Tuesday, February 1, 2022

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[New post] TiE Dubai and RAKBANK join hands to launch 2022 TiE University MENA Program for aspiring university students

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 02:49 AM PST

uaenews4u posted: " TiE Dubai and RAKBANK join hands to launch 2022 TiE University MENA Program for aspiring university students Applications are now open to 0075niversity students MENA wide to compete globally for cash and in-kind prizes of up to USD $100,000 Dub"

Slashdot

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 02:41 AM PST

Slashdot


DARPA's ROCKn Program Aims To Make Optical Atomic Clocks Portable

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:00 PM PST

DARPA has announced a new initiative called the Robust Optical Clock Network (ROCkN) program, which will look to develop a practical, super-accurate optical atomic clock that is robust and small enough to fit inside a military aircraft, warship, or field vehicle. New Atlas reports: Ignoring a lot of technical details, a conventional atomic clock works by using a beam of microwaves to measure the frequency of the target atoms, but by replacing the microwaves with light, the accuracy is boosted by a factor of 100. In fact, such optical clocks are so accurate that the most advanced wouldn't gain or lose a second through the entire lifespan of the universe. Such optical atomic clocks have been built, but they're still huge, delicate, room-filling machines that aren't practical for military application. The goal of DARPA's ROCKn program is to study the basic physics of the principle behind the optical clock and find a way to make optical atomic clocks with low size, weight, and power (SWaP). Not only that, they will be more precise and accurate than current state-of-the-art atomic clocks. To do this, ROCKn will first look to produce a robust, high-precision small portable optical clock that can maintain picosecond accuracy for 100 seconds at a time. This clock would be small enough to install in a fighter jet or satellite and tough enough to withstand the temperatures, acceleration, and vibrational noise of such an environment. The second stage will aim to create a larger transportable version that can be used in a Navy ship or field unit that is accurate to a nanosecond for up to 30 days without an outside GPS signal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Academic Journal Claims It Fingerprints PDFs For 'Ransomware,' Not Surveillance

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 07:30 PM PST

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: One of the world's largest publishers of academic papers said it adds a unique fingerprint to every PDF users download in an attempt to prevent ransomware, not to prevent piracy. Elsevier defended the practice after an independent researcher discovered the existence of the unique fingerprints and shared their findings on Twitter last week. "The identifier in the PDF helps to prevent cybersecurity risks to our systems and to those of our customers -- there is no metadata, PII [Personal Identifying Information] or personal data captured by these," an Elsevier spokesperson said in an email to Motherboard. "Fingerprinting in PDFs allows us to identify potential sources of threats so we can inform our customers for them to act upon. This approach is commonly used across the academic publishing industry." When asked what risks he was referring to, the spokesperson sent a list of links to news articles about ransomware. However, Elsevier has a long history of pursuing people who pirate or share its paywalled academic articles. [...] It's unclear exactly how fingerprinting every PDF downloaded could actually prevent ransomware. Jonny Saunders, a neuroscience PhD candidate at University of Oregon, who discovered the practice, said he believes Elsevier is trying to surveil its users and prevent people from sharing research without paying the company. "The subtext there is pretty loud to me," Saunders told Motherboard in an online chat. "Those breaches/ransoms are really a pretext for saying 'universities need to lock down accounts so people can't skim PDFs. When you have stuff that you don't want other people to give away for free, you want some way of finding out who is giving it away, right?" "Saying that the unique identifiers *themselves* don't contain PII is a semantic dodge: the way identifiers like these work is to be able to match them later with other identifying information stored at the time of download like browser fingerprint, institutional credentials, etc," Saunders added. "Justifying them as a tool to protect against ransomware is a straightforward admission that these codes are intended to identify the downloader: how would they help if not by identifying the compromised account or system?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Massachusetts Court Says Breathaylzers Are A-OK Less Than Three Months After Declaring Them Hot Garbage

from the good-enough-for-the-drukqs dept

by Tim Cushing - January 31st @ 8:03pm

Breathalyzers are like drug dogs and field tests: they are considered infallible right up until they're challenged in court. Once challenged, the evidence seems to indicate all of the above are basically coin tosses the government always claims to win. Good enough for a search or an arrest when only examined by an interested outsider who's been subjected to warrantless searches and possibly bogus criminal charges. But when the evidentiary standard is a little more rigorous than roadside stops, probable cause assertions seem to start falling apart.

Drug dogs are only as good as their handlers. They perform probable cause tricks in exchange for praise and treats. Field drug tests turn bird poop and donut crumbs into probable cause with a little roadside swirling of $2-worth of chemicals. And breathalyzers turn regular driving into impaired driving with devices that see little in the way of calibration or routine maintenance.

Courts have seldom felt compelled to argue against law enforcement expertise and training, even when said expertise/training relies on devices never calibrated or maintained, even when said devices are capable of depriving people of their freedom.

Once every so often courts take notice of the weak assertions of probable cause -- ones almost entirely supported by cop tools that remain untested and unproven. Late last year, a state judge issued an order forbidding the use of breathalyzer results as evidence in impaired driving prosecutions. District court judge Robert Brennan said he had numerous concerns about the accuracy of the tests, and the oversight of testing, and the testing of test equipment by the Massachusetts Office of Alcohol Testing.

“Breathalyzer results undeniably are among the most incriminating and powerful pieces of evidence in prosecutions involving either alcohol impairment or “per se” blood alcohol percentage as an element. Their improper inclusion in criminal cases not only unfairly impacts individual defendants, but also undermines public confidence in the criminal justice system.”

The pause on using breathalyzer tests as evidence is only the most recent development in a year's long challenge of their accuracy. In 2017, ruling on the reliability of tests taken between 2012 and 2014, Brennan found that while the tests were accurate, the way the state maintained them was not.

A court finally found a reason to push back against assertions of training and expertise, as well as assertions that cop tech should be considered nigh invulnerable. But the pushback is over. The same court is apparently now satisfied that the tech it questioned last November is good enough to make determinations that can deprive people of their property and freedom.

Breathalyzers are back in business in the Bay State after a judge dropped the suspension on breath tests, which cops use to bust and prosecute drunk drivers.

Salem Judge Robert Brennan, who in November ordered the statewide exclusion of breath test results, has tossed out the police Breathalyzer pause.

The Draeger Alcotest 9510 breath tests have come under fire for several years, as a Springfield OUI attorney represents defendants in statewide Breathalyzer litigation. Lead defense attorney Joseph Bernard has been raising concerns about the software problems impacting the scientific reliability of the breath test.

But the Salem judge in the ruling vacating the Breathalyzer suspension said the Draeger Alcotest 9510 "produces scientifically reliable breath test results."

Judge Brennan isn't willing to let the possibly subpar be the enemy of the verifiable good. If you went long on breathalyzers late last year, it's time to cash out. According to Judge Brennan, whatever's determined to be good enough is, well, good enough to deprive people of their liberties. Brennan's decision notes there's no such thing as "perfect source code" or "flawless machines." Therefore, state residents should just resign themselves to the fact their freedom is reliant on the Massachusetts' OKest Breathalyzers.

"This Court remains satisfied that the public can have full confidence in the results produced by the Alcotest 9510…"

But can they though? Who knows? Certainly not this court. Certification information has been offered but prior to the November 2021 decision, state prosecutors were voluntarily excluding breathalyzer evidence. That's not exactly a vote of confidence. And this vote against breathalyzers was coming from entities judged almost solely on their prosecutorial wins, necessitating the need to achieve as many easy wins as possible.

Weirdly, the judge says the tests are OK but their oversight isn't. Despite the fact that both facets need to be on the same level to avoid abuse and unjustified arrests, the judge is allowing roadside testing to move forward while criticizing the Office of Alcohol Testing for its "lack of candor and transparency" when dealing with the court and criminal defendants.

In the end, the system prevails. Massachusetts cops can continue to use questionable tech to effect arrests and engage in warrantless searches and detentions. As for its oversight, it's only being threatened with the possibility of further action from this court -- the same court that ended breathalyzer testing in November (citing concerns about equipment and accuracy) only to reverse course three months later.

One imagines the demands placed on the Office of Alcohol Testing will be just as temporary as this court's momentary pause on the use of unproven tech. The desire to be in the police business once again outweighs the public's concern about being on the wrong end of baseless prosecutions. The onus is back on presumably innocent defendants to prove the government isn't using faulty tech to lock them up.

4 Comments »

Another 'Wordle' App Mixup Occurs, Only This Time Recipient Of Undue Rewards Builds Good Will

from the word-up dept

by Timothy Geigner - January 31st @ 3:30pm

This post was written before the news today that the NY Times was buying Wordle. It will be interesting to see if suddenly "IP issues" start becoming a bigger deal to the NY Times than they were to the original developer...

Just a week or so back, we discussed how one man ripped off Wordle, a browser-based Mastermind style game who's creator insists be free and unmonetized. In that instance, Zach Shakked copied the game with only a few minor additional features and released it as an app going by the same name, Wordle, only to find that the entire internet decided this was a dick move and helped get the app delisted from Apple and Google stores. That was a story about how one bad actor got dealt with without anyone having to go down intellectual property or legal routes.

Well, here we are again with yet another unaffiliated Wordle app syphoning off money from people who think they're getting the browser game in an app... only this time the recipient of that undue income is building up a ton of goodwill by not being a jerk about it.

As spotted by GR+, Josh Wardle’s Wordle has led to squillions of confused players (hello!) accidentally downloading a five-year-old app with the same name to their mobile devices. The result being, creator of the other Wordle ended up receiving close to 200,000 downloads in a couple of days. More than it had received in total in the previous five years. And in turn, generating him a whole bunch of advertising revenue.

Steven Cravotta created that app five years ago as a teenager almost strictly to practice his coding skills. When he woke up the other day to suddenly find advertising revenue pouring in from the since-forgotten app, he didn't simply sit back and start counting all the dollar signs floating before his eyes. Instead, he started tweeting about how weird this all was and how much he wishes that the media did a better job of differentiating between Wordle the browser game and any Wordle mobile app.

If you follow that tweet-thread all the way through, you'll notice a couple of things. Cravotta spends a lot of time pointing out how weird this all is. Then he mentions that he is reaching out to Wordle creator Josh Wardle to find out what his preferred charity is so he can donate all of this money to the cause of his choice. The two apparently did speak and landed on Boost! West Oakland, an organization that empowers youths in Oakland, California through school tutoring. And, while he was at it, he pointed out that his more recent and professional apps are available.

In other words, he acted reasonable and human, recognizing that this was all a bunch of confused people accidentally downloading his game. As a result, just as the internet went off on what a jerk the Wordle copycat guy seemed to be, so too is it and a bunch of mass media sites reporting on how human and awesome Cravotta is. This is leading more people to his current apps.

Sometimes a little public reaction is all you need, rather than worrying about IP.

3 Comments »

Court Gets An Easy One Right: Section 230 Says Omegle Isn't To Blame For Bad People On Omegle

from the just-the-basics-here dept

by Mike Masnick - January 31st @ 1:47pm

Back in 2020, we had a post explaining that Section 230 isn't why Omegle has awful content, and getting rid of Section 230 wouldn't change that. Omegle, if you don't know, is a service that matches people, randomly, into video chats. It's basically the same thing as Chatroulette, which got super famous for a very brief period of time years ago. Both services are somewhat infamous for the unfortunately high likelihood of randomly ending up in a "chat" with some awful dude masturbating on the other side of the screen. But, still, there are a lot of people who like using it just for random chats. I have friends who are entertainers who like to use it to test out material on random people. It has a purpose. But, sure there are some awful people on the site, like many sites. And, content moderation of live video chat is quite a challenge.

For reasons I don't quite understand, some people blame Section 230 for the bad people on Omegle, and there have been a few recent lawsuits that try to get around Section 230 and still hold Omegle liable for the fact that bad people use the site. As others have explained in great detail, if these lawsuits succeed, they would do tremendous harm to online speech. We've discussed all the reasons why in the past -- but pinning liability on an intermediary for speech of its users is the best way to stifle all sorts of important speech online.

So, it's good news to see that one of the first such cases against Omegle was recently dismissed on Section 230 grounds -- and rather easily at that (story first noted by Eric Goldman). The case involved a situation which is, quite clearly, terrible. It involved what's apparently known as "a capper." As explained in the ruling:

Omegle, like many websites, is susceptible to hacking.... According to Plaintiffs, sexual predators have taken advantage of the anonymity that Omegle offers to prey on other users, including children.... Among these predators are "cappers," who trick children into committing sexual acts over live web feeds while simultaneously recording the encounters....

On March 31, 2020, C.H. was randomly placed in a chatroom with a capper during her first time on Omegle.... C.H. — an eleven-year-old girl at the time — accessed the Omegle platform from her laptop.... She was initially placed in a chatroom with other minors for some time.... C.H. later ended the chat with the minors and was placed in another chatroom.... She was met in the next chatroom with a black screen that began displaying text from the other anonymous user, "John Doe." ... John Doe informed C.H. that he knew where she lived, and he provided specific details of her whereabouts to prove it.... He threatened to hack C.H. and her family's electronic devices if she did not disrobe and comply with his demands.... After pleading with John Doe without success, C.H. complied.... John Doe captured screenshots and recorded the encounter.... Immediately after this incident, C.H. informed her parents, who then contacted law enforcement.

