Sunday, September 30, 2018
What's the Best Way to Play PUBG? What You Need to Know
Redmi Note 6 Pro Launch, iPhone XS and Galaxy A7 (2018) in India & More
The Division 2 Feels Like a Sharper, Cleaner Version of the First Game
OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T Get OxygenOS 5.0.6 With New Android Security Patch
Microsoft Robot OS With ML, IoT Integration Coming to Windows 10
Xiaomi Wants to Enter Your Home (Spoiler: Not With Its Smartphones)
US Judge Rules Against Qualcomm's Appeal to Ban iPhone Imports in US
Android Pie Still Isn't a Part of Updated Android Distribution Chart
Apple Store Robbery: 17 Charged With Theft of $1 Million
Nokia 7.1 Plus Specifications, Images Apparently Surface on TENAA
With Data Breach of 50 Million Users, What's Next for Facebook?
Facebook Data Breach: Senator Urges for US Congress to Take Action
BSNL Launches Rs. 18 Recharge With Unlimited Data, Calling Benefits
Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro vs Redmi Note 5 Pro
Xiaomi Redmi Y2 Now Getting New MIUI Update With Improved Portrait Mode
Google May Pay Apple $9 Billion to Remain Default iPhone Search Engine
Wear OS Update Now Starts Rolling Out With Enhanced Google Fit Support
Here's How You Could Get OnePlus 6T Ahead of Its Public Launch
Some iPhone XS smartphones are clicking ‘strange’ selfies, say customers
Here’s how you can be amongst the first ones to receive OnePlus 6T
AIR streaming services launched on Amazon Alexa smart speakers
U.S. trade judge declines to block iPhone imports
Delink your Aadhaar from Paytm account in 14 simple steps
Digital ID systems, as they are being developed today, are ripe for exploitation and abuse; citizens must advocate for principles that shield fundamental rights (Brett Solomon/Wired)
Digital ID systems, as they are being developed today, are ripe for exploitation and abuse; citizens must advocate for principles that shield fundamental rights — THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT, real-world benefits to having an accepted and recognized identity. That's why the concept of a digital identity …
EU enacts law enabling cross-border recognition of national electronic IDs, like driver licenses and bank cards, in tax filing, medical records, public services (Digital Single Market)
EU enacts law enabling cross-border recognition of national electronic IDs, like driver licenses and bank cards, in tax filing, medical records, public services — About Trust services and eIdentification — As of 29 September, the EU-wide legislation on the electronic identification …
Satellite communications company Iridium partners with AWS to develop CloudConnect, a satellite-based network for IoT applications, expected to launch in 2019 (Michael Sheetz/CNBC)
Satellite communications company Iridium partners with AWS to develop CloudConnect, a satellite-based network for IoT applications, expected to launch in 2019 — - Iridium is partnering with AWS to develop a satellite-based network called CloudConnect for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
A look at how HSI, the investigative arm of ICE, used a New Deal-era warrant called the customs summons to help shutdown South Korean spycam porn site Soranet (The Verge)
A look at how HSI, the investigative arm of ICE, used a New Deal-era warrant called the customs summons to help shutdown South Korean spycam porn site Soranet — How did US customs officials get involved in taking down a South Korean porn site? — Over the course of this summer …
Inside Bentonville UP, a secretive conference attended by reps from Airbus, Google, Uber, NASA, US Air Force, and more to discuss innovation in flying cars (Eric Adams/Wired)
Inside Bentonville UP, a secretive conference attended by reps from Airbus, Google, Uber, NASA, US Air Force, and more to discuss innovation in flying cars — MOST DAYS, THE Bentonville Municipal Airport in Arkansas is a pretty quiet place, servicing the occasional small private airplanes that pass through …
WSJ found ~$90M in criminal proceeds from fraud or hacks like WannaCry, laundered via 46 crypto exchanges; US-based ShapeShift processed $9M in suspect funds (Wall Street Journal)
WSJ found ~$90M in criminal proceeds from fraud or hacks like WannaCry, laundered via 46 crypto exchanges; US-based ShapeShift processed $9M in suspect funds — Journal investigation documents suspicious trades through venture capital-backed ShapeShift — A North Korean agent …
Estonia sues Gemalto for €152M over security flaw that made the country's citizen ID cards vulnerable to hacking last year (Tarmo Virki/Reuters)
Estonia sues Gemalto for €152M over security flaw that made the country's citizen ID cards vulnerable to hacking last year — Estonian police are seeking to recover 152 million euros ($178 mln) in a lawsuit filed on Thursday against digital security firm Gemalto, following a recall …
