Otonomo raises $46 million to expand its automotive data marketplace

New vehicles today can produce a treasure trove of data. Without the proper tools, that data will sit undisturbed, rendering it worthless.

A number of companies have sprung up to help automakers manage and use data generated from connected cars. Israeli startup Otonomo is one such player that jumped on the scene in 2015 with a cloud-based software platform that captures and anonymizes vehicle data so it can then be used to create apps to provide services such as electric vehicle management, subscription-based fueling, parking, mapping, usage-based insurance and emergency service.

The startup announced this week it has raised $46 million to take its automotive data platform further. The capital was raised in a Series C funding round that included investments from SK Holdings, Avis Budget Group and Alliance Ventures. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners also participated. Otonomo has raised $82 million, to date.

The funds will be used to help Otonomo scale its business, improve its products and help it remain competitive, according to the company. Otonomo is also aiming to expand into new markets, particularly South Korea and Japan.

“We now have the expanded resources needed to deliver on our vision of making car data as valuable as possible for the entire transportation ecosystem, while adhering to the strictest privacy and security standards,” Otonomo CEO and founder Ben Volkow said in a statement.

Otonomo’s pitch focuses on creating opportunities to monetize connected car data while keeping it safe from the moment it is captured. Once the data is securely collected, the platform modifies it so companies can use it to develop apps and services for fleets, smart cities and individual customers. The platform also enables GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulation-compliant solutions using both personal and aggregate data.

Today, Otonomo’s platform takes in 2.6 billion data points a day from more than 20 million vehicles through partnerships with more than automakers, fleets and farm and construction manufacturers. Otonomo has more than 25 partnerships, a list that includes Daimler, BMW, Mitsubishi Motor Company and Avis Budget Group. The company said it’s preparing to bring on seven more customers.

That opportunity for Otonomo is growing based on forecasts, including one from SBD Automotive that predicts connected cars will account for more than 70% of cars sold in North American and European markets in 2020.

Physicists identify unique signature to confirm quark-gluon plasma in universe

Computer simulation of a merger between two dense neutron stars. After the merger, a phase transition from ordinary hadronic matter (red-yellow) to quark matter (green) takes place.

In the first fractions of a second of our universe's existence, the energy density was so incredibly high that there were no protons and neutrons, just a hot "quark soup" known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Physicists have successfully recreated this unique state of matter in high-energy laboratories, but those conditions are exceedingly rare in the current cosmos. According to a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, German physicists have performed computer simulations indicating that a QGP could form in the immediate aftermath of a binary neutron star merger, and that it should produce a telltale, detectable signature in the gravitational waves emanating from that event.

"Compared to previous simulations, we have discovered a new signature in the gravitational waves that is significantly clearer to detect," said co-author Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. "If this signature occurs in the gravitational waves that we will receive from future neutron-star mergers, we would have a clear evidence for the creation of quark-gluon plasma in the present universe."

A hot, dense soup

Quarks, the fundamental components of subatomic particles, are bound together by force-carrying gluons to form protons and neutrons. But under the extreme high-energy conditions of the early universe in its first microseconds of existence, that couldn't happen. Instead, quarks and gluons mingled freely in a dense soup, until things cooled down sufficiently for protons to condense out of the QGP. Before the first second was up, the Universe had gone through its entire inflationary period, sowing the seeds for the large-scale structures we see today.

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Wonder Woman Spin-Off to Come Before Wonder Woman 3, Patty Jenkins Hints

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JioMeet Is Jio's Video Conferencing App to Take on Zoom, Google Meet

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Xbox Series X next-gen gameplay reveal event set for May 7

Microsoft has taken to Twitter to announce their next Xbox Series X event. The event, which will be a digital-only event, will take place on May 7 at 8:30 PM India time. Microsoft has tweeted, “You want to see games for the Xbox Series X? We want to show you games for the Xbox Series X. Check out First Look next-gen gameplay from our global developer's partners within #InsideXbox on Thursday, May 7 at 8am PT.” Since the tweet reads, “gameplay from our global developer's partners”, we think this will be the platform where Microsoft will show off what other developers are working on that will make an appearance on the next-generation consoles. As for first-party games, we think the reveal will be down the line for what Microsoft’s 16 first-party Xbox studios have to offer. It has been confirmed that gameplay for the recently revealed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be shown off at Microsoft’s May event. Speaking of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the game saw the official unveiling of a gameplay trailer and you can check out details of the game here. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be released for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5 towards the end of 2020. 

