Sunday, December 15, 2019
How Visa is looking to replace POS machines with this technology
Online travel firms waive charges as tourists cancel Northeast trips
Google halts Chrome 79 rollout on Android, which was ~50% complete, after the misconfigured update wipes user data from many apps using Android's native WebView (Corbin Davenport/Android Police)
Google halts Chrome 79 rollout on Android, which was ~50% complete, after the misconfigured update wipes user data from many apps using Android's native WebView — Chrome 79 started rolling out on desktop and mobile platforms a few days ago. Unfortunately, a bug has cropped up that wipes data …
Keybase CEO says an onslaught of spammers derailed an airdrop of Stellar coins for Keybase users, initially pitched as a ~$120M giveaway (Brady Dale/CoinDesk)
Keybase CEO says an onslaught of spammers derailed an airdrop of Stellar coins for Keybase users, initially pitched as a ~$120M giveaway — Spammers started showing up on Keybase as soon as Stellar announced a giant airdrop on the encryption app. They went away as soon as word went out that the free money era was over.
TikTok sees advertising pilots turn into repeat contracts
The new new weird
Neo-Pentecostal gangs in Brazil, driving out other faiths at gunpoint. A mob of 100 lawyers attacking a hospital in Pakistan to revenge themselves on violent doctors there. Anti-vaxxers, neo-Nazis, and red-pillers. Sometimes it seems like the world has fragmented into a jagged kaleidoscope of countless mobs and subcultures, each more disconcerting than the last.
Much of this is selection bias: if it bleeds, it leads, in both mass media and social-media algorithms. But it does seem plausible that the Internet is contributing to this kaleidoscope, to this growth in worrisome fringe subcultures, in three separate ways: complexity, information, and connectivity.
Connectivity is the most obvious avenue. The Internet empowers everyone to find their like-minded people, and this is as true of the hateful and vengeful as it is of the dispossessed and downtrodden. Furthermore, the power of a group increases nonlinearly with its size. The hateful views of one man in a community of 100 people are unlikely to make a huge collective difference; worst case, they become a fabled missing stair. But 1% of a nation of 100 million? That’s a million people. That’s a movement ready to join, to march, to pay tithes, to reinforce one another.
Information is more subtle. There’s a fascinating quote from the recent New Yorker profile of William Gibson: “Gibson noticed that people with access to unlimited information could develop illusions of omniscience.” You can get any kind of information you want on the Internet. You can find what appear at first glance to be closely argued and well-supported claims that global warming will kill off all but half a billion people by the end of this century, and also, if you prefer, that global warming is an authoritarian hoax.
No wonder people increasingly act as if the truth is something you choose from a buffet rather than a fact that will eventually bite you, hard, if you refuse to believe in it. As Philip K. Dick put it, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” But if all your information comes from the Internet, and is never testable, you never have to stop believing in it … until it’s far too late.
Complexity is, I think, the saddest. It has nothing to do with being led astray by evil companions or disinformation. It’s just that our modern world has become so complicated, such an endless buzz of noise and events and obligations, that lashing back against it, fixating on a simple solution to all the world’s problems, makes people feel strong. This delightful article about schisms among believers in a flat Earth includes the telling quote: “When you find out the Earth is flat … then you become empowered.”
Is the world going to get weirder yet, with new and more bizarre and inexplicable subcultures erupting from the Internet with every passing year? Have we hit the plateau of an S-curve? Or are we in a local minimum, and as we get better at dealing with connectivity and complexity, will we look back on these as the crazy years? My money’s on door number two … but I’ve been outweirded before.
Zomato-UberEats deal may ride on the cab firm's $200 million
Govt mulls regulating social networks as e-comm platforms
Week in Review: Pet startups will be the death of Silicon Valley
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into your inboxes yet again.
I’m in Berlin where TechCrunch just pulled off another great Disrupt event, we’ve got a lot of great Europe-focused startup content on the site so get to scrolling if your interest is piqued.
If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.
The big story
Just as Pets.com symbolized the ridiculousness that came to frame the tech industry preceding the Dotcom bubble burst at the start of the century, dog-walking startup Wag might symbolize that SoftBank’s earthquaking investment overexposure may extend far beyond a one-time WeWork mistake.
