’s preventing it from doing so, paradoxically, is its own more generalized success. Low unemployment saps the incentive for rapid economic change, and Austria’s otherwise abundant wealth has congealed around a set of relatively conservative investment values. Many people in the scene humble-bragged that Austrians just don’t have enough experience dealing with failure to survive the entrepreneurial gauntlet. But change is coming to Austria, whether the country likes it or not. Recovery from the 2008 financial crash has been slow and thus far incomplete, placing acute pressure on policymakers to devise new approaches to unfamiliar economic hardships. The European refugee crisis also has had a particularly jarring effect on this tiny, mountainous country, which flirted with complete political upheaval during its most recent nationwide elections. , an Impact Hub Vienna-backed job-listing platform that with the more than 30,000 refugees already seeking to enter the Austrian labor market, is just one illustration of how the innovation sector can rise to meet these and other challenges. It will take continued support from the government, and greater engagement from the private sector, but don’t be surprised if we start seeing many more like it.
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Make your commute suck less
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Contributor
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post was done in partnership with Everything you do to make your commute better is like an early-stage investment in your success at work. Start earning dividends early by borrowing some of our hundreds of hours of research and picking up the best devices and accessories for commuters. They make your twice-daily trek by car, rail or bike worry-free, comfortable, and sometimes even fun. The Marshall Mode sounds rich and balanced, and it fit all of our testers equally well. Photo: Michael Hession For better music, a much better microphone, and a wonderfully improved fit, switch out the earbuds that came with your phone and pick up the best under $100, the Marshall Mode (for and ). After researching hundreds of headphones in this price range, then testing 54 with an expert audio panel, we found Marshall’s Modes stand out. They fit better, their sound profile works with every kind of sound, they never sound muddy or tinny, and their OS-specific remotes and mics make hands-free calls far less of a pain. The TravelCard comes in both Micro-USB and Lightning-connector flavors. Photo: Mark Smirniotis Avoid the sting of a dead phone battery at the end of a long day by packing an ultra-portable . We like the because it’s nearly the size of a credit card, but quickly zaps 30 to 50 percent back into the battery of a large smartphone. Its built-in USB charging cable (and Micro-USB or Lightning connectors) keep its profile slim and mean no extra cords to carry. You can find cheaper packs, sure, but after examining 50 pounds of batteries, then flying the best 17 to a Canadian battery analysis lab, we believe the TravelCard is the most pocketable pack that can still pack a punch. Amazon’s Kindle home screen. Photo: Nick Guy With an , you can fit your personal library on a thinner-than-paperback-size device—one that’s easy to toss in a bag and hold one-handed—and recharge only every few weeks. After testing the only five competitive ebook readers available in the US, we can say that the is the right choice for almost everyone. The Kindle Paperwhite’s features and price, coupled with Amazon’s vast collection of reading material, make it the best device dedicated to reading. Zojirushi’s new Stainless Mug was our top pick for close to three years. Photo: Michael Hession After doing close to 50 hours of research on 60 different and testing 20 for heat retention, durability and drinking convenience, we still think that Zojirushi makes the best travel mugs. Specifically, the new is lighter and more compact than its champion predecessors, but the newest model still offers one-handed usability and a foolproof locking mechanism that will keep your drink warm and your clothing safe. It’s available in a 20-ounce version that can double as a water bottle, as well as 12- and 16-ounce versions. Mission Workshop Sanction on our tester’s back. Photo: Michael Hession The is the that is everything a modern commuter needs their rucksack to be: simple, rugged, and comfortable. It’s as sleek as it is tough, and it resists water from all angles, making it perfect for bike commuters and people who live in rainy climates. But commuters of all varieties will appreciate its slim profile that lets you squeeze through crowds and its ability to overload in a pinch to accommodate the jacket that, in retrospect, you really didn’t need to wear today. It’s basically a comfortable bucket you wear on your back. That’s a lot more useful than it sounds. The Anker SoundSync Drive. If you want Bluetooth in your car, but you don’t want to spend the money and/or time to install a new , and you’re fortunate enough to have an aux-in port (an audio-input jack that fits a plug like the one on your headphones), a is the easy choice. It’s the most reliable alternative to full-blown car surgery, and will produce the best sound and call quality. We recommend for its superior sound quality (as good as, or better than, the sound from the competition) and good microphone performance. We also appreciate the inclusion of track-control buttons on the main unit. If you don’t have line-in, the is our . Not everyone needs a Bluetooth headset. But if you’re hopping on and off the phone throughout the day, or if you’re typically talking on the phone while walking long distances or driving (despite the safety concerns), the is the for most people. After more than 20 hours of research in our latest update, and testing 12 models in real-world scenarios, we found the Voyager Edge to be the best headset with the right balance of stellar sound quality, long battery life, impressive Bluetooth range and comfortable fit. TechMatte’s MagGrip CD in place. Photo: Nick Guy After surveying more than 1,000 Wirecutter readers, surveying the market for hours, and testing about 30 models, the we recommend for most people is . You were probably expecting something with a suction cup, like we were at first. But the MagGrip CD Slot uses a space that more than 90 percent of cars have, but fewer than 6 percent of people put actual CDs into. This style — magnet on the CD slot, metal disk in your phone case — allows for the easiest insertion, removal, and repositioning, and does not sacrifice a secure hold. It also places the phone at an ideal position that doesn’t block your view of the road. For those who can’t give up their CD player, or who have cars with awkward angles, we recommend . Scosche’s USBC242M ReVolt Dual. Photo: Nick Guy The for most people and most devices is . Packed into this tiny charger is the capability to simultaneously charge two full-size tablets at full speed — a capability that most models don’t have. The ReVolt is also able to differentiate between different devices to deliver the proper charging current to each, something not every charger can do — including the previous iteration of this model. Though not the absolute smallest or most powerful charger we tested, it has the best balance of all the important features among the 20 we tested, and a reasonable price. Topeak rear bike rack. Photo: Eve O’Neill If you plan to carry more than a few pounds of stuff on your bike, you’ll need a . A solid rear rack is the foundation of any good gear-hauling setup because it lets you attach other components to your bike and get that heavy pack off your back. After considering 38 models and testing eight top contenders, we’re confident that the is the best rack for most people. This rack was the easiest to install and felt the most stable under testing loads. It also has a sturdier taillight mount than other racks. The Arkel Commuter mounted on a rear rack. Photo: Eve O’Neill If you regularly lug a laptop to and from work, the will carry your computer (up to 15 inches) alongside 23 liters’ worth of gear to wherever you need to be. It goes on and off a bike in seconds, is supremely durable (and backed by a lifetime guarantee), and remains unobtrusive on the bike. It was also the only that had a metal backplate, which can keep a laptop from bumping against the ground or walls. It won’t make your commute fun, but a will give you peace of mind and ensure you’ve got a ride home. We interviewed bike enthusiasts — and bike thieves — and they agreed that is strong enough to foil most any thief who’s not an expert looking for a multithousand-dollar model. It’s also light and comes with a stable, easy-to-mount carrying bracket that fits on virtually all bikes. If you’ve got a pricier bike, or just want more assurances, Kryptonite’s accompanying “insurance” — costing $20 for three years — will pay the homeowners’ or renter’s insurance deductible or the replacement cost of the bike if a particularly skilled thief beats its Series 2. The included 4-foot KryptoFlex cable is just one more layer of security discouraging opportunists from nabbing a wheel or seat.
