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Iran has banned Clash of Clans for promoting violence and tribal conflict
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Amir Bozorgzadeh
| 2,016 | 12 | 30 |
Earlier this week The Ministry of Justice in Iran blocked because psychologists in the country believe the game promotes violence and what they are describing as ‘tribal conflict’. They also state that, among other findings, that the game negatively affects family life for youth, who psychologists believe are addicted to playing. I reported that close to two-thirds of mobile gamers in Iran played the game. Players first reported having trouble accessing the game and then the ban was confirmed when the app was removed from Iran’s most popular third party app store, (which only began publishing the popular title earlier this spring). Judiciaries took action after the made the recommendation to remove the game. The regulatory body had received a report from psychologists about the game. In August, Iran was the first country to ban Pokémon Go over — which, although a severe action to take — was at least based on reasons that many authorities around the world had also expressed. There are rumors in the gaming community in Iran that Supercell’s other title, Clash Royale, is next to be axed. The unprecedented move bodes poorly for any other strategy games that are currently published in the Islamic Republic, most notably Clash of Kings by Elex-Tech, which has been popular for years now. But how long before it cascades over to other categories that include any gaming content that is considered to be ‘too addictive’? None of this is exactly surprising since the country is well known for its strict stance on filtering digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, along with most . Before Supercell entered the Iran market with a localized version of Clash of Clans, Iranians accessed the game through foreign country app stores and paid for in-game purchases with gift cards that are in mass supply in the country’s black market. The localized version allowed Iranians to pay for in-game items and upgrades using their local currency, the Iranian rial. But this boon didn’t make it past the year and gamers in Iran will have to revert back to playing the game in the black market, which they are very acquainted. This however hits them in the same week that Iran’s currency , making the in-game pricing that much less affordable.
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Fam lets you do group videochats directly within iMessage
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 12 | 30 |
In my opinion, one of FaceTime’s major flaws is the lack of group video chat. Sure, apps like Skype, ooVoo and let you do group video chats, but it’s just not as seamless as FaceTime. And while has also recently entered the group video chat race, they are focused more on providing a shared space for all of your friends to pop in and out of a video chat. Enter . The app lets you create group video chats directly within iMessage. Here’s how it works: You download Fam from the iOS iMessage App Store. After being downloaded, Fam will show up alongside the rest of your iMessage apps. When you open the app it takes over the keyboard area; there is only one button: “Create Group Video.” When pressed, it sends a link to your whole group iMessage, which when pressed starts a group video chat between your friends. The video chat takes over the keyboard area, or can be expanded to full screen — but either way, the entire video chat lives inside iMessage and not a separate app. The first time a friend presses “join chat” they will have to download Fam, but each time after that it is essentially seamless. The video quality is pretty good — even when using cellular data. You also can use it for just a two-person chat, but for that you’re probably better off using FaceTime so you can pause it and navigate to other apps. Of course, the app isn’t perfect — you can’t navigate anywhere else on your screen or the chat will end — unlike FaceTime, which lets you use any other app while talking. And there are no notifications when someone joins the group chat — which gets frustrating when you’re trying to get a group of people all to be in the chat at once. But overall, Fam is great for what it is — a super simple way to do group video chats from directly within iMessage. I’d even argue that it’s the only iMessage app I actually use on a regular basis. You can download Fam from the iMessage App Store, or from
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Blockchain technologies entered the trough of disillusionment in 2016, but 2017 will be brighter
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Peter Smith
| 2,016 | 12 | 30 |
What does 2017 have in store for digital assets and underlying blockchain technology? This is a vital question for those in fintech, especially in light of recent news that and speculation that Are the doubters correct? Is this the end of digital currency as we know it? Not by a long shot — though we can certainly expect some ecosystem changes ahead. Consider the following: In the wake of Brexit earlier this year, the value of the British pound, assumed by most to be a “safe” currency, tumbled overnight. During this same period, the value of bitcoin increased. The same trend was seen after the U.S. presidential election. The stock market took a nosedive, yet during the same period, the value of bitcoin went up. Are these two events merely coincidental? Not from where I sit. Both of these data points speak to the secure, borderless, frictionless power of digital assets. Digital assets are immune to control by a central authority, capital controls or currency manipulation. As a result, they are insulated from global risk. More importantly, digital assets are designed for today’s era of digital information, and the underlying blockchain technology has the power to completely overhaul the current financial system, making it more efficient, transparent and accessible. When taking a look at the industry over the last 12 months, the first quarter of this year saw But that investment is starting to pull back. In the first nine months of 2016, . Compared to the same period in 2015, the deal activity fell this year by 16 percent, and funding was down by 7 percent. And we are already seeing some of this reticence play out in the market. For example, just last week, announced they were pivoting away from the buying and selling of bitcoin through their wallet app. Is this evidence that we are at the beginning of the end? Not exactly. In fact, this is what should be expected when you are dealing with technology that radically innovates and transforms something as important as the financial system. Or, in the framework of the much-noted Gartner Hype Cycle, bitcoin has passed the so-called , where “early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.” Instead, the blockchain industry is moving into the Trough of Disillusionment, marked by waning interest “as experiments and implementations fail to deliver.” During this time, many will fail and exit the market, while those that survive will continue to enjoy market success, secure investment dollars and march forward along a path to widespread market adoption. Thus, we are exactly where we should be in the life cycle of an emerging technology with such widespread potential for impact. When I look out at 2017, I do see some shifts ahead in the market.
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Andreessen in hot water for texts he sent Zuckerberg
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Katie Roof
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 | |
China’s futuristic train that floats above traffic now lies deserted
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
It felt pretty awesome to witness the future of transportation unveiled this summer as for testing. One would think that after such an accomplishment the vehicle would be put to use as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening. tells the story of an innovative new transportation solution left to collect dust like last year’s major tech release. After the TEB was shown off in August, the project Next, investors began to pull out of the project. The optics of the ambitious accomplishment have largely been shaped by a series of design oversights. For starters, the clearance under the bus is substantially lower than the height of vehicles allowed on most roads in the country. The train could also cause serious damage to roads, traffic lights and other infrastructure. This is not to mention accusations of illegal crowdfunding and failures to disclose proper information to investors. All of this led to a complete halt in testing. Since then, the TEB has been left in a rusted-out barn — in the middle of a major Chinese road. Despite the fact that the ground that it sits on is still leased out for another year. More than anything, I feel sorry for the commuters who, while stuck in traffic, have to watch a once promising, expensive, infrastructure project lose value in front of their eyes.
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Nvidia is now clear to test self-driving vehicles on California roads
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
The California Department of Motor Vehicles posts a cleared to test self-driving vehicles on public roads in the state, and that list has a new member: Nvidia. The graphics card-maker also builds processing units for use in autonomous driving systems, including those capable of deep learning. Nvidia is working with a number of companies on the list as a supplier of processing power for self-driving, including Tesla and Delphi, but it’s also to help prove and improve its own systems. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-96BEoXJMs0&w=680] You can see one of these cars in the video above, nicknamed BB8 and trained in California. This new license suggests it’ll get more training opportunities now, in real traffic conditions on real city streets. Nvidia is doing this testing solo, with the aim of building its own contained, intelligent learning autonomous driving system — which it could presumably then add to the list of things it can supply to automakers looking for ready-to-drive systems from top-tier suppliers in the future, as an alternative to having to develop their own.
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The Libreboot C201 from Minifree is really really really ridiculously open source
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John Biggs
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Open source laptops — ones not running any commercial software whatsoever — have been the holy grail for free software fans for years. Now, with the introduction of libreboot, a truly open source boot firmware, the dream is close to fruition. The $730 laptop is a bog standard piece of hardware but it contains only open source software. The OS, Debian, is completely open source; to avoid closed software the company has added an Atheros Wi-Fi dongle with open source drivers rather than use the built-in Wi-Fi chip. Open source is not just fun, it’s also wildly important. While Linux on the desktop is still years away, Debian is already fully featured and fun to use and the goes the last mile by ensuring everything is open source from boot time to shutdown. The laptop itself simply runs a quad-core 1.8GHz ARM CPU (Rockchip RK3288) and has 4GB RAM with 16GB built-in eMMC storage. You can add more storage with a microSD card. It has an 11-inch screen and a three-year warranty. Not many of us actively hunt down open source laptops, but it’s nice to know that when we want to wrest our freedom back from the corporate computing giants we have some real options.
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Berkeley project tests tracking imperiled forests with 3D multispectral drone imaging
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Droughts, climate change and deforestation are putting forests at risk worldwide, so studying these ecosystems closely is more important than ever — but it’s a hell of a lot of work to climb every tree in the Sierra Nevada. Drones and advanced imaging, however, present an increasingly practical alternative to that, as this UC Berkeley project shows. Todd Dawson, an ecologist at the university, spends a lot of time up in trees, measuring limbs, checking growth and so on. As you can imagine, it’s slow, dangerous and demanding work — which is why a collaboration with drone maker Parrot and imaging tech company Pix4D was appealing. “Before, a team of five to seven people would climb and spend a week or more in one tree mapping it all around. With a drone, we could do that with a two-minute flight. We can map the leaf area by circling the tree, then do some camera work inside the canopy, and we have the whole tree in a day,” . [gallery ids="1426013,1426014,1426015,1426002"] Drones are, of course, commonly used in forestry and agriculture, but this particular setup is very focused on quickly and repeatedly profiling individual trees. Pix4D’s “Sequoia” camera collects light in a variety of complementary wavelengths — a useful technique called — while also building a detailed 3D point cloud using LIDAR. Between the two, the resulting data can show overall health and growth; it can also be collected repeatedly over weeks or months, creating a time-lapse view. Processing and storing the data is becoming less troublesome as well; to quickly turn around the data and make it accessible for this particular purpose. All that data can feed into prediction models for other things: overall leaf area can help predict carbon exchange, and growth or health patterns can be mapped to climatic or anthropological ones. Dawson’s project was a pilot; Parrot and Pix4D are also through which researchers can get access to drones and imaging hardware — any topic “from archaeology to zoology,” as long as it will “foster innovation in understanding and mitigating the impacts of climate change.”
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Nintendo will pay you up to $20,000 to hack the 3DS
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
So you bought a Nintendo 3DS to play some … but now your Pokedex is complete and you’ve explored every inch of Alola. Now what? If you’ve got a technical background, you might consider poking around the 3DS itself. There might just be a big ol’ stack of cash in it for you. Nintendo has just launched a . Find a bug that can make a 3DS do certain things it’s not supposed to and Nintendo will cough up anywhere from 100 bucks to $20,000. Nintendo is being pretty open with the sorts of things they’re looking to eliminate here. To quote them directly: Below are examples of types of activities that Nintendo is focused on preventing:
– Game application dumping
– Copied game application execution
– Game application modification
– Save data modification As with most bug bounty programs, there are a few catches: the payout is up to Nintendo, you’ve got to be the first person to tell them about the bug (publicly or privately) you’ve got to agree not to ever tell anyone else about the bug. That last one in particular might trip up some people — many a researcher loves to detail their bug hunt to the public once a company has had a chance to fix it. Alas, as Nintendo can’t necessarily patch all bugs out of existence on all consoles (many of which never connect to the internet), they’re trying to keep a tight lid on things. I get the sense that this is something of a dry run for Nintendo — an experiment to see how something like this might work on the Nintendo Switch. As an example: Preventing piracy on the 3DS is listed as one of the main goals, but that ship set sail long ago. They might find some new exploits they hadn’t seen before through this program, but that doesn’t help all of the ones that have come to light since the 3DS started shipping back in 2011.
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Fading anonymous social network Yik Yak is laying off most of its employees
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Yik Yak, the once universally recognized anonymous social network that virally took over college campuses back in 2014, is planning to lay off a “significant” number of employees, first noted by The company is said to be retaining mostly engineers as it notified its team of about 50 employees earlier this morning. In a statement to TechCrunch, Tyler Droll, CEO of Yik Yak, pointed to strategic changes as the cause for the layoffs. While it’s possible that some positions are being shifted around to refocus the company declining download metrics tell the story of a company struggling to find its identity and retain user interest. Yik Yak was founded as I started college in 2013. I had front row seats to the app’s rise and fall on one of the largest campuses in America. There used to be hundreds of up-votes on posts There was a point in late 2014 when employees and ambassadors were setting up booths around Ann Arbor to give out Yik Yak socks and beer cozies. This was clearly the high point for the app and students ate it up. Unfortunately, the company has since struggled to gain prominence outside the aforementioned demographics. The startup presented itself with an overall “scandalous spring-break” vibe, which proved inaccessible to many users. A group of Yik Yak promoters once marched around UofM with a camera to film students responding to blunt, shock-value, questions. While Yik Yak gets a lot of criticism for being host to offensive anonymous content, it has shown me, on more than one occasion, that anonymity can sometimes have value. Students struggling with overwhelming anxiety, depression and traumatic life events have found solace on the platform. In a single night, Yik Yak’s feed could simultaneously include threats to athletes coming off a bad game and notes of kindness and understanding to other struggling peers. . Efforts to rebrand as more of a “local” social network brought out frustration in users who appreciated the app as purely a place to anonymously vent within a shared community. This, coupled with the success of other emerging networks like Snapchat and Instagram, have almost put the app in its grave. Data pulled from the company’s site via Wayback Machine, indicates that Yik Yak had 23 open positions listed on their careers page this time last year. Today, rather than being higher, the company — two of which are for contractors. Ranking statistics pulled from App Annie don’t paint a much brighter picture. Though Yik Yak has shown signs of life at various points throughout its cycles of updates, trusting in the trend, the app has been unable to gain any meaningful traction — particularly in the last few months. Download statistics only seem to make the problem look worse. According to data collected by , Yik Yak received fewer than 100k downloads last month. That’s worldwide data across both the iOS and Android ecosystems. This time last year that number was over 300k — representing a decline of 76 percent. It’s growing increasingly likely that Yik Yak will fall into complete obscurity, just like the messages of users who anonymously posted on it. That said, I’d still bet a hefty sum that Yik Yak’s failure will create a void that can only be filled by the next niche, risqué, social media platform. We’ve reached out to leadership at Yik Yak and will update this post when we hear back.
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Sean Rad steps away from CEO role (again) to run Tinder’s new Swipe Ventures
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Jordan Crook
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
a new M&A branch of the company called Swipe Ventures, which will be led by Sean Rad. As part of the launch, Rad will step down as Tinder CEO and become chairman of both Tinder and Swipe Ventures, with Match CEO and Chairman Greg Blatt swapping out as Tinder chairman to become Tinder CEO. He will remain chairman and CEO of Tinder parent company Match. Put more simply: Sean Rad = chairman of Tinder and chairman of Swipe Ventures
Greg Blatt = CEO and chairman of Match and CEO of Tinder According to the press release, Swipe Ventures will focus on expanding Tinder’s footprint through acquisitions, new business development and investments in new and existing companies. These acquisitions/investments will focus both on the dating space and social spaces overall. Tinder is not new to the world of M&A, as the company has already acquired and , and invested in social app . Even before Match Group spun out of IAC, the company has arguably done more with mergers and acquisitions than it has with actual innovation. OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and HowAboutWe were all Match Group acquisitions, and Tinder was started out of an IAC incubator called Hatch Labs. “Every company, from Google to Facebook to Snapchat, is where it is because of smart acquisitions that are complementary to its core business or long-term objectives,” said Sean Rad in an interview with TechCrunch. “It’s an important strategy for Tinder’s growth and that’s why we are taking it so seriously.” It’s also worth considering that this is the second time Sean Rad has left his CEO role at Tinder. The first time, Rad was forced out of the position following a sexual harassment lawsuit, which was eventually settled with no admission of wrongdoing on either side. However, it took less than five months for Match to , bumping former out of the company. This time, Rad says that the transition is based around the state of Tinder today. He said that he and the team have accomplished the two objectives he had when he returned as CEO nearly 18 months ago: to scale the organization and capabilities to manage a global footprint, and to successfully monetize in a way that would fund the long-term objectives of the company. “While I’ll still be meaningfully involved in Tinder’s strategic direction and expanding the footprint of the product, this next step allows me to expand Tinder’s reach through a new vehicle focused on acquisitions and new businesses,” said Rad. “This is a new chapter in Tinder’s history, and I’m super excited about it.” The exact amount of funds at Swipe Ventures’ discretion is not being disclosed, but Swipe Ventures will fall under the Tinder umbrella. Here’s what Match Chairman and CEO (and now Tinder CEO) Greg Blatt said in a prepared statement: A growth company like Tinder often requires operational and structural changes as it evolves through its multiple stages of development. This new configuration will allow Tinder to capture its full potential. I look forward to continuing to work with Sean and Tinder’s talented team and am eager to see the opportunities that we develop through Swipe Ventures. I’m confident that the incredible leadership we have throughout the rest of Match Group gives me the ability to devote more time to Tinder without our other businesses missing a beat. Overall, we’re rolling into 2017 with lots of opportunity ahead. Tinder has launched a handful of new monetization tools beyond the Tinder Plus premium layer of the app. For example, the company in October 2015 (just after Rad returned as CEO) and, more recently, Tinder launched , a way to pay to skip to the front of Tinder’s ever-growing feed of users. Rad has played a huge role in the company’s monetization, but he says that he will still remain heavily involved in the strategic direction of the company. Still, Tinder faces growing competition from a host of other players, including Badoo-owned Bumble (led by former Tinder VP of Marketing Whitney Wolfe) and a newly pivoted, premium Hinge. That said, the launch of Swipe Ventures may turn Tinder’s foes into friends.
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The NSA eavesdrops on in-flight mobile use too
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Taylor Hatmaker
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
If you’ve been taking your sensitive phone calls at 30,000 feet, well, it’s time to stop. Apparently, the NSA knows about your extremely elaborate privacy workaround — putting your iPhone in the freezer is 2013 — and can hear your calls at cruising altitude just the same. According to a new joint report from on previously unreported content from the Snowden files, the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ have an entire program dedicated to tracking targets in the skies. As airlines back off from formerly strict policies around in-flight mobile use, GCHQ and the NSA have been ready and waiting with their own high-altitude surveillance solution, coming to a commercial airline near you. According to the report, GCHQ had the process dialed in: “To spy on a telephone, all that was required was that the aircraft be cruising at an altitude above 10,000 feet. Secret aerial stations on the ground could intercept the signal as it transited through a satellite. The simple fact that the telephone was switched on was enough to give away its position; the interception could then be cross-referenced with the list of known passengers on the flight, the flight number, and the airline code to determine the name of the smartphone user.” Air France appears to be the favorite surveillance target for this particular flavor of spying, but as of 2012, British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates and more than 20 other commercial airlines were of interest due to easing restrictions around in-flight GSM phone use. The program, code-named “ ,” is detailed in a series of slides on the topic “Using on-board GSM/GPRS services to track targets.” According to the NSA document obtained by , entire flights by carriers Air France and Air Mexico have been designated “possible terrorist targets” for more than a decade. Presumably, the program also surveils private flights, where in-flight calls are commonplace because when you’re rich you can do literally whatever you want. The newly leaked slides outline real-time tracking abilities, noting how surveillance targets can be intercepted upon arrival at their destination. As a slide titled “Travel Tracking” explains: “We can confirm that targets selectors are on board specific flights in near real time, enabling surveillance or arrest teams to be put in place in advance.” While tracking targets via mobile signals is nothing new, monitoring them in-flight offers the unique challenge of a literal moving target. Much to the chagrin of the two spy agencies, surveillance targets could blink offline and pop up on another side of the globe if a strategy like the one detailed in this report didn’t fill in the gaps. After all, there’s nothing an unblinking eye hates more than downtime.
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See you tomorrow in Wroclaw
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John Biggs
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
One more meetup in Poland! I’ll see you all tomorrow in Wroclaw and it’s going to be a hoot! Tomorrow’s meetup is after the conference on and it’s part of the IN-FERENCE conference. We’ll be talking medtech, biotech and anything non-fintech related. You can submit an . Please note that unless you hear from me specifically you won’t be guaranteed a spot to pitch. I’ll see you all tomorrow and hopefully we can drain a Zywiec or two.
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BuzzFeed hires Gilad Lotan as VP of data science
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
BuzzFeed has a new vice president leading its data science team. Gilad Lotan has a long in the field, having most recently served as chief data scientist at New York-based startup studio Betaworks, and before that working in data-related roles at SocialFlow, Microsoft and Endemol. Publisher Dao Nguyen told me that this is a new role at BuzzFeed — the closest equivalent being Nguyen’s old title of vice president of growth and data, which she held until . Among other things, she said she expects Lotan to significantly expand BuzzFeed’s 11-person data science team next year. Nguyen suggested that there are a number of BuzzFeed initiatives where data will play an important role, including international growth and . And beyond that, there’s the growing importance of channels like Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube in allowing publishers like BuzzFeed to reach their audience. “The proliferation of platforms and media on those platforms has actually made data science a much more difficult — but also more interesting — job,” Nguyen said. “Because you have a lot of data coming from a lot of third-party platforms and they all measure things differently” — creating an opportunity to think up “different ways of collecting and analyzing data.” For example, BuzzFeed is currently working on “totally rethinking how we classify content,” in a way that’s less focused on things like format, topic and length, and more on “What’s the motivator of this content? How does it make people feel?” That kind of classification, Nguyen said, also resonates with advertisers: “It’s the kind of mindset that can be applied to a lot of different parts of the core business.” As for why Lotan is the right person for the job, Nguyen described him as “a talented data scientist,” but also pointed to his interest in “the intersection of media and social.” (Check out on fake news and the broader media landscape.) She said Lotan’s other key attribute was “a real appreciation for, understanding of and empathy towards people as opposed to just numbers.” That’s important for working with the BuzzFeed team, but also for trying to understand “why people are sharing.”
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John Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth, has died at 95
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Emily Calandrelli
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth and the oldest human to travel into space, died today at 95 years old. Today, we join the world in mourning the passing of legendary astronaut, senator and Ohioan John Glenn. — Ohio State (@OhioState) Glenn was hospitalized over a week ago at the The James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University, although it is unclear what his specific illness was. The Ohio State University his death in a public release. “The Ohio State University community deeply mourns the loss of John Glenn, Ohio’s consummate public servant and a true American hero. He leaves an undiminished legacy as one of the great people of our time.” Ohio State University President Dr. Michael V. Drake. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot who served in World War II and the Korean war. As a skilled pilot, he and six other military test pilots were selected to join the U.S. Space Program and were known as the Mercury Seven. Glenn was the last living member of this group. The seven Mercury astronauts were (from left) Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper and Scott Carpenter / Image courtesy of NASA Glenn became an American hero when he circled the planet on February 20 , 1962, completing three full orbits on a mission lasting nearly five hours. After this milestone, President John F. Kennedy presented him with the NASA Distinguished Service medal. Thirty-six years later, at the age of 77, Glenn became the to fly in space when he served on the space shuttle Discovery mission on October 29 , 1998. Between his milestone flights, Glenn served as a U.S. Senator (D-Ohio), taking office in 1974. After 25 years, and one year after his last mission to space, Glenn retired from the Senate. That same year, NASA renamed their research center, located in Cleveland, Ohio, the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center. Glenn will be remembered for his service to his country and for his historic flights in the American space program. “The state of Ohio, the nation and the world lost a hero. We at the Glenn College and The Ohio State University lost a friend.” Dr. Trevor Brown, dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.
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Apple Maps adds EV charging station data from ChargePoint
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Just in time for that cross-country holiday trip, Apple’s bringing some key electric vehicle charging info to its ecosystem, courtesy of ChargePoint. The partnership brings location info for 30,000 charging stations, which will pop up in Maps as badges, along with available pricing and hours of operation. Apple’s AI assistant will, naturally, be getting in on the action, with the “Hey Siri, where’s the closest charging station?” and iPhone owners can use Apple Pay to charge the charge. Google’s similarly named competitor has featured charging stations for a number of years now, adding information from the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2011, back when its list of spots numbered in the mere hundreds. And then there are third-party offerings like PlugShare, which is supported by a number of EV manufacturers like Tesla and Ford. Along with the aforementioned EV functionality, Apple’s added a number of other features to Maps recently, including reservations through OpenTable and Uber and Lyft hailing directly from the iOS 10 app. Makes you wonder what else the company .
