Thursday, September 19, 2019

ISRO panel to look into Vikram loss

Space agency’s attempts to communicate with the lander have been futile till date https://ift.tt/2OffOQb https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Identity management company Ping Identity closes up 30% on its first day of trading after raising $188M in its IPO, which valued the company at $1.16B (Abhishek Manikandan/Reuters)

Abhishek Manikandan / Reuters:
Identity management company Ping Identity closes up 30% on its first day of trading after raising $188M in its IPO, which valued the company at $1.16B  —  (Reuters) - Shares of Ping Identity Holding Corp (PING.N) jumped 25% in their market debut on Thursday, giving the identity software company a market value of about $1.46 billion.



How to change a Slack channel name

Did you inherit a mess of a Slack workspace? Find out how to clean that up by renaming channels. https://ift.tt/2QgzMg4 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

20 features that will make your iPhone better starting today

Apple officially rolled out iOS 13 to iPhone users yesterday. The Cupertino-based tech giant’s latest OS update brings a slew of new features to iPhones and are set to make the user experience better than before. Here we list out 20 features that will make iPhones better than last year: https://ift.tt/31I98hC

ETtech Top 5: Surge pricing & driver earnings, Regulation vs Innovation & more

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

Vivo V17 Pro With Dual Pop-Up Cameras to Launch Today: How to Watch Live

Vivo V17 Pro is set to launch in India today, a new dual pop-up selfie camera smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer. https://ift.tt/2LCjiKW

Court dismisses the sex-abuse lawsuit against Michael Goguen, which was the reason the venture capitalist was fired from Sequoia Capital back in 2016 (Peter Blumberg/Bloomberg)

Peter Blumberg / Bloomberg:
Court dismisses the sex-abuse lawsuit against Michael Goguen, which was the reason the venture capitalist was fired from Sequoia Capital back in 2016  —  The sex-abuse lawsuit that ended venture capitalist Michael Goguen's 20-year career at Sequoia Capital was dismissed because his accuser …



French court rules that European consumers can resell games they bought on Steam, just as they are able to resell packaged, physical games (Colin Campbell/Polygon)

Colin Campbell / Polygon:
French court rules that European consumers can resell games they bought on Steam, just as they are able to resell packaged, physical games  —  Valve pledges to fight ruling  —  A French high court this week delivered a blow to Valve, ruling that European consumers are legally free …



Twitter's controversial "Hide Replies" feature launches today in the US and Japan after earlier tests in Canada (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter's controversial “Hide Replies” feature launches today in the US and Japan after earlier tests in Canada  —  Twitter's controversial “Hide Replies” feature, aimed at civilizing conversations on its platform, is launching today in the U.S. and Japan after earlier tests in Canada.



An explosive breach of contract lawsuit against former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Goguen has been dropped

Three-and-a-half years ago, a lawsuit hit the San Mateo, Ca. county courthouse that briefly attracted the attention of the worldwide venture capital community given its salacious nature. The defendant: longtime VC Michael Goguen, who’d spent 20 years with Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, Ca. The plaintiff: a former intimate who described him through the filing as a “worse predator than the human traffickers.” She said in the filing that she would know, having become a “victim of human trafficking” at age 15 when she was “brought to America in 2001,” then “sold as a dancer to a strip club” in Texas, which is where she says first encountered Goguen.

What she wanted from the lawsuit was money that she said was owed to her by Goguen: $40 million over four installments that the lawsuit stated were for “compensation for the sexual abuse and [a sexual] infection she contracted from him.” According to her suit, Goguen agreed to these terms, paying Baptiste a first installment of $10 million before refusing to make further payments.

At the time, Goguen called the allegations “horrific” and suggested Baptiste was a spurned lover, saying they’d had a “10+ year romantic relationship that ended badly.” He also filed a cross complaint alleging extortion.