At E3 2019 and E3 2018, Microsoft made it a point to show off a lot of games during their press conference to cement the fact that they were committed to the Xbox and gaming. We think the upcoming May event will be filled with gameplay reveal after reveal from new and existing games. It is possible we get to see more details on the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 among other games. 

Microsoft has been front and centre about giving gamer information about the upcoming console, the Xbox Series X. Microsoft took the stage at the Game Awards 2019 to announce the name and the look of the console along with a trailer that showed off Hellblade Senua’s Saga. In 2020, Microsoft gave us an in-depth look at the specifications and build of the console. 

Sony, on the other hand, has only shown off the PS5 controller dubbed the DualSense and revealed the specifications of the PS5. It makes sense that Sony is quiet about the PS5 as they still have 2 big games set to launch in 2020 - The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. You can read more about the new release date of the two games here. 

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Apple Sees iPhone Revenues Fall, as Services and Wearables Help It Grow

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ICANN blocks controversial sale of .org domain to a private equity firm

Enlarge (credit: dalton00 / Getty)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit organization that oversees the Internet's domain name system, has rejected a controversial proposal to sell the .org domain to a private equity group for more than $1 billion. It's a serious—quite possibly fatal—blow to a proposal that had few supporters besides the organizations that proposed it.

Currently, the .org domain registry is run by the Public Interest Registry, a non-profit subsidiary of another non-profit called the Internet Society. PIR was created in 2002 to run the .org domain and has been doing so ever since. But last fall, the Internet Society stunned the non-profit world by announcing it would sell the PIR—and, effectively, ownership of the .org domain—to a new and secretive private equity firm called Ethos Capital for more than $1 billion.

The announcement created a swift and powerful backlash. In its resolution formally rejecting the transaction, ICANN says it received its first letter opposing the deal just two days after it was announced. The group would eventually receive letters from at least 30 groups opposing the deal, as well as numerous negative comments during public hearings. Meanwhile, ICANN says, the deal has received "virtually no counterbalancing support except from the parties involved in the transaction and their advisors."

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LockBit, the new ransomware for hire: a sad and cautionary tale

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Ransomware has emerged as one of the top threats facing large organizations over the past few years, with researchers reporting a more than a fourfold increase in detections last year. A recent infection by a fairly new strain called LockBit explains why: after it ransacked one company’s poorly secured network in a matter of hours, leaders had no viable choice other than to pay the ransom.

A report published by McAfee documents the effectiveness of this newcomer ransomware. Incident responders with Northwave Intelligent Security Operations aided in the analysis. LockBit is most prevalent in countries including the US, the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, China, India, and Indonesia.

(credit: McAfee)

Attackers started out by researching potential targets with valuable data and the means to make big payouts when faced with the dim prospect of losing access to it. The attackers then used a list of words in hopes of gaining access to one of the accounts. Eventually, they hit the jackpot: an administrative account that had free rein over the entire network. The weak account password, combined with the lack of multi-factor authentication protection, gave the attackers all the system rights they needed.

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Reliance Jio working on Zoom rival: 10 things to know

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Amazon says India business most affected due to Covid-19

The Indian government has mandated e-commerce companies to only fulfil orders of essential goods such as groceries. https://ift.tt/2VTFGoj https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

ICANN board has voted to reject the sale of the .org registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital (ICANN)

ICANN:
ICANN board has voted to reject the sale of the .org registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital  —  Today, the ICANN Board made the decision to reject the proposed change of control and entity conversion request that Public Interest Registry (PIR) submitted to ICANN.

Amazon sees possible Q2 loss as it forecasts $4 billion in Covid-19-related costs

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Reddit has disabled its chat room feature, Start Chatting, a day after launch due to "several errors" in rollout and moderators' concerns over lack of control (Monica Chin/The Verge)

Monica Chin / The Verge:
Reddit has disabled its chat room feature, Start Chatting, a day after launch due to “several errors” in rollout and moderators' concerns over lack of control  —  The company says the rollout had several errors  —  Remember how Reddit announced just yesterday that it was introducing built-in subreddit chat rooms?

IDC: Global smartphone shipments dropped 11.7% YoY to 276M during Q1 2020, the largest YoY decline ever (Aimee Chanthadavong/ZDNet)

Aimee Chanthadavong / ZDNet:
IDC: Global smartphone shipments dropped 11.7% YoY to 276M during Q1 2020, the largest YoY decline ever  —  Shipment volumes suffered its largest year over year decline in the first quarter.  —  The latest data from International Data Corporation (IDC) has revealed that as the world grapples …