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Sheryl Sandberg: “People don’t want to see hoaxes on Facebook”
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Taylor Hatmaker
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Today on “ ,” Sheryl Sandberg dismissed Facebook’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Still, she didn’t want you to forget that Facebook plays a relevant part in political and social movements, just not in a way that went on to influence the results of the most divisive election in modern American history. “People come to Facebook to share what matters to them, so the top list is always a reflection of those moments,” Sandberg told “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, discussing Facebook’s . “Not surprising that the U.S. election was the number one topic, because people took to Facebook to share what they care about.” Guthrie went on to ask the Facebook COO if fake news turned out to be more of a problem than Facebook originally thought. “Well we’ve been working on this for a long time and we’ve taken important steps, but there’s a lot more to do. We know that people don’t want to see hoaxes on Facebook and we don’t want to see hoaxes on Facebook. And so we’re working on it, because misinformation is something we take seriously and something we’re going to continue to iterate on the service.” Sandberg’s canny switch to more benign language about “hoaxes” hearkens back to a more , one in which Facebook’s bogus viral content wasn’t yet a thriving with deep political and cultural consequences. Unfortunately, in spite of Sandberg’s claims, all evidence points to the contrary: Since they usually can’t anyway, people care deeply about misinformation. It’s no surprise that, as , fake news outpaced the performance of real news on the platform into late 2016. In spite of all the bad press, Facebook itself clearly benefits from that proliferation. After all, it’s the stickiest content around. When pressed again if deliberately misleading news stories “played a bigger role than [Facebook] thought, in retrospect,” Sandberg elaborated: “Well, there have been claims that it swayed the election and we don’t think it swayed the election. But we take that responsibility really seriously and we’re looking at things like working with third parties, helping to label false news, doing the things we can do to make it clearer what’s a hoax on Facebook.” Skipping over most other topics in Facebook’s year-end top 10, Sandberg then took the opportunity to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, which came in at #4. “That’s also part of what’s happening with Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter has been happening for years—this was the first year it broke into the top 10 on Facebook. And we think that’s partially because the power of Live helps people bear witness. We see people connecting with the big moments, connecting with the small moments, and sharing the things that matter to them.” Notably, half of Facebook’s top global topics from its were political in nature: Sandberg went on to announce Facebook Live’s top video of the year, . Fittingly, the rightful and perhaps sole winner of 2016 did not escape the year without her own share of political .
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GIFs in space! NASA makes an official channel on Giphy
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
In addition to exploring the solar system and performing critical and fascinating research on the Earth itself, NASA produces a lot of cool imagery. And as we all know, GIFs are the best way to enjoy pretty much any kind of visual stimuli — so it is with joy that I can relate that , with hundreds of images from its archives and latest missions. The collection ranges from the classic:
To the fascinating:
And the zany and fun:
Many have links to the science or news item they’re associated with, so you can learn while you mindlessly loop. I counted about 500 total, and more are surely on the way. If you want to invoke one at random through a bot or search for the collection from other apps and locations, #nasagif is the tag you should use. It also uploaded a bunch to , whatever that is.
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NBC is shuttering Breaking News, the Twitter-fuelled newswire it acquired in 2011
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Just as Twitter has struggled to find the right business model to grow faster and make profits, so, it seems, have some of the business ideas that have been built on the platform. Today NBC said that, effective December 31, it would be closing down , a social media newswire service that (surprise) delivers breaking news headlines, best known for its rapid-fire Twitter account but also delivering its content on a site and a mobile app with further links. The news was first broken publicly by Cory Bergman, Breaking News’ co-founder and GM, appropriately enough on Twitter. This is a breaking story I hoped I'd never report: NBC News has decided to shut down Breaking News effective Dec 31. /1 — Cory Bergman (@corybe) He went on to say that “We’re true believers of news that isn’t designed for clicks, but a service that helps people and companies make smarter, safer decisions…[but] As we discovered, such a model doesn’t fit with advertising, and despite a surge of interest in our premium data, the money has run out.” We have contacted NBC, which confirmed the news to us. We also have an internal memo from Nick Ascheim, SVP of Digital for NBC News, that notes that the staff of around 20 will stay on with NBC until late January. “We will be using the time between now and then to try and find new roles for each of them, in News or elsewhere at NBCU. We will also be working with Cory and team to incorporate the best of Breaking News’ features into other NBC News products,” he notes. The full memo is below. It’s a tough time for the news business overall, with new platforms, like Facebook and Snapchat, and new outlets spawned by the rise of digital media, such as Buzzfeed and Vice, competing with an older guard of publishers for the same ad dollars and audience. An earlier iteration of that bigger trend is partly what spurred NBC (and specifically MSNBC) to pick up Breaking News in the first place in and (Twitter handle and domain, respectively). It sounds like Breaking News had been trying out different revenue models, for example working with business clients to provide tailored information. But that is also a challenging space, and if there is an actual market for such a service, it might have been hard to prove defensible. Other companies like Dataminr (strategically backed by Twitter) offer similar services, but with larger, big data and predictive analytical twists. At the end of the day, NBC, like many media companies, still struggles to fit into a tech company hoodie. It was never officially disclosed what the financial terms of the deal were for NBC when it originally acquired Breaking News, but the service definitely grew in users, if not revenues. Today, the Twitter account has . It had a “ ” 1.5 million when it first made its acquisition jump. The Twitter-based service was first started in 2007 by Michael Van Poppel (who is not at NBC) with the premise that it could use social media both to source and spread breaking news. “From thousands of news organizations to millions of ‘accidental journalists’ armed with smart phones, breaking stories are screaming for your attention every minute of the day. It’s increasingly hard to keep track of it all—and know what’s real. Our goal is to make breaking news matter again, instantly alerting you of the stories you need and want to know,” the notes. “No screaming, no fluff, no rumors—just news.” Its team sourced news itself, and also relied on tips from a group of 300 news organizations (not unlike ‘s role in the tech world). In cases where it linked to stories, it drives an average 200,000 clicks a day per link, it says. Full memo from NBC below. All I have just let the Breaking News staff know that we have made the difficult decision to close down . As you know, Breaking News is a suite of digital products — including a site, mobile app and well-followed Twitter feed — that deliver smart and fast alerts, and has been supported by NBC News Digital for nearly 5 years. Breaking News has built up a large following among journalists, government workers, industries whose success depends on accurate and fast news, and news junkies of all types from around the globe. Unfortunately, despite its consumer appeal, Breaking News has not been able to generate enough revenue to sustain itself. We have therefore made the hard decision to close its operations so that we can re-invest that funding into NBC News’ core digital products to help us achieve our ambitious goals for those businesses. Breaking News will cease operations by the end of this month. Cory Bergman and his incredibly talented team — in Seattle, LA, Chicago, New York and London — will remain with the company until late January, and we will be using the time between now and then to try and find new roles for each of them, in News or elsewhere at NBCU. We will also be working with Cory and team to incorporate the best of Breaking News’ features into other NBC News products. I want to thank Cory and his team for all of their impressive and hard work, as well as their unyielding dedication to their craft. Sincerely, Nick
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Amazon debutes first AWS Region in Canada
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Amazon is launching a , its first in Canada, in Montreal. The AWS Canada (Central) Region will offer two Availability Zones as of its launch today, which basically means there are two separate physical data center spots separated by enough distance that a physical event affecting one should not affect the other. AWS already had a number of Canadian clients, but this clients have asked for Canada infrastructure for a while now, and have had to make do with using AWS Regions located in other geographies. Local AWS facilities mean that customers can do more in terms of running mission-critical applications that need the lowest possible latency, and for applications that require data to be stored locally for regulatory or compliance reasons. Amazon’s expansion into Canada means it’s now offering 40 separate Availability Zones across 15 global regions, with planned additional expansion on the roadmap for the UK, France and China in the next few months.
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Molotov activates the cloud DVR feature and raises $23.3 million
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Romain Dillet
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
French startup launched , but a key feature had yet to go live. Molotov users can now bookmark TV shows and movies in the cloud so that they can watch them later. That’s not all, the startup has also raised $23.3 million (€22 million). I’ve already written quite a few words about Molotov, but it’s worth reiterating that it’s the in 2016. In fact, it has been the killer app for my Apple TV. While the service is only available in France and is certainly catching the attention of our French readers, it’s worth paying attention to Molotov in general. I can see other startups and broadcasting companies replicating the same kind of service for their own market. It has been named app of the year in the French App Store and nominated as one of the best apps of the year in the French Play Store. Molotov lets you watch live TV, go back in time to the beginning of a show, catch up on past episodes a few days after they first aired in a single, unified interface. But what if you want to save something and watch it in six months? This was quite easy when we all had VHS recorders, but it has become a bit harder now that we watch TV on a phone or a computer. With Molotov, you can bookmark something and save it in the cloud. It took a few months to make sure that the startup wouldn’t get into any legal trouble, the feature is finally live. You can then stream this episode from all your devices — all you need is your login and password. Some networks have refused the bookmarking feature, such as Canal+ (C8, CStar, I-Télé…) NextRadioTV (BFM TV…) and Arte. Other networks don’t let you start a live show from the beginning, such as TF1 (TF1, TMC…). It’s clear that Molotov is moving a bit too fast for the TV industry. Content providers still think that they can make their own solution on their own and get a ton of viewers this way. But the great thing about Molotov is that you don’t have to download 12 different apps and remember which network aired what. You can simply search for content across all French channels. The startup also raised $23.3 million from its existing investor Idinvest, new unknown investors and business angels, Sky (as ) and TDF. Molotov is now available on the iPhone, the iPad, Android devices, masOS, Windows and Linux, recent LG and Samsung TVs. It also supports Chromecast. The basic service is free. You can get more channels and/or cloud storage space by subscribing to premium options.
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Joe Lonsdale pours $4.55M for alcohol IoT startup Nectar
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
Nationally, bars today lose billions of dollars from improperly managed alcohol inventory. These losses add up quickly as a result of oversized pours, spills and even theft. , a stealth connected-device startup operating out of a Palo Alto dentist’s office (of all places), just locked down a $4.55 million seed funding round from the likes of (8VC + Palantir), (Eclipse Ventures) and the founding family of (brewery) to complete development on a new IoT solution for the hospitality and consumer packaged goods industries. What could it be?!?! I took a trip down to the company’s headquarters to speak with founders, Aayush Phumbhra and Prabhanjan “PJ” Gurumohan, and to do a bit of preliminary due diligence on the company’s product. The Nectar team is keeping the details of their product under wraps for the time being, so I can’t say much, but the problem they’re looking to solve is well-defined and their approach is both scientific and minimally invasive — two words rarely seen together. The value of a bottle of liquor to a bar is not just the cost of the bottle, it’s the potential revenue the bottle presents. If a bar pays $40 for a 750 ml bottle of Laphroaig, and a serving is 44 ml, each bottle contains roughly 17 servings. At a 5x markup, that bottle is worth $200 in potential revenue and $160 in profit. Large bars can stock hundreds of bottles of alcohol, so even a few heavy-handed pours can represent thousands of dollars in lost money. Archaic employee redundancies Solutions on the market today require bar owners to do a lot of work that’s not part of their existing daily routines. Some systems use expensive weights to track inventory, while others have tried to leverage smartphone cameras, but the bottom line is that these solutions are invasive. This is not to mention the millions of dollars that bars spend on their own to duct tape this problem with employee redundancy. All those people in the chart to the right exist, in part, to manage large liquor inventories. Some are in charge of cataloging what alcohol needs to be ordered, others spend their days looking for trends in consumption and some even exist just to look over the shoulder of others doing the stocking to make sure no supply goes missing. The device Nectar is building serves a purpose similar to that of an . The goal is to reduce the barriers standing in the way of the ordering process and to provide an efficient means of collecting real-time inventory data. The key difference between Nectar and Dash is the complexity of what’s being tracked. A Tide Dash button requires a human in the loop to determine when laundry detergent is running low. Nectar aims to track inventory with a combination of hardware and software in addition to building out seamless order fulfillment. Nectar co-founders Prabhanjan “PJ” Gurumohan and Aayush Phumbhra Phumbhra and Gurumohan came to Nectar with previous startup experience. Phumbhra previously co-founded the now publicly traded textbook rental company , while Gurumohan led to support publishers. Both co-founders say that they drink minimally in their free time and the two even built a robotic pourer to pass off the responsibility of making drinks. In the short-run, Nectar will help bars and restaurants regain control of their overwhelming liquor supply needs, but, in the long-run, the data generated from moving a traditionally pen and paper process online will be critical for industry-wide forecasting. Unlike online shopping, you cannot (yet) consume a fine glass of Cognac off your Facebook News Feed. For distillers, applying predictive analytics to consumption data is a tantalizing proposition. We’ll look for more from these guys soon.
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Why edtech startups need to build for overlooked communities
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Shannon Farley
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 |
The education world has been transformed in the past 10 years thanks to the power of technology. But not all communities have been privy to the benefits of expanding mobile networks and devices. Programs like and have increased access to the internet, but low-income students are still shut out of the edtech revolution. The digital divide is no longer just about connectivity. While many edtech startups operate on a freemium model, at the end of the day their products are not designed with the specific needs of low-income, under-connected kids in mind. That’s where nonprofits come in. Most edtech companies in the space are VC-backed, for-profit ventures. However, the majority of these paid products cannot reach the communities ripe for impact. We need to see more education apps designed with low-income parents and students in mind. Edtech startups must rethink their offerings and business models if they want to address education needs holistically. We’re already starting to see companies realize a for-profit model may not be the most effective. In August, the tech nonprofit . An untraditional acquisition, Duck Duck Moose joined without cash exchange. The assets and team came under the Khan Academy umbrella thanks to support from a grant from . While Duck Duck Moose’s apps have been collectively downloaded more than 10 million times, this acquisition points to the fact that this traction wasn’t strong enough for long-term sustainability. The previously paid mobile games will now be freely available through Khan Academy. This proves edtech doesn’t have to exacerbate the digital divide. Startups just need to consider how to build accessible, affordable (or free) tech that caters to the needs of those at the bottom of the pyramid. There’s a sector of education startups focused on bridging the resource gap by developing high-quality education tools that students can access for free. And that’s made possible through a nonprofit business model. CommonLit, Literacy Lab and Hack Club, and many others, are uniquely positioned to reach underserved communities and close the education gap that persists in the U.S. Michelle Brown, founder and CEO of , experienced this resource disparity firsthand while teaching at an under-resourced school in rural Mississippi. She decided to tackle the issue herself, and built a digital platform that allows any teacher to access high-quality literature, curriculum and grading resources for free. Where a for-profit company would have to pay for copyrights to access these literary resources, organizations like , the and the donated licenses to CommonLit because the startup is a nonprofit. This structure allows CommonLit to focus on reaching at-risk students in low-income communities to raise literacy rates nationwide. CommonLit has already reached 30,000 teachers and more than 850,000 students. Similarly, Oakland-based tech nonprofit is working to improve early childhood education in low-income communities. LitLab aims to fix the inequities that result from the fact that . This severely impacts children’s early development and holds them back when they enter elementary school. In fact, . LitLab closes this gap through its free digital content and mobile apps that help parents, educators and caregivers bring children up to speed in areas like language and numeracy so they’re prepared to start school regardless of socioeconomic barriers. Other nonprofit startups are tackling the second digital divide differently. , a student-led coding franchise, empowers high school students in any community to create their own computer science programs without relying upon their school to dedicate teachers and resources. Hack Club has enabled 138 schools around the world to start their own computer science programs, including low-income schools like Roosevelt High in the Los Angeles area. Free for students, the program overcomes the resource limitations that often prevent kids from learning code.
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Reports of a Facebook fake news detector are apparently a plugin
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Taylor Hatmaker
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Facebook is showing red warning labels above fake news links in the News Feed for some users in what appears to be a limited test. TechCrunch attained the screenshot below of the warning from a source. The warning reads “This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: Classification Pending” In some cases, ‘State-Sponsored News’ appears as a reason. The warnings are one of the first visible sign of the new approaches to fighting fake news that Facebook CEO . We’ve reached out to Facebook with a request for comment and will update if we receive a response. The fake news flag tests appear to have been running for over a week, though they seem to be vanishing from some users’ feeds as quickly as they appear. That behavior is in line with the way Facebook regularly tests new product features through limited, live rollouts to small swaths of its massive user base. The warning message in the screenshot is from an instance of the test that appeared live today. It shows a flagged a story from occupydemocrats.com, a website included on a . The headline reads “2,000 Veterans Just Arrived At Standing Rock To Form ‘Human Shield’ Around Protesters.” Notably, this particular news story checks out as true and was also picked up by and , among other reliable fact-checking outlets. That suggests that Facebook is blacklisting entire sites rather than individual news stories. It also demonstrates the potential for false positives in Facebook’s system, where accurate stories are slapped with the “not reliable” warning. Hacker news user noted the same warning feature last week: “Coincidentally, I was on FB today and started seeing a red flag on two friends’ posts reading, “This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: [REASON]” with reasons like state-sponsored news and unclassified. The flag appeared on an article about Pokemon Go that was clearly sensationalist speculation and a conspiracy website about George Soros. Facebook has endured for allowing fake news to proliferate on the News Feed, as some believe hoaxes and misleading stories helped Donald Trump get elected. While at first the company was reluctant to admit fake news was a big problem, media pressure spurred it towards action. Fake news is a scourge that threatens an informed democracy, though it would be risky for Facebook alone to become the truth police. Without proper transparency, that could lead to censorship and allegations of bias, as well as being an operational nightmare for the company. Working with outside verification services, media, or academic institutions could allow Facebook to classify fake news without assuming full control of or responsibility for the decisions about what’s true.
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Snapchat Spectacles, Oculus Touch and Product Hunt: Listen to TCBC 10 with Fitz Tepper
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Spectacles are all the rage, but me and this week’s guest Fitz Tepper have already stopped using ours pretty much. Maybe we’re just not cool. Still, the hardware from Snapchat parent Snap, Inc. is the most interesting gadget created in recent memory, and Snap’s future plays in hardware should be exciting to watch. Fitz is also set to get Oculus Touch next week at launch, which should open up a whole new level of VR gaming options for the Oculus Rift. , actually, and that might finally convince me to get my gaming PC fixed and get my HTC Vive up and running again. Finally we get startuppy as we dive into the Product Hunt acquisition, which was announced today by the company and its acquirer, Angle List. It sounds like a good fit, but PH shouldn’t be too afraid about remaining maybe a little less independent of its new owner. Also there’s some sports talk in there but that’s all on Fitz. You can listen via the stream embedded above, or (and leave a review), or in your podcast player of choice.
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Twitter buys startup Yes, Inc. and scores a new VP of product in the process
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
One-hundred and forty-three. That’s not the new character limit or the number of heads of product Twitter has employed over the few years (though close). That, rather, is the amount of times the new fellow filling that role over the course of the past nine years — a number that includes two recent updates from the past couple of hours acknowledging the gig, one of which was enthusiastically retweeted by Jack Dorsey about an hour or so ago. Yes! Keith and team are joining Twitter to help lead and strengthen our service! — jack (@jack) The role, which has been vacant since the summer, has seen a number of names come and go as the service has struggled to figure out the ideal way forward in the face of new competition and mounting user complaints. The gig was filled, most recently, by Jeff Seibert, who went back to his previous job at Twitter development platform Fabric, back in June. The new VP of Product, Keith Coleman, steps into the role as part of Twitter’s purchase of seven-person mobile app startup Yes, Inc., where he served as CEO. Prior to that gig, the exec worked as a product manager for another little startup called Google. Yes, Inc.’s other half-dozen employees will also be joining the Twitter staff, with design and product roles at the company. Yes, meanwhile, its own offerings in the coming weeks, in anticipation of the transition. That should give Coleman some time to engage a bit more with the platform he’ll be helping lead. Only 6,100 or so until he catches up with his predecessor.
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Motorola won’t release a new smartwatch any time soon, which doesn’t bode well for Android Wear
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Two key things we learned during a Motorola press event in Chicago this week: 1) The company’s bullish on modular phones and 2) Not . The Lenovo-owned smartphone maker’s head of global product development Shakil Barkat told the audience that, “We don’t see enough pull from the market at this point to put out a new product,” when speaking of the Moto 360. Barkat cited a lack of broad appeal for the space. Which, let’s be honest, doesn’t say a lot about the health of Google’s Android Wear operating system. The Moto 360 was easily one of the best pieces of hardware to adopt the smartwatch OS, keeping with it for two generations of devices, even as companies like Samsung abandoned ship for their own proprietary software. Those offerings make a strong case for developing a software solution custom-made for a device — especially in light of the number of potential variables present on a wearable. And the recently announced delay of Wear 2.0 certainly hasn’t helped its case. The OS, which was due out this fall, was pushed to early next year back in September. The executive suggested that there may be a new smartwatch in Motorola’s future somewhere down the road, saying that the “wrist still has value,” but the short-term prognosis is pretty grim.
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BOTS Act punishing online scalpers passes Senate, moves on to the House
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Scalpers who use bots to slam ticket websites and snatch up a huge proportion of seats at popular shows may soon find themselves in violation of federal law. The Senate and House have both passed versions of a bill criminalizing the practice. , or the BOTS Act, basically prohibits the circumvention of security measures and website policies governing how many tickets one can buy. Scalpers would set up networks of computers (likely virtualized) armed with credit cards and fake buyer info to hammer sites like Ticketmaster as soon as ticket sales went live. The result, as you’ve probably experienced yourself, was often major slowdowns and ticket shortages — though of course you could get that $40 ticket for $100 an hour or two later on StubHub, Craigslist, or Facebook. Interstate sales of bot-acquired tickets would also be made illegal. passed the House in September, and the Senate version passed yesterday is largely the same, except that the former also prohibits sale of software intended to be used for bot scalping purposes. This modified Senate version will head back to the House for re-approval, then it’s on to the President.
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Bullpen closes its third fund at $75 million to back post-seed stage startups
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
, a venture firm that specializes in post-seed stage deals, has closed its third fund at $75 million. The firm invests in companies that previously closed a seed round of investment and showed solid signs of traction, but have been dubbed too early for traditional VCs. Bullpen founder said, “Our rounds get the CEOs real coverage. We put founders in bootcamp for a year, in essence, so they’re ready to scale which is what Series A rounds are for. Many of our founders looking back say the spot where they really needed help was the Bullpen round.” Martino convened his firm’s annual in San Francisco today to talk about the unique challenges and opportunities for investors and founders in this stage of business. Past investments by Bullpen have ranged broadly across industries. The firm was an early backer in the platform that helps nonprofits raise funds online and manage their donor relationships, FanDuel, the pioneering daily fantasy sports site which recently , a company making airspace management systems for lower airspace where consumer and commercial drones will fly and a subscription commerce player in bath and beauty, called . Martino said most U.S. startups in the post-seed stage are looking for $2 million to $4.5 million in financing, or sometimes even more, before they are ready to pitch venture firms to raise a Series A round, or simply live off their profits. The cost of doing business has risen for companies in some over-hyped categories, Martino said, like virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. But Bullpen focuses on startups in categories that have fallen out of favor with VCs and the startup ecosystem. “Whatever was hot two or three years ago is exactly what we’re investing in. Like when we did our first fund, nobody wanted to do ecommerce. We did an ecommerce deal and soon Dollar Shave Club and Jet bought in huge deals, and now everybody wants in on the good ecommerce brands. The beauty of this is I don’t have to prognosticate… We know we don’t know how to predict the future, but we know how to identify the good companies that are still around from that accelerator batch three years back.” Martino said the firm looks for startups well outside of the Silicon Valley community, and looks for founders who have a “chip on their shoulders,” because they’re doing well fundamentally, but aren’t courted by other venture firms and partners. Bullpen also likes companies that are attracting an outsized share of customers before copycats show up, Martino noted. Limited partners in Bullpen’s new fund include a number of large, institutional investors, including Greenspring and Oberlin College, but he did not have permission to name all of them. The presence of these institutional investors in a quirky fund like Bullpen may be a harbinger of things to come in venture capital. It won’t be surprising if other microfunds, or possibly venture firms, begin investing more in the post-seed stage where Bullpen has carved out a niche.
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Juniper Networks acquires cloud optimization service AppFormix
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
, a cloud operations management and optimization startup, today announced that it has been acquired by publicly traded networking company . AppFormix was founded in 2013 by Sumeet Singh, who previously worked at Microsoft and Cisco. At Microsoft, he started the Windows Azure Networking team. AppFormix works with any OpenStack or Kubernetes distribution and helps operators gain real-time insights into the state and health of their clouds, then allows them to take action based on this information (and to automate many of those processes). More importantly, though, it also includes some predictive features that prevent issues in the first place. The service also features some automated orchestration tools that help operators avoid the kind of resource contention that can often slow workloads down. All of this is built on top of a big data analytics and machine learning platform — and that’s likely what Juniper was most after. Juniper plans to pair AppFormix’s telemetry and operations management smarts with its product line. “When paired with ’s Contrail product line, AppFormix improves cloud orchestration, security, accounting, and planning,” Juniper notes in today’s announcement. “We believe that customers will benefit from a smarter, automatic, and agile operational experience at lower total costs.” AppFormix itself will remain a stand-alone brand and will continue to develop its own platform under its current name. Current users shouldn’t notice any immediate changes. “J is focused on delivering agile, virtualized networking technologies to its telecom customers and other operators of large networks,” Singh notes in today’s announcement. “Together, AppFormix and can give customers the best possible NFV experience.” He also notes that AppFormix and Juniper are both deeply integrated with the OpenStack and Kubernetes communities and that the two companies can give those who operate clouds and applications based on those technologies “an automated monitoring environment that’s built from the ground up for DevOps and developer agility.” Similarly, Juniper’s CTO Pradeep Sindhu argues that his company’s customers are looking for a “self-driving infrastructure” and that the acquisition of AppFormix will allow Juniper to accelerate the roadmap to getting there. While Juniper did not disclose the acquisition price, it’s worth noting that has raised a total of $7 million. led the company’s Series A round.