This week, the WSJ reported that SoftBank had tossed in the towel on Wag, selling off its massive “nearly 50% stake” in the startup. The report states that SoftBank sold its stake back to the startup at a valuation far below its previous $650 million value. SoftBank is walking away from its two board seats in the process.
Wag will be laying off “a significant amount of the remainder of its workforce,” according to the report.
High-ambition startups stumble all of the time, but SoftBank’s money bag-swinging swagger has left a handful of startups with dollar signs in their eyes and the desire to grow at a pace that they never dreamed of. When LA-based Wag closed its $300 million raise from SoftBank at the beginning of 2018, plenty of people wondered why on earth a dog-walking startup needed that kind of money.
Shift forward to the end of 2019, and startups that have relied on connecting contractor labor with phone-wielding consumers haven’t proven to be as capable in shifting into profitability with Wag seeming to be yet another example.
Needless to say Pets.com and Wag really don’t hold much comparison when it comes to the broader impact. Pets.com was well-known largely because of its hilarious marketing overextension, Wag’s stumblings are far more impactful, especially as they relate to the reputation of its Japanese benefactor which has significantly reshaped the venture capital market in Silicon Valley and around the world.
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On to the rest of the week’s news.
Trends of the week
Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:
- Apple revamps parental controls on iOS
Apple is giving its parental control tools for iOS new functionality. The new update in iOS 13.3 lets parents set limits over who their kids can talk to and text with during certain hours of the day. - Away CEO steps down
One of the weirder sagas of the week was Away CEO Steph Korey’s stepping down from her role at the D2C luggage company. The step-down followed a long investigation in the Verge which basically chronicled how awful life was on Away’s customer service team which painted a pretty ugly portrait of Korey’s leadership style. It was a rough article, but after Korey’s apology acknowledged that she had made some mistakes and would be trying to fix her management style, most people assumed the saga had wrapped. She stepped down this week following what was reported to be board pressure to do so, turns out they had been wanting to replace Korey and the negative press was the excuse they needed.
GAFA Gaffes
How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of badness:
- An iOS bug is locking up iPhones:
[An iOS bug in AirDrop lets anyone temporarily lockup nearby iPhones]
Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Extra Crunch
Our premium subscription business had another great week of content. Our good friend Alex Wilhelm (who hired me as an intern four years ago!) is back at TechCrunch and has fired up a new series on Extra Crunch. Here’s his first post on the new hot club to join.
The $100M ARR Club
“…Firms with valuations that their revenues can’t back are in similar straits. In the post-WeWork era, some unicorns are starting to look a bit long in the tooth. I suspect that the companies in most danger are those with slim revenues (compared to their valuations), poor revenue quality (compared to software startups) or both.
That said, there is a club of private companies that are really something, namely private ones that have managed to reach the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold. It’s not a large group, as startups that tend to cross the $100 million ARR mark are well on the path to going public…”
Sign up for more newsletters including my colleague Darrell Etherington’s new space-focused newsletter Max Q here.
This alleged Bitcoin scam looked a lot like a pyramid scheme
Enlarge (credit: Chesnot / Getty Images)
The world of cryptocurrency has no shortage of imaginary investment products. Fake coins. Fake blockchain services. Fake cryptocurrency exchanges. Now five men behind a company called BitClub Network are accused of a $722 million scam that allegedly preyed on victims who thought they were investing in a pool of bitcoin mining equipment.
Federal prosecutors call the case a “high-tech” plot in the “complex world of cryptocurrency.” But it has all the hallmarks of a classic pyramid scheme, albeit with a crypto-centric conceit. Investors were invited to send BitClub Network cash, which would allow the company to buy mining equipment—machines that produce bitcoin through a process called hashing. When those machines were turned on, all would (in theory) enjoy the spoils. The company also allegedly gave rewards to existing investors in exchange for recruiting others to join. According to the complaint, the scheme began in April 2014 and continued until earlier this month.
Matthew Brent Goettsche, Jobadiah Sinclair Weeks, and Silviu Catalin Balaci are accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to offer and sell unregistered securities. A fourth defendant, Joseph Frank Abel, faces only the latter charge. Another unnamed defendant remains at large. Balaci’s name was redacted from one public version of the indictment, but appeared on another.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
With $4B food delivery acquisition, Korea poised to enter upper tier of startup hubs
Seoul and South Korea may well be the secret startup hub that (still) no one talks about.