Now there is no way to describe this as anything but absolutely horrifying. The dude who did this should be thrown away for a long time. But he is the person committing the horrible crime here, not Omegle. And that's what Section 230 helps clarify. So here, the court dismissed the case against Omegle:

First, Omegle is an ICS provider under Section 230. That is, Omegle is a system that allows multiple users to connect to a computer server via the Internet. 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3). ICS providers are afforded immunity under the CDA unless they materially augment or develop the unlawful content at issue. See Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1167-68 (9th Cir. 2008) ("a website helps to develop unlawful content, and thus falls within the exception to section 230, if it contributes materially to the alleged illegality of the conduct."). Indeed, Plaintiffs appear to acknowledge that Omegle is an ICS provider by arguing that "the rapidly evolving legal landscape . . . increasingly holds Internet Service Providers . . . liable for the harms they facilitate and oftentimes create."...

Nonetheless, a review of the factual allegations confirms that Omegle functions by randomly pairing users in a chatroom and enabling them to communicate in real time. (Doc. # 75 at ¶¶ 33-34). There are no factual allegations suggesting that Omegle authors, publishes, or generates its own information to warrant classifying it as an ICP rather than an ICS provider. Compare Doe v. Mindgeek USA Inc., No. SACV 21-00338-CJC(ADSx), 2021 WL 4167504, at *9 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 9, 2021) (finding that website was an ICP where it actively created programs, curated playlists, and developed private messaging systems to facilitate trafficking of child pornography) with Mezey v. Twitter, Inc., No. 1:18-cv-21069-KMM, 2018 WL 5306769, at *1 (S.D. Fla. July 17, 2018) (granting Twitter CDA immunity where it merely displayed, organized, and hosted user content). Nor are there any factual allegations that Omegle materially contributes to the unlawfulness of the content at issue by developing or augmenting it. See Roommates.com, 521 F.3d at 1167-68. Omegle users are not required to provide or verify user information before being placed in a chatroom with another user. (Doc. # 75 at ¶¶ 37, 50-51). Further, some users, such as hackers and cappers, can circumvent Omegle's anonymity using the data they themselves collect from other users during their encounters. (Id. at ¶ 38). The Court is persuaded that Omegle's hosting capabilities for its users, coupled with its lack of material content generation, place it squarely within the definition of an ICS provider under 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(2).

The plaintiffs tried a bunch of arguments to get around 230, and all of them fail. One key one was arguing that Omegle's design of the platform somehow gives it liability through "negligence", but the court says that doesn't work:

The other claims, Counts V, VII, and VII, confirm that Plaintiffs' theories of liability against Omegle are rooted in the creation and maintenance of the platform. These claims recognize the distinction between Omegle as an ICS provider and the users, but nonetheless treat Omegle as the publisher responsible for the conduct at issue. Yahoo!, 570 F.3d at 1101-02. This is corroborated in no small part by Count VII, the "ratification/indemnification" claim, where Plaintiffs maintain that child sex trafficking was so pervasive on and known to Omegle that it should be vicariously liable for the damages caused by the cappers and similar criminals.... Through the negligence and public nuisance claims, Plaintiffs allege that Omegle knew or should have known about the dangers that the platform posed to minor children, and that Omegle failed to ensure that minor children did not fall prey to child predators that may use the website....

The CDA bars such claims as they seek to redirect liability onto Omegle for the ultimate actions of their users. See, e.g., Bauer v. Armslist, LLC, No. 20-cv-215-pp, 2021 WL 5416017, at **25-26 (E.D. Wis. Nov. 19, 2021) (dismissing, among others, negligence, public nuisance, aiding and abetting tortious conduct, and civil conspiracy claims, against ICS provider website that was used to facilitate unlawful firearm sales); Kik, 482 F. Supp. 3d at 1249-50 (website where users solicited plaintiff for sexual photographs was immune from sex trafficking, negligence, and strict lability claims where website only enabled user communication); Poole v. Tumblr, Inc., 404 F. Supp. 3d 637, 642-43 (D. Conn. 2019) (content hosting website entitled to immunity from invasion of privacy and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims); Saponaro v. Grindr, LLC, 93 F. Supp. 3d 319, 325 (D. N.J. 2015) (dismissing "failure to police" claim against ICS provider under Section 230). Regardless of form, each of Plaintiffs' claims ultimately seek to treat Omegle as a publisher or speaker, which are encompassed within Section 230 immunity.

As the court notes, the person who did the wrong thing here was "John Doe," not Omegle:

John Doe's video feed, his brandishing of C.H.'s personal identifying information, and the threats he subjected her to were not provided by Omegle in any sense.... Merely providing the forum where harmful conduct took place cannot otherwise serve to impose liability onto Omegle.

There was, of course, also a FOSTA claim in the lawsuit. As you'll recall, FOSTA created a new Section 230 exemption for sex trafficking. But, even with that, Omegle is not liable here, as the court notes that a site would need specific knowledge of sex trafficking, not "generalized knowledge" that the platform is sometimes used for sex trafficking.

As analyzed in the recent decision of Doe v. Kik Interactive, Inc., the legislative history of the CDA confirms that generalized knowledge that sex trafficking occurs on a website is insufficient to maintain a plausible 18 U.S.C. § 1591 claim that survives CDA immunity. 482 F. Supp. 3d 1242, 1250 n. 6 (S.D. Fla. 2020). The plaintiff in Kik alleged that multiple users on the Kik website solicited her for sexually explicit photographs. Id. at 1244. She then brought claims against Kik for violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591, 1595, negligence, and strict liability. Id. at 1245-46, 1251. The Kik court found that Kik would not be immune from suit only if it were alleged that Kik had actual knowledge of the underlying incident and had some degree of active participation in the alleged sex trafficking venture. Id. at 1250-51. The Kik plaintiff did not assert actual knowledge or overt participation on behalf of Kik, and instead asserted that Kik had general knowledge of other sex trafficking incidents on the website. Id. at 1251. Thus, the Kik court found that Kik was entitled to Section 230 immunity because plaintiff had not plausibly alleged a claim that would surmount Section 230 immunity. Id.; see also Reddit, 2021 WL 5860904, at *8 (dismissing 18 U.S.C. § 1591 claim for failure to plead that ICS provider knowingly participated in a sex trafficking venture).

The requirement for actual knowledge, as opposed to generalized knowledge, seems to annoy some people, but it's the only reasonable standard. If generalized knowledge were enough to create liability, how would a site respond? It would shut down all sorts of speech, trying to overblock for fear of any liability. Expecting a website to magically figure out how to stop bad people from using it is an impossible task. And, it really takes away from the simple fact that you should hold the people who did the criminal acts liable for the criminal acts and not the providers of the tools they use.

Other such cases should face a similar end. I understand that people are upset that there are bad people on these platforms doing bad things -- and that some kids use these platforms. But there are better ways to deal with that: namely (1) holding those people who actually violate the law responsible for their own criminal acts, and (2) better educating our children on how to use the internet and what to do if they come across a dangerous situation like this.

Read More | 7 Comments »

In 2019, The FBI Took NSO Malware For A Spin Before Deciding It Might Cause Too Many Problems In Court

from the every-so-often,-the-feds-get-it-right dept

by Tim Cushing - January 31st @ 12:15pm

The latest disturbing revelation about Israeli malware merchant NSO Group is a bit delayed. NSO has claimed its malware can't be used to target American phone numbers which, even if true, hasn't stopped the malware from targeting Americans.

But two years before NSO's malware malfeasance made headlines around the world, the company was inside the United States, demonstrating its products for federal law enforcement. The latest revelations come via Roman Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, writing for the New York Times.

In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. As they set up the equipment, the engineers made a series of calls to their bosses in Herzliya, a Tel Aviv suburb, at the headquarters for NSO Group, the world’s most notorious maker of spyware. Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.

What was being tested was NSO's Pegasus -- an exploit so advanced it pretty much rendered encryption obsolete. In some cases, the exploit didn't even need the target's participation to deploy. NSO was selling zero-click malware that compromises phones entirely -- providing access to texts, photos, WhatsApp messages, cameras, mics, and whatever other data might be flowing through it. That's what the FBI was interested in.

It was also interested in something NSO had prepared especially for the FBI. Pegasus was blocked from targeting US numbers. But the FBI definitely wanted to target US phone users, so NSO whipped up a very specific product for the feds.

During a presentation to officials in Washington, the company demonstrated a new system, called Phantom, that could hack any number in the United States that the F.B.I. decided to target. Israel had granted a special license to NSO, one that permitted its Phantom system to attack U.S. numbers. The license allowed for only one type of client: U.S. government agencies.

The presentation made it clear the FBI could target whoever it wanted and needed to seek no assistance from any US cell provider. The exploits were completely independent of US communications infrastructure… other than relying on US content servers for deployment.

But, as the New York Times reports, the FBI still had concerns. Given the malware's ability to turn a target's phone into pretty much the FBI's phone, would deployment raise Fourth Amendment concerns? Presumably, this question centered on how much could be obscured through parallel construction, rather than the FBI's genuine concern about the privacy rights of Americans. It's one thing to disguise a wardriving Stingray as a pen register order. It's quite another to attempt to explain how agents were able to access the content of encrypted communications with a normal wiretap warrant, especially if there's no cooperating witness to lean on.

As this debate proceeded, the FBI continued to pay for the product it wasn't sure it could actually use, racking up $5 million in license fees before deciding against rolling this particular constitutional dice. But in doing so, it unwittingly played a part in Facebook's lawsuit against NSO Group. Documents filed by Facebook and WhatsApp showed an NSO customer was using US-based servers to deploy malware. The assumption at that time was that NSO was enabling access to US servers so foreign governments could deliver malware to targets. Apparently what Facebook observed was the testing conducted by NSO and FBI during this trial run.

When they first presented their case against NSO, Facebook’s lawyers thought they had evidence to disprove one of the Israeli company’s longtime claims — that the Israeli government strictly prohibits the firm from hacking any phone numbers in the United States. In court documents, Facebook asserted it had evidence that at least one number with a Washington area code had been attacked. Clearly someone was using NSO spyware to monitor an American phone number.

But the tech giant didn’t have the entire picture. What Facebook didn’t appear to know was that the attack on a U.S. phone number, far from being an assault by a foreign power, was part of the NSO demonstrations to the F.B.I. of Phantom — the system NSO designed for American law-enforcement agencies to turn the nation’s smartphones into an “intelligence gold mine.”

Five million dollars and one court exhibit later, the FBI is still finding ways to work around encryption that don't involve constitutionally-questionable phone exploits sold by a morally questionable tech company.

There are plenty of other interesting details in the New York Times article, which I definitely encourage you to click through and read. While the exploits have indeed enabled governments to take down dangerous criminals (including, apparently, notorious drug cartel leader El Chapo), the spread of malware contracts to morally questionable governments was greatly enabled by the Israeli government, which leveraged NSO and its powerful tools to obtain cooperation from countries historically resistant to forming bonds with the Israeli government. While the ends may have been somewhat admirable, the means have resulted in persistent abuse of NSO tools to target people governments don't like, rather than actual threats to themselves or their constituents.

8 Comments »

Governor Inslee Wants To Jail Politicians Who Lie? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

from the besides-everything dept

by Mike Masnick - January 31st @ 10:56am

I know that people who identify tribally as Democrats or Republicans often like to accuse the other team of being especially censorial, but the unfortunate fact is that elected officials in both parties seem equally interested in using the power of the state to take away 1st Amendment rights. For every misguided effort by Florida, Texas, or Georgia to attack the 1st Amendment rights of websites, we see a Colorado or New York going in the other direction.

For every Republican bill in Congress demanding censorship of some types of content, you have Democrats seeking to censor other kinds of content. You can argue that the reasons behind one side's wish to censor is more pure than the other side's, but that's not how the 1st Amendment works -- and anyone who doesn't realize how any of these laws would be easily (and widely) abused by the other side has not paid any attention to the history of how speech suppressive laws work.

Entering into this fray, we have Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, who, at the beginning of the year, announced plans for a law to criminalize "false speech" about elections.

"Soon, legislation will be introduced in the state House and Senate that would make it a gross misdemeanor for candidates and elected officials to knowingly lie about elections. The proposed law is narrowly tailored to capture only those false statements that are made for the purpose of undermining the election process or results and is further limited to lies that are likely to incite or cause lawlessness," Inslee said.

He claimed, dubiously, that such a law is okay under the Brandenburg test, that says speech that is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action can be restricted. But, that's a very stringent test, and lies about elections are almost never going to rise to that standard.

The actual bill appears to be wildly unconstitutional, even as it tries to write itself into the Brandenburg standard:

Every elected official and candidate who has filed for public office under chapter 29A.24 RCW and who knowingly makes false statements or claims regarding the election process or election results, which statements or claims are made for the purpose of undermining the election process or election results and are directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and such statements or claims produce such action, related to any election conducted in the state, is guilty of a gross misdemeanor punishable under RCW 9A.20.021 and, if convicted, immediately forfeits the elected office.