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The Moto Mods ecosystem expands with a car dock and Mophie battery backup
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
At launch, the Moto Z was compatible with three different modular backings (four if you count the shell projector): a Motorola pico projector, a speaker from JBL and an Incipio battery pack. Shortly after launch, the company brought a little camera brand legitimacy to the ecosystem with a Hasselblad back featuring 10x optical zoom. Not a huge number, sure, but it was certainly a more impressive offering than any other recent attempt at a modular handset. Since then, however, things have pretty much slowed to a crawl on the announcement front, as the company focuses on opened up third-party development, partnered with Indiegogo and readied some hackathons. This week, however, Motorola offered a peek into the future, including a . This week the company also doubled down on its commitment to the Moto Mods line, noting that the company plans to launch more mods next year than it did this – the total number of which is now up to seven with . Incipio has come back for seconds, with the launch of the phone’s first snap on auto accessory, the $65 Car Dock, which not only keeps the phone in place vertically or horizontally, but also routes its audio into the car and keeps the phone charged. When docked, the phone switches into Android Auto mode, as well. Mophie has also unsurprisingly joined the fray with a Juice Pack, the second battery add-on for the system. The new Mod is notably larger than its predecessor, bringing a 3,000mAh battery to the offGrid’s 2,200. It will also run you $80, a $20 premium over the Incipio version. Mophie’s model also brings a USB C port for charging while the pack is attached to the phone. Mophie has, of course, been experimenting a . Both Mods are set to ship soon.
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‘Come for the tool, stay for the network’ is wrong
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Marc Bodnick
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
For the past few years, “Come for the tool, stay for the network” has been in vogue as a theory of consumer startup product development. Chris Dixon’s popularized the idea*, and it’s and by investors. Why does this idea have so much appeal? There are several reasons: But as I’ve spent more time around consumer products, I’ve come to the view that this theory is overstated and over-relied upon by entrepreneurs and investors. Many consumer product startups have tried the tool-then-network approach, but it’s difficult to think of any big successes. Building a social product is almost always more challenging than building a great single-player tool, and if your initial product doesn’t include crucial, integrated social functionality, you probably won’t succeed in building a strong network down the road; you’ll either fail altogether, or at best build a weak network. Internet system design is extremely difficult; only a handful of founders/teams have pulled it off over the past 10-15 years. Every great consumer social product started as a network with important social functionality included from the start: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Quora, Gmail, Yelp, Wikipedia, Pinterest — social/networking features defined these products from Day 1. Proponents of the “Come for the tool, stay for the network” theory sometimes indulge in revisionist product history. “Instagram started as a photo filter tool” — wrong; sharing and following was critical from the beginning. “Facebook started as a digital student directory” — wrong; the social friend-to-friend network was key from the start. And it’s not just startups that have relied on the tool→network hypothesis. Google (many examples; e.g. Buzz), Apple (Ping) and Dropbox (Carousel) have all tried to build networks after-the-fact, without much success. And Microsoft hasn’t been able to build any consumer network products starting with their massive base of Office and Windows users. So even with a huge number of users who love your software/service, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to connect them into a network. Counter-examples (i.e. where companies have turned good tools into good networks)? There are some, but it’s hard to think of cases where really strong networks were built: , certain fitness tracking apps, / , games (the network enables leader boards and trading, but, ultimately, when the game gets old, people stop playing it, despite the network). Also perhaps — it’s a very good blogging tool with a good community; but whether it’s a strong network remains unclear, given the level and value of social interactivity. Many failures and disappointments in consumer interactive technology occur because founders/investors believe that a valuable, scalable network is just a short jump from a great tool. And building a great network does matter — a lot — in establishing a sustainable competitive advantage. You could argue that in the modern history of consumer tech products, the only products that have built a defensible advantage without establishing a network were backed by extraordinary institutional knowledge/resources — e.g. Apple’s hardware, Google’s ranking, YouTube’s database of nearly every video ever made post-internet (and even YouTube is coming under nontrivial pressure from Facebook these days), etc. Everything else in consumer technology seems to reduce to perfect competition if the market is valuable enough for anyone to care.
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Earthquake-sensing mobile app MyShake captures hundreds of temblors large and small
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Back in February, seismologists at UC Berkeley released , an app that , both watching for earthquakes and warning users if one is underway. In the months since its introduction, the app has outperformed its creators’ expectations, detecting over 200 earthquakes in more than ten countries. The app has received nearly 200,000 downloads, though only a fraction of those are active at any given time; it waits for the phone to sit idle so it can get good readings. Nevertheless, over the first six months the network of sensors has proven quite effective. Example of an earthquake (the star) and data points nearby. “We found that MyShake could detect large earthquakes, but also small ones, which we never thought would be possible,” one of the app’s creators, , . A paper describing the early results was — the abstract gives a general idea of the app’s success: On a typical day about 8000 phones provide acceleration waveform data to the MyShake archive. The on-phone app can detect and trigger on P waves and is capable of recording magnitude 2.5 and larger events. The largest number of waveforms from a single earthquake to date comes from the M5.2 Borrego Springs earthquake in Southern California, for which MyShake collected 103 useful three-component waveforms. The network continues to grow with new downloads from the Google Play store everyday and expands rapidly when public interest in earthquakes peaks such as during an earthquake sequence. The accelerometers in phones and other smart devices are surprisingly capable, . Having dozens or hundreds of them at varying ranges and altitudes from the epicenter of a quake is an invaluable resource for seismologists. It could also make those in earthquake-prone areas safer, issuing a warning to those nearby and giving them a few extra seconds to prepare and tell others. MyShake also provides summaries of recent quakes around the world and shows you what historic ones would have looked like in your area. I’m installing it so I’ll have a jump on everyone else when the big one hits Seattle, but of course I’m also happy to contribute a bit to the scientific community in the process. The app is free on Android; and help build up that worldwide network.
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You can now wear Spectacles indoors with Rochester Optical’s lenses
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
If are really about sharing your life with the world, we need a solution for capturing the majority of our lives that occur boxed inside buildings. This solution could come in the form of replacement lenses or in the form of an entirely new device. Niche lens manufacturer gave us the first one today with replacement lenses for Spectacles that come in clear optical, sun and photochromic versions. Sure, this is good news for people who can’t wear sunglasses without prescription lenses, but it also means Spectacles can now be used indoors. Lucky Spectacles owners can send their glasses in to be cut and upgraded to any prescription strength (including none at all). From the ascetics of the plating on that hipster dinner you ordered to the smiles on the faces of your family meeting you at the airport after a long time apart, many moments are missed for the sheer fact you would look like an idiot wearing tinted Spectacles inside a fancy restaurant or busy airport. This is not to mention the fact that capturing video with a smartphone is cumbersome and often impolite. Unfortunately, the pricing on the custom alterations put the changes out of reach for most people. Even regardless of price, the average consumer is not going to take the time to send their new glasses in to be altered. What we really need is an integrated solution for capturing video indoors. This could come in the form of something that features two cameras, but it could also just be refined indoor glasses without tint. It’s not necessary that Snap or any other company sell millions of units either. At this point, any product in this category is niche, but I can think of more than one instance where a camera on an ordinary pair of (cool) glasses could come in handy. It’s true that sunglasses have an element of je ne sais quoi that prescription glasses will never have. It also makes sense that Snap’s first cameras were integrated into sunglasses to stay far away from . But there remains an opportunity to help people capture their indoor lives handsfree.
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Oculus shows off the 50+ launch titles for its Touch motion controllers
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Lucas Matney
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Oculus is gearing up for a major hardware launch next week with its $199 Touch motion controllers. That’s nice and all but as we’ve learned, VR hardware is really only as good as the software that exists to shows off its strengths. Oculus seems to be getting this and it’s ensuring that a swath of titles exist that make good use of the new input type. Today, Oculus the lineup of 53 titles that will be available on December 6 alongside Touch. The launch of Touch is a lot more than just Oculus selling a new controller, in a lot of ways its a relaunch of the entire system. The motion-tracked peripherials bring a whole new dimension to gameplay that puts it on par with headsets like the HTC Vive and Sony PS VR which have their own wireless motion controllers. The Rift began shipping in March with an Xbox One controller after production issues forced the company to delay shipment of the Touch controllers. You can take a look at the full list of titles launching in the Oculus Store on December 6 below.
Vertigo Games
Bigscreen
2K Games
Crytek
Funktronic Labs
HandMade Game
Oculus Studios
Q-Games
Ninja Theory
COLOPL, Inc.
YOMUNECO
Radial Games and Northway Games
Phaser Lock Interactive
COLOPL, Inc.
Halfbrick Studios
Liftoff Labs
Cloudhead Games
Limitless Studios
VRBits
TreeFortress
The Stork Burnt Down
Schell Games
Owlchemy Labs
Infectious Ape
Oculus
Reality Reflection
Visual Concepts / 2K
Llŷr ap Cenydd
Oculus Studios
Mechabit Ltd
Tricol
Escalation Studios
Opus
Zero Transform
Zero Transform
Steel Wool Games
Oculus Story Studio
Against Gravity
mode of expression, LLC
Sanzaru Games, Inc.
Croteam VR
I-Illusions
Perilous Orbit and
Cherry Pop Games
Directive Games
SUPERHOT Team
Bossa Studios
WeVR, Inc.
Oculus Studios
Insomniac Games
Fierce Kaiju
Sanzaru Games, Inc.
Psytec Games Ltd
PlaySide VR Oculus seems to be launching with a healthy balance of titles available across platfroms alongside some pretty hyped exclusives. As expected the vast majority of titles are games with just a couple entertainment apps mixed in. All Touch controller pre-orders will be shipping with The Unspoken and VR Sports Challenge as free bundled titles.
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That one time I was tucked in by a startup
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Sarah Buhr
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
There I was on a comfy gray couch, surrounded by pillows and being handed an eye mask in a reserved office space in downtown San Francisco when, next thing I knew, Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of was tucking me in and spraying a relaxing mist over my body. “Sweet dreams,” said his comms person as the two shut the door. That’s when Tamara began to speak… Tamara, in case you were wondering, is the woman behind the voice of many of Calm’s new Sleep Stories feature. Tamara’s soothing voice takes you on a safe, droning mental journey meant to lead you to zonk out and have good dreams. As Smith explains, “It’s kind of like bedtime stories for grown-ups.” Two days ago I went to take a nap for work. The makers of Calm, the aforementioned app for relaxing meditations, had invited me to try out a Sleep Story for myself. So napping, naturally, was part of the meeting and I was invited to try to rest for 20 minutes to a story about a waterfall. And to be honest, at first I thought, because of the rushing water, I might have to pee. But soon thereafter began to drift into a relaxed state, forgetting where I was for a moment. Lucky for me I don’t usually need extra help falling asleep. And, not one to voluntarily give up extra time under the covers, I’m one of those who sleeps extra on the weekends, too. But insomnia is a massive problem, affecting an estimated — and one Smith and his co-founder Alex Tew aim to solve through droning stories that get your mind to relax enough to nod off. Calm as an online relaxation resource and falls into the same vein as other apps trying to tackle the problem of getting to sleep such as Awoken, Deep Sleep with Andrew Johnson and Digipill. Calm has raised $1.5 million from angels since launching and now claims 6 million active users and positive revenues – though Smith says he may start looking to raise new funding sometime next year. Calm also says it also has a pretty popular kids bedtime stories version and would like to introduce celebrity voices in the near future. Smith, who wants to pair the online with the offline, also mentioned possibly opening up a Calm-branded hotel at some point. “Sleep has become the new rock n’ roll,” Smith says. “We want to build the Nike for the mind.” So did I fall asleep to the Sleep Story selected for me? No. But I actually think I would have if it weren’t in the middle of the day, in a strange office and I wasn’t being pinged by work emails and texts at the same time. “So many of us try to get in one more email or twitter or Facebook. Our brains are so wired and stressed,” Smith told me, adding, “The irony isn’t lost on us that we are using the phone for this.” But if you do happen to turn off those notifications and prepare to get some zzz’s, I could see there’s a very good probability you’ll at least feel more relaxed at the end. For those interested in checking out the new Sleep Stories feature, the works on both iOS and Android and costs $12.99 per month (or $60 for the year) to access the hundreds of meditations, bedtime stories and other relaxing journeys.
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Researchers taught Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot to walk gingerly over rubble
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
There’s something strangely comforting in watching Boston Dynamics’ 330-pound bipedal humanoid robot cautiously attempt to navigate a field of uneven surfaces. Something…humanizing, if that’s the right world, as the faceless ‘bot gingerly tests its footholds, slowly and with an abundance of caution, before shifting its full weight to the next block. The IHMC (Institute for Human and Machine Cognition) Robotics Lab out of Pensacola, Florida has developed a system by which the robot can navigate across a series of different surfaces of different sizes and geometries – in the case of the featured video, mason blocks that have been turned on their sides and at various angles, so in some cases the robot has little more than a corner on which to step. Atlas has no prior knowledge of the surfaces laid out in front of it. Using the program, it tests the surface one foot at a time, shifting its weight around in the process and finally applying it to the supported foothold. The process is supported by angular momentum provided by the robot’s upper body as Atlas executes some of the more difficult steps. The project is one of a series of bipedal walking projects being undertaken by the institute. “While great strides have recently been made in robotics, robots still cannot get to the same places that people can,” says the IHMC. “Our humanoid projects are focused on enabling our bipedal humanoids handle rough terrain without requiring onboard sensors to build a model of the terrain. We also focus on robustly handling external disturbance. Our goal is to tackle increasingly more difficult walking challenges.”
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JustEat is now delivering takeout with self-driving robots in the UK
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
The robots will serve you now: Greenwich, London residents have officially begun receiving deliveries from autonomous, six-wheeled rolling cooler bots, which are handling the “last mile” of food delivery from nearby takeout restaurants. notes that the robots are now in “active service,” after they completed a . Before you ask, these bots are designed to be tamper-proof, so passers-by won’t just smell your delicious delivery curry and crack one open to score an unpaid meal. Also, in case you wanted to request one for selfie opportunities, you’re out of luck – they’re assigned at random, and not available via specific request while ordering from Just Eat even if you happen to live in their Greenwich operating area. When I previously spoke to Starship Technologies, the startup co-founded by Skype vets Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis that’s providing the bots for this delivery service, the company told me part of its testing was about finding out how humans would react to seeing the bots rolling down their sidewalks. Seems like in Greenwich, at least, they’ve been pleased with the results – the plan is to continue expanding the number of these terrestrial drones in service in the area, with other parts of London getting their own robots next year. Starship’s robots aren’t just operating across the pond – they’ve been .
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AWS launches Blox, a collection of open source tools for the EC2 Container Service
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
With its EC2 Container Service (ECS), Amazon has long offered support for software containers on its AWS cloud computing platform. Today, at its re:Invent developer conference, the company announced a number of updates to how it supports containers, which are quickly becoming the go-to way to operate distributed applications. Soon, for example, the EC2 container service will become far more customizable. The new Task Placement Engine will allow developer to place containers in certain availability zones. “Container management and container execution for quite a few of our customers — especially if you use some of the open source software — is quite a pain,” As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels noted in today’s keynote. These updates to ECS are meant to reduce some of these pain points and give users a bit more flexibility in how they use containers on AWS. More importantly, though, Amazon also today announced , a collection of open source project for building container management tools for ECS. The idea here is to let you build container schedulers and integrate third-party schedulers like Mesos with ECS. Blox is starting out with two projects which are now available on GitHub: a cluster-state-service and a daemon scheduler. That’s quite an interesting move for AWS, which hasn’t usually engaged with the open source community all that much. The container ecosystem, however, is largely driven by open source projects, so maybe it now made sense for Amazon to start engaging with that community directly. Blox projects will be published under the Apache 2.0 license.
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 8 | null |
Logojoy turns design into an AI-powered, iterative process
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Haje Jan Kamps
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
If you’ve ever had to have a logo designed, you probably know that a lot of love, care, taste, years of training, tons of experience and buckets of knowledge goes into the process. pulls the plug on all of that and goes barreling down a different alleyway, unlocking the power of AI and machine learning to help you throw together logo concepts. The result is astonishingly good, actually. The concept is pretty simple: You type in the name of your company, you pick some icons and your favorite colors and then you hit “go.” The machine scurries off and does its thing, before feeding you a stack of logos. You favorite the ones you like best, and hit “more logos.” Repeat until the heat-death of the universe, until you’re bored or until you have the perfect logo. [gallery ids="1422786,1422788,1422787,1422790,1422789"] Once you’re happy with what you see, the site mocks up a series of examples of what your logo might look like once you’re a big, fancy company: The Logojoy mockups are pretty good! And if you really love what you see, you can hit “buy now” and for $65 download the assets that Logojoy generated for you. That might sound like a lot of money, but honestly, the results coming out of this overgrown cybernetic designer are far better than some of the ones I’ve seen come out of other solutions, such as or , with the additional bonus that Logojoy turns around your logos far faster, and if you never find nirvana-like happiness, you can just elect to not pay for any of the machine-generated examples. If nothing else, Logojoy can be a fantastic tool for generating ideas that you can pass to a real design agency; Saying “Hey, I like these 5, can you do something like that” could potentially save a lot of back and forth. Oh, and did I mention that it’s a lot of fun to play with? Because it is. And you should. .
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Amazon Glue solves sticky data prep problem in cloud
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Ron Miller
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Amazon announced Amazon Glue today at the re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. The tool has been designed to help developers process data, whether the source is in the cloud or on prem. This is sometimes known as extract, transform, load (ETL) of data, and it’s generally considered one of the toughest parts of analytics. As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels explained today on stage at the re:Invent, getting data into a form you can actually use it to perform analytics is hard work. In fact, it’s so difficult, that it’s generally accepted that you spend about 80 percent of your time getting the data ready to be analyzed and just 20 percent getting information from that data. Vogels said, the goal of Amazon Glue is to flip that equation, greatly simplifying the act of processing the data, so that you are freed to do analysis on it, regardless of the analytics tools you are using. This last point is particularly important because many analytics tools require that the data be in a specific format, and that transformation can be a lot of up-front work. Basically, Glue does all of this work for you — whether you’re using Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, an RDS database, or any JDBC compliant database for that matter, regardless of where it’s stored. The first step is to simply point to your data sources, regardless of where they are. It builds the data catalog for you including giving you the opportunity to define access control. Next, it prepares the data by building it in the format required for your analytics package. Finally, it gives you the ability to schedule and run jobs against the clean data set, and if the source data changes, the jobs will run again automatically based on the new information. The whole idea is to remove the complexity from data preparation and maintenance, a task that has tended to be extremely labor intensive, and allow people to do what they actually want to do, and that’s run queries against one or more data sets to get answers based on that information.
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AWS lets developers execute Lambda functions on edge locations with Lambda@Edge
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Matthew Lynley
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Today, Amazon said it was rolling out a tool called Lambda@Edge, that allows developers to execute Lambda functions at edge locations on a content delivery network, cutting down the time needed to make a process. With Lambda@Edge, developers can do processing at the edge locations without having to go back to the original source. These functions are able to inspect HTTP requests and take actions on them. By literally cutting the physical distance that information has to flow through in order to execute parts of an application, developers will be able to improve the performance of their applications running with AWS Lambda. Amazon unveiled the new product at AWS:reInvent today. “Can we do something about the speed of light, no,” Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels said. “But Maybe we can cut the path in half.” With Lambda, developers can simply write and run code without having to provision or manage servers. And yesterday, Amazon said it would bring its Lambda compute tools that . Traditionally, developers would write it in Python, but C# is also now available. This moves the computation to the edge of the network to avoid the latency that a round trip between the device and the cloud would incur. All this is important because, as users start to demand more performance and efficiency, ever millisecond between operations is going to count. By skipping the round trip, users will be able to feel more comfortable that the services they’re tapping into their devices in a more real time fashion. It could also remove the cost of bandwidth that companies — or their users — might incur in order to complete those round trips. It also looks like this is available with CloudFront, which means that Amazon is once again rolling up a bunch of functions within a whole operational suite for developers. That, too, helps give Amazon a competitive advantage over its rivals.
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Spatial helps users navigate like a native
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 |
Lyden Foust was an ethnographer traveling the world on behalf of corporations, living in a city for months at a time to learn what he could, and reporting back to the people who hired him. “I realized people were telling their social media more than they would ever tell me as a researcher,” Foust said. And so he partnered with his friend Will Kiessling, a jet engine software engineer used to dealing with vast amounts of data, to create . Spatial pulls data from “tons and tons of social sources,” Foust said, then uses it in aggregate to help users understand the city like a local would. Spatial pulls from more than 30 sources, including Instagram, , , , and , but also from apps like to find out where people are riding their bikes and weather apps to learn what people do when it’s sunny or rainy or snowing. “If you look at one source, it’s totally junk ,” Foust said. “You can’t understand it . But looking at them in aggregate, you can ask what’s happening on Instagram when it’s raining.” Foust noted that there are many apps that try to get people from point A to point B, from their car’s navigation system to websites like Yelp. “The market is endless,” he said. So rather than building yet another app, Spatial is an API that any app maker or automotive company can license for their own use. In 2016, Spatial participated in the program, and on Demo Day, the company announced a deal with Ford. “If you ask any of these apps, Where’s a Chinese restaurant?, that’s fine ,” Foust said. “But if you ask anything beyond that – conditional questions – you end up on Google for an hour.” Spatial pulls data from its dozens of sources to tell users which bars have sunset views over the water, or which neighborhoods have the best Christmas lights. Spatial is based in Detroit, which Foust said “makes it really difficult to raise money for an app.” Thus the decision to provide the API and sell directly to businesses. It’s a strategy that seems to have worked — is the 9-month-old company’s largest customer, and Spatial expects to close a $2 million round of seed funding next week.
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Hands-on with VR Sports Challenge, the Oculus Touch version of Wii Sports
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
When the Wii launched, no one knew what motion controllers were or why we even needed them. So to get people excited about the new input method, Nintendo released Wii Sports as a free game to anyone who bought the Wii. The game came with Boxing, Bowling, Golf, Tennis and Baseball – all mini games designed to show off the motion controller. It proved to be extremely popular – to date over 82 million copies have been sold, and the game did a great job of convincing people why they needed motion control (remember when nursing homes bought Wii units so people could play Wii Bowling?). Anyways, that was more than 10 years ago. And to be honest, there hasn’t really been a new motion controller since – until now. (and the already released HTC Vive) motion controls are making a comeback. And one of the free launch titles (for preorders) available today on Oculus is called – and essentially attempts to do for Oculus what Wii Sports did for the Wii ten years ago. The game has only three sports – Football, Basketball and Hockey. Here’s a quick rundown of what I though of each one, in order of most fun to least fun. For the football game you’re both the quarterback and the receiver. You pick a play and get to call hike, scan the field, and eventually throw to an open receiver. If you don’t throw in time you’ll be sacked. [gallery ids="1425234,1425235,1425236"] Once the ball is thrown your character switches to the receiver, where you can try to catch the ball with two hands. As soon as you catch it you lose control of the player and he gets tackled. Typically you’re put in a scenario where there are about two minutes left in the game and you need to go score 2 touchdowns to win. Regular football rules apply – like 4 downs and a game-clock – but the timing is a little weird. For example, if you score with 25 seconds left in the game the ball will go to the other team, but they just turn it right back over to you with 25 seconds still on the clock. Nice, but not realistic. Overall, using the Touch motions to play football felt really natural – you just squeeze and release whenever you want to catch or throw the ball. Plus, having VR put you in the “eyes” of the quarterback is really cool – almost like a more interactive version of Madden. Basketball was my second favorite game. Typically it was a similar situation where there was a minute or two left in the game and your team was down. You never play defense, so when you turnover the ball it just goes back to you. You can throw the ball to your teammates as well as shoot, which both happen when you let go of the triggers and make a passing or shooting motion. If you pass to a teammate you automatically take over for them, and need to then catch your own pass. Shooting is pretty hard actually – you really have to make an arc like you are actually shooting, or else it won’t go in. [gallery ids="1425237,1425238,1425239"] There was also an ally-oop feature I found really fun – when promoted you throw it up to the net, then you were teleported to the player who was making the dunk in slow motion, so you could catch the ball and dunk it. Hockey was weird. And Ice Hockey is actually the only one of these sports I’ve actually played. But in the game you’re mainly the goalie, which just isn’t that much fun. It’s also pretty hard – you have to hold an imaginary stick/blocker in one hand and a glove in the other – just like a real ice hockey goalie. These tools don’t exactly translate well to the touch controller, so it got a little hard to play. [gallery ids="1425241,1425240"] Occasionally you can get a breakaway and switch to offense, but all you can do on offense is take one well-timed shot and hope it goes in. Hockey is definitely the least fun of the there. Oh, there’s also apparently a part in the storyline where you start fighting other players, but hockey didn’t keep my attention long enough to get there. There actually is a 4th sport snuck into the game by way of the mini-games area. Called Home Run Derby, you get the chance to grab a bat and step up to the plate. If you like baseball this could be fun, but using the touch controllers to hold a bat also wasn’t that natural – because when you hold a real baseball bat you’re supposed to hold your knuckles close together with a tight grip, and the touch controllers don’t really let you do that. You’re probably only going to truly like and regularly play VR Sports Challenge if you’re a sports fan. It isn’t like the Wii where it does a great job at providing fun for anyone. But if you are into football, I’d argue it’s just as fun as the latest Madden game. If you were planning on using VR Sports Challenge to show your friends how cool VR and Touch is – don’t. You’re better off setting them up with or or any other Oculus demo where they can really explore the full functionality of the hands, without the distractions of the pseudo-sports games provided by VR Sports Challenge.