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The human role in a bot-dominated future
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Justin DiPietro
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Imagine a world where bots are ubiquitous… a world where nearly every online interaction takes place with a Siri, Alexa, Cortana or some soon-to-be-named artificial being. Here, banking is a breeze, as a customer service bot can quickly extrapolate your banking preferences from your online search history. In this world, your cupboards and refrigerator are always full, because your groceries are reordered every week automatically, based on consumption data. But in such a world, where bots provide the ultimate convenience of a futuristic lifestyle, is there still room for human help? At the most recent F8 Conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some about a bot’s place in the future of commerce. Using 1-800-Flowers as an example, Zuckerberg argued that by integrating bot chats into the sales process, a customer would never have to dial 1-800-Flowers or speak to a human again. In theory, using chat with bot support can expedite the buyer-seller interaction and bring the consumer closer to a sale. While Zuckerberg may be correct to say that customers much prefer chat interaction to using the phone, we can’t necessarily leap to the conclusion that their preference includes chatting with a robot. Human interaction is, and has always been, vital to a high-quality customer experience. Even Facebook supports this claim, as they’ve partnered with several companies to help with the hand-off from bot to human during live chats. Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has publicly stated that, “…we simply don’t have the technology yet to actually imagine that a bot could replace humans in the sales process.” So, what is the human role in a bot-dominated future? Remember that frustration every time you call customer service and end up with an automated voice (IVR)? That’s where we are with bot chats. And guess what happens every time a bot fails? You end up talking to a real, live customer service representative — back to square one. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way with artificial intelligence, but for the strides we’ve made, we’re still a ways away from the creation of a bot that can successfully pass all facets of the . While a bot can handle a good portion of a conversation with a human, there will undoubtedly be times when it gets confused and fails (especially when it comes to switching from one topic/area to another). In these situations, your bot chat gets handed over to a human to complete your engagement. Even with all the buzz today, the bot is nothing new. In the late 1990s, when AOL Instant Messenger was all the rage, I remember chatting with . At its core, SmarterChild was essentially an early version of a bot. You could chat with it about school, life or sports — much like you would do with your real friends. SmarterChild worked great (most of the time) and seemed quite sophisticated. Though, in fairness, a majority of the chats were conducted by twelve-year-olds. So, the real question today is whether the bot is really going to define the future, or are we all just falling for the same hype we did when we were ‘tweens? To answer this question, it’s important to understand the technology behind a bot. While we’ve seen tremendous strides and advances in computer technology and software development over the last 20 years, bot technology has essentially been siloed into two categories: those based on simple logic trees (SLT) and those that rely on natural language processing (NLP) or machine learning (ML). An SLT bot relies on the traditional logic tree to gather information and redirect the user. For example, an insurance bot may ask several questions to determine which policy is ideal for you. If your answers match what the bot has anticipated, the experience will be seamless. However, if your answers stray from those predicted and stored in the bot database, you might hit a dead-end. If you’re lucky, you’ll be handed off to a human to complete the interaction. If you’re not, you’ll end up in bot purgatory. Most bot technology today relies on SLT. An NLP and machine learning (ML) bot is meant to function more like a real conversationalist by picking up keywords and phrases from the user’s input to gather information, instead of requiring direct answers to specific questions. In theory, this category of bot sounds like the better option. Examples of this type of bot are Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. While Siri and Alexa are pretty good at simple functions like giving the weather or telling a joke, they still have a ways to go with complex functions and lengthy commands. Regardless of whether you are engaging with an SLT or NLP bot, the likelihood of ending up needing to speak to a real person is incredibly high. SLT bots often lack the complexity we expect from technology today, while we are unable to fully utilize the technology necessary for NLP or ML bots at this point. Fortunately, customers enjoy the efficiency of interacting with a real person. While the trend is moving away from long, formal conversations, customers still expect the same quality of service from chat, whether live or bot. In fact, a recent study by American Express found that have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience. The same study also found that 67 percent of customers have hung up the phone out of frustration when they could not talk to a real person. In most of those cases, the customer was forced to endure a dialogue with a bot. We will likely see a two-stage industry transition as we attempt to adopt bot technology into daily transactions. The first will be very human interaction-intensive, as real people will be required to take over every interaction that a bot fails to handle. The risk of a poor customer experience is simply too much for top brands to stomach, so staffing their engagement centers to take over when the bot fails will be a very real side effect. It seems inevitable that at some point ML and NLP will allow for a bot to become more intelligent, to a point where the failure rate is minimal. At that time, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that a majority of interactions will take place on bot channels. Will the bot channels stand alone, or will they be integrated into the existing channel landscape? If they exist on their own, what happens to the other channels? In a scenario where the preferred customer engagement moves away from a brand’s website and onto a bot channel like Facebook Messenger, a question of scale is presented. Even with low failure rates, the number of human hand-offs will most likely grow because of the sheer volume of engagements that will likely occur. It’s more than likely that we’ll see exponential adoption of bot technology, but human capital for engagement is both inevitable and necessary for sales and customer support. Depending on the lifetime value of the customer and the margin of the product, the specific value of an engagement with a real person can be very significant. As we prepare for a more automated future, it’s important to not forget about the role of the human in engagement. And, as great as R2-D2 was in “A New Hope,” we all must remember that there was a in that bot.
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Crunch Report | Theranos CEO Gets Banned
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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CARTO makes geographical data visualization and analysis accessible to non-specialists
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Lucia Maffei
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Historically, CartoDB has helped data specialists with knowledge of SQL perform location data analysis. In addition, the company allowed data visualization enthusiasts (including data journalists with no coding experience) to build interactive maps from scratch. Now, the company aims at providing large organizations with a data analysis tool to help them optimize business decisions and predict consumer trends. “CARTO Builder can be used in every industry, but we are targeting financial services, to help them predict the risk of investments in specific areas, and telecom companies,” Javier de la Torre, CEO at CARTO, told TechCrunch. CARTO Builder is a web-based drag-and-drop analysis tool that comes with a variety of data sheets from public platforms. It’s different from its previous versions because of two features: widgets and predicting functions; neither of them require knowledge of coding to be used. Widgets allow users to obtain instant analysis of the data by focusing on one or more entries of the dataset. CARTO Builder offers four types of widgets: widgets that work on data by category (the different entries in the columns), by histogram (to show data spread out over a range), by formula (to count elements in a row) and by time series. The map colors can also be set according to the different widgets we use. Let’s say, for example, that we’re interested in discovering the average cost of all the train accidents in the U.S. Our dataset only shows a list of all accidents, and their singular cost. All users have to do is select the right parameters in the “formula” widget, and the map instantly shows the average damage of a train accident. “What this used to take is a lot of JavaScript,” said Jeff Ferzoco, New York City Business Development Manager at CARTO. CARTO Builder does not require knowledge of coding nor to extrapolate patterns in the data. Expert users of CARTO Builder can still use SQL to work on their database, but non-specialists will only need to access the “Analyze and predict” section of the tool and select some parameters. In this section, users have three options: Calculate clusters of points, Detect outliers and clusters, and Predict trends and volatility. “Thanks to CARTO Builder, a lot of work that was previously done by data scientists is now easier to do for non-data analysts,” Ferzoco said. Getting results of an analysis of a 10,000-row database in CARTO Builder requires about one minute and 30 seconds. Analyzing a 50-million row database would probably require from 40 minutes to one hour, Ferzoco said. “But we haven’t tried, so it’s not an official number,” he pointed out. De la Torre added that the basic version of CARTO Builder starts at $149/month. “Most organizations will use the enterprise offer, which starts at $10,000 a year,” said de la Torre. The company said they’re planning to complete the roll out of CARTO Builder in progressive phases starting July 7.
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Facebook explains censorship policy for Live video
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Josh Constine
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Facebook only removes content if it celebrates or glorifies violence, not if it’s only graphic or disturbing, according to a spokesperson. Facebook also insists that the video of Philando Castile’s death was temporarily unavailable due to a technical glitch that was Facebook’s fault. That contradicts theories that the video disappeared due to Facebook waffling on whether it should stay up, a high volume of reports of it containing violent content, a deletion by police who’d taken possession of Castile’s girlfriend’s phone and Facebook account or a request from police to remove it. However, Facebook refused to detail exactly what caused the glitch, such as a traffic spike. It did , however. The temporary removal raised questions from , and other outlets about Facebook’s roles and responsibilities for hosting citizen journalism that could be controversial or graphic. I spoke at length with a Facebook spokesperson to get answers on its exact policy of its regarding graphic content, and when violations lead to censorship. Though they refused to be quoted beyond an official statement, here’s what we’ve learned: Overall, these policies do not appear to be overly restrictive. Facebook’s censorship rules focus on the glorification of violence, such as videos posted to promote or celebrate terrorism. The policy does not make distinctions about the cause of death, the relationship between the video’s creator and its subjects or the involvement of law enforcement. As with all content posted on Facebook, the creator retains ownership. In the case of the Philando Castile video, Facebook says it’s aiming to balance awareness with the graphically violent nature of the content. The company tells me it understands the unique challenges of live video broadcasting and needs a responsible approach. In a statement to TechCrunch the company says: “We’re very sorry that the video was temporarily inaccessible. It was down due to a technical glitch, and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. We can confirm it was streaming live on Facebook. A couple hours after, it was down for about an hour. The video doesn’t violate standards but we marked it as disturbing with a warning.” The company suspiciously refused to detail the cause of the glitch, though a spike in traffic is a possibility. Still, that ambiguity stokes concerns that Facebook purposefully brought down the clip. Even if it was a technical glitch, it’s one Facebook must prevent from happening in the future. Live is its chance to become a hub for real-time news that has historically ended up on Twitter first. And with the acquisition of Periscope, Twitter wants to control live video broadcasting, too. Users may reach for whichever they think is most likely to make their voice heard and not censor them. Regarding Facebook and the future of citizen journalism, the company “Just as [Live video] gives us a window into the best moments in people’s lives, it can also let us bear witness to the worst. Live video can be a powerful tool in a crisis — to document events or ask for help.” Facebook appears committed to hosting content that as Mark Zuckerberg says, can “shine a light” on injustice, even if it might shock people. Calling 911 can’t bring the same transparency and reach to a situation that live video can. With 1.65 billion users, Facebook connects more of us than perhaps any other communication channel, and gives us a Live video camera to illuminate wrong-doing for the world to see. That power and potential for profit comes with a responsibility not to shy away from controversy.
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15 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week
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Anna Escher
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This week, Apple’s iOS 10 beta was released, Tesla Autopilot went under scrutiny and the tech world responded to the devastating shootings and protests that occurred across the country. These are the top tech stories to bring you up to speed. It was a tragic week in the U.S. as headlines and live social video brought to light the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was shot by an officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His final moments before death were . The tech world responded as diversity advocate In reference to the incidents that were caught on Facebook Live, that read, “The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day.” Apple released the , which includes new features like extensions for Siri and Maps and the Messages overhaul. We the beta for you so you can wait for the polished version. Apple is also releasing an option within with just a few taps. Tesla Autopilot has made headlines this week, as government regulators continued an investigation into a fatal on May 7. Investigators are . T Snapchat introduced what could be a game-changing . Memories changes Snapchat by letting you capture content in the moment, and post to your Story later. You can import existing Snaps, search by caption, get creative with clips and keep sensitive content for your eyes only. However, the feature is kind of a gamble, as it will create a fundamental shift in how people use the app. After traveling five years through the solar system, the , traveling nearly 150,000 mph. Juno will provide data to improve our understanding of Jupiter’s formation and evolution. TechCrunch also . The tech behind Juno, NASA's Jupiter orbiter, explained http://tcrn.ch/29ma8O9 Posted by on Tuesday, July 5, 2016 An gave more clarity about what led up to Apparently, Microsoft wasn’t the only prospective buyer. While it is not known who the other buyers could have been, it’s possible that engaged in conversations with LinkedIn. Google made two acquisitions this week. The search giant swooped up , signifying Google’s desire to get deeper into the tech of the broadcasting business. Google also purchased the , which has been described as the “Shazam for images.” Kevin Turner left his position as COO of to take on the roll of CEO at Citadel Securities. Turner was a key figure at Microsoft and was involved in everything from sales and marketing to product development. Facebook expanded its mission to connect the world with the that aims to bring a more affordable wireless access platform to remote areas. Silent Circle, the maker of encrypted messaging apps and a security-hardened Android smartphone, called Blackphone, has , claiming it was a business decision. Alibaba unveiled . The RX5 is available for pre-order now, and is priced upwards of RMB 148,800 ($22,300). It includes three LED screens and space for four detachable 360-degree cameras to record video and take photos, as well as a smart rear view mirror. There’s support for voice controls, while an on-board “intelligent” mapping system should work without GPS or Wi-Fi. We , about a new short film, “ .” The film is about the creation of the World Wide Web and is currently showing at the Seattle International Film Festival. He spoke about encryption, social media and the need to, as he calls it, “re-decentralize the web.” In the gadgets space, Bose announced its . They’re not exactly cheap, but between the good sound quality, excellent noise canceling, comfort and long battery life, these are exactly the pair of headphones fans have been waiting for Bose to deliver. We also got up close with , determining that Fujifilm has built a worthy successor on top of a solid foundation. In the decade since its launch, has grown into the most successful cloud infrastructure company ever, garnering more than 30 percent of the market. Despite market volatility, Twilio continues to impress after its recent IPO. If the first few weeks after an IPO are fueled by emotion, the first few months are fueled by numbers. Public market aside, the . Want to receive the Weekly Roundup as a newsletter? .