Elon Musk and SEC settle; Musk admits no guilt, will remain Tesla CEO, has to resign as Chairman for 3 years, appoint 2 new independent directors, pay $20M fine (Javier E. David/CNBC)
Elon Musk and SEC settle; Musk admits no guilt, will remain Tesla CEO, has to resign as Chairman for 3 years, appoint 2 new independent directors, pay $20M fine — The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled charges with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to court documents filed on Saturday …
Profile of Kathryn Haun, a former prosecutor who created US' first federal "digital currency task force" and now an a16z partner investing in crypto startups (Robert Hackett/Fortune)
Profile of Kathryn Haun, a former prosecutor who created US' first federal “digital currency task force” and now an a16z partner investing in crypto startups — “Let's settle this!” an announcer rumbles over loudspeakers. — The “this” in question is one of the more important business disputes …
UK's Conservative Party conference app allowed anyone to login without a password, just by using attendee's email, revealed personal details like phone numbers (The Guardian)
UK's Conservative Party conference app allowed anyone to login without a password, just by using attendee's email, revealed personal details like phone numbers — Images posted to social media show people accessing data of senior Tories such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove
Profile of Bytedance, a China-based social news and video startup that may soon surpass Uber in valuation if rumored $1.5B SoftBank investment at $75B closes (Bloomberg)
Profile of Bytedance, a China-based social news and video startup that may soon surpass Uber in valuation if rumored $1.5B SoftBank investment at $75B closes — - Bytedance's said to be valued at over $75 billion in new round — SoftBank is said to plan an investment of about $1.5 billion
CEO of Jawbone Health, which emerged after the liquidation of Jawbone, explains why he believes his new "device agnostic" health tracking startup will succeed (Eric Johnson/Recode)
CEO of Jawbone Health, which emerged after the liquidation of Jawbone, explains why he believes his new “device agnostic” health tracking startup will succeed — Jawbone Health CEO Hosain Rahman reflects on past mistakes and explains what's next on Recode Decode.
Tim Berners-Lee unveils Solid, an open source project to decentralize the web and give users control of their data, and Inrupt, a startup to guide the project (Tim Berners-Lee)
Tim Berners-Lee unveils Solid, an open source project to decentralize the web and give users control of their data, and Inrupt, a startup to guide the project — I've always believed the web is for everyone. That's why I and others fight fiercely to protect it.
Linus Torvalds shares thoughts on his decision to step away from Linux, the controversy behind the Code of Conduct, and the problems in the Linux community (Jane Wakefield/BBC)
Linus Torvalds shares thoughts on his decision to step away from Linux, the controversy behind the Code of Conduct, and the problems in the Linux community — Linux founder Linus Torvalds has told the BBC that he is seeking professional help to become more empathetic towards fellow developers …
Interview with Skype co-founder and VC firm Atomico founder Niklas Zennström on European tech, why startups need team members with diverse backgrounds, and more (Steve O'Hear/TechCrunch)
Interview with Skype co-founder and VC firm Atomico founder Niklas Zennström on European tech, why startups need team members with diverse backgrounds, and more — With a ‘techlash’ underway, Atomico founder Niklas Zennström still believes a fourth industrial revolution can save us from the first three
America's coolest company: How Big Ass Fans went from cooling cows to a multinational tech powerhouse
Big Ass Fans: An inside look at America's coolest company
The biggest mistake companies can make when adopting IoT
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How business can use IoT to conduct more efficient operations
The biggest mistake companies can make when adopting IoT
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Solve, MIT’s take on social innovation challenges, may be different enough to work
Since McKinsey released a report on how best to use prizes to incentivize innovation nearly a decade ago, an entire industry has grown around social innovation challenges. The formula for these “save the world” competitions has become standard. Drum up a lot of buzz around an award. Partner with big names to get funding and high-profile judges. Try and get as many submissions as possible from across the world. Whittle down the submissions and come up with a list of finalists that get to pitch at a glitzy event with a lot of media attention.