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Trump fires a member of his transition team for tweeting fake news
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
So-called fake news has real consequences, and everyone in the U.S. keeps learning that the hard way. Not just executives at social networks like , and Or Weather Channel meteorologists. Driven by misinformation masquerading as news, in the latest tragic incident, a gunman on Sunday opened fire in a kid-friendly Washington, D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. According to on the incident: “[The man] claimed to be ‘self-investigating’ a…wholly fictitious conspiracy theory that maintains Comet Ping Pong is the site of an international Satanic child sex abuse cabal hosted by powerful Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.” Thankfully nobody was killed at the hands of the conspiracy-believing vigilante in Washington, D.C. But the day after that shooting, Michael G. Flynn Jr., who was a member of Trump’s transition team, was fired for tweets that continued to espouse the conspiracy theory. The son of Trump senior advisor General Michael Flynn ignored police work that had called the conspiracy absolutely baseless, and ignored the dangerous impact of endorsing a conspiracy theory that’s already led to gun violence. News outlets have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of Trump firing someone for sharing misinformation on Twitter — our PEOTUS is not usually an arbiter of accuracy. His history of deceit via tweet hearkens back to 2011. Then, he embarked on about President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship. The following year, he claimed perpetrated by the Chinese. And, more recently, he adamantly lied to his followers , and would have won the popular vote if not for millions of illegal voters. We have to wonder whose job is on the line next? Even General Flynn has used social media, including Twitter, to spread about Hillary Clinton, baselessly suggesting she was involved in child trafficking.
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Airbnb plummets, Facebook ranks top in tech on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work 2017
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Facebook has risen to the top spot among tech companies on the annual rankings. That seems fitting for the company in a year when it is taking on Slack, Microsoft-owned Yammer, and other workplace collaboration platforms with its own Facebook’s Head of People, , told TechCrunch that the social media giant focuses on being a “strengths-based organization” and wants to be known as an employer that “takes good care of its people overall.” She said, “Most employees speak favorably about their ability to have a real impact here. Many talk about the flexibility in the way we work. Your manager is there to care for you, set context and help you play to your strengths, give you feedback and goals, but let you do whatever you need to get there. It’s not about how much time you spend in the office. This is great for families but was inspired by engineers who, as you know, like to or need to work at different hours and are not seated at their desks all the time.” Facebook also offers a very attractive parental leave package, she noted. Glassdoor compiles compensation data, reviews and ratings by employees about the companies where they work. It makes money through paid job listings, recruiting and employer branding services. Its data sample comes from employees who self-select to offer information there. Last year’s top-ranked tech venture, , plummeted 34 spots in Glassdoor Best Places to Work 2017. According to Glassdoor Community Expert, Scott Dobroski, that was largely due to written reviews from employees who said there has been an increasing amount of bureaucracy and decreasing amount of transparency from senior leaders in the company as it has grown. The sharing economy’s top lodgings business still attained an overall 4.2 rating, out of 5 possible, from employees and did make the list of Best Places to Work U.S. He also said Facebook made the list for the seventh time and topped the tech category because employees raved about their employer, overall, especially around compensation and benefits and perks that make day to day life easier like free meals or transportation. When it comes to Facebook’s areas for improvement, Glassdoor data suggests the company could afford its people greater work-life balance. On a scale from one to five, Facebook employees rated work-life balance at their company around 3.8 compared to Google’s 4.1 rating in the category. Google got slightly lower marks than Facebook on compensation and benefits with a rating of 4.4. Other areas where employees were asked to score their companies included: career opportunities, culture and values, senior leadership, how strongly they’d recommend their employer to a friend, and the business outlook for their employer. Whether Facebook can stay atop the list, or perhaps even top it overall and not just among tech employers remains to be seen. The future of human resources at Facebook will be about “personalization,” Goler said. “Students in middle and high school right now have grown up on shared platforms where they can customize their feeds, whether that’s on Instagram, or Facebook…They’ll enter the work world thinking it should feel similar to those consumer products.” In total, 20 tech companies made the Glassdoor Best Places to Work 2017 list for the U.S. Here they are, with their rankings and overall company score, as provided by Dobroski:
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Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters and show the site’s true scale
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Reddit has just completed a major redo of its scoring algorithm aimed at cracking down on bots and vote brigades while also showing just how big the site has gotten. , admin KeyserSosa explained that the team felt that some of the many rules designed to prevent vote manipulation could be streamlined, especially a few that seemed to result in huge decreases in the final calculated score seen by users. Yes, it’s true: Those numbers on the site aren’t just “upvotes minus downvotes” or anything so simple. The KeyserSosa shared as an indication of how the system works is probably closer to the truth. And he indicated in another comment that there is “some slight fuzzing” to stymie would-be reverse engineers of the algorithm. At any rate, the goal was to remove some of the rules that were resulting in scores of say, five thousand or so, on a post with far more people involved in the tallying process. After all, if 50,000 people upvoted something, shouldn’t that level of participation be reflected in the final score? The change went live a couple of hours ago and, as the post notes, everything is going haywire while the systems chew through the backlog of posts over the next week. But in the meantime, new posts will start seeing higher scores, and the front page has been updated to show a “k” instead of “000” at the end of posts with scores over 10,000. Comment scores should be largely unaffected. Expect things to be crazier than usual over there for the next few days while people figure out how to game the new system.
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You should probably still avoid toys that talk with your kids
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
If you were thinking of getting your kid a little doll or robot that they can talk to — and, critically, that responds — you should probably hold off for a few years. A complaint to the FTC filed by consumer watchdog groups highlights ongoing privacy and security concerns with this creepy class of toy. Now, I hate FUD as much as the next guy, and I seriously doubt that these toy makers and software companies are in a shady scheme to secretly record toddlers worldwide. But when it comes to protecting groups who can’t protect themselves, we can’t be too vigilant — and on the other side of the equation, companies can’t be too transparent or explicit about how information is used and protected at every step. The complaint ( ), filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and a couple of other groups, alleges that Genesis Toys and Nuance Communications “unfairly and deceptively collect, use, and disclose audio files of children’s voices without providing adequate notice or obtaining verified parental consent,” in violation of COPPA and other laws. The toys in question, the girly and chunkily robotic operate over Bluetooth through an app on your phone, which sends voice data to either Nuance or Google servers to be turned to text, and this text is used to serve queries to approved sources (with lots of blacklisted words like swears and other bad stuff). of the allegations. Apart from it being what seems to me an inherently weird toy (back in my day… well, now’s not the time), and the troubling fact that it’s pre-programmed with responses praising Disney movies (!), it’s more or less what you’d expect. The problem comes when you look at how the data is handled. Kids’ data must be handled carefully, per the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — parents’ consent must be obtained, and parents must also be able to review or delete that data. These toys seem to be rather cavalier with COPPA rules. For one thing, the Genesis privacy policy passes the buck to Google and Nuance, which are unhelpfully not linked. Nuance’s privacy policy asks that users not submit data to them if they are under 18, which kids using this toy are likely to be, probably because it uses this type of data for training its algorithms and potentially sharing it with third parties. That’s par for the course with a service like Nuance’s, but when you have a product that’s fundamentally aimed at the 4-8 crowd, better protections are expected. When contacted for comment, Nuance referred to outlining some of the company’s relevant policies, in particular that it doesn’t “use or sell voice data for marketing or advertising purposes” nor “share voice data collected from or on behalf of any of our customers with any of our other customers.” Genesis, for its part, doesn’t indicate whether it retains audio or text of kids’ queries. Are recordings of your kids’ questions staying on its big server in Massachusetts, to be mined for data in figuring out how to market the next version of the doll, or which third parties to bring in as baked-in advertisers? Since they’re not explicit about it, your best move, for the safety and privacy of your kids, is to assume the worst until told otherwise. I’ve asked, by the way. I say safety because these devices — not necessarily those from Genesis specifically, but many connected devices of this variety — generally have poor security. Even and , things you would expect to have pretty robust protections, fall in short order. It’s one thing to have some hacker peeking into your garage, but to have them listening in on your kid while she prattles and plays? The first My Friend Cayla sold over a million dolls, so these aren’t some short-run toy sitting in a bargain bin somewhere. It’s big business, and the creators should acknowledge concerns that devices like theirs can and are being abused.
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Martian adds Alexa to its hybrid smartwatch
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
If you’ve already gone through all of the trouble to stick a microphone and speaker on your hybrid smartwatch, you might as well make the most of the thing. Martian’s taking advantage of the opportunity with the addition of Amazon Alexa functionality to its mVoice wearable. Honestly, as silly as it sounds, this may be one of the most logical third-party implementations of Alexa yet. After all, the wrist makes about as much sense as any piece of real estate when it comes to asking Amazon’s AI assistant questions. It’s always on and close by, and Martian’s analog face lacks even the basic input of other full-fledged smartwatches. Martian will be rolling out Alexa functionality on other watches after the mVoice, including the GUESS Watches it helped build. The addition of Alexa brings 5,000 skills to the wrist, including some legitimately handy features, like calling for a Lyft and creating calendar reminders. As with the company’s other timepieces, the mVoice swaps the LCD for a standard watch face, while preserving a small crawl for receiving notifications. It’s available now for a hair under $300.
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AeroVironment: official charger of the Chevy Bolt
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
The is coming to California and Oregon before the end of 2016, and along with it comes its very own official charger from . The company’s EVSE-RS charger has been available for some time, and AeroVironment is not new to the EV charging game. The company is kind of an unofficial charger for everyone else; it sells models compatible with just about on the market — Ford, Fiat, BMW, Nissan, Toyota even Tesla. And though it’s available through dealerships that sell the Bolt, the AeroVironment charger doesn’t come with the car like a prize in a Cracker Jack box. It’s an official accessory that buyers will have to purchase. The retail price for the 30-amp 240-volt charger is about $1,000. It is a Level 2 charger, which means it will charge your Bolt (or any EV) five times faster than plugging the car into a regular household outlet, which is known in the EV universe as Level 1 charging. The EVSE-RS is rated to be used indoors or out, so if you don’t have room inside the garage to park your car, it can be installed elsewhere so you can charge in the driveway. No other electric vehicle on the market right now has an official charger. Tesla does have the home charger that is designed to work with its cars, but both the car and charger are made by a single company. Other companies like ChargePoint, GE, Siemens and JuiceBox all make home EV chargers that you can buy on Amazon. So it may be easier to buy an AeroVironment charger at the dealership when you buy your Bolt, but it’s not absolutely required.
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Ruvento raises new seed fund to invest in hardware across Singapore, China and the U.S.
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Today, is announcing a new $25 million seed fund for hardware startups in need of capital from Singapore, China and the U.S. The fund, managed by Slava Solonitsyn and Alex Toh, will write 70 percent of its checks between $100k and $500k. The rest of the capital will be reserved for follow-on investments of up to $2 million. Ruvento is not the first investor to take a cross-boarder approach to the hardware space. , among others, has a large accelerator presence in Shenzhen. Meanwhile, it also operates a separate program in the United States for post-accelerator startups that already have their preliminary supply chains figured out. Ruvento is particularly interested in infrastructure hardware. Specifically, the team believes there is a lot of untapped potential around IOT and sensor integrations. The firm also cites commercial applications of drones and robotics as areas of interest and plans to keep its eyes on startups creatively leveraging advancements in virtual reality and augmented reality to solve problems. “Hardware shouldn’t mean gimmicks,” noted Slava Solonitsyn, managing partner of Ruvento. “We are not investing in things you don’t need.” Slava Solonitsyn, managing partner of Ruvento The innate properties of Asia will play an integral role in Ruvento’s investment strategy. In a place like Singapore for example, 12 percent of the limited land mass is used for roads. This is a huge incentive for investment in alternate methods of transportation like cycling and connected cars that is unique to the region. Singapore was the first testing ground of to real-world road tests of autonomous technologies. “We see startups in Asia already putting innovative last-mile delivery options on the streets because there are fewer regulatory hurdles,” added Solonitsyn. At the start, Ruvento was fighting for footing in larger $2+ million syndicated seed rounds. The firm was an investor in a larger post-seed round for , a frontier startup looking to build supersonic jets to serve the masses. Some time after that deal, the team decided that Ruvento’s sweet spot would be the first or second money into smaller rounds. Ruvento has already written checks to over 14 companies from this fund. Some of the companies like and seem to line up with the aforementioned thesis, but it seems that Solonitsyn isn’t afraid to allow for some wiggle room. The firm also invested in and which could be characterized more as consumer bets.
Prenav, an early Ruvento bet, is building precise autonomous drones for commercial applications On the LP front, Ruvento is backed by family office money. The firm agreed to an eight year fund lifecycle with the potential for a two year extension.
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GoDaddy is buying rival Host Europe Group for $1.8B to accelerate its international expansion
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
GoDaddy is on a shopping spree. Yesterday , a WordPress services startup to expand its WordPress support team. And today the company has just announced a much bigger deal. GoDaddy has European rival (HEG) for $1.8 billion — including €605 million paid to existing Host Europe shareholders, and €1.08 billion in assumed debt. HEG has 1.7 million customers throughout Europe, with more than 7 million domains under management. For comparison, GoDaddy’s most recently reported quarter ended with about 14.5 million customers and manages more than 63 million domains. While this acquisition will obviously speed GoDaddy’s expansion throughout Europe, it’s already been in the process of expanding internationally. Prior to the acquisition, the company recently registered its one millionth .UK domain in the UK, and says that 25 percent of Britain’s domains are now registered through GoDaddy. As a whole, GoDaddy reported $129.2 million in international revenue, which was up 21 percent year-over-year. GoDaddy prides itself on generating revenue outside of traditional revenue streams like domain registration and hosting. This additional revenue mainly comes from “presence and business applications,” which are additional services they offer to small businesses — think SEO optimization, online marketing and even online bookkeeping. If GoDaddy starts to offer these additional services to HEG’s customer base, they may have a shot at expanding both their revenue and presence in Europe much faster than originally planned.
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New journal Science Robotics is established to chronicle the rise of the robots
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Robots have been a major focus in the technology world for decades and decades, but they and basic science, and for that matter everyday life, have largely been non-overlapping magisteria. That’s changed over the last few years, as robotics and every other field have come to inform and improve each other, and robots have begun to infiltrate and affect our lives in countless ways. So the only surprise in the news that the prestigious journal group Science has established a discrete Robotics imprint is that they didn’t do it earlier. Editor Guang-Zhong Yang and president of the National Academy of Sciences Marcia McNutt : In a mere 50 years, robots have gone from being a topic of science fiction to becoming an integral part of modern society. They now are ubiquitous on factory floors, build complex deep-sea installations, explore icy worlds beyond the reach of humans, and assist in precision surgeries… With this growth, the research community that is engaged in robotics has expanded globally. To help meet the need to communicate discoveries across all domains of robotics research, we are proud to announce that Science Robotics is open for submissions. Today brought the , Vol.1 Issue 1, and it’s a whopper. Despite having only a handful of articles, each is deeply interesting and shows off a different aspect of the robotics research world — though by no means do these few articles hit the major regions of the field. At the bottom of the “mission and scope” section are some interesting reviews of areas the journal is hoping to accept submissions for, so if you want to catch up on soft robotics, nano-scale stuff or bio-inspired/biomimetic robots, you could do worse. Access will be free until February 1 if you register, but after that it will be subject to the same limitations as the rest of the Science family.
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Inboard’s M1 electric skateboard offers stiff competition
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Stefan Etienne
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Boosted Board, long considered the de facto electric skateboard, finally has some competition from a rival that is also based in California. The Inboard M1 brings a new take to the category, with hubless motors that are planted into the rear wheels of the board. This means that the motors, batteries and wires are hidden, and there’s no resistance in the drive train, so you can kick-push the Inboard M1 just like a regular skateboard. The downside is that the tech can feel underpowered. The Inboard M1 requires far more rider confidence because there isn’t as much feedback while the board is idle. Thankfully, though, there are rider profiles: beginner, eco and intermediate (5 mph, 14 mph and 20 mph, respectively), to help ease the learning curve. Inboard added some other nice touches, like a stiff deck that stays planted on the ground, sticky wheels that assist in higher-speed cornering and LED lights on the front and back of the board for night riding. The board even comes in a carrying case. The stiff board, too, comes with its share of drawbacks. Uneven surfaces mean the rider’s legs and knees absorb most of the shock. The solution could be carving around obstacles, but that’s an issue that wouldn’t arise on the Boosted boards. Braking is another issue. Heat mitigation is important, because there is a lot going on in a small space. While the power transition is smooth, braking is delayed, so the M1’s stopping power increases slowly. I’ve had to bail on the Inboard on more than one occasion, because I haven’t been able to stop in time — a big difference from the Boosted Board’s excellent stopping power. Moving forward isn’t possible without the M1’s swappable batteries. It’s an immensely useful and straightforward feature: open the battery door, pull the battery out and attach to the Magsafe-esque charger. Inboard says you can get an estimated seven to 10 miles of range on the M1, and my rides around the metropolitan area have been true to that range. [gallery ids="1425068,1425071,1425066,1425070,1425069,1425067"] You’ll be able to get a decent run out of the M1 before you need a charge, and, even so, it would only takes you 90 minutes to charge fully — or you could buy a spare and swap or charge batteries for longer journeys. For a first-generation product, the Inboard M1 gets a lot right. It’s priced effectively, comes with a carrying case and is equipped for night riding. It still has its share of shortcomings, but it’s quickly gaining on Boasted Board’s dominance.
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Trump is holding a meeting with key tech leaders at Trump Tower next week
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Aside his on-going free market bromance with entrepreneur-turned-transition-adviser Peter Thiel, things between Donald Trump and the broader tech community have been fairly rocky for some time. Silicon Valley largely put its weight behind his opponent, and the President-Elect has taken a number of potshots at big technology names from Apple to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. A number of execs, including Tim Cook have already called for unity in the wake of November’s election, and now it seems that Trump is looking to sit down at the table with some key tech industry leaders. Thiel, chief of staff Reince Preibus and Trump adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner have formally extended an invitation to a roundtable event set for December 14 at Trump Tower in New York. Specifics of the summit, revealed by and confirmed by , are pretty scant at the moment, including who’s invited and what’s on the proverbial round table. Though, given recent rhetoric, it seems likely that hot topics like cyber security, net neutrality and, of course, jobs are all fair game in the lead up to inauguration. Given the President-Elect’s contentious history with a number of tech leaders/companies, the list of who’s left off will be every bit as important as who’s actually invited. We’ve reached out for comment and will update the story when we hear back.
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TiVo tests a cloud DVR
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Reports that media player and DVR maker TiVo is testing a “cloud DVR” type functionality have been circulating in recent weeks. If the feature was to make it into commercial production it would be a notable addition for the hardware maker, whose products have been more focused on competing with traditional DVRs by combining TiVo’s unique user experience with the ability to stream from online services, as well as tools to search and follow content no matter where it originates. According to industry watcher Dave Zatz, was initially spotted in new, unreleased hardware, dubbed . However, this week that the owner of the TiVo Bolt DVR also briefly saw a notification that referenced a “cloud recording” feature. (see below) Cloud recording is not something that ships with the TiVo Bolt today, so this pop-up did seem to imply that some sort of testing is underway. Though TiVo is not commenting on the finding, we’ve confirmed from sources familiar with the matter that TiVo is performing small scale tests with cloud recording, as this leak indicates. From our understanding, the company is only looking into using the cloud (instead of local recording) for over-the-air signals, not cable TV. TiVo has yet to firmly decide if the feature will be rolled out as an upgrade to existing OTA DVRs, like the Bolt, or if it will be introduced as a primary feature on new products designed specifically for the purpose of recording to the cloud. Using the cloud for saving recordings has advantages, as it means that customers won’t be limited by hardware when it comes to how much room they have to save their recordings. Instead, a cloud DVR could allow TiVo to sell multiple tiers of service attached to a given device. The recordings could also be made available across a network of devices, or even other platforms like mobile phones, via TiVo’s app. Cloud DVRs are becoming a popular add-on for a number of services in the cord cutting era, so it makes sense that TiVo would at least be considering the option. PlayStation Vue’s streaming TV service, for example, has long offered a Cloud DVR, and Dish’s Sling TV Meanwhile, doesn’t yet have a cloud DVR, but is planning to launch the feature next year. While TiVo is not a streaming service, obviously, it’s playing in a similar space. With , it went more directly after those who are watching a combination of TV along with content from top services like Netflix, Amazon and others.
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4K movies come to the Google Play Movies & TV app
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
It may be getting a late start, compared with streaming services from Amazon and Netflix, but today Google Play Movies & TV is adding 4K movies to its content library. Google says there are now over 125 movies in 4K resolution, using VP9, available for purchase via its web or mobile storefront. These can be streamed via a Chromecast Ultra, Sony Bravia Android TV, or Xiaomi Mi Box 3. The Chromecast Ultra, as you may recall, as the first member of the Chromecast family to support 4K and HDR video streaming. At a $69 price point, it’s an affordable way to get a 4K streamer into your home. With the launch of 4K support on Google Play Movies & TV, Google is sweetening the deal for those in the market for such a device, as it’s offering one 4K movie title for free when you buy a Chromecast Ultra. Google is not the only late arrival to 4K video. Just this Friday, limited support for 4K shows and movies as well. In its case, only its originals and 20 James Bond films were made available in 4K. and by comparison, both launched 4K support back in 2014. That being said, , so Google’s timing won’t be much of an issue here. The company also noted today that its Movies & TV app, which is now available in 117 countries worldwide, will ship on 2016 model Samsung Smart TVs.
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And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt London 2016 is… Seenit
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Romain Dillet
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
beginning, there were 14 startups. After two days of incredibly fierce competition, we now have a winner. Startups participating in the have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win £40,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to six finalists: , , , and . These startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included: Judges: (Hardware Club), (Accel), (SOSV), (TechCrunch) and (Downing Ventures). Applications for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt NY are opening soon. Please check out our , apply and email Battlefield Editor Sam O’Keefe with any questions ([email protected]). And now, meet the Startup Battlefield winner of TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016. helps event organizers and other businesses turn their biggest fans into a film crew. Seenit customers invite a select group of their own users, who can use the Seenit app to shoot and submit video from their smartphone. Read more about Seenit in our . plans to help research and pharma teams identify the best drug target by using machine learning to analyze massive genetic datasets and identify likely drug targets. Read more about InsideDNA in our .
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What’s next for tech companies in the Brexit debate
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Crowdpac’s Steve Hilton, a passionate advocate of Brexit, has few points of agreement with Daniel Korski, a former advisor to David Cameron and an organizer of the Remain campaign. But the two could agree on at least one thing — the U.K. is headed for a so-called hard Brexit that will have negative ramifications for the technology and business sectors. “My sense is that they are definitely not embracing the dynamic pro-enterprise agenda,” Hilton said of the current government. And although Korski agreed that the U.K. will likely close itself off from important trade deals and not access the global economy, he and Hilton differed drastically about the motivations that drove Brexit voters to leave. Hilton cited economic factors, saying that the tech industry is in part responsible for disrupting traditional employment and leaving many people behind. Korski argued that undertones of racism and elitism coursed through the Leave campaign. “There are people who are deeply uncomfortable with the progress of change,” Korski said. “The Leave side unleashed some terrible demons in our society.” [gallery columns="5" ids="1424899,1424937,1424935,1424934,1424933,1424932,1424931,1424930,1424929,1424928,1424927,1424902"] Hilton and Korski agreed that the best path forward would be an open Brexit, but Prime Minister Theresa May’s administration does not seem to be headed in that direction. Hilton said he and other Brexit supporters advanced a vision of an open Brexit. “Leaving the EU enables the U.K. to be more engaged with the global economy, not just the European economy. That dynamic, outlooking Brexit is what we are looking for,” HIlton explained. However, he cautioned that May is “going down a darker path.” “I’ve described it as a closed Brexit, which I think is really damaging and dangerous and should be avoided at all costs,” Hilton added. Korski agreed. “I think, going forward, I like the concept of an open Brexit. I say a smart Brexit,” he said, adding that the tech community will need to step up and define its needs to the government. He said the reactions to Brexit have varied from Pollyannaish to sky-is-falling, and the community needs to land somewhere in between. “The tech community needs to create parameters for the government to operate within,” he said. “A middle position: knowing what’s good for it — talent, access to market, access to capital — but also knowing what it can provide.” Watch the full debate below.