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Bain Capital Ventures raises $600 million (and another big fund is born)
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Connie Loizos
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It’s starting to happen like clockwork. Firms are closing new funds almost exactly 24 months to the date from their last fund closing. The newest example? (BCV), which this morning announced a new, $600 million fund. It last closed two funds — a $650 million early-stage vehicle, and a $200 million co-investment fund to back maturing BCV investments — in . Other venture firms to close fast follow-on funds this year include Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and General Catalyst Partners. BCV is the venture arm of the private equity behemoth Bain Capital, which was founded in 1984. The 15-year-old unit opened its first Bay Area office five years ago, planting a flag in Palo Alto; soon, it’s moving into an even bigger office in San Francisco. It has eight managing directors — including Ajay Agarwal, who leads its West Coast team — and one partner. , who joined BCV 13 years ago, it used to be that “90 percent of our team was on the East Coast, in Boston and New York, and 10 percent was here, but it’s about 50/50 at this point.” BCV primarily backs enterprise-focused software companies, though it invests “opportunistically” in consumer-facing businesses, too, says Agarwal. Two examples are Rent the Runway and Jet.com. The firm says that half of what it does is early stage and the other half is growth stage. It also says it’s run very separately from Bain Capital, though Agarwal has told us in the past that “those connections into companies [from Bain’s broader network] is massive.” When the robotics company Kiva had “six terms sheets and was trying to determine who to pick,” he’d said, “we introduced the company to the head of distribution at Staples.” It helped seal the deal. (Kiva went on to sell to Amazon in 2012 for .) BCV’s newest early-stage fund is slightly smaller than its last. Asked about that, the firm says it targeted what it thinks is the “appropriate fund size for our strategy in the current market environment.” Asked why it didn’t raise another co-investment vehicle this time around, it says it still has capital to deploy from that $200 million fund it closed it 2014. It also said it isn’t quite done investing its previous early-stage fund. That’s not uncommon either, these days. As notes an institutional investor at a university endowment with whom we spoke recently, “Every one of our GPs has come back in the last 12 months, with the exception of one guy. VCs are accelerating their fundraising partly because they have nice marks and want to get ahead of any market cyclicality.” (Read: downturn.) “Partly, too, they see their GP brethren coming in and they know that [the institutional investors who fund venture firms] only have so many dollars. And you want to be at the front of the queue, not the back of it.” BCV hasn’t exited yet from any of the investments it has made with its 2014 fund, nor from the $600 million fund it closed in 2012. But it has seen numerous exits, including from a $467 million fund that it closed in 2009. These include Boston Heart Diagnostics, a company that for $140 million in 2014; Liazon, a private benefits exchange that to the professional services firm Towers Watson in 2013 for undisclosed terms; and the digital ad platform TellApart, which sold to Twitter for about last year. Other companies in BCV’s portfolio include Optimizely, BillTrust, DocuSign and SurveyMonkey.
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Google’s Self-Driving Car Project has a new legal lead
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Mark Lelinwalla
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Google’s Self-Driving Car Project is one step closer to becoming its own independent business. has confirmed that the autonomous-driving company under the Alphabet umbrella has hired The Climate Corporation’s chief legal officer, Kevin Vosen, as its first general attorney. He’s slated to begin later this month. Currently, Google’s self-driving unit is under the company’s experimental lab, X, but Vosen’s hire seemingly marks another gradual step in it becoming its own entity. And the timing is interesting, considering it comes amidst for a fatal May 7 crash involving a Model S in Autopilot mode. The legal red tape that Google — or any company developing autonomous driving technology — will encounter with regulators will make having a veteran lawyer like Vosen handy, given his experience. Vosen handled The Climate Corporation’s Compliance and Government Relations activities. Also, Climate’s CEO and co-founder, David Friedberg, formerly worked for Google under its Corporate Development and Product Management, so there’s a connection there. Friedberg is also the chairman of Metromile, which offers pay-per-mile auto insurance, so perhaps there’s something greater in the works here, as well. The news of Google’s autonomous unit lawyering up comes shortly after , the former head of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Office of Innovation, so its self-driving development team is getting more and more robust.
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Study of Candy Crush players finds virtual currency buyers don’t go for upsells
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Devin Coldewey
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The upsell we all fall for at fast food joints and places like Costco doesn’t seem to work on purchasers of in-game currencies, according to a study conducted on millions of Candy Crush players. Turns out the decision to buy fictional bars of gold isn’t rational, economically speaking. Who would have thought? For two months, economists at the University of Chicago . Surprisingly, the virtual commodity is not sold with particularly nonlinear pricing. That’s where, for example, a small soda at Wendy’s costs $1.29, a medium costs $1.49 and a large costs $1.59. The amount you get doesn’t increase linearly with the amount you pay, and the result is that the larger item appears (as planned) to be the better deal. This is elementary retail theory, and we all fall for it constantly. It’s especially profitable when the thing being sold is a cheap commodity; for example, the cost of soda syrup and carbonated water is nearly negligible compared with what customers pay. So you would think a commodity that is literally unlimited and costs nothing would be a great one to offer crazy nonlinear pricing on. Interestingly, that’s not the case with King’s offerings. If you buy the biggest pack (1,000) of “gold bars” instead of the smallest (9), you only save 9 percent per unit! Yet people buy both — at very different frequencies, of course. The economists thought it would be interesting to introduce nonlinear pricing and see how that affected which users bought gold bars and when. Over two months, they and King systematically offered various discounts to over 14 million players. Here’s an exciting graph: The result of all their behind-the-scenes machinations? A big fat nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but even deep discounts like a 70 percent lower cost per unit failed to produce higher profits or more than marginally greater sales volume. In fact, some of the data suggested that people who would have bought small packs of gold may have decided not to because the discounted big packs made the small ones look like a bad deal! People who never bought anything continued to buy nothing. People who occasionally bought a small pack spent a bit more on deep discounts. And people who bought big packs spent less, canceling the others out. There was a possible but slight habit-forming effect in making occasional buyers do so with slightly higher frequency, but it wasn’t much. In the researchers’ own words: The ultimate conclusion of our experiment is that the potential gains to King from the forms of price discrimination we explored are remarkably small, in contrast to what one might have expected based on the prior theoretical and empirical literature. “From a corporate perspective, this experiment was somewhat a failure,” they admit. But from an academic perspective, it’s interesting: it challenges existing ideas and, like all good research, raises further questions. Why does this happen? What is the psychology behind in-app purchases, and why does it differ so much from retail ones, where this pricing strategy would have had a much greater effect? Is there a pricing technique that make a difference? The paper, published earlier this week in the , is very readable. Just what you need for a quiet Friday evening!