On the final stage, based on pitches that last mere minutes, pick a winner that can get upwards of millions in prize funding. Don’t have a software platform to run a challenge of this kind? No worries, numerous for-profit vendors have sprung up that can do all the work for you—for anywhere from ten to a few hundred thousand dollars. The growth has been so exponential that prizes awarded through competitions has grown from less than $20 million in 1970 to a whopping $375 million just four decades later.
But do these prizes get the sort of world-saving results they aim for? There’s little quantified evidence to back that, and some leaders in philanthropy are broadly skeptical.
For its part, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is trying a different approach to innovation challenges with Solve, taking some of what’s worked in these challenges and fusing it with elements of tech accelerator programs, including post-award training that focuses on results.
Solve is entering an already crowded field of innovation challenges. Many of these prizes overlap, with each vying to be the “Nobel” of its field. More prizes means more noise—which has led to a race to offer more money to get attention.
But even private-sector riches do not guarantee that prize money for innovation gets good results. In 2004, Bigelow Enterprises sponsored a $50 million Space Prize but it failed to capture the imagination of space researchers and eventually folded. Back in 2009, Netflix invited outside teams to improve it movie recommendation algorithm by 10% for a $1 million reward. The Netflix Prize led to a race among programmers, only for Netflix to eventually kill the entire plan because it was getting better results in-house.
Overall, the social innovation competitions tend to reward presentation, glitz and charisma, and penalize speaking English as a second language, introversion and inability to make flashy slides.
Solve, which held its third annual finalists event on Sunday September 23 in New York, is taking a different approach.
Unlike other contests where questions are internally decided, Solve crowdsources the questions to begin with. Its team takes months to run hackathons and workshops around the world to decide on the four most pressing questions to become the focus of that year’s challenge. This year, the questions focused on teachers and educators, workforce of the future, frontlines of health and coastal communities.
The competition is then opened up to participants from around the world with relatively low barriers to entry, resulting in 1,150 submissions from 110 countries in the last competition round. (That’s at least one submission from nearly 60 percent of all countries in the world!)
The prize recipients of the GM Prize for Advanced Technology. Photo: Adam Schultz | MIT Solve
To qualify, though, participants need to have more than just an idea. They must have a prototype that works, be either in the growth, pilot or scale stage, and be tech-driven. Submissions are then evaluated by judges from across industry, intergovernmental organizations and academia to get to 15 finalists for each of the four challenge questions. These 60 finalists get a full day with judges to be asked in-depth questions and have their ideas evaluated.
The day after, with all the preparations completed, the finalists get three minutes apiece to present on stage. Crucially, instead of one winner, eight finalists are chosen for each of the challenge questions.
Each finalist receives an initial $10,000 prize, plus a pool of hundreds of thousands of dollars provided by partners including General Motors, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Consensys, and RISE.
This year, for example, Ugandan health care startup Neopenda brought in an additional $30,000 in funding through Solve, from a UN program sponsored by Citi. An intelligent messaging app called TalkingPoints, meanwhile, received backing from General Motors and Save the Children to develop its personalized coaching technology for parents and educators. (You can see more details on this year’s winners and prizes here.)
As opposed to being a “one and done competition” where winning the prize money marks the end of the competition, managing director of community Hala Hanna tells me that the real work begins once the Solver teams are selected. Each qualifying Solver team gets 12 months of engagement and support from the organization. “Our value-add is providing a network, from MIT and beyond, and then brokering partnerships,” she explains.