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 1 | null |
Arago’s AI can now beat some human players at complex civ strategy games
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Arago’s flagship product plays Freeciv, a free civilization building simulation that’s based on the popular and long-lived series of games – and it’s getting more skilled. Freeciv is a complex, sprawling game with a huge number of possible strategies that can lead to success, especially when playing against unpredictable human opponents, but HIRO can now even best around 80 percent of human players it faces off against, as announced by Arago at TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016 on stage. How complicated can it be to succeed at a video game? Well, depending on options you select, as well as variables that can vary dramatically during the many, many turns that normally happen during any given game of Freeciv, the possibly permutations of individual games is 10 to the power of 15,000, meaning you require a very plastic AI indeed to successfully “learn” how to negotiate individual twists and turns. Games prove a common platform for testing and proving AI prowess; Google’s AlphaGo is an example that has received a lot of attention for its successes. Arago notes that the number of possible moves in playing Freeciv is actually far greater than Go – by an exponential amount. Yet HIRO had less training from a smaller data pool before it began to best human opponents. HIRO was already unbeatable when it comes to facing off against the “AI” opponents built-in to Freeciv that ship with the game (which is more than I can say for myself, and despite not having extra info like the built-in AI) but this is the first time that it’s been able to beat human players. It’s still not able to best all human opposition, but it’s still a marked indicator of progress for the platform. Playing games like a pro is great, but it’s not HIRO’s only purpose – the AI service is primarily offered by Arago to enterprises who are looking to improve their IT automation across their business, and HIRO is used in that capacity to boost a company’s own human IT experts, and help make them and itself better over time. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYu5UgBMyU0?list=PLCYgasM7SKuPDjMvwCCFq6YTFcWulU5lo&w=680] HIRO gets smarter differently from other AI agents, too, according to Arago. The company teaches the machine using “trainers,” which convey the experience of human examplars to HIRO using actual words, which it says means that their machine learning also includes a machine reasoning component, according to founder and CEO Hans-Christian Boos speaking on stage, whereby the machines can learn concepts like “tile” and “city,” in the Freeciv example. Recalling and recombining these concepts are what eventually lead to the optimization of its performance, which applies in both its scientific (game-playing) and professional (enterprise IT) capacities. Arago’s goal is to create not a very specific, narrow AI, but a more general tool that can learn and perform a range of tasks. Civilization (and Freeciv) helps further that aim, and Boos also notes that the key ingredients of free, strategy and tremendous community feedback helped them settle on Freeciv as the route forward.
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Zenly lays out its plan to become a must-have social media app
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Sarah Buhr
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
French-based location sharing app hopes to be the next Snapchat and co-founder Antoine Martin came onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt London to talk about how it plans to get there. The original idea came from Foursquare check-ins but Zenly allows users to check-in and share their location with friends and family. Martin spent two to three years with ex-Google and Apple engineers perfecting the product and ensuring privacy. The app had about 2 million downloads, mostly teen users but also some families and branded entities when we wrote about it . According to Martin, Zenly aims to become one of the ten most important apps — but it will obviously need to grow a lot to get there. As with most social media platforms, the key may be with the teens. Teenagers are the biggest users, according to Martin, for the lack of privacy fears in sharing their location. Teens want to know where their friends are. And, as Martin discovered after a year of trying to work on privacy concerns, the teens really don’t care about all that. “Zenly is actually the best expression of grown truths, seeing what your friends are doing,” Martin said. [gallery ids="1425009,1425008,1425007,1425005,1425004,1425003,1425002,1425001,1425000,1424999"] But what do the parents think? Martin says he’s thought of that. The very first UX/UI expected people to have very few friends and allowed the ability to share with that small handful, but now, with the growth, teens are sharing with 50 friends at a time. So Zenly says parents are now able to see who their teen is sharing their location with to keep them safe. Peter Fenton from Benchmark and a prominent investor in social media apps joined the board during the startup’s last round of funding in September. But it’s a crowded field and Martin said he didn’t take as much money as he was offered for that reason — he didn’t want to hamper progress by taking more than was necessary. But with $30 million raised so far, Martin said he was confident he had the money to grow the business and hire more team members. So what’s the growth strategy? “We realize when we reach a certain tipping point, a penetration of maybe twenty, twenty-five percent we see we will have the rest of the school within a week,” Martin said. Zenly will also likely spend a little cash for marketing efforts and he was firm he believed there was still room to build a social media app in a crowded space.
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After having its infrastructure shuttered, CyanogenMod will live on as Lineage
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
The days leading up to the holiday have been a real roller coaster ride for Cyanogen fans. Yesterday, Cyanogen Inc. on its support for CyanogenOS in a short post declaring that “all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued” by the year’s end. In a post today titled the team behind CyanogenMod acknowledged that the pre-holiday announcement effectively amounts to a “death blow” for their own project. “In addition to infrastructure being retired, we in the CM community have lost our voice in the future direction of CM — the brand could be sold to a third party entity as it was an asset that Kondik risked to start his business and dream,” the team wrote in a post. “Even if we were to regroup and rebuild our own infrastructure, continuing development of CM would mean to operate with the threat of sale of the brand looming over our heads.” But while many in the community were caught off-guard by yesterday’s curt announcement, the CyanogenMod team has apparently been working hard on a plan B. Word of Lineage started cropping up a few weeks back, after Cyanogen Inc. unceremoniously severed ties with co-founder and @cyanogen Twitter handle haver, Steve Kondik. Now Lineage is official. In its post, the CyanogenMod team insists that it’s more than just a rebranding effort. “This fork will return to the grassroots community effort that used to define CM while maintaining the professional quality and reliability you have come to expect more recently,” it writes. For now, it’s available as source code over on GitHub, but we’ll hopefully be seeing something more official as the team regroups and the new year rolls around.
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Italian incubator H-Farm prepares for a new crop with a campus slated to open in 2018
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Marcello Mari
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
There’s a farm outside of Venice, Italy, that cultivates tech talent the way other farms grow crops. Called the , the compound nestled in the Venetian countryside will open Italy’s most advanced technology education campus, providing all levels of education — from primary school to master’s degrees — to students coming from all over the world. “Forming the next class of innovators is the biggest challenge our country needs to face in the next years,” says Riccardo Donadon, CEO and founder of H-Farm. Carlo Carraro, the former president of Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice (one of Italy’s most prestigious public universities), has been chosen as the Head of Education. The school will offer robotics, AI and data science and coding classes. The campus will be built over 300,000 square meters of Venetian countryside, and it will be home to 2,000 students and over 240 staff members. It will also boast 270,000 square meters of green space. Donadon’s passion for education isn’t new. He’s been running “The Digital Academy” since 2010 to educate managers and corporate leaders. Big Rock, a 3D-animation school, is a stone’s throw from the farm, also in a farmhouse. They claim that 99 percent of all 3D-animated movies in the world have one of their students on their team. “Gardening and farming have always been my two greatest passions,” says Donadon. It is, perhaps, thanks to this attitude that he found himself to be the right man, in the right place at the right moment. He made his money by selling his own digital agency in the early 2000s for 26 billion lire (something in the range of $14.5 million), an evaluation that he admits being crazy for that time. After spending a year gardening (“my true passion” as he says), in 2005, Donadon decided to buy the farm next to where he was working and transform it into something from which young entrepreneurs could benefit. “In a time when everything was electronic — e-commerce, eBay, and even my own company was called Etree — I wanted to create something that put humans at its core.” In the first 11 years of activities, H-farm invested around €24 million, way above the average investment happening in the country, with four main exits that brought in profits of about 10x compared to the initial investment, to companies like WPP and Lockerz. “We were dreaming really big at the beginning, but we then realized that it’s almost impossible for an Italian company to scale globally. Back then, there were only 20 million internet users in the country, the language barrier was massive and the lack of infrastructure was a real hurdle,” says Donadon. Italy’s legislation is only adapting now and most of the previous attempts of modernizing it (like the Task Force Donadon was called to be a part of) have resulted in a massive waste of energy despite being one of the most critical goals of Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who paid a visit to the farm in the early days of his government’s term in office. H-Farm is now an international hub of innovation, a unique model and clever mix of Italian tradition and true international entrepreneurial mindset that put in connection corporations and startups. Along with more than €24 million invested in the last 11 years, 550 people working at the farm, 86 startups in their portfolio and seven buildings with 3D printers, robots and drones constitute the farm of the future. Here, early-stage tech companies and tech startups can work and live together in a farm-like environment where talents and business can really thrive. Events, hackathons, community and mentoring are located in one of the most beautiful countryside sites, often defined as the “Italian Boulder” (Boulder, CO is the headquarter of Techstars). As a corporate accelerator, H-Farm tries to invest in a minimum of 20 startups a year. It’s the birthplace of , an online marketplace that recently secured an $8.25 million investment from international investors with the likes of Balderton Capital. is a network for creative talent that partners with brands and agencies to launch user-generated advertising projects; it is also one of the fastest growing startups currently at the farm. They took part in an initial acceleration program and decided to stay at the farm after the program — renting space in the bucolic setting. “We really believe this is the right environment for us to grow and scale. Here we work side by side with great talents, we constantly have C-level professionals visiting and top-notch events. We really value our roots and also believe that a high quality of life is key to fostering great talents,” says Alessandro Biggi, CEO of Zooppa. In November 2015, the farm went public, but has since lost 25 percent of its value. There are three main components to the farm’s business model. The first is investments. Together with corporate ventures, H-Farm invests in early-stage startups and scaleups through vertical accelerator programs like the newest IoT cohort in collaboration with the Deutsche Bank, or the l Wellness Accelerator Program with TechnoGym and the Food Accelerator Program with CISCO. The second is providing technology consulting services for traditional businesses. Diesel, Luxottica and Porsche Italy are all customers of the farm. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is education — the pillar that Donadon believes in the most. H-Farm has raised €60 million to create , the first real international education program dedicated to forming the next generation of innovators. As Italy looks to be one of the emerging surprises in the European startup ecosystem spectrum, initiatives like H-Farm could be the spark for the Italian nation’s next great renaissance.
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Pepo, Jason Goldberg’s social media app, raises $2.35M from his old Fab.com backers
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Jason Goldberg — a founder that may be as well known for his high-profile startups ( , , ) as his failures and pivots ( , , , ) — earlier this year stepped up to the batting plate once again with , a group social messaging app that lets you post, read and interact with content based on specific interests. Today, he’s announcing that Pepo has raised money — a $2.35 million seed round. If you think that failed startups inevitably leave a bad taste in investors’ mouths, Goldberg’s story should give you something to chew on. Pepo is bringing Goldberg together with some of the same backers who put some $300 million into his previous startup, the design marketplace Fab.com (before it was sold to PCH in a firesale). Pepo’s seed round was led by Tencent, with Greycroft, Vectr, Correlation, as well as Goldberg himself also participating. Specific previous Fab.com investors and board members that are now putting money into Pepo include James Mitchell of Tencent, Geoff Prentice of Oriente, (previously Atomico), Allen Morgan, David Bohnett, Howard Morgan, and Nishith Shah. In all, 7 of the 10 board members of Fab.com are now involved in Pepo, Goldberg said in an interview with TechCrunch last week. These investors were not only interested in once more backing and working with Goldberg and his team (the same team who worked with him on Fab.com, Jobster and a previous startup, Socialmedian), but they actually wanted to give him more than he raised in the end. “We Why, exactly, would investors put money into a startup from a founder who had burned through $300 million in his last outing? One reason could be Goldberg’s response to adversity. He’s often been very frank and open about what he and his startups have . The other notable point is that Fab.com — a design marketplace with a social twist — was a completely different business area from his new endeavor, a social network with little in the way of e-commerce (at least for now). And the third could be that Pepo, at least in its early days, seems to be doing modestly well. Even with little marketing effort. Goldberg tells me that among them, “Cooking” has had 12,000 views, “food food food” has had 4,000 views, and “Global Gay Travelers” has had 18,000 views. He says that of all of its new users, 50% are coming back each week, engagement that he believes is more important than having a large volume of downloads (which often don’t have a direct correlation with sustained interest). As it looks today, Pepo is divided into several categories, some of which have been created by Pepo, and some of which have been set by users. They cover subjects as diverse as travel sites, hotel gyms (created by Jason), cooking and foodie subjects, fashion and tech. Inside each of those are a Pinterest-style stream of pictures and videos and links related to the category, which users can respond to with positive notes or icons, or ask questions. The app itself is still in what I’d call an early state: the cooking category, for example, has a lot of snaps of people’s dishes, but very little in the way of recipes or techniques, or tools to give content posters the ability to add these in easily. And apart from there being a lot of competition from the likes of Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram, and a track record of challenges for others trying to build communications for specific groups (Snapguide’s demise being just one example), Goldberg describes Pepo as a “passion project”, which is as good a reason as any to try your hand at something new. Indeed, Goldberg has something of a natural touch when it comes to being human about tech challenges and also opportunities. Asked about how he decided to build Pepo, he says it came out of his search for an answer to a little question of his own — how to find his favorite snack. “The idea for Pepo was derived from my own experience trying to pursue one of my passions: avocado toast,” he said in an email to me. “Last Christmas, my husband and I were walking around Sydney and we had a craving for avocado toast. We searched Google and weren’t satisfied with the static results. We posted a question on Facebook but our post got lost in the stream and didn’t reach anyone who was in-the-know. It hit me that it should be possible to instantly connect with and message with other avocado toast enthusiasts around the world, instantly, via a messaging platform that connects friends, friends of friends, people nearby, people with unique passions and expertise, indelible, always searchable — and that avocado toast was just one of gazillions of use cases for such a service.”
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Technology and today’s vast and immensely underserved mental health population
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Adam Seabrook
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
Someone in your life is suffering from a mental disorder right now. You may not know it, but it’s there. Indeed, one in five adults suffers from a mental disorder. Society has trained us to believe mental illness is something to be ashamed of, so a majority of the afflicted hide it and go untreated. Also, patients are often perceived as being dangerous or incompetent, with little hope of recovery. I’d like to say we’re becoming more accepting as a society, but pop culture examples to the contrary aren’t difficult to find — the newest song from Drake, “Two Birds, One Stone,” is critical of fellow rapper Kid Cudi for seeking treatment after admitting to feelings of depression and suicidal thoughts. Even the powerful and revered Tony Soprano had to hide his psychiatry appointments from his friends and family. There are other examples, but you get the idea. On top of the stigmas we’ve created, we’ve also constructed a healthcare system incapable of treating all our patients because of capacity and cost constraints, favoring clinical solutions for more traditional health concerns, such as cancer and heart disease. It’s time to recognize that depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions are every bit as serious and debilitating as physical conditions, and address the inadequacies in the medical community’s approach to treating them. To put the problem in perspective, consider that 18.5 percent of American adults suffer from some form of mental illness. That’s nearly as many people as heart disease (11.5 percent) and cancer (8.5 percent), the two leading causes of death in the United States, combined. Imagine the public uproar if 50 percent of heart disease and cancer patients couldn’t find treatment. That’s what mental health patients . More than half go untreated or undiagnosed, leading to nearly $200 billion in lost earnings and productivity for employers, and, far more importantly, more than 37,000 every year. We also spend $200 billion each year on treatment for the who can actually find it. The scope of the problem is immense, and we’ve failed this population in nearly every critical way: What’s particularly distressing about the lack of access to care is how effective treatment can be — up to 90 percent of people who receive treatment experience an in their symptoms. Treatment works, so we need to do better at delivering it. We at B Capital believe now is the time for digital health companies to lead the charge in finding a solution. The upside to our previous failings in mental health is that it is a sector primed for disruption. The U.S. market is large, but the problem is global; the number of afflicted and untreated patients worldwide follows closely in line with the percentages here in America. That means there are hundreds of millions of patients without access to care and traditional forms of treatment (i.e. face-to-face therapy) that can’t realistically or effectively scale up to meet this need. An alternative must be found. We think technology will be a critical component of the solution — and a great deal of that technology already exists. Telemedicine is an effective tool for expanding the reach of traditional practitioners to treat patients in underserved areas. Digital therapeutics have long failed to deliver on the hype of better outcomes and lower cost, but, recently, treatments like internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (iCBT), which generally consist of self-help texts, homework assignments, queries and guidance by an online therapist, have been shown to deliver for conditions ranging from social anxiety to depression to PTSD. New analytic tools can sift through mountains of data to find signs and symptoms unseen by doctors. Digital health can dramatically change the way we diagnose and treat patients, and it can allow us to do it at a fraction of the cost. We’re not the only investors who have taken notice; the last 18 months have seen a flurry of investment in the space: There were even clear regulatory tailwinds in favor of better care options prior to the presidential election on November 8. The ACA, for example, included mental health treatment as an essential benefit required to be offered by health plans. While President-elect Trump had been adamant his first order of business would be to repeal Obamacare, he’s since softened his stance and said certain elements of the ACA might remain in place (see the recent by Gavin Teo). Regardless of the regulatory environment, we believe low-cost treatment options delivered in a manner that expands the capacity and reach of existing provider networks will find tremendous success. The dynamics of the mental health market are complicated and the needs are many. Practitioners need better tools to diagnose patients both in and out of traditional care settings. Insurers need clinically validated products that deliver results matching those from face-to-face therapy. Individuals need a way to eliminate or circumvent the stigma associated with seeking care. The cost of treating a patient needs to come down dramatically. But the market demands are indeed abundant and the conditions are ideal for innovation. So what will it take to win? In short, improved access to quality care. The good news is there are clear signs of progress. Researchers at Northwestern University have developed an app called that tracks your movements and phone usage looking for signs of depression. delivers patient recovery and engagement rates on par with traditional face-to-face therapy. Ieso Digital Health allows patients to text in real time with their therapist semi-anonymously from anywhere, helping to reduce and eliminate stigma. Joyable, Lantern and SilverCloud use one-to-many delivery models with online tools and content to expand the capacity of existing mental health practitioners and reduce cost. This progress gives cause to be optimistic about dramatically reducing the number of untreated patients as quality improves and adoption grows among payers, providers and consumers.
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The broken edtech ecosystem investors once avoided is changing
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Charles Wiles
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
“Don’t go into education technology, no one makes any money,” was the advice I once got from an early founder of an edtech startup that failed. It used to be an all too common sentiment that once deterred many prospective investors from backing some of the most promising edtech ventures conceived. Previously considered risky investments, it’s true that many edtech startups — commonly founded by “teacherpreneurs” hell-bent on mending the broken social and cultural framework of education through tech innovation — either tank or fail to achieve true scale. Why is this the case, when basic reasoning leads us to believe there is no other professional better placed to address the issues facing education than an actual teacher? The broken ecosystem of selling to schools educational software rather than the actual technology is what often consigns many edtech ventures to the dustbin. Of the few teacher-entrepreneurs who do succeed in the startup world to become true scale-up businesses, these mold-breakers are developing solutions to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in education — challenges that are leading many of the industry’s talent to leave the profession completely and a disproportionate number of children to underachieve. In a digitized world where tech innovation has revolutionized nearly every corner of our life, the negligible impact it has made in our classrooms is woeful. annually, which, while growing at 20 percent year-on-year, is still only a tiny fraction (1.4 percent) of the $800 billion spent on schools. Considering the lack of accountability and clear inefficiencies apparent in the way government, local authorities and schools spend on educational resources, edtech businesses are slowly but surely being seen as a sustainable means of tackling the bureaucracy, resourcing shortfalls and engagement issues that come with teaching. For these very reasons, edtech ventures are not only worthy of additional attention — they are deserving of investment. The market potential for the edtech industry is vast and 17 percent year-on-year to become worth $252 billion by 2020. Last year, that funding of edtech startups peaked at $3.3 billion. Let’s put this into perspective: Digital advertising is a $200 million industry, from which two of the world’s biggest brands (Google and Facebook) have grown; the edtech market, though still in its infancy, already exceeds this and is growing at a faster rate. It’s not impossible to think that an edtech behemoth of the same power and scale of two of the world’s most successful tech brands will soon emerge from this space. Today, the unforgiving school ecosystem, which has presented itself as an almost insurmountable barrier to entry for many edtech startups, is showing signs of change. This is a critical development in an industry where many innovative apps have been unable to displace archaic, inferior technologies in schools because of restricted funding and a general unwillingness of schools to disrupt the status quo. The implication of this change is exciting. A clearer path will be made for new players to create valuable businesses with meaningful social impact. There will be ample opportunities to innovate; it is there for the taking. To fully appreciate what this could mean for the edtech industry, for teachers and, ultimately, for children, you need only look at the broken ecosystem currently in place that has long prevented modern classrooms from innovating teaching and learning processes using 21st century technology. Imagine you’ve invented a great new application for teaching math to school children and you want to sell your app to schools. It’s almost certain that such schools are already paying for a math application (typically costing £500 annually for a or app in the U.K.) — and these schools will have set their annual budget for math software to match the price of the £500 annual subscription fee. The only way you can get such schools to pay for your software is by displacing the incumbent. That’s achievable, in theory, if you have a better product and a brilliant sales pitch. Yet the typical cost of achieving a single sale of this nature in the U.K. is around £1,000 — and you may well have to wait until the start of the new school year for the school to have the funds to make that purchase. In short, an edtech startup will need to invest £1,000 and wait 6-12 months to get a £500 initial return. Few new ventures have the kind of funds available to invest in this process, and even those that do have the funds struggle to build up and sustain the sales effort needed to scale. , founded by teacherpreneur Naimish Gohill, is one of the few examples of companies that have received the kind of investment needed to break through, but break through they have: their software is now used by one-third of the schools in the U.K. Of course, the great news is that once you have made that sale, the same issues that made it hard for you to get the sale in the first place now make it hard for others to displace your application, and the school will likely continue to use your application for 5-10 years. The long-term return on that £1,000 investment is anything from £2,500 to £5,000 — that’s a 2.5X to 5.0X return. Pearson predicts it will take about three years to break even on a sale, but they also expect the school to keep using the software, on average, for seven years. Indeed, once you get your edtech business to a position of scale, you have a highly profitable business with quite exceptional margins. Unfortunately, most new edtech ventures never get that far and run out of money first. Some manage to keep going, but struggle to attain real and sustainable scale. The result is a highly fragmented education software market with some big established incumbents. To circumvent these funding issues, some edtech ventures have built their offering on a freemium business model, offering basic features of their apps for nothing. and are examples of edtech brands that have succeeded in getting very high penetration in schools by providing their application for free. The problem is that these companies haven’t quite yet worked out how to generate revenue. Schools and teachers get very upset if they are asked to start paying for something that used to be free. Furthermore, the problem for these ventures can be even worse than for those edtech businesses who stay small, given that their large user bases gobble up cash in both servers and in customer and community support costs. These are the very issues that have led investors to steer clear of investing in the K12 edtech space despite the sizeable market opportunity. Whilst they may understand that, with proper investment, these edtech ventures can give outstanding returns in the long term, they see other sectors as being far easier to crack. The result? Companies that have the potential to break through, never do. Of course, the ultimate losers in this are our children. The current quality of software used by schools is extremely poor compared to what it could be. MyMaths, for example, is essentially a 10-year old product that has had no investment over the last five years. Software has the potential to have a massive impact on how children learn, particularly the new generation of personalized and adaptive software applications that customize the learning experience to each child as they progress. Giving a student his or her own personal tutor usually has a massive impact on a student’s rate of learning. A personal tutor can understand and address a student’s specific learning gaps and deliver teaching and practice exercises that perfectly match the student’s needs. It’s impossible to give every child in the world their own personal tutor, but possible to give every child their own personal virtual tutor using software. Schools are ripe for this new generation of intelligent software that uses data, analytics and intelligent algorithms to make teaching more informed and effective and to help students learn better. The potential for such technology to democratize quality education and transcend the socio-economic barriers to progress is incredibly promising. That aside, nascent, high-sophisticated education software is now forcing the current ecosystem to evolve, and investors should be excited about how the new world of K12 edtech is shaping up. Relatively few companies will be able to raise the funds and have the skills necessary to deliver the underlying technology for this new generation of software, and those that are first to market will achieve global scale. This is already happening with companies like and — which received $150 million and $83 million of investment, respectively, and have acquired a worldwide user base. Elsewhere, there are edtech ventures out there whose “reason to be” is to make it easier for small and new players to succeed — from lowering the cost of developing, launching and marketing an edtech app without the need to raise astronomical funds, to transforming the 200,000 or so applications in existence on the Apple App Store into something that is accountable, effective and instantly classroom ready. There are ventures that enable schools to pay a low-cost one-off subscription fee that gives them access to thousands of apps for free; no longer will they be locked into one incumbent application. What we are effectively seeing is the radical democratization of the edtech market. In the classroom, we are seeing transformative innovations being deployed by way of edtech apps that give teachers access to valuable real-time data and insight into the classroom. In the past, teachers would test their students at the end of a term or topic and only at that point would they discover what students really knew — by which time it was too late to do anything about any learning gaps students might have. Now teachers are able to get this insight instantly in every class and change their teaching immediately to address any issues and ensure pupils achieve mastery of curriculum-mapped learning objectives. Technology of this kind is new, and it exists today. Complementing rather than replacing traditional pedagogy, teaching and learning needs to be relevant to the next generation of students and teachers, and edtech — fueled by the proliferation of mobile devices — creates the very tools needed to achieve this. Technology can and must be mobilized to make the process more efficient and engaging in order to curtail the critical decline of quality teachers in the industry, as well as unlock a fascination within pupils for academic subjects that inspires them to pursue something at a higher level or even later as a career. New opportunities brought about by a digital world pose new challenges and responsibilities for both educators and policymakers. But the significant shift in the ecosystem will see more schools invest in current transformative technology that will create accountability in a way that has never been seen. Adoption is still in its infancy, but the climate is ripe for a new wave of megabrands set to overturn not only the misconceptions around investment in edtech, but to also move the needle on student learning. We’re entering a new era in edtech; now has never been a more opportune time to take advantage of this space.