This is already problematic on multiple levels. If the speech already meets the Brandenburg test, then it's unclear why a new law is needed. But, furthermore, how do you distinguish "undermining the election process" from... engaging in "get out the vote" campaigns or trying to get people not to vote. The definitions don't help much here, as deterring a voter from voting freely is included as "undermining the election process" but is encouraging a voter to vote one way -- or even just to stay home and not vote -- actually "undermining the election process" or is it just a standard part of electioneering?

Indeed, such a law would almost certainly be widely and dangerously abused by those in power. An awful lot of politicians (and just partisans in general) will always claim that folks on the other side are "lying about elections." Sometimes they are. Sometimes they misspeak. Sometimes they mislead. Sometimes they say things out of context. Sometimes they exaggerate. But that shouldn't result in potential jail time.

But, under this law, you can see that opponents of politicians on both sides of the political debate would almost certainly bring cases under this law claiming random statements "undermine the election process" in an attempt to (1) waste time, resources, money, and attention of candidates, and (2) in the hope that maybe they win one and force that candidate to forfeit elected office.

And that's not even touching on the simple fact that political speech is the most important speech to be protected, and anything deliberately criminalizing political speech is an incredibly dangerous decision.

As more and more people have pointed out just how unconstitutional this is, rather than admit the problems of the bill, Inslee is doubling down. He recently defended this plan with a bunch of nonsense. His office highlights that a couple of constitutional law professors have looked over the bill and kinda shrugged and said "maybe it doesn't violate the 1st Amendment?" But when your strongest supporting comment -- from notoriously partisan law professor Laurence Tribe -- starts out with this giant caveat:

I can't say with complete confidence that the Governor's elections/democracy bill will in the end survive all judicial challenges...

Then perhaps it should be a sign that your bill has serious problems.

Inslee's speech in support of the bill is not just ridiculous, but it's simply astoundingly ignorant of how his own political enemies would turn this bill around on him:

Politicians are not above anyone else who would incite violence by knowingly, recklessly, or maliciously spreading lies about lawfully run elections.

The Big Lie, that we can't trust our democracy to count the votes, has become a weapon. It's being used all over America — including our state — and it will again incite violence. There are many examples where the law punishes lying on official documents or under oath — and I believe some standard should apply here.

Using their power or popularity, they lie — whether knowingly, recklessly or maliciously — to foment violence against others and against the foundations of American democracy. By asserting a right to violently subvert democracy, they assert the right to overturn the popular will determined by elections, if that's the only way they think they can achieve power. Their intent is to harm.

Lots of 1st Amendment lawyers have looked at the various aspects of the Big Lie and concluded that it would be nearly impossible to get any politician on claims that they incited imminent violence -- even those who spoke at the rally on January 6th right before a mob of clueless, ignorant insurrectionists besieged the Capitol.

But, just put this law in the hands of the proponents of the Big Lie and think how this plays out. Those people have no compunction at all about insisting that those who say that Biden clearly and easily won the election, that there was no meaningful evidence of fraud, and that our elections were some of the most secure ever... that they are the ones lying about an election and that they are the ones inciting violence.

In other words, this would become a tool for grievances by anyone in politics against opponents, whether based in reality or in delusions.

The 1st Amendment prohibits these kinds of laws for that very reason.

So many of these laws seem to be written in the naïve belief that political opponents will never use those laws or never be in power themselves. And that is a very dangerous assumption, which historically never seems to hold up.

26 Comments »

Daily Deal: PDF Converter Pro

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

by Daily Deal - January 31st @ 10:51am

This all-in-one PDF Converter Pro software enables you to convert PDF documents into a variety of formats or processes and create PDF files from other formats in just a few clicks. The high quality output is ensured as all the original layouts, images, texts, hyperlinks, etc. will be preserved without any quality loss. It's on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

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Legislators Looking To Ban Geofence/Reverse Warrants In The State Of New York

from the illegalize-it dept

by Tim Cushing - January 31st @ 9:39am

A report published by Google's transparency team last August made it clear reverse warrants weren't a law enforcement fad, but rather a trend. Google is the recipient of pretty much every so-called reverse (or geofence) warrant issued, thanks to its vast stores of location info. When cops have a crime but no likely suspect, they have the option of turning everyone with a cell phone in the area into a suspect and working their way backwards from this list of data to find the most likely suspects.

Google's report showed an exponential escalation in geofence warrant deployments.

According to the data, Google received 982 geofence warrants in 2018, 8,396 in 2019 and 11,554 in 2020.

While regular search warrants generally show probable cause to search a suspect's property for evidence of criminal activity, the only probability needed for geofence warrants is the likelihood the data investigators are seeking is held by Google. This reversal of the probable cause equation has resulted in an explosion of requests sent to Google, but since the process involves the very early steps in a criminal investigation, there have been very few direct challenges of reverse warrant-derived evidence during criminal trials.

With Google unable to make a call as to whether requests are overbroad and court oversight being mostly an exception, it may be up to lawmakers to curtail the use of warrants that ask private companies to perform proxy searches for criminal suspects. Fortunately, some lawmakers are doing exactly that, as Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch. (h/t Michael Vario)

A New York bill that would ban state law enforcement from obtaining residents’ private user data from tech giants through the use of controversial search warrants will get another chance, two years after it was first introduced.

The Reverse Location Search Prohibition Act was reintroduced to the New York Assembly and Senate last year by a group of Democratic lawmakers after the bill previously failed to pass. Last week, the bill was referred to committee, the first major hurdle before it can be considered for a floor vote.

The bill, if passed, would be the first state law in the U.S. to end the use of geofence warrants and keyword search warrants, which rely on asking technology companies to turn over data about users who were near the scene of a crime or searched for particular keywords at a specific point in time.

The bill [PDF] anticipates the loopholes law enforcement might try to use and closes them. It also makes it clear the courts have no say in this matter at all.

§ 695.10 Issuance of reverse location court orders and reverse keyword court orders.
No court shall issue a reverse location court order or a reverse keyword court order.

As for state and local law enforcement agencies, their options are similarly nonexistent.

1. No government entity shall seek, from any court, a reverse location court order or a reverse keyword court order.

2. No government entity shall make a voluntary reverse location request or a voluntary and reverse keyword request.

3. No government entity shall seek, secure, obtain, borrow, purchase, use, or review any information or data obtained through a reverse location request or a reverse keyword request.

4. No government entity shall seek the assistance of any non-governmental entity, any agency of the federal government, or any agency of the government of another state or subdivision thereof in obtaining information or data from a reverse location court order, reverse keyword court order, reverse location request, or reverse keyword request if the government entity would be barred from directly seeking such information under this article.

So, that makes it pretty much impossible for law enforcement to route around the law. The courts are banned from issuing warrants. Investigators can't ask other agencies to execute reverse warrants on their behalf. And, if law enforcement somehow manages to obtain this data by utilizing an unforeseen loophole in the law, it still won't work. The ban provides for automatic suppression or exclusion of evidence derived from a geofence warrant.

In addition, the law provides a legal avenue to sue government entities if they do break the law. Citizens who've had their location info illegally obtained by law enforcement can sue the agency that performed the illegal search and recover $1,000 per violation and punitive damages.

It's a pretty solid law. And that means someone in the state legislature is going to try to kill it or, at least, neuter it into uselessness. Hopefully the bill's sponsors and supporters can guide it safely through the gauntlet of "tough on crime" legislators, overly powerful police unions, and overly powerful law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement has embraced this new way to obtain data generated by thousands of innocent people but has yet to prove it can be trusted with it. The best thing is to take the option away before it does any damage.

Read More | 4 Comments »

Wireless Industry Now Claims 5G Will Miraculously Help Fix Climate Change

from the is-there-nothing-it-can't-do dept

by Karl Bode - January 31st @ 6:16am

For several years the wireless industry has been hyping fifth-generation wireless (5G) as something utterly transformative. For this whole stretch we've been subjected to claims about how the wireless standard would revolutionize smart cities, transform the way we live, result in unbridled innovation, and even help us cure cancer (doctors have told me it won't actually do that, if you're interested).

But in reality, when 5G arrived, it was a bit underwhelming. At least in the United States, where speeds were dramatically lower than overseas deployments due to our failure to make middle-band spectrum widely available. And at prices that remain some of the highest in the developed world thanks in large part to consistent consolidation and regulatory capture.

Yeah, 5G is important. But not in any sexy way. It provides significantly faster speeds and lower latency over more reliable networks. Which is a good thing. But it's more evolution than revolution. Consumers are generally happy with 4G speeds, and most consumer surveys suggest the number one thing they want is better coverage (which U.S. 5G has struggled to provide because middle band spectrum was scarce) and price cuts.

Hoping to excite consumers and regulators, wireless carriers have been desperate to come up with marketing that tries to frame 5G as utterly transformative. Usually this involves marketing that takes something you can already do over 4G or Wi-Fi, attaching 5G to it, and calling it a miracle. Like watching concerts (which you can already do) over 5G. Or getting a tattoo remotely (which you could technically already do over wired, Wi-Fi, or 4G broadband):

While 5G hype had slowed a bit in the last six months, the wireless industry jumped back into the fray with a sponsored report claiming that 5G will soon dramatically aid the fight against climate change. The industry study (which was quickly picked up and parroted by loyal telecom trade magazines) insists that 5G will quickly help the U.S. meet its climate goals (which most climate experts say were already woefully undercooked):

"In the United States, use cases on 5G networks are expected to enable the abatement of 330.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMtCO2e) across five industry verticals by 2025, which is an approximated 20% contribution towards US emission reduction targets at this time. This is the same effect as taking 71.9 million cars off the roads for one year or eliminating the annual emissions from 83 coal-fired power plants."

The report effectively goes on to argue that the very act of embedding faster, lower-latency 5G chipsets into technology in fields and factories will improve overall efficiency and communication speed. Which is true, but the idea that you could actually take these improvements and measure their impact on overall emissions across a parade of different technologies and industries seems suspect at best. And even if you could, the idea that companies will exploit these efficiencies to reduce carbon emissions--as opposed to simply utilizing these improved efficiencies to improve profitability--seems like a fairly sizeable and generous assumption.

The whole report is based on the concept that being faster and more energy efficient will just naturally lead to lower carbon emissions, through very "science-ish" sounding paragraphs like this one:

"5G can reduce carbon emissions through a more efficient use of energy per bit of data transmitted. We call this an "upstream" effect because of technical efficiency gains realized by the network itself. In addition to the upstream effect, widespread 5G adoption will bring a positive effect "downstream," or changes that result from behavior changes stemming from technologies enabled by 5G's higher speed or device throughput."

But just because you've affixed faster, lower latency chipsets onto hardware in a factory or field doesn't naturally always equate to greater efficiency, either. The underlying equipment being used could still be inefficient, polluting, and problematic. And any gains in efficiency could still be offset by just a countless array of other factors at the company, be it dysfunctional organization or dated equipment. Like with most claims, 5G isn't just some kind of magic lotion you spread on things resulting in everything somehow getting better.

The wireless industry certainly wants the public to believe 5G is magic to justify U.S. consumers paying some of the highest prices for wireless service in the developed world. But the hype serves another purpose: if you portray 5G as a near-mystical to the majority of societal problems, that increases the pressure on regulators to acquiesce to industry demands quickly and without much thought. If they don't (like say by questioning the need for more subsidies, blocking a problematic megamerger, or supporting basic consumer protections), they're enemies of progress and innovation.

12 Comments »

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www.espn.com - MLB

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:52 AM PST

www.espn.com - MLB


Glanville: Bonds shouldn't be a Hall of Famer -- and that's OK

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 12:14 PM PST

For one former player, Bonds' candidacy was an unwelcome reminder of how different the stakes felt when cheating isn't entertaining or theoretical -- it was costing you a job.

Nearly two months into MLB lockout, when is it time to worry about spring training and Opening Day?

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 03:09 AM PST

When baseball's work stoppage began, the one silver lining was there was plenty of time to reach a deal. As the calendar turns to February this week, that is no longer the case.

MLB The Sho: Ohtani makes video game history

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:59 AM PST

Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani will grace the cover of Sony's MLB the Show 22 video game following his historic 2021 season.

Vandalized Robinson plaque set to be displayed

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 09:30 AM PST

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will display a plaque honoring baseball legend Jackie Robinson that was vandalized in Georgia to teach the public about Robinson's story and combat hate.

[New post] Irn-Bru maker raises prices as UK inflation soars

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:36 AM PST

WTX Business Team posted: "Irn-Bru maker raises prices as UK inflation soars The Guardian says the company behind Irn-Bru has revealed it is increasing its prices after its packaging, ingredients and energy-linked commodity costs jumped, as it raised its sales and profit estimates"

BuzzFeed - LGBTQ

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:15 AM PST

BuzzFeed - LGBTQ


25 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets About "RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus The World" According To The Cast Themselves

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 06:04 AM PST

"I personally think this is higher than an All Stars."