Perhaps the biggest testament to the Solve method getting traction is its funders putting in even more cash in support. At the closing event on Sunday, an upbeat Matthew Minor, Solve’s director for international programs, took to the stage decked out in Solve-branded socks and a broad smile. He announced the winning finalists—and more funding opportunities. Two of Solve’s original backers, the Atlassian Foundation and the Australian government, are continuing to invest out of a standing $2.6 million budget for companies in the workforce track. RISE, a global impact investing fund, is putting an additional $1 million into companies focused on coastal communities.
The Australians have already put in funding to help past winners scale after the program. One of them is Ruangguru, a digital boot camp in Indonesia that gives youth dropouts resources they need to earn graduation certificates. The startup had reached nearly a million Indonesians prior to participating in Solve; through the program and the additional funding, it assisted more than 3 million Indonesian youth by the end of last year. Iman Usman, one of Ruangguru’s founders, tells me that Solve enabled them to enter into partnerships that helped them scale across Indonesia in a way they would have never been able to do on their own.
Solve has also been unequivocally good at ensuring diversity, both in its own staffing and—perhaps for related reasons—in those that are chosen as finalists. Of Solve’s 20 full-time staff, 14 are women, as are six out of the seven leadership team members and—by my count—at least seven nationalities from four continents are represented on staff.
The 33 Solver teams selected at the finals this year hail from 28 different countries, with 61 percent of them being women-led. At a time when the tech industry is struggling to increase diversity, Solve’s emphasis on diversity in challenge design and promotion has led to applicants and finalists that reflect the world Solve aims to help.
Hanna noted that increasing diversity is not as difficult as it’s made out to be. “Honestly, we’re not even trying that hard,” she explained. “So whoever says there are no women in tech, I say, crazy talk.”
The view from the Apella at Solve Challenge Finals on Sept. 23. Photo: Adam Schulz | MIT Solve
Still, Solve does have a few kinks to work out. By taking on extremely broad topics, the competition can sometimes lack focus. Lofty questions mean you can get very disparate answers, making it hard to compare them in a way that feels fair.
And while it’s great that the award monies are not all given to a single winner, it is not quite clear how funders pick the teams that do get funding. 15 qualifying finalists this year ended up winning money awards, some winning more than one, while the remaining 18 qualifying teams went home with the minimum amount. This is because Solve funders get to pick which of the teams that qualify at the finals get their respective monetary prizes. Of course, all 33 qualifying teams equally get to be a part of the Solve class with all the support and training that includes.
Another kink is the audience choice award—selected through open online voting prior to the finals—but not tied to any clear concrete benefit. Take the example of Science for Sharing (Sci4S), a Mexico-based startup that trains teachers to better engage students in STEM and has already reached nearly a million children across Latin America. It garnered 419 community votes in the Education Challenge, more votes than any other participant in the category, and handedly won the audience choice award. Ultimately, Sci4S was not selected as a Solver team. Another education startup, Kenya-based Moringa School, only got two votes but was selected. While Moringa and others were compelling and qualified in their own right, it’s still hard not to think that Sci4S should have focused all of its time on its presentation and ignored the audience vote.
All in all, Solve does get a number of things right where other innovation challenges have failed. Instead of anointing one winner for the entire competition, it selects a class of dozens—reflecting the simple fact that the world’s most intractable problems are not going to be solved by any singular idea. Unlike many challenges put on by educational institutions and open only to their own students, Solve opens its doors wide. And winning at the finals doesn’t end your connection with MIT, it only starts it, with all qualifying finalists getting a year of individualized support, training and mentorship.
Done right, prizes can be effective at incentivizing startups to focus on pressing societal issues that can truly benefit from tech-driven solutions. But prizes for the sake of prizes can add to the noise and dissipate scarce public resources and entrepreneur attention. In the increasingly crowded world of innovation challenges promising to change the world, MIT’s Solve is a step away from the noise and towards effective prize granting.