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Step aside, Tatooine, astronomers have discovered a planet with three suns
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Emily Calandrelli
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Move over, , astronomers have a planet with not one, not two, but three suns. Known as HD 131399Ab, the newly discovered planet is located 320 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus. The planet is estimated to be merely 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered so far. Illustration of HD 131399Ab with its three suns / Image courtesy of ESO The triple star system is made up of two smaller stars that twirl around together like a spinning dumbbell and a third, larger star. The two twirling stars orbit the third star at a distance of 300 astronomical units (1 astronomical unit is equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun). HD 131399Ab directly orbits the larger star. This complex triple-star dance is visualized in the video below. With a triple-star system like this, someone standing on HD 131399Ab would witness triple sunrises and sunsets each day, during certain seasons. For half of the planet’s orbit, which lasts 550 Earth-years, all three stars are visible in the sky. “The fainter two are always much closer together, and change in apparent separation from the brightest star throughout the year.” Kevin Wagner, PhD candidate at the University of Arizona and lead author on HD 131399Ab paper Of course with temperatures reaching 580 degrees Celsius, it’s unlikely that life, as we know it, could exist on this planet to enjoy those romantic triple sunsets. The exotic system was discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona using the European Southern Observatory’s in Chile. Scientists previously believed that it was impossible for a system like this to exist. Because of the complexity of the changing gravitational attraction throughout an orbit, it was thought that stability could not be achieved and any planet would be tossed out of the system. “If the planet was further away from the most massive star in the system, it would be kicked out of the system. Our computer simulations have shown that this type of orbit can be stable, but if you change things around just a little bit, it can become unstable very quickly.” Daniel Apai, Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona and co-author on HD 131399Ab paper This graphic shows the orbit of the planet in the HD 131399 system (red line) and the orbits of the stars (blue lines). The planet orbits the brightest star in the system, HD 131399A / Image/caption courtesy of ESO HD 131399Ab is particularly unique because it’s one of very few directly imaged exoplanets. Because exoplanets are very faint and far away, they are often lost in the bright glare of the giant stars they orbit. For this reason, directly imaging an exoplanet is incredibly difficult, and most of the 2,000+ exoplanets confirmed to date have been found instead by detecting of their existence, rather than a direct picture of the planet. Using the , astronomers can identify exoplanets by detecting the effect they have on their host star’s light as it passes in front of it. When a star’s light is dimmed periodically, it hints that a planet might be transiting in front of it. Astronomers were able to successfully obtain a direct image of HD 131399Ab by using a specialized tool on ESO’s Very Large Telescope known as the instrument. With SPHERE, astronomers studied a patch of sky in infrared light, and employed a sophisticated strategy to pluck out planetary heat signatures from their host stars’ signatures. While a planet with three suns may seem particularly unique, the astronomer who led the study, Kevin Wagner, believes that they may be more common than we think. “It is not clear how this planet ended up on its wide orbit in this extreme system…but it shows that there is more variety out there than many would have deemed possible. What we do know is that planets in multi-star systems have been studied far less often, but are potentially just as numerous as planets in single-star systems.” Kevin Wagner, PhD candidate at the University of Arizona and lead author on HD 131399Ab paper
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Engineering management may be the most unnatural act of all
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Michael Driscoll
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The best management decision I ever made took five seconds. “I can build a better database,” were the words accompanied by a blank but confident stare from the most talented developer I’d ever hired. “Okay,” I nodded, “see what you can do.” It wasn’t our top priority at the time, but five years later, the Druid database he conceived stores 300 billion daily events for digital media firms around the globe. When it comes to software engineering, that management is best which manages least — to borrow Thoreau’s quip about government. While it’s rarely as easy as nodding at a brilliant developer and getting out of the way, the best systems are, like good software, minimalist and lightweight. Through my experiences as a CTO and through talking to other technical founders, leaders and heads of engineering over the years, I’ve developed the “LITE” philosophy of engineering management. It focuses on a well-leveraged developer, whose innovation drives the development of products that users love and trust, at the right cost efficiency. These are its four pillars: leverage, innovation, trust and efficiency. The foremost priority of good engineering management is protecting the quality of your engineers’ work time and ensuring a distraction-free office environment. On the time side, mind the distinction between . Group meetings during certain times of the day or week; clustering and cancelling meetings frees up the contiguous blocks of time, which enables engineers to achieve the flow state essential to creative endeavors. Engineers often don’t realize they are the owners of their own time, and telling them they are under no obligation to attend every meeting empowers them. On the office environment side, invest in noise-cancelling headphones, egg-shaped pod chairs, stand up desks or any other tools that help your engineers concentrate. Offering meals, snacks and varieties of caffeinated experiences are also part of that equation — , but the engineers who write that software need to eat food. The development environment matters too, namely the tools and systems that developers rely on to write, debug, test and ship code into production. Anything that induces drag on the critical path from developer laptop to production system should be treated as an obstacle and cleared. Like many optimization problems, there is an inner loop where small improvements in the development chain can yield large savings in time. Finally, right-sizing teams is essential to their working well together. Stu Feldman, the inventor of , offers that emerged from his early days at Bell Labs: Groups bigger than 10 people tend to suffer communication breakdowns. If enabling leverage on developers’ skills is a practical means of engineering management, fostering innovation is its highest end. Innovation is a combustive mix of ideas and unmet needs that sparks invention, and ultimately births breakthrough products. While much digital ink has been spilled on the topic of how to unleash innovation in organizations, here are three ingredients of innovation that I’ve observed are essential based on my experiences. Intel’s described his philosophy as “ ” Google as part of its edge, and in Facebook’s early days, the The lesson: Structure can be stifling to a merry band of rebels conspiring on the next new thing. Whether through allowing engineers 20 percent of their time to work on unorthodox projects, hosting week-long office hackathons or giving a helpful nudge (or turning a blind eye) to an internal skunkworks initiative, innovation breeds best in a bit of chaos. This is a truism that deserves unpacking. Unmitigated risk-taking is, by itself, not an intelligent strategy for engineering innovation, any more than an explorer sailing aimlessly out to sea is a strategy for discovery. But development teams must take calculated risks where the expected value is positive. Moonshots with high cost and a low chance of success can be worth it if they have big pay-offs. Perhaps no one exemplifies this engineering strategy more successfully, with billion-dollar, bankruptcy-defying bets on electric automobiles and reusable space rockets, than Elon Musk. The more genetically distant two parents are, the more successful their offspring. This same kind of “hybrid vigor” applies to the world of innovation. Cryptography combined with one of accounting’s oldest ideas, the general ledger, brought us bitcoin. Psychology, mathematics and computer science have all contributed strains to the modern machine learning behind self-driving cars and speech recognition. Teams with diverse academic and professional backgrounds who dabble at the intersections of disciplines are more likely to innovate. I’ve long believed the true driver of success in technology is trust: software that performs as expected. Google’s search engine gained loyal users because it was fast and always up. WhatsApp rose on the strength of reliable messaging. Whatever it is that users trust your software to do, measure it, and manage toward improving it. Trust matters not only for external users, it matters for internal engineers. Production systems that are on fire will ultimately consume engineers’ hours. At best, this de-leverages their time and makes them less productive; at worst, it will burn them out and they will quit. The best lever of software trust is human accountability. When a site goes down or load times veer out of bounds, someone must ultimately own and solve it. Under the covers of most web-scale applications are dozens of specialized services — such as user authentication, data processing and archiving — but these services have human owners that should be held accountable if a service violates its contract (e.g. “I’ll authenticate users within 500 milliseconds”). Engineers should not be insulated from the operation of the services. When something breaks badly enough, developers are best equipped to firefight and resolve the issue. Exposing engineers directly to the stability of their own services enforces ownership: They are motivated and capable of writing code that avoids the 3 a.m. red alert. A useful rule of thumb for DevOps investment is as follows: Every hour of firefighting earns at least one hour of development effort to properly solve that problem. Like trust, efficiency is often viewed warily by engineers. Unlike the call to innovate, the call to “reduce our server footprint!” is rarely met with happy emojis. And yet, efficiency by any other name would be just as sweet: Engineers celebrate faster compression algorithms and scoff at slow apps. Performance and efficiency are often in tension. Yet unlike performance, which often has a useful upper bound in products, the gains from efficiency have only a lower bound of zero. (No one needs a car that goes more than 200 mph and everyone would love a car that requires no gas or electricity.) Thus, engineering teams that drive toward these zero lower bounds open new business models, often with zero in their prices: free search, email and photo sharing on the web were made possible by radically efficient engineering infrastructure. Efficiency is also a core value because it ties back to our first pillar: developer leverage. The most precious resource that ought to be most efficiently managed is not hardware cycles, but human cycles. This is why Google’s universal measure of cost is not dollars, but developer hours. Management is an unnatural act, as Ben Horowitz , and engineering management may be the most unnatural of all, because engineers are a unique bunch: persuadable by logic yet driven by ego. But getting engineering management right matters: Software engineering talent is the most precious resource on the planet earth, and enabling engineers to do their best work is often the difference between a startup’s success and its failure.
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The Golden State Warriors used virtual reality to woo Kevin Durant
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Mark Lelinwalla
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The Golden State Warriors laid it on pretty thick for Kevin Durant during the team’s successful free-agent pitch to the NBA superstar last week. In addition to having two-time MVP Stephen Curry and fellow Warriors’ all-stars, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, attend the meeting, the team also tapped into its Silicon Valley backyard to hit KD with a virtual reality presentation. According to , the Warriors gave Durant a VR headset to show him the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, a courtside view at Oracle Arena and a look at coach Steve Kerr talking to his players in the locker room, so he could envision himself being there. The high-tech effort paid off, as KD, of course, left the Oklahoma City Thunder team that he had played with for all nine years of his NBA career to sign with the Warriors on a two-year, $54.3 million deal earlier this week. Chalk this up to when virtual reality becomes reality.
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DIY Co. launches JAM to help kids learn what they don’t in school, with a little help from Cartoon Network
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Lora Kolodny
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, the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder , has launched a new online learning platform for kids called The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by , joined by , at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM were created for kids up to age 14. Klein said, “There’s a huge landscape of skills worth kids learning now that schools aren’t teaching, and a new set of teachers who aren’t full-time educators willing to help them.” So far, courses on JAM include titles like: How to Invent Your Own Machines, Become a Pro Chef and Become an Animator. The animation course, which DIY developed and is promoting in partnership with , is free for any students and parents who sign them up to take it. Others cost $99 for a course that is available to students for up to one year, with a 7-day free trial period to start. One of the creative talents behind the animated series on the Cartoon Network, , helped develop JAM’s animation course. Pott also appears in the video portions of the JAM course. DIY produces all of its JAM courses with hand-picked instructors, some of them on staff at DIY and others who are experts in a given field, like Pott. The startup generates revenue from the purchases of courses. Klein has committed to keep all of the company’s apps and sites free of advertising, and will not sell user data, he said. Cartoon Network president Christina Miller said that at least three students will have the chance to see the animations they create for this course promoted via the Cartoon Network’s online properties, and even possibly on air in interstitials if they are exceptional. Pott will review the animations and determine which should be considered for such Cartoon Network promotions. The Turner Broadcasting-owned network has committed $30 million to projects that specifically support “STEAM” — science, tech, engineering, arts and math — skills and concepts to kids and its audience. DIY Co. is a partner it has worked with in the past via this Miller said, “Coding is as much about the art class of the future as it is about scientists and engineers. We want to make sure we raise up the next generation of animators, and inspire kids. We reached out to DIY because we liked what they are doing around community.” Learn Capital’s said his firm funded DIY in part to help it launch JAM. Moving forward, he expects the New York-based startup to develop additional courses and amass feedback from families on existing courses. DIY Co.’s approach is mobile-centric, the investor noted, which makes it appealing to kids who often have a primary internet access point through a tablet or smartphone outside of school. Klein added that JAM courses include more than just videos and interactive quizzes that other more simplistic apps are offering. Kids interact with JAM courses through a bot interface. It helps answer basic questions and advance them through various activities they need to complete or master a new skill. The bot and course content directs them, at times, to go away from their screens into the real world to get things done. That’s important in an era where kids are already spending perhaps too much time in front of screens. Additionally, when a kid joins a course on JAM they join a community online. Their work for the course can be seen by everyone. When a kid begins a new quest, or section of a course, JAM prompts them to take a look at work by other members to get them inspired. “We see ourselves helping parents to provide good screen time options for their kids. After they go offline and do something in the real world, then they can come back to the screen to report it to the community,” Klein said. In the future, DIY Co. aims to make its bot interface more sophisticated, using artificial intelligence, so that kids who have a lot of seemingly tangential questions can interrupt a course and speak with the JAM bots as they would an understanding parent or teacher. JAM is a distinct site from the company’s original social network for kids, DIY.org, which is also centered around learning and kids’ creative or intellectual interests. That site remains completely free, and ad-free, for users and open to any kids whether they take JAM courses or not.