While often dwarfed by the scale and scope of the Chinese startup market next door, South Korea has proven over the last few years that it can — and will — enter the top-tier of startup hubs.
Case in point: Baedal Minjok (typically shortened to Baemin), one of the country’s leading food delivery apps, announced an acquisition offer by Berlin-based Delivery Hero in a blockbuster $4 billion transaction late this week, representing potentially one of the largest exits yet for the Korean startup world.
The transaction faces antitrust review before closing, since Delivery Hero owns Baemin’s largest competitor Yogiyo, and therefore is conditional on regulatory approval. Delivery Hero bought a majority stake in Yogiyo way back in 2014.
What’s been dazzling though is to have witnessed the growth of this hub over the past decade. As TechCrunch’s former foreign correspondent in Seoul five years ago and a university researcher locally at KAIST eight years ago, I’ve been watching the growth of this hub locally and from afar for years now.
While the country remains dominated by its chaebol tech conglomerates — none more important than Samsung — it’s the country’s startup and culture industries that are driving dynamism in this economy. And with money flooding out of the country’s pension funds into the startup world (both locally and internationally), even more opportunities await entrepreneurs willing to slough off traditional big corporate career paths and take the startup route.
Baemin’s original branding was heavy on the illustrations.
Five years ago, Baemin was just an app for chicken delivery with a cutesy and creative interface facing criticism from restaurant franchise owners over fees. Now, its motorbikes are seen all over Seoul, and the company has installed speakers in many restaurants where a catchy whistle and the company’s name are announced every time there is an online delivery order.
(Last week when I was in Seoul, one restaurant seemingly received an order every 1-3 minutes with a “Baedal Minjok Order!” announcement that made eating a quite distracted experience. Amazing product marketing tactic though that I am surprised more U.S.-based food delivery startups haven’t copied yet).
The strengths of the ecosystem remain the same as they have always been. A huge workforce of smart graduates (Korea has one of the highest education rates in the world), plus a high youth unemployment and underemployment rate have driven more and more potential founders down the startup path rather than holding out for professional positions that may never materialize.
What has changed is venture capital funding. It wasn’t so long ago that Korea struggled to get any funding for its startups. Years ago, the government initiated a program to underwrite the creation of venture capital firms focused on the country’s entrepreneurs, simply because there was just no capital to get a startup underway (it was not uncommon among some deals I heard of at the time for a $100k seed check to buy almost a majority of a startup’s equity).
Now, Korea has become a startup target for many international funds, including Goldman Sachs and Sequoia. It has also been at the center of many of the developments of blockchain in recent years, with the massive funding boom and crash that market sustained. Altogether, the increased funding has led to a number of unicorn startups — a total of seven according to the The Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard.
And the country is just getting started – with a bunch of new startups looking poised to driven toward huge outcomes in the coming years.
Thus, there continues to be a unique opportunity for venture investors who are willing to cross the barriers here and engage. That said, there are challenges to overcome to make the most of the country’s past and future success.
Perhaps the hardest problem is simply getting insight on what is happening locally. While China attracts large contingents of foreign correspondents who cover everything from national security to the country’s startups and economy, Korea’s foreign media coverage basically entails coverage of the funny guy to the North and the occasional odd cultural note. Dedicated startup journalists do exist, but they are unfortunately few and far between and vastly under-resourced compared to the scale of the ecosystem.
Plus, similar to New York City, there are also just a number of different ecosystems that broadly don’t interact with each other. For Korea, it has startups that target the domestic market (which makes up the bulk of its existing unicorns), plus leading companies in industries as diverse as semiconductors, gaming, and music/entertainment. My experience is that these different verticals exist separately from each other not just socially, but also geographically as well, making it hard to combine talent and insights across different industries.
Yet ultimately, as valuations soar in the Valley and other prominent tech hubs, it is the next tier of startup cities that might well offer the best return profiles. For the early investors in Baemin, this was a week to celebrate, perhaps with some fried chicken delivery.