Ne-Yo wants to make Silicon Valley more diverse, one investment at a time
Dressed in a Naruto t-shirt and a hat emblazoned with the phrase “lone wolf,” Ne-Yo slouches over in a chair inside a Holberton School classroom. The Grammy-winning recording artist is struggling to remember the name of “that actor,” the one who’s had a successful career in both the entertainment industry and tech investing.
“I learned about all the things he was doing and I thought it was great for him,” Ne-Yo told TechCrunch. “But I didn’t really know what my place in tech would be.”
It turns out “that actor” is Ashton Kutcher, widely known in Hollywood and beyond for his role in several blockbusters and the TV sitcom That ’70s Show, and respected in Silicon Valley for his investments via Sound Ventures and A-Grade in Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Bird and several others.
Ne-Yo, for his part, is known for a string of R&B hits including So Sick, One in a Million and Because of You. His latest album, Good Man, came out in June.
Ne-Yo, like Kutcher, is interested in pursuing a side gig in investing but he doesn’t want to waste time chasing down the next big thing. His goal, he explained, is to use his wealth to encourage people like him to view software engineering and other technical careers as viable options.
“Little black kids growing up don’t say things like ‘I want to be a coder when I grow up,’ because it’s not real to them, they don’t see people that look like me doing it,” Ne-Yo said. “But tech is changing the world, like literally by the day, by the second, so I feel like it just makes the most sense to have it accessible to everyone.”
Last year, Ne-Yo finally made the leap into venture capital investing: his first deal, an investment in Holberton School, a two-year coding academy founded by Julien Barbier and Sylvain Kalache that trains full-stack engineers. The singer returned to San Francisco earlier this month for the grand opening of Holberton’s remodeled headquarters on Mission Street in the city’s SoMa neighborhood.
[gallery ids="1722954,1722952,1722953,1722955"]Holberton, a proposed alternative to a computer science degree, is free to students until they graduate and land a job, at which point they are asked to pay 17 percent of their salaries during their first three years in the workforce.
It has a different teaching philosophy than your average coding academy or four-year university. It relies on project-based and peer learning, i.e. students helping and teaching each other; there are no formal teachers or lecturers. The concept appears to be working. Holberton says their former students are now employed at Apple, NASA, LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox and Tesla.
Ne-Yo participated in Holberton’s $2.3 million round in February 2017 alongside Reach Capital and Insight Venture Partners, as well as Trinity Ventures, the VC firm that introduced Ne-Yo to the edtech startup. Holberton has since raised an additional $8 million from existing and new investors like daphni, Omidyar Network, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang and Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle.
Holberton has used that capital to expand beyond the Bay Area. A school in New Haven, Conn., where the company hopes to reach students who can’t afford to live in tech’s hubs, is in development.
The startup’s emphasis on diversity is what attracted Ne-Yo to the project and why he signed on as a member of the board of trustees. More than half of Holberton’s students are people of color and 35 percent are women. Since Ne-Yo got involved, the number of African American applicants has doubled from roughly 5 percent to 11.5 percent.
“I didn’t really know what my place in tech would be.”
Before Ne-Yo’s preliminary meetings with Holberton’s founders, he says he wasn’t aware of the racial and gender diversity problem in tech.
“When it was brought to my attention, I was like ‘ok, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed,'” he said. “It makes no sense that this thing that affects us all isn’t available to us all. If you don’t have the money or you don’t have the schooling, it’s not available to you, however, it’s affecting their lives the same way it’s affecting the rich guys’ lives.”
Holberton’s founders joked with TechCrunch that Ne-Yo has actually been more supportive and helpful in the last year than many of the venture capitalists who back Holberton. He’s very “hands-on,” they said. Despite the fact that he’s balancing a successful music career and doesn’t exactly have a lot of free time, he’s made sure to attend events at Holberton, like the recent grand opening, and will Skype with students occasionally.
“I wanted it to be grassroots and authentic.”