View Entire Post ›

[New post] Wordle: New York Times buys viral game for seven-figure sum

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:11 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Wordle: New York Times buys viral game for seven-figure sum The Guardian says The New York Times has acquired the viral word game Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the publisher announced on Monday. Created by a Reddit engineer and launched "

[New post] 3 Reasons to Add Visa & Mastercard to Your Shopping List

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:10 AM PST

Editorial Team posted: "Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) are two of the most important names in the digital payments industry. These global leaders have forever changed the way that consumers, businesses, and governments... Find out more at https://ift.tt/HLiz0Swga "

[New post] MarketBeat Podcast – Are We In An Energy Bull Market with Eric Nutall

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:10 AM PST

Editorial Team posted: "In this week's episode of The MarketBeat Podcast, Stalter talks with energy fund manager Eric Nuttall, who is a partner and senior portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners. Find out more at https://ift.tt/rcEU68L27 via Entrepreneur.com"

[New post] Codiak BioSciences, Inc. (CDAK) Stock Jumps 18.2%: Will It Continue to Soar?

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:10 AM PST

Editorial Team posted: "Codiak BioSciences, Inc. (CDAK) was a big mover last session on higher-than-average trading volume. The latest trend in earnings estimate revisions might not help the stock continue moving higher in... Find out more at https://ift.tt/fV1w4cthS via "

[New post] (YEMEN) UN Security Council Report: Nearly 1,500 children recruited by Yemen’s Houthi rebels died in fighting in 2020, and hundreds more the following year #AceNewsDesk report

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:00 AM PST

Ace Worldwide News Group posted: " #AceNewsReport - Feb.01: They added that air strikes on the rebels by Saudi-led forces were still inflicting many civilian casualties: More than 10,000 children have been killed in the war that began in 2015. #AceDailyNews says according to United Nat"

[New post] Fire rips through block of flats in London as 20 people evacuated

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:59 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Fire rips through block of flats in London as 20 people evacuated The Metro says Thick plumes of smoke could be seen billowing into the air as an inferno broke out at a block of flats in east London. Dramatic footage shows firefighters using a 32-metr"

[New post] Florida Lawmaker Works to Increase Medical Cannabis Access

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:57 AM PST

Cannabis News World posted: "High Times A Democratic lawmaker in Florida wants medical cannabis patients in the state to have easier access to the treatment. That is one of the goals behind a bill being introduced by state House Representative Andrew Learned as Florida's legislati"

[New post] Huge mudslide leaves at least 11 dead as 40 people are swept away in horror flood

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:49 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Huge mudslide leaves at least 11 dead as 40 people are swept away in horror flood The Metro says at least 11 people have been killed in a landslide after Ecuador was rocked by its heaviest flooding in nearly two decades. Cars and houses were swept awa"

[New post] YAY The Orkney News is 5

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:48 AM PST

theorkneynews posted: " The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press was heavier than the siege weapon.  Just a few words can change everything .. Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment "

TechSpot Reviews and Features

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:43 AM PST

TechSpot Reviews and Features


Do It Yourself: The Best Computer Cases

Posted: 15 Jan 2022 12:52 PM PST

There's no point spending lots of money on PC hardware if you don't have a great case to put it in. But with so many options out there, how do you know what's best for you? There are plenty of factors to examine: looks, size, cost, features, thermals, etc. But we're here to make the process easier and narrow things down to a few excellent options for you to consider.

Read Entire ArticleRead Comments

The Best Keyboards: Enthusiast, Wireless, Gaming & More

Posted: 14 Jan 2022 02:12 AM PST

No PC build is complete without a decent set of peripherals, and of all the parts that go into one, the keyboard probably ties with cases when it comes to catering a wide variety of tastes.

Read Entire ArticleRead Comments

The Best Wi-Fi Routers

Posted: 09 Jan 2022 05:12 AM PST

The need for a quality router has never been greater. Today every household is packed with phones, laptops, smart TVs, and more devices all fighting for bandwidth. If you want a router that offers better throughput, range, and features, check out our top picks.

Read Entire ArticleRead Comments

[New post] Blessed are the tax collectors: Pope praises Italy’s inland revenue workers

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:40 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Blessed are the tax collectors: Pope praises Italy's inland revenue workers The Independent says Pope Francis shared his support for tax collectors on Monday, saying they are vital for the functioning of a fair society and a "guarantee of equality". S"

[New post] Moscow warns Ukraine may ‘destroy itself’ as Russia and US clash at UN

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:35 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Moscow warns Ukraine may 'destroy itself' as Russia and US clash at UN The Guardian says Ukraine will be responsible for its own destruction if it undermines existing peace agreements, a senior Russian diplomat has warned at a combative UN security counc"

[New post] Weather Forecast: Yellow Warning Wind, Some bright spells with showers.

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:33 AM PST

theorkneynews posted: " Information from The Met Office Today 1st February: Bright or sunny intervals and occasional blustery showers, some of these heavy and turning wintry later, especially over Shetland. West to northwesterly gales, with severe gales over Orkney for a "

[New post] ‘It wasn’t a stunt!’ SNP’s Ian Blackford doubles down on Johnson attack after expulsion

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:32 AM PST

Moon Syouri posted: "'It wasn't a stunt!' SNP's Ian Blackford doubles down on Johnson attack after expulsion The Daily Express: THE SNP's Westminster leader renewed his attack on Boris Johnson as he defended himself for the the furious row he sparked with the Speaker of the "

BuzzFeed - Latest

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:32 AM PST

BuzzFeed - Latest


Say "Yuck" Or "Yum" To These 25 Indian Comfort Foods And We'll Reveal The Initial Of Your Soulmate

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:31 AM PST

This quiz will really bring you comfort.


View Entire Post ›

[New post] Liz Truss vows ‘nowhere to hide’ for Putin allies if Ukraine invaded

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:24 AM PST

WTX News posted: "Liz Truss vows 'nowhere to hide' for Putin allies if Ukraine invaded The Guardian says Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, has said Russian oligarchs and key supporters of Vladimir Putin will be targeted by UK sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, b"

[New post] ‘Major headache’ as France sparks delay chaos at Dover with new demand

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:23 AM PST

Moon Syouri posted: "'Major headache' as France sparks delay chaos at Dover with new demand The Daily Mirror: FRENCH customs officials are causing major delays at Dover by demanding physical "wet" signatures for exports of animal and plant products, despite the fact that mos"

TechCrunch

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:19 AM PST

TechCrunch


Egypt’s YFS gets $7M to scale its on-demand logistics and delivery business across MENA

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:05 AM PST

On-demand delivery in the Middle East and North Africa is estimated to reach $47 billion by 2030. In its largest and fastest-growing economy, Egypt, many platforms operate in different segments of e-commerce and logistics while serving businesses and customers.

Today, one of those companies, Yalla Fel Sekka (YFS), whose business involves building a network of dark stores and micro-warehouses across Egypt, has secured a $7 million Series A round.

YFS was founded by Khashayar Mahdavi and Yasmine Abdel Karim in 2020, just before the pandemic struck and customer behaviour shifted toward needing faster deliveries due to pandemic-induced lockdowns.

With increased customer activity, e-commerce companies in North Africa sought to adopt trending models such as quick commerce pioneered by Gopuff, Gorillas, and Flint. But unlike the West, Egypt's e-commerce infrastructure isn't ready to accommodate the crazy demand and chaos that quick commerce brings.

It's one of the reasons Mahdavi and Abdel Karim started YFS. On a call with TechCrunch, the founders said while identifying a critical gap in the regional market: the need for near-instant deliveries, YFS has assembled a distributed network of small mini-warehouses and dark stores, where businesses can store the goods very close to their customers to ensure quick deliveries.

Here's how the platform works in a nutshell. It's a B2B2C delivery logistics play where the company integrates to the backend of a client, say a supermarket, so whenever a customer makes an online order, it picks up the order from a dark store built to keep its clients' products and makes the delivery. 

The platform also provides a broad fleet and dark store and micro-warehouse management serving businesses across multiple verticals, including groceries, pharmacies and e-commerce. 

"Being able to marry operational excellence and innovation with the technology to bring down your cost and have productivity gains is what sets us apart," said Khashayar Mahdavi, co-founder and chief strategy officer to TechCrunch.

"And because of our economic and finance background, we've always been super focused on unit economics. So that's what we've tried to achieve here, bringing innovation into this space with a focus on productivity and unit economics, and having this distributed logistics services to be able to serve our customers extremely quickly."

YFS has a fleet of 1,000 active drivers of motorcycles and vans, with more than 3,000 on a waitlist. These drivers make 10,000 orders daily, said CEO Abdel Karim, adding that the company's gross merchandise volume is growing at a monthly rate of 20% and customer retention rate above 90%.

She also said YFS has completed two million deliveries across five cities in Egypt — Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Mansoura and Tanta — all the while being gross margin positive, all in 18 months.

Millions of small businesses in Egypt are just coming online for the first time. But for most of them, fulfilling orders remains a challenge. YFS sees this segment as its next batch of customers, although it has predominantly served big clients such as Spinneys, Vezeeta, Jumia and Noon.

"We are working on also serving multiple different businesses and even SMEs. We have a very advanced technology that will easily integrate with anyone. And that's also a key advantage for us because we can help SMEs come online and help with their logistics arm while they focus on the product," she said.

The founders, who have economic backgrounds working in investment banking and oil and gas, received $2.5 million as seed money from Flybridge Ventures and I Squared Capital. These investors backed the company again in this round, including lead investor DisruptAD, ADQ's venture platform and Kuwait-based Kharafi Group.

YFS will be deploying the new funding to expand its presence in cities across Egypt and the MENA region. Abdel Karim said the company would also expand on its dark store management as it looks to build 20 to 40 dark stores in the coming year,

For Mahdavi, now that the company has a proof of concept, it'll enter a solid growth phase.

"What's important to say is anything that has to do with quick commerce or instant delivery requires a new form of infrastructure on the ground to be close to your customers, technology, operations," he said. "All of that is radically different from the type of infrastructure we saw when we were not dealing with quick commerce. But now this is what it is all about for YFS, to become the main player and the leader of offering these logistic services for commerce."

AirTree launches three new funds totaling $700M AUD

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:47 PM PST

AirTree partners (from l to r): From left to right: James Cameron, John Henderson, Elicia McDonald, Jackie Vullinghs, Craig Blair and Helen Norton

AirTree partners (from l to r): From left to right: James Cameron, John Henderson, Elicia McDonald, Jackie Vullinghs, Craig Blair and Helen Norton

More money is flowing into Australia and New Zealand's startup ecosystems. Sydney-based AirTree Ventures, one of the region's most prolific VC firms, announced it has raised $700 million AUD (about $493 million USD), to be divided between three investment vehicles. These include a $200 million AUD for early-stage companies that AirTree says is Australia's largest-ever seed fund; a $50 million AUD fund earmarked for Web3 startups; and $450 million AUD for growth-stage companies, including ones headed for an initial public offering.

Founded in 2014, AirTree now manages a total of $1.3 billion AUD and has more than 80 active investments. Out of that number, 23 are valued at more than $100 million and include eight unicorns. The new round was oversubscribed and much of it came from returning investors, including cornerstone LPs, superannuation funds AustralianSuper, Sunsuper, TelstraSuper and Statewide Super, said AirTree co-founder and partner Craig Blair.

Some of AirTree's best-known investments include Canva and A Cloud Guru. The last funding AirTree raised was a total of $300 million AUD for seed and growth rounds that closed in 2019. About 70% of that went to early-stage startups including Mr. Yum, Linktree and MILKRUN.

"We've been in this space for coming up to ten years now and we've seen more and more exciting founders tackling huge global markets," said Blair. "We see 1,000 potential investments a year and invest to 10 to 20 of them and we think one or two of those will go on a billion dollar outcome." AirTree is sector agnostic, but Blair named SaaS, agriculture, mining and government as particularly exciting ones to find the firm's next early-stage investments.

AirTree works closely with portfolio companies, often helping them recruit key talent, working on public relations and their pricing strategies. It also has a community forum made up of experts and portfolio founders.

"The exciting thing about the Australian ecosystem at the moment is we are at the point where there's enough repeat and successful founders who are willing to give their time and resources back to helping the next generation," said AirTree partner Elicia McDonald. She added "we definitely don't have a spray and pray mentality, and we're very focused on our portfolio success, their teams and providing support from the earliest stages."

The Web3 fund will focus on decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO). AirTree has already made five investments in the space, ranging from Immutable, the NFT infrastructure startup, to DeFi projects.

McDonald said AirTree has been looking at the crypto space since it launched seven years ago, but didn't feel like it was an investable asset class for the firm until recently. "The view there was that crypto was in the installation phase, so the infrastructure was still being built and the real use cases were still to come," she said. "For us, that tipped over and changed in the middle of 2020, with the rise of decentralized finance and NFTs. We're well aware that the crypto markets will continue to be a bit of a rollercoaster, but we're focused on making long-term bets in that space and seeing through the cycles."

Capital from the growth fund will go primarily toward AirTree's portfolio companies as they scale up into Series B and further stages, but Blair said the firm occasionally invests in other companies out of the growth fund.

With the launch of their new funds, AirTree's partners underscored that diversity, equality and inclusion is tenet at the firm, which has as 50/50 split between men and women among their partners and broader team. McDonald said AirTree tracks its funnel at each stage of the investment process for a mix of gender and ethnicity among founders, and then at each stage of the fund.