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The Athletic is bringing subscription-based local sports coverage to a city near you
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Fitz Tepper
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High-quality local sports coverage isn’t dead. At least that’s the premise upon which is building its business. The young startup, part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2016 class, is trying to reinvent local sports media – an industry that has been on the decline ever since newspapers realized that advertising revenue wouldn’t be enough to support a team of writers to cover local sports teams. So when regional newspapers began to cut costs the sports desk was often the first to go – especially since national brands like ESPN were already offering similar content. But The Athletic thinks that there is still demand for truly local content, written by sportswriters that live and breathe local teams. And, the startup thinks that if this content is good enough, readers will happily pay for it. So far, it’s worked. The athletic launched 6 months ago in Chicago – they hired the top sportswriters in the city on a full-time basis, and have them write a total of five to ten quality pieces of content a day. The startup is credentialed by all five sports teams in the city, and mixes in traditional sports reporting with inside access and exclusives from team executives and agents of the hottest players. The Athletic currently charges $10 a month (or $5 if you pay for a year upfront), and is seeing great engagement from subscribers. Alex Mather, co-founder of the company, said that 80% of readers view every article that is produced, and subscribers are spending an average of 90 minutes a week reading content on the site – pretty good for a publication that only launched five months ago. Another aspect that differentiates The Athletic from traditional sports media is a platform that is actually enjoyable to read from. The startup prides itself on offering pages that “don’t take 30 seconds to load”, and having an interface that puts most newspaper’s websites to shame. Once it nails down Chicago and raises funding for expansion, The Athletic wants to grow into other large sports cities, eventually having a presence in every major sports market in the U.S. And, when it’s large enough, eventually expand beyond writing into things like video and podcasts so it can become a premium sports media brand spanning all mediums. Any site that charges for content on a subscription basis is making a big bet that users will consistently be willing to pay for quality content. And while companies like Netflix (and originally HBO) have shown that users will open their wallets for truly great content, this hasn’t held up as much in the traditional written news industry.Because while Netflix is the only place you can watch House of Cards, hundreds of different sites will all tell you the same story about how Kevin Durant is now on the Warriors. But if The Athletic can find an audience of die-hard sports fans that truly value strong local analysis and reporting, they may just have a shot at succeeding where larger publishers before them failed.
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MIT researchers develop wearable toxic gas sensor
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Lucia Maffei
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Using these sensors, the researchers hope to design badges that weigh less than a credit card and can be easily worn by military personnel on the battlefield. In layman’s terms, the system works as follows. The sensor is a circuit loaded with carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical molecules that look like little wires. “Let’s think about the wires we’re familiar with, such as electric wires,” Swager explained. “They’re wrapped in plastic.” As a result, the actual wire is insulated from the external environment and users are safe. In the carbon nanotubes case, insulation is not achieved thanks to a plastic case. “We wrapped the nanotubes with a polymer,” Swager explained. When exposed to toxic gases, such as Sarin gas, the polymer breaks apart and the insulation disappears. Consequently, the nanotubes touch each other and become conductive. When this happens, a signal is sent to the smartphone. To detect the signal, the smartphone or the wireless device must be equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology, which allows the devices to transmit data over short distances without the need for internet connection. The sensor’s response is irreversible, meaning that users can see they’ve been exposed to a certain amount of toxic gas even though the gas is not detected anymore in the air. “There are sensors that give reversible response, so things go up and if you take away the signal they go back again. But this one is different: The response is irreversible, so you can get the total dosage,” Swager said. The toxic-gas detector — composed of the wearable badge and the communication device — may also have civilian applications in refineries, where workers might be exposed to toxic chemicals. According to Swager, the technology to develop the product has already been licensed by , a company based in Cambridge, Mass. Swager said the company is working on commercializing the product: “I think it would be at least a year.”
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Twitter reportedly in talks with the NBA, MLS and Turner for more sports streaming
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Mark Lelinwalla
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Twitter isn’t satisfied with streaming 10 games this upcoming NFL season. According to , the social media network is also reportedly in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer and cable television giant Turner about acquiring digital rights to stream more live sports. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to our request for confirmation of the report. Whether those allegedly sought-after rights pave the way for Twitter to stream actual NBA and MLS games or exclusive interviews and analysis remains to be seen. But by the report alone it’s clear that the social network wants to establish itself as a legit sports presence, in which people can watch content while they tweet about it. Earlier this week, in what the company told us was a test. “ is increasingly a place where people can find live streaming video, and that includes exciting sporting events like Wimbledon,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email about live-streaming the tennis action as a test. “This live stream is an extremely early and incomplete test experience, and we’ll be making lots of improvements before we launch it in its final form.” Like it has already locked up with the NFL, securing a bundle of NBA and MLS games — or even just fringe content — would be a pretty sweet score for Twitter.
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Her, the dating app for queer women, finally goes live on Android
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Jordan Crook
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And so, the dating pool for queer women across the world got that much bigger. , the dating app focused exclusively on ladies who are into other ladies, has finally opened up the app to Android users. The app launched all the way back in 2013 in the UK, and back then it was known as “Dattch.” Since, the app has rebranded to Her and launched across the United States, with total coverage reaching 55 different countries. And yet, the app has only ever been available on iOS. Today, that changes. Founder and CEO Robyn Exton explained that the app’s recent expansion into South America and parts of Asia showed incredible growth. Given that many of these emerging markets are based on the Android operating system, Exton said that it didn’t leave the company much of a choice. “We just knew we had to start building for Android,” said Exton. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J4Ze3nGc58&w=640&h=360] Her is rather different from other dating apps, and not only because it serves queer women. The profile of a user looks much like a Pinterest board, with the option to add new things constantly and give other users a more well-rounded view. But perhaps more importantly, Her focuses on the real world just as much as the virtual. The company runs the equivalent of its own blog, with news stories for and about the community, as well as a listing of events, some of which are even hosted by Her. Her runs its events program in 11 cities, with plans to expand to more in the coming months. And for all of my fellow iOS-based queerios, get ready for a new era.
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Where today’s tech can, and can’t, replace humans
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Connie Loizos
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This morning, McKinsey & Co. is releasing a new look at the impact automation is likely to have across various sectors of the economy and, ultimately, the workplace. Its findings are based on analysis of 2,000-plus work activities across more than 800 occupations and includes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The good news, says the report, is that automation will “eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade.” It adds that automation will eventually affect “portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree.” Whether you see this as a good or bad thing could depend on how much of your job involves physical activity or operating machinery. For example, if even current technologies were broadly adopted, says McKinsey, fully 78 percent of “predictable physical activities” across manufacturing, retailing, and food service and accommodations could be automated. The study notes that working on an assembly line is a “highly predictable” physical activity, whereas forestry or raising outdoor animals is much less so. Either way, as tech grows more advanced, expect that percentage to rise. What else could be far more automated if current tech was adopted more widely? Plenty of so-called white collar occupations, particularly those that involve collecting and processing data. And it’s not just entry level workers who will be impacted, notes McKinsey. For example, it notes that “stock traders and investment bankers live off their wits, yet about 50 percent of the overall time [in their field] is devoted to collecting and processing data . . .” Ditto insurance sales agents. McKinsey’s estimate for how much of these jobs could be automated: about 43 percent of workers’ time. Worth keeping in mind, of course, is that while certain aspects of work can be automated, many jobs will always require some human contact, as with nursing. Also, automation doesn’t always mean job displacement. The McKinsey study notes that bar-code scanners and point-of-sale systems in the U.S. in the 1980s reduced labor costs per store by an estimated 4.5 percent and the cost of the groceries by 1.4 percent. But cashiers were still needed and in fact, their employment grew at an average rate of more than 2 percent between 1980 and 2013. Still, if you’re not keen on the idea of your work being automated (and we are with you on this), it’s worth noting that the hardest activities to automate — with current tech anyway — involve managing and developing people (McKinsey puts the “automation potential” here at 9 percent), or activities that require decision-making, planning, or creative work (18 percent). While computers are already very good at executing on well-defined activities, they don’t have common sense and they’re not (yet) great at interpreting results. In fact, to stay relevant and working long into the future, your best bet may be a career in healthcare or education. Much more of the if you want to see it yourself.
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Police use of robot to kill Dallas shooting suspect is new, but not without precursors
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Darrell Etherington
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The Dallas police force used a bomb-defusing robot equipped with an explosive device to kill a shooting suspect, police chief David Brown revealed today at a press conference. An explosive was affixed to the extension arm on the robot, Brown said at the , in order to neutralize the suspect, later , 25. The incident involved the shooting of 12 officers, five of whom were killed, during a protest in Dallas organized in response to the recent police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. It does appear to be the of a police department using an explosive in an offensive capacity to actually kill a suspect, but bomb-defusing robots have been weaponized in the past by police forces, in one instance resulting in a mobile home burning down. Police have previously used bomb-squad robots to deploy non-lethal means of neutralizing suspects, as in the 2014 cause of Stephen Fought, a suspect suffering from schizophrenia who had secured himself inside a motel room and was refusing to come out. The Albuquerque police’s bomb squad in that instance was used to deploy “chemical munitions,” according to an at the time. In the case mentioned above that resulted in the mobile home fire, police in Tennessee used a teargas grenade which was designed for outdoor use and which accidentally resulted in a fire that engulfed the entire trailer. The suspect was not at home, police later determined, so no injuries resulted from the incident. Reports of armed robots being employed by law enforcement date back even further, however — details in-depth how robots originally designed for military use were being actively marketed and sold to domestic police forces in the U.S., including models that could be equipped with the following: • Multi-shot TASER electronic control device with laser-dot aiming.