Flipkart and Walmart invest in Ninjacart, a Bangalore-based fresh produce supply chain startup; sources had said earlier that Walmart could invest up to $50M (The Economic Times)
Flipkart and Walmart invest in Ninjacart, a Bangalore-based fresh produce supply chain startup; sources had said earlier that Walmart could invest up to $50M — India's largest online retailer, Flipkart, and its US-based parent entity Walmart have jointly invested an undisclosed sum …
Samsung denies report of having sold 1 million Galaxy Fold units
Just a day before, it was widely reported that the innovative new Samsung Galaxy Fold has sold more a million times, after Samsung Electronics’ President Sohn Young-kwon revealed the same. But less than 24 hours after, Samsung spokesperson has denied the number stated is true.
During TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Berlin, Samsung Electronics President Sohn Young-kwon revealed the company sold 1 million units of the Galaxy Fold. His words were “And I think the point is, we’re selling [a] million of these.. There’s a million people that want to use this product at $2000.”
However, a new report out of South Korea now has company spokespersons denying the company even achieved the milestone in the first place. The spokesperson claimed the President “may have confused the figure with the company’s initial sales target for the year, emphasizing that sales of the tech firm’s first foldable handset have not touched 1 million units.”
Previously, analysts had tipped Samsung will go on to sell around 400,000-500,000 Galaxy Fold Units in 2019. But then Samsung had to delay the launch of the device after major design issues were pointed out by reviewers. So, for Samsung to have sold a million units of a steeply-expensive smartphone despite that always seemed to be a tall claim. Turns out, it indeed is a tall claim. Samsung is yet to reveal the actual number of units of the Galaxy Fold sold.
https://ift.tt/34oo3Or
Google Street View now covers 10 million miles, enough to cover the world 400 times
Google’s Street View has been in existence for quite some time now, but so far we didn’t have an idea just how much of the world the informative feature covered. Now, Google has given us a deeper look into its Street View implementation and how it contributes to making Google Maps more acccurate and informative.
Google Maps makes locating a place easier by relying on satellite imagery, along with on-ground photography. In a new blog, Google has revealed Street View now covers 10 million miles of streets. The distance is enough to cover the globe 400 times. Google also revealed it has 36 million square miles of HD satellite imagery that you can browse, and the area covers 98 percent of the entire human population. This is, in fact, the first time Google revealed just how widespread the coverage in Maps is.
Google also detailed how it goes about collecting map imagery. It’s known that the company uses Street View cars equipped with 360-degree cameras to take photos from various angles while it’s being driven. Areas where driving isn’t possible, Google has even equipped Street View equipment on people, and in some cases, even sheep.
Google also explained how it uses a technique called photogrammetry to stitch images together to create a map of an area. It’s essentially the same method used to deliver VR experiences such as a tour of the Taj Mahal that it created for Oculus and HTC Vive users.
https://ift.tt/2rP84vl
Vivo outlines new features in FunTouchOS 10, expected to debut in Vivo X30
The fact that the Vivo X30 is about to launch is not big news anymore. Based on the leaks, we’re now aware that the smartphone will be powered by the Exynos 980 SoC that comes with an integrated 5G modem along with a multi-camera setup. The phone is set to launch on December 16 and along with the new offering, Vivo will also reveal what the latest build of FunTouchOS will bring to its phones.
The Vivo X30 will be the first smartphone to feature the latest variant of Vivo’s Android skin. Called FunTouchOS 10, the latest OS will be based on Android 10 and will house some features, which Vivo revealed in a teaser video.
Amidst all the new features, app sharing seems to take the prime spot. The feature will apparently allow users to ‘share’ videos, sounds as well as vibrations from one Vivo phone to another. It seems more like a casting implementation which just happens to support sharing vibration patterns as well. It could also be a little more complicated with Vivo claiming the app will have multi-cast features allowing users to share a live game with a room full of people. Furthermore, the feature could also allow users to control the phone from a desktop through a remote client.
Apart from this, there will be dynamic wallpapers and effects which will cover the status bar icons, transitions, and edge lighting effects. How dynamic will the wallpapers be is something we will have to wait and see, but the video claims macro fluid photography and rivers, lakes and sea motions could be a part of it.
Interestingly, the teaser shows no change in the way icons and other UI elements are designed. It seems Vivo will stick to the previous look and feel of its operating system.
https://ift.tt/2LX9OJS
Japan allocates another $9.9B to boost its chip, quantum computing, and AI endeavors, with an undisclosed amount going to chip startup Rapidus (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg : Japan allocates another $9.9B to boost its chip, quantum computing, and AI endeavors, with an undisclosed amount going to chi...
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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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