"We take our responsibility as a leader in this industry very seriously," she said. "Our approach is to the change we want to see and set the standards for the industry, and there's always more that can be done."

India proposes 30% tax on crypto and NFTs income

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:03 PM PST

India on Tuesday announced plans to launch a digital currency by next year and tax cryptocurrencies and NFTs in one of its most remarkable tech and business-focused federal budgets as the second largest internet market moves to navigate the fast-evolving world of virtual financial instruments.

Income from the the transfer of any virtual assets will be taxed at 30%, the nation’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Tuesday. To capture details of all such crypto transactions, she also proposed a 1% tax deduction at source on payments made related to purchase of virtual assets.

“No deduction in respect of any expenditure or allowance shall be allowed while computing such income except cost of acquisition. Further, loss from transfer of digital asset cannot be set off against any other income,” she said. “Gift of virtual digital asset is also proposed to be taxed at the hand of the recipient.”

The proposal comes at a time when the purchase of cryptocurrencies and NFTs are quickly making inroads in India despite regulatory uncertainty in the nation.

Binance-owned WazirX said last month that yearly trading volume on its platform exceeded $43 billion in 2021, at an “1,735%” growth from 2020.

The growing adoption of crypto tokens has also led to the emergence of a group of startups looking to innovate in the space — though their aggressive marketing campaigns have raised many eyebrows.

Andreessen Horowitz made its maiden investment in India last year by backing cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch Kuber.

“The magnitude and frequency of these transactions have made it imperative to provide for a specific tax regime,” she said.

India’s central bank will also introduce a digital currency in the next financial year, she said. The nation’s central bank has been testing its CBDC through a number of controlled trials for several months in the country and has been examining its impact on the banking and monetary systems.

“Introduction of a central bank digital currency will give a big boost to digital economy. Digital currency will also lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system,” she said.

India’s neighbor China said earlier this month that People’s Bank of China has processed over 3 million transactions in digital yuan worth over $160 million as part of its CBDC trial. (China, if you remember, also labeled all private cryptocurrency-related transactions in the country as illegal last year.)

India’s proposals today have somewhat created more confusion among entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and the general public alike about how New Delhi plans to tackle cryptocurrencies.

By introducing a tax system for crypto-related transactions, New Delhi appears to be either recognizing such virtual assets as legal tender, or as an investor wondered aloud, “take their pound of flesh from all the action.”

New Delhi also pledged to open up its defense's research and development to startups, and pushed to increase the reach of internet and digital banks in rural parts of the country.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

European micromobility startup Dott grabs $70 million

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 10:00 PM PST

Urban mobility startup Dott has raised an extension to its Series B round. Originally announced in the Spring of 2021, the company raised an $85 million Series B round — it was a mix of equity and asset-backed debt financing. And today, the company is adding another $70 million to this round —once again, it's a mix of equity and debt.

Dott is a European micromobility startup that is better known for its scooter-sharing service. More recently, the company also added an electric bike-sharing service in some cities.

abrdn is leading the Series B extension with Dott's existing investor Sofina. Other existing investors put more money on the table, such as EQT Ventures and Prosus Ventures.

Dott competes with several micromobility startups in Europe. Its most direct competitors are Tier, Lime and Voi. There are quite similar when it comes to pricing and scooters — most of them work with Okai to design their scooters. But they don't necessarily operate in the same markets.

Right now, Dott covers 36 cities across nine European countries. The company manages 40,000 scooters and 10,000 bikes. While Dott isn't sharing revenue numbers, the startup processed 130% more trips in 2021 compared to 2020.

Two other differentiating factors between micromobility operators are logistics and regulation. When it comes to logistics, Dott tries to internalize its processes as much as possible. It doesn't work with third-party logistics providers and it has its own warehouses and repair teams to take care of its fleet.

When it comes to regulation, the company has won several permits to operate in highly coveted markets, such as Paris and London. However, Paris is currently trying to heavily regulate scooter-sharing services in Paris with a new top speed of… 10 km/h (that's 6.2 mph). There are currently 700 slow zones in Paris with a top speed of 10 km/h.

There are two key takeaways here. First, building a micromobility company requires a ton of capital. It shouldn't come as a surprise as buying scooters is expensive, charging batteries is expensive and hiring people to make everything run smoothly is expensive.

Second, the regulatory landscape is still evolving and there are still some uncertainties for scooter startups. Dott is diversifying its product offering with electric bikes — and that seems like a smart move. It’s also going to be interesting to see how it plans to optimize battery charging even more to make its service more cost effective.

Upskilling platform Scaler tops $700 million valuation in new funding

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 08:15 PM PST

Scaler, an edtech startup that offers upskilling courses to working professionals in India, has raised $55 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand to international markets including the U.S., the Bengaluru-headquartered firm said Tuesday.

The Series B funding – led by Lightrock India – values the startup at $710 million, up from about $110 million two years ago, Scaler said. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global also participated in the round, moving Scaler's all-time raise to $76.5 million.

The funding comes just months after Scaler received a $400 million buyout offer from Indian edtech giant Unacademy, two sources familiar with the matter told me. Scaler declined to comment on the buyout talk, which has not been previously reported.

The startup began its journey as InterviewBit, an edtech offering that provides students with learning resources to crack interviews. "InterviewBit has millions of users and is loved by techies," said Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder of Scaler, in an interview with TechCrunch.

But just the content isn't adequate to guide every individual to prepare for the new job, he said. "For people deprived of the high-learning ecosystem, it is very hard for them to make a massive learning delta by just consuming content," he said. "At a grassroots level, the service was not helping people who were at a disadvantage."

InterviewBit remains operational; in fact, it's one of the most popular interview prep apps in India, but Scaler is the startup's eponymous and marque offering today that is attempting to address the broader challenge.

The startup runs nine to 11 months courses for cohorts of working professionals. During this period, Scaler teaches these individuals subjects that are designed to help them gain skills required to land jobs and pursue new opportunities.

The startup today offers courses such as data science and machine learning. These curriculums are designed in consultation with scores of major tech employers including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Adobe, VMWare, and Uber, said Saxena, who previously worked at e-commerce upstart Fab.com as a software architect. (Anshuman Singh, Scaler’s other co-founder, helped Facebook build the Messenger in his last stint.)

A course on Scaler typically runs to about $3,350 and individuals can either pay the fee upfront or in instalments by taking a loan from one of the non-banking financial institutions with whom Scaler has tied up.

(There isn’t any income sharing arrangement on Scaler. Saxena argued that the income sharing arrangement has some aspects that would disadvantage its cohort members.)

On Scaler, individuals watch three to four live lessons each week, work through assignments, and gain access to teaching assistants and mentors to clear their doubts and seek guidance. As part of Scaler's offering, the startup also collaborates with companies to help its cohort members find and land better jobs. "Individuals are spending three hours or more on Scaler each day," he said.

The ambition of Scaler is to help the "massive gap that exists between what college and other institutions are producing and what the tech industry demands," he said. "People joining Scaler have already worked at firms in the past. We are providing them with hard-skills that the Amazons and Googles of the world demand."

Saxena said as companies begin to hire people globally, Scaler will help India shift the narrative from being a place that provides you with engineers that can be recruited at lower wages to a hub of globally competitive high-skilled talent.

Saxena co-founded Scaler in 2019. (Image credits: Scaler)

“The failure of legacy institutions in India’s higher education sector, particularly in the IT space, has opened up opportunities for avowed status-quo disruptors like Scaler to push a new kind of thinking that looks beyond cost arbitrage-based success,” he said.

India, home to over 250 million school going students, produces about a million engineering graduates each year. Most of these individuals struggle to land jobs, let alone secure gigs that they dreamed of.

Scaler is building a learning community that is “accountable for outcomes and designed for the future of work,” said Divya Venkatavaraghavan, Principal Investor at Lightrock India, in a statement.

So far about 15,000 individuals have enrolled to Scaler and about 6,000 have finished the program. “96% of individuals who wanted to land a new job are now working at a tier 1 firm,” he said, adding that the startup is still collecting data for rest of the members and is working with one of the large auditing firms for it.

More than 300 individuals have landed a job at Amazon, he said.

The startup, which says it is operationally profit, plans to deploy the fresh funds to “experiment aggressively in new markets” in which it is expanding, he said, identifying U.S. as one of those markets. Scaler is also looking to acquire new startups, especially in foreign markets to supercharge its expansion, he said.

“To us, the most distinctive part of [Scaler’s] strategy is that they are super focused on extremely high-quality computer science education, delivered with their own unique approach that makes their programs practical and useful in the work environment,” said Shailendra J. Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, in a statement.

“This is resulting in outstanding student NPS and exceptional job placements for Scaler students. We couldn’t be more excited to journey together with them to impact the lives of so many high potential computer programmers.”

Waymo can keep some driverless data secret for another 22 days

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 06:10 PM PST

Waymo had small win Monday in its fight to keep certain details about its autonomous vehicle operations from public view.

The Alphabet-owned company filed a lawsuit last week against the California Department of Motor Vehicles to keep some information from its autonomous vehicle deployment permit, as well as emails between the company and the DMV, redacted from a public record request, which was originally filed by an undisclosed third party. On Monday, a judge issued Waymo a temporary restraining order, giving the company 22 more days to avoid divulging the redacted information.

There will be another hearing on February 22 to decide on the issue of permanent injunctive relief. The hearing will dig into the question of whether or not the information should continue to be redacted from the public record in perpetuity.

Every autonomous vehicle developer, including Waymo, that tests and deploys in California must receive a series of permits from the California DMV. To apply for one of California’s permits, companies need to submit information about their safety practices and technology, information about which the DMV usually asks follow up questions.

After receiving the public record request for Waymo’s permit application, the DMV invited the company to censor sections that might reveal trade secrets. Waymo did so, even going as far as to censor certain questions the DMV had for Waymo, and the DMV sent the package to the third party with major portions blocked out. When the requester then challenged the blackouts, the DMV told Waymo it would have to release the information unless Waymo sought an injunction prohibiting the disclosure of the material in unredacted form. According to Waymo, the DMV advised the company to also file a temporary restraining order against the DMV.

At the hearing on Monday, the DMV did not oppose Waymo’s application for a temporary restraining order, according to the company. The DMV’s somewhat passive role in the matter signals that the agency isn’t interested in taking a side in the argument and is throwing it to the courts to decide.

Waymo wants to protect details about how its AVs identify and navigate through certain conditions, how they determine the circumstances under which the AV will revert control to a human driver, when to provide support to an AV fleet, and how the company addresses disengagement incidents and collision incidents, according to the lawsuit the company filed with the Superior Court of California, Sacramento.

The company not only argues that revealing the information will cause damage to Waymo and undermine its investments into automated driving technology, but also that it will have a “chilling effect across the industry.”

“Potential market participants interested in deploying autonomous vehicles in California will be dissuaded from investing valuable time and resources developing this technology if there is a demonstrated track record of their trade secrets being released," reads the lawsuit.

In other words, other companies might get spooked about how much information they want to share with the DMV in the future, and rather than having a transparent dialogue between the private sector and the agency, the industry might opt for complying strictly with regulations, rather than complying with the spirit of the regulation – this could, in turn, have an impact on the safety of the technology overall if the DMV doesn’t have the fullest picture it needs to create and enforce autonomous vehicle regulations.

On the other hand, Matthew Wansley, former general counsel of nuTonomy (which Aptiv acquired) and a law professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law in New York, previously told TechCrunch that he doubts all of the information Waymo wanted to keep redacted would actually qualify as a trade secret, but noted it was difficult to know without being able to actually see the redacted information.

Daily Crunch: Citrix to be acquired by Vista and Evergreen/Elliott in $16.5B all-cash deal

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 03:12 PM PST

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, January 31! We're putting a bow on the first month of the year today, but that doesn't mean we're looking back. Not at all. First, news is popping off like firecrackers. And, we're looking ahead because we're doing a lot of really fun live podcasting this year. See you there! – Alex

The TechCrunch Top 4

  • Sony buys Bungie as gaming consolidates: If you have been reading TechCrunch for more than a few days, you've seen us cover the Take Two-Zynga deal, and the recent Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal. Today, Sony threw another transaction into the mix, announcing that it will buy Halo-maker Bungie for billions. There have been other transactions lately as well, and if the latest agreements make it past antitrust authorities, we'll head into next year with a more consolidated gaming industry than ever. It's not yet clear if that will prove a power up or a debuff for gamers.
  • The now-infamous Bolt CEO is out: Following waves of power-posting Twitter threads attacking some of the more prominent power nexuses in tech, Ryan Breslow is out as the CEO of Bolt. Bolt competes in the one-click checkout space. Regardless of how you view the Breslow drama, he holds super-voting shares in Bolt, per TechCrunch reporting, so he's not going anywhere too far, we reckon.
  • Spotify tries to patch the Joe Rogan flap: After some prominent musicians decided that they didn't want to have their material available on Spotify, protesting the music platform's deal with controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, the company began to work to beat back criticism. It detailed its guidelines, and said it would make some changes to its podcast setup. The market works! Sadly, not all capitalists are able to not lose their mind when it does, in fact, work.
  • Citrix to go private in PE megadeal: With tech stocks under the hammer thanks to changing public market preferences and tightening central bank policies, it may be deal shopping season for private equity. Today, Vista and a friend decided to buy remote-desktop company Citrix for north of $16 billion. The idea is to turn Citrix and the already-private Tibco into a sort of enterprise stew. Will that work?