Today, that cross complaint lives on, but Baptiste’s case against Goguen was just dismissed by arbitrator Read Ambler, a retired judge who served 20 years with the Santa Clara County Superior Court and who wrote in a ruling filed yesterday in San Mateo that Baptiste’s failures to undergo medical examinations doomed her case, as did her failure to produce documents necessary in the discovery process.

“The record presented further establishes that Baptiste’s’ failures were willful,” Ambler writes. “Baptiste appears to believe that the information responsive to the discovery at issue is either not relevant, or with respect to the medical examinations, not permitted by law. While Baptiste is free to believe what she wants to believe, the orders are binding on Baptiste, and her failure to comply with the orders is unacceptable.”

Baptiste doesn’t currently have legal representation, though four sets of lawyers have represented her over time.

Patricia Glaser, a high-powered attorney who took on Baptiste’s case originally (and later agreed to represent Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein), asked to be relieved from the case five months later, citing “irreconcilable differences.” More recently, an L.A.-based couple that operates the Sherman Law Group in L.A. filed a motion to be relieved as Baptiste’s counsel, citing “irreconcilable differences and a breakdown in communication.”

Goguen’s attorneys say he will continue to pursue his counterclaims against Baptiste and looks forward to “complete vindication.”

Though Ambler never remarked on the merits or Baptiste’s claims, Goguen’s attorney Diane Doolittle further said today in a statement that: “Amber Laurel Baptiste’s sensationalized lawsuit against Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Goguen collapsed under the weight of its own falsehood yesterday, when a judge dismissed the case because of Baptiste’s repeated, egregious and willful misconduct. Over the course of this case, Baptiste perjured herself, concealed, destroyed and falsified key evidence, and demonstrated her contempt for the legal system by systematically violating numerous court orders.”

Baptiste could not be reached for comment.

Baptiste’s lawsuit against Goguen prompted Sequoia to part ways with him almost immediately. Later the very day that TechCrunch broke news of the suit in 2016, a Sequoia spokesman told us that while the firm understood “these allegations of serious improprieties” to be “unproven and unrelated to Sequoia” its management committee had nevertheless “decided that Mike’s departure was the appropriate course of action.”

Goguen, who sold an $11 million home in Atherton, Ca., in 2017, has spent much of his time in recent years at another home in Whitefish, Montana, where he has seemingly been wooing locals. An August story about Goguen in The Missoulian about a separate case describes him “known locally for philanthropic ventures.”

Continues the story: “Such donations have funded Montana’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and a Flathead group teaching girls to code. Two Bear Air, his northwestern Montana search and rescue outfit free to anyone who has needed it, has performed well over 500 missions and 400 rescues, according to executive director and chief pilot Jim Pierce. Goguen has personally completed 30 rescues, the Daily Inter Lake reported in February. The Flathead Beacon reports he was honored with the Great Whitefish Award earlier this year.”

Tougher to get 800M who are not on UPI Platform: Google’s VP for Next Billion Users and Payments

In an interview with Surabhi Agarwal & Pratik Bhakta, he spoke about how RBI’s proposed market share cap on UPI players may not be a good measure at this stage. https://ift.tt/30c3zLu https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Electrifying opportunity, some bumps on the way

A slew of researchers and entrepreneurs are working overtime to reduce battery costs and improve efficiency, while yet others are looking to put new models of electric vehicles on the road. https://ift.tt/2IdAhRN https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

‘Expand number of IDs for social media linkage’

In the amended petition, Rubin has sought the removal of any mention of "Aadhaar", and instead to reflect “any government approved or authorized identities.” https://ift.tt/31z3f6g https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Will Huawei's Mate 30 Series Find Buyers Without Google Apps?

Huawei launches what could be the world's most powerful and feature-packed 5G smartphone on Thursday, but the fate of the device in Europe will hang on whether it can overcome a US ban to give... https://ift.tt/2QeOO63

Mi Smart Band 4 to Go on Sale in India for the First Time Today

The Mi Smart Band 4 is priced in India at Rs. 2,299 and it will be available on Amazon India, Mi.com, and Mi Home Stores. https://ift.tt/2V4hpcQ

Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)

Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...