• Loudspeaker and audio receiver for negotiations.
• Night vision and thermal cameras.
• Choice of weapons for lethal or less-than-lethal responses
– 40 mm grenade launcher – 2 rounds
– 12-gage shotgun – 5 rounds
– FN303 less-lethal launcher – 15 rounds. Those robots were not actually armed by the police departments which owned them, at the time of publication of that story, and those are different in purpose and construction from the robot likely used by the Dallas PD, which is likely a , designed rather than offensive action. Similar robots have been used in an improvised manner similar to how Dallas police employed theirs in this situation in a few instances on the battlefield in combat situations. Here’s a photo Dallas PD tweeted in 2012 of a public demonstration of their bomb-defusing robot: DPD showcasing their bomb robot (HD2) to members of the public safety committee. — Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) Regardless of past examples of police robots used to deploy weapons, this incident seems unprecedented as it marks the first example in which the intent (or a likely potential outcome) was to end a human life.
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Integral Ad Science acquires bot detection company Swarm
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Anthony Ha
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is unveiling some new steps to combat ad fraudsters, including the acquisition of a bot detection company called . CEO Scott Knoll told me that he was particularly interested in Swarm’s technology for side channel analysis, a technique for examining a web browser to identify whether or not it’s a bot. That’s an area where Integral Ad Science has already developed its own technology, but Knoll said its approach is “complementary” with Swarm’s. “For the last 18 months, we’ve been kicking the tires on a lot of technologies out there in side channel analysis,” he said. “We’re really excited, because this combined with our side channel analysis and our unique big data capabilities will give us a huge advantage.” Knoll added that the Swarm team will continue to operate out of their offices in San Francisco. The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed. In the meantime, the Integral Ad Science team has also been busy doing more of its own research on identifying bots. The big theme, Knoll said, is that fraudsters are changing bot behavior as advertisers start looking at different metrics. They broad aim is the same — tricking advertisers into paying for fake ad impressions — but they’re no longer limited to just loading up or clicking on an ad. “They’re getting really sophisticated, in the sense that they’re hard to detect,” Knoll said. “These bots are trying to success metrics around viewability, attention metrics … like scroll rates or hover rates.” For example, Integral Ad Science is releasing a new white paper on Poweliks, a bot that generates random mouse movement and examines the content of the page to identify other behaviors that could increase ad revenue. The company says:
For example, if there is a video on a page, Poweliks presses play; if there is a search bar, Poweliks clicks ‘Submit’ using keywords like ‘car’, ‘insurance’, and ‘weight loss’. The keywords are designed to attract advertisements and can be updated at any time via communications with the bot’s Command and Control (C&C) server. The bot stays current as well: a recent 2016 update included the search terms “Donald” and “Trump”. The browsers generating traffic are sized full-screen in order to maximize the measured viewability of the ads, and as a result, maximize the amount advertisers will pay to deliver them. The company says it has also identified some new bots, including Avireen, which is similar to Poweliks, but can run on two browsers, Chrome and Internet Explorer. Then there’s StarUp, which collects cookies like a real user, then brings up retargeted ads on fraudulent websites using spoofed domains. And finally, there’s Superswag, which allows users to run campaigns on the incentivized browsing service Swagbucks in an automated way.
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Creating life through generative design
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Florencio Mazzoldi
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We have been shaping the organisms that live around us for a long time. Take as an example the changes we forced on wolves to become our best friends. Traditionally, we accomplished it by selecting organisms with special traits (“Let’s keep that wolf, it doesn’t bite as much”). In the last 20 years we have gone further by modifying the genetic programming of organisms directly. Access to the genetic program gives scientists higher control to hopefully produce intended results faster and create behaviors not easily accessible evolution. We have modified the genetic programs of organisms to solve hard problems. For instance, we have created micro-organisms to produce highly valued chemical compounds like insulin, butanol, etc. We have designed rice that produces its own beta carotene to solve malnourishment in third-world nations. We have even modified higher-level organisms to fight diseases, such as Zika-fighting mosquitoes. And viruses modified to deliver genetic therapeutics are currently yielding increasing cure rates in previously deadly cancers. Yet, the designs to create those organisms and particles usually involve relatively simple changes to natural systems, or copying genetic material from one species and pasting it into another. How do we enable much more powerful biological designs? The main challenge in this type of is that we do not understand all the rules governing biological systems, which makes it impossible to simulate or predict the outcome of a particular . No computational tool will determine whether a genetic modification of an organism will make it consume less sugar, produce more of a particular compound and survive. This forces us to do at least some part of the evaluations in the lab. If we want to create a bacteria strain that produces insulin, for instance, we have to actually produce the organisms to determine if a particular set of genetic changes will yield the insulin we need. This is done by synthesizing (printing) DNA, which is then transformed (injected) into organisms. Although synthesizing DNA has traditionally been prohibitively expensive, it has been dramatically dropping in price in the last decade, from $4 per base pair to just $0.03 . The testing phase is also expensive and unreliable. Small changes in process or environment, quality of the materials, scale of manufacturing and manual errors all have significant impact on results. Large companies struggle with these challenges, but are able to afford to spend tens of millions of dollars on automation and software to build and test genetic systems in high throughput and with high levels of reproducibility. Cloud lab services like and , as well as DNA foundries like and , are starting to emerge. These services offer to create large sequences of DNA and perform experiments in robotic labs, for a fee. Not only do they increase reliability, but they democratize experiments, as well: Independent scientists and small startups don’t need to incur the high cost of setting up a lab anymore. Another challenge in biology is the lack of reliable information to enable machine learning algorithms. Many learning techniques require a large amount of trustworthy data. Some biotech companies have datasets that could be used, but they are behind firewalls and not accessible to academia or small startups. The advent of less expensive and more streamlined manufacturing and testing academic foundries will hopefully provide the necessary information to evaluate and advance these techniques. In manufacturing, designers have been exploring g d as a new way of everyday things. With g d , we set up high-level objectives and constraints and let the computer (or infinitely scalable cloud computation) create options that best fit their criteria. At a minimum, these options spark creative ideas, and, in the best case, they provide the first draft of the final . The advances in synthesizing, assembling and testing genetic constructs, together with the advent of cloud computing, make g d a good option for biologists. To create our bacteria that produces insulin, then, we could modify a well-known organism, such as E. coli. These modifications include new genes that alter the internal cell metabolism to enable the production of insulin. Multiple genes may be needed, and combining them may yield better results. We could create algorithms that produce different combinations of these modifications. In traditional manufacturing, we would run analysis simulations during the build and test phases. For biology, however, there are fewer of these analysis tools available. To test the designs, we need to build them in a lab. Depending on the type of , this may include synthesizing DNA, introducing the DNA into cells, growing the organisms and testing for some properties. For our insulin-producing bacteria, we would test whether the bacteria grows and the amount of insulin it produces. Because of the necessary roundtrip from the computer to the lab to test the designs, the testing phase for biology will tend to be much longer than for traditional manufacturing. In biology we need to build and test designs in the lab. The learning step is accomplished by entering the test results in a computer and running the learning algorithm. The data are then used to create a new set of designs that will aim to rate better against the set of user objectives. Going back to our bacteria, then, each iteration of designs both explores drastically different genetic programming and enhances previous successful bacteria strains. Industrial biotech is already using a process similar to the one described. We are hoping that advances in software, genetic synthesis and assembly facilities, cloud laboratories and machine learning techniques not only make this process more powerful, but make it feasible for academic labs and small startups, as well. Without the ability to rationally due to unknowns in biological systems, g d is a powerful tool for biologists. It allows them to determine which designs to build and test the lab, minimizing lab experiments. As our understanding of biology grows, we will be able to move more of these processes in silicon and in a similar fashion as in “traditional” .