Startups/VC

Let's start today in France. The French startup scene had a pretty darn good 2021, meaning that more deals from the country are hitting our radar. Today it's Pennylane, which just raised $57 million in a Series B to "replace legacy accounting solutions in France," and its continent at large. If you aren't following our own Romain Dillet on the France beat, you're missing out.

Scooting along, the trend of Big Funds Investing Earlier is not letting up, it appears. TCV has a new $460 million fund ready to go as early as Series A, despite the fact that it raised a multi-billion fund not many quarters ago. Our take is that this will help keep early-stage startup deals expensive.

Spinning the globe, let's talk about Africa. There's a new fund with $200 million in the market looking for growth-stage startups on the continent. And, Tiger made its second investment into an African company, we wrote today, this time putting capital into Bamboo, a fintech startup that is bringing U.S. equities to the Nigerian market.

  • Employees pass on Better.com CEO's return: If you return to lead your old team and they decide 'naw,' are you still a leader? TechCrunch reports that Better.com's staff are hitting the 'hell no' button and opting out of working there after the company brought back its disgraced CEO.
  • Jupyter the platform: If you mess about with data, there's a good chance you are familiar with Jupyter Notebook. It's a scratchpad for data scientists to take notes, interact with code, and more. Deepnote wants to build a "data science platform on top of Jupyter-compatible notebooks," TechCrunch reports. The company just raised $20 million.
  • GitHub for hardware? Startup AllSpice is not a spice, nor is it a guerilla Old Spice marketing campaign. Instead, the company is creating a "collaborative hub designed for hardware development," TechCrunch reports. Probably every industry needs a GitHub-style central knowledge repository? Expect to see more startups working along similar lines.
  • Qlub wants to shake up how you pay for food: Per Mike Butcher, Qlub is akin to Sunday in that it wants to help consumers pay for their orders via QR codes instead of restaurant staff helping them check out. The company just raised $17 million.

3 experiments for early-stage founders seeking product-market fit

Children Wearing Lighted Helmets

Image Credits: RichVintage (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Elise King, program director of Human Ventures' entrepreneur-in-residence program, interviewed three founders from the company’s portfolio to learn more about the tactics they used to acquire data in their pursuit of product-market fit.

  • Pre-MVP/customer discovery phase: Tiny Organics
  • Mid-MVP phase: Tabu
  • After product is in-market: Teal

“The overarching theme seems to be this: Listen to your demographic, learn from their experiences in order to find a way to truly service them, and don't be afraid to pivot if needed,” advises King.

Big Tech Inc.

  • Pinterest now lets you see pinned furniture IRL: The idea of wanting to see furniture in situ before buying is a good one. Some retailers have tools to help consumers do just that. Pinterest is getting in on the action, working with some of those same retailers. This fits into the general concept of Pinterest as more of an e-commerce company over time than a social network.

Max Q: NFTs… but for space stuff

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 03:00 PM PST

Welcome back to Max Q, our weekly newsletter about space and the business thereof.

NFTs were bound to intersect with space in a number of ways, and the way they do in this week’s newsletter is very likely not the first such intersection, but it is the first one I’ve noticed. Also, some hiccups for major M&A in the sector.

Don't forget to sign up to get the free newsletter version of Max Q delivered to your inbox.

Lambo cashes in on NFTs, with a space station twist

No, you can’t buy a car that’s been to space (those tend not to come back for the most part). But Lamborghini is dabbling in NFTs, selling ones that are matched up with paired physical artworks. All of those items have actually been to space, with short stints on the International Space Station in 2020.

The digital NFTs you’re buying are not actually just images of those tiny pieces of carbon; each is a frame from a gif of a computer-generated image of a Lamborghini being launched into space and sort of coming apart. But at least even if the whole digital artifact market goes entirely bust, you’ll be left with something tangible to hold onto for your purchase price. Something that’s slipped the surly bonds of Earth, no less.

Image Credits: Fabian Oefner/Lamborghini

FTC sues to stop Lockheed Martin acquiring Aerojet Rocketdyne

The U.S. trade regulator isn’t pleased with the proposed $4.4 billion merger between primary defense contractor Lockheed Martin and top-tier supplier Aerojet Rocketdyne. It officially filed suit to block the deal last week, citing a number of reasons, including decreased competition among the top U.S. defense contractors, and the potential that in picking up Aerojet, Lockheed might become privy to a little too much information regarding its competition, much of which the smaller company already does business with.

The good news is that the FTC is very explicit in that this is mostly about ensuring the U.S. defense industry remains as robust and high-performing as possible for the sake of national defense, rather than any other reason that might trickle down to other M&A activity around much younger, earlier-stage startups and companies.

An artist's impression of NASA's developmental Space Launch System, which uses Aerojet Rocketdyne engine techology. Image Credits: NASA

Epsilon3 raises seed funding to modernize the launch backoffice

Speaking of startups, a new one called Epsilon3 has raised a sizeable seed round of $2.8 million to address an oft-overlooked challenge in the space industry. Despite big stars like SpaceX coming in and challenging a lot of assumption around rockets and the physical launches themselves, you’d be surprised how unchanged a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff around launch operations (and in-space operations) actually is.

Espilon3, which was part of YC’s Summer 2021 cohort, is challenging that. The CEO and co-founder came from SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, too, so she knows a thing or two about how companies big and small get their rockets off the ground and into space.

An Epsilon3 employee compares data from tests on multiple screens.

Image Credits: Epsilon3

Other news from TC and beyond

Xplore finds its first satellite provider for a series of upcoming missions through a deal with OrbAstro.

Skyroot raises $4.5 million in new funding in a bridge round, and expects to have its first satellite on orbit this year.

Popular puzzle game Wordle is being purchased by The New York Times

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 01:52 PM PST

Wordle, the popular puzzle game that has captivated users around the world, has been purchased by The New York Times Company. The game has been acquired for an undisclosed price in the “low-seven figures.” The New York Times Company says Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players for the time being. The company also says no changes will be made to its gameplay as it moves to The New York Times.

“As The Times looks to entertain more solvers with puzzles every day — especially during these anxious times — we're thrilled to announce that we've acquired Wordle, the stimulating and wildly popular daily word game that has become a cultural phenomenon,” The New York Times Company wrote in a press release. “Wordle, which gives players six tries to guess a five-letter mystery word, will join New York Times Games's portfolio of original, engaging puzzle games that delight and challenge solvers every day.”

The game was released by Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, in October 2021. Since then, the game has exploded in popularity. On November 1st, 90 people played the game. Two months later, the game reached 300,000 users and now has millions of daily players.

Wardle told TechCrunch earlier this month that he originally built Wordle last year for his partner, a word puzzle enthusiast, for them to play together. Hosting it on a website he's had for years as a home for his other creative efforts (powerlanguage.co.uk, back from his time in England), Wardle casually shared the game with his family. Then he showed it to a few well-placed friends, after which it continued to gain in popularity.

“I am incredibly pleased to announce that I’ve reached an agreement with The New York Times for them to take over running Wordle going forward,” Wardle said in a tweet. “If you’ve followed along with the story of Wordle, you’ll know that NYT games play a big part in its origins and so this step feels very natural to me. When the game moves to the NYT site, it will be free to play for everyone, and I am working with them to make sure your wins and streaks will be preserved.”

Wardle went on to note that the game has gotten bigger than he ever imagined, but that its popularity has also been overwhelming. He outlined that he has admired The New York Times’ approach to its games and that the company’s values align with his own.

The New York Times says Wordle will now play a part in its daily games experience and will give millions of people around the world another reason to turn to The Times. The company says its games were played more than 500 million times in 2021, and that it reached one million Games subscriptions in December.

Meta brings 3D avatars to Instagram, rolls out new options for Facebook and Messenger

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 12:22 PM PST

Meta is bringing its 3D avatars to Instagram and is also rolling out updated avatars to Facebook and Messenger, the company announced on Monday. Users in the United States, Canada and Mexico can now show up as their virtual selves in stickers, feed posts, Facebook profile pictures and more.

Today’s update adds Cochlear implants and over-the-ear hearing aids in several colors on all platforms, including VR. The update also brings wheelchairs, which can appear in stickers on Facebook, in Messenger chats and in Instagram Stories and DMs. Meta is also improving the look of avatars by adjusting certain facial shapes to make them appear more authentic. The company says it plans to continue to add more items to the avatar editor.

“We’re updating Meta avatars with a lot more expressions, faces and skin tones, as well as wheelchairs and hearing aids,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement posted to his Facebook profile. “We’re starting to experiment with digital clothing too. You can use your avatar across Quest, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. One day you’ll have multiple avatars ranging from expressive to photorealistic. Looking forward to sharing more soon.”

With the new update, users can now bring the same avatar across all Meta platforms, including VR. Any changes users make to their avatar on Facebook and Messenger will automatically appear on Instagram as well, and vice versa. Users still have the option to create different avatars for different platforms. Meta says that over time, its goal is to make it easier for users to move their avatar from place to place and plans to share more updates on this in the future.

Image Credits: Meta

Meta is also partnering with the NFL to give fans a way to celebrate their favorite team ahead of the Super Bowl. From now until February 28th, users can choose to support the Cincinnati Bengals or the Los Angeles Rams via their avatars. There’s also a neutral Super Bowl LVI shirt for users who don’t want to pick a team.

“VR and Quest are key parts of our metaverse vision, but we see the metaverse as an interconnected digital world, one that bridges VR and AR, in addition to more familiar platforms like your phone and computer,” said Aigerim Shorman, Meta’s general manager for avatars and identity, in a blog post about the new launch. “Rolling out avatars across our platforms is an early step towards making this a reality. We hope your new virtual self enables you to be represented online the way you want.”

The company first launched avatars in 2020 as a way to compete with Snap’s Bitmoji and has been continuously updating them since. For instance, these new changes come as Meta launched new avatar options for eyes, noses, beards and hairstyles last year with the goal of making them more customizable and diverse. Meta declined to share any numbers related to avatar adoption to date, however.

Today’s update comes as Meta is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings on February 2nd. The company plans to break out the results of its AR and VR hardware unit for the first time.

Will the Citrix-Tibco merger create enterprise magic? Vista clearly thinks so

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:53 AM PST

Private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital have finally found a suitable match for Tibco: the firms will buy Citrix for $16.5 billion.

The deal, which represents a roughly 30% premium on Citrix’s value, aims to combine the two companies to create a legacy enterprise tech powerhouse. But will the combination produce something more useful for customers, or a conglomeration that doesn’t really fit well together?

Citrix is best known for its desktop virtualization products, and it’d be fair to presume it did pretty well when the pandemic hit and companies had to shift employees to remote work. Having the ability to deliver work desktops in one package to at-home workers would seem to be a good feature to have these past couple of years.

It will be all about execution, and we will see in a few months if Vista and Elliott are undertaking a go-forward and growth strategy, or if they will save costs and ‘milk’ the install base. Holger Mueller

But it’s not been tearing up the scoreboard with growth recently. Its status as a public company gives us visibility into its financial performance (including its mediocre earnings report released today), and as we’ll see, its lackluster growth likely makes it more of a takeover target.

Citrix’s new partner Tibco provides tools and infrastructure to manage and analyze data. But it launched in 1997, and the analytics market has evolved dramatically since then. There’s also way more competition and more data to manage thanks to the market-shift towards machine learning. Tibco has had to find a way to change with its market, having been born in the era of free AOL CDs.

Citrix was itself founded in 1989, long before the cloud changed the way companies deliver software, and many years before companies shifted to subscription-based revenue models. Both companies had to change their approach to the way they do business dramatically in recent years.

We don’t have much data on Tibco, but we do know that Vista was looking for a buyer for the company, which it bought for $4.3 billion in 2014.

It’s hard to know what became of that, but we do know now that Vista has decided to create a much larger enterprise company to deliver two seemingly different sets of services — virtualization and data analytics.

Can these two companies combine to make something better?

A look at Citrix's financials

While we no longer have windows into Tibco’s financials, Citrix’s latest earnings results show a somewhat slow-growing company in the midst of a transition towards subscription-pricing and away from support incomes.

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, Citrix generated revenue of $851 million, but that top line was up just 5% from a year earlier. The company's profit fell slightly, though, to $112.1 million, but as the quarter included restructuring charges, and a huge tax benefit, it's hard to compare the results directly.

How to build and maintain momentum in your fundraising process

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:47 AM PST

Momentum is the single most important factor that helps startup founders raise capital.

In 20+ years of working to connect founders with potential investors, I've learned that there's a direct correlation between the speed of your fundraising process and the probability of actually getting funded.

Startup investors are incredibly smart people who eat, sleep and breathe these kinds of investments. The best investors are pros at sensing whether a deal has momentum or not — or worse, whether a deal has gone stale.

When you're raising venture capital for your startup, you will have to hustle like you've never hustled before. As CEO, your primary job is building and maintaining momentum for your investment deals.