Ne-Yo was very careful to explain that he didn’t put money in Holberton for the good optics.
“This isn’t something I just wanted to put my name on,” he said. “I wanted to make sure [the founders] knew this was something I was going to be serious about and not just do the celebrity thing. I wanted it to be grassroots and authentic so we dropped whatever we were doing and came down, met these guys, hung out with the students and hung out at the school to see what it’s really about.”
What’s next for Ne-Yo? A career in venture capital, perhaps? He’s definitely interested and will be making more investments soon, but a full pivot into VC is unlikely.
At the end of the day, Silicon Valley doesn’t need more people with fat wallets and a hankering for the billionaire lifestyle. What it needs are people who have the money and resources necessary to bolster the right businesses and who care enough to prioritize diversity and inclusivity over yet another payday.
“Not to toot the horn or brag, but I’m not missing any meals,” Ne-Yo said. “So, if I’m going to do it, let it mean something.”
Elon Musk agrees to resign as Tesla chairman in settlement with SEC
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will step down as chairman of the electric automaker and pay a $20 million fine under a settlement reached with the U.S Securities and Exchange commission. Musk will remain CEO and he will still keep a seat on the board, just not as chairman.
The agreement settles what could have turned into a bitter and potentially damaging fight for Musk, the company, and Tesla shareholders.
Musk will resign from his role as chairman of the Tesla board within 45 days of the agreement, which was filed Saturday. He has agreed to not seek reelection or accept an appointment as chairman for three years. An independent chairman will be appointed, under the settlement agreement.
Tesla will pay a separate $20 million penalty, according to the SEC. The SEC said the charge and fine against Tesla is for failing to require disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets.
Musk doesn’t have to admit or deny the SEC’s allegations as part of the agreement.
Tesla has also agreed to appoint two new independent directors to its board and establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications, according to the SEC. This likely means that Musk, who frequently turns to Twitter to unveils new products, features and updates on his multiple companies, will be more restricted moving forward. At least when it comes to his tweets about Tesla.
“The resolution is intended to prevent further market disruption and harm to Tesla’s shareholders,” Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division said in a statement.
The agreement marks the beginning of a new era of corporate governance for Tesla, which some shareholders have argued is too tightly controlled by Musk and others closely aligned to him such as his brother Kimbal Musk. Investor and founding board member Steve Jurvetson is still on leave.
In 2017, Tesla diversified its board and added James Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., and Linda Johnson Rice,Chairman and CEO of Johnson Publishing Company.
Other board members include: Robyn Denholm, who joined the board in 2014, Brad W. Buss, who has been on since 2009, Antonio Gracias, and Ira Ehrenpreis, one of longest-serving board members who joined in 2007.
The SEC filed a complaint Thursday in federal district court alleged that Musk lied when he tweeted on August 7 that he had “funding secured” for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share. Federal securities regulators reportedly served Tesla with a subpoena just a week after the tweet. Investigations can take years before any action is taken, if at all. In this case, charges were filed just six weeks later.
The SEC said in the complaint that Musk violated anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The commission has asked the court to fine Musk and bar the billionaire entrepreneur from serving as an officer or director of a public company.
Musk described fraud charges an “unjustified action” that has left him “deeply saddened and disappointed.”
Tesla and the board later issued a joint statement supporting Musk.
The complaint contains a number of eye-browing raising details, including that he had talked to the board about an offer to take Tesla private as early as August 2 when he sent to Tesla’s board of directors, chief financial officer and general counsel an email with the subject, “Offer to Take Tesla Private at $420.”
Twitch plans to roll out its TikTok-style discovery feed later in April, letting users scroll clips and livestreams, after testing the feature for a year (Emma Roth/The Verge)
Emma Roth / The Verge : Twitch plans to roll out its TikTok-style discovery feed later in April, letting users scroll clips and livestrea...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Andrew Tarantola / Engadget : An adapted excerpt from the book “Your Computer Is on Fire”, on how voice assistants like Siri and Alexa al...