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Five companies considered buying LinkedIn
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Katie Roof
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The filing also shows that LinkedIn is subject to a $725 million breakup fee if the transaction with Microsoft does not get finalized. Here’s why:
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Marrakesh Treaty will limit copyright, easing book access for blind and print-disabled worldwide
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Devin Coldewey
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It’s difficult enough already for the visually impaired to read the books and publications sighted people take for granted, but it’s downright impossible when the content isn’t even available in accessible formats. Fortunately, a global agreement aimed at alleviating the problem passed a major milestone today and may take effect before the end of the year. is a proposed set of rules designed by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a division of the U.N. that helps alleviate cross-border IP issues. Marrakesh would create exceptions to copyright laws, allowing reproduction of works in accessible formats like Braille, audio or e-book, and easing restrictions on passing those works between countries. The range of disabilities, needs and means of access are very wide: A person who is paralyzed or lacks hands has very different requirements from someone who is blind, or someone suffering from dyslexia. Marrakesh isn’t some hot new idea; the treaty has been under construction and negotiation for a decade — which isn’t surprising, since big international agreements aren’t simple by any means. Of course, it doesn’t help that major copyright holders like the MPAA have opposed it — limiting its scope from affecting things like subtitles. Ironically, the U.S. is one of the few lucky countries that already offers the copyright limitations the treaty seeks to internationalize — and with major organizations willing to do so. In fact, just yesterday, HathiTrust and the National Federation of the Blind into an online repository for the blind and print-disabled. Opposition notwithstanding, things appear to be coming to a conclusion in a flurry of activity: Ecuador and Guatemala acceded to the treaty yesterday, and Canada did so today, becoming the critical 20th country to accede to Marrakesh, allowing it to be “entered into force.” India, it is worth mentioning, was the first to ratify, two years ago. Representatives from Canada (left), Guatemala (center) and Ecuador present documents to WIPO’s Francis Gurry. “The Marrakesh Treaty will, when widely adopted throughout the world, create the framework for persons who are blind and visually impaired to enjoy access to literacy in a much more equal and inclusive way,” said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry . Entry into force means WIPO can start nagging signatory countries into fulfilling their promises and making the treaty’s provisions into actual law. This should occur on September 30, though don’t expect a flood of Braille translations on October 1 — laws still need to be written and organizations chosen or formed to oversee the process of translation and distribution. Still, however slow it’s been, it’s better than having nothing at all. Within a few years it should be considerably easier for someone who is unable to read a traditional print book to find an alternative. [hat tip: ]
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Google talks up its self-driving cars’ cyclist-detection algorithms
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Devin Coldewey
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Today might be conspicuous in the annals of autonomous vehicles for a , but another month is over and Google has issued its self-driving car report for June. In it are some interesting details about the system’s ability to detect and avoid cyclists. “Cyclists are fast and agile — sometimes moving as quickly as cars — but that also means that it’s hard for others to anticipate their movements,” “Our cars recognize cyclists as unique users of the road, and are taught to drive conservatively around them.” The LIDAR and other sensors on the vehicles can detect bikers in any direction, or even every direction at once, as this illustration shows. That’s somewhere over a hundred Googlers riding their bikes around a stationary self-driving car. This is what they do all day in Mountain View, apparently. Each bike was tracked individually and its likely path predicted, probably giving the car’s AI an anxiety attack. When cyclists are detected, they’re given extra room, and the cars won’t attempt to pass if the bike is taking up the whole lane (rarely convenient for drivers, but often necessary, cyclists will surely agree). Hand signals are also seen, understood and taken into account when predicting a cyclist’s path later on, after the signalling hand has returned to its grip. Two fender-benders occurred in June, neither the Google car’s fault and neither causing more than scraped bumpers.
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Games company Paradox Interactive raises $11.8M from the crowd
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Haje Jan Kamps
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, best known for developing and publishing a series of popular games, including Hearts of Iron, Stellaris and Europa Universalis today announced it on the new Swedish equity crowdfunding platform Pepins. The campaign was off to a strong start, raising the first $3 million in a mere eight minutes, before going on to fill out its 100 million Swedish Kronor ($11.8 million) round in what is among one of the biggest equity crowdfunding campaigns we’ve seen in the gaming space so far. Significantly, the equity crowdfunding campaign went live just ahead of aimed at smaller, fast-growing companies in Europe. At close of market on Friday, the company was trading at SEK 51.75; great reason to celebrate for the people buying into the crowdfunding campaign — they bought at SEK 33. The campaign is a big win for Pepins, as the platform only launched a few months ago.
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Invoxia’s Voice Bridge puts your landline in your pocket
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Haje Jan Kamps
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If you’ve ever wished you could roll out a five-mile extension cable for your home phone so you can get your calls when you’re out and about, may be the solution to your globetrotting woes. It’s a virtual phone that connects your landline to your Wi-Fi, making it available via an app. It’s a box. With a light. The utterly minimalist box is smarter than it looks, giving your poor old beleaguered landline another last raspy breath before it continues its slow crawl to obsolescence. To use the $99 Voice Bridge, plug it into the phone socket and pair it with your Wi-Fi connection. From the telcos’ point of view, Voice Bridge masquerades as a normal phone, which greatly reduces the setup hassles. Once you’ve configured the or app, your calls will be forwarded to your mobile phone. Just like that. In addition to call routing, Voice Bridge enables users to synchronize address books and see the Caller ID for people calling the landline phone. It’s also possible for more than one person to answer at the same time, in case you want to do impromptu phone conferences. It seems like a pretty good idea, until you see the price tag; at $99, it isn’t a particularly cheap device, and geeks will be able to roll their own solutions for next to no money. You can replicate most of Voice Bridge’s functionality for free with , a or . On top of that, a already offer free or cheap call forwarding as part of their standard packages — but let’s face it, remembering what sequence of stars, hash symbols and numbers to press to forward your home phone is a user experience that belongs in the mid-1990s. Having said that, I don’t doubt that the Voice Bridge will find itself a market among those who aren’t particularly tech-savvy. For users where ease of use is worth more than the one-off cost of the box, it might just be the right tool for the job.
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Exploiting machine learning in cybersecurity
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Ben Dickson
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Thanks to technologies that , companies are able to perform tasks that previously were impossible. But the added benefit does come with its own setbacks, specifically from a security standpoint. With reams of data being generated and transferred over networks, cybersecurity experts will have a hard time monitoring everything that gets exchanged — potential threats can easily go unnoticed. Hiring more security experts would offer a temporary reprieve, but the cybersecurity industry is already dealing with , and organizations and firms are hard-pressed to fill vacant security posts. The solution might lie in machine learning, the phenomenon that is transforming an increasing number of industries and has become buzzword in Silicon Valley. But while and artificial intelligence, is it conceivable to convey to machines a responsibility as complicated as cybersecurity? The topic is being hotly debated by security professionals, with strong arguments on both ends of the spectrum. In the meantime, tech firms and security vendors are looking for ways to add this hot technology to their cybersecurity arsenal. Simon Crosby, CTO at , calls machine learning , arguing that “there’s no silver bullet in security.” What backs up this argument is the fact that in cybersecurity, you’re always up against some of the most devious minds, people who already know very well how machines and machine learning works and how to circumvent their capabilities. Many attacks are carried out through minuscule and inconspicuous steps, often concealed in the guise of legitimate requests and commands. Others, like Mike Paquette, VP of Products at , argue that , and it will shine in securing IT environments as they “grow increasingly complex” and “more data is being produced than the human brain has the capacity to monitor” and it becomes nearly impossible “to gauge whether activity is normal or malicious.” Stephan Jou, CTO at , is . He acknowledges that AI is still not yet ready to replace humans, but it can boost human efforts by automating the process of recognizing patterns. What’s undeniably true is that machine learning has very distinct use cases in the realm of cybersecurity, and even if it’s not a perfect solution, it is helping improve the fight against cybercrime. The main argument against security solutions powered by unsupervised machine learning is that they churn out too many false positives and alerts, effectively resulting in alert fatigue and a decrease in sensibility. On the other hand, the amount of data and events generated in corporate networks are beyond the capacity of human experts. The fact that neither can shoulder the burden of fighting cyberthreats alone has led to the development of solutions where . MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab ( ) has led one of the most notable efforts in this regard, , an adaptive cybersecurity platform that uses machine learning and the assistance of expert analysts to adapt and improve over time. The system, which takes its name from the combination of artificial intelligence and analyst intuition, reviews data from tens of millions of log lines each day and singles out anything it finds suspicious. The filtered data is then passed on to a human analyst, who provides feedback to AI by tagging legitimate threats. Over time, the system fine-tunes its monitoring and learns from its mistakes and successes, eventually becoming better at finding real breaches and reducing false positives. , “Essentially, the biggest savings here is that we’re able to show the analyst only up to 200 or even 100 events per day,” which is considerably less than the tens of thousands security events that cybersecurity experts have to deal with every day. The platform was tested during a 90-day period, crunching a daily dose of 40 million log lines generated from an e-commerce website. After the training, AI was able to detect 85 percent of the attacks without human assistance. Finnish security vendor is another firm that has placed its bets on the combination of human and machine intelligence in its most recent cybersecurity efforts, which reduces the time it takes to detect and respond to cyberattacks. On average, it . F-Secure wants to cut down the time frame to 30 minutes with its . The system gathers data from a combination of software installed on customer workstations and sensors placed in network segments. The data are fed to threat intelligence and behavioral analytics engines, which use machine learning to classify the incoming samples and determine normal behavior and identify outliers and anomalies. The system uses near-real-time analytics to identify known security threats, stored data analytics to compare samples against historical data and big data analytics to identify evolving threats through anonymized datasets gathered from a vast number of clients. At the heart of the system is a team of cybersecurity experts who will go through the results of the machine learning analysis and ultimately identify and handle security incidents. With the bulk of the work being carried out by machine learning, the experts and software engineers can become much more productive and focus on more advanced concepts, such as identifying relationships between threats, reverse engineering attacks and enhancing the overall system. “The human component is an important factor,” . “Attackers are human, so to detect them you can’t rely on machines alone. Our experts know how attackers think, the very tactics they use to hide their presence from standard means of detection.” While data gathered from end points and network traffic help in identifying threats, it only accounts for a small part of the cybersecurity picture. A lot of the intelligence and information required to detect and protect enterprises from emerging threats lies in unstructured data such as blog posts, research papers, news stories and social media posts. Being able to make sense of these resources is what gives cybersecurity experts the edge over machines. Tech giant wants to bridge this gap by taking advantage of the natural language processing capabilities of its flagship artificial intelligence platform . The company intends to take advantage of Watson’s unique capabilities in sifting through unstructured data to read and learn from thousands of cybersecurity documents per month, and apply that knowledge to . “The fascinating difference between teaching Watson and teaching one of my children,” Caleb Barlow, vice president at IBM Security, , “is that Watson never forgets.” Combining this capability with the data already being gathered by IBM’s threat intelligence platform, , the company wants to address the shortage of talent in the industry by raising Watson’s level of efficiency to that of an expert assistant and help reduce the rate of false positives. However, Barlow doesn’t believe that Watson is here to replace humans. “It’s not about replacing humans, but about making them superhumans,” he said . If the experiment is successful, Watson should deploy to enterprise customers later this year as a cloud service named . Until then, it has a lot to learn about how cybersecurity works, which is no easy feat. Cybersecurity startup uses a slightly different approach to glean information from unstructured data. Its cybersecurity platform uses a set of sophisticated proprietary tools that anonymously gather data related to its customers from the surface web (public search engines), deep web (non-indexed pages) and dark web (TOR-based networks). The collected data is analyzed by a sentiment-based machine learning engine that discerns the general emotion of content. The mechanics behind the technology include mathematical engines that produce adaptive models of behavior of threat actors and determine the danger they pose against the client. The results are finally submitted to analysts who process the information and spot potential risks. This technique gives the cybersecurity firm the unique ability to monitor billions of results on a daily basis, identify and alert about the publication of potentially brand-damaging information and proactively detect and prevent attacks and data loss before they happen. “To date, human intelligence is still the most pointed form of intelligence and can be the most effective in a specific operation or crisis,” says Brook Zimmatore, the company’s CEO. “However, focus on Machine Learning technology across any industry is vital as human efforts have their limitations.” It’s still too early to determine whether any of these efforts will result in cybersecurity experts being totally replaced by machine-learning-based solutions. Maybe the balance will shift in the future, but, for the moment, humans and robots have no other choice than to unite against the ever-increasing threats that lurk in cyberspace.
