Friday, June 28, 2019

SV Academy, a startup that provides free 12-week training programs to help people get tech-based sales jobs, raises $9.5M Series A led by Owl Ventures (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)

Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
SV Academy, a startup that provides free 12-week training programs to help people get tech-based sales jobs, raises $9.5M Series A led by Owl Ventures  —  When you live in Silicon Valley, it feels like nearly everyone works in tech and that entry into the industry is wide open.



Google finance head joins Postmates board ahead of anticipated IPO

Google’s vice president of finance, has joined Postmates’ board of directors, the latest sign that the on-demand food delivery startup is prepping to take the company public.

Postmates announced Friday that Kristin Reinke, vice president of Finance at Google, will join the San Francisco startup as an independent director.

Reinke has been with Google since 2005. Prior to Google, Reinke was at Oracle for eight years. Reinke also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council.

Her skill set will come in handy as Postmates creeps towards an IPO.

Earlier this year, the company lined up a $100 million pre-IPO financing that valued the business at $1.85 billion. Postmates is backed by Tiger Global, BlackRock, Spark Capital, Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Slow Ventures and others. Spark Capital’s Nabeel Hyatt tweeted the news earlier Friday.

“Postmates has established itself as the market leader with a focus on innovation and route efficiency in the fast‐growing on‐demand delivery sector. Given their strong execution, accelerating growth, and financial discipline, they are well positioned for continued market growth across the U.S.,” said Reinke. “I’m thrilled to join the board.”

The startup has been beefing up its executive quiver, most recently hiring Apple veteran and author Ken Kocienda as a principal software engineer at Postmates X, the team building the food delivery company’s semi-autonomous sidewalk rover, Serve.

Kocienda, author of “Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s  Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs,” spent 15 years at Apple focused on human interface design, collaborating with engineers to develop the first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

Payments & food delivery apps use games to increase subscribers

Games increase the time customers spend on such apps and is relevant for sectors that are transactional in nature, like payment apps and food delivery apps, industry experts told ET. https://ift.tt/321TGNO https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

SpaceX aims to provide commercial Starship launches by 2021

SpaceX is only getting started launching Falcon Heavy commercial missions, but it already has its eyes on the next prize – launching Starship. Now, we know that it’s hoping to start commercial service for this next-generation, fully reusable rocket by 2021, according to SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Jonathan Hofeller.

Hofeller was speaking at a conference in Indonesia (via SpaceNews), and noted that the private space launch company is currently talking to three different telecom companies about selecting which will be the first mission aboard the new spacecraft. Starship, formerly knowns as ‘BFR’ or ‘Big Falcon Rocket’) is currently in development at two separate SpaceX facilities, one in Texas and one in Florida, in what amounts to an internal company ‘bake-off’ to see which team can delivery the better solution faster. An engineering show-down of this kind is not uncommon among tech companies, and often produces results from both efforts that complement or enhance whatever the final product ends up being, rather than being a ‘winner take all’ scenario.

Starship, once complete, will include a launch system propelled to orbit by a ‘Super Heavy’ booster, with even more lift capacity than the existing Falcon Heavy rocket. It’ll be able to delivery as many as 20 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit, or over 100 tons to low-Earth orbit. It’s also intended to be the spacecraft that enables SpaceX to achieve its goal of running crewed missions to Mars.

Previously stated target dates for Starship milestones include achieving orbital launches by 2020, though based on this new info those will be test or demonstration missions rather than for paying customers. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also previously said that the company is looking at 2023 as the earliest target date for providing a Moon circuit space trip to his first paying tourist customer, Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa.

Parent company of Jack'd, a gay dating app with 6M+ users, settles complaint over flaw that had exposed private user photos on a public server for over a year (Adi Robertson/The Verge)

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Parent company of Jack'd, a gay dating app with 6M+ users, settles complaint over flaw that had exposed private user photos on a public server for over a year  —  New York's attorney general has settled a complaint over gay, bisexual, and queer dating app Jack'd, whose parent company left …



Thursday, June 27, 2019

Apple Music Hits More Than 60 Million Subscribers, Trailing Spotify

Apple confirmed that the company's streaming music service has more than 60 million subscribers, trailing rival Spotify's 100 million premium subscribers. https://ift.tt/2IS6wqi

Realme C2 with 61-inch HD+ display goes on sale at 12pm today: Price, offers and all you need to know

Realme announced its entry-level smartphone, the Realme C2 a couple of months ago in India and the handset will go up for sale at 12pm today. The smartphone is priced starting at Rs 5,999, which means it goes up against the likes of Redmi 7, Samsung Galaxy M10 and other handsets that are in the same price range. As the Realme C2 is an entry-level handset, it is powered by the Helio P22 SoC and comes in two memory variants and three storage versions. The handset will be available for purchase today via Flipkart and Realme India website. 