Once you have set up and organized your fundraising funnel, it's go time.

Check out these tips for creating momentum in your next fundraising round:

Great hack for asking for email introductions

Asking for introductions to your target investors is one of the best places to concentrate your efforts at the beginning of a round. If done well, these email intros can get the ball rolling quickly.

The trick is to make it as easy as possible for your connector to do their job.

Before you send your first email, map out mutual connections between you and your target investors. You may find that you have some "power connectors" in your network — people who are already in touch with several of your targets. Put these people at the top of your list.

If your go-to-market slide raises eyebrows at a couple of meetings, it's time to try a different tact.

Reach out to your connector with a brief email that says something like: “Hey, I'm raising money and I see you're connected to these investors on my target list. Do you know them well enough to make an intro?”

After your connector responds with a list of introductions they're willing to make, here's the best way to help them help you:

  • Start a clean email thread to your connector — one for each target investor.
  • Write a clear subject line: "[Connector], can you introduce me to [target investor]?"
  • At the end of the subject line, include at-a-glance info about your company: company name, the funding round + the single most exciting data point about your business
  • Keep the email body very short. Investors get dozens of these emails a day, so keep yours to four to five sentences:
    • Use one sentence to say what your company does and link to your website.
    • Reiterate that you're fundraising, and ask for the intro.
    • Mention any connections you may have with the investor (Universities, past employers, etc.)

Success of web3 hinges on remedying its security challenges

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:41 AM PST

In both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, security models changed in tandem with application architectures to help unlock entirely new economies. In Web 1.0, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) was pioneered by Netscape to provide secure communication between user browsers and those servers. Trusted Web 2.0 intermediaries such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and certificate authorities played a central role in driving implementation of Transport Layer Security (TLS), the successor to SSL.

The same will happen for web3. This is the key reason why investment in new web3 security companies increased last year more than 10x to over $1 billion.

The success of web3 hinges on innovation to solve new security challenges created by different application architectures. In web3, decentralized applications or "dApps" are built without relying on the traditional application logic and database layers that exist in Web 2.0; instead, a blockchain, network nodes, and smart contracts are used to manage logic and state.

Users still access a front end, which connects to those nodes, to update data such as publishing new content or making a purchase. These activities require users to sign transactions using their private keys, typically managed with a wallet, a model that is intended to preserve user control and privacy. Transactions on the blockchain are fully transparent, publicly accessible and immutable (meaning they cannot be changed).

Like any system, this design has security trade-offs. The blockchain does not require actors to be trusted as in Web 2.0, but making updates to address security problems is harder. Users get to maintain control over their identities, but no intermediaries exist to provide recourse in the event of attacks or key compromises (e.g., how Web 2.0 providers can revert stolen funds or reset passwords). Wallets can still leak sensitive information like an Ethereum address – it's still software, which is never perfect.

The success of web3 hinges on innovation to solve new security challenges created by different application architectures.

These trade-offs rightfully prompt significant security concerns, but they should not stymie web3 momentum and, practically speaking, they are unlikely to.

Consider the parallels to Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 again. The initial versions of SSL/TLS had critical vulnerabilities. Early security tooling was rudimentary at best and became more robust over time. Web3 security companies and projects like Certik, Forta, Slithe, and Securify are the equivalents of the code-scanning and application security testing tools that were originally developed for Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications.

However, in Web 2.0, a substantial part of the security model is about response. In web3, where transactions cannot be changed once executed, mechanisms must be built in to verify if transactions should happen in the first place. In other words, security has to be exceptionally good at prevention.

This means the web3 community has to figure out how best to technically address systemic weaknesses to head off new attack vectors that target everything from cryptographic primitives to smart contract vulnerabilities. In parallel, there are at least four initiatives that would advance a preventative web3 security model:

Source-of-truth data for vulnerabilities

There needs to be a source of truth for known web3 vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Today, the National Vulnerability Database provides the core data for vulnerability management programs.

Web3 needs a decentralized equivalent. For now, incomplete information lives scattered across places such as SWC Registry, Rekt, Smart Contract Attack Vectors and DeFi Threat Matrix. Bug bounty programs such as those run by Immunefi are meant to surface new weaknesses.

Security decision-making norms

The decision-making model for critical security design choices and individual incidents in web3 is currently unknown. Decentralization means that no one owns the problems, and the ramifications for users can be significant. Examples such as the recent Log4j vulnerability are cautionary tales for leaving security up to a decentralized community.

There needs to be greater clarity regarding how decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), security experts, providers such as Alchemy and Infura, and others collaborate to manage emergent security issues. There are applicable lessons from how large open source communities have formed the OpenSSF and CNCF advisory groups and established processes to tackle security issues.

Authentication and signing

Most dApps, including the most prominent ones, today do not authenticate or sign their API responses. This means that when a user's wallet retrieves data from these apps, there is a gap in verifying that the response is coming from the intended app and that the data has not been tampered with in some way.

In a world where apps do not employ basic security best practices, it is left to users to determine their security posture and trustworthiness, a task that is practically impossible. At a minimum, there need to be better methods to surface risks to users.

Easier, user-controlled key management

Cryptographic keys underpin users' ability to transact in the web3 paradigm. Cryptographic keys are also notoriously hard to manage properly; entire businesses have been and continue to be built around managing keys.

The complexity and risk involved with managing private keys is the primary consideration that drives users to choose hosted wallets rather than non-custodial ones. However, the use of hosted wallets leads to two tradeoffs: they result in new "intermediaries" like Coinbase, which detract from the fully decentralized direction of web3; and they restrict users' ability to take advantage of all that web3 has to offer. Ideally, further security innovation will provide users with both better usability and protections for non-custodial scenarios.

It is worth noting that the first two initiatives center more around people and processes, while the third and fourth initiatives will require technological changes. Getting new technology, nascent processes, and a large number of users aligned is what makes figuring out web3 security hard.

At the same time, one of the most encouraging changes is that web3 security innovation is happening in the open, and we should never underestimate how that can lead to creative solutions.

Paradigm invests in Solana wallet app Phantom at $1.2 billion valuation

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:39 AM PST

In the crypto ecosystem, wallets are perhaps the most critical user touchpoint serving as a gateway to exchanges and smart contracts. This positions the startups building popular wallet apps closest to the firehose of consumer crypto opportunities, while also leaving them to take charge in tackling many of web3’s unsolved problems including steep onboarding challenges and a hostile fraud environment.

Phantom, one of the premier wallet apps for the Solana ecosystem, has seen plenty of momentum as the result of investor and developer attention being paid to the Ethereum competitor which has seen its value explode over the past year — though the relative newcomer is also proving to be a more volatile bet with the token taking a particularly rough hit during the most recent crypto crash.

The San Francisco crypto startup is turning this Solana attention into a fat $109 million funding round led by Paradigm on a $1.2 billion valuation. The monster unicorn round comes six months after the startup closed a $9 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. At the time, the startup had 40,000 active users, now they have 2.1 million, with CEO Brandon Millman noting that the company has been consistently onboarding about 100,000 users per week.

Phantom’s next big ambition is to go multi-chain and add support for another blockchain beyond the Solana ecosystem to its wallet. The startup isn’t indicating where exactly it’s aiming to focus resources other than that it’s looking to add support for a blockchain compatible with Ethereum’s EVM stack where most crypto developers have been focusing their attention and where competitors like MetaMask loom large.

Multi-chain compatibility means expanded opportunities, but also means dealing with the headaches of multiple ecosystems, something that could be a challenge for Phantom, which has around 20 employees currently — though the team plans to scale with its new funding.

“As the party that’s closest to the end user, we definitely have a responsibility to protect and educate users. A lot of the work that we’ve spent in the past couple months has been around user safety-related features.” Millman tells TechCrunch.

The company is scaling up its presence on mobile, announcing alongside the funding news that they are rolling out an iOS app widely and will be releasing an Android native app in the coming months. The apps, which accompany Phantom’s site and Chrome extension, are part of efforts designed to bring a new wave of consumers into the crypto space, though plenty in the ecosystem are still questioning whether the web3 space is ready for a wave of less technical players.

“I’d say the entire space is really early from all perspectives and I think no one really knows how all of this is going to shake out,” Millman says. “It’s still very, very much geared towards professional users all across the stack… and it’s typically something that people kind of wave around and say ‘it’s not for consumers yet,’ but we actually want to help be the team that bridges the gap.”

 

An app developer’s lawsuit over rejections and scammers is allowed to proceed, judge rules

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:24 AM PST

A lawsuit over App Store abuses has been given the green light to proceed, at least on some fronts. The case, filed in California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara County last March, hails from app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou, who claims his keyboard app FlickType was initially unfairly rejected from Apple’s App Store, then later targeted by scammers once approved, leading to lost revenues.

The judge has ruled that at least half the claims can proceed and is giving Eleftheriou the opportunity to amend the remaining items that were dismissed.

Eleftheriou has become known as an outspoken App Store critic in recent months, often serving as the source for stories about App Store scams like a crypto wallet app that scammed a user out of his life savings (~$600,000) in bitcoin; a kids game that actually contained a hidden online casino; and a VPN app scamming users out of $5 million per year, among others. His findings even became the subject of a line of questioning during a Senate antitrust hearing in April 2021, where Georgia's Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) questioned Apple Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer as to why Apple was not able to locate these sorts of scams itself, given they were “trivially easy to identify.”

In his own lawsuit against Apple, Eleftheriou aims to document what he alleges were an unfair series of rejections for his Apple Watch keyboard app, FlickType, from the App Store. At the time, Apple told Eleftheriou his app offered a “poor user experience” and noted full keyboard apps were not allowed for Apple Watch. But, he says, it then allowed competitor keyboard apps as well as third-party apps (like Nano for Reddit, Chirp for Twitter, WatchChat for WhatsApp and Lens for Instagram) to launch on the App Store — the latter using an integratable version of the FlickType keyboard, in seeming contradiction to Apple’s earlier claims over FlickType’s poor usability.

When Apple chose to approve FlickType in January 2020, the keyboard app reached the App Store’s top 10 paid app list and generated $130,000 in revenue during its first month, Eleftheriou said. But this soon made it a target for scammers who launched barely usable competitors boosted by fake ratings and reviews, he claims. As a result, he says FlickType’s revenue dropped to just $20,000 per month as the scammers cut into the potential revenue from users seeking a keyboard app.

According to the original complaint, Eleftheriou is looking to hold Apple accountable for the issues the FlickType app faced with rejections, and is asking Apple to restore lost revenue due to scam apps. He believes Apple at first was preventing competition with its own built-in keyboard and later did little to prevent unscrupulous developers from buying fake reviews to make their apps look better than their legitimate rivals.

In legal terms, Eleftheriou’s case against Apple involves six causes of action, including false advertising, unfair competition, a breach of contract claim (“implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing”), fraud, negligent misrepresentation and negligence. Apple attempted to get the entire case dismissed, citing similar lawsuits that were also dismissed. It also objected to the entire complaint, saying that each cause of action failed to state sufficient facts. But Superior Court Judge Peter H. Kirwan disagreed with this, ruling on each of the six items.

The court overruled Apple’s individual objections on the first three causes of action, which means at least part of the case’s claims will proceed. In addition, the court gave Kpaw, Inc. (Eleftheriou’s company) the opportunity to amend the other three causes of action, which involve the claims of fraud and negligence. Eleftheriou says he plans to amend the complaints to add the specifics the court requires, and “definitely” plans to proceed with the lawsuit, which he says now moving forward with discovery.

Of course, there are much larger lawsuits underway against Apple, like the antitrust suit between Apple and Epic Games — now under appeal. But this particular case is one worth tracking, too, as it doesn’t attempt to make an antitrust argument, necessarily, but instead aims to see if Apple can be legally held accountable for other aspects of how it runs its App Store business — including issues involving inconsistent app rejections that also plague other developers, and the prevalence of scam apps that are being allowed to thrive on the App Store.

A number of lawsuits against Apple from smaller developers have failed over the years, including those involving antitrust claims from BlueMail developer Blix, current exchange app Konverti, health app Coronavirus Reporter and jailbreak app Cydia, among others. By comparison, Kpaw versus Apple doesn’t outright accuse Apple of being a monopoly, but instead focuses on specific App Store issues.

“Apple has been massively profiting from their App Store monopoly, by restricting the ability of developers to freely conduct business directly with their users,” said Eleftheriou. “Their anti-competitive practices have gone unchecked for over a decade, and they're only getting more brazen. I'm now looking forward to presenting my case, and I’m confident the court will see Apple's practices for what they are.”

Apple was also asked for comment, but did not yet respond.

Kpaw v Apple – ORDER: Overr… by Kosta Eleftheriou

Sony snaps up ‘Halo’ and ‘Destiny’ creator Bungie for $3.6B

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 10:44 AM PST

Bungie, the studio responsible for the creation of Halo and Destiny, two of the gaming world’s biggest franchises, has been acquired by Sony. It’s part of a consolidation and turf war being waged as the next generation of gaming (and the metaverse, whatever that is) builds up steam.