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Windows 10 Creators update loads up on features for IT
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Ron Miller
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 |
Microsoft announced a slew of goodies today for its upcoming Windows 10 Creators update, designed to please IT admins and simplify management of Windows 10 inside large enterprises. Microsoft has been trying to get enterprise companies — you know the ones with lots of users — to make the switch to Windows 10. They claim, even before this announcement, the number of organizations going for what they called “full deployment” had increased 3X. Microsoft director of program management for Windows enterprise and security, Rob Lefferts, wouldn’t put an exact number on that, even when pressed, but indicated it was a “stock impacting number.” The company announced the user side of the so-called “Creators Update” a few weeks ago including . Today is all about the system administrators, providing new features related to security and easier device management inside, and in some cases, even outside of the Windows 10 environment. For starters, Microsoft wants to enhance the tools it gives security pros in , the Windows 10 advanced threat protection dashboard. As Lefferts pointed out, the number and sophistication level of attacks is increasing all the time. That means in the tit for tat war of security versus hackers, the tools have to become increasingly sophisticated too. To that end, instead of limiting threat searches to disk, Microsoft is adding in-memory and in-kernel threat detection, as well, trying to expand the toolkit to give security teams more weapons to work with. In addition, the company has announced a partnership with security firm, to share threat data. Lefferts says, it’s a case of the good guys banding together to fight security threats, but in addition, it is giving security teams the options of integrating their own threat intelligence data into the Windows Defender ATP framework. Finally, once the attackers get in — and someone is always going to get in — Microsoft is offering new tools for isolating the attacker or performing forensics on the fly. How aggressive an action the customer takes will depend on whether they want to follow the attacker and learn about them, or kick them out of the network. That will depend on many factors, but Microsoft is giving the security team some remediation tools, and they can decide how to use them. The company also announced a number of device management enhancements including an update to Windows Analytics. Lefferts says the latter is designed to help admins updating devices with Windows 10 to understand if those machines are ready. “[Windows Analytics] really gives IT insights on devices,” he said. It also allows IT to operate like a service for end users, something Microsoft is really hoping will happen as Windows 10 permeates the enterprise. If the analysis finds the machines needs to be updated from the old BIOS-style firmware to the newer UEFI, there is a new automated conversion tool to let them do that. Finally, Microsoft will be offering a couple of device management options. The first is designed for folks who offer some combination of company-issued devices and BYOD (bring your own device). These companies can control access to Windows/Office content on an enrolled device, even if the company isn’t using a mobile device management (MDM) tool. If the company is just offering company-issued devices, Microsoft can easily enroll the device and sign it up for whatever MDM tool the company is using. Microsoft has previously announced that the full Creators update should be available in early 2017. The IT side of this update is designed to offer a full range of administrative services. Lefferts said his company went out of its way to listen to customers and to implement the types of features they require, as it works hard to incorporate Windows 10 into the enterprise mix.
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Tim Curry will read you ‘A Christmas Carol’ from your Amazon Echo
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
It’s the time of year when we find ourselves together with our loved ones, gathered around the warming seasonal glow of our smart-home devices. And for those who managed to snag an Echo before the device sold out seemingly everywhere, Amazon’s got a fun little Easter egg (nog). From now until Jan. 3, 2017, Alexa customers can listen to a holiday classic for free. "Alexa, read A Christmas Carol from Audible" — Amazon Echo (@amazonecho) Saying “Alexa, read A Christmas Carol from Audible” will fire up an audiobook version of the Charles Dickens classic read by Dr. Frank-N-Furter himself, Tim Curry, in a 1997 animated adaptation and narrated a 2006 Sesame Street version, wherein, not surprisingly, Oscar the Grouch was cast as the lead. The story will be available for listening through January 3, a little extra time for those who open up an Echo or Echo Dot over the next few days. The Audible version is also available on YouTube at the moment, for those who don’t have an Echo handy. https://youtu.be/aDL-JiX0lWw?list=PLMMGsWOJoaltQHQgIXfDrdLcvA2QTmmGp In the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us, everyone” — and barring that, the booming voice of Tim Curry will do in a pinch.
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Fitbit ends one Jawbone patent case seeking to block device import
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
It’s a minor holiday miracle. Wearable device leaders Fitbit and Jawbone have been locked in a prolonged legal battle for well over a year, and yesterday Fitbit dropped one of the key pursuits against its fellow fitness manufacturer, dropping a patent violation complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission. Fitbit recent as part of the decision to drop the suit, throwing some serious legal shade: “SEC filings of one of its biggest investors now value Jawbone shares as worth nothing, as well as indicate that Jawbone has filed for bankruptcy or is in default.” While Jawbone is denying bankruptcy filings, the company was happy to discuss the end of the suit, which sought to block import of its devices. A Jawbone rep reached out to TechCrunch with a statement lauding the move, while adding that it will continue its own legal action against Fitbit. Here it is, in full: Fitbit has moved to drop its patent case against Jawbone, which had been set for trial in the International Trade Commission in March. By dismissing this action, Fitbit is no longer seeking to block importation of Jawbone devices, including Jawbone products in development. Jawbone believes this case — involving patents already found once to be invalid — should have been dismissed long ago by Fitbit. Fitbit’s pursuit of these baseless claims for so long was to burden Jawbone — an issue to be raised in Jawbone’s antitrust claim against Fitbit. Jawbone’s trade secret case in California state court against Fitbit will move forward to a jury trial in 2017. We’ve reached out to Fitbit for comment, but have yet to receive a response. Holidays, you know? We’ll add something as soon as we hear back. In spite of the end of this specific pursuit, the extended legal battle between the fitness companies don’t look to be ending any time soon, with several suits still on-going. Fitbit has declined to comment on the suit beyond what has already been filed with the
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Dutch regulators order T-Mobile to stop offering free music streaming over net neutrality concerns
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
T-Mobile’s no-data-charge-music-streaming-thing has been going strong since 2014 here in the States, with the company adding services to the offering one by one. The Netherlands version of the promotion ran into this week, however, as regulators at the Dutch Consumer and Markets (AFM) officially ordered the carrier to stop offering the “zero rating” feature over concerns that it constitutes a threat to net neutrality. As with the version in the States, the service lets users play unlimited music through participating services, without contributing to their data costs (the U.S. counterpart features a video version, as well). The “participating services” is the key part of the decision here, as promoting certain companies over others can adversely impact competition. T-Mobile Netherlands, which introduced the service on October 10, will be hit with a $52,000-a-day fine if it refuses to comply to yesterday’s ruling. Here’s a key bit of the to the ruling, filtered through Google Translate: T-Mobile meets the European requirements and is therefore not agree with the decision of the ACM and will refer the matter to the courts. T-Mobile is waiting for the verdict of the court and until then Data Royalty Free Music remains available. So, all that free streaming may end up costing T-Mobile quite a bit in the end.
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The reality of VR/AR trial
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Tim Merel
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
If you haven’t heard about VR/AR by now, your desert island must not have Wi-Fi. But there are millions of folks who know about VR/AR who haven’t seen it yet. User trial is on the critical path for VR/AR to go mass market. So what are the lessons from previous digital platforms about moving mass consumers from awareness to trial? founding chairman Tom Bedecarre gets right to the point. “New technology follows a familiar adoption curve, and it’s easier to attract your first customers, innovators and early adopters. It’s very hard to cross the chasm and attract the early majority and beyond.” The challenge is particularly acute for VR/AR, where even 360-degree videos can’t completely translate the surprise and delight that users get from the best VR/AR apps. For the full experience you need to have it on your face. To paraphrase, “It’s the stereoscopic vision, stupid.” So how are VR/AR companies getting mass consumers to try it beyond early adopters? The New York Times has to its readers. McDonalds’ “ ” turn a Happy Meal box into a VR headset, and Coca-Cola has experimented with a similar approach using its . Moving up in quality from Cardboard, Samsung has with compatible phones, which together with sales has delivered “millions of people with a Gear VR, and over a million monthly active users” according to a Samsung spokesperson. Samsung has also enabled location-based trial, with “15,000 retail locations in the US.” Verizon VR headset with pre-orders of Pixel phones, and China’s OnePlus with its phones. We aren’t likely to see high-end PC or console VR headsets bundled for free, but prices for high-end VR headsets and the systems to run them will be driven lower by Microsoft’s new headsets. Richard Marks, the head of Magic Lab, believes that “trying VR is really important, because the experience is so dramatically beyond what most people have seen before now. We’ve shown over 400,000 in-store demos, and to encourage people to show their friends, we give away a free demo disc with every PSVR as well as a free asymmetric multiplayer game that enables everyone without a headset to play along with the person in VR.” Chief of Staff Pearly Chen is equally emphatic about getting the Vive in front of people, “seeing is believing, and there isn’t a better way to communicate what VR is than letting people see it with their own eyes. We’ve run the since mid-2015, touring major cities, universities, events and trade shows — which gave us significant press exposure, grass-roots engagement, and learning about consumer feedback.” “We continue to engage major retail partners to set up demo stations, including , and MicroCenter in the US, as well as Suning, Guomei and internet cafes across China. We’ve also announced in Taipei as a location-based entertainment center to reach mass consumers.” HTC isn’t just getting its own products in front of consumers, but is thinking more broadly. “To help the entire ecosystem, our $100 million Vive X program is committed to helping companies with the right vision to help everyone and everything in VR.” AR/VR education player has a proactive approach to location-based trial, taking the location to its users rather than requiring them to go anywhere. They have multiple buses complete with full-demo experiences touring the U.S. to take their magic to schools around the country. CEO Paul Kellenberger says that, “we do it because it just plain works. Students and teachers don’t need to travel for miles or take a chance on buying a system they haven’t tried yet. And with our highly collaborative approach to AR/VR, the entire school community sees how effective it is. We have strong ROI from this approach, and some of our largest school system sales have come from it. So we see a direct bottom line impact from going to where potential users are and making trial as simple as possible for them — it’s a significant driver of our business growth.” The AR smartglasses that are already hitting the market (Microsoft HoloLens, ODG, Meta, etc.) are largely enterprise focused so far, making it too early to assess their approach to consumer trial. But Pokémon GO has already achieved both mass awareness and trial of AR (even if industry ). and happily declared Pokémon GO as an early win for the AR market. So while the huge splash it made this year peaked at over , globally there are tens (if not hundreds) of millions of consumers who think they’ve tried AR and liked it. The big question is how will “true” AR smartglasses leverage that awareness when they go consumer in the next year or so? Hopefully the from both Google Glass (boo) and Snap Spectacles (yay) will inform what comes next. Snap’s approach with Spectacles has been nothing short of , almost single-handedly erasing the years of damage done to AR’s consumer profile by Google Glass (even if Spectacles aren’t really AR). Spectacles are a cool populist toy, not a vision of the . They’re scarce but not elitist, with a limited rollout for anyone prepared to drive hours to get to a vending machine (rather than hand-picked ). Spectacles’ $130 price point is a lot less than some alternative ways to buy into the new hotness (regardless of functionality). The free marketing hype and virality surrounding Spectacles videos gives Snap’s -plus daily active users the chance to feel like they’re trying Spectacles (even if they can’t get hold of them yet). And all the data from early adopters (some might call them paying beta testers) enables Snap to tweak Spectacles hardware and software to perfection before a full launch. That Evan Spiegel is one smart cookie. There are for consumer AR when it gets here: hero device (i.e. an Apple quality device, whether made by Apple or someone else), cellular connectivity, all-day battery life, app ecosystem (similar in quality to early mobile) and telco cross-subsidization. Telco data revenues and cross-subsidization will be key, so how will the telcos help consumer trial? Director Ed Ruth believes telcos will have a meaningful role to play when AR is ready for consumers. He says, “Beyond the in-store trial telcos could enable through retail stores across the country, eventually they could help AR reach consumers in the same way that they do with smartphones today. The data revenues from this new market could help reinvigorate growth for mobile networks, especially when you consider that 360-degree video alone takes 4 to 5 times the bandwidth of regular video.” When producing content and applications for mass consumers — ranging from high-end VR content like Baobab Studios’ and , to next-generation visual messaging for VR/AR like Eyetouch Reality — how do you get in front of lots of people, and how do you leverage that trial more broadly? CEO Eugene Chung takes a holistic view. “The development of VR/AR as a new artistic medium is unprecedented in the modern era. The last time we saw this transformational change was with the advent of the moving picture. Right now the nascent stage of hardware penetration constrains VR/AR, but that is rapidly evolving. With developments such as the PlayStation VR release and Google Daydream, the addressable market for VR is growing bigger than ever. While much of the technorati have seen VR, the vast majority has not. As the population at large sees and understands the power of the medium, adoption will grow accordingly.” CEO Alban Denoyel thinks “mass adoption will come when people are able to create VR content themselves. When you take VR shots (360 or 3D) of your family or holidays, you’ll want to revisit them in VR. So user-generated content will be key to mass adoption. In terms of reach and audience, it’s key to deliver the content where the audience already is, typically the social networks. That’s why is important, as it lets creators reach consumers directly and bypasses the app store gates.” Mass markets cover everyone from your nephew to your grandma. But recent tech success from Facebook to Snapchat skewed younger at launch, before migrating upwards to take over the world. So the cool kids need to try VR/AR for it to go mass market, with Pokémon GO and Snap Spectacles showing how it’s done. As they say in the classics, “ .”
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Withings products disappear from Apple stores following Nokia patent kerfuffle
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
As most of us were gearing up for a relatively quiet holiday season, Apple and Nokia were getting , reigniting a war that had seemingly gone cold in 2011 with a reported $720 million settlement for the use of a number of patents. Earlier this week, Apple filed suit in California, alleging that Nokia removed certain patents from the deal for the purpose of “extorting excessive royalties.” It later added in a statement to TechCrunch that the one-time smartphone leader was “using the tactics of a patent troll.” For its part, Nokia filed suit in three German cities and ground zero for patent battles here in the States, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over 32 patents applying to a wide range of smartphone hardware and software. It’s probably too late to do any major sales damage ahead of the holiday, but in the wake of the myriad suits, Withings products have from Apple’s online store. Attempting to purchase the company’s fitness devices like a smart scale or blood pressure monitor will pop up the cheeky error, “Looking for something? We thought so. However, the product you’re looking for is no longer available on apple.com.” They appear to have gone missing from the company’s retail locations as well — the company’s brick and mortars don’t tend to stock anything you won’t find online. We’ve reached out to the company for comment, but the timing does seem curious, with Nokia having completed its acquisition of the French electronics company over the summer.
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Here’s how to track Santa on Christmas Eve
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
As per tradition, is live today across , and , helping parents and children alike track Santa’s journey from the North Pole as he begins to deliver Christmas presents all over the world. using the Google Maps app on their iPhone or iPad, plus Santa’s journey can be streamed to your TV via Chromecast, You can by saying things like “Where’s Santa?” or “Track Santa.” You can even ask it to tell you a Santa joke. But Google’s Santa Tracker website is really the one to visit these days, as it goes far beyond simply plotting good ol’ Kris Kringle on the map. The site itself has been filling throughout the month with activities for the little ones, including a number of games and videos featuring cute animated characters, as well as educational material about the place where Santa is now. Kids can see a photo from that city and read a short description. A real-time tracker on the site also lets kids see exactly how far away Santa is from them, how many gifts he’s delivered so far, and — most importantly — how long it will be until he reaches their house. And at the bottom of the page, a link will take you over to Santa’s village, a site that’s a mini-town filled with more games, places to explore and other spots where kids can learn a new skill. For example, a “learn to code” game teaches programming basics by piecing together pictures of holiday characters, like elves and reindeer, before advancing to harder tasks. Another has you ordering shapes to make a picture of a snowflake. A different learning spot takes advantage of Google Translate to teach kids how to say things like “Santa Claus” and “Ho Ho Ho” in other languages. While Google’s Santa Tracker can keep children engaged for quite some time, it’s not the only tracking site available. The got its start over 60 years ago, and also tallies the gifts delivered, time to Santa’s next stop and where Santa was last seen. But compared with Google’s fun-filled site, NORAD’s is a little boring. It’s just an animated Santa sleigh and reindeer flying across a map. And although there are photos of where Santa has been, clicking on them only pops up a Wikipedia page. But both sites can serve a purpose, though! If you want to distract the kids so you can get some last-minute gift wrapping done, point them to Google’s. If it’s time for bed, load up NORAD’s site instead. They’ll tire of it quickly, and be lulled to sleep.
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Cyanogen failed to kill Android, now it is shuttering its services and OS as part of a pivot
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Jon Russell
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
It’s been a rocky few months for , the ambitious startup that aimed to build a better version of Android than Google. It has laid off staff, let go of its CEO and parted ways with another co-founder — now it is shutting down its services and nightly software builds on December 31. The news was announced in released late on Friday: As part of the ongoing consolidation of Cyanogen, all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16. The open source project and source code will remain available for anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally. This update means owners of a device that runs the Cyanogen OS — such as the OnePlus One — must now transition over to the CyanogenMod ROM, which is not a commercial product and is managed by a community of developers led by . This essentially marks the end of Cyanogen’s grand ambition. his company was “putting a bullet through Google’s head,” but now it is transitioning to a different approach that new CEO Lior Tal believes will be more attractive to OEMs. Tal, who was previously Cyanogen COO, described the new Cyanogen Modular OS program as “designed to achieve the original objective of an open and smarter Android without the limitations of requiring the full Cyanogen OS stack and individual device bring-ups.” Essentially, Cyanogen has given up on killing Google and will instead adapt to live in Google’s world. Its software was always a hard sell because it required handset makers to ditch Android and Google services entirely in favor of Cyanogen’s own alternatives. Then there was the politics. OnePlus was Cyanogen’s largest partner, but the relationship was strained and . Now that these Cyanogen services are dying, Tal’s strategy is to unbundle what the Cyanogen OS did offer so that it can work in conjunction with regular Android builds and the stock services that Google provides with it. “The new partnership program offers smartphone manufacturers greater freedom and opportunity to introduce intelligent, customizable Android smartphones using different parts of the Cyanogen OS via dynamic modules and MODs, with the ROM of their choice, whether stock Android or their own variant,” Tal said in when he took his new role. Cyanogen has raised $115 million to date from investors that include Andreessen Horowitz and Benchmark, . that the company is “well funded,” yet it has spent half of the year in cost-cutting mode. It made over the summer and recently shuttered its Seattle office in order to “consolidate” its workforce into one team based out of its base in Palo Alto. The closure of its services is a further cost-saving move that fits with its pivot to make it more accessible and less of commitment for prospective partners. The question now is whether it can offer anything that partners actually want and will pay for.
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Count down the end of 2016 with 12 Days of Doug
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Felicia Shivakumar
| 2,016 | 12 | 24 |
Is 2016 over yet? Watch 12 Days of Doug on TechCrunch for a new giggle-inducing gadget review everyday this year. What is left of it, at least. On a hot day in the big city, Doug takes the $13 Simple Shower portable camping shower for a spin. Gadget reviewer Doug Aamoth comes away relatively impressed with the performance of the $11 “Aptoco Beard Catcher Beard ApronTrim Your Beard In Minutes Without The Mess And Stop Clogging Your Sink” and VERY impressed by the marketing team that named the product.
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Phil Schiller says Apple is working with Consumer Reports in wake of MacBook Pro battery issues
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
In a year that’s been largely lackluster for Apple and downright bizarre for battery technologies, Consumer Reports’ the new MacBook Pro feels like a too-perfect microcosm of the past 12 months. In the wake of online complaints surrounding the recently refreshed laptop line’s longevity, the review stalwart handed the 15-inch version of the laptop 56/100 and its 13-inch counterparts 47 and 40 for the standard and Touch Bar versions, respectively. “Yes, it’s the battery life,” the site wrote in the subhead of the post announcing scores, chalking the refusal to recommend the laptops up to an inconsistency across results. From CR: For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours. The site also noted that “Apple declined to comment on our test results until they better understand the issue.” SVP Phil Schiller for a late Friday tweet to address concerns, noting that the company’s own internal testing doesn’t square with Consumer Reports’ rating. Working with CR to understand their battery tests. Results do not match our extensive lab tests or field data. — Philip Schiller (@pschiller) “Working with CR to understand their battery tests,” Schiller wrote. “Results do not match our extensive lab tests or field data.” Apple’s own testing rates the high-end laptops’ battery at “up to 10 hours.” The publication was quick to note that such battery issues are sometimes fixable via software update and as such would be more than happy to conduct fresh testing if/when Apple issues a fix. While the tests mark the end of a perfect string of Consumer Reports recommendations for the notebook line, this isn’t the first time the organization has raised Apple’s ire. Notably, into iPhone 4 antenna problems resulted in an emergency press conference and a whole bunch of free cases for phone buyers.