Realme C2 specifications

Realme C2 comes equipped with a 6.1-inch HD+ display that offers a 19.5:9 aspect ratio with a dewdrop notch design. As mentioned earlier, it is powered by an Octa-core Helio P22 chipset and it runs on Android 9 Pie with ColorOS 6.0 on top. Backed by a 4000mAh battery, the Realme handset sports a micro-USB port for charging and data transfer. It also supports memory expansion of up to 256GB storage. The dual 4G dual SIM device has comes with a dedicated third slot for memory expansion.

In terms of optics, the Realme C2 features a dual-rear camera setup. It comes with a 13MP primary sensor, which is assisted by a 2MP depth sensor. Realme says that the rear camera can shoot slo-mo videos in 80fps/480p quality. There’s also a 5MP front camera with AI Face Unlock feature. The handset comes in a total of three variants, two with 2GB RAM and options to select between 16GB and 32GB of internal storage. There's also a 3GB RAM version with 32GB of storage. 

Realme C2 price and offers 

The 2GB RAM + 16GB variant of the Realme C2 costs Rs 5,999, while its 2GB RAM + 32GB variant is priced at Rs 6,999. The 3GB RAM + 32GB storage model of the handset is priced at Rs 7,999. It comes in Diamond Blue and Diamond Black colours. It will be available via Flipkart and the Realme India website. 

For sale offers, Realme is offering a 15 percent cashback for users who pay for the phone via MobiKwik on Realme website. On Flipkart, one can avail a no-cost EMI option and 5 percent discount for payments made through Axis Bank Buzz credit card.

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Your next iPhone may not be ‘designed’ by Apple

Apple said Ive will continue work on its products at his new venture, but shares fell as much as 1.5% to $197.44 in after-market trading, wiping about $9 billion from the firm's value. https://ift.tt/2Xk8SqZ

Twitter to De-Emphasise, Label Politician Tweets That Break Rules

"We'll now clearly label any tweets which violate our terms of service but decide to keep up due to public interest," Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said. https://ift.tt/2J4p856

Somerville, MA becomes the second US city after San Francisco, to ban the use of facial recognition software by local police and city government agencies (Caroline Haskins/VICE)

Caroline Haskins / VICE:
Somerville, MA becomes the second US city after San Francisco, to ban the use of facial recognition software by local police and city government agencies  —  Somerville, which neighbors Cambridge, Massachusetts, just joined San Francisco in banning the use of facial recognition.



Tata may join drone race: All you need to know about flying drones in India and more

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How to make your Google account safer using Android smartphone

Google has added a new feature as an extension of the 2FA that lets users use their Android smartphone as a Security key for their Google Account. https://ift.tt/2Ni8c0p

ETtech Top 5: Indian founders hail differential voting rights, Naspers may back Meesho & more

A closer look at today's biggest tech and startup news and why they matter. https://ift.tt/2X3sx9y https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

6 Xiaomi smartphones available at lowest-ever prices during Mi Super sale

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Kakao's blockchain subsidiary Ground X launches its blockchain platform Klaytn, with support from companies including LG, and nine initial decentralized apps (Yeo Jun-suk/The Korea Herald)

Yeo Jun-suk / The Korea Herald:
Kakao's blockchain subsidiary Ground X launches its blockchain platform Klaytn, with support from companies including LG, and nine initial decentralized apps  —  Kakao's blockchain subsidiary Ground X on Thursday launched a public network platform for companies and developers …



Anthropic cuts its list of unauthorized secondary market sellers from eight to four after the initial notice caused panic and pushback from investors (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg : Anthropic cuts its list of unauthorized secondary market sellers from eight to four after the initial notice cau...