The news was announced by both companies Monday morning (with industry sleuth Jason Schreier reporting early) and the deal valued at $3.6 billion. That may be just a fraction of Microsoft’s recent $60 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, but Bungie is no less a legend in gaming.

Beginning as a Mac-focused studio in the ’90s with forgotten classic FPS Pathways Into Darkness and the influential Marathon, Bungie threatened to change the balance in power in the gaming world with Halo, which was intended to serve as the moment Apple took gaming seriously. Even Steve Jobs got in on the hype.

But then Microsoft announced it was buying Bungie and making Halo an exclusive to its new Xbox console — seemingly disappointing Apple so hard the company gave up on gaming entirely until it struck gold with the App Store.

Halo grew to become one of the Xbox’s flagship franchises, but after a few sequels Bungie was spun out into an independent company, to pursue original IPs while Microsoft retained the Halo brand. In 2013 the independent Bungie revealed Destiny, which became a huge hit, and in 2017 its sequel made its debut and is still active.

Bungie continued to be associated with its longtime publisher Activision back in 2019, even further freeing up the company to… be acquired. Seems it was going to happen either way, so might as well do it on your own terms.

The acquisition is a clear land grab by Sony as the rival console gaming companies warm up for the next round of battle. Games-as-a-service, or so-called live service games, have become one of the most lucrative new models for the industry, and Destiny 2 is one of the most successful examples. By selling a game and then further monetizing it with regular “seasons” of content, new aesthetic updates and other items, the GaaS model takes a page from MMOs.

With Destiny 2 likely on its last legs, one presumes that Destiny 3 is right around the corner, making this acquisition quite timely. To own one of the biggest GaaS franchises, and to invest in related multimedia as well (a Netflix show seems inevitable now), positions Sony well for next-generation gaming income. And while it seems probable that Destiny 3 will be cross-platform as its predecessor has been, nothing is stopping Sony from sweetening the deal for subscribers to its subscription service, rumored to be receiving a big refresh to compete with Microsoft’s Game Pass.

“Today, Bungie begins our journey to become a global multi-media entertainment company,” wrote CEO Pete Parsons in a blog post announcing the deal. “We remain in charge of our destiny. We will continue to independently publish and creatively develop our games. With SIE’s support, the most immediate change you will see is an acceleration in hiring talent across the entire studio to support our ambitious vision.”

Hopefully that means continuing to address culture issues at the company recently profiled in an IGN report. The company is reportedly working on a new IP as well as the expected sequel… and perhaps their independence and new resources will lead to a revival of cult hit Marathon — if there’s anyone left at the company who remembers it.

How one founder aims to both improve women’s health right now, and the gender gap in research

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 09:49 AM PST

We're in the business of talking to very impressive people who are working to solve incredibly tough problems— but Elizabeth Ruzzo, founder and CEO of adyn, may be one of the most impressive yet. Not only did she develop the only test for women to ensure they are prescribed the birth control that will be the least likely to have detrimental side effects, she also founded the company and fundraised as the sole employee of the company. She talks to Darrell and Jordan about the challenges she faced as a solo founder/employee raising money for a solution for birth control, why she decided to leave academia, and the complicated regulatory maze she had to navigate to get adyn off the ground.

Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.

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Ember expands into cold chain medical shipping with new device, Cardinal Health partnership

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 09:48 AM PST

Last year, Ember outlined one of the more fascinating expansions of recent vintage we've seen in the hardware space. Primarily known for its smart mugs designed to keep their contents hot, the firm took a long, hard look at the cold chain — specifically, the transport of medicine across distances. What began as a conversation was bolstered by a $23.5 million raise last year, and now the firm has a new product — and partnership to showcase where things go from here.

The centerpiece of the new direction is the Ember Cube — what the company calls "the world's first self-refrigerated, cloud-based shipping box." The technology is designed to update some antiquated shipping technologies for important cargo that still rely on this, like cardboard, Styrofoam and disposable ice packs. At its core is Ember's proprietary temperature control technology designed to keep the contents between 2-8 degrees Celsius (36-46 degrees Fahrenheit).

Temperature/hudmidity information, along with GPS location, is shared via the cloud, so that information can be tracked during shipping. On the rear of the device is a "Return to Sender" button that will populate a return label on the device's E Ink screen. The company says the Cube can be reused "hundreds of times."

Today's announcement also finds the company partnering with healthcare logistics firm Cardinal Health.

"Our partnership with Ember utilizes technology solutions to set a new industry standard for real-time visibility and product integrity, while also providing transformative waste reduction," president of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions Heidi Hunter said in a release tied to the announcement. "The Ember Cube will be a particularly relevant solution for the many cell and gene therapies that are in the drug development pipeline, due to their temperature sensitivity, high value and need for real-time integrated tracking."

Cardinal will be the first major firm to pilot the new device, set to launch later this year.

Following his fiery Twitter tirades, Bolt founder Ryan Breslow is no longer CEO — and he says it’s his choice

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 08:45 AM PST

Ryan Breslow, who founded the “one-click” checkout tech company Bolt as a Stanford student and dropped out of college to build it, is stepping away as the company’s CEO seven years into his reign. Breslow, who says the decision is his own, is being replaced as CEO by Maju Kuruvilla, who joined the company as its chief product and technology officer in 2019 and became its COO in August of last year. Breslow is assuming the role of executive chairman.

On its face, the decision would seem to make sense for the 600-person company, which is currently raising a round of funding that is expected to value the outfit at $14 billion, up from the $11 billion valuation it was assigned just earlier this month when it closed on $355 million in Series E funding.

Bolt — which earlier this month decided to give employees a four-day work week permanently — has raised nearly $1 billion altogether to date.

In Kuruvilla, Bolt gets some serious operational chops. He previously spent seven years at Amazon, the last three of them as a vice president and general manager, helping to scale Amazon’s worldwide Prime logistics and fulfillment business. Kuruvilla also worked previously on products at Microsoft, Honeywell, and Milliman. Put another way, he may be viewed as a safe bet by potential business partners, private investors, and, ultimately, if the company later attempts to go public, investment bankers.

Of course, it’s easy to wonder how closely the move is also tied to the attention that Breslow, 27, attracted after publishing a series of tweets last Monday afternoon and who was back at it this past weekend.

In what he described in his first series of tweets as a kind of public service to other founders, he warned that rival Stripe and famed accelerator Y Combinator (YC) — which counts Stripe among its biggest success stories — are "mob bosses” that will pull "every power move imaginable" to squash competitors.

One of power moves, wrote Breslow, is to keep any threat to Stripe out of YC, which he says rejected Bolt’s application earlier in time. He also accused Stripe of “co-running” the link aggregator and message board that’s owned by YC, Hacker News, and thus limiting how much attention Bolt received.

Not last, he accused Stripe of deliberately funding a direct competitor to Bolt at the same valuation that Bolt enjoyed at the time.

The last accusation seems fair, given that Stripe did lead a $102 million round in the upstart checkout company Fast a year ago. But defenders of both YC and Stripe were quick to dismantle Breslow’s other claims, including Stripe’s power over Hacker News, YC’s unwillingness to fund rivals to Stripe (it has funded other payments startups), and Stripe’s relationship to Lyft, which Breslow tweeted was a YC alum (it is not).

Some wondered if Breslow might be having a meltdown. Other assumed the whole thread was a marketing stunt.

Breslow also found plenty of support for that first thread, which has now garnered nearly 9,000 “likes” on Twitter, and may have encouraged him to tweet more about YC on Saturday. (He warned founders that YC takes far more from them that it delivers, a message that was also both criticized and celebrated.) In fact, asked Friday if he regrets going after the two powerful Silicon Valley institutions so publicly, he noted the many hundreds of supportive messages he received from other founders.

As far as he is concerned, adds Breslow — who grew up in Miami and still lives there — there is a lack of “authenticity” in the region. “I felt like I was being given lip service a lot and that’s just not how I roll. Especially with the tier one VCs, I just kept getting the run around [despite that] I’m building a great business.” Being in Miami “definitely empowered me to do this.”

Whether investors that have passed on Bolt will regret it is the question.

By Breslow’s telling, the company, whose checkout technology is already used by a wide number of retailers, signed roughly 10 major deals in the second half of last year, and each is bigger than any that Bolt has signed in the company’s history previously.

These exclusive partnerships will “generate billions in revenue” when rolled out, he says, offering that the process takes time given the “large technical lift” of some of these “large merchants and commerce platforms.”

As for how Bolt makes money, it takes zero fees off transactions for first-time customers and 2% off every transaction completed by a customer it already knows, so as the “larger our network [of retail partners] grows, the higher percent of transactions we’re charging for,” says Breslow.

Currently, he says, just 5% of all transactions involve shoppers it has seen before across its network, meaning it is charging a fee on just one out of every 20 transactions. But “because we know we have hundreds of millions of shoppers coming on board the network,” he continues, “a majority of our transactions will be network powered . . . and our profit will grow exponentially with the network.”

So goes the expectation anyway. The proof, naturally, will come when those partnerships go live. In the meantime, Bolt has no shortage of competitors that, like Bolt, are selling retailers on the data they gather and their accompanying ability to offer a more personalized shopping experience, along with one-click returns and order tracking. Just one of its many rivals, Checkout.com, raised $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation two weeks ago. Payment giants like PayPal, Block, Shopify and (yes) Stripe, are also racing to garner more of the online checkout action.

Breslow, unsurprisingly, sounds undaunted. He says that already, Bolt’s new CEO, Kuruvilla, “has completely transformed the organization,” adding, “I get to take credit for a lot of stuff that he does [but] I’ve learned more from him on how to execute than anybody in my life.”

Breslow also underscores that while he’s officially handing off day-to-day management of Bolt, he’s not going anywhere. “Without going into specifics,” he says, “I have a lot of votes in the company.” (Like many tech founders, Breslow holds super-voting shares, meaning he owns a class of stock that provides its holders with outsize voting rights; a source close to the company says that because of those shares, “Ryan controls the board; he is the boss.”)

Indeed, Breslow suggests that installing Kuruvilla as CEO has been a strong likelihood since Breslow began recruiting him in 2019, and that Kuruvilla’s appointment right now has nothing to do with Breslow’s tweet storms but instead ties to Bolt’s fiscal year, which begins tomorrow, February 1.

In the meantime, says Breslow, he’s excited about his new role as executive chairman. “I have the self awareness to know when someone’s better than me at certain things, and Maju is better than me at a lot of things.” Now, he says, he can step away from those things and “exclusively focus on culture, vision, landing company-defining deals, and fundraising. Those,” says Breslow, “are my superpowers.”

To date, Bolt has raised funding from BlackRock, SchonfeldInvus Opportunities, H.I.G. Growth, CE Innovation Capital, Tribe Capital, Untitled Investments, General Atlantic and Activant Capital, among many others.

That newest tranche is expected to close soon.

Come hang with us for live recordings of TechCrunch podcasts Equity and Found

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 08:45 AM PST

Are you a numbers nerd? A people person?

In either case, there’s a TechCrunch podcast for you.

TechCrunch’s premier (only) podcasts Equity and Found are kicking off 2022 with live recordings of the shows starting in February. Listeners can catch the live recordings on YouTube, Facebook or (to get even more involved) chat directly with the hosts by registering on Hopin.

Here’s a look at the schedule:

February 10 – 1pm ET/10am PT
Equity – Hosted by Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo

Register here for Equity Live on February 10th


February 17, 1pm ET/10am PT
Found – Hosted by Darrell Etherington and Jordan Crook
Featuring QuizUp founder Thor Fridriksson

Register here for Found Live on February 17th


February 24 – 1pm ET/10am PT
Equity – Hosted by Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo

Register here for Equity Live on February 24th

If you’ve been listening to Equity for a while, this is a chance to go even deeper. You’ll get to listen to the episode a day early, get behind-the-scenes access and even chat live with the Equity crew, including Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo.

If you’re brand new to the Equity fandom, come on in and have a look around. The water’s nice.

Equity is all about unpacking the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. The Equity crew wades through the hype to keep you up to date on the world of business, technology and venture capital, and they have a blast doing it.

Found, TechCrunch’s newer (and arguably better — as a co-host I’m only a little biased) podcast focuses on the stories behind the startups. We talk to founders about the peaks and pits of running a business, including the fundraising process, hiring, leadership tactics and more.

We’ve talked to folks like Ro co-founder Rob Schultz, Envoy CEO Larry Gadea, Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger (who co-founded MOSH) and Hims and Hers co-founder Hilary Coles.

For our first live recording of Found, we’ll sit down with QuizUp founder Thor Fridriksson, who has proven himself a master of developing viral mobile games, and learn about his template for success and what he’s learned from his failures.

Folks who register (for free) to join the live recording on Hopin will be able to ask their own questions to Thor throughout the episode.

It should be pretty damn cool.

[New post] Carol McGiffin denies spat with ITV’s Lorraine after appearing to brand star ‘revolting’

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 12:18 AM PST

Moon Syouri posted: "Carol McGiffin denies spat with ITV's Lorraine after appearing to brand star 'revolting' The Daily Mirror: Loose Women's Carol McGiffin has denied a behind the scenes fall out with fellow ITV star Lorraine Kelly after she was seen to brand the TV host "r"

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