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Responding to disaster with IoT and SDN mesh
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Jay Turner
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Communication is always important, but during a disaster it becomes paramount. Hard phone lines are an afterthought, if they’re still standing. If phone lines go down, we’re left with cellular networks that quickly become overloaded. Indeed, the internet is the backbone of contemporary communications, from email and Twitter to Instagram and WhatsApp. If we suffer an internet outage, we’re at a loss for how to communicate with the connected world. During the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, which didn’t affect hard phone lines in the area, mobile networks couldn’t handle the surge in activity. One provider went so far as to suggest sticking to texts and emails. I can’t think of anyone who would bother to email during such a crisis. In any disaster, man-made or natural, power can go out, servers can go offline and systems like cellular networks can get overloaded. This communication outage effectively means isolation — the last thing anyone in a disaster zone wants. When cellular networks and internet infrastructure are impaired, the current solution is to jerry-rig hardware replacements to act as a kind of stop-gap until the infrastructure can be restored to its original state. This approach to communication restoration has several faults, though. It takes time to implement these provisional solutions. The equipment needs to be transported, deployed and initialized. Until this happens, communications throughout the disaster area are incapacitated. Even if the deployment is a success, i.e. it was initialized without a problem, the solutions themselves can be faulty. Sometimes the solutions that are deployed interfere with communications more than they actually repair communications. After the Haiti earthquake in 2010, local ISPs restored 90 percent of the network, but NGOs broke the same network by taking over the wireless spectrum. Even if jerry-rigged solutions do work, they still take time to implement. In a disaster zone, there needs to be an immediate, dynamic and reactive way to communicate when the internet goes down. The solution might be right in front of us — or at least on our wrists. The adoption of IoT has led to more than 5 billion connected devices (wearables, sensors, implantables, etc.) in use today. There are varying accounts of how quickly these devices will proliferate, but everyone agrees the number is poised to increase rapidly over the next few years. These devices are perfect candidates to communicate with the outside world in isolated disaster zones. Low-power IoT devices and sensors have the potential to communicate with each other through Bluetooth, meaning they won’t have to go through the public internet to connect with each other. The possibility exists that these devices can form their own network — a sensor-based network that can, at the very least, provide some basic functionality during periods of extreme network stress. IoT devices can retain the capacity for low-bandwidth communication in the event that internet and power are cut off to the user, making the devices resilient in a disaster. Because they run on battery power, they aren’t affected by blackouts like many wired communication devices. And broken wiring won’t affect their ability to communicate with other wireless communication devices. While they certainly don’t have staggering amounts of power, they can enable basic communication in a pinch. Bluetooth Low Energy can handle more than 1,100 tweets per second, giving users a way to quickly communicate with a large group of people outside the disaster zone. Even nodes in the IoT that are exclusively sensors can help in the event of severed lines of communication. Large portions of the IoT are sensors that monitor the environment they’re in. These sensors can be used to relay information about the nature of the disaster, extracting data from temperature and radiation sensors to give responders a better idea of what they’re dealing with. In the event that a wide swath of sensors have been destroyed, that information also gives responders valuable, if harrowing knowledge. The devices that make up the IoT are an eclectic bunch, so managing them effectively is a complex task. The diversity of devices will increase the chances that some will survive, but without a way for them to talk to each other, they’ll be useless. Differences in networking hardware and software need to be overcome, and the only way to do that is to put the data traffic controls in the capable hands of software-defined networking (SDN). SDN separates the data plane from the control plane, and with a standard SDN protocol, IoT devices will be able to communicate with each other, even between disparate devices. IoT devices need to dynamically respond to the sudden lack of internet with compulsive wireless networking. SDN software can be built into these devices so they can search and re-route based on the information they have. This routing information can be sent to responders, as well, so they have a better understanding of the communication pathways that remain. The dynamic IoT network can use cell phones as SDN routers. If SDN protocols are programmed into the cell phones and the devices, a responsive and automated network can respond to the needs of its users. Cell phones and tablets have multiple network interfaces (like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), so they should be able to bridge gaps between radio technologies. Every device in the disaster zone can be repurposed to form a geo-locating mesh network, funneling data out of (and into) the disaster zone while giving precise locations for the people who need help. The phones and tablets become mobile routers, giving preference to critical information and allowing for the local caching of data, which reduces the load on the (already strained) network. IoT has built-in redundancy — it’s basically a mesh network of very low-bandwidth devices. If you lose nodes in the mesh, it will still function, especially with the added direction of SDN routing that optimizes node hopping through the mesh. It’s possible for responders to track the number of nodes and how they’re moving to gain insight into the disaster and how the people in the disaster zone are reacting. This is all for low-power, IoT mesh networks. For a more robust post-disaster network, software-defined wireless mesh networks might be a more versatile solution. Mesh networks reconfigure the typical hub-and-spoke model of the internet into a more diffuse method of internet access. This diffusion avoids any single point of failure by allowing the network to dynamically reroute data through the mesh. Multi-hop routing is easy to implement, but the hardware involved is not. Wireless mesh networks need line-of-sight communication pathways, which is why they’re usually deployed on the tops of buildings. It’s possible to use this requirement to our advantage following a disaster. Battery-powered mesh routers can be dropped on top of buildings. Once they’re in place, we can use them to communicate with the ground network of mobile phones and IoT devices. Only a few nodes need to be connected to the internet, so effective deployment comes down to extending the reach of the internet throughout the disaster zone. The main appeal of a mesh network is its versatility. Network nodes can be nearly any wireless-enabled device, from wireless routers to mobile devices like laptops or smartphones. These networks also can be set up quickly and easily because they don’t require a fixed infrastructure. What this all comes down to is that, in a disaster, people prefer to communicate with the devices they’re accustomed to using. Maybe it’s the comfort factor of a familiar device — we almost always have at least one mobile device on us — but people reach for their mobile phones first when disaster strikes. After the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, 50 percent of the photos related to the disaster were uploaded to Flickr in less than 24 hours. The reflex to capture evidence of disaster and inform other people of it has two purposes: it informs people in the area of the risk of staying nearby, but it also helps rescue teams identify particularly affected or precarious regions within the larger disaster zone, which helps them make informed decisions about next steps in the rescue effort. The general public, equipped with billions of connected devices, is our best weapon to mitigate disaster. The network should evolve with this in mind, injecting SDN protocols into IoT and mobile devices to take advantage of the undulating sea of potential mesh nodes already out in the world.
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Automile raises $7.5 million for fleet vehicle management software
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Megan Rose Dickey
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
provides customers with a box to install under the vehicle’s dashboard to track mileage, trips and provide route tracking. Automile ships its tracking device to customers for free. Customers pay anywhere from $5.90 per vehicle per month to $19 per vehicle per month for the service once they start to use it. What makes Automile different from Fleetmatics, Nylander said, is that its customers can easily install the device themselves, instead of having to wait for a professional to come out and install it for them. Automile anticipates a year-end revenue of $3 million, up from $800,000 last year. With the new funding, Automile plans to more aggressively expand into Europe and build out its engineering team in Palo Alto.
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Tesla’s latest Easter Eggs include a holiday light show and a trip to Mars
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKlREq6uUF8&w=680] Tesla has a habit of including Easter Eggs (aka hidden software features) in its software updates, and the latest update includes two doozies. The first is a holiday light show for Model X owners that takes full advantage of the electric SUV’s folding gullwing doors, along with its turn indicators, fog lights, headlights and more. Plus a rousing soundtrack to get you in the holiday spirit. That’s not all, though – for people looking for an even more escapist experience from their car, both Model S and Model X owners with the update can ‘transform’ their vehicles into a Mars-bound spacecraft; the one his other company, SpaceX, is building to send colonists to the red planet. This bonus feature, triggered by entering ‘Mars’ as the access code for your vehicle’s software system, will turn your in-car map to a map of the surface of Mars, and as you drive around the position of your virtual red planet rover will cross new Mars planetary terrain, too. Both Easter Eggs, and the way to enable them, can be seen in the DragTimes YouTube clips above and below. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9GE5rWrmOM&w=680]
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After Super Mario Run, Nintendo plans 2 or 3 new mobile games per year
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Super Mario Run may have its detractors, but it’s also managed to rack up nearly 10 million downloads per day in its App Store debut, officially topping 50 million downloads as of Friday. Those numbers, combined with its early revenue generating power, have Nintendo still keen on exploring more in mobile, with plans to release around two or three new mobile games per year beyond 2017. That’s according to a new interview with Nintendo’s president Tatsumi Kimishima (via ), wherein the Nintendo executive says that two or three games are on the roadmap for next year, too – reportedly an Animal Crossing and a Fire Emblem game, thought plans might change. Even assuming a 30 percent cut to Apple from Super Mario Run revenue, and lower unit sales vs. traditional console games it puts out for systems like the 3DS, Nintendo stands to make a lot of money from its mobile efforts. Super Mario Run’s revenue estimates are in the , per App Annie, which is probably far less than it makes in terms of gross revenue from a successful console title launch, but also has potential upsides in terms of much lower costs of distribution and development. Mobile, in other words, looks like a promising side business for Nintendo to lean on as it prepares to launch the Nintendo Switch, its next big hope for console success, but one that definitely isn’t without risks. That said, there has been a lot of backlash about the payment structure and game mechanics of Super Mario Run, and it’s looking likely that Nintendo is listening since it’s been tweaking elements, like the availability of tickets for the in-game Toad Rally mode, since the debut. That feedback will hopefully result in smoother rollouts of future offerings, but it’s good news in general that Nintendo looks committed to a mobile future.
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Glu Mobile acquires QuizUp in deal valued at $7.5 million
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
The developers of popular celeb-themed games including Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Nicki Minaj: The Empire, acquired Plain Vanilla Corp., and its mobile social trivia game this week, according to an . The deal was valued at $7.5 million, including forgiven debt, according to sources familiar with the deal. This is undoubtedly a disappointing fate for the investors who backed QuizUp, and kind of a steal for Glu Mobile. The Iceland-based startup raised a hefty $22 million Series B round of venture funding led by Sequoia and Tencent in 2013. Altogether, the company had raised about $40 million in outside funding, according to Crunchbase, and had attracted tens of millions of users. QuizUp, which is equal parts social network and mobile game, allows users to play trivia against friends, or to be matched in real time against an equally skilled and knowledgeable players, for a given subject. QuizUp also let users create their own question and answer sets, which made it appealing to educators, fan communities, and brands looking for creative ways to promote their products. Last year, the startup launched software that allowed corporations to use QuizUp to deliver to their employees. And it inked a deal with NBC for a 10-episode show based on and using QuizUp for audience-interactive elements of the show. All that product development and maintenance costs money, of course. In January this year, publicly traded Glu Mobile backed Plain Vanilla with a promissory note that gave them the option to later purchase the startup and its QuizUp-related assets. When NBC scuttled the QuizUp show , as Iceland-based Northstack reported at the time, it was expected that Glu would eventually buy QuizUp, provided the startup didn’t find other funds to keep its lights on, from profits or new backers. Plain Vanilla CEO Thor Fridriksson declined to comment on terms of the deal with Glu Mobile, today. He only said, “I hope that Glu will take good care of my baby.” Investors in QuizUp could not be immediately reached for comment.
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 6 | null |
Weekly Roundup: Tim Cook explains why he met with Trump, Uber stops self-driving pilot in SF
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Anna Escher
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Uber took its self-driving vehicle fleet to Arizona after being kicked out of San Francisco, Tim Cook cleared up why he met with Trump, and executive level shakeups occurred at Twitter this week. These are the top tech stories all in one place. Apple CEO Tim Cook was that met with Trump last week, and some were confused as to why. Cook sent out an internal memo to employees explaining . The short of it was that you have to show up in order to have a say. “Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be,” wrote Cook. “The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena.” Amid notions that the popularity of Apple’s portable laptops and slower upgrade cycle of desktop products, some have suggested Apple’s commitment to the desktop product. But in a posting to an employee message board, . “L Uber’s came to a hard stop, following a meeting with the California DMV and Attorney General’s office. Uber had been ordered to cease operations due to the . A cyclist advocacy group also warned that the self-driving units could put . Uber will for the time being. As 2016 comes to a close, we looked at the highs and lows of how top tech companies performed throughout the year. as iPhone sales slowed and interest in the Apple Watch declined. this year as it introduced two major hardware products, the Google Pixel and Google Home. , but 2017 could see an even larger wave for the ecommerce company. amid layoffs, slowed user growth and a botched acquisition that plagued the network in 2016. This year saw There were a few executive level shakeups this week. A , George A. Polisner, after the enterprise tech titan’s co-CEO, Safra Catz, joined the Trump transition team and stated her enthusiasm for the president-elect. Twitter just can’t catch a break. Adam Messinger, who has been the company’s CTO for nearly four years, said he was . Twitter VP of product Josh McFarland is . Review: Super Mario Run is a hopeful glimpse of Nintendo’s mobile ambitions http://tcrn.ch/2hTSvrR Posted by on Thursday, December 15, 2016 Super Mario Run finally hit the iPhone, . But . The company’s shares dropped about 15 percent in five days following the launch, which shaved off a significant amount of the company’s market cap. $10 just might be too much to ask for a mobile game. An Uber employee accusing the company of misleading employees about their equity compensation. Uber “devised a fraudulent scheme to recruit highly sought software engineers,” according to the case. It looks like Facebook is beginning to take responsibility for its role in informing today’s world. “Facebook is a new kind of platform. It’s not a traditional technology company,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a with COO Sheryl Sandberg. “It’s not a traditional media company. You know, we build technology and we feel responsible for how it’s used.” The internet has brought us into a new era where the digital is affecting the real. But the rise of abuse on social networks would lead one to believe that internet users still think the two realities are separate. Once we could cancel our subscription to the daily paper if we didn’t like the news. How can we cancel our subscription to the defining medium of the 21st century?” writes John Biggs in . There’s room for one more ride sharing unicorn. Uber’s Middle Eastern rival at a $1B valuation. Almost a year after six months after it was supposed to arrive on iPhone, the BitTorrent has done for live video what it did for file downloads: invented peer-to-peer tech that moves data transfer from a centralized source to the people. 2016 was a : It was the first full year after the surprise and the year that saw Google about its own hardware, and the . Across the industry, 2016 was also the year of AI and machine learning — and Google was at the forefront of this.
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Now Snapchat has “Filter Games”
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Josh Constine
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Snapchat wants you to play with your face, not just take pictures of it. New Selfie Lens filter games are starting to appear to users, creating an addicting new Snapchat feature that also inspires competition between friends and could become a powerful ad revenue driver. Snapchat confirms this is the launch of a new, native games feature. Back in March, Snapchat tested a limited run of a Sponsored Kraft Mac & Cheese game where you had to in your mouth. Then earlier this month, it offered an unsponsored Puzzle Face game where you have to around to reconstruct an image of your face in the least amount of time. Both were first reported by . Snapchat has also previously allowed some traditional Snap Ads in Discover to be swiped up to launch a web browser with a game inside, like the , and the . But these weren’t built by Snapchat or hosted natively in the app, and instead were built by ad agencies and hosted on the web. Snapchat’s Sponsored Mac & Cheese game (left), and Puzzle Face game (right). Image credit: Wojdylo Now Snapchat is offering its most full-fledged, well-produced native game, called Santa’s Helper. It’s embedded in one of the first Lenses shown today. You can find it by opening the camera, holding on your face to scan it, then choosing the Santa’s Helper Lens. The game places your face into an elf body, JibJab-style, and then you tilt your device back and forth to steer yourself down a ski slope as you collect presents and avoid obstacles. You can take a photo or video at any time and post it or share it with friends to challenge others to beat your score. Snapchat game Santa’s Helper. Image Credit: While absurdly simple, the games are also accessible and don’t require many instructions. They could get users coming back over and over to improve their scores. And since most Snapchat Lenses are temporary, there’s a sense of urgency to play before they disappear. Some of Snapchat’s influencers have tried creating their own games in the past, which generally see viewers try to take a screenshot at the right time, like when parts of an image line up in a fast-moving video. And chat apps from Asia like Line have long offered games to play while you wait for friends to reply. Snapchat is also tapping into people’s competitive spirit, as high score sharing via direct message or Stories could lure your friends to play, trash talk, and send back higher scores. This asynchronous, challenge-style gaming is what Facebook Messenger is trying to tap into with its own that includes titles like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Snapchat’s games aren’t as polished, but instead inspire the rough-edged goofiness its known for. Finally, Snapchat has already proven that advertisers are eager to buy Sponsored Lenses that essentially attach their brands to your faces. This type of promotion slips past people’s banner-blindness and general numbness to ads, and offers virality and influencer marketing as you send the Sponsored Lens-filtered creations to friends. And even if your never share the output, just playing with the lenses creates a much deeper, more interactive experience with a brand than most ads. Demonstrating a new potential revenue stream is a big deal for Snapchat as it heads towards a 2017 IPO. The Serena tennis game saw an average of 217 seconds of play per user who opened it, and that’s despite having to dig the game out of another ad and wait for the web page to load. By building its own native games inside its app, Snapchat may have found another way to stay fresh and fun in the eyes of teens.
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Salesforce asserted itself in 2016
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Ron Miller
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
has always liked to think of itself as an industry irritant, the company that was bucking the status quo and making the established players feel uncomfortable. But this year as the cloud mainstreamed and , you couldn’t help but feel that after 17 years in business, that Salesforce’s time had finally come. The company went on a historic acquisition shopping spree, hitting some targets and missing others — and at one point seeing . It also stayed firmly on the technology cutting edge by joining the parade of companies building artificial intelligence into their products. While it went on quite a run this year, it still stayed true to its community service roots. After threatening to pull out of Indiana in 2015 over anti-LGBTQ legislation, it did the same in Georgia and North Carolina in 2016. CEO Marc Benioff remained a passionate spokesperson for responsible capitalism and . While not everything went its way, all in all, not a bad 12 months. Let’s take a closer look. It all starts with being a focused company, and few could argue that Salesforce doesn’t execute. In November, , after showing some . What’s more, revenue continued to trend up. CEO Marc Benioff predicted some time in 2018, and went so far as to forecast the company would reach $20 billion “faster than any other enterprise software company,” (although he didn’t give a timeline for that goal). [graphiq id=”1r7DYA2T4zP” title=”Salesforce.Com, Inc. (CRM) Quarterly Revenue Last 8 Quarters” width=”600″ height=”551″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/1r7DYA2T4zP” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/9286813/Salesforce-Com-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] According to data from (pdf), which ranked the world’s software companies based on fiscal 2014 revenue numbers, Salesforce was one of the top 10 software companies, coming in at number 9. As their lofty revenue goals suggest, they have no intention of stopping any time soon. The thing is, Salesforce is bursting through these revenue milestones as a SaaS vendor, proving that SaaS vendors can be highly successful organizations. Salesforce opened up its wallet this year, buying 10 companies, . That’s up from five deals last year, after just one in 2014. It’s worth noting that two of those 2015 acquisitions came in December, perhaps foretelling the buying binge that was to come. Chart: All good acquisitions bring some combination of engineering talent, filling a functionality gap and driving revenue (obviously a big goal for any company, but especially Salesforce). As Salesforce president, vice chairman and COO, Keith Block explained in September : “We look at culture. Will it be a good cultural fit? Is it good product fit? Is there talent? Is there financial value? What are the risks of assimilating the company into our company,” Block explained. In April, it made an important purchase related to artificial intelligence for a relatively modest $32.8 million. With it, they acquired the talents and expertise of CEO Richard Socher, who immediately became Salesforce’s Chief Scientist, contributing his deep learning and natural language processing knowledge. While we didn’t know it, the company had been working on building an artificial intelligence platform, which it announced in September (more on that later). The biggest fish by far was Demandware, in June, the highest amount it ever paid for a company. in late September, filling in a big hole in its platform. Perhaps the most unusual of its 10 acquisitions was word processing platform, Quip, last July. The purchase went against the company’s philosophy of going hard for verticals, , it saw potential. “Quip is very compelling. Some people think it’s an unorthodox acquisition, but it’s in the context of driving productivity for customers,” he said.” From the very beginning, when the company was launched, i , hard coding community action into its corporate charter — whether that meant giving money or software or encouraging its employees to commit time and money in the community where they live and work. Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer of Salesforce.com Inc., left, speaks with Tony Prophet, now Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce Photo: Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images Benioff, at his company’s Dreamforce conference, an event that attracted more than 100,000 people, explained that he sees the world at a pivotal time in history with lots of issues related to the environment, inequality and education, and he believes it’s imperative that execs put their skills to bear on some of these social issues. “You can isolate yourselves and say I’m going to put those skills to use in a box at work, or you can say I’m going to have an integrated life. The way I look at the world, I’m going to put those skills to work to make the world a better place.” And for Benioff, these aren’t just empty words. He walks the walk when it comes to social issues. In 2016, to attempt to prevent anti-LGBTQ legislation from being passed in Georgia and North Carolina, threatening to move business or cancel events in those states if they passed discriminatory legislation. This year, , an unprecedented step in tech industry, an industry that has been highly criticized for its lack of diversity. In statement announcing the hiring, Salesforce called Prophet, “a champion for human rights and social justice.” Salesforce has always prided itself staying on the cutting edge by trying to find ways to incorporate the latest technologies into its platform. This year, its biggest tech announcement by far, involved artificial intelligence. Its first foray into AI, introduced in September, . It was not a product so much as an approach to insert intelligence across the Salesforce platform. For too long, CRM tools have been systems of record, where the sales team recorded everything they knew about the customer. The goal with AI is to help surface information and proactively help the sales team, turning CRM (and other parts of the Salesforce platform) into a tool that can assist and suggest in a much more prescriptive way. This is the next company you should call, or you should know about this news before you call them. While it was just a first step this year, the idea is that by adding talent like from the aforementioned MetaMind purchase, and building on the initial pieces, this could be a big part of the value proposition of these tools moving forward. (Of course, it’s worth mentioning, that while Salesforce was embracing AI, .) Not everything went Salesforce’s way in 2016, and its attempts to buy a social property proved to be a glaring failure. First, there was LinkedIn, in June. It’s a compelling property for a company like Salesforce because the data has the potential to be incredibly valuable. Microsoft certainly saw that and was willing to allocate a chunk of its fortune toward bringing it into the fold, getting the data for itself, and keeping it away from Salesforce. Benioff indicated in September t , although given that price, it would seem way out of Salesforce’s range. Not to be left out, Benioff saw another opportunity to grab a data-rich social tool . Immediately , and as the story leaked, Salesforce shareholders were mystified by Benioff’s interest in Twitter, not seeing the value in that data that seemed so tantalizing to Salesforce. The stock price began to drop and the Board began to balk, and Benioff had little choice to back off. He would later say he was puzzled by the leak that led to the widespread coverage of the deal, saying that such a leak had never happened before. But an even bigger leak was to come. On October 19th, the Wall Street Journal found a leaked emails. It included just about every SaaS company of any value on the planet, but what it didn’t show was Twitter, suggesting perhaps that Benioff saw a limited opportunity when Twitter became available and tried to grab it while the grabbing was good. It didn’t work. No company ever has a perfect year. As with any person or company, there are going to be ups and downs, and hits and misses, but on balance when you look at what the company accomplished this year, you have to say it was mostly positive. Its challenge will be to keep it going in 2017.