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The silver lining of Google’s diversity efforts
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Google has had a big week around diversity. The company gifted a $2.8 million office space inside its New York City building to Black Girls Code, appointed , and released its . Most of this was good news. Having a space inside Google’s office could potentially give Black Girls Code more access to mentorship and internship opportunities at the company. It also means that Google employees in New York will be able to have regular interactions with young girls of color. Ferguson’s appointment to the board of directors marks the first time Google has had a black board member, which is important for the sake of equal representation at the top. In Google’s latest diversity report, we saw that overall representation of women went from to 31% female in 2015. Here’s where the bad news comes in: the overall percentage of black and Hispanic people did not increase at all, with overall representation of blacks remaining at 2% and Hispanics remaining at 3%. In 2015, only 4% of Google’s hires were black and 5% of its hires were Hispanic. If Google really wants to move the needle, the company needs to stop hiring such small numbers of black and Hispanic people. Although Google did not break out what group made up the majority of its 2015 hires, my bet is that the majority of hires last year were white. It feels as if Google was buttering us up all week so that when the bad news dropped, it wouldn’t sting as badly.
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13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week
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Anna Escher
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This week, Airbnb sued the city of San Francisco, details about a fatal Tesla autopilot crash came to light and Facebook changed the News Feed again. Here are the top tech stories of the week. Airbnb is taking its beef with the city of San Francisco to court. over a new law that requires Airbnb to verify that its hosts have registered with the city before showing online ads for their homes. The suit aims to block the law from going into effect as scheduled on August 1. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into that occurred while the company’s was activated. Following the news, Mobileye (the company helping power the carmaker’s Autopilot feature) said Tesla’s auto-braking tech , which involved a laterally crossing vehicle. On the social side of the tech world, Facebook changed the News Feed once again. This time, the News Feed will prioritize . Still, the best way to improve your News Feed is to teach it. Hide and unfollow what’s boring or annoying. Like something if you actually like it. , and they’re actually pretty cool. this week, and is somehow still alive. We learned that , which offers exclusives and early releases from big artists like Beyoncé and Kanye West. If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em. . The VC giant is definitely not losing its mojo. BuzzFeed got its hands on a arranged by Palantir for its employees. The docs showed that the company asked current and former employees to agree to a host of stipulations. Among them, Palantir asked former employees to renew their non-disclosure agreements, agree not to solicit Palantir employees for 12 months and promise not to sue the company or its executive. It looks to us like Spotify and Apple are back at it again. It appears that , citing business model issues. Shortly before that, Spotify turned off billing within the Spotify iOS app altogether, cutting off free users’ ability to upgrade and even shutting off existing premium mobile users’ payments. at an event in Denver. Almost immediately, the proposal began to generate criticism. The controversial part isn’t the section on encryption, net neutrality or any of the other divisive policy issues that plague the tech industry. Instead, it’s the . The . The $300 million between Japan and the U.S. West Coast is 9,000 km and can deliver up to 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth. Google introduced , a new hardware platform that teaches kids how to code. Google launches Project Bloks, a new open hardware platform for teaching kids to code http://tcrn.ch/28ZaoDV Posted by on Monday, June 27, 2016 On the startup front, a company called . It’s no secret in the tech world that Twitter is in trouble. John Mannes speculated about what could happen if larger tech companies bought up the little blue bird. Google, Microsoft, News Corp.? CDN network Akamai published an interesting report that concluded , to 6.3 Mbps (a 23 percent increase year over year). Who’s in the lead for fastest connection speed? South Korea.
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Amazon Prime Video gets exclusive deal for most PBS Kids shows
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Lucia Maffei
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will be the exclusive subscription streaming service for the majority of PBS series for children, Amazon today. All episodes are now available to download and stream. Prime members in the U.S. can watch PBS episodes via the Amazon Video app for TVs, connected devices including Fire TV, mobile devices and online. The shows will also be available with Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, a subscription service that offers kid-friendly books, TV shows, apps and games. “We’re committed to making Prime Video the best destination for kids and family programming that will both educate and entertain,” said Brad Beale, Vice President of Worldwide Television Acquisition for Amazon. “PBS Kids shows have been developed with the needs of today’s children in mind and focus on fundamental academic areas such as literacy, science, technology, engineering and math, in addition to collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity,” said Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice president and general manager at PBS. The list of PBS shows now available on Prime includes Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood (Seasons 1-6), Arthur (aimed at the 4- to 8-year old), Dinosaur Train, Wild Kratts, Nature Cat, Odd Squad, Peg + Cat, Martha Speaks and WordGirl. Programs will premiere on PBS stations and then will be made available on Amazon Prime Video after a period of time, the company explained. A selection of the PBS series is already available on Prime Video aside from a show meant to spark children’s interest in astronomy. Currently, Amazon users can buy an episode for $2.99 and an entire season for $9.99. will be included in Amazon Prime Video starting August 15.
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NASA captures enormous aurora on the largest planet in the solar system
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Emily Calandrelli
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Days before the Juno spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, astronomers have an enormous aurora at the north pole of Jupiter. The imagery, released this week, was taken back on May 19 using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as part of a program to study how solar wind affects auroras on Jupiter. Hubble Tracks Bright Auroras on Jupiter This composite video illustrates the auroras on Jupiter relative to their position on the giant planet. As on Earth, auroras are produced by the interaction of a planet's magnetic field with its atmosphere. The Jupiter auroras observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are some of the most active and brightest ever caught by Hubble, reaching intensities over a thousand times brighter than those seen on Earth. Hubble's sensitivity to ultraviolet light captures the glow of the auroras above Jupiter's cloud top.The auroras were photographed on May 19, 2016, during a series of far-ultraviolet-light observations taking place as NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches and enters into orbit around Jupiter. The aim of the program is to determine how Jupiter's auroras respond to changing conditions in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted from the sun.The full-color disk of Jupiter in this video was separately photographed at a different time by Hubble's Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, a long-term Hubble project that annually captures global maps of the outer planets.Auroras are formed when charged particles in the space surrounding the planet are accelerated to high energies along the planet's magnetic field. When the particles hit the atmosphere near the magnetic poles, they cause it to glow like gases in a fluorescent light fixture. Jupiter's magnetosphere is 20,000 times stronger than Earth's. These observations will reveal how the solar system's largest and most powerful magnetosphere behaves.Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Nichols (University of Leicester), and G. Bacon (STScI)Acknowledgment: A. Simon (NASA/GSFC) and the OPAL team Posted by on Thursday, June 30, 2016 The video above was created by pairing many far-ultraviolet images from Hubble with a full-color disk of Jupiter that was photographed at a different time. Like on Earth, an aurora is produced when highly charged particles interact with the atmosphere. For Earthlings, the light show begins with our incredibly active sun, which sends charged particles, in the form of solar wind, out into the solar system. In addition to the sun, Jupiter has an additional source to charged particles: its volcanic moon, Io. Montage of an image of Jupiter and a separate image of Io taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2008 / Image courtesy of NASA For both Earth and Jupiter, these charged particles ultimately hit magnetic fields, which direct the particles to the north and south poles. The charged particles excite atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, and when these atoms and molecules return from their excited state, they emit a photon: a small burst of energy in the form of light. In fact, the colors of the aurora depend on the atoms and molecules present in the atmosphere. On Earth, we know this phenomenon as the northern lights, or the aurora borealis. They also happen in the south pole (aurora australis). We just don’t hear the term “southern lights” often because there are fewer people there to witness them. Jupiter’s aurora is especially interesting to study because the planet’s magnetosphere is roughly 20,000 times stronger than the Earth’s. For this reason, Jupiter’s auroras are also hundreds of times more energetic than the ones we have on our planet. By studying Jupiter’s auroras, scientists can better understand how the most powerful magnetosphere in the solar system behaves compared to the smaller one at home that we know so well. The aurora seems to be lighting the way for NASA’s spacecraft, scheduled to reach Jupiter’s orbit on July 4. As Hubble observes and measures the auroras, Juno will be on location measuring the properties of the solar wind itself. “These auroras are very dramatic and among the most active I have ever seen. It almost seems as if Jupiter is throwing a firework party for the imminent arrival of Juno.” Jonathan Nichols, University of Leicester, U.K. Principle Investigator of the Jupiter aurora study Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field may be good for pretty light shows, but it’s not particularly great for orbiting spacecraft. Juno had to be specially designed to withstand Jupiter’s dangerous environment. Equipment on board was radiation-hardened to make Juno’s electronics resistant to damage, at least for a period of time. Once in orbit, Juno will measure Jupiter’s magnetic and gravitational fields. It will also have a camera to capture high-resolution images of the planet, including pictures of the poles from above — something that has never been done before. Unfortunately, Juno won’t be able to survive forever. The mission is designed to complete 36 orbits of Jupiter and then de-orbit into the planet, meeting its end in 2018. Juno’s journey around Jupiter begins July 4 at 11:18 pm ET. At that time, the spacecraft will ignite its main engine for 35 minutes until it reaches the desired orbit around the gas giant. Scientists will then have just a small number of precious months to capture as much data as possible before Juno succumbs to damage and must end its mission.
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