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Our self-flying car future
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Tony Aube
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
When I was young, I remember tuning in with my brother for the Sunday morning cartoons and watching reruns of the Jetson family going about in their flying car. That was the golden era for science fiction. Hollywood was filled with movies like Blade Runner, Back to the Future, Star Wars and The Fifth Element. These movies promised us futuristic worlds full of wonderful tech. It seems like we’ve achieved that future in many ways. Everybody now has a super transmitter in their pocket, allowing them to communicate instantly with anyone else on the planet. We’ve mapped the human genome, made most of the human knowledge freely accessible at one’s fingertips and hell, we’re even making plans to colonize Mars. But despite all of this, one part is missing. There are still no flying cars in sight. They can’t be so hard to make, right? Source: Believe it or not, flying cars have been around for more than 70 years. Ever since Jules Verne introduced the idea in his 1904 novel, generations of engineers have tried . In 1940, Henry Ford predicted that a combination of airplane and motorcar was coming. At the time, both the car and the plane were becoming cheaper, better and saw massive adoption. A combination of the two was thought to be inevitable. It turns out Ford was right. Just a few years after his announcement, aeronautical engineer Ted Hall came out with the first fully functioning flying car. What you just watched is a 70-year-old video of a fully working flying car. The vehicle was a combination of a road car and attachable wings. It was backed by Convair, a major airplane manufacturer at the time, and had a total of . With just a few minor adjustments, it promised to become a huge commercial success. But in 1947, a crash landing during a test flight led Convair to back out. The project, judged to be too dangerous, was eventually shut down, along with Hall’s dream of a flying car in every garage. Source: Since then, there have been countless attempts at building flying cars. None of them made it beyond the prototype phase. However, what’s most remarkable about the idea of the flying car is how enduring it is Despite a history of failures and setbacks, every generation of engineers have been, and still are, captivated by the idea. Today, companies like , and are actively pushing the dream forward. You probably have never heard of them, but all of these companies have , prototypes. AeroMobil’s latest prototype, aptly named, the AeroMobil 3.0 As we’ve seen, the technology for flying cars has been around for decades, and even today, companies are working on them. So why are there still no flying cars in sight? In a word: . As I , humans are horrible drivers. In the U.S., cars cause about , costing in the process. Think of the worst driver you know. Now imagine that person flying a two-ton death machine. How would that make you feel? Public adoption of flying cars would be a death warrant for every single building in the world. Modern buildings have been designed to sustain normal car crashes (which happen all the time), but not flying ones. In the air, a mere collision with another car could send both vehicles crashing to the ground. Who would want to live in a world where flying metal can fall on your head at any time? Ultimately, the reason we don’t have flying cars isn’t technological or cost limitations. It’s because most human beings are way too unreliable to fly anything. This is where it gets interesting: We’ve already solved the problem of unreliable human beings with self-driving cars. Self-driving cars . All of the biggest tech companies are working on them, and it is only a matter of time until we see everywhere. While self-driving cars are neat, they are not nearly as fascinating as their potential successor: self-flying cars. you might ask. It turns out, it is much easier to build driverless tech for flying vehicles than regular cars. In the air, there are no pedestrians, potholes, construction sites or any other obstacles that . This is why driverless tech has been first developed and has now been used in airfare for decades. Recent advances in sensors, computing and AI are making human pilots . Today, pilots fly, on average, . While pilots’ income used to compare to lawyers and doctors, the entry salary for new pilots in the U.S. can now go . There has been a lot of talk about how automation is taking out taxi and truck driving jobs. Pilots are no exception. To sum things up, safety is the main issue with flying cars, and driverless tech is the key to solving that problem. So, who is working on that? In the last years, three major players in the Valley have raised strong interest in flying vehicles. All of them are currently working on driverless technology. Oh, and they also have very deep pockets, access to the best engineers in the world and a history of making seemingly impossible ideas happen. They are Travis Kalanick, Larry Page and Elon Musk. Last month, Uber published a explaining their vision for our flying-car future. The paper, , describes a concrete plan to expand their business toward a global, shared, on-demand aviation service within the next 10 years. In short: Picture the Uber app, but for driverless, flying vehicles. Beyond Uber, Larry Page also has a big interest in flying cars. In the past years, he has in two flying car startups, and Kitty Hawk. Zee.Aero is currently testing its prototype at the Hollister Municipal Airport, where people have reported seeing . Kitty Hawk is a bit more secretive, but interestingly enough, it is run by Sebastian Thrun, the former head of Google’s self-driving car program. As for Musk, well, he doesn’t quite believe in the idea of a flying car. , mind you, but because he thinks there are more efficient ways of traveling between cities, such as the Hyperloop. However, for long distance travel, he thinks that electric aircraft are the way to go. , he mentioned that his next big idea is a supersonic electric jet. In fact, he already has a design, and if no one else does it, he might start yet another company to make it happen. What’s interesting about these projects is that they have one point in common: their design. Indeed, Uber, Page and Musk’s projects are about electric, human-carrying vehicles that can take off and land vertically. That last part is important. You could argue that the flying cars shown so far are, at best, an awkward and overly expensive combination of a plane and a car — the resulting vehicle being much worse than the sum of its parts. This is because planes and cars are meant for very different purposes, and merging the two means making terrible compromises. Ultimately, you would be better off buying a plane and a car separately. To solve this design problem, we first need to let go of the idea that a flying car should look like a plane or a car. I’ve how we have the bad tendency to apply old solutions to new technology, and why ground-breaking products usually require a new design approach. This is exactly what we’re getting with VTOLs. VTOLs stands for Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicles. In short, the that made possible today’s will enable our future, human-carrying flying cars. Forget wings and wheels; we’re talking about the . Picture DJI’s drones, but for people. The EHang 184, , is among the most exciting prototypes. Beyond looking silly, strapping plane wings to a car is a flawed idea in many ways. Wings mean the vehicle has to take off horizontally, which is dangerous, cumbersome and requires a lot of space. By switching to vertical thrusters, the vehicle can achieve a high altitude much faster, which saves a lot of energy. With such a design, you can strip the vehicle of its most dangerous, movables parts, such as the wings, the tail and elevators. The resulting design is simpler, safer and easier to mass produce. Another key part of the design is the electric motor. Beyond this being great for the environment, electricity is the most logical option for VTOLs. Because they don’t require as many moving parts, electric motors are much easier to produce than combustion engines. They are also way more energy-efficient, easier to maintain, less likely to break down mid-flight and can’t explode in case of impact. Electric motors also enable having multiple asynchronized thrusters. If one thruster fails, the others can instantly adjust to compensate and land safely. Finally, electricity has the huge benefit of being silent. This is a big distinguishing factor between VTOLs and helicopters. In their paper, Uber estimates that, during take-off, the VTOL’s noise will be comparable to the city’s background noise. During flight, it should be barely audible. Source: Who has ever dreamed about, while being stuck in traffic, pressing a big red button, soaring up in the air and flying over all the other suckers? Eliminating traffic is the dream and the promise of flying cars. Just like skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground — Jeff Holden, Uber’s CPO As I , traffic his a huge burden for our society. In the U.S. alone, traffic wastes about annually. One of the biggest causes of traffic is the lack of infrastructure. Our highways were never designed to sustain today’s amount of commuters. With VTOLs, that won’t be a problem anymore. Their mainstream adoption would massively reduce the need for roads, rails, bridges and tunnels. In addition to being great news for the environment, this would mean hundreds of billions of dollars in potential infrastructure savings. Furthermore, not being bound to infrastructure also means saving a lot of time. Trains, buses and cars can only go from A to B in limited and sometimes inefficient ways. Roads are constantly exposed to interruptions, such as car crashes or construction work. Flying, on the other hand, means being able to travel in a straight line, which is the shortest distance between you and your destination. In addition, being able to take off and land vertically is a huge advantage over current aircraft because you aren’t dependent on airports and runways anymore. Just take off near home, and land next to your destination. Again, less infrastructure required, more time saved. In its paper, Uber estimates long-distance commute as the best initial use-case for VTOLS. Ultimately, with mass production, they believe VTOLs could be cheaper than owning a car. For example, a drive from San Francisco to San Jose could eventually be a 15-minute, $20 ride in a VTOL. Pretty good. Flying cars still have a long way to go. In its white paper, Uber underlines the major challenges needed to make them a reality. For starters, even if they don’t require any pilots, new flying vehicles need to comply with FAA regulations, which will likely take a long time. Furthermore, there are still concerns about costs and safety, and the battery technology isn’t quite there yet. In its white paper, Uber presents how it plans to address those concerns and achieve public adoption of VTOLs within the next 10 years. In , Peter Thiel presents the controversial idea that we don’t live in an innovative world anymore. He argues that, while the industrial revolution saw massive innovations such as electricity, home appliances, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, etc., today’s innovation is mostly confined to IT and communication. As Thiel puts it, our smartphones distract us from the fact that our lifestyle has remained strangely unchanged since the 1950s. I would propose that is not the case anymore. At least, not in transportation. Recent projects such as the self-driving car, the Hyperloop and prove that innovation is alive and well. And now, on-demand shared flying cars promise to democratize air travel the same way the car once democratized ground transportation. Ultimately, this means better, faster, cheaper, safer and environmentally friendlier mobility for all. Flying cars might still have a long road ahead of them, but it doesn’t matter. Because Marty, where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
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Russian authorities are trying to unlock iPhone 4S from Russian ambassador’s killer
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Romain Dillet
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
The off-duty police officer who the Russian ambassador in Turkey was shot by Turkish special forces minutes after the crime. He had an iPhone 4S on him, and now, according to and , Turkish authorities asked for Russia’s help to unlock the iPhone. Given that it’s an iPhone 4S and it has a 4-digit passcode, it should be quite easy to unlock the device. There are many solutions out there to do this and authorities don’t even need to ask for Apple’s help. The iPhone 4S is quite old now and it was a much less secure device. First, the iPhone 4S runs iOS 5 to iOS 9, but many iPhone 4S owners didn’t update to recent iOS versions. If the device runs iOS 7 or earlier, getting the content of the device is a piece of cake. The content of the device isn’t encrypted as Apple with iOS 8. Authorities can access this data quite easily. Second, if the iPhone is running iOS 8, remember that the iPhone 4S didn’t have a Secure Enclave and Touch ID sensor. The Secure Enclave is a coprocessor that utilizes a secure boot process to make sure that it’s uncompromized. It has a secret unique ID not accessible by the rest of the phone, Apple or anyone — it’s like a private key. The phone generates ephemeral keys (think public keys) to talk with the Secure Enclave. They only work with the unique ID to encrypt and decrypt the data on the coprocessor. With the iPhone 5s and later, Apple has been using the Secure Enclave to encrypt your passcode and sensitive information. Even more important, the Secure Enclave progressively increase the delay between passcode entries when attempting to bruteforce passcodes (trying all passcode possibilities). Without a Secure Enclave, you can bruteforce the passcode with a that costs a few hundred bucks. And these bruteforcing devices can also the setting that lets you wipe the data after 10 unsuccessful attempts. It only takes a few hours. With iOS 8.1.2 and later, Apple fixed the vulnerability that let devices like the IP-Box enter passcodes. But forensics companies have been relying on other vulnerabilities to access phone data. In the San Bernardino case, the FBI to unlock an iPhone 5c running iOS 9 for instance. Some companies even that they can unlock an iPhone 4S running iOS 9. It’s just much harder on an iPhone with a Secure Enclave. For all these reasons, it seems highly unlikely that Apple was involved in this investigation at all. Russian authorities are most certainly perfectly capable of unlocking an iPhone 4S on their own, and that’s why Apple has been silent on this issue.
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Here’s what Pokémon GO is doing for its Holiday Event
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
After back-to-back Pokemon GO and events, everyone was sure Niantic would do something to bring players in through the Winter Holidays — but no one really knew what. The event is rolling out in two phases, with some overlap between the two. Meanwhile, that should still pop up until December 29th. Alas, Niantic has confirmed to me that there will be no doubling of XP or Stardust for this event — so if you’ve been sitting on a boatload of Pidgies all ready to evolve, it doesn’t look like December will be their time to shine.
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Arizona welcomes Uber’s autonomy: It’s The Daily Crunch
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Uber rage quits California, Pokémon Go hits the Apple Watch hype wall and Super Mario might be running against time when it comes to revenue. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for December 23, 2016. And don’t worry – yule make it through 2016. It looked like the California DMV had scored a rare PR victory over Uber when it revoked the restoration on Uber’s 16 autonomous test vehicles, effectively ending the company’s San Francisco pilot service. But Uber fought back with a splashy, well-documented convoy taking its cars and bringing them to their new home in Arizona, where they’ll start service in the coming weeks with the State’s full approval. Uber’s hoping this turns into a black eye for California, since it’ll make them look anti-progress. But CA is being very reasonable with their autonomous test permit requirement, so we’ll see how the return to the state goes for Uber’s self-driving cars if and when it happens. Well, Niantic made good on its timeline for Pokémon Go for the Apple Watch. It’s here! But it’s also not that great. I tried it out for all of about five minutes, before realizing it doesn’t fix any of the problems Pokémon Go has as a game, and it succeeds only in making me feel bacd about my lethargy. The Pokémon Go dedicated hardware is a much better add-on for the core experience. Super Mario Run is a record-breaker, but can it go the distance? The number of users who are spending in-game is dropping off very quickly, but that kind of makes sense given its purchase model. Still it’s also continuing to face negative reviews because of how its structured, and Nintendo probably isn’t too keen on spending on its carefully built brand credibility on mobile titles that look designed to drive in-app spend. Encrypted communication app Signal has pushed an update that will work around state-controlled censorship in places like Egypt where it’s been blocked, which is great news. The app also put stickers and doodles in the update because it’s not ALL just about privacy all the time – sometimes it’s about fun. Ahead of its IPO, Airbnb might be looking to de-risk some of its business by building flight booking into its service offerings. Rather than face increased acceptance of its rental model, it seems to be encountering more resistance from regulators and from building owners and management companies, so varying the ways in which it makes money is only logical. And even if hosts can skirt these rules, it . Uber’s been upfront about why it wants more access to user location data, but some were finding that it appeared to be tracking their location even days or weeks after they last opened the app. Well it turns out that’s not Uber’s fault, but the fault of an iOS Maps extension made available to developers in September. Basically, if you use the Uber integration in the native iOS Maps app, you’ll see the icon indicating the app is using your location, and it’s actually nbd. Good news! Features of Autopilot that haven’t been enabled on newer Tesla hardware, ironically because the new hardware is so much better, should be coming back sometime next week. !
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Amazon launches its newest private label, Wickedly Prime
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Amazon’s push into the private-label business continued this month, with the launch of its latest brand, . Unlike Amazon’s more recent entries in the private label space, such as Happy Belly, Mama Bear and Presto!, Wickedly Prime is the first brand since the debut of Amazon Elements two years ago to make its affiliation with Amazon known. This represents a strategic shift in how Amazon is approaching its private label business. Instead of making it nearly impossible to tell which brands are made by Amazon, Wickedly Prime embraces its Amazon affiliation. Not only does it have “Prime” in its name, the boxes feature the iconic Amazon “smile” in the brand’s logo, and the product packaging even states “Distributed by Amazon Fulfillment Services,” notes the e-commerce data measurement firm, , in a new report that analyzed the success of the brand’s launch. Amazon’s previous private label goods only stated “AFS Brands LLC” on their packaging, for comparison’s sake. The new Wickedly Prime brand, as the name implies, is exclusive to Amazon Prime members, and targets the “foodie” crowd with offerings similar to what you might find at a Trader Joe’s. This includes Amazon’s own line of snacks, like popcorn, tortilla chips, and soft shell almonds, available in a variety of flavors. Amazon’s increased efforts in the private label space were first outed in May The article detailed the forthcoming brands’ offerings, including those from Wickedly Prime Wickedly Prime was not the first of the newer private labels to launch. It’s likely that Amazon wanted to test the business and work out the kinks, before slapping its name on the private label items it sells. With the relative success of its earlier launches, however, the retailer now seems ready to make its private label goods more known to consumers. Still, the launch of Wickedly Prime was a bit under the radar – as with some of its other brands, Amazon didn’t make a big announcement, it just added the products to its website. One Click Retail says the initial products sold well so far, with the top four SKUs reaching over $500 in sales in the first week. The other SKUs each broke $100. While these are not record-breaking numbers by any means, they are “not insignificant for a new product,” notes One Click Retail in its report. And based on how the other private labels performed, there’s potential for solid growth. Happy Belly, for example, saw its nuts and trail mix sales grow from $20,000 to $265,000 thanks to a series of Alexa deals in November, and a Lightning Deal on December 6th. That’s 5,000 percent growth over the prior month. The ability to promote its own products through its deals platform and, now, its network of connected devices in consumers’ homes, is a lever Amazon can pull at any time. The retailer seems to know what it’s doing, too. found that Amazon’s private label brands were taking over market share in their respective categories, including speakers (thanks to Amazon Echo), baby wipes (Amazon Elements), and batteries (AmazonBasics). Now we’ll see if Amazon will have the same success in the consumer packaged goods space, with its Happy Belly coffees and snacks, Wickedly Good snacks, and Presto! detergents.
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The Dodo is alive and well with 1 billion monthly video views
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Looks like people really do like animal videos. The team at (an online publisher focused on those aforementioned animals) told me their videos were viewed 1 billion times in November. That’s an increase of more than a tenfold from January, when Dodo videos received a mere 80 million views. The Dodo follows a “distributed” media strategy, which means that the majority of those video views aren’t happening on its website, but rather on social media — mostly Facebook. President YuJung Kim also told me that the publisher just this month, which means that there should be a healthy bump for December. “The average across our videos was 2.6 million views,” Kim said. “So we’re not looking at a stream of memes and GIFs that get 100,000 views and then that one viral hit that gets 200 million, and that somehow gets us to 1 billion. It’s that steady efficiency per video.” What does “steady efficiency” involve? Kim acknowledged that The Dodo has learned many of the same lessons as every other publisher on social media — things like having “a strong opening shot.” But she said it’s really been about finding animal stories that resonate with people. “Our videos are designed to be shared,” added founder Izzie Lerer. “They have to pack a punch and, most importantly, mean something to people. Whether it’s a video of a dog having the time of his life, or an elephant orphanage, the idea is that our videos can present a way to connect with animals.” That doesn’t mean The Dodo is above tying into current events, too. For example, it got 66 million views for this video of “ .” Getting views is one thing — the other challenge is making money, particularly when those video views are happening on someone else’s platform. Kim said the focus for now is on growth rather than monetization, but as business models evolve, The Dodo needs to “equip ourselves and be nimble.” It’s also part of a larger organization now, namely Group Nine, a company formed from of Thrillist, NowThis Media, Discovery’s digital network Seeker and The Dodo. (At the time of the merger in October, Group Nine said it was getting 3.5 billion video views across all its properties.) The Dodo still operates as a separate brand, but Lerer said that as a result of the deal, the team is now planning to create Dodo content for TV.
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This battery is powered by bacteria
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John Biggs
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Researchers at Binghamton University in New York have created a “bacteria-powered battery on a single sheet of paper.” The project is aimed at creating batteries for disposable microelectronics that can run for weeks using a little bacteria-rich liquid. “The manufacturing technique reduces fabrication time and cost, and the design could revolutionize the use of bio-batteries as a power source in remote, dangerous and resource-limited areas,” write the researchers. The researchers used a piece of chromatography paper and a ribbon of silver nitrate under a layer of wax. The anode was made of “a conductive polymer on the other half of the paper” and a reservoir held bacteria-rich liquid. The cellular respiration powered the battery. You’re not going to power your car with these but you will be able to squeeze out a little juice. The batteries expel “31.51 microwatts at 125.53 microamps with six batteries in three parallel series and 44.85 microwatts at 105.89 microamps in a 6×6 configuration.” The researchers believe these batteries can run glucose sensors, detect pathogens, or keep small electronics alive for days without traditional power supplies. Interestingly this isn’t the first bacteria battery his team has made. The team “developed its first paper prototype in 2015, which was a foldable battery that looked much like a matchbook.” The best part? “Earlier this year they unveiled a design that was inspired by a ninja throwing star.”
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Wolfprint 3D raises $500K to bring scanning pods to an airport near you
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John Biggs
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
3D body scanning isn’t very exciting right now – you can’t really use your scan anywhere except maybe on where people can print you out and create a shrine to you (hint hint!). Wolfprint, however, wants to bring 3D body scanning to the masses by putting their pod-shaped scanners in airports and malls, allowing you to create 3D avatars of yourself for use in video games and VR. According to , the Estonian company raised $500,000 to do this job – not much, honestly, but enough to get a few more 3D scans into the hands of gamers and artists. The company has already scanned 5,000 people and they hope to do more by in public places. The scanners cost $8,000 and can bring in about $50,000 in yearly revenue. Interestingly the Estonian company raised the cash using SeedInvest, an equity crowdfunding platform. This mode could be the de facto way for small companies like this one to grab some cash in early stages and, given that it’s far more popular in Europe where the VC scene is arguably truncated it looks like an interesting way to build and grow. The company claims to have partnerships with Nike and Paramount in the works so we’ll see how soon you’ll be able to scan yourself at the local Niketown.
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ABC launches a suite of local news apps for Fire TV
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Disney-ABC is going after cord cutters with the launch of a suite of streaming TV apps for the Fire TV, aimed at bringing ABC stations’ local news to those who don’t pay for cable. The company this week launched eight apps that cover all its ABC-owned stations, each delivering local news to that market, along with weather, community news, an evening video digest with the day’s top stories, and even a “Feel Good” section with upbeat, inspiring stories to take the edge off. The launch includes all the ABC-owned stations, including , and . In addition, the company brought its Freeform (previously ABC Family) app to Fire TV, alongside the new ABC apps. The move is a notable investment on ABC’s part to reach the cord cutting audience, who are often lacking for local news. Without using a digital antenna to capture free, over-the-air stations, many cord cutters simply forgo watching local content when streaming through apps on their connected media players. But the station apps are free, and don’t require a subscription to use, notes ABC, which will allow them to attract a wider audience. Of course, ABC’s main app also offers live local news programming, but the new local apps are focused on offering a different type of experience. Instead of live streams, the apps’ navigation lets viewers browse through sections like “Quick Catch Up,” or “Latest Update,” depending on what sort of news they’re looking for at the time. But because these curated news stories are not live streamed, some viewers may be frustrated that the content doesn’t feel as current as it could be. The company said the decision to launch these apps was prompted by the sizable increases Disney-ABC has seen on connected devices in the past year. By launching on Fire TV, it’s hoping to capture those lost viewers who are no longer tuning into their local news channels. The new apps are available for download from the Amazon Appstore.
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Baidu and KFC’s new smart restaurant suggests what to order based on your face
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Baidu is demonstrating some of its most recent tech advancements in novel ways, including a partnership with KFC China (yes, the fried chicken KFC). The search giant sometimes referred to as the ‘Google of China’ partnered with KFC to open a new “smart restaurant” in Beijing, which employs facial recognition to make recommendations about what customers might order, based on factors like their age, gender and facial expression. The restaurant also offers up augmented reality games via table stickers, but these are also deployed at 300 other KFC locations in Beijing. The facial recognition tech is unique to this one location, though Baidu has previously worked with KFC on another type of smart restaurant at a pilot location in Shanghai, where a robot customer service agent can listen for and recognize orders made by customers using natural language input. Baidu’s tech in this new restaurant, however, is all about guessing what you want before you can even ask; image recognition hardware installed at the KFC will scan customer faces, seeking to infer moods, and guess other information including gender an age in order to inform their recommendation. Baidu says in a press release that the system would tell “a male customer in his early 20s” to order “a set meal of crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and coke for lunch,” while “a female customer in her 50s” would get a recommendation of “porridge and soybean milk for breakfast.” Customers might not love the implications of the suggestions the system comes up with, but these are just suggestions, after all. And the setup also has built-in recognition, so if you’re a return customer, it can ‘remember’ what you ordered before and suggest your past favorites. Of course, the idea of a fast food restaurant retaining my image for recognition purposes, tied to an actual order history, is more than a little unnerving. But then again, KFC China is really damn good – better than its North American counterpart. This is just a single restaurant so Baidu and KFC are only toying with the idea, but if you feel exhausted at the thought of having to make up your mind in the fast food checkout line, you can always hope it catches on.
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UK’s Nutmeg pulls in an extra £12m for its Series D from Taipei’s Fubon bank
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Mike Butcher
| 2,016 | 12 | 23 |
Hit UK FinTech startup Nutmeg has raked in another $14.6m (£12m) for its Series D round, bringing the total to $51m (£42m). The £12m comes from the Taipei Fubon Bank, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s second largest financial services firm. Last month it announced a £30m raise led by Convoy, Hong Kong’s largest listed independent financial advice firm and existing backers including Balderton Capital, Pentech, Armada Investment Group and Nigel Wray. Nutmeg, which has now raised $86.8m (£71m) to date said the funds will be used to “fuel Nutmeg’s innovation, expansion and to maintain its growth trajectory”. Martin Stead, CEO of Nutmeg, said: “There is a very significant market opportunity before us, in the UK and beyond, and we are going to capture it. With these new funds, we will continue to invest in product innovations which disrupt the industry and deliver a better deal – and a better experience – for customers. And, we are going to expand into new categories and new territories.” Nutmeg now manages approximately £600 million AUM on behalf of 25,000 customers.
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America’s problems are Silicon Valley’s next investment
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Katherine Boyle
| 2,016 | 12 | 15 |
Rounds versus appropriations. Term sheets versus term limits. Silicon Valley and Washington speak different languages, but we mostly understand each other. The same is less true of conversations between the economic and political elites and the constituencies they serve. President-elect Trump and members of the new administration met with tech leaders , where Trump told Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sheryl Sandberg, among others, that “there’s no one in the world like you!” Sources told the that the off-the-record meeting included productive discussions on immigration and trade with China. But this rosy rhetoric isn’t surprising and threatens to mask a major problem that surfaced during the campaign: the growing cultural disconnect between tech innovators and the many Americans we serve. This week is the perfect opportunity for technology executives and investors to lead an open, public conversation about how we can innovate for all Americans, many of whom feel threatened by automation and technological progress. This election highlighted many problems that tech leaders are starting to address—and fake news is only one of them. It’s time investors and founders expand our focus to help solve the tough civic and economic problems that surfaced during the campaign. Here are some questions we should be asking ourselves. In Silicon Valley, people strive to conserve time. In the rest of America, people conserve money. Much of the on-demand economy is built to help busy professionals save time and reduce hassle. While many on-demand companies are great businesses—with some employing hundreds of thousands of people— there are serious problems plaguing Americans that have little to do with saving time. Companies like the General Catalyst investment Digit, which helps consumers easily save money by automating the savings process, or Wish and Hollar, mobile commerce companies that sell affordable goods to people across the country, are proving that the needs of average Americans can be served through commercial tech products. What makes these companies timely is that their founders eschewed trickle-down business models. They envisioned the problems of the average consumer—and solved their problems In the same vein, there are national problems—including underemployment and mental health— that are too big for investors to ignore. Products that foster wellness should be top of mind for investors, as advances in machine learning are making personalized health solutions cheaper and broadly accessible. Similarly, a new crop of tech-enabled educational products and vocational schools, such as Guild Education in Denver, are giving workers new skills for career advancement for the automated economy. The decades-long push to personalization of news has given rise to some of the most beloved consumer companies of our era. But that siloed media can destroy civic discourse— . As Facebook grapples with product changes to fend off fake news, every venture-backed company should evaluate how product design affects their communities, for better or worse. Are there product fixes and features that encourage debate among people who are skeptical of one another? Airbnb (another General Catalyst investment) and NextDoor are two prominent examples of companies addressing these questions head on. To combat racial bias on their platform, Airbnb created a new product team to monitor discrimination and will now offer bias training to its hosts. Nextdoor, a neighborhood social media platform, has changed its user experience in relation to crime: it now requires description of suspicious behaviors rather than descriptors of suspects, coaching users away from biased assumptions. These companies show how product design can improve societal ills, and investors can push for these changes. Om Malik says Silicon Valley has an . For investors, it’s often a bias problem—a bias towards solving problems we see up close. As a Washington Post reporter in the BB (Before Bezos) Era, I begged for funds to cover stories outside our nation’s capital, knowing that reporters can’t truly empathize with what they don’t see and report firsthand. Silicon Valley investors don’t have dire funding constraints, yet I’ll be the first to admit that we need to leave the Bay more to truly understand the problems affecting rural America. The rural-urban divide is obvious and will widen if technologists overlook the markets between the coasts. If we want the impact of Silicon Valley to expand, we have to witness and address the problems unique to communities outside our own. The bifurcation of American society is not only a Washington problem, it’s a business problem. Beyond denouncing the election results, let’s ask why this massive market of voters supported Trump’s candidacy and find opportunities for technology to improve their lives, as well.
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Crunch Report | Super Mario Run Hits the App Store
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
| 2,016 | 12 | 15 |
Tito Hamze, John Mannes
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski TechCrunch C/O Tito Hamze
410 Townsend street
Suite 100
San Francisco Ca